A Conversation With My 12 Year Old Self (a Youtube film by Jeremiah McDonald)
by Fran Ilich <fran@eyebeam.org>
In A Conversation With My 12 Year Old Self Actor and director Jeremiah McDonald, who has been uploading videos into Youtube dealing with some of his obsessions — animation, Dr. Who, Youtube, and, more specifically, his narcissistic self –found among his old VHS tapes footage where his 12 year-old self talks about his desire to interview the then-future (and now present) Jeremiah. By doing creative editing he is able to pull the trick off alright — better, at least, than many of those “same actor, twin brothers” movies of past times that in general fell short of bad slapstick comedy. He uses the card by combining it with a sort of media flashback time travel resource, which making aside the fact that is the Dr. Who main topic (and so, another of the coded winks he does) gets picked up on Youtube not so much because of the cult aspect, but for the more widespread practice of corniness among the platform users. However, McDonald is able to update the trick in a fashion that already generated him 8,412,786 views, and possibly some tangible cash or opportunities, beyond being reviewed on Entertainment Weekly and tweetted by notable people like Neil Gaiman and Roger Ebert.
In any case, we realize two things about Jeremiah: he was a much better actor as a kid and he has joined our beloved army of dilettantes (he wanted to get into animation, but ended up trying to do film because it was much easier). All in all, besides the found footage, I discovered that a previous video of Jeremiah’s is much more interesting. In “YouTube Is My Life” (where we find out that Jeremiah can sing), which had 2,013,430 views at the time of posting this text, he is someone trying to get even with the network by spreading some viral negativity. It shows that his videos are clearly the product of an actor (himself) who displays his multiple talents as wares for sale (but who can’t structure a story). Like in the previous video, Jeremiah makes the storyline depend on his palette of abilities he can offer as a professional, making this emerging genre of the web 2.0 “one man act” an even more attractive trend for aspiring actors, directors, and other man-orchestras swimming on the web social networks: show what you can do for show business and make it a satellite, hoping the forces of gravitation can get you a gig somewhere in the galactic federation. All the luck, Jeremiah. In time we trust.
