A bunch of new, mostly cinematography-related stuff has just been been posted on our main page, and I want to draw your attention to it. First there is our article in which four cinematographers discuss the creative and production decision-making behind their latest features. The dps are Ellen Kuras (currently in production on Sam Mendes's new film for Focus Features), Tim Orr, Andrij Parekh and Sean Kirby. On the same page: Damon Smith on Ellen Kuras's documentary, Nerahahoon.

Next is a feature called "Illuminating" in which six directors -- Miguel Arteta, Pete Sollett, Miranda July (who is beginning her new feature with d.p. Ed Lachman), Kelly Reichardt, Aaron Katz and Ronald Bronstein -- think about how they think about lighting when imaking their films. From Arteta:

I think lighting is intuitive. It is one of the key tools with which you can communicate with the audience. But it‘s always the balance of all the tools available to you that you have to consider. Composition, costume, performance, dialogue, casting, camera movement, music and production design are also there. I always ask myself: What is the heart of this scene? Usually that leads me to one close-up that I can totally imagine and that contains the pulse and meaning of the scene.

All this is in addition to Roberto Quezado-Dardon's previously posted piece on the Red camera and Nick Dawson's Director Interview (this week: Georgina Riedel). And, finally, a bunch of people emailed to thank me for posting a link to Barbara Schock's great article from our archives on "Intelligent Script Development." If you are a writer, producer or development exec, I really recommend it.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/15/2008 11:17:00 AM Comments (0)

FILMdetail has posted a 2.0 version of their "Most Useful Movie Websites" list. I was happy to see that Filmmaker made the cut along with a lot of other sites, most of which I knew but some I didn't. The list also includes an exhaustive list of the best movie podcasts out there. Check it out and bookmark away.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/14/2008 01:00:00 PM Comments (0)

In the WTF! department comes this story just posted by Dave McNary at Variety: Werner Herzog will direct this summer a remake of Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant starring Nicolas Cage.

Really, that's what it says. You can click over there and confirm it. And as the picture to the left notes, this is the first Filmmaker cover film to be remade. (What's next? Suture? 24-Hour Woman? Twin Falls, Idaho?)

Ed Pressman is producing and Avi Lerner's Nu Image/Millenium is financing. The script is by Billy Finkelstein.

Bad Lieutenant is one of my all time favorite independent films, and it's going to be hard to top the combined contributions of Ferrara, screenwriter Zoe Lund, and Harvey Keitel. Herzog's involvement, however, makes it hard to write this one off.

We'll have to see post Cannes if this project materializes or whether it's just speculative bait for foreign buyers.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/13/2008 06:07:00 PM Comments (4)

Recently I was talking to the script readers in my production office about script reading and development and remembered an article we published years ago by filmmaker and former development exec Barbara Schock. It was a great piece that looked at the screenplay development process with a critical eye, examining why the traditional method so often fails to generate great work. Along the way she offered a series of sensible tips on how to make that process better.

I went home and rummaged through my old issue of Filmmakers trying to find it and then thought to try the web. And there it was for me so here it is again for you: Barbara Schock on Intelligent Screenplay Development.

Here's an excerpt from her intro:

A large number of scripts that Hollywood develops are shelved or put into turnaround, but, as filmgoers are well aware, many poorly developed scripts are put into production too. A typical Hollywood development scenario: a producer gets enthusiastic about an idea, sells it to a powerful studio executive, and lands a deal. A high-priced writer is contracted to write the standard two drafts and a polish. The first draft comes in and, in most cases, the producer is disappointed. Something’s wrong – it just doesn’t sing off the page. The producer, his or her development person, and the studio executive prepare critical notes for the writer which are usually inadequate to help the writer make the changes that they feel are necessary. The writer makes a second pass, but sensing their lack of enthusiasm, has difficulty mustering feeling for the rewrite. When the second draft comes in, it’s still not that home run the producer was looking for. The project is dropped, or, depending on how commercial the producer believes the idea is, another writer is brought in.

There is a general awareness that the screenplay development process in Hollywood is terribly flawed. Screenwriters are paid more than ever, but at great artistic cost. One wonders what Ben Hecht or Raymond Chandler would have thought about a young screenwriter being paid $4 million for a violent actioner that includes a gunfight in which splattered brains land on a griddle and are fried next to a hamburger?

As the piece goes on, she dispenses advice, bullet-point style, on a number of topics, including editing first and second drafts, how to talk to writers, and how to run a development company. We ran this piece in 1995, but it's still quite relevant.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/13/2008 04:54:00 PM Comments (2)

Jason Kottke has a fascinating entry today at his Kottke.org entitled "Approaching the Uncanny Valley from the Other Direction." In case you haven't heard about the "uncanny valley," it's a term originally created to apply to robotics that can now, Kottke says, refer to the human visage in the age of plastic surgery.

First, from Dave Bryan at Glimpses:

Japanese roboticist Doctor Masahiro Mori is not exactly a household name—but, for the speculative fiction community at least, he could prove to be an important one. The reason why can be summed up in a simple, strangely elegant phrase that translates into English as “the uncanny valley”.

Though originally intended to provide an insight into human psychological reaction to robotic design, the concept expressed by this phrase is equally applicable to interactions with nearly any nonhuman entity. Stated simply, the idea is that if one were to plot emotional response against similarity to human appearance and movement, the curve is not a sure, steady upward trend. Instead, there is a peak shortly before one reaches a completely human “look” . . . but then a deep chasm plunges below neutrality into a strongly negative response before rebounding to a second peak where resemblance to humanity is complete.

This chasm—the uncanny valley of Doctor Mori’s thesis—represents the point at which a person observing the creature or object in question sees something that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to seem eerie or disquieting. The first peak, moreover, is where that same individual would see something that is human enough to arouse some empathy, yet at the same time is clearly enough not human to avoid the sense of wrongness. The slope leading up to this first peak is a province of relative emotional detachment—affection, perhaps, but rarely more than that.

Kottke links to a New Yorker article on Pascal Dangin, photo retoucher to the stars, who makes "a 50-year-old Madonna look like a recent college graduate who has never lifted a weight in her life.

He writes:

The uncanny valley comes into play here, which we usually think of in terms of robots, cartoon characters, and other pseudo anthropomorphic characters attempting and failing to look sufficiently human and therefore appearing creepy and scary. With an increasing amount of photo retouching, postproduction in film, plastic surgery, and increasingly effective makeup & skin care products, we're being bombarded with a growing amount of imagery featuring people who don't appear naturally human. People who appear often in media (film & tv stars, models, cable news anchors & reporters, miscellaneous celebrities, etc.) are creeping down into the uncanny valley to meet up with characters from The Polar Express. I don't know about you but a middle-aged Madonna made to look 24 gives me the heebie-jeebies.

(Click on the link to his post and see how he's redrawn the Uncanny Valley graph.)

I thought of all of this when I was forwarded a link found on the Coudal Partners website to this reel by video effects artist Bill Pollock. Click on the link and watch as the video toggles through a roster of your favorite celebrities and makes their various facial imperfections magically appear and disappear.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/13/2008 03:38:00 PM Comments (1)

Created to support high-quality, independent projects at the rough cut stage
of production prior to submission to film festivals, IFP announced today the films that will take part in its May Documentary Lab that connects first-time feature filmmakers with leading industry mentors, which this year includes filmmakers Doug Block (51 Birch Street), Liz Garbus of Moxie Firecracker Films (The Farm: Angola, USA) and editor Keiko Deguchi (Cats of Mirkitani). Excerpts from the films will then screen at IFP's Independent Film Week in New York City this September.

The 10 selected films include:

Burning in the Sun - A young entrepreneur starts producing and selling
homemade solar panels to rural Malians without power, but the harsh realities
of doing business in Mali threaten to overpower his good intentions. Cambria
Matlow (Director, Producer, Writer, Director of Photography); Morgan
Robinson (Director, Producer, Writer, Director of Photography); Claire
Weingarten (Executive Producer)

The Hand of Fatima - The daughter of late NY Times music critic Robert
Palmer investigates her estranged father's transformative encounter with an
ancient Sufi band when she journeys to the remote village of Jajouka,
experiences its sacred musical rituals, and comes to terms with her father's
legacy. Augusta Palmer (Director, Writer); Chris Arnold (Producer, Editor)

Mine: Taken by Katrina - Hundreds of thousands of people lost their pets in
Hurricane Katrina, but 15,000 were heroically rescued and sent to shelters
and adoptive homes around the country. When the original owners want their
pets back, rescuers and animal lovers alike are divided over what is right for
the animals and what is fair to the families who love them. Geralyn Pezanoski
(Director, Producer, Writer); Erin Essenmacher (Producer)

Ocean of Song and Dance - Ngawang Choephel tells the story of Tibetan folk
music, and how Chinese policies have systematically destroyed it since the
takeover of Tibet - and his own story of filmmaker turned political prisoner.
Ngawang Choephel (Director, Producer, Writer); Tim Bartlett (Editor)

The Presence of Joseph Chaikin - The story of the most innovative late-
century American theater director in his own words, and those of his
collaborators. Chaikin's career as actor, director, writer, and leading light in
new theater of the 1960's, belies his lifelong struggle with rheumatic heart
disease and resulting stroke, an ever-present harbinger of death. Troy Word
(Director, Producer, Writer, Director of Photography); Encke King (Writer,
Editor)

The Stranger's Land - An observational portrait of the filmmaker's return,
after a long absence, to rural Spain, where he grew up - rediscovering a
place lost to time and memory. Xavier Marrades Orga (Director, Producer,
Writer, Director of Photography, Editor)

Tijuana, Nada Más - A story of visible and invisible borders faced by four
homeless children in the busiest frontier city in the world. Yolanda Pividal
(Director, Producer, Writer); Carmen Vidal (Director of Photography); Sara
Booth (Editor)

Ulises' Odyssey - The story of the filmmaker's struggle as a Chilean-American
woman to mend a 30-year-old rift between her father and uncle who were on
opposite sides in the 1973 military coup that brought General Pinochet to
power in Chile. Lorena Manriquez (Director, Producer, Writer); Miguel Picker
(Director, Producer, Director of Photography, Editor)


Up With People - The story of the sacrifices and secrets kept from the public
eye of a clean-cut youth group who believed they could change the world
with music as their weapon of choice to attract minds to the American values
of Freedom and Democracy in the riotous 1960s. Lee Storey (Director,
Writer); Bari Pearlman (Producer)

The Visitors – A documentary about the passengers of a charter bus that
leaves New York City every weekend for visits to various prisons located in
upstate New York, reflecting the struggles of a unique culture living at the
intersection of the confinement and the free world. Melis Birder (Director,
Producer, Writer, Director of Photography, Editor)

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 5/13/2008 11:39:00 AM Comments (0)

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch reports on a way you can make money while in Cannes. (Actually, there are a bunch of ways you can make money in Cannes, but this one is legal.) The arthouse download site The Auteurs is sponsoring a contest in which you arrive at the festival, pick up one of 250 Flip cameras, make a film while there, and compete for a $10,000 prize. More details at the link.

Previously we wrote about the Obama Campaign's "Obama in 30 Seconds Competition" user-generated political ad competition. You can see the winner and the runners-up at the link.

Ted Hope forwards a Variety link that will either make the American producers in our readership totally envious of their U.K. counterparts or else completely depressed that such initiatives are not available here. From Ali Jaafar's piece, "BBC ups producers' stakes in pics""

....the BBC is creating a corridor for the producer from the equity it recoups. This will apply wherever the tax credit has not been treated as producer’s equity....

"We’re delighted that the BBC has shown the way forward with this initiative, which will make a real difference to British film producers,” said Andrea Calderwood, Pact’s vice chair of feature film and topper at Slate Films. “Independent producers put a lot of investment -- of commitment as well as money -- into their films to make them happen, and this will give them the chance to make a proper return on their investment.”

The trades and blogs were full this weekend of the now all-too-familiar box-office schadenfreude that occurs when a studio tentpole tanks. Over at her Spout blog, Karina Longworth offers a corrective: Five Reasons Why Speed Racer's Failure is Bad for Movies.

Finally, a few posts below, Jason Guerrasio noted the firing of critic Glenn Kenney from Premiere.com. I'm happy to now link to his new blog, Some Came Running, which already has several entries. Anthony Mann, Michel Piccoli and Thin Lizzy all make appearances in a blog that is now on my list of go-to bookmarks.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/12/2008 09:08:00 PM Comments (0)

After just a few postings, Jamie Stuart has reached a conclusion at his nascent blog over at Wonderland: user-generated video is dead. (Oh, and by the way, long live user-generated video.)

From the piece:

Well, so much for that. Hope you enjoyed it. And I'm sure you never even realized it was over.

Trends rarely last longer than 4-5 years, so by that measurement this recent burst of online DIY activity is finished. By my estimation, this trend in film culture and filmmaking encompassed the period spanning roughly from 2002-2007, give or take....

During this same period, sites like MySpace and YouTube surfaced offering users the ability to generate their own content within the context of a community. Once both of these companies were bought, their respective owners immediately began studying what was so successful about the user-generated content and culture to mine it for profit. And ultimately, what's happened is that the DIY aesthetic that came about during this brief explosion (not unlike indie film/music in the early-'90s) has been co-opted by the professional media and subtly marketed back to the community without its consciousness of this take-over. Just like switching tracks on a train.

You'll have to read the piece to get his whole argument, and one can certainly debate this several different ways, but Stuart's main point seems to be that the possibility that user-generated video held out -- the possibility of a new way of making work (when filmmaking reached the level of "pencil and paper," Stuart writes) -- has been quietly snuffed out and that, in the brevity of its lifespan, it has failed to offer the only occasionally reachable utopian dream that most successful indie models briefly promise.

What do you think? Has user-generated video been co-opted before it has even had a chance to develop and grow?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/12/2008 08:27:00 PM Comments (0)

Will you see a huge billboard of Robert Downey Jr. in blackface. The promotion is for the upcoming summer release Tropic Thunder, which also stars Jack Black and Ben Stiller (who co-wrote-directed) as a group of actors making the most expensive Vietnam War film and finding themselves in real combat. Downey Jr. plays super serious actor Kirk Lazarus who's been cast in the role of a black solider. Not enough? Tom Cruise has a cameo as a bald, foul-mouthed studio head.

Image courtesey of Variety's The Circuit.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 5/12/2008 07:50:00 PM Comments (0)

Over at Variety's The Circuit, Mike Jones digs up a very helpful article by a director who travelled to Cannes to pitch his project... that happened to appear a couple of years ago in Filmmaker. Producers and directors about to make the trip over would do well to check it out.

An excerpt from Richard Press's Cannes Diary:

A week before I leave for cannes to participate in L’Atelier du Festival, the co-production market of the Cannes Film Festival, I receive an e-mail from the festival reminding me to bring my black tie; without it I will not be allowed to ascend the Red Carpet for the competition screenings. Then, as an aside — a whisper of the protocol to come — they add, “And don’t wear white socks.” I think they’re joking, but in a flurry of good-natured e-mails I’m assured that more than one unfortunate fashion “faux pas-er” has been forced to turn around and head down the steps in sartorial shame.

Soon after my arrival in Cannes it becomes clear that the festival doesn’t shy away from the whole truth of the movie industry. Rather, it embraces and celebrates the glamour, the commerce and the art of filmmaking in equal measure. It’s a heady, over-the-top mix that makes my 10 days at the Atelier an intoxicating carnival.

Read more at the link.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/10/2008 11:22:00 PM Comments (0)

The New Yorker this week reports on a Hollywood job opening in this generally deteriorating entertainment economy. The "Talk of the Town" piece by Lizzie Widdicombe quotes an "unofficial" email about what is apparently a real position: cultural attache to Oscar-winning producer Brian Grazer. Here's the email:

This person would be responsible for keeping Brian abreast of everything that’s going on in the world; politically, culturally, musically. . . . They’re also responsible for finding an interesting person for Brian to meet with every week . . . an astronaut, a journalist, a philosopher, a buddhist monk. . . . There is LOTS of reading for this position! Grazer may ask you to read any book he’s interested in. You’ll probably get to read about 4 or 5 books a week and you may be required to travel with him on his private plane to Hawaii, New York, Europe—teaching him anything he asks you about along the way. . . . You will also be provided with an assistant. . . . Salary is around $150,000 a year. . . . You will be to Grazer what Karl Rove was to Bush.

If you haven't already applied, it may be too late. From the piece:

“I’ve met a lot of good candidates,” Grazer said, reached on his cell phone en route to a meeting with the screenwriter for Angels and Demons. He said that he’d been hiring cultural attachés for twenty years, ever since he asked Jonas Salk’s assistant to help him track down interesting people in science. Fifteen or twenty people have held the job since then. (The “attaché” title started out as a joke.) “They have to be really resourceful,” Grazer said. “I like to meet people in dangerous organizations, and my cultural attaché finds out who that person is—who runs the Yakuza, or the Masons, or MI5.” The best attaché so far, Grazer said, has been Brad Grossman, the current one, who is leaving the post, after four years. Grossman is thirty-two; he owned a tutoring business before taking the job, and Grazer said that he is especially good at explaining the things he’s asked to learn about—bacteria or makeup or superdelegates. “I’m looking for a person who has that teacherlike quality,” Grazer said. “Also, it’s good to have a person who is a connector, who is liked by people.”

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/10/2008 04:05:00 PM Comments (0)

Roberto Quezada-Dardon's article on the Red One camera is one of our most widely read articles on the website this month. If you want to read about the Red from a different angle, check out Steve Tammi's piece, "Beta Sight: Red Digital Camera Red One," in the current Millimeter, which is online at their Digital Content Producer site.

Here's his lede:

I have been shooting with the Red Digital Cinema Red One Camera for almost six months now. Although I have been asked to write about my first impression of the camera, it is important to realize that shooting with the Red One camera is a continuous progression of first impressions. New camera accessories, firmware, and production software have been released on a continual basis since I've taken delivery of my camera. Unlike other camera companies, Red Digital Cinema plans to continually upgrade and refine the original cameras — a welcome change to the usual cycle of purchasing new cameras every few years and sending the old model to the auction block or shelf to collect dust. With that in mind, let's talk about what the last six months of first impressions have been like.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/09/2008 07:06:00 PM Comments (2)

Here's Ricky jay, who co-stars in David Mamet's Redbelt, currently in release, performing a card trick alongside his discussion of Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance.



Both Mamet and Jay were interviewed this week, separately, on the XMPR Bob Edwards radio show, and the discussions can be listened to or downloaded here. Both men are fantastic raconteurs and interview subjects, so this is a great hour, with Mamet talking about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, the fight film and noir genres, the link between drama, magic and con games, and his approach to rehearsing film actors. Jay discusses performing, card magic, and The Life, Adventures and Unparalleled Sufferings of Andrew Oehler, an account of a Zelig-like magician who travelled throughout the U.S. territories in the late 1700s where he was continuously jailed by authorities convinced his ghost shows were real.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/09/2008 12:55:00 AM Comments (0)

I've wondered several times on this blog why more filmmakers don't try to make original works for the web, works that challenge and alter the storytelling conventions of their feature or other narrative work. Well, now on the Sundance Channel website comes Green Porno, a series of shorts designed to be watched on computers and cellphones.

Here's what Sundance and Rossellini say about the project:

Green Porno is a series of very short films conceived, written, co-directed by and featuring Isabella Rossellini about the sex life of bugs, insects and various creatures. The films are a comical but insightful study of the curious ways certain bugs “make love”. “Green” echoes the ecological movement of today and our interest in nature, and “Porno” alludes to the racy ways bugs, insects and other creatures have sex, if human, these acts would not be allowed to be screened or air on television, considered instead as most filthy and obscene.

Each film is executed in a very simple childlike manner. They are a playful mixture of real world and cartoon. Each episode begins with Isabella speaking to the camera “ If I were a…(firefly, spider, dragonfly etc.). She then transforms into the male of the species explaining in a simple yet direct dialogue the actual act of species-specific fornication. The costumes, colorful sets and backdrops as well as the female insects contribute to the playfulness of the films. The contrast of this “naïf” expression and filthy sex practices adds to the comicality of Green Porno.

Green Porno is an experiment specifically conceived with the third screen, namely cellular screens, computers and ipods.

Green Porno, directed by Jody Shapiro and Rossellini, is odd, disarming, and, finally, quite charming and wonderful. Click on the link above to watch these shorts.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/08/2008 06:00:00 PM Comments (0)

Variety is reporting the stunning news that Warner Bros. is shutting down both Picturehouse and Warner Independent. Speculation has been running in the indie community about the fate of the companies following the demise of New Line (which was a co-owner, with HBO, of Picturehouse) as a standalone studio and distributor. Observers had imagined a variety of scenarios, but I don't think anyone thought that both companies would be folded.

Here's Warner prez and COO Alan Horn's statement:

"With New Line now a key part of Warner Bros., we’re able to handle films across the entire spectrum of genres and budgets without overlapping production, marketing and distribution infrastructures. After much painstaking analysis, this was a difficult decision to make, but it reflects the reality of a changing marketplace and our need to prudently run our businesses with increased efficiencies. We’re confident that the spirit of independent filmmaking and the opportunity to find and give a voice to new talent will continue to have a presence at Warner Bros."

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/08/2008 01:36:00 PM Comments (2)

Adding to the already long list of axed film critics, Glenn Kenny announced this morning on his blog that he's been terminated from his position at Premiere.com. One of the only (if not thee only) survivors when Premiere closed its print edition over a year ago, Kenny's blog has since been a marvelous edition to the blogsphere as his colorful style and almost scary knowledge of film was wonderful to read daily (and the comments were always entertaining to read). Here's his post from this morning:

I've just been informed that my position at Premiere.com is being terminated. What this means for this blog is still up in the air; I've got meetings this afternoon in which such things are to be negotiated. In any case, I now join the ever-growing ranks of film critics without staff positions. I very much hope to keep this blog going...and get some good freelance work, quick.

I had the pleasure of getting to know Glenn a little bit when I interned at Premiere and hope things work out for him. We all here wish him the best.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 5/08/2008 01:30:00 PM Comments (0)

CNN is reporting that Weinstein Company head Harvey Weinstein engaged in a "heated phone call" with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in late April in which he pressured her to accept a plan in which he would finance primary revotes in Michigan and Florida.

From the piece:

In a heated phone call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi late last month, Hillary Clinton supporter Harvey Weinstein threatened to cut off campaign money to congressional Democrats unless Pelosi embraced a new plan by the movie mogul to finance a revote of the Democratic presidential primaries in Florida and Michigan, according to three officials who were briefed on the contents of the conversation.

The three officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the private phone conversation, said Weinstein, a top supporter of Clinton’s presidential campaign, appeared determined to buy Clinton more time in her battle against Sen. Barack Obama by pushing for the revote and pressing Pelosi to back off her previous comments that superdelegates should support the candidate who’s leading in pledged delegates in early June.

Weinstein called CNN to deny the report.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/08/2008 11:00:00 AM Comments (0)

Susannah Breslin has a positively surreal interview at Radar Online with Ira Isaacs, the 57-year-old L.A.-based director currently awaiting trial on obscenity charges for his, um... scat videos. Kudos to the photo editor at Radar for the two improbable shots that run with the piece -- one of Marcel Duchamp's famous urinal (voted in 2004 by a group of art critics as the most influential piece of art of all time), and the other of Martha Stewart.

On her own Reverse Cowgirl blog, Breslin had previously written about Isaacs and the novel defense he's mounting against the charges that his videos Laurie's Toilet Show and Hollywood Scat Amateurs 7 are obscene. She called it the "Two Girls, One Cup Defense."

From her blog post:

And perhaps most interestingly, Isaacs and his lawyer, he says, intend to pursue an unprecedented legal defense. The 2 Girls 1 Cup defense, that is. Isaacs explains: "'What it is, is, there's videos all over the internet of millions of people watching this [Two Girls, One Cup] video, and it's a shock video, and people record their reactions...' '[T]he idea is, millions of people are watching this video... and they are not, I think, obviously looking for prurient interest to masturbate. People are trying to shock themselves, because in today's world, everything is shock on TV... People need a lot to be shocked these days... What I've done is, I think, really shocked people, and I think that's why the federal government is on this case.'"

She also links to Boing Boing, which has a similar story. In that piece, a poster named UndergroundBastard offers some legal commentary:

In United States v. Gugliemi (819 F.2d 451), the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals considered the legality of bestial pornography, sided with Alan Dershowitz' contention that the grossness of the events depicted in the defendant's film, "The Snake F**kers" was so extreme as to not appeal to the prurient interests demanded of the pornography standard. In short, it was so gross it was beyond pornography, which is what the defendant here is arguing.

In her interview, Breslin talks with Isaac and discovers that he has the heart of an independent filmmaker;

RADAR: How did you get started making these movies?
IRA ISAACS: When the Internet was happening, I wanted to enter it in some way, and I wanted to do something different. In the past, you needed a lot of money and people to make a movie. Until video cameras were invented. Then the Internet was a big breakthrough for distribution. So, I started making a lot of money with these fetish shock videos. I was distributing shock art films from Europe.

What do you mean by "shock art films"?
You talk about art? What is art? Art is what artists do. If it shocks you, it's art. One of the things art should do is make you think and question things. Shock art has always been something that has been a very popular thing through the 20th century and the 21st century. People used feces as shock art. There was a guy who shit in a can and sold it for the price of gold. [In 1961, Italian conceptual artist Piero Manzoni canned his feces in 90 tins and sold them for the price of their weight in gold.] So, the Internet allowed me to be an artist, to reach a lot of people. It allowed me to be on the edge, to do what I would never do as a fine artist. If you're going to paint, you've got to compete with Picasso. If you want to write a great classical music piece, you're competing with Mozart. I would never write anything like Kafka's The Trial. If I was going to make a mark, I was going to do it in some extreme shock way.

Later in the interview, we learn that Isaac's Kafka reference is not just some random musing:

So you were indicted.
In July [2007], they indict me. This has all been very surreal. I'm a big Kafka fan. I always dreamed to be Josef K. [the central character of Kafka's The Trial, who wakes up one morning to find he is being prosecuted for an unknown crime]. And now I am. I'm rereading the book, and I see the similarities. In fact, the director's credit I use in all my films is Josef K. I am Josef K., the character. Now I get to play Josef K. I get to go to court and do all these things. This whole thing is art. Now I get my 15 minutes of fame.

Isaacs is not the only one facing jail time at the moment on an obscenity rap. Boing Boing rounds up a number of links about the prosecution of John Stagliano, a porn director we featured in Filmmaker in 1993. As the Boing Boing post notes, Stagliano's case promises a constitutional showdown over elements of its prosecution, particularly its reliance on a law that says that the internet can not be used to send offensive material to anyone under 18.

Boing Boing quotes from a piece by Mark Kernes at Adult Video News:

One charge, however, that hasn't been seen before in a case involving adult material accessible from a Website is under Chapter 47 of the United States Code, Sec. 223(d), "sending or displaying offensive material to persons under 18."

That section reads, in pertinent part, "Whoever, in interstate or foreign communications, knowingly ... uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that is obscene or child pornography, regardless of whether the user of such service placed the call or initiated the communication; or knowingly permits any telecommunications facility under such person's control to be used for an activity prohibited by paragraph (1) with the intent that it be used for such activity, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/07/2008 10:01:00 PM Comments (0)

There's nothing like a film getting the Criterion treatment. And having this job I get the privilege of finding out before many what they have next up their sleeves. But the latest announcement doesn't have to do with a film but of the company adapting to new technology. The Criterion Collection is preparing to put several of their titles on Blu-ray. Read below.

The time has arrived! Several titles from the Criterion Collection are set for Blu-ray treatment beginning in October. These new editions will feature glorious high-definition picture and sound, all the supplemental content of the DVD releases, and will be priced to match Criterion's standard-def editions.

Titles lined up at this point include:

The Third Man
Bottle Rocket
Chungking Express
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Last Emperor
El Norte
The 400 Blows
Gimme Shelter
The Complete Monterey Pop Contempt
Walkabout
For All Mankind
The Wages of Fear

Alongside the DVD and Blu-ray box sets of The Last Emperor, Criterion will also release the theatrical version as a stand-alone release in both formats, priced at $39.95. The Blu-ray release of Walkabout will be an all-new edition, featuring new supplements as well as a new transfer. An updated anamorphic DVD of Nicolas Roeg's outback masterpiece will be released at the same time.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 5/07/2008 07:58:00 PM Comments (0)

In a move that has been rumored for months, Variety reports today that Rainbow Media (which also owns AMC and Independent Film Channel) has acquired the Sundance Channel for $496 million.

According to the story:

Rainbow Media will exchange about 12.7 million shares it owns in GE, tax-free, with a cash adjustment based on the value of the GE shares in relation to the total purchase price. GE will get all of the GE shares, and CBS and [Robert] Redford's entities will get cash for their stakes.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 5/07/2008 01:28:00 PM Comments (0)

(Hat tips: GreenCine and Coudal Partners.)

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/06/2008 11:08:00 PM Comments (1)

Over at his CinemaTech blog, Scott Kirsner writes about the new Seattle-based IndieShares, which is another one of those "democratize the process" companies that has sprung up around some aspect of the film business. Democracy, of course, is (mostly) good. Filmmaker's mission statement even includes the goal of democratizing the production process for beginning filmmakers. And last week I interviewed Lance Weiler and learned more about his From Here to Awesome festival (which I've concluded is a really cool and good thing, and I'm not just saying that because I know Lance and he's a writer for the magazine), and he also talked about how FHTA is all about democratizing the process of marketing and distribution.

The new IndieShares aims to democratize another aspect of filmmaking: the investor experience. It joins a number of new ventures using the social networking and educational functions of the internet to bring production dollars to filmmakers. But whereas other companies, like IndieGoGo, make their pitch in more holistic terms, promoting their sites as places for filmmakers and investors to discover each other and make movies around shared interests, IndieShares seems primarily about pitching the thrill of the idea of feature-film investing to a mainstream audience.

From the site:

...the independent film revolution is about connecting audiences with movies by more than just buying a ticket. It’s about making you a part of the experience. After all, why spend $10 on a ticket when you can own a piece of the action for the same price?

And from the site's FAQ, here's the answer to "Why should I invest in a film project?"

Because you’ll get to be an integral part of the production process as an executive producer. Not only will you get to see the film come together firsthand, but you’ll also have exclusive access to interactive content such as clips from the shoot, chat sessions with the talent, and bragging rights to your friends. Again, please be aware that there is no guarantee that you will make a return on your investment and there is a risk that you may lose some or all of your investment depending on the success of the individual film. Please review the “Risk Factors” section in the applicable offering statement.

Whenever I've raised private equity for a film project, I've done it the traditional way via a private placement memorandum and subscription agreement given to accredited investors only. (Accredited investors are often individuals with over $1 million in net worth.) And I've also tried to find as few investors as possible. The fewer people, the easier it is to deal with them and to satisfy their desires to really participate in the process.

IndieShares is taking the opposite approach. You don't have to be an accredited investor (that's the democratization part), and shares are priced at only $10. You can buy anywhere from one to 250 shares, meaning that a $5 million film has to have anywhere from 500,000 to 2,000 investors. (I'm not a tax and investment expert, but I'm sure that some of these numbers have to do with securities requirements. I also notice that, at present, the site can only accept investors from 17 states.)

Significantly, as the FAQ responsibly notes, that "integral part of the production process" doesn't include the most standard of investor perks, a ticket to the premiere. (In fact, one of the site's arguments for having so many people contribute to the financing of a film is that investment scheme this will naturally enlarge the paying audience for each produced movie.)

To its credit, the site is clear-eyed about the profit potential of an independent film investment. They repeatedly tell people that they could lose all their money. Still by primarily selling the investor experience and then by diluting down that experience so much (no set visits!), I don't think IndieShares is doing independent film any favors. Let's face it, most one-time-only indie film investors lose their money, and what benefit they do gain from the experience comes from either being closer to the production process than will be possible via the IndieShares model or by enabling a worthy project that they themselves also feel passionately about.

So far, the three pitches on the IndieShares site don't seem so impressive. Furthermore, the site tells you virtually nothing about the writer/directors (I'm assuming the writers are directing, although it's not really clear), nor anything about who the collaborators on the project (d.p., editor, etc.) might be. (There is info about the IndieShares principals. Founder Jay Schwatz has done business development for companies like Nike; CFO George Brumder was a v.p. of finance at Washington Mutual. There's also a small advisory board that includes producer and director Eugene Mazzola, whose company will apparently produce the first selected script.)

How were these initial three films selected? Through a "proprietary Indiescore process" that ensures that only "quality scripts enter the production process." And what goes into that IndieScore? They won't tell you -- that, they say, is "their secret sauce." In other words (and the way I read it), you cede the development process to a small group of executives and their vaguely technocratic process, and then the resulting three projects are uploaded on the site in the form of script summaries and video pitches for you to vote on. The winner then gets fast-tracked into a $5 million production that's bonded with a professional crew and you get to see streamed dailies and participate in web chats with the talent.

But here's what's staggering -- at least in the initial stage, you can't read the scripts! I searched around the site for a link to the screenplays and found none. Anybody knows that screenplay writing is 10% concept, 90% execution. The idea that you are being pitched an investment for a film that you can't read the screenplay for is unfathomable to me. (I must be missing something here. This statement from the site -- "Does he drive off a cliff? Does she get the guy? You tell us—it's Your Movie" -- implies that there is some kind of development process that must kick in at a later date. I wonder how many reshoots these films are budgeted for...)

Online film investment is a really tricky area, and I commend IndieShares for trying to dot all the i's and cross the t's when it comes to their paperwork. Schwartz has a post in CinemaTech's comments thread where he goes into a bit more detail about how the company is complying with SEC regulations. Although here again is something weird. The biggest variable in independent film -- distribution -- is barely addressed on the site. The company simply says it will try to secure distribution for the finished films What if it fails? From the FAQ:

The film’s management has a legal obligation to the preferred shareholders to secure the best sales or distribution deal. In the event that a film cannot be sold or distributed, management has the right to purchase the film from the preferred shareholders at fair market value. This ensures that the sales effort does not go on indefinitely.

Potential investors, I got news for you -- the "fair market value" of a film that, like the majority of independent films produced, is rejected by all distributors could be zero.

Finally, though, my beef with IndieShares revolves not around business issues but around what I see as its simplistic promotion of concepts like "democracy," "It's Your Movie," and even "independent film" as a means of building a company around movies that don't appear to have strong artistic identities. What independent film needs now is not another technocratic financing model, contest, or gimmick-y come-on (does anybody even remember any of the Project: Greenlight films?), but rather ways to build communities linking passionate creators with energized audiences based on shared values and specific interests. That and a saner distribution model that finds ways to cost-effectively place these films in front of these viewers. I don't see IndieShares doing any of this.

But then again, maybe I'm not the target audience. Here's a comment from a respondent to the company's blog: "I like this idea. I could get used to telling people I'm in 'The Biz.'"

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/05/2008 12:40:00 AM Comments (2)

It’s a hard festival to wrap your head around (especially if you’re a New Yorker), with too many sections with vague names and programming sensibilities that begin to bleed together, but after awhile, the internal logic of the Tribeca Film Festival, which just wrapped its seventh and probably its best edition, begins to become clear. Although they would never refer themselves thusly, TFF is beginning to resemble a smaller, more hype-centric, less sales activated, Spring bound cousin to the Toronto Film Festival, another sprawling, premiere-savvy Metropolitan fest in a North American cinema capital that offers far too many riches for any single moviegoer to behold in one stretch and basks in both star wattage and high art in equal measures. In general, critics and observers seemed more pleased with the size and quality of the selection than in year’s past, although very few movies bowing at Tribeca, especially among the world premiere narratives, seemed to draw impassioned or universal praise. I caught around twenty features or so at this year’s festival, a small sliver of the 121 on display. I missed a large swath of films I wanted to see. Many of the films I did catch I had anticipated from earlier fests, while several took their initial bows in Tribeca, by filmmakers both new and old. Perhaps most fortunately, as you always hope for at any film festival, even big, almost but not quite market fests like this, I happened to catch a few movies that seemed to materialize out of nowhere and take my breath away. The whole thing just makes you want to whip out your American Express card and make a movie with it. The parties aren’t bad either.

From the hyper-cute, pseudo-satisfying, “gee wouldn’t it be great to have a kid”, studio delivered opener Baby Mama to the magnificent revival of Ethiopian cineaste and professor Haile Gerima’s didactic and frenetically lefty, post-Salassie, 1974 would be student feature Harvest: 3000 Years, to the uncompromising, sober eyed American historical gaze of John Gianvito’s experimental doc Profit Motive and The Whispering Wind, Tribeca had just about something for everyone. Everything about the festival seems to be a mish-mash, a stream of contradictions. The small cadre of titles playing Tribeca which were released commercially during the festival, such as David Mamet’s terrific dip into Los Angeles’ Mixed Martial Arts world Redbelt, Harmony Korine’s ethereally beautiful and oddly touching Mister Lonely and Errol Morris’ chilling account of the truths buried within the photos from Abu Ghraib, Standard Operating Procedure, are each excellent products by true auteurs and couldn’t be more different from each other.

Personal favorites would have to include five of the six titles I mentioned above (I’ll let you guess which one to scratch), along with a number of titles that upon reflection seem to represent a cross-section of what the festival had to offer. Nina Paley’s fantastic animated feature Sita Sings The Blues, which marries the tunes of obscure 30’s blues songstress Annette Hanshaw to a retelling, by three hip, Gen-Y Indians, of the Indian myth Ramayana and a mildly autobiographical story of a Seattle based female cartoonist loosing her husband to his job in India, is both heartfelt and consistently witty, the type of low-fi animated musical that puts Disney to shame. Paley’s animated stylings are rich and constantly shifting, making it all the more impressive that she did the intricate and amusing animations herself. It is another terrific western made film kicking around the festival circuit with Indian themes and locales, following titles as varied as Ritchie Mehta’s Amal (Toronto 07’), John Jeffcoat’s Outsourced (Toronto 06’) and Chris Smith’s The Pool (Sundance 07’), none of which have the indiewood distribution muscle behind them that glossy yet blander titles like The Darjeeling Limited and The Namesake bring to the table.

82 year old Pole Andrzej Wajda, whose early masterpiece Ashes and Diamonds turned fifty last year, was back with his Academy-award nominated and Berlinale approved Katyn, a harrowing, multi-layered account of the massacre of captured Polish officers by the Russians during World War II and the beginnings of the repressive state of denial which they imposed upon the Polish people in its aftermath. Wajda has been ruminating on these very same themes since Kanal, but more seems to be at stake for him then ever before (his father died in the Katyn Forest massacres, which aren’t depicted until the film's harrowing closing passages) and the picture is certainly as powerful as anything he’s crafted since Man of Iron.

Plenty of marital strife was on display amidst the world and international premiere narratives. Irishman Declan Recks’ Eden, from Eugene O’Brien’s play, takes an almost comedic look at the dissolution of a marriage in the run-up to the couple’s tenth anniversary. Aiden Kelly and Eileen Walsh are both very good and the pic has a legitimately dynamic visual style that manages to transcend the smallness of its stage origins, but the inevitable betrayal and attempts at betrayal never sting as much as Recks wants them to and its not saying anything especially novel about the state of modern love. Walsh deservedly walked away with the fest’s best actress prize for her portrayal. Aussie Christopher Weekes’ un-ironically titled Bitter and Twisted, much buzzed about by certain critics during the festival, does have a host of serviceable performances by people who look like real life, exurban Aussie losers, but its visual style, with a few exceptions, is pure TV movie and the whole thing is staged at a lighter weight pitch than the material, which has shades of The Sweet Hereafter or Snow Angels in it, seems to want it to be. Meanwhile, the divorcee female truck driver confronted with the son she never wanted, as portrayed by svelte Michelle Monaghan in Trucker, isn’t even capable of maintaining boyfriends, favoring half night stands in seedy motels instead. Writer-Director James Mottern has a terrific script and he clearly has a keen visual eye, his HD lensed pic full of sumptuous visual treats, but in Monaghan and Benjamin Bratt, both of whom act with conviction and nuance, he casts people who don’t fit into the world he’s creating – their collective in-authenticity bounces off the walls of the screening room. He probably would have been bettered served by casting the sandpaper voiced Joey Lauren Adams as the title character and reserved Monaghan’s soaring cheek bones for the dying man’s new belle.

Two of the three titles swallowed up by Sony Classics at Sundance and subsequently screened (in secret, sort of) at SXSW, both of which are second films by promising filmmakers, Jonathan Levine’s The Wackness and The Duplass Brothers’ Baghead, failed to rouse me upon there New York debuts, although the starlets of both pictures, Olivia Thirlby and Greta Gerwig, clearly have big things ahead of them. Both are likable enough, with strong casts (I could watch Jane Adams read the phonebook. For a week.) and plenty of humor, but are underserved by formulaic writing in the former’s case and mediocre directorial execution in the latter’s. Now if someone set a mumblecore tinged, tongue in cheek horror movie among depressed, Jewish, pot dealing, hip-hop obsessed, ice cream salesmen in 1994, they’d have one helluva picture.

Among a largely disappointing field of world premiere narratives was Richard Ledes’ snoozer private dick/corporate corruption thriller The Caller, which inexplicably took home the “NY,NY” narrative prize. I guess it’s a step up from last year’s winner, ex Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst’s Jesse Eisenberg vehicle The Education of Charlie Banks. Robert Celestino’s Chazz Palminteri/Christine Lahti dice hustling with an autistic son movie Yonkers Joe would have been a more appropriate choice, with its earnest, attractive performances and fairly predictable but satisfying cadences, yet that’s not saying much and I’m sure the jury was as psyched as I was to see Elliot Gould play a private detective again, even if The Caller was never going to be a worthy successor to Robert Altman’s classic Philip Marlowe deconstruction The Long Goodbye.

Winner of the World Narrative Competition and soon to hit screens via Mark Cuban’s Magnet, Swede Tomas Alfredsson’s grisly and sensual Let The Right One In is easy to like for a movie in which middle aged men drug, string up and drain innocent, dog walking teenage boys to feed the twelve year old vampire they shack up with. Uber-stylish, teeming with long lense shots that would make Tony Scott envious, Alfredsson gives his vampire girl a love interest in the form of an awkward blond kid who lives across the courtyard in a quaint apartment complex and occasionally, when not being bullied by near homicidal middle school hooligans, is stabbing trees and asking them why they aren’t squealing. Alfredsson deftly imposes the angsty alienation of adolescence onto a vampire coming of age narrative and thus makes it okay for us to take pleasure in the beheading of middle school bullies. Great. This is a beautiful, engaging movie that has cult classic written all over it, but its not quite as smart (or, shall I say moral) as Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction, Bill Gunn’s Ganja and Hess, Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day or Larry Fessenden’s Habit and left me kind of cold thematically. It's teeming with life though and at least the word vampire isn’t used until the second to last reel.

The narratives definitely bottomed out for me with The Blair Witch Project co-director Daniel Myrick’s horrendous The Objective, a not so slick, seemingly made for Sci-Fi Channel Predator rip-off that plunks a horrifyingly similar scenario (to both that film and his previous movie) in the middle of our troubles in Afghanistan. As one of its producers is known to say, it has more implication than drama, but its deeply embedded derivativeness, wooden performances and generally unspooky 90’s revival of The Twilight Zone vibe wear thin real quick. It has the makings of a camp classic if viewed in the right circumstances. Call the kid from The Wackness.

The legacy of John McTiernan’s imminently quotable Schwartznegger vehicle (“If it bleeds… we can kill it”) also factors prominently in Christopher Bell’s Bigger, Stronger, Faster, a terrific look at the intersection of 80’s popular culture and steroid use, in Bell's family as well as in the worlds of bodybuilding and professional team sports. Its one of the pair of docs, along with James Marsh’s wonderful Man On Wire, that Magnolia scooped up at Sundance and NY Premiered at Tribeca. These will both figure heavily in year-end award buzz among the doc set.

Perhaps the doc that lingers in my film battered brain the most is Brazilian Paula Gaitan’s Days In Sintra, her chronicle of returning to the Portugese city she and deceased husband Glauber Rocha, a major figure in Brazilian cinema of the 60s, exiled themselves too in the midst of Brazilian’s political implosion. Mixing contemporary video footage of the beautiful if mildly decaying city with archival film footage of her final years with Rocha in the late 70s/early 80s, the film is a minor marvel, lyrical and tedious in equal measures, but a nonetheless gorgeous and mature work by someone searching for truth and beauty among the shards and fragments of her former self, using this thing we call memory to illuminate the personal and the political-historical. In its loose, jazzy rhythms, meticulous traveling shots and romantic eye it recalls the work of avant-gardists Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage, particularly Brakhage’s monumental Anticipation of The Night. You know, the one where he was going to hang himself at the end and then didn’t.

So if I learned anything at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, other than the fact that producer Mike Ryan drives something akin to a pimpmobile (so cool), actress Natasha Lyonne is in a bowling league at The Port Authority (equally cool) and multi-hyphenate Melvin Van Peebles has the ass end of a VW Bus coming out of his living room wall (the coolest of them all), its that there’s no place to see a movie quite like New York. Only our town could put on a festival quite like this one. Even at its trimmest and classiest level yet, it still is a big bad metaphor for our love of the loud, profane and massive. I can’t wait until next year.

# posted by Brandon Harris @ 5/05/2008 12:16:00 AM Comments (0)

With the demise of New Line -- one of the two partners behind the creation of Picturehouse (HBO is the other) -- speculation has arisen over what's going to happen to the specialty shingle now that it, like New Line, has been absorbed into Warner Brothers. Warner, you remember, has Warner Independent already on its lot. Anne Thompson penned a piece in Variety stating that WIP head Polly Cohen and Picturehouse head Bob Berney "are likely to accept a bicoastal co-head arrangement." Stu Van Airsdale at Defamer ran his own story, saying that there are rumors that Berney will be "starting fresh at a new company underwritten with hedge fund cash." Now, at the end of the weekend, Jeffrey Welles at Hollywood Elsewhere posts his own piece on the rumor that Berney is leaving that contains the choice phraseology headlined above:

Now I've been told by someone very close to things that the latter scenario is not true. Berney has "been open to Warner Bros. proposals, but they actually haven't made any real decisions yet on how much they want to be in this 'indie' part of the business." They haven't made any real decisions? In my experience that means they've made a decision but lack the character to express it...no? "So this thing may drag on for some time," the insider comments.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/04/2008 09:55:00 PM Comments (0)

The Hollywood Reporter hosts a roundtable on the economics of independent production with five noted players: Newsweek film critic David Ansen; Kirk D'Amico, president and CEO of Myriad Pictures, a production and sales company; Cassian Elwes, co-head of William Morris Independent; Mark Gill, CEO of finance and production company the Film Department; and Avi Lerner, co-chairman and CEO of Nu Image/Millennium Films. Stephen Galloway leads a conversation that, by my read, offers a pretty accurate and succinct take on the American independent film market at the moment. They discuss overproduction, the demise of New Line, foreign markets, the plight of the Sundance film, and more. I was particularly taken by this exchange at the end, when, after a discussion of the rise of local production abroad, Galloway asks, "What should America do to protect its own independent film culture?" Elwes and Lerner both suggest the kind of non-free market solutions that European governments have embraced and that may be necessary to preserve a more vibrant indie sphere in America:

ELWES: I would love to see the government help small distribution companies and subsidize them so that they can grow and allow the independent cinema to be vibrant in this country.

LERNER: They should make a law that the television networks have to buy a certain amount of movies from the independents. All the basic and pay television, 99% is from the studio -- it is like a cartel. Otherwise, at the end of the day, it will all be controlled by the studios.

The full conversation can be found at the link above, and a video excerpt can be watched here.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/03/2008 08:23:00 PM Comments (0)