Obitvision
Art Buchwald has died – and announced the news himself in a video on NYTimes.com: “Hi,” he says/said, “I’m Art Buchwald and I just died.” There was still a twinkle in his eye.
The Times says this is the first of a new effort to go to the prominent to ask them on tape how they want to be remembered. It’s an absolutely wonderful idea. (I do wish, though, this tribute did not start off paying tribute to The Times for having the idea.)
I see a trend: I want to record my obit now. Now that is the ultimate vlog.
I used to say that the one real fringe benefit of working for newspapers was getting obits in them. But I now wonder whether the papers I worked for will survive me. So perhaps it’s better to put your own obit on YouTube. And with staff cutbacks, maybe we’ll all have to write out own obits. I remember when I was writing them back on Chicago Today (a paper that had no tomorrow), a former priest wanted to save his former-nun wife from having to do all this, so when he knew he was going to die, he arranged his own funeral and wrote his own obit.
The final indignity could be having one’s obit edited. So maybe a video obit is the best idea.
Tags: newspapers, smalltv
January 18th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Now that’s priceless!
January 18th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
I find the whole piece gruesome.
January 18th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Ha ha. Art Buchwald was so funny and so great, right to the end. Not to be morbid but a Nixon crack is in order:
So, what opening line would Art have suggested if Nixon had lived to record one of these: “HI, I AM NOT A CROOK,!” or “AND THEN….YOOOO DESTROY YOURSELF”?
January 18th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
It’s an idea to die for..
January 19th, 2007 at 8:30 am
Quite frankly, it would have made great television: ABC News did an obit on Buchwald last night, used lots of archival clips, but should have used part of Buchwald’s own video obit. It would have improved the piece and brought it into the here-and-now. A missed opportunity. I wonder if any of the other nightly broadcast network newscasts used it? They should have.
January 19th, 2007 at 10:41 am
I quit watching after about a minute. I found watching him to be too discomforting. And the archival stuff didn’t interest me.
This is the kind of piece 60 Minutes or CBS Sunday Morning will do.
But if local papers adopt this and invite ANYONE to submit their video obit, then it will get interesting.
January 19th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
How is it to be you?
That is what people want to know.
How is it to be you dying?
I guess I prefer not to know and not to show.
I like it private…