How do you find out about these articles? I'm a fan of Filmmaker magazine, but the Online Features archive (at http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/archives/online_features.html) only shows links to articles as recent as June. Thanks for all your good work!

Rich, Filmmaker really is a terrific magazine, absolutely agreed. As for where news of some of these articles come from, thing is, we really do "appreciate tips via email," and that's where this heads-up came from, too.

I actually saw this film a couple of weeks ago and I must say, I felt the filmmakers sort of assumed the American company was only trying to help and emphasized the fact that 90% of the Georgians (including the government) weren't paying their bills. (Average Georgian monthly salary: $15-45; average monthly electric bill: $27.) The film never questions why it was necessary to install personal meters in every home or what sort of options the electric company had for transitioning the Georgians--who had never paid an electric bill in their lives--into a capitalist power economy. It's a good sketch of a fascinating cultural moment, but I would have appreciated a bit more critical perspective toward the company. Sure, it lost a lot of money... but how much much did it really have to spend in the first place? Were its demands on the population exorbitant? The film doesn't really ask these questions.

Still, I'd like to read the interview...thanks for posting.

I have to withhold judgement until I see the film, of course, but I suspect you may be right, Doug. Thoughts after reading the interview? What about the general reception of Lewis by the Georgians? Do Devlin's comments ring true?

Yeah, Lewis seemed like a cool guy, very keen to mix with the locals, smart, down-to-earth, congenial. In fact, he sort of becomes the "hero" of the film, so I was disappointed to find out the filmmaker knew him from college!

I think this Devlin quote from the interview sums up the film's perspective:

"And so the shame is, even though the Americans were there to make money themselves of course, they also seemed to have good intentions, they wanted to build an infrastructure; they wanted to make the system work. But the Georgians, having thousands of years of this history of milking the foreigner, couldn’t see the opportunity to build anything, they just saw it as an opportunity to pocket a lot of money from these silly Americans. And Power Trip is about the comedy and the tragedy of that disconnect. "

I don't know, that just seems a bit Americentric to me. Maybe it could have been true in a general sense, but the film just assumes this perspective and never really questions it. The Americans are young, hard working, and congenial and the Georgians are angry, uncooperative, and opportunistic. There just wasn't a very good balance. I wish there had been more questioning of the company's strategies. Did they really make the most of a bad situation? Could they have done it more cheaply? Was it too much too soon or does an economy transition that big have to occur through baby steps?

I would have appreciated those kinds of questions rather than the sort of "idealists in a hard world" angle the film took. It was discomforting to note the average Georgian salary was $15 and then to see these newly-refurbished corporate offices and laptops and new technologies and wonder about the efficiency, or necessity, of the whole enterprise.

"Was it too much too soon or does an economy transition that big have to occur through baby steps?"

As you can imagine, perched as I am over here in Berlin, this is a question that has plagued me and just about everyone around me. I think one of the most concise and, pardon the expression, on-the-money assessments of what's gone wrong since 1989/1991 came from Joseph Stiglitz a little more than a few months ago now. That piece I'm linking to is about Russia specifically, but of course, it also addresses the slew of problems faced by all countries that were once behind the Iron Curtain, then force-fed a strong dose of medicine that has only exacerbated the problem rather than come anywhere near curing it.

What I'm hearing from you, it seems, is that Devlin is not the sort of guy to pose essential questions. Again, I don't want to leap to judgement before seeing his film, but perhaps he's gone with his gut rather than do a bit more research, influenced by his close relationship with his protagonist.

Either way, you've only made me more anxious to see the film if/when it ever makes it over here!

where the film's sympathies lie is not as interesting as some of what it reveals about life in georgia. i saw the film in april. from that film, it was fairly clear that shevardnadze was not earning his keep, even adjusting for a bias against socialist economics. patronage was running rampant.

after a few days i was thinking, "foreign profiteers bringing religion, corrupt government bribing itself to death, wow. it's like a tape loop we can't stop, century after century." devlin's friend could have been a jesuit monk, in fact devlin's friend could have been bobby de niro in the mission for how devlin treated him. maybe this means
shevardnadze's next gig will be at the vatican. cash economy good! pope bad! wait now i'm confused.

so john paul ii and ken lay are out together on a boat, and they're fishing. lay looks over and sees that the pope's holding a fishing pole over the water but it has no line!

"you can't catch fish that way, your eminence," he says. "you've got no line, no hook!" and the pope says, "the church is my sustenance, ken, i need no more."

"boy, i hear that," says ken lay.

"and what about you?" asks the pope. "you have neither hook nor line, nor even pole! i think you are not fishing at all."

ken lay leans back and looks deep into the blue, blue sky. "your eminence, the way i see it, every fish i don't catch today counts as two fish: the one that got away, and the one i let go. and as i'm doubling the number of fish in the lake, i'm going to take a fish or two from everybody else's catch from here on in, as a restocking fee."

the pope sits and considers this for quite some time. water laps against the boat, insects buzz, leaves flutter. finally the pope opens his eyes and speaks.

"real estate is safer."