California Typewriter Page #11

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the whole family keeps

working together and

it'd be great.

- Right now the site

just pretty much features

profiles of the store and

of the employees in it

and what we do and how

long we've been here.

And it features a few machines,

but it certainly has to

grow bigger than that.

One thing about

the new technology

is that even though

we may hate it,

we need it.

(laughing)

(crowd noise)

First of all, we wanna

thank you guys for comin'.

This is our first type in.

this place hasn't been bumping

like this in a while, so.

Welcome and thank

you for coming.

Yeah, basic service

runs about $75

and the ribbon's about $15.

Give you a name

and a phone number

to call back at.

Okay, great.

(clicking)

(crowd chatter)

- We're all a little weird.

When you have an addiction

and you find other

like-minded people,

this whole group of people

enabling each other.

- I thought it was a

good opportunity to come

and meet lots of other people

who bother with typewriters.

- I'm worse than an alcoholic.

Somebody come up

with a creative way

for Typewriters

Anonymous and I'm that.

- My name's Tony Midley and

I have a typewriter problem.

- I have a typewriter

problem, too, and I love it.

- I think there's

actually a lot of people

who fit the description

of high tech people

who have kind of had enough

and have gone back

to the analog world.

I actually work for Facebook,

which is really interesting

to me, because I spend

all of my time online,

social networking.

I think a lot of people

wanna get away from that,

or withdraw from that.

Even young people, and

I think that's why they're

attracted to

technology like this.

- There's never going to

be a typewriter movement.

It's just about,

instead of there being

this one massive

way of thinking,

there are many, many smaller,

more niche sort

of ways of being.

Which would be

great to have again.

- I'm Sylvia.

- Hi, I'm Mike.

- And bringing back this village

by way of different

neighborhoods.

These guys, they're

on the typewriter

and they're naturalists.

You're gonna see a group of

people grow, and grow, and grow

and grow and grow.

- Hope we can do it

again every year.

That's it, alright.

(tinkling)

(cha-cha music)

(dinging)

- [Actor] How do you do,

are you an actress? (chuckling)

- [Actress] You have

a fantastic set.

- We call her the fate machine.

- [Actress] What?

- You see,

typewriter keys represent

the keys of life.

(chiming)

And we human beings

dance on them

and then when you dance,

as we press down the keys

of the machine, the

story that's written

is the story of our fate.

- [Actress] It's very symbolic.

- Thank you.

(chiming)

(engine rattling)

- [Jeremy] Typewriter

really isn't dead,

it's still getting used

in India, at least.

(upbeat Bollywood music)

There are these info

slums, places where people

type for a living on the street.

Not for creative purposes,

not for writing poems

or for writing novels, but

for business purposes.

(engine revving)

It was recently announced

that the last typewriter

manufacturing plant

was closing down.

- The last typewriter

manufacturer on earth

has shut down.

The factory was

in Mumbai, India.

The company was 60 years old,

it opened in the time of Nehru.

- [Jeremy] Godrej and

Boyce stopped their

typewriter manufacturing

about three years ago.

- [TV Announcer] They sold 105

of thousands of typewriters

every year, until the

typewriter was just killed off

by the computer.

- [Jeremy] Godrej brought

me here to create sculptures

from the last 100 typewriters

that rolled off

their assembly line.

I don't know what

I'm gonna make yet.

(clinking)

(murmuring)

Godrej wanted the

sculpture to be a symbol of

their commitment to innovation.

To represent their move

into the 21st century.

(honking)

(distant chanting)

(light ambient music)

(clinking)

The lotus, it rises

from the filth.

From the murky water at

he bottom of the pond

and blossoms into this pure,

uncontaminated, delicate flower.

The symbol of enlightenment,

rebirth, perfection.

Something beautiful growing

from the bottom of a dirty pond.

There's no such

thing as permanence.

Things die and they're

reborn as something new.

I don't wanna look back.

The future is the only thing

you can do anything about.

You can't do anything

about the past.

A lot of people

are really scared

about how the

future is unfolding

and the only way

to think about it

is to be optimistic.

We're gonna do amazing

things with technology,

we have to.

The thing that people

who are afraid of change

should remember is that

people born after you are,

living in your time, they

don't want what you want.

They want what's in their time.

(engine running)

(light ambient music)

We can't stop that

habit that people have

of taking knowledge and

trying to tweak the world

around us with it, we're

always going to do that.

I don't know what the

future holds for me.

I'm doing what I love and

I'm doing what I want.

I don't know where I'm gonna

be six months from now.

(clicking)

- [Martin] I remember

when I told my wife

that I'd had my first

typewriter dream.

She was quite alarmed.

I'm looking in a big

glass window of a store,

it's nighttime, they're closed.

And I look in and I see shelves.

And on the shelves are

wonderful, early typewriters.

Rare ones, unusual ones,

ones I've never seen before.

And my eyes dance

along the shelves,

checking out these treasures.

But I can't get in,

the door's locked.

Sometimes I'm

actually transported

into the store, and I get to get

really close to the shelves.

I never touched the typewriters,

I can never touch

them, but I get close.

That's as far as it goes.

- I have no idea what the

life of this typewriter was

before I had the privilege

of possessing it.

Nor do I have any idea

what will become of it

when my turn is over.

I'd like to think it

will stay in our family

and maybe there will be

grandchildren that wanna write.

And maybe one or two of them

might be peculiar enough

to enjoy this as much as

their grandfather did.

- Hello, hi, my gosh.

Alan, I'm Martin, hi.

We've met before, I think.

- We've talked on the phone.

- We have.

- But we haven't met.

- Well we've got

catching up to do.

There's typewriters

in these hills, eh?

Hi.

- Canadian boy.

- Oh.

This year, there's a gathering

of antique typewriter collectors

in Morgantown, West Virginia

at Herman Price's house.

- [Man] Have you seen his

Manhattan paper table.

- No.

- It's like the Mona Lisa.

- Oh, come, come.

Herman Price, his whole

basement is a labyrinth

of rooms and corridors where

typewriters are stacked

on shelves from the floor

right up to the ceiling.

- Anybody come from 2,000 miles?

(murmuring assent)

3,000 miles.

(laughing)

4,000 miles.

And the winner is, Marty Rice.

Come on up here, Marty.

I have a lot of typewriters.

It's approximately 700.

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