Interview: Colin Smith & Jon Foy (Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles)

From Wiki: The Toynbee tiles (also called Toynbee plaques) are messages of mysterious origin found embedded in asphalt of streets in about two dozen major cities in the United States and four South American capitals. Since the 1980s, several hundred tiles have been discovered. They are generally about the size of an American license plate, but sometimes considerably larger. They contain some variation on the following inscription:

TOYNBEE IDEA
IN Kubrick’s 2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER.

Jordan M. Smith: It’s pretty clear in the film how Justin, Steve, and Colin got involved in the project, but how did Jon’s involvement come about?
Colin Smith: The origins of everyone’s involvement might not be as clear as it seems. Justin and Jon, both of whom were involved in West Philadelphia’s underground rock scene, met in 2000 through a prank call involving the Toynbee tiles that Jon sent to Justin’s roommate, a mutual friend, and which Justin received by mistake. They vowed to make a Toynbee tile documentary then and there, but it didn’t get underway until the spring of 2005. Jon and I were old friends (we didn’t meet on the internet as the movie seems to suggest) and had worked on various projects together, and my Toynbee tile interest was turning into an obsession, so I got on board. We actually did meet Steve on the internet.

Jon Foy: Colin and I didn’t meet on the internet (we knew each other for years), though I’d say the movie was suggesting a meeting between Justin, Colin, and Steve. Colin and Justin got to know each other as the investigation was launched and a lot of this was going on through emails. Though the first meeting was while shooting the scene at the copy shop. Steve entered the picture online first, then with on camera interviews for the movie.

Jordan: I heard there is a funny story about how executive producer Doug Block came on board to help out with the film. Can you tell us about that?
Colin: I might not be the best person to tell the story, but Jon had been intermittently in touch with Doug, the head of a documentary bulletin board called D-Word, over the years with various questions on documentary logistics. When Jon got the completely unexpected acceptance call from Sundance, he (literally) sent out an SOS email to Doug, and the rest is history.

Jon: Doug gives a good account of how he came on board Resurrect Dead on his blog in a blog entry here.

Jordan: After so many years of trying to get to the bottom of this bizarre mystery, and finally coming to an end point with an understanding of both the meaning of the Toynbee tiles, and to some degree, their creator, how do you guys feel?
Colin: I feel great. When we were unearthing findings in the mystery, it was a totally unreal, almost quasi-spiritual sort of feeling. It sounds hyperbolic, but these discoveries really, truly blew our minds one after one. Probably the weirdest part was sitting on all of this insider knowledge for five years, knowing these things that we didn’t want to tell anyone, and then finally letting it all out at once. Having to deal with the public’s reaction to the sensitive information was also strange, as it isn’t always as respectful as we would like. But the bottom line is that it feels great to have the privilege of telling the Toynbee tiles’ story as we understand it and being met with such a warm reception.

Jordan: The story unfolds through such a strange sequence of almost by chance coincidences that right off the bat seem to lead nowhere. Did you ever reach a point where you all wanted to throw in the towel, and call it a day? What made you want to continue the search?
Colin: There were numerous moments when I felt like we had hit a brick wall, yes, and we try to capture the mood of those periods in the movie. The time-frame of our detective work might not be clear in the movie, and it’s important to know that sometimes, months would go by, and we would just play around with the same, seemingly dead-end leads. We also followed numerous leads that got us nowhere, despite being filled with quirky characters and concepts: there were guys building communication devices to talk to the dead, anarchist collectives making their own tiles, all kinds of colorful stuff on which we spent time researching. But the lulls never lasted that long, and the breakthroughs kept coming, sometimes at utterly unexpected moments, so we never did hang up that towel for good.

Jordan: In the film it didn’t seem like you ever solved the mystery as to why tiles were found in South America. Do you have any guesses as to how they ended up there?
Colin: Personally, my theory is that our main suspect took a trip there somewhere rather early in the tile campaign, like around 1987, and just didn’t tell too many people about it.

Jordan: Do you think that the original tiler is still actively installing new tiles, or do you think the tiles that are showing up today are all copy cats like the Buffalo based House of Hades tiler?
Colin: Beginning around 2002, Toynbee tiles entered into a completely new artistic and compositional phase and never fully returned to their old look. They are now more simple artistically, seemingly written in a different hand, contain slightly different messages, appear to be of a thicker substance, and are placed differently in the sidewalk. Beginning in 2007, tiles began melding the old and new styles, though emphasizing the latter. There is dissension in our ranks about whether a copycat began working in 2002, or whether it was the original artist, and my personal theory is now strongly that the original artist is still at work. I think that all of the changes can be explained (for example, a shift from laying via car to laying as a pedestrian, a desire to mass-produce rather than make artistically ornate tiles, etc.), and I think all four of us are moving closer towards that view. House of Hades began around 2006, and although their copycats are excellent, we can always tell the difference between their copies and the originals.

Jordan: I feel like there are sure to be many more copy cats once the film finds wider distribution. Are you worried about the flooding of a new art form that might almost feel disrespectful to the original tiler, or excited at the potential for what’s might come?
Colin: I’m very excited by the idea of the tile medium spreading. After all, the original tiler begs one to “Make and glue tile! YOU!!” I don’t think that anyone can argue against the tiler’s desire to spread the medium because of this strong spirit in the originals, what with all the exclamation marks and such. The tiles are clearly all about destroying the media and taking it to the streets, and I’m excited for other artists to start doing that en masse. Also, I would say that there are many great copycat movements that predate our film: House of Hades most notably, a cool artist in Indiana, the work of the group Crimethinc., etc.

Jordan: You make it clear that you don’t want to interrupt the life of the original tiler, but by making and releasing the film it seems that a lot of attention is bound to reach his doorstep, especially since one of the tiles gives his actual address. What are your thoughts on this?
Colin: This is a huge question, and one over which we spent much time debating. There was even a thread in the original cut of the movie where we discussed the ethical question on-screen. We get mild criticism from both sides on this issue, too: some people say that we went too far in invading the tiler’s privacy by making the movie at all, while others think that we didn’t go far enough and should have staked out his house, presumably to catch him, throw him in a cage and put him on display. Here are my thoughts: First, I don’t think that it is reasonable to expect serious harm to come to the tiler through our movie. Some mild psychological trauma, at worst, may result, but hopefully something much more mild. With that in mind, I think that we have a duty to ourselves as huge tile fans and investigators to publicize our findings. Another line of argumentation to which I am sympathetic holds that it would almost be equally unethical to keep these findings to ourselves: in other words, I really think that this story should be told. Importantly, I trust us to tell it: we hold the tiler in a very high regard and want to treat him and his work with the utmost dignity and seriousness, which I very sincerely believe it deserves. If we hadn’t told the story first, someone else could have come along and done a much less respectful job. Regarding the address, there was no skirting it, although we do black a portion of it out in the film. Since we didn’t place it, however, and it was a major clue going into the research, we were forced to include it.

Jordan: What is next for you all? Do you have plans to collaborate on future research projects, or are working on any current ones?
Colin: Jon hopes to launch a career in film directing and musical composition and has numerous followup ideas, although he is presently occupied with work surrounding Resurrect Dead. Justin, in addition to remaining insanely busy with music, art, writing and a little film-making, remains deeply interested in the mysteries of artist Herbert Crowley and activist Kathy Change. Steve is pursuing photography and working in public art, and while I don’t know what his current investigation is, I hear that he always likes to keep a pet mystery going. I myself am going to grad school and playing music, and hope to get to work on another film at some point. I’m interested in undeciphered ancient scripts, especially ancient Aegean scripts like Linear A and the Phaistos disk, but my research on those has a long way to go.