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Ben Wilson

Ben Wilson

ben wilson This is the blog of a one Ben Wilson, a Louisville, Kentucky native who enjoys baseball, beer, music, bikes, things that fly and good food. By day he pushes pixels and makes the Internet happen for a local advertising agency. His wife, Kelly is an Ironman, and his baby Amelia is the cutest thing ever.

I’ve been on a real documentary kick as of late and here are a few that should be mandatory viewing for anyone who calls Louisville, Kentucky home.

When We Were Kings – Muhammad Ali vs George Foreman

Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, he was and is the product of both the racial tensions and the revolutionary times and no film shows all of those sides better than When We Were Kings. Ali has become a transcendent figure in his old age – but at the time of the Ali/Foreman fight in 1974, he was still a divisive figure. He went to jail because he refused the Vietnam draft, he joined the Nation of Islam, and to top it off he was a gregarious civil rights activist. But at the core of his being, beneath the pride and the talent was a man who cared deeply about where he came from, who he was and what he and his people could achieve. And all that from a dyslexic street kid from Louisville.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson

Like Ali, Hunter S. Thompson was born and raised in Louisville and took his natural talent and revolutionary thinking and helped to transform the world. Ali and Thompson ultimately shared a similar fate – crippled by the sport they entered into – Ali crippled by Parkinson’s and Hunter S. Thompson’s drug abuse. Their heydays were amazing shows of force and talent spawned by unbelievable creativity, and their slides into the autumns of their lives are terribly sad.

Harlan County USA

While I might live in Kentucky, I love the rest of the state, from the mines in the east to the lakes in the west and the horses in the middle. And while the people in between might not share the same values that I do here in the “big city” of Louisville, they are nonetheless my people and people that shaped the person who I am today. Harlan County USA is a fascinating snapshot of life in a mining town in Harlan County, Kentucky in the early 1970s. An gripping tale of workers and the machine – and what happens when a people have so few options to survive.

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Dec 3 2008 ~ 6:48 pm ~ Comments (1) ~
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Scott Schroeder is a talented (and National Addy Award Winning) designer at my ad agency. He’s also a big classic horror nerd, and apparently has passed those genes down to his kid, Holden. You see, first-grader Holden has written his first script this year and his old man has given the green-light to the project. Scott and Holden have embarked on making sets and doing pre-production for the stop-motion film in their garage.

The plot synopsis is a such (from Scott):

It’s the your typical feel good tale about the young son of a mad scientist, who unwittingly gets into one of his fathers expierements and transforms himself into a flesh eating skeleton/boy/monster.

The working title? THE KING OF DEATH.

Yeah, that’s all Holden there.

The name of Holden’s dog? ROBOT ONE-EYE.

No, I am not joking.

This is going to… be… AWESOME.

You can keep up with THE KING OF DEATH on the official KING OF DEATH blog, http://plan43.blogspot.com/.

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Jun 11 2008 ~ 2:24 pm ~ Comments (1) ~
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