NYC filmmaker-actor-sibling-duo Betsey Brown and Peter Vack join NM to reflect on the making and reception of their own and each other’s films, Actors (Brown, 2021) and www.RachelOrmont.com (Vack, 2024). Deliberately tuned to the affective frequency of the internet (desire, desperation, outrage), both works proceeded to inflame online channels to the point of being overshadowed by controversy—at least initially. With a little distance, we approach the films on their own terms: contemporary explorations of the psychoanalytic depths of self, society, and platform in a cyber-networked present.
For transcription of full episode intro, scroll down.
Watch: Actors & www.RachelOrmont.com
Read: Peter Vack, Sillyboy
IG: @me_betseybrown/ & @themasterofcum
INTRO | NM Greenroom: Betsey Brown & Peter Vack
Welcome to New Models Greenroom. On this episode, we speak with filmmaker-actor-sibling-duo Betsey Brown and Peter Vack. Peter starred in Betsey’s 2021 film Actors, and Betsey starred in Peter’s 2024 film www.RachelOrmont.com. Many outside of New York City may have first-encountered Betsey and Peter in the context of Dimes Square, a neighbourhood-turned-meme-turned-parasocial-decentralized-reality-show populated by edgelord podcasters, techno-libertarian venture capitalists, cancelled poets, occultist crypto grifters, zoomer magazine editors, MAGA trans girls and Catholics on ketamine.
While this association certainly helped to signal boost Betsey and Peter, it also made it easy to imagine Betsey and Peter as actors—and their films as events—within the theatre, the media spectacle, that is Dimes Square. We, at first, also fell into this trap. But some time passed, and with a friend’s recommendation, and Peter generously sending us a screener, we watched www.RachelOrmont.com, and we realized that, in fact, it is Peter’s film that contains Dimes Square, not the other way around. RachelOrmont.com was disgusting, obscene, even shocking in its unrelenting abjection and we didn’t stop talking about it for a week. So we decided to follow with Betsey’s film Actors, which is currently streamable, and then talked about that for a week.
On the surface, both films seem engineered to provoke outrage, to offend, to invite cancellation — yet these are not superficial films. They possess a complexity that comes from channeling the psychoanalytical depths of the internet, making the films distinctly contemporary works — deliberately front-loaded with enough torque to blast through all preconceptions. They stand on their own merit, and deserve to be seen on their own terms. Betsey and Peter join us from New York City to talk about their family, filmmaking, and their films, both how they address a hyper-mediated society and how this society receives them.
I’m Lil Internet joined by my co-host Carly Busta; our guests are filmmakers Betsey Brown and Peter Vack. Let’s get into it. — LIL INTERNET
