Mark Slutsky

Mark Slutsky is a writer, director, and actor that makes shorts ranging from five to ten minutes and is currently running the Tumblr blog Sad Youtube. He has co-authored other films, and is currently based in Montreal.
He has co-written other works such as The Fruit Hunters "The Fruit Hunters" (co-written with Yung Chang), and Peepers (co-written with Daniel Perimutter).
Mark Slutsky is an example of a digital literature author due to this blog Sad YouTube. It is an unoriginal compilation of comments that are purely from outside sources that he has put together in one holistic piece of digital art that aims to be poignant but at the same time is impersonal due to the lack of connection between the author and the material. Unoriginal literature and digital literature are not the same idea, but they are closely related in that a great part of digital literature is unoriginal and vice versa. Unoriginal literature consists of taking material from other authors and using it, with minor to no modifications, to create a form of literature. This is what Slutsky does with Sad YouTube; the comments in the corresponding video are cited without any alterations or annotation from the author, making the content posted on the blog purely unoriginal. Digital literature is an art form that takes advantage of the capabilities of modern technology. Slutsky's work exemplifies digital literature by using the comments feature on YouTube as the source of material on his blog. Since digital literature and unoriginal literature are rather small and less noticed movements, there are few artists that are noted for their work, and Slutsky is one of the few that has gathered modest attention.
Work
Sad YouTube
Sad YouTube is a compilation of comments on YouTube that evoke sadness, posted online on the blogging site Tumblr. The description on the Tumblr profile is
The posts are formatted in a way that first shows a screenshot of the YouTube video under which the comment was posted and then underneath, in quotes, is the comment, followed by the name of the person who wrote the comment and the title of the video. Most comments on the blog are short personal anecdotes or confessions that are poignant, partly due to the story itself, and party because of the connection between the video and the story in the comment. Most of the comments on the blog are personal anecdotes or confessions that Slutsky deemed poignant in the multitude of YouTube comments.
This blog has gathered modest attention, ranging from short press clippings to a BuzzFeed article Slutsky himself wrote for the site.
Sorry, Rabbi (2011)
Sorry Rabbi is a ten-minute short that is about Josh, a young Jewish professional living in Montreal. The plot centers around an encounter with some Hasidic men one night that leads to an impromptu tribunal with these men and their Rabbi, thus the name.
The short begins with a scene depicting rabbi sitting across from a group of Hasidic Jewish men dressed in traditional clothing, and one man in a plain shirt, Josh. One of the Jewish men, Chaim, has an injury on his forehead, caused by a projectile that he claims was thrown by Josh. First Chaim tells his side of the story, which consists of then walking down the street when he is suddenly struck by an object, thus causing the injury. He looks up to find Josh, who says "What are you looking at?" in a condescending manner. Josh then tells his side of the story - he and his girlfriend, Marie-Hélène, are fighting because of Josh's cheap and simple birthday gift for her. According to this story, Marie-Hélène throws the gift, a small plastic Buddha statue, out the window, which ends up striking Chaim. Then the Jewish men and Josh start arguing, until the rabbi tells everyone but Josh to leave the room. The rabbi and Josh speak shortly and Josh calls everyone back into the room. Josh admits that his previous story was wrong - Marie-Hélène did not throw the plastic figure out; it was Josh, who threw it out the window in a fit of rage. Chaim and Josh apologize to each other, and the rabbi says "If you ask pardon for your sins, must you not also forgive those who have trespassed against you?" Everyone in the room cheers as Josh and Chaim hug. Later on Josh and the rabbi are seen speaking, and the rabbi says the truth would have caused too much trouble, and nobody wants that. He says the truth does not matter since everyone is happy now anyways. It is shown as a flashback that in actuality, it was Marie-Hélène that threw the figure, injuring Chaim, but Josh was blamed for the action because she ran away when she saw it hit Chaim. Marie-Hélène returns, and apologizes to Josh. Josh repeats the rabbi's words: "If you ask pardon for your sins, must you not also forgive those who have trespassed against you?" and "Why does it matter as long as we're happy?"
This short is somewhat satiric in that it seems like it has a moral, but the moral goes against more common ethical morals. The rabbi, who should be a beacon of truth and light, says that the truth can be twisted as long as it makes everyone happy, which is not the most orthodox thing for rabbi to say.
The poster art for this short combines a Rabbi and a city, while a man can be seen running away in the distance.
The Decelerators (2012)
The Decelerators is a five-minute sci-fi short dealing with the story of a group of friends that invent a time-slowing machine. This group of friends start the story by explaining how everyone started to notice that time flowed faster the older they got. They tried to slow it down, to decelerate time, using several methods, such as meditation, substance abuse, sex, life-risking experiences. As a last method, they invent a machine that stops tie in an infinite loop at a certain point of time in the present. Once the machine is activated by its user, the user is stuck in that exact moment, experiencing it again and again for eternity. Each of the friends in the group start activating their machines, choosing their moments individually. Some chose moments of peak happiness, or tranquility, or perfect contentment. Everyone starts disappearing, stuck in their decelerated moments, until there only remains one. The last friend does not activate her decelerator, as she says that her perfect moment was in the past, with her now-disappeared friends and loved ones.
The audio of the short is entirely in voice over format, the voices of the several characters in relay narrating the story. The short is a series of still frames that slightly zoom into a specific point in the frame. At the beginning the frames show empty backgrounds, such as a bathtub filled with water and surrounded by lit candles but no person in it. As the short progresses, the frames are shown with the characters in them, and as they start disappearing, the frames become empty. One song is playing throughout the entire short up until the moment until the last friend is left, still living in real time, when the music stops and she is shown walking away, leaving a broken decelerator behind.
This film was played in the following film festivals:
Rendezvous du Cinéma Québécois 2014
Dark Matters Horror Bites 2013
Kaluga Popular Science Festival 2013
Dark Bridges Film Festival 2013
[http://bostonscifi.com/ Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival 2013 (Honorable Mention)]
Never Happened (2015)
Never Happened, Slutsky's most recent short with a running time of 8 minutes, is the story of a pair of business travelers who have a reckless affair and decide to act as if it Never Happened.
The poster for this short shows the profile of a woman who is putting an earring on, suggesting that she is getting dressed, preparing to leave after a one-night stand.
It received positive reviews from the screening it had at the Toronto International Film Festival 2015. It was said to be a "well-paced story with an interesting plot twist that the story seems to build up to."

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