In my previous two posts (here & here) about the history of E.C. Comics, I have discussed the value of these comics as a form of nostalgia cannibalism and the ways in which nostalgia and consumer culture overlap. As an important part of the Baby Boomer childhood experience, the various comic titles published by E.C. Comics from […]
One of the weirder things going on in my life is the saga of The Mysterious Tab Drinker. Yes, that’s right. Someone is drinking that forgotten, terrible diet soda from the ’80s — TAB — in a way that makes me wonder what the heck is going on. There’s no real logical or professional way to […]
I meant to post this a while ago… anyway, here it is. In the summer of 2014 I was honored with an invitation to speak at the Flash Forward Festival hosted by the Magenta Foundation. Here is the full video of my talk: An Idiot Makes A Move: How I Learned To Love My Accountant […]
I hope you’ll pardon the radio silence on this blog, but I’ve been working on a new film! It’s called “Dysopticon” and it will be a fast-paced sci-fi short film. After nearly 4 years working on a dark Holocaust documentary, I wanted to try something fun and light. My friend James Manning was pushing to […]
Sorry about the radio silence here for the past month. I have several excuses that might explain my lack of posts lately… Work is really busy. (This is my boring and predictable excuse.) It’s WAAAAAAAAYYYYY too cold to visit Franklin Park, much less write about it. 16 Photographs At Ohrdruf is showing on TV and out […]
This week I had to write an annual report for The Smith Foundation, who are the fiscal sponsors of 454 Productions. In cataloging the successes I’ve had this past year, I was really blown away by how much has happened and, more importantly, how many great friends I know who support creativity and independent vision. […]
While it is true that I read a lot about U.S. politics on a daily basis, I often struggle as I try to understand the underlying geographic and historical context of the post/modern fights. This is where maps are so handy. First, look at this map from Wikipedia about the Black Belt. The Black Belt is a […]
Wikipedia: The Panopticon is a type of institutional building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. The concept of the design is to allow a watchman to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) inmates of an institution without their being able to tell whether they are being watched or not. The name is also […]
An Open Letter to President Obama from matthewnash on Vimeo. Today I created this video as an open letter to President Obama. I worry that we are marching to war in Syria with no clear goal, and that no good that can come of this. I am hoping that he can ignore the drumbeat to […]
A few weeks ago, my wife and I took a great trip up the west coast. We started in San Francisco with a few days of tourism (history nerds + Golden Gate Park = awesome) and then took the train to Seattle. If you ever get the chance to take the Coast Starlight I highly recommend […]
A while ago I wrote about my attempts to find the Lover’s Leap in Franklin Park, which turned out to be much more of a mystery than I expected. Since that post I’ve received a few emails about what I wrote, all positive. Yesterday was no exception: Greetings Mr. Nash! I have had the pleasure […]
Recently I shot a short video which involved about 20 interviews. I do a lot of interviews for my work, and I’m consistently frustrated by the fact that people never look at the camera. Now, I know that most people are intimidated by cameras, but as a filmmaker it is necessary that they address “the […]
This week I got to level up my nerd cred. I am a huge fan of the historian David McCullough. Not just his writing, which is incredibly compelling and amazingly well-researched, but also his voice! As a history nerd, McCullough is the soundtrack to my life. Whether listening to the audiobook of 1776 that he […]
Today my city suffered a tragedy. It’s easy to see these things on the news and to become detached, but tonight watching TV I keep seeing the library I visit weekly, the streets I walk every day and the city skyline that I call home. I don’t know what to say except that my heart […]
Today I was walking in a light snow past The Monument near my home in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood of Boston. I’m sure it has a formal name, but to everyone I know it is just The Monument. For years I’ve walked past it and looked at it as a glorification of the Union victory […]
Sorry about the radio silence this past week. Things have been moving swiftly with the film and I’ve been focussed on getting everything ready for the upcoming screenings. But fear not, I have several rants saved up along with great new pictures from Franklin Park. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this picture of […]
When I was a kid, I liked to skip school. I’m about to turn 37 and I can admit to this. But here’s the thing: I didn’t want to skip school to do drugs or vandalize churches… nope, I wanted to read books and watch tv. Around Christmas of 1987 my parents split, and I […]
In January of 1986 I was 9 years old and in the 4th grade. Each day our teacher gave a 10-question spelling test, and the student who got the top score was allowed to stay in the classroom during lunch (rather than eating in the cafeteria) with a friend. The class TV was tuned to […]
I have known Jason Dean Egan for 21 years, and for all the time I’ve known him he has been obsessed with music. In 1992 we formed a punk band that eventually became our creative partnership as Harvey Loves Harvey. Throughout our collaboration, no matter what we are doing, we always make music and listen […]
I’ve never had much cause to hang out in New York’s Grand Central Terminal. Arriving from Boston (or, for a time, Chicago) by train I end up in Penn Station; by bus at Port Authority. My infrequent LIRR trips to visit my grandparents departed from Grand Central, but I was a poor college kid and […]
In my previous piece, I looked at how the Baby Boom generation is both endlessly nostalgic for its past, and driven by a consumerist philosophy that encourages businesses to make products that capitalize on this nostalgia. Using the example of E.C. Comics, who published great titles such as Tales From The Crypt from 1950-55, I […]
For any of this to make sense, I need to begin with three generalizations about the Baby Boom generation: they are the largest generational cohort in history1; they were raised in post-war consumer culture, and view most of life in consumerist terms; they are incredibly nostalgic. The first of these is a verifiable fact, and […]
Today, my wife Nicole and I were talking about television and movies from our childhood (a popular topic; we were both born in the mid-1970s) and how pervasive the Vietnam War was in the media. It seemed that there was barely a TV show or movie in which a main character was not a veteran, […]
This autumn, I spent a huge amount of time scanning all the negative sheets that my wife and I have shot over the years, to make an archive and also to re-visit old work. It took me the better part of a month (thank you sabbatical!) to get the hundreds of sheets scanned, and […]