FILM: My Heart is an Idiot – Douglas Wright
I’m always excited whenever Portland filmmaker David Meiklejohn releases a new project out into the world. He’s a multi-talented writer, director, poet, and storyteller (his short story Gardens is featured in Exit Strata: Print! No. #1). We’ve have known each other more for than a decade now, having met at the Live Poets Society (now dead) in the grungy basement bar/underground hall of drunkards/fire trap that was Geno’s Bar. And for years, whenever I’d ask what he was doing, he’d say: “well, i’m still working on this documentary about Davy Rothbart.”
It’s now clear why David spent years working on the film “My Heart is an Idiot,” a whirlwind documentary pared down from over 150 hours of footage of life on the road with Davy Rothbart (founder of Found Magazine and regular contributor to This American Life). It’s a raw, real look at Love (with a capital L) through the lens of Rothbart’s romantic escapades—and an honest appraisal of the idealism that many writers and artists fall victim to when they try to script their romances and turn their lovers in characters from a Bronte novel. “My Heart is an Idiot” screened at independent theaters across the US during its 2011 tour, and the much-anticipated DVD will be released this fall.
