

Filmmaker tries satire to send a message about the D

February 17, 2013   |  
Still from "Detroit_ (blank)_City," an online comedy series. Goldenberg hopes to raise $15,000 on Kickstarter to make it.
Still from "Detroit_ (blank)_City," an online comedy series. Goldenberg hopes to raise $15,000 on Kickstarter to make it. / "Detroit_(Blank)_City"
Still from Oren Goldenberg's "Save Detroit," a satirical video that he posted to promote his Kickstarter campaign. / "Save Detroit"
Oren Goldenberg


The guy behind the viral online spoof to raise half a billion to save Detroit is wielding his satire again.

His latest video is a quick-cut stream of logos for Say Nice Things About Detroit, Made in Detroit, Imported from Detroit, Seed Detroit, Popup Detroit and dozens more. As a robotic voice reads each one out loud over the course of 3 minutes, the point hits home. Invoking the city's name for marketing purposes can work for nearly anything and yet mean almost nothing.

"I'm fascinated by this idea: Who is Detroit? What do you mean when you say it?" says Oren Goldenberg. "We don't have any consensus on what Detroit is, so how can anyone come up with a plan to revitalize, regenerate, save, (do) anything (to) Detroit?"

The 29-year-old local filmmaker is best known for his serious, unblinking documentaries about Detroit. But at the moment, he's switching gears to comedy, the language of political and socially relevant discourse for a generation that finds truth in "The Daily Show" and instant analysis on Twitter.


A couple of weeks ago, Goldenberg posted a clip of a perky young woman pitching a Kickstarter campaign to raise $500 million to save Detroit. The spokeswoman, identified as Jessica Martin (actually local actress Jennifer Proescher), explained how a $1 donation would get you a ride on the People Mover, $500 an abandoned home, $20 million the city's entire water department and so on.


Goldenberg's Kickstarter campaign is for real. He's trying to raise $15,000 for a six-part online comedy series, "Detroit_(blank)_City," to be directed by him and cowritten by Ari Rubin, a childhood friend from Huntington Woods who's now a New York voice actor. (You can find the details of the campaign -- and see the viral video -- at by searching for "Detroit_(blank)_City."

The project is described on the popular crowd-sourcing site as absurdist comedy. "Through humor, we will laugh to breathe another day," the text explains. In person, Goldenberg describes laughter as a catharsis for what's happening in Detroit -- both the problems of the city and the sometimes surreal ideas floated as possible remedies.

A University of Michigan graduate who studied film and video, Goldenberg has worked on everything from indie drama (he was the editor of "Bilal's Stand," which screened at Sundance in 2010) to music videos.

He's probably best known locally for two documentaries that tell Detroit's story through the eyes of citizens dealing with the public sector's failing systems. His film "Our School" takes viewers inside the city's troubled schools and shows what life is like for students there. His latest documentary, "Brewster Douglass, You're My Home," about the historic public housing project, won a documentary prize at February's Detroit Dreaming Film Festival.

"He takes Detroit very seriously. He's committed to it," says local filmmaker and educator Harvey Ovshinsky, who applauds Goldenberg's attempt to stretch his creative muscles with comedy.

The inspiration for "Detroit_(blank)_City" was a conversation that Goldenberg had with Rubin during a visit to New York. As they talked about the state of Detroit, they started joking and began a cathartic conversation that lasted for several hours.

Goldenberg believes the satire they're out to make is not that far from reality. The "Save Detroit" video, for instance, tackles the issues of privatization of city services to ease a financial crisis in a way that Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert might like.

Another area ripe for parody is the influx of what Goldenberg calls "hope porn," which -- unlike the "ruin porn" fascination with Detroit's crumbling structures -- concerns the fixation with efforts to turn Detroit around, some fueled by young white transplants to the region.

He doesn't sugarcoat the dichotomies that he's out to parody. "If you require the public sector, you're (profanity) in Detroit. If you come in with resources and you don't rely on public transportation, you don't rely on public schools, you don't rely on anything from your government, then Detroit's a great place. It's cheap. It's fun."

So far, the "Save Detroit" video has raised nearly $1,000 on Kickstarter. The campaign runs until Feb. 28.

Goldenberg says that the online comedy project is completely on the level, but he does like playing with the layers of reality in his material. He says the Save Detroit Think Tank actually exists, yet it's pretty safe to consider it a metaphor for decades of do-gooderism.

"If you really want to get to the meta place, I also work for Save Detroit Think Thank. They hired me to make their Kickstarter video," he says with a smile.

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