Writing Staff, 8 Million

By [John Blahnik]

The city that never sleeps now has a way of chronicling the everydayness of New Yorkers Nowadays, it?s a cliché that any movie about blocked writers will eventually feature a postmodern epiphany. This is it, they?ll think. The movie should be our lives. Leo Burnett USA has now enabled New Yorkers to do something similar. A longtime presence in Chicago, the ad agency catapulted into the national consciousness in the 1950s as the people behind the Pillsbury Doughboy, the Marlboro Man, the Jolly Green Giant and a type of corporate Americana emblematic of the Midwest. Now, six months into the opening of their first Manhattan branch, the firm has come out with something decidedly New York. ?We were all experiencing city life in a new way,? said creative director Max Goodwin about the move. ?I had just come from Denver, and two other directors, Michael Canning and Kieran Antill, had just come from Sydney, and we found ourselves saying, ?You won?t believe what I just heard? or ?Imagine what I just saw.? We wanted to create a way to capture these moments and use them to fuel creativity.? The result was New York Writes Itself. Live since June, the project, online at www.newyorkwritesitself.com, is billed as a running script of the city written by the city. Any New Yorker can register and start writing?the only requirement is that posts capture something observed within the five boroughs. ?It?s all about fleeting moments,? said Goodwin. ?We?ve boiled it down to three categories: a character description, just a passerby you found amazing; a scene you might witness, something more than an individual; or a quote.? The three categories already have some highlights. User Marco writes about Mr. Superfly, a man who looks like he?s walked out of a 1970s blaxploitation film and into the East Village, dismissing those who stare at him as if they were the crazy ones. Simen writes about a truck driver stuck behind a girl on a bike; the honking, the frustrated yelling, the tailgating, and then the change of tone. ?Nice ass,? says the driver, now patiently following her. At a bar, user Goody overhears a pack of frat boys declare that they don?t drink beer, only shots, then place their order: three lemon drops. There are also an unavoidable number of mediocre entries. Many users don?t bother with spelling or grammar. ?Would of? is standard for ?would have.? Too often the pieces are of the only-in-New-York variety, some hackneyed sketch relaying the wacky antics of the unhinged. But never do you go through these without eventually hitting something good, like this quote, again overheard by Goody, from an upwardly mobile couple visiting friends on the Lower East Side: ?What they need is a doorman and an elevator.? The subtle implication that some buildings have doormen but no elevators almost inspires a subsequent scene, in which a uniformed man tosses open a set of gilded doors and gestures the way to the affluent guests, up five flights of stairs. ?That?s what they?re supposed to do,? said Goodwin. ?Recording the observations is just step one toward the final goal, which is inspiring New York art. Although you own what you put up, you agree to let others use it in whatever way they can.? The agency is jumpstarting this process itself. Every week it plans to hand their favorite submissions over to actor Kevin Conway, who will perform the pieces around the five boroughs for a new web series called The Chairman. And on Dec. 15, the Art Directors Club will exhibit the best posts as interpreted by local letterpress printers in a show that will run through Jan. 6. ?The more you post, the better chance you have of getting produced,? said Goodwin. ?It?s not about being a writer, it?s about being observant. We?re looking for people from all walks of life and from all parts of New York.? And does that include a Park Avenue adman? ?Of course,? said Goodwin. ?I post whenever I can. My username is Goody.? Actor Kevin Conway in the web series The Chairman, part of the New York Writes Itself project. Photo courtesy of New York Writes Itself