“You don”™t want to be a flat squirrel in life. If you decide to go for something, you”™ve just got to do it and not hesitate and second-guess yourself or third-guess yourself.”
”“ Steven K. Oto, owner of Alternate Realities, a rare-surviving Westchester comic book shop, in “My Comic Shop Documentary.”
“Sheer tasteful merchandise that can decorate any room in any house in any country in any world.”
”“ Jay Meisel, modestly describing his wares at Jay”™s Comics and Posters in the late Empire State Flea Market, in “By Spoon! The Jay Meisel Story.” He has since relocated his business to his very full garage.
“Basically, he does garage sales right now,” Anthony Desiato says of the man who inspired his second documentary film, Jay Meisel.
We”™re standing in an aisle at Alternate Realities, a comic book shop with a Scarsdale address in a Central Avenue strip mall. Desiato left his job in the admissions office at Pace Law School an hour early this July afternoon to meet us at Steve Oto”™s store.
A 2012 graduate of the law school that now employs him, 27-year-old Desiato worked at Alternate Realities through high school and college and here was mentored in the owner”™s “Otoisms” ”“ see the flattened squirrel metaphor above. Oto and his merry, highly talkative band of friends and customers were the subject of Desiato”™s first full-length documentary film three years ago. It began as a law school internship project. Desiato earned his J.D. degree ”“ Oto, a former real estate attorney in Manhattan, had urged him to steer clear of law school ”“ and passed the New York bar exam in the same summer that his documentary was shown at the Jacob Burns Film Center. He would like to practice someday in entertainment or intellectual property law, but now it”™s his own entertaining intellectual properties that Desiato aims to promote.
“He won”™t quit,” Desiato tells us. “It”™s still something for him to do.”
He is speaking of Jay Meisel, but he could be speaking of himself as a filmmaker who hasn”™t yet made a dime at what he”™s done.
Meisel is another habitué of Alternate Realities and the tragicomic subject and profanity-prone, outrageously opionated curmudgeon ”“ with a generous soft spot for kids who can”™t afford the price of a comic book ”“ of Desiato”™s new documentary short film, “By Spoon! The Jay Meisel Story.” Desiato with his Canon camera recorded the 77-year-old merchant”™s final year and closing days at Port Chester”™s Empire State Flea Market last year.
Meisel, it should be noted, vociferously loathes a lot of things in modern life, including that word “flea” in the name of the market where he was a colorful fixture for more than three decades. Fleas and tasteful merchandise don”™t much mix.
“He curses at the television,” the livid curmudgeon”™s wife, Alice, told the filmmaker on camera, with a spouse”™s air not of long suffering but of long and easy familiarity with a tough New Yorker”™s uncouth vocabulary of outrage. “He curses at the news. He curses everything. I think he curses the 21st century.”
“—- technology!” her husband says into the camera on another slow day at the market.
“—- the computer age!”
A former social studies teacher in Spanish Harlem, Meisel brought a habit of good attendance to his flea market gig. “I”™ve closed three weekends in 34 years,” he tells Desiato in the 32-minute documentary. “One weekend was my brother-in-law died. One weekend I was in the hospital, and one weekend I took my son to a rehab.”
That interview took place before management at the Port Chester Shopping Center announced the flea market would close by the end of 2013. The market”™s demise sadly ended the world as he knew it for Jay Meisel ”“ “It”™s a ——”™ life”™s thing!” ”“ but its closing and Meisel”™s move to his garage ”“ with the help of friends and fellow customers from Westchester”™s comic shop subculture ”“ add a poignant dramatic element to Desiato”™s film.
“It was handled disgustingly,” Meisel, who had no lease, says of the abruptly announced closing. “It shows the worst of capitalism once again.”
“And I”™m not going on eBay. —- eBay!”
“Today the market doesn”™t end,” Meisel proclaims in the film as he clears out his shop. “The market will go on forever in the hearts and minds of everybody who resides in Port Chester.”
Maybe so, but customers haven”™t followed Jay and his decorative merchandise ”“ movie posters and still photos, comic books, autographed materials and pop-culture collectibles ”“ to the Meisel garage in Hartsdale.
“It”™s frustrating. It”™s disheartening. It”™s scary,” he says, before lowering the garage door to shut out the young filmmaker and his camera.
As if to urge himself on through his own frustrations, Desiato has named his film company Flat Squirrrel Productions. “I like to think I apply that philosophy” ”“ hesitate to act and you end up as life”™s flattened roadkill, that is ”“ “to the making of this movie, hence the name of the production company,” he says.
The novice filmmaker thought the screening of “My Comic Shop Documentary” at Jacob Burns two years ago might connect him to the industry network he needed to land a distribution deal and find a wide audience for his 72-minute film. “Somewhat frustratingly, that didn”™t happen,” he says.
“I was just trying to get the movie in front of the right eyes. I got a lot of press surrounding the screening, but it didn”™t have the ultimate effect that I was hoping. I was hoping to cultivate more of a relationship with Jacob Burns and the Jacob Burns community. I guess they weren”™t that into me, I don”™t know.”
Until recently, the filmmaker had resisted showing his movie free of charge online. But as it has too for Jay Meisel, a new reality has set in for Anthony Desiato. You can freely view his full-length feature on his company website, flatsquirrelproductions.com. It”™s also posted on YouTube.
A tantalizing trailer for his Jay Meisel film also can be viewed at the Flat Squirrel Productions site and on YouTube.
The first documentary has had nearly 5,000 views on YouTube in the last two months ”“ not viral, but encouraging numbers for a lawyer-in-waiting who won”™t quit on his other possible career.
“At this point, I just wanted to make it as accessible as possible,” he says. “The quest to monetize what I do on the filmmaking side is definitely important. I feel the biggest thing right now is just reaching that audience.”
The fimmaker recently was joined by Jay Meisel at a library showing of “By Spoon!” “I sat next to him in the screening,” Desiato says. “He was laughing the whole time.”
“I think he really liked having an audience again.”
