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When Timothy "Speed" Levitch walked out on stage last spring at South by SouthWest in order to talk about his new Hulu.com project, Up to Speed, his high, nasal voice and peripatetic attire seemed so over the top, I found myself immediately trying to categorize him.
"What is this guy's deal?" I wondered aloud.
The deal, as I quickly learned, is that Speed Levitch is brilliant (also: quirky, joyous, deeply philosophical, and as he acknowledges himself, perhaps just a little schizophrenic).
Directed by Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise, School of Rock), Up to Speed is an episodic travelogue that deposits Levitch, a former New York City tour guide, in a different city each week in order to "shamanically visit cities and other textural situations of human collaboration," reveling all the while in "the beauty of the unexpected." In this nonlinear process, viewers learn (for instance) that San Francisco's bucolic Alamo Square is actually the site of a mass grave, and that Frederic Bartholdi, the designer of the Statue of Liberty, unsettlingly based the face of his iconic creation on his mother while modeling its body on his mistress.
A favorite moment in the program's first episode, "San Francisco: A City Shaped by Earthquakes," shows Speed ruminating upon one positive outcome to emerge from the tragic quake of 1989. According to Levitch, the elevated, double-decked Embarcadero Freeway – which for decades had divided the city proper from its' neighboring bay – was crippled beyond repair by the disaster. The city's mayor had no option but to dismantle the structure, once again uniting city and waterfront. As if to say, "Thank you for removing that eyesore," San Francisco's sea lions immediately relocated en masse to the newly-visible Pier 39, where 300 of the animals ultimately became one of San Francisco's biggest tourist attractions.
Levitch reflects:
In other words, this isn't your average walking tour...
New episodes of Up to Speed will be released each Thursday this month as part of Hulu's ongoing efforts to compete against Netflix and Amazon Prime and I encourage geeks of all stripes to check them out. Caveat: Up to Speed does have some profanity – often used to surreal effect (ie, embattled redwood trees, strident monuments). In our household of teenagers and teens at heart, colorful language is not necessarily a dealbreaker, so Up to Speed is absolutely considered family-friendly entertainment.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/46722989[/vimeo]
