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Portland filmmaker Patti Lewis straddles the line between the eccentric and the obsessive with her current project, Collectors at Large. She has interviewed a Portland man who has acquired more than a thousand Santa Claus collectibles; a Seattleite who has a 20-year obsession with insects; a Eugene woman with 3,500 bunches of plastic resin grapes; and a Spokane man whose house is virtually unlivable due to his enormous collection of pigs--swine-themed artifacts, that is. Lewis is still looking for quirky pack-rats to include in her film.

Although it would be easy to present her subjects in a derisive light, Lewis is embarking upon a more "intellectual" approach to her material, allowing viewers to draw their own conclusions.

"I'm trying to remain really open and let their common threads emerge," Lewis says. "So far the main thread has been the passionate, childlike quality of the people and how their hobbies provide a wonderful source of happiness for them--how it drives them and keeps them going."

To help raise funds to complete the film, local artists 3 Leg Torso, Lyndee Mah, Ken Butler and Thomas Lauderdale (who will provide the film's tinkled-ivory soundtrack) will hold a musical benefit at 8:30 pm Thursday, Nov. 6, at the Old Church, 1422 SW 11th Ave. Tickets are $10. "I doubt if a group of filmmakers could put something like this together," Lewis says of the benefit arranged to alleviate her grant-seeking struggles. "We're a flaky lot."

 --Dale E. Basye

HEAVEN on EARTH 105?
 
With her memory still warm on the presses, the late Diana Spencer was roused from her eternal rest on Halloween morning to be the incorporeal guest of Earth 105's Dave and Tom morning show.

 At 5:30 am, 20 people and a radio remote unit crowded the Vancouver, Wash., home of British medium (and former Scotland Yard consultant) Maria Whitworth. "We knew we wanted to cross the barrier and contact Diana, but we needed someone with really good credentials and didn't know how to go about finding that person," says co-host Dave Scott. "Then--and you won't believe this--we found Maria through an ad in Willamette Week!"

At 7 am, all 20 individuals held hands. "Speaking for myself, I could sincerely feel an energy coursing through us," Scott says. "It was like in school where you'd hand-crank that generator and it would send 100 volts through you."

"...and we're pretty sure all our microphones were grounded," chimes in Tom Turner.

Whitworth recreated Diana's moment of death from her viewpoint: the pressure she felt on her chest, the sensation of swirling lights and that crystalline moment where she lost her fear and realized that she was going to die.

"It was frankly chilling," says Scott. "Maria said that Diana wasn't aware her driver had been drinking and that while the paparazzi were definitely in pursuit, they weren't necessarily the direct cause of the accident. But apparently Diana was most interested in sending a message to her children, that there would be a time when William would take the throne and realize that it is not where he should be, and that although she is not on the planet with them, she is with them at all times."

Considering that Dave and Tom are two of the most cynical voices in the morning radio din, their glowing testimony is almost, in itself, something supernatural.

"We're the most jaded creeps you'll ever find," Scott says. "But Maria has this ability to be in tune with certain people across the beyond. It wasn't all this Ouija, 'first 10 minutes free' psychic hot-line crap. It would have been easy to ham it up as something spooky for Halloween, but we had to put all that radio cheese aside and allow Maria to paint a different picture. The 20 people in that room left feeling more positive about life than when they came in."

Maria does indeed sound like a rare medium.

 --Dale E. Basye

EXPANDING HORIZONS
 
It's fashionable now to sneer at the advancements made by the Digital Age: Knowledge, it is said, is the seed of corruption. Already, we can measure the breadth of computer technology by its one, if hardly imposing, contribution to the annals of crime: Timid, pasty-faced lads attempting break-ins of the Pentagon's computers after a night of surfing the Net for suitable companions. How easy, then, to forget that computer technology is here to serve us and not our idle habits.

Out in Gresham, though, Mount Hood Community College is putting chips and cables to what J.S. Mill would call the greater good.

Multnomah Community Television (MCTV), located on the campus of Mount Hood Community College, has been selected as an Open Studio access site, part of a nationally funded project called Arts Online. Administered by the Benton Foundation--a Washington, D.C., arts-advocacy group--Arts Online was created to help build cultural audiences and resources on line. Two Open Studio access sites will be set up in every state to train artists--from painters to scribes to guitarists--to access and contribute to the Web for purely artistic purposes.

This means the public has at its disposal a free resource devoted exclusively to the arts. If you want to learn how to set up your own Web page, browse for arts organizations and activities, or just plain network, MCTV's Open Studio access site will be an invaluable resource.

With its newly minted status, MCTV has beefed up its computer lab in order to provide basic Internet instruction to those unfamiliar with the technical aspects of the World Wide Web and the idea of "surfing." These orientation workshops are also free to the public. The next two take place from 7 to 9 pm Nov. 10 and 18, on the Mount Hood campus. To register, call 667-7636, then press 4.

The Open Studio access site will be open 9 am to 10 pm Tuesday through Friday, and 9 am to 9 pm Saturday and Sunday. For further information, call Denise Tanguay, promotions and fund-raising coordinator for MCTV, at 667-7636 ext. 327.

To the hardened cynic, the term "media in the public interest" may appear to be a convenient anomaly--like the ubiquitous "truth in advertising"--but here is one example where suspension is worth the belief.

 --D.K. Row