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'Home Page' documents on-line search for self
By Patti Hartigan, Globe Staff, 07/02/99
 ack in 1996, documentary filmmaker Doug Block went looking for the heart of the Internet, searching for the people who were defining what was then a strange new medium. Who were these folks who bared their souls - and sometimes their bodies - on line? Were they simply starved for attention, misfits screaming `Me, me, me'' in computer code? Or were they tapping into something deeper, some primal need for connection by whatever medium possible?
Block's film ''Home Page,'' which debuts Sunday at 8 p.m. on HBO, takes us on a rambling odyssey to find the answers to those questions; it sheds light on the giddy excitement and chaos of the Web before it became a giant shopping mall. But while the film introduces us to the gurus and geeks who became mini-celebrities during the early days of the Web, it isn't really about technology per se, but rather about the curious human impulse that drives these individuals. They're looking for home on a home page; in the words of one character, they're ''looking for Bo Bo'' - that is, ''the person who makes it all OK.'' Block somehow manages to make his subjects - who are maddeningly narcissistic, wistful, and tragic at the same time - seem like pilgrims on an almost spiritual quest. Like Odysseus or Peer Gynt or even Dorothy of Kansas, they embark on wild adventures, only to discover that you don't find fulfillment on the information superhighway.
But you can sure have a good time on the ride. By sheer coincidence, Block ends up following the lives of several Web pioneers, who grew up along with the medium. We meet Justin Hall, an outrageous college student with an unruly mane who broadcasts every intimate detail of his life on line. He hooks up with Howard Rheingold, the cultlike celebrity who wrote ''The Virtual Community.'' Along the way, we also meet Julie and Jim Petersen; Block captures the pair at the time when green-haired Julie and her lover, Patrick, are posting news of their affair on their Web sites. And we meet Carl Steadman, the founder of the ironic commentary site suck.com who can't hide his overwhelming sadness behind the rims of his spectacles.
Justin Hall, with his rat-a-tat guffaw and dreadlocks, is the centerpiece of the film, maintaining youthful enthusiasm and optimism despite a troubled past. Hall is high drama to the nth degree. Let's put it this way: He might amuse you in class, but you wouldn't want to have him move in next door.
But the beauty of the film is that Block doesn't try to sustain high drama; instead, he focuses his lens on the small moments of insight, the tiny epiphanies, the sigh after the storm. We see Jim Petersen talking quietly about his wife's amorous adventures, and we see Julie Petersen lamenting the end of the affair: ''Nine letters and a Web site. That's when you start wondering. What's it all about?'' We even see Hall admitting that his on-line shenanigans are really about carving out ''some idealized, intimate relationship.'' And we see Steadman explaining how he documented the tragic death of his girlfriend on his home page; quietly, soberly, he reveals that the Web hasn't revolutionized human interaction, despite its great promise. ''There is no revolution at hand,'' he says. ''There are new technologies, but that doesn't change the nature of desire.''
Desire, after all, is what it's all about; the only difference in cyberspace is that it's measured in what Net folks call ''traffic,'' or views of a Web page. And Block isn't immune to that desire himself. When he starts the film, he is ''halfway between college graduation and retirement,'' and like the people he chronicles, he is on a journey as well. We don't see him until he creates his own home page, and then suddenly he becomes a character in the story, filming his wife and children, his nephew's bar mitzvah, his parents' 50th-anniversary party. He goes on the road with the cyberpunks, only to discover that there's no place like home. While Hall is ''all connections and no grounding,'' Block's wife, Marjorie, is the grounded force of stability in the film. She doesn't have a home page; she doesn't read her husband's Web page. Unlike the others, she is satisfied with her life, maintaining a spiritual center.
The contrast between a real home life and a virtual home page is striking here. But Block doesn't judge his subjects; he becomes one of them and learns the same lessons. ''I'm trying to show that there are some consequences,'' Block says from his office in New York. ''It can jeopardize your relationships. At the same time, it gives them a forum to get stuff off their chest. It beats standing on a street corner.''
While providing a glimpse of the early days of the Web, Block manages to get at something much deeper. ''We were looking for some spark to our lives,'' says Block. ''We were looking for something to come along and shake us out of our lethargy and give life some zest and meaning. I thought there was something missing in my life, and my journey was to realize `There's no place like home, Dorothy.'''
That aside, Block and all of the others in the film still maintain their own home pages, although some of them are more discriminating about the details they reveal. You can find all the links on Block's site, www.d-word.com. All of the characters, in fact, are identified by their Web addresses at the end of the film. Do they mind having their ''homes'' revealed, now that they've acquired distance from the early euphoria? ''Are you kidding? It's traffic,'' Block says. ''That's the name of the game. It's attention.'' But it's not, in the end, that abstract concept we call home.
Send e-mail to cyberlinks@globe
.com.
This story ran on page D11 of the Boston Globe on 07/02/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.
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