Prototype Issue
Max and Jason: Faces of Current TV
By Polly Cole
(page 1 of 2)Max Lugavere and Jason Silva are best friends and hosts and producers at Current TV in LA. Current was created by Al Gore and his business partner, Joel Hyatt, to serve as an alternative news network for the 18-to-34-year-old demographic.
The network is available through most cable television providers and online at www.currenttv.com. Current’s format features “pods,” short-form pieces, usually documentary in nature. The pods play 24 hours a day, with interstitial commentary and introduction provided by Jason, Max and a rainbow of other young, television-friendly faces.
Many of the pods are viewer-generated; they encompass a wide range of topics. Recent airings include stories on a controversial gay-rights rally in Jerusalem, the pros and cons of the medical-marijuana debate and the practice of female circumcision in Africa.
Current TV brought Max and Jason, both 25, to LA after the network’s TV brass saw Textures of Selfhood, the film the two made while at the University of Miami. In addition to their hosting duties, they continue to create content, including a recent pod exploring Miami’s jet-set immigrant community.
We met at the Farmer’s Market at Third St. and Fairfax on a drizzly Tuesday evening to talk about Current TV, LA and what makes these guys tick.
RTLA: Tell me a little about Current TV. Silva: Television is no longer a one-way street. Television is now a two-way conversation. We’re bringing the interactivity of the Internet—what’s made the Internet so alluring to people is that they can participate—well now you can participate on television. We’re taking it a lot further than just like American Idol, where you can call in on your cellphone. On Current, you’re the journalist; you’re telling us what’s going on in your world.
Lugavere: It’s alternative television: user-generated, a citizen-generated media revolution.
Silva: The channel has done away with the paradigm of the half-hour [and the] hour-long show because they are going on this idea that our generation is a generation of media grazers that are on the computer, chatting on the phone, so they’re not going to sit for a half an hour, but they’ll sit for these five-to-seven-minute pods on a variety of subjects. We’ve been called the HBO of YouTube.
RTLA: What’s your idea of a utopian society? Silva: Honestly? The title of our original film, Textures of Selfhood, was taken from a website called hedonism.org, that we always used to read passages from in college because they were really well written. This guy David Pierce published this online manifesto about a future society of hedonists, those that believe that the pleasure, the value of life is found in pursuing and nurturing things that give us pleasure; love, art, sex, whatever…and he’s also a futurist, so his utopian society is one where [we have] perfect designer drugs, genetic engineering, stem cell through the roof, everything that you need to create a perfect place where we have genetically preprogrammed bliss as the norm. And we were always fascinated by that, so if you ask me long down the line, well, I’m a sci-fi guy but I think that the science fiction of today is the science of tomorrow. I think that would be my utopian society, where everybody is blissfully happy hanging out in robes, eating grapes…nobody dies.
RTLA: Do you think that this utopia has to be chemically induced? Silva: Well, I think that once we understand the human genome better, the chemicals that we create will be chemicals that bind perfectly with our nerve receptors, and it’s not going to be like buying street drugs, but its going to be like enhancing our consciousness with a variety of nanobiotic, robotic, genetically enhanced designer drugs.
RTLA: Do you think it’s possible with just the power of the mind? (Silence. Lugavere laughs)
Lugavere: I totally think so. As a side project, I’m also a musician, and musical practice is definitely something that has provided for me what some people look to outside sources for. When I’m practicing or when I’m performing, I go into a space where I’m completely blissful and I couldn’t ask for anything else.
RTLA: Any thoughts on LA as compared with Miami? Lugavere: I personally am from Manhattan and I went to school in Miami, and I think LA has done a good job of blending the best of both cities. Also, in LA we find that our days are really fulfilling creatively, and you don’t get that so much in Miami.
RTLA: If you could live anywhere in LA, where would it be? Lugavere: I love the Grove. We actually live a block from here. It has a lot of New York vibe to it; you can walk to places, lots of families.
Television is no longer a one-way street. Television is now a two-way conversation. —Jason Silva
Silva: The next step is the hills. I grew up in Venezuela, in Caracas, and Caracas looks exactly like Los Angeles, and all the nice neighborhoods in Caracas are exactly like the Hollywood Hills.
RTLA: What are your favorite restaurants in LA? Lugavere: Bossa Nova.
Silva: Bossa Nova is phenomenal.
Lugavere: Katana for sushi.
Silva: Coupa Café, a great Venezuelan place on Canon Drive in Beverly Hills.
Lugavere: Pink Pepper in Hollywood. Best Thai food. They are so consistent it’s amazing.
Silva: Nyala, Ethiopian food on Fairfax, and Roros, Lebanese food on Sunset.
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