With Steven Soderbergh's two Che films on deck at Cannes, Tribeca had the perfect appetizer with Chevolution. This impressive doc chronicles the unlikely journey this image of Che Guevara from the La Coubre explosion funeral march in 1960 evolved into a beacon of capitalism.
Directed by Luis Lopez and Trisha Ziff, the doc, which is making its World Premiere at Tribeca, is produced through Netflix's Red Envelope Entertainment.
Starting off with a brief history of how Ernesto Guevera became "Che," the doc then examines the man who took the famous shot, Alberto Korda. A fashion photographer turned news photog during the revolution in Cuba, not until the '90s was he recognized as the person who took it. Filing away the film negative after the newspaper didn't run the shot, it stayed hidden from the world until the late '60s when the shot appeared in a French magazine after Che fled into the Congo. Though the image wasn't appropriate for a news piece at the time Korda shot it, his fashion photography background made the image perfect for reflection, especially for a man who after his death would become immortal. Considered the most reproduced image in the history of photography, a major reason for that is because Korda never had a copyright on it. This lead the Che shot in public domain (until recently) and evolve through the decades from being on posters at rallies to sparking inspiration for artists like Jim Fitzpatrick to create pop art out of it (right) and inevitably used for corporate gain as it gets plastered on T-shirts, coffee mugs, cigarette packs, beer bottles and even bikinis.
Interviews in the film range from people who knew Che, like his motorcycle diaries mate Carlos Calica Ferrer, Korda's daughter Diana, photographers who knew Korda, and Che historians. Rage Against The Machine's Tom Morello even tells how Diana's lawyers went after the band for using the Che image on the cover of one of their singles.
But Lopez and Ziff don't ignore the awfully large elephant in the room: Che's controversial reign in Cuba. Known to be a violent disciplinary, many interviewees speak out how youngsters should learn about the Cuban revolution and the acts of Che before idolizing the man by wearing a T-shirt or get his face tattooed on your arm, as one person does while being interviewed.
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posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 4/30/2008 09:35:00 PM
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008
LINKAGE
Here are a few noteworthy links from the last few days.
First, a must-read (or must-listen) is an interview with Matt Zoller Seitz on his blog, The House Next Door. (The hour-long talk is available as a transcript or as a download.) In the piece, Seitz discusses his decision to abandon print criticism and concentrate on both moviemaking and things other than movies. Here's how he opens:
Well, the short of it is: I’m out of print criticism. I’ve been thinking about it for a while and for a variety of reasons. One of them is that I’ve been doing it for seventeen years now as of May of this year, and I’ve done it for a variety of different outlets in a variety of different forms. I’ve enjoyed it… I’ve always enjoyed it, but I just don’t want to do it anymore. Part of the reason for that is that I don’t write as quickly as I used to and I don’t have as much time to do it as I used to. But the more important thing is that, according to the actuarial tables, I’m probably about halfway through my life, if I’m lucky. And there’s a lot of things that I would like to do, and I haven’t done them yet. And I want to get started on it.
Over at FilmInFocus, the site has one of their periodic "Five in Focus" lists. This time, over the course of the next week five designers list their favorite feature films from the standpoint of design. First up: Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz.
Finally, there seems to be only one mainstream entertainment story today: the release of Rock Star Games' Grand Theft Auto 4. The pre-sale of this game hit $60 million before it's release. We don't have the game yet at Filmmaker, but our new gaming columnist, Heather Chaplin, has checked it out and contributes her report to "All Things Considered" at NPR. If you've been hiding under a rock and haven't read about the game, then you may not be aware that the latest installment is set in a scuzzed-out, nostalgia-confirming version of New York City. Here's an excerpt of her piece, in which she takes the game for a spin with one of its writer/directors, Lazlow Jones:
But the game is more than merely satire. Video games have never been known for expressing the finer points of human emotion. But I took a turn at the console with Jones, and the more I played GTA IV, the more I felt I knew Niko.
He's haunted by violence. He walks slowly, and every action is deliberate, as if he were conserving energy. When he steals a car, he matter-of-factly pulls the driver out of the seat and deposits him on the road. There's no joy in it; it's just what needs to be done.
And everything about Niko feels uniquely Niko — like when a great actor disappears into a character. It's just not something you see that often in videogames.
The key, Jones says, is storytelling — "fundamental storytelling that becomes so engaging that you find yourself emotionally involved with polygons. None of this exists, but we've made a living, breathing world."
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/29/2008 06:57:00 PM
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PORTISHEAD, THIRD
From Portishead's excellent Third, "The Rip," one of the album's best songs performed live on Jools Holland's U.K. tv show.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/29/2008 05:58:00 PM
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Monday, April 28, 2008
GREAT BUT PROBABLY QUITE IMPRACTICAL HORROR FILM LOCATION #2
The BLDGBLOB has a great post entitled "Hotels in the Afterlife" that is very J.G. Ballard -- a series of shots of abandoned hotel exteriors on the Sinai peninsula, "monuments to failed investment." Based on a photography show that opened last week in Vienna by Sabine Haubitz and Stephanie Zoche.
From Geoff Manaugh's blog post:
The hotels now look more like "architectonic sculptures" in the desert, the photographers claim, or derelict abstractions, as if some aging and half-crazed billionaire had constructed an eccentric sculpture park for himself amongst the dunes.
The billionaire goes for long walks at night alone amongst the ruins, sweeping dust from recent sandstorms off windowsills and open doorways.
At night, when the stars come out, different constellations are framed by unglazed windows, as if justifying these concrete forms from above with the poetic force of celestial geometry.
Or, for that matter, five years from now these deserted monuments simply disappear – but because they've been put to use, finally, enwrapped with drywall and plaster, fitted out with drapes and marble floors, and you can sleep inside them for $300 a night, never even dreaming that these hotels were once ruins, temporarily abandoned to the sand and only recently reclaimed. The empty swimming pool is now full – and you dive into it, unaware that you're more like a ghost than a tourist, haunting the afterlife of these sites in bleaching sunlight.
Make sure to read the great comment thread, in which various responders discuss the reasons for the abandonment of these structures as well as other similar spots around the world.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/28/2008 04:39:00 PM
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Sunday, April 27, 2008
DOCS IN A SLUMP
As Tribeca's first weekend passes, most talk has been on the admission by Errol Morris that he paid -- or paid the expences of (depending on what story you read) -- some of the prison guards interviewed in his latest film, Standard Operating Procedure. But Anthony Kaufman raises a much more pressing question in a story on indieWIRE: "Can Standard Operating Procedure Break the Political Doc Deadlock?"
Though it's not just political docs that are in trouble, films that I and many others thought would take hold on audiences (My Kid Could Paint That, Zoo, Manda Bala) never took off, the political docs have taken the biggest hits.
An excerpt:
2008 duds include "Chicago 10" ($156,000), "Taxi to the Dark Side" ($248,200) and "Body of War" ($32,000). Morgan Spurlock's "Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?" opened in 102 theaters with a per-venue average of just $1,401 and dropped significantly this weekend. Compare that to the 41-theater debut of "Super Size Me," which garnered a $12,601 average, one can see how different the landscape is nowadays.
"Everyone is uninterested," said Roadside Attractions' Howard Cohen, who worked on the release of "Super Size Me" as well as this year's "Chicago 10." Even in markets where Oscar-nominated director Brett Morgen's super-energized retelling of the Chicago 1968 rabblerousers got four-star reviews, such as Washington D.C. ("the first great film of 2008," wrote the Washington Post), audiences were "absolutely indifferent," explained Cohen.
According to Variety, SOP grossed an estimated $14,916 from two theaters for a per screen average of $7,458.
There are a few more political docs in the pipeline over the summer, but what may get docs out of its funk are titles like Sundance favorites American Teen, which follows the senior year of a group of high school students in Indiana, and Man On Wire, which recounts tightrope walker Philippe Petit's illegal high-wire routine between the World Trade Center towers in the '70s. Two superb docs without a hint of war.
Though I have been wrong before...
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posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 4/27/2008 10:12:00 PM
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TRIBECA DIRECTOR INTERVIEW: PAULA GAITAN, DAYS IN SINTRA
Screening Times: Apr 27th, 8:30pm (Village East), Apr 29th, 3:30pm (AMC Village VII), Apr 30th, 1:30pm (19th St. AMC), May 4th, 7:45pm (19th St. AMC)
Brazilian filmmaker Paula Gaitan's ghostly part memoir, part experimental doc Days In Sintra chronicles her return to Sintra, Portugal, where she once lived in exile with her husband, famed Brazilian director Glauber Rocha (1938-1981), a notable figure in Brazil's Cinema Novo movement of the 1960's.
Filmmaker: At what point following your husbands death did you begin to ruminate about this film?
Gaitan: 25 years later. I have realized many films and documentaries before carrying out Days in Sintra. I thought it was important to have this distance from the historical moment so that it could become reminiscence, forgetfulness, poetry, art.
Filmmaker: What initially provoked you to return to Portugal?
Gaitan: The possibility to create a movie with new perceptions and to see in what way the emotions would transit through the labyrinths of the unconscious.
Filmmaker: Have your children seen the film? What do they think of it?
Gaitan: They have just seen the film after it was ready, in an opening session of the Rio de Janeiro's Festival, with five hundred people in the room. They got visibly moved, as the whole audience did... it was a special night.
Filmmaker: What, if anything, surprised you about the film as you constructed the movie in the editing room?
Gaitan: This film is a film of composition, of language construction in the edition room, and also a kind of craftwork film, as if it was being weaving images, ideas. I did the photography in super 8, in 1981, and also in my returning to Portugal in 2007. The composition was happening slowly, in an impressionist way, by associations of ideas, composition of memory layers, involuntary memory. It was a discovery of a memory's topography.
Filmmaker: How has the film been received in Brazil? Como o filme foi recebido no Brazil?
Gaitan: It was not commercially launched yet, but will happen yet in this year. In the critics sessions it was well received, and in the Rio's Festival and in Sao Paulo's Exhibition the audience got really amazed for it was not a journalistic documentary, but a reflexive documentary, of an inner travel, in first person, that evokes Glauber. The audience really liked it.
Filmmaker: If you could make this picture again, what would you do differently?
Gaitan: Nothing, perhaps I would create a longer version. This film has the rhythm of breathing. It is a sensorial movie.
What's next for you? I have just accomplished a short film, Monsanto. I am preparing a film sequence of a fiction movie, Sobre a Neblina, to be realized in co-production with Argentina, and also preparing a short film about the work of the poet Marcio-Andre, entitled Intradoxos.
Screening Times: Apr 25th, 8:30pm (19th St. AMC), Apr 27th, 5:00pm (Village East), Apr 29th, 4:30pm (AMC Village VII), May 1st, 7:15pm (Village East), May 3rd, 4:45pm (Village East)
Based on Eugene O'Brien's play, Reck's lauded Irish relationship dramedy centers on the run up to the 10th wedding anniversary of working class couple Billy and Brenda (Aiden Kelly, Eileen Walsh). Bound by devotion to their pair of children long after their marriage has grown stale, they desperately cling to selfish fantasies that have more to do with their own vanity than the well being of their partner. Eden is a grown up look a whose needs and desires have grown in vastly different directions than their partners.
Filmmaker: Tell us alittle bit about your background in filmmaking.
Recks: I studied film at what is now the National Film School in Ireland. I left there in 1989, and at that time there was no Film industry to speak of in the country. The Irish Film Board had been disbanded and Irish broadcasters weren't making drama. But I was lucky enough that my graduation film Big Swinger won a number of awards and was screened as support to films in London's West End and I got a film into development in England with the producers of one of my favorite films Gregory's Girl. Unfortunately after about four years of almost getting into production the project stalled. That was pretty devastating, but I learned a lot from the experience. I formed a production company with a friend of mine from college and we managed to get some shorts of the ground and eventually produced a few Feature films. But I really wanted to concentrate on directing. So about seven years ago I started to direct series TV in Ireland and eventually packed in the company and have been pretty much directing TV drama non stop, all the while developing film projects at the same time.
Filmmaker: How the script for Eden come about?
Recks: I was in LA in late 2000 at a festival of Irish Films showing a one hour drama I directed called "making Ends Meet" (which was written by Damien O'Donnell who directed East is East). Eugene O'Brien was also there showing a short film he had written and we got talking and we were there for a week having the craic, doing all the bars in LA and over the course of the week Eugene started telling me about this play he was writing called Eden. Eugene used to be an actor so he would pretty much act out parts of the play for me and I thought it sounded great and asked him to send me the manuscript when we got home and optioned it straight away. Eugene wasn't keen to write the script himself as he had spent so much time with the play so I started working on the script. The play went on in The Abbey (Ireland's National Theatre) and was a huge success. It travelled all over. The play was essentially two monologues performed by two actors and the translation to film script was proving difficult. Eugene began to get involved in the writing of the script but at the same time he was writing a six part TV series called Pure Mule. Pure Mule went into production in late 2004 and I directed the first three episodes, which meant that Eden took a back seat for a while. But when Mule went on air in late 2005 it was a huge success and I suppose off the back of that we decided the time was right to push Eden into production. Eugene took over writing duties and we started from scratch with the script. We asked David Collins who had been one of the producers of Pure Mule to produce the film and within 2 years we were in production!
Filmmaker: How do you know when you're ready to shoot a scene? Do you prefer to work quickly or more methodically? Is rehearsal or spontaneity given preference on your set?
Recks: I don't like to rehearse during prep. I like to bring the actors in for a read-thru and have a chat with them about their character. I like to shoot on location and have the actors down for a week before the shoot so that they can hang out and get used to the place. Not just to help with accent but just to get into the pace of the place. I'm from the midlands of Ireland, as is Eugene, and the pace is very slow and I think its important that the actors acclimatize. Once I'm on set I like to work things out with the actors and Owen McPolin (DP). I will have a plan which myself and Owen will have worked on during prep, but I try to give the actors the freedom to move around the space, whatever they feel comfortable with. I don't over-rehearse on set I like to get the shoot in the first couple of takes and move on. Having done a lot o f TV drama where the schedules are ridiculously fast I tend to move fairly quickly. We shot the film in 24 days. Which is short by most peoples standards, but when you're used to shooting two fifty minute episodes of TV drama in fifteen or twenty days, having 24 days to shoot 90 minutes felt like a luxury! The one scene in Eden which I didn't have a plan for was the final scene between Billy and Breda. This was a late edition to the script. The film had always ended with Breda in the bath. Billy arrives home and goes into the kids bedroom, wakes them and breaks down and we leave the family at that point. We decided that we needed some hope of a positive outcome for the family so Eugene wrote this final scene where Billy and Breda are in the bedroom and they have a real conversation for the first time in the film , and for the first time in their marriage. We spent a good deal of time reading that scene with Eugene and Aidan and Eileen in the week before shooting. But we never put it on its feet 'cos I wanted to save that for the shoot because I knew it would be an emotional scene for both o them and I only wanted them to do that for camera. When it came to shooting the scene, we were up against it time wise and we ended up shooting one take on both actors and then I think we just picked up the end of the scene in a two shot and that's it. I think even if we could have gone for more takes we would never have matched the performance in each take and both Aidan and Eileen were so good in take one we just moved on .
Filmmaker: What, if anything, surprised you as you constructed the movie in post?
Recks: It became clear very early on that the first twenty minutes as we had shot it didn't work. The order of the scenes was wrong. None of us had seen the problem until we sat down to watch the cut, I think David had always had and inkling that we needed to re-order but we had never nailed it before the shoot. So Gareth Young (editor) and myself spent a week just throwing the opening up in the air and trying new ways to start the film. Of course this causes all sorts of problems with continuity, particularly as far as what people are wearing and in the end we had to ignore a few obvious costume changes and hope that people wouldn't notice..I'm not going to say where they are 'cops I think we get away with them. Eileen Walsh only noticed one of them on her third viewing of the film so I think we're safe! Myself and Gareth have cut a lot of drama together. Probably everything I've directed for in the last five years. Having worked in the 52 min format for so long, it took a while to get into the rhythm of a feature film. That extra half hour makes such a difference. In TV you're always working from commercial break to commercial break, making sure you hook the audience to get them back after the ads. But this was totally different, you have time with film to let the audience ease themselves into the film, you don't have to have the relentless pace you do on TV. In theory you've got a captive audience in the theatre, they can't change channel, we both learnt a lot from the experience.
Filmmaker: If you could make this picture again (or any of your movies for that matter), what would you do differently?
Recks: I think I would have cut back on the dialogue some more. When we were editing we lost a lot of dialogue and Eugene and I have talked about this a lot since finishing the film and I think it's only something that you learn from experience. When we did the TV series together dialogue is so important, you don't have the time that you do with a film to get everything across in visuals so you end up filling in a lot of story and back story with dialogue. With film you have more space and the script can afford to be sparse.
I also felt, and I felt this before shooting as well, that we could have done with a bit more humor. The characters of Tony, Feggy and Breffni always provided levity in the script. But as the script developed and we focussed our story more and more on Billy and Breda some of the Color that those peripheral characters provided was lost.
Filmmaker: What's next for you?
Recks: I'm working on another film script with Eugene. It's very different from either Pure Mule or Eden. A psychological thriller set in the midlands! It's early days with it yet but I'm looking forwards to spending time working with him on that. There's also the possibility of a mini-series later this year that I would love to do. Apart from that I'm reading lots of scripts and looking for stories that excite me!
The artist Cindy Sherman has made a statement disavowing a documentary, Paul H-O's Guest of Cindy Sherman, in which she is featured that is playing at the Tribeca Film Festival.
As my name is in the title and my work and self are so abundantly represented, I would like to counter any assumption that I am or wish to be personally associated with it. I am not a participant in any events related to the film's screenings in this festival or future presentations.
I apologize to all those who participated, thinking they were doing me a favor in giving interviews and otherwise assisting in the fabrication of this film.
Against my better judgment, it was clearly unwise to cooperate with the project at it's inception.
Cindy Sherman
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/26/2008 07:15:00 PM
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INDIE TIMES TWO
Two stalwarts of the New York indie scene, producers Ted Hope and Christine Vachon, are the hosts of a program on PlumTV entitled "Very Independent Producers." Five episodes have already been produced, and all are viewable online at the link I just posted.
Here's how PlumTV describes the program:
On “Very Independent Producers,” Ted and Christine get a chance to share their wit and hard-earned wisdom as they kick back with friends and colleagues from all corners of the film world. Ted, Christine, and their impressive roster of guests share their film experiences past and present and discuss the inner workings of the industry. Wooing financiers, establishing creative control, marketing provocative films, reveling at international festivals – all this and much more makes it way into these candid conversations. Joined by their love for film and their seasoned insight, Ted and Christine give us a humorous, insider look at what really goes into producing independent films.
So far the series includes segments with guests like director Mitchell Lichtenstein, Cinetic Media Founder and attorney John Sloss (discussing "power and control"), THINKfilm prez Mark Urman, Sundance Director of Programming John Cooper, and Noah Cowan, Co-Director of the Toronto Film Festival. Check it out.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/26/2008 03:51:00 PM
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Friday, April 25, 2008
TRIBECA DIRECTOR INTERVIEW: IVAN O'MAHONEY, BAGHDAD HIGH
Screening Times: Apr 29th, 7:30pm (AMC Village VII), Apr 30, 10:30pm (Village East), May 1st, 3:00pm (AMC Village VII), May 2nd, 11:30am (19th St AMC), May 3rd, 10:45am (Village East)
A provocative look at the daily lives of four Iraqi teenagers struggling to educate themselves and simply survive their senior years of high school, journalists turned filmmakers Ivan O'Mahoney and Laura Winter's Baghdad High surfaces this week a Tribeca with a tremendous amount of anticipation. Shot largely by the cast themselves, its a penetrating look at the delicate balance these students make between the concerns any teenager faces with those of a much more deadly nature.
Filmmaker: Tell us about your backgrounds as filmmakers. You both began as journalists, yes?
O'Mahoney: My original background is international law. After law school I worked as a UN peacekeeper in Bosnia and then as a litigation lawyer for a few years. I loved the investigative angle of the work, but being in a big city firm was often frustrated feeling I was representing the party on the wrong side of the argument. I switched into journalism ten years ago. While at journalism school (Columbia/NYC) I immediately took to the camera. My wild ideas of becoming an on screen war reporter quickly evaporated - early on I realized I wanted to make films and rather be behind the camera. It started with very journalistic magazine length stories. Over the years the films have become proper documentaries, longer, much more observational and character driven.
But even as a documentary film maker I still am drawn to stories like Baghdad High that have a high journalistic value to them.
Filmmaker: How did the two of you begin working together on this project?
O'Mahoney: Laura and I met through the alumni network of our journalism school. Two years ago I started my own production company in London and put out a call for ideas among the school's alumni. I was looking for long term access based story ideas. Ideas that would make for great epic narratives with lots of time passage in them - stories that would take viewers on a true journey.
Laura had just moved to London. She responded and said she wanted to make a film about Iraq. Both Laura and I had worked there previously. Laura's idea was to make a film about Iraqi teenagers - cut through the spin of officialdom so to speak and go straight to Iraq's future, i.e its teens. The best place to find them was a high school...
Filmmaker: What are some of the fundamental challenges in making a doc in which the participants are doing most of the filming?
O'Mahoney: As a director, even in observational documentary where you have to allow for a lot of unknows and surprises, you have a lot of control over the gathering of your material, your film's building blocks. A lot of that control was lost by default since the kids were deciding what to film and when to film it. It did provide for a lot of excitement back in London every time we watched a tape and an unexpected gem emerged.
By constantly viewing tapes as they came in, we were able to help the kids shape their stories, encourage them to follow up on certain story lines and help fill in gaps if we spotted them. One of the biggest challenges was to make sure that at the end of the school year there would be enough good material and enough stories with beginning, middle, and ends to sustain a long form documentary. And then there was the small issue of editing 300 hours of raw material, all in Arabic, into a watch-able film!
Filmmaker: What process did you undertake to choose compelling students to be in the film?
O'Mahoney: Given the security concerns for all involved it was largely up to the headmaster who did an extraordinary job. Casting decisions were largely based on whether there was a relationship of trust between him and the parents. We cast the net fairly wide originally starting with 8 students.
Over the first two months or so it became clear that the boys who ended up as our key characters were the strongest candidates. Other boys also dropped out because parents fled Baghdad too early in the production.
Filmmaker: Did you encounter any aggression or threats of violence during production?
O'Mahoney: Surprisingly little. It helped that the boys were allowed to only film at home, in secure environments like family houses and at school. We tried to keep it all as low profile as possible. There have been a few tricky wrinkles which required some diplomatic ironing by our local producers.
Filmmaker: What were the biggest difficulties while constructing the film in post-production and how did you manage them?
O'Mahoney: The biggest challenges in the edit were how to construct the general narrative flow and how to interweave the stories of the boys. There obviously was the chronological narrative of the school year and some clear time markers like the first day of school, Saddam's execution, Christmas and final exams, but what about the personal stories? Ultimately, it became clear that one of the boys had documented the greatest number of personal issues and challenges in his life. After several structural approaches we decided to first edit this boy's narrative, almost as if we were making a film just about him. When that was done, it became clear what was still needed to give a fuller picture of Iraq and the complexities relating to ethnic/religious backgrounds of the characters. The stories of the other boys all of sudden fell into place.
Filmmaker: If you we're to make the film again, what, if anything, would you do differently?
O'Mahoney: I wouldn't have tried to edit the film in stages which we did to try and stay on top of the vast amounts of material coming in. While we had several editing bursts throughout the year, we never really knew where any of the stories were ultimately heading as each individual narrative was still developing in Baghdad. It wasn't until we got close to the end of the school year that we could say 'this is a solid storyline that we can follow from A to B to C. Lets include it.' The film went through so many incarnations - the early cuts are completely unrecognizable compared to the final film.
Perhaps a lot of that was inevitable given the nature of the project.
Filmmaker: What's next for you?
O'Mahoney: I have moved from London to Sydney, Australia, with my family recently and am trying to re-establish my small independent production company called StoryLab there. I am looking for the next 'big' story and my next feature length documentary. In the meantime I am also developing shorter television films, more specifically a series about Australian conspiracy stories.
Conspiracy stories, along with playing the Ukelele, are my guilty pleasure.
Cannes' 40th Director's Fortnight was announced today in Paris with good showings from Latin America, Spain and particularly France with 12 of the 22 films either French or co-productions. The lone U.S. film is Joshua Safdie's The Pleasure of Being Robbed, a warm, beautifully lensed, simple story of a curious girl wondering around New York City in search of connections with strangers. The film gained a lot of attention at its premiere at SXSW and has been building buzz on the regional circuit since. I saw it at Sarasota earlier this month (where it received the fest's Independent Vision award) and was one of my favorites there.
Below is the full list of Fortnight films:
Four Nights With Anna, France-Poland, Jerzy Skolimowski (opener) The Pleasure of Being Robbed, U.S., Josh Safdie (closer) Acne, Uruguay-Spain-Argentina-Mexico, Federico Veiroj Aquele querido mes de agosto, Portugal-France, Miguel Gomes Boogie, Romania, Radu Muntean Les Bureaux de Dieu, France, Claire Simon El Cant dels ocells, Spain, Albert Serra De la guerre, France, Bertrand Bonello Le Dernier Maquis, France-Algeria, Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche Eldorado, Belgium-France, Bouli Lanners Eleve libre, Belgium-France, Joachim Lafosse Liverpool, Argentina-France-Netherlands-Spain-Germany, Lisandro Alonso Monsieur Morimoto, France, Nicola Sornaga Knitting, China, Yin Lichuan Now Showing, Philippines-France, Raya Martin Il Resto della notte, Italy, Francesco Munzi Salamandra, Argentina-France-Germany, Pablo Aguero Shultes, Russia, Bakur Bakuradze Blind Loves, Slovakia, Juraj Lehotsky Lonely Tune of Tehran, Iran, Saman Salour “Tony Manero,” Chile-Brazil, Pablo Larrain "Le Voyage aux Pyrenees," France, Jean-Marie Larrieu, Arnaud Larrieu
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posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 4/25/2008 11:01:00 AM
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Thursday, April 24, 2008
TRIBECA DIRECTOR INTERVIEW: JUSTIN MEEKS, THE WILD MAN OF THE NAVIDAD
Screening Times: Apr 24th, 7:45pm (AMC Village VII), Sat Apr 26th, 11:59pm (New School, Tischman Auditorium), Apr 28th, 6:45pm (AMC Village VII), May 1st, 8:00pm (AMC Village VII), May 3rd, 10:30pm (AMC Village VII)
Austere and clastrophobic as opposed to the torture porn passing as horror these days, Justin Meeks and Duane Graves' low budget horror thriller, The Wild Man of Navidad owes some debt to vintage 70s horror films and classic monster movies. Apparently based on the "real life" journals of Texas rancher Dale S. Rogers, it stars the Mr. Meeks and was co-produced by Kim Henkel of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Filmmaker: Where were you and how did you hear that you had been accepted to Tribeca? How did you react?
Meeks: I was literally in the middle of shooting an additional scene for The Wild Man of the Navidad when we got the call from Tribeca. I believe I might have knocked over some lights and I know the camera fell from the tri-pod from all the excitement exuded by Duane and myself. However, the motivation to finish the additional scene was heightened and with a little dusting, the camera was ready to go.
Filmmaker: What about 70s horror films appeal to you and what ones in particular did you revisit when prepping Navidad?
Meeks: The horror films of the 70's created an atmosphere that you just don't see anymore. They toyed with the human psyche, and often guided the viewer down a road in which one's imagination played out the scene in it's entirety. Leaving the scene open to imagination and utilizing the principle, "less is more", really adds mystery, and heightens the films viewing experience. Our main goal and vision was to re-tell Dale's story in an honest homage to vintage horror. We watch a ton of old movies anyway, but several movies that we researched for Wild Man were, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Town That Dreaded Sundown and The Legend of Boggy Creek. All of these movies are story-driven tales that utilize atmosphere and mystery in a very effective, linear way. The narrative/documentary style of the first two was very effective and inspiring from a story telling point of view.
Filmmaker: How were you able to raise money for the project?
Meeks: We continued to work during the week and chose to shoot our film on the weekends. This stretched the production time over a 6 month period, but gave us the lattitude to pay as we shot. Also, we had just completed a series of educational French language video's, which gave us a nice chunk of cash to put towards our project.
Filmmaker: How is the work divided when co-directing a film?
Meeks: Co-directing is an interesting concept, and doesn't always work for everyone, but seems to work very well for us. Duane and I have been working on short films together since 2000. We formed a production company in 2001, Greeks Productions Inc., and have been dedicated to our projects ever since. We spend a considerable amount of time during the pre-production phase so, when the actual production starts we are both on the same station, and don't have conflicting visions. We seem to keep each other's ego's in check, while at the same time ideas flow freely between us. Sometimes, I may have a way that coincides with Duane or visa versa, but we always seem to work it out for the best.
Filmmaker: So much contemporary horror seems to be little more than juvenile torture porn - what separates The Wild Man of the Navidad from the pack?
Meeks: A few years ago, we were offered an opportunity to produce a Texas slasher film. This is when we started researching Texas folklore, in search for that perfect story. When we came across the legend of the Wild Man of the Navidad (river), we knew we had the makings of a great story. We wrote a short proposal, and sent it to the company that wanted to back this project. They loved it, but wanted to change it to have excessive blood, nudity, and lots of torture. This was so far from what the story of the Wild Man was about, so we decided to make the movie ourselves, on our own dime. The Wild Man of the Navidad has a linear plot line, and utilizes mystery and atmosphere to reveal true events.
Filmmaker: What were the biggest challenges when constructing the film in post-production?
Meeks: There were challenges during the entire movie, but our motto was to "push on despite everything". We decided to cast real people and not actors in our film in hopes of constructing some realism, and giving the film that documentary feel. So, when it came time to edit their performances, it was often like putting a jig-saw puzzle together.
Filmmaker: Do you plan on continuing to work in the horror genre or do you see it as a stepping stone to other types of work?
Meeks: Currently I have two scripts I am writing. One is acomedy, and the other is a mystery/thriller. Our work in the past has been an arrangement of documentary,comedy and psychological thrillers. However, I have no problem with well done horror. I would prefer not to be stuck in one genre, though. Duane and I are considering co-writing a western as well. So, we have several options, it's just a matter of committing to one.
It's official -- Governor Patterson has signed the enhanced New York tax incentive. The state now offers a 30% tax credit against qualified expenses and it's now payable to the production company in one year, not two. The city's five percent remains intact, meaning a 35% credit for films lensed within the five boroughs.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/24/2008 10:13:00 AM
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Wednesday, April 23, 2008
GLORIOUS GLORY
One of the hits of this year's SXSW was the 25-minute short, Glory at Sea. Set in a magically real, emotionally honest post-Katrina New Orleans, the film is something of a mini-epic, a grand tale of outsized, heartbreaking ambition set against both a devastated city and the boundlessness of the open waters.
The story of Ben Zeitlin's film, unfortunately, did not end with its triumphant Austin premiere. Zeitlin and members of his crew were injured in a serious car accident on the way to a screening. The uninsured Zeitlin broke his hip and pelvis and has two sprained ankles. So, the upcoming New York screening this Saturday is not only your chance to see a great film but also your chance to help Zeitlin pay his medical bills, as proceeds will go towards defraying his $80,000 worth of expenses. There's also an Austin screening on April 29 that is also a medical-bill fundraiser. (And if these screenings sell out, which I'm sure they will, please consider donating.)
In case I haven't been convincing enough, I'll quote here Michael Tully from an email he sent around urging people to attend the screening:
Glory at Sea should be taught in film schools from this point forth. In only 25 minutes, it has the emotional gravity and impact of a feature four times its length. On a production level, I consider it to be more Herzog than Herzog. On an emotional level, is spiritually transcendent and indescribably powerful. It also has one of my favorite scores of all-time. Do yourself a favor and buy a ticket for this special screening of Glory at Sea. If there's a way for me to be there, I will be. For now, I will simply watch it again and succumb to its reckless, daring, brilliant magic.
And the trailer is below:
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/23/2008 09:20:00 PM
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TRIBECA DIRECTOR INTERVIEW: ROBERT CELESTINO, YONKERS JOE
Screening Times: Apr 24th, 9:30pm (BMCC Tribeca PAC), Apr 26th, 2:00pm (Village East), Apr 29th, 11:00pm (AMC Village VII), May 2nd, 10:30am (AMC Village VII), May 3rd, 10:30am (AMC Village VII)
Robert Celestino's new feature is the story of a couple (Chazz Palminteri and Christine Lahti) who make a living working confidence scams and dice hustling until their life changes after the expulsion of the title character's mentally challenged, 21 year old son (Tom Guiry). Forced to accommodate the young man, he and his wife plan the biggest scam of their lives.
Filmmaker: What gave you the initial idea for the film? How did writing the script unfold from there?
Celestino: As an aspiring magician I would run into these rogue characters as the magic shops. They were mechanics, which is on the opposite side of the spectrum of magicians; the good ones were great with slight of hand. I would hear stories of what these men did and it fascinated me. I met with “Fast Jack” Farrell and “Benny Jumbo” when I was in my early teens and they took me around. I saw them switch dice around crowded rough and tumble and craps tables, pitch poker, bankers and brokers, blackjack, anything you could gamble on. It was never a matter of testing your courage or how much money there was in the game. They simply walked up to the table, made their moves and got the money. It was work for them and I never saw any of them carry a gun for safety or protection. They didn’t even think about getting caught, in fact they as soon as suspicion arose they would work with each other in ways that made the players doubt their own suspicion. That is not to say they never got caught – they did, and when they did it was bad – but it was just the price of doing business.
I started the script as a journal about these men. But it become evident early on that I needed more – I needed a relationship the audience could invest in. Because to me good films are about relationships, story and character are requisites but it’s the relationships the audience invests in. I thought it would be interesting to see a father who is a mechanic be forced to interact his mentally challenged son. It was a challenge worth pursuing.
Filmmaker: How did you find financing? Was it cast-contingent or did the money appear first?
Celestino: I was fishing around for financing for about twelve years. My last film premiered at Sundance and was received well there so we had some serious bites for Yonkers Joe, but they never came to fruition. It wasn’t until I met Trent Othick who just started up his production company that things began to happen for YJ. Trent loved the script and he and I really connected. He’s a hands on producer who brings esthetic value to every project so he came up with many good ideas for YJ. Even though this film became his passion it still took another five years to get started. Trent went to his good friend John Gaughan, who financed the lion’s share but still wasn’t enough. So Trent went to his brother Matt, a celebrity in his own right. Matt was a pro basketball player and gambler. He is a good friend with Phil Ivey, the poker player. I remember a night in Vegas where Trent, Matt and I were shooting dice along side of Phil, knowing that if Phil won he would invest his winning into the film. He did win and with Matt and Big John Gaughan as our anchor we were off!
Filmmaker: "Con Artists" are one of the American Cinemas oldest subjects - in what ways are is your portrait of such behavior unique from other on-screen portraits of confidence schemes?
Celestino: It irks me when Yonkers Joe is referred to as a con artist. But I understand why – “where there’s gambling there’s larceny”, and there’s no other way to type cast a character like this. A con man gets the money with his mouth -- a Mechanic does it with his hands. This distinction is very important to me and I believe the film makes that clear. A mechanic can’t show off. He lives in the shadows – he’s inconspicuous, he can’t even let his partners know what he’s doing because then they don’t need him anymore. When an artist cannot show off his art he becomes lonely and isolated. That’s why Yonkers Joe has built walls that shield his emotions and won’t let anyone in – especially his son.
Filmmaker: Do you consider yourself a cinephile? How has watching movies informed your ability and desire to make them?
Celestino: Yes, but not anymore. When I was in film school and a while thereafter I would watch 25 films a week. I loved to take directors apart. I’d start with their first film and watch them all in chronological order. It seemed to me that the best directors found their voice by their third film. When I started to make films I realized the difference between your first film and second is so massive in term of your own experience that if you don’t know what you’re doing by your third -- you probably never will.
Lately I haven’t been watching as many films; maybe I don’t want to be influenced by them. I love working on them though.
Filmmaker: When working with talented veteran performers like Chazz Palminteri and Christine Lahti, how much "directing" do you do?
Celestino: I find that the best actors want direction. Certainly Christine and Chazz are two of our best. In order for an actor to do their best work they have to be present in the scene. If they have to worry about giving to much here because we’re going to need more of that later or earlier (you shoot a film out of chronological order). Then there’s no way they can do their best work. It’s my job to let them know where they are emotionally, relative to the rest of the picture. Although I never talk about emotion (it only tenses an actor up). We talk about needs and objectives. For example Yonkers Joe’s Life Object, which is the core of his personality or character problem is “People are fine – but it’s better when they’re not around.” Then we focus on a ‘life need’, an action powerful enough to pursue the life object. So Yonkers’ life need is “to be inconspicuous.” Now you can move on to the ‘scene needs, beat transitions and so on. As a director you want to fire up these needs by throwing obstacles at them. This is what causes conflict and keep the character’s behavior consistent. One reason Yonkers’ son is so problematic for him is because he’s in direct conflict with Yonkers’ life need to be inconspicuous. Joe Jr. is a mentally challenge young man with Down syndrome. There is nothing inconspicuous about him. Therefore Yonkers is out of his comfort zone, his movements become gestures that express themselves and reveal inner conflict. The best director’s fire up the need right before the scene is shot – so they can ‘capture’ the conflict on film. If you can manage that, chances are you’re going to be happy in the editing room.
Filmmaker: What were the biggest challenges while constructing and polishing the film in post-production?
Celestino: A great script can only indicate a great movie – it points at it, but a lot of things can go right or wrong along the way. When you’re translating a script on a film set it’s a different animal. You’re fighting time, weather, personalities, and confidence. I believe everyone understand this. I find what most people don’t understand is it’s the same when it comes to editing the film. It’s a complete different process. Some folks think you cut the footage to the script and it’s over. That has never been my experience. All these ‘must understand’ elements such as character arks and story plot come a far second to rhythm. That’s not to say they are not important, but you better find a way to make it work within a rhythm that keeps the audience watching or you’re in trouble. I’ve never seen a script no matter how tight translate exactly to the finished film. That’s why the first rough cut is so hard to watch – you’re seeing the film before it finds it’s rhythm. This is where structure comes back and bites you on the nose. If you don’t have a good setup, confrontation and resolution you’re done, but even if you do, you still have to find the film’s organic rhythm. You don’t have to give an audience much – they’ll forgive you for making them work. What they won’t forgive is boredom, because that’s what takes them out of the movie. And once they’re out you probably won’t get them back. That’s why I believe in testing a film in front of an audience that doesn’t know anything about it. It’s the only way you can be sure if the film is working. And if it’s not, it’s probably a structure/rhythm issue.
Filmmaker: What's next for you?
Celestino: I’d like to work with Trent Othick again. I trust him. I can’t say it better than that – he suffers with the film, plus he knows how to cover a director’s ass without invading his space. That’s a great producer. Also Frank John Hughes, who I believe is one of the best American writers living today, has written a script that we’re development with.
TRIBECA DIRECTOR INTERVIEW: JONATHAN LEVINE, THE WACKNESS
Screening Times: Apr 26th, 9:00pm (19th St. AMC), Apr 28th, 7:00pm (AMC Village VII), May 1st, 10:30pm (AMC Village VII)
A mid nineties, hip-hop textured bildungsroman, The Wackness, which was gobbled up by Sony Pictures Classics upon bowing at Sudnance, is the work of Jonathan Levine, whose first feature, All The Boys Love Mandy Lane is still tragically awaiting a theatrical release. With a standout cast that includes Ben Kingsley, Mary-Kate Olsen (who apparently makes out with the legendary British thesp), Method Man, Josh Peck and the inimitable, ex-25 New Face In Independent Film, Olivia Thirlby, it sure seems like the picture has broad appeal, even for those who've never heard of A Tribe Called Quest.
Filmmaker: This picture is much different in tone and style to your first film - was this a conscious departure or did it grow organically from working with vastly different subject matter?
Levine: The Wackness is a very personal film whereas Mandy Lane is more of an experiment in combining tones/genres/etc. That said, I do feel there share commonalities from both a thematic and stylistic perspective. While not a conscious departure, this script did stem from a desire to express my own personality filmically. Mostly, though, I just wanted people to stop sending me shitty horror remakes to direct.
Filmmaker: Your film is loaded, in a rather engaging, unobtrusive way, with vintage early/mid 90's hip-hop and features Method Man as one of the supporting players - how did that era of hip-hop, especially in New York City, inform the film you were making?
Levine: For me, every memory has a soundtrack to go with it, and 90's hip hop wasthe soundtrack to my very own coming-of age. It also served the era metaphorically: the music combined unbridled creativity with a passion to provoke and challenge. It transcended lines of race or socioeconomics. These factors formed a fascinating backdrop to Luke's journey. It also seems so foreign from our own contemporary culture, and that juxtaposition intrigued me.
Filmmaker: Josh's character, perhaps because of his privilege, falls outside of the "drug dealer" archetype, yet many if not most of the pot dealers I've encounter are not so unlike him, both socio-economically and culturally. What from your personal experience did you draw on to create such an authentic portrait of uptown youthful malaise?
Levine: Well, I never dealt pot, but I certainly smoked a lot of it. As such, I knew all types of drug dealers growing up in NYC. For the younger ones, dealing pot was more of a way to "act out" than to sustain themselves economically. It was the ultimate benign act of rebellion. For, while there were consequences, a lot of these kids didn't recognize them. But Luke is interesting, since he doesn't really define himself by his occupation. And if he didn't, then we weren't going to do that either. I think Luke had a different moral code than many of us, and we tried to explore and respect it through the course of telling his story.
Filmmaker: The casting is quite eclectic and inspired - tell us about that process a bit.
Levine: We knew from the beginning that we wanted to cast in an unexpected way: to take established people and have them do things they'd never done. I think that creates an energy and restlessness that excites audiences.
It all started with Ben Kingsley. When he responded to the script, we were thrilled. Everyone else sort of fell into place, because they were psyched to work with him. Josh and Olivia both read for their roles, and they were the best auditions: the only two to combine an authenticity with a lightness that I was looking for. Meth and MKO were ideas we had, and they both really liked the script. That said, each member of our cast had the chops to pull it off. This was an absolute prerequisite: sick acting ability. I don't like stunt casting and I am happy to report that none of these guys are playing themselves. They disappear into their roles, but I think the fact that they bring some preconceived notions to the table makes it thrilling to watch them shatter 'em.
Filmmaker: What were your biggest challenges in post-production?
Levine: The timetable was rough. We finished shooting in early September and we locked picture 3 months later to make the Sundance deadline. Somehow, the original cut was almost 3 hours. That was scary. We screened the film aggressively for friends and family, and had to make strong, quick decisions about what to keep in and what to cut out.
Filmmaker: If you were to make the film again, would you do anything differently?
Levine: Yes, I'm sure I would do a lot of stuff differently. On my first 2 films, I learned so many lessons--and then I forgot them as soon as the film was done. I should start writing this stuff down.
Filmmaker: The film is so New York centric - any special expectations, desires or concerns in lieu of your New York premiere?
Levine: Each festival has its own pressures and thrills, but I am very excited to show this film to a New York audience. A lot of this movie is about little evocative details, and I hope those details resonate strongly with New Yorkers. And it will be emotional for me to have my friends and family in my corner. Thinking about it makes me very happy.
Filmmaker: How was the acquisition of your most recent film different from that of the long awaited All the Boys Love Mandy Lane?
Levine: Mandy Lane was like a crazy dream, selling the film at Toronto, achieving overnight success--but it has been challenging since then. Selling Wackness was more about finding the right home than making the most money. It's a credit to my producers that they learned some lessons on Mandy. And Sony Pictures Classics has gotten behind this in a remarkable way. I've never met anyone with the kind of passion for film that Tom Bernard and Michael Barker have, and they've reaffirmed my faith in the "movie business". Yet while the roads are very different, the destination will be the same: in a movie theater, with an audience--and I very much hope audiences go see both films.
Filmmaker: What's next for you?
Levine: I'm writing a script for Sony entitled Echelon Vendetta, an adaptation of a spy novel of the same name. It's kind of like Bourne Identity on acid, and it's a lot of fun to write.
I'm reading a lot of scripts, and I'm going to write something for myself to make, which I would then like to make in 3D. I like the idea of a real 3D movie, not an exploitation movie, but, like a good movie. I hope to do that at some point within the next 20 years. I would also like to go to a Mets game.
TRIBECA DIRECTOR INTERVIEW: JULIE CHECKOWAY, WAITING FOR HOCKNEY
Screening Times: Apr 24th 7:30pm (19th St. AMC), Apr 30th 9:45pm (AMC Village VII), May 1st, 4:00pm (Village VII), May 2nd 8:30pm (19th St. AMC), May 4th 4:45pm (19th St. AMC)
For her debut feature, Julie Checkoway, a Salt Lake City based ex-radio reporter and writing professor, chose to follow the ten year struggle of Maryland artist Billy Pappas, as he attempted to create the world's most detailed portrait. This fascinating 2005 New York Times article details just a portion of the long journey Checkoway's film took to find the screen.
Filmmaker: Tell us about the history of this project and how you initially became involved with Billy Pappas.
Checkoway: A writer is always hungry for a once-in-a-lifetime story. I was initially introduced to the story of Billy Pappas in 2002 by Dr. Gary Vikan, director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Vikan, who had known Billy for nearly 8 years, had already recognized a story of mythic dimensions, at that time purely because Billy had undertaken the Herculean and hubristic task of trying to invent a new art movement with a single pencil drawing. But the more I got to know Billy—I called him up from my then-home in Houston and eventually met him for lunch in a Baltimore restaurant---I realized that it wasn’t only the making of the drawing that was epic, but the search for someone to validate it. Billy and I seemed to bond pretty quickly. He was naturally suspicious of someone who wanted to hear and witness his story but he was also starved for company and desirous of confiding his methods, his years of suffering, and his aspirations. After a little dancing around each other, Billy allowed me to audiotape him talking about the project, and eventually, after a year, he allowed me to begin filming.
Filmmaker: You come from a literary and academic background - how have these informed your filmmaking?
Checkoway: Hugely. I had to make sure that what I had was not only a film but also a novel, a Bildungsroman, or in this case a Kunstleroman (the story of the making of an artist). Before I could fully attach to this project, I had to make sure it had all the elements of a solid narrative---a central character in a state of flux with the possibility of change; a cast of supporting characters whose central concerns would, taken together, reflects the gestalt of the protagonist. As my former writing professor John Berth used to say, in quite a wordy way: I wanted a story in which would occur the “incremental perturbation of an unstable homeostatic system and its catastrophic restoration to a more complexities equilibrium.” A mouthful, no? More simply said, I wanted a story in which there was certain to be movement forward and significant consequences as a result of that movement. Stories---good ones---catch characters at the point at which their habitual ways of being are about to meet their greatest challenge and---perhaps---give way. Which way the character gives is the difference between comedy and tragedy.
Filmmaker: The absolute control one is able to exhibit as a novelist seems to be in opposition to the working style of a documentary filmmaker, whose main currency is often the spontaneous and unexpected, or do you find the two crafts to be congruous in some ways?
Checkoway: These two things are in direct opposition to one another in production but I think they must come into play in post. I did struggle during shooting not to over-influence events, force them to happen, but I often found myself interceding and trying to make the story move in directions I wanted/needed it to. That never worked. For example, on the morning Billy and Vikan and Brother Rene Sterner are having breakfast in LA, I suggested that they meet at a particular time and that we film it. The result was a forced 2 hours worth of horrible footage in which everyone was horribly uncomfortable because they knew they were expected to perform. A second time during that shoot was when I suggested we stop on Mulholland Drive so Billy could (really, so I could get shots of him) look out across to the Hollywood sign. It’s laughable now, but at the time, I was torn between intervention and witness. The looking out over the hills scene never made it into the film; rather we have the more subtle and realistic shots of Billy as the car is in motion and cutaways that are timed to what he says and feels. By god, I had a lot to learn about getting out of my own way.
Filmmaker: What is your honest appraisal of "Marilyn", Mr. Pappas' ten years in the making portrait? Is it "Art"? How has the "Art world" responded to the piece?
Checkoway: I’m completely unqualified to say whether anything is “art.” Recently, I had the pleasure of hearing the famous 87 year-old artist Wayne Thiebaud give a talk about his own work (Thiebaud is just a little older than David Hockney but is sometimes considered a proto-pop artist). What I loved about Thiebaud and I love about so many working “artists” is that they resist with vigor the notion that what they do every day is ‘art.” Thiebaud calls himself “a sign painter.” He began as a graphic artist. Hockney merely calls himself a painter. Art, Charlie Scheips, says in the film, is something that has to stand the test of time in the sense that it touches and moves people across time and space, universally. At the same time, ever since the Dadaists, the whole question of “what is art?” is a bogus one. But this I will tell you about Billy’s work: I was profoundly moved by it, amazed by it, devastated by it, and I have never, ever forgotten what it felt like when I first saw it. I was breathless, and every time I think on it again, I am breathless. What more can I say?
Filmmaker: You approached Lawrence Weschler in order to arrange a meeting for Billy Pappas with Mr. Hockney, interceding on his behalf - how does your attempt to provide your subject access effect your relationship to the piece?
Checkoway: You are no longer a passive observer at this point. Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that. I didn’t call Weschler to intercede for Billy, at least consciously. I called Weschler to intercede on my behalf. Everything had come to a standstill in Billy’s story, and I was genuinely uncertain whether I should continue to follow him. I had just had my second daughter in May of that year and had almost died during the pregnancy. Life seemed short, and I merely wanted to know from Weschler whether there was any chance, given what Weschler knew about Hockney, that Hockney would ever really see Billy’s work. That’s all I asked. At the end of the conversation, when Weschler asked whether Billy would come to New York to show him the portrait, I told Weschler I thought it likely. That’s when I stepped over the bounds. I called Billy and told him to call Weschler. That was my ethical and journalistic transgression. But in my defense, I become so attached to Billy that I also had begun to think it unfair not to share something that I knew that could help him. As much as I tried and tried to be an unbiased observer of Billy’s quest, it was nearly impossible not to embrace that quest, and him, and hope for his future.
Filmmaker: What were the biggest challenges you faced when constructing the film in post?
Checkoway: The story has so much back-story----the origin of the dare, the donee of the main character, the theory behind the choice of Marilyn and not another famous person, the 8 ½ years of work and how it was done, and the conveyance of how much suffering and sacrifice Billy went through to get to the point where he had something to show. We had to get all of that in the first 13 minutes, trying to balance efficacy with the need to cover a ton of material. As a first time filmmaker I was always cheered to hear that the first third of a film is the most difficult to get right. With the extraordinary insight of Chris Peterson, who knew how to cut through the too-much that I knew and who taught me to stay with the proverbial tip of the iceberg, I think we pulled it off. That said, I know that, even though we don’t lose the audience’s attention in the first 13 minutes, I’m sure that we also chose to lose a lot of the nuances about Billy’s work---the kind of pencils he used, the optics involved, the more complex discussion of scale, etc. So letting go was a challenge in order to get the film to move into real time.
Filmmaker: If you were to make the same film again, what, if anything, would you do differently?
Checkoway: There’s so much I would do differently with this one. I think I became cavalier at some point that I was dealing with a real and complicated person’s life. I don’t mean that I was unkind, but just that it was all too easy to forget how much control Billy was giving up by allowing me to tell his story. Despite my sisterly closeness to him, there was no way that I ever could assuage him anxiety about my depiction of him, however hard I tried. For me to believe that he would embrace and love my vision of him was also foolish. Billy drew Marilyn; that was his art, but it was, as he said, a “self portrait.” I “drew” Billy; that is my art, and it would be foolhardy to fail to say that as much as I tried to “draw” Billy, I was also drawing a story about myself. How, then, could I comfort the subject of the film and make him believe that I was going to portray him as he would want to see himself?
The proposition was impossible.
Filmmaker: Do you have plans to make another film?
Checkoway: I’m producing a film called Open Secret with director Steve Lickteig. Steve was my AD on Hockney. He actually began Open Secret before Hockney and delayed work on his film to apprentice himself on mine, hoping to learn, he said, from my mistakes. Open Secret is a gorgeous, painterly and essayistic story told from Steve’s point of view. It’s the story of how he grew up in a small Kansas town believing he was the child of one set of parents, only to discover that he the child of an entirely different one, and how every single person in that town knew that secret and kept it from him and why. As Steve says, “what if everything you thought about yourself your whole life was wrong? And what if everyone who knew you knew that before you did?” That’s what Steve’s film is about: the complex love of keeping and divulging secrets and how even the smallest of lies, once revealed, can change a person’s life forever.
The Tribeca Film Festival, the nascent downtown upstart now in its seventh year, kicks off tonight with Michael McCullers' Tina Fey/Amy Poehler vehicle Baby Mama. Running through May 4th, this year's slimmed down edition will unfurl 120 features and 79 shorts in a selection that, while still premiere heavy, includes a broader range of crossover titles from festivals like Sundance, Berlin and SXSW than in years past. During the festival, this blog will host interviews with filmmakers both well known and not, critical dispatches and perhaps the occasional video piece. Over at my own site, Cinema Echo Chamber, you'll be able to find longer form reviews of films and reflections on the festival.
As you can see from the list below, the 61st Festival de Cannes is filled with many familiar names including Steven Soderbergh, who brings his pair of Che films, and works from Clint Eastwood, Atom Egoyan, Wim Wenders, Woody Allen and Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York. The festival takes place May 14-25.
IN COMPETITION 24 City, directed by Jia Zhangke Adoration, directed by Atom Egoyan Changeling, directed by Clint Eastwood Che (The Argentine, Guerrilla), directed by Steven Soderbergh Un Conte de noel, directed by Arnaud Desplechin Delta, directed by Kornel Mundruczo Il Divo, directed by Paolo Sorrentino Gomorrah, directed by Matteo Garrone La Frontiere de l'aube, directed by Philippe Garrel Le Silence de Lorna, directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne Leonera, directed by Pablo Trapero Linha de Passe, directed by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas La mujer sin cabeza, directed by Lucrecia Martel My Magic, directed by Eric Khoo The Palermo Shooting, directed by Wim Wenders Three Monkeys, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan Serbis, directed by Brillante Mendoza Synecdoche, New York, directed by Charlie Kaufman Waltz With Bashir, directed by Ari Folman
OUT OF COMPETITION Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, directed by Steven Spielberg Kung Fu Panda, directed by Mark Osborne and John Stevenson The Good, the Bad, the Weird, directed by Kim Jee-woon Vicky Cristina Barcelona, directed by Woody Allen
UN CERTAIN REGARD Afterschool, directed by Antonio Campos Cloud 9, directed by Andreas Dresen The Dead Girl's Feast, directed by Matheus Nachtergaele Involuntary, directed by Ruben Ostlund Je Veux Voir , directed by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige Johnny Mad Dog, directed by Jean-Stephane Sauvaire O' Horten, directed by Bent Hamer Los Bastardos, directed by Amat Escalante Parking, directed by Chung Mong-Hong Part Ocean, Part Flame, directed by Liu Fendou Salt of This Sea, directed by Annemarie Jacir Soi Cowboy, directed by Thomas Clay The Moderne Life (Profils Paysans), directed by Raymond Depardon Tokyo!, directed by Bong Joon Ho, Leos Carax, and Michel Gondry Tokyo Sonata, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa Tulpan, directed by Sergey Dvortsevoy Tyson, directed by James Toback Versailles, directed by Pierre Schoeller Wendy and Lucy, directed by Kelly Reichardt
MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS The Chaser, directed by Na Hong-Jin Maradona, directed by Emir Kusturica Surveillance, directed by Jennifer Lynch
SHORT FILM COMPETITION 411-Z, directed by Daniel Erdelyi Jerrycan, directed by Julius Avery De Moins en Moins, directed by Melanie Laurent Good Trip, directed by Javier Palleiro and Guillermo Rocamora The Desire, directed by Marie Benito Love You More, directed by Sam Taylor-Wood Megatron, directed by Marian Crisan My Rabbit Hoppy, directed by Anthony Lucas Two Birds, directed by Runar Runarsson
SPECIAL SCREENINGS Ashes of Time Redux, directed by Wong Kar Wai C'Est Dur D'Etre Aime Par Des Cons, directed by Daniel Leconte Chelsea Hotel, directed by Abel Ferrara Of Time and City, directed by Terence Davies Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, directed by Marina Zenovich Sanguepazzo, directed by Marco Tullio Giordana
SCREENING OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE JURY The Third Wave, directed by Alison Thompson
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posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 4/23/2008 09:05:00 AM
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Tuesday, April 22, 2008
WHACKING THE WACKNESS
Over at Ain't It Cool News, Quint calls the trailer for Jonathan Levine's The Wackness "an okay trailer for a great movie" and "a little clunky." At Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeffrey Wells thinks star Josh Peck "is basically Leo Gorcey" and is not likely to ever play "anything other than a what-up homie who sells tabs of ecstasy and dilaudid in Tompkins Square Park" while one of his readers, Hallick, calls the clip "the dullest trailer of 2008" and asks, "What the hell are they trying their hardest not to sell here?"
Yep, the trailer's underwhelming, but it does set you up with the lowered expectations that I and everyone I knew at Sundance had when we went to see the movie. Expected to hate it, squirmed in our seats for a couple minutes, but eventually thought it was kinda okay despite a few couldn't-figure-out-how-to-wrap-it-up moments at the end. Peck is decent, Olivia Thirlby's amazing and despite its slick '90s-retro veneer, the film has a surprising amount of heart. Let's just hope the next trailer is better.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/22/2008 11:53:00 PM
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(If you haven't heard, John Sloss's Cinetic Media has set up a new company that will represent digital media rights for independent films. They are currently contacting many indie filmmakers and producers and signing for representation films that will presumably be leveraged into digital distribution platforms ranging from internet downloads to new delivery devices like mobile phones.)
An excerpt:
Most of the deals CRM is seeing offered are so-called “consignment” deals: give us the movie, and we’ll give you a share of the revenues it produces. But CRM hopes that some films, in some digital outlets, will receive advances – especially when they’re offered to one outlet on an exclusive basis.
It can take a while for these Internet outlets to produce revenues, Horton explained. “We never tell filmmakers, we’re going to make you a heck of a lot of money through Jaman, Joost, and Netflix over the next twelve months. We’re focusing on the long-term,” he said.
A main emphasis in CRM’s dealings with filmmakers, it seems, will be helping them make sense of the growing number of digital distribution options – and freeing filmmakers up to get started on their next project, without spending years marketing their last one.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/22/2008 10:34:00 PM
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I made High Maintenance to touch upon behaviors that I see in excess today among friends and in society; things like rampant consumerism, serial monogamy, lives predicated entirely on connections through technology or some sort of networking platform, and a real, new kind of loneliness. We’re more connected now than we’ve ever been before but somehow, also more disconnected. I think this relates directly to the filters that we use to reach out and connect to one another. The film was a way for me to turn those themes into a story and I did it through the characters of Jane and Paul. Jane is looking for a man by ordering designer robotic men online, tweaking them to accommodate her desires, and making sure the upgrade is better than the first version of the husband she bought. In that process, she tests the degree to which men are interchangeable. In one respect, the film comments on how programmatic love can be in human lives. We’re susceptible to a series of stimuli that induce chemical reactions. When we’re told what we want to hear, our response is mechanical on a certain level. In another respect, by attempting to demonstrate that love is replaceable, the film becomes a strong argument for the opposing truth. It pinpoints a kind of alienation, depravity and need for companionship that is all too human.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/22/2008 10:22:00 PM
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WAITING FOR CHARLIE
Over at his blog, Jonathan Taplin calls "Charlie Rose by Samuel Beckett" the "most creative video mash-up of the year."
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/22/2008 01:17:00 AM
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HOW HAS YOUR LIFE CHANGED BECAUSE OF YOUR BLOG? HAS IT GONE IN ANY NEW DIRECTIONS BECAUSE OF YOUR NEWFOUND PROMINENCE?
Throughout my career, I always took my work seriously, but I also had a skeptical or even cynical attitude about it — that it was just something people read at breakfast or on the bus to kill time. But since I started the blog I've been contacted by a lot of people who have been reading me closely for years and can quote lines or passages from pieces that I'd forgotten I even wrote. That kind of feedback means more to me than any professional honor I've ever received. It's the Christmas party scene at the end of It's a Wonderful Life where George Bailey learns that his existence meant something.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/22/2008 01:02:00 AM
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SHAMBERG'S TURTLE ARRIVES IN NEW YORK
When Filmmaker last caught up with director and cultural impresario Michael Shamberg (pictured), he had just finished collecting the various New Order music videos he produced into a compilation. One of those videos, by Leos Carax, we wrote about separately and linked to not only the clip but also Shamberg's Kinoteca website, which is now re-energized with several new pieces.
All of this is to introduce Shamberg and his global artist "anarchic salon," Turtle, which arrives in New York this weekend at The Tank. Running this Sunday, April 27, from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m., the event is described like this:
TURTLE IN THE TANK brings the anarchic spirit of 1968 to Tribeca, where films by Chris Marker, Pierre Clémenti, Robert Frank, Jem Cohen, Jowan Le Besco, Marie Losier, Michael H Shamberg and many others will be projected with live music from New York artists Jeffrey Lewis and Christina Courtin.
Highlights include Jowan Le Besco's Yapo, introduced by his sister, director/actress Isild le Besco; the premiere of a short, The Tunnel, but Robert Frank; Jeffrey Lewis performing alongside a screening of Jem Cohen and Pierre Clementi's Revolution X; and short films by Marie Losier, including Jaye Lady Jaye, a portrait of pandrogynous couple Genesis P-Orridge and Lady Jaye, presented in tribute to Jaye, who died suddenly last October.
Admission is $10. For more, visit the links above.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/22/2008 12:35:00 AM
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MICHAEL TIMES FIVE
Over at Videogum, Gabe anticipates Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely, which is Filmmaker's cover this issue, by rounding up his top five Michael Jackson impersonator clips.
Here's his intro:
And now, I'm going to do the classic blogger trick of praising a movie and then completely missing the point (an introspective look into how people struggle with identity and the need for acceptance) by posting a superficially related Top 5 List of Michael Jackson Impersonators.
I've posted below one of his top five, which he dubs "Midget Michael Jackson."
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/22/2008 12:25:00 AM
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BENTEN ON WINGO
Benten Films has a splendid, newly redesigned website that has launched alongside its latest release -- Todd Rohal's wonderful Guatemalan Handshake. The release is top-shelf all the way -- the two-disk set includes six of Rohal's short films, an essay by David Gordon Green, and numerous other extras, like casting tapes and other behind-the-scenes material.
How different is the creative process when lyrics are involved, such as your Ola Podrida work?
Usually, I come up with a melody and chord progression, then let that dictate the words, but I always have the words before I start building the arrangements. There's a Brian Eno quote that I read recently that's interesting because it's kind of the way I think about things. He was talking about Bob Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde" -- which is odd because I never would've figured Eno to be a big Dylan fan -- and how that fit the way he was operating lyrically. Dylan mimicked the music with the words, whether it was the emotions coming through or the rhythms, just letting the words... not so much tell a story on its own, but more like the story the music was dictating, more subconsciously. I try to do a similar thing.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/22/2008 12:16:00 AM
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Monday, April 21, 2008
BOXING HANNAH, PART TWO
Aided by a greater competence when it comes to grabbing and resizing web images (a competence I've appropriated here), Peter Martin at Cinematical links to my piece on the DVD box art of Joe Swanberg's Hannah Takes the Stairs and asks:
I agree that Hannah Takes the Stairs deserves a wider audience, but I'm not sure the DVD cover will make people want to pick it up and take a chance on renting or buying it. What do you think?
To be honest, I don't know. As a producer, I've long been inured to the design indignity that occurs when a film moves from theatrical release to home video. I remember one particular poster, for Frank Whaley's Joe the King. It was a bold, striking image of a house sitting on top of protagonist Joe Henry's young head. When the folks at Trimark came up with it, they explicitly told us it wouldn't be the video box, which wound up to be a more more conventional, Lifetime-movie-seeming shot of Joe on his bike with various family members ghosted around him. Even more recently, I helped a friend get her independent film distributed and spent some time talking with the arthouse distributor who told us that the original, edgier poster design simply wasn't acceptable to Blockbuster.
The part of me that cares about having a DVD on my shelf for years and wanting it represent the film and its integrity sides with the various commenters to the Filmmaker and Cinematical posts, however. On our thread, the guys at Benten Films say, "Covers such as this was a motivating factor in my starting Benten Films. Is this Friends-like cover really going to sell that much more product?" Brandon Harris writes, "I saw that box coming out of Kim's the other night after another unsuccessful attempt at finding a European DVD on Ferrara's Mary and nearly collapsed. It makes the movie look like a remake of About Last Night or something..."
The most colorful comment, though, comes from Wiley Wiggins over at the Cinematical thread:
The one on the right looks like either a straight to video movie that was cast off from a Gay and Lesbian film festival or a Christian film festival. Or it could be an ad for herpes medicine.
The original blue/yellow one actually looked like someone with some design sense took a swing at it (other than the horrible wacky-font tagline on top).
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/21/2008 11:52:00 PM
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TWILIGHT OF THE STARS
Jamie Stuart forwarded the screen cap pictured here from IMDb. It's a grab from the "pro" version of the site's Starmeter which, you'd think, would provide some sort of ranking of top movie stars. But no, the Starmeter is more a measure of transitory popularity. As the site notes about the rankings:
Plain and simple, they represent what people are interested in, based not on small statistical samplings, but on the actual behavior of millions of IMDb users. Unlike the AFI 100TM or Academy AwardsTM, high rankings on STARmeterTM and MOVIEmeterTM do not necessarily mean that something is "good." They do mean that there is a high level of public awareness and/or interest in the title or person.
So, if this Starmeter snapshot is to be believed, Catherine Hardwicke's Twilight, in which eight of the ten top stars appear, should be the biggest movie of the year.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/21/2008 11:49:00 PM
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SPRING ISSUE ONLINE
Over on the main page check select stories from the Spring issue.
Peter Bowen chats with Errol Morris about Standard Operating Procedure, I have an in-depth discussion with Sangre de Mi Sangre (aka Padre Nuestro) writer-director Christopher Zalla, Lisa Y. Garibay interviews Tom Kalin about Savage Grace, Howard Feinstein explores the making of Tom McCarthy's The Visitor and Travis Crawford talks to Dario Argento about his final chapter in the "Three Mothers" trilogy, Mother of Tears.
Plus, we take a look at the Red One camera, Anthony Kaufman reports on the struggle American filmmakers are having in the international marketplace in his Industry Beat column and Heather Chaplin searches for the indie videogame in our relaunched Gaming column.
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posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 4/21/2008 12:41:00 PM
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Friday, April 18, 2008
IRAQ AT 24 FRAMES A SECOND
Over at FilmInFocus, Anthony Kaufman takes a look at filmmaking in Iraq by talking to the leaders of the Baghdad Independent Film and Television College.
Here's the opening:
Filmmaking requires perseverance, zeal, sometimes even a pathological commitment to see a project through. Now imagine making movies in Baghdad.
Kidnappings, killings, suicide bombings and blackouts haven't deterred a number of intrepid aspiring directors from pursuing their passion, whether Oday Rasheed and Mohamed Al-Daradji, the first two people to make feature films in the wake of the U.S. invasion in 2003 (respectively, Over Exposure and Ahlaam) or the roughly 80 young Iraqis who have gone through Baghdad's Independent Film and Television College since it was launched by two Iraqi exiles in 2004.
Based in London, Kasim Abid and Maysoon Pachachi had taught filmmaking courses to Palestinians in Ramallah and decided to bring that experience to bear in their homeland. "We thought, 'What can we do to help?'" says Pachachi. "We're not doctors, we're not engineers, we're just filmmakers."
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/18/2008 08:08:00 PM
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EQAL-ITY
Over at his Cinematech, Scott Kirsner rounds up the news that EQAL, a "microstudio formed by the guys behind the lonelygirl15 series and KateModern" has raised $5 million in venture capital from Sparks Capital in Boston along with Marc Andreessen and Ron Conway.
Producers of the Internet-video serial "lonelygirl15" -- once thought to be an amateur project but later revealed to be the product of professionals -- have raised $5 million from prominent technology investors to expand and introduce new online shows.
The new funding for EQAL, the Los Angeles company behind "lonelygirl" and another popular Internet drama, "KateModern," illustrates Silicon Valley's continuing push to move video onto the Web and find better ways to make money from it. Though the online-video industry got a big boost after Google Inc. bought video site YouTube for $1.6 billion two years ago, many companies are still struggling to come up with viable revenue models.
Todd Dagres, a partner at Spark Capital, the Boston-based firm that led EQAL's round of financing, said the studio understands that "the Web is not TV, and you can't advertise like you do on TV."
Instead, EQAL, formerly known as LG15 Studios and led by Chief Executive Miles Beckett and President Greg Goodfried, plans to weave advertising into the content of their shows, Mr. Dagres said, and also to interact with its community of viewers.
It’s an exciting time for online entertainment. There are a slew of independent producers, digital studios, and social media companies sprouting up, not to mention the fact that traditional media isn’t exactly ignoring this whole “internets” thing. We’ve always wanted to stay independent and produce interactive shows that we could put our hearts and souls into, and sometime last fall we realized that raising money would give us the ability to remain independent and produce amazing shows on our terms.
After six months of fast food and airplane delays, we found a VC that shared our vision to build a company that would produce truly interactive shows. Many of the exciting innovations we’ve all talked about will finally come to fruition now that we have the funding to act on our shared vision. Needless to say, we’re very excited to get started.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/18/2008 06:15:00 PM
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SYNDROMES CENSORSHIP, PART TWO
A couple of weeks back, we posted an email from U.K. producer Keith Griffiths about the Thai censorship of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes and a Century. Now, over at FilmInFocus, where Griffiths is maintaining a regular and quite erudite blog, he updates us with stories of the butchered film's screenings in Thailand (audiences must sit through several-minute-long sequences of black leader) in a long post that winds its way through a discussion of Walter Benjamin and his Arcades Project, the Degenerate Art Show and Marshall McLuhan's The Mechanical Bride.
An excerpt:
Unlike the Degenerate Art show in Munich of 1937, thousands of people regretfully did not show up at the Siam Paragon — probably only a hundred accompanied by many television news crews. The show apparently opened with a discussion and Apichatpong recognizes that he was tired and has written that he "became very aggressive lambasting the stagnant system that we are floating in… Something possessed me and I couldn't help it. Somehow I thought this was useless in this glitzy cineplex…but this was the last chance to display my accumulated anger. This was not only about this film…there are countless films, self censored, censored, banned. Where is the audience's voice? In a way it was liberating but while watching the film, I felt so bad of course. It was the most stupid film ever shown. (Even though I enjoyed the black scratches…) Somehow with some scenes removed, especially the longest one, it completely changed the movie. When you consider that the cut scenes don't have much narrative connection with the others, the movie just fell apart…so, it is really a corpse, not a film."
Unsurprisingly quite a number of people, both Thai and foreign visitors, complained to the cinema about the film when they were confronted with "meaningless blackness". The cinema was forced to display a board at the ticket booth explaining what was actually screening and that they should only see it, at their own risk. "I feel sorry for the unknown audience to have to put up with our 'statement.' But come to think of it, this is amazing…maybe this will be only one time we could do this in a commercial theater here."
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/18/2008 03:05:00 PM
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HANNAH GOES TO THE VIDEO STORE
What is the difference in the conventional wisdom between selling a film to an indie arthouse audience and selling it to the video chains?
A quick tutorial:
Exhibit A, theatrical release poster.
Exhibit B, home video box cover.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/18/2008 02:31:00 PM
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Tuesday, April 15, 2008
TIME LAPSED
I was on two short film juries in the last two weeks. If this web video from The New Yorker had been entered in either of them, it would have been a finalist.
"Up and Then Down," Nick Paumgarten's New Yorker feature on elevators, is centered around Nicholas White’s ordeal of being trapped in an elevator for 41 hours after he left his office at Business Week to go downstairs for a cigarette. The article is accompanied by an extraordinary time-lapse video of White in his cage, rattling back and forth like a trapped insect:
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/15/2008 06:49:00 PM
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FIVE QUESTIONS FOR CARNY'S ALISON MURRAY
Throughout her career, Alison Murray has excelled in the filmic exploration of subculture. Her films, both docs and a narrative feature, burrow deep inside groups situated outside of mainstream culture and capture not only their social dynamics but also the very human stories contained within them. Her first doc, Train on the Brain, looked at the teenage culture of "train jumpers." Her feature Mouth to Mouth starred Ellen Page in a story of a teenager who runs away and joins a European youth cult. And now her latest, Carny, which premieres this week at Hot Docs, finds Murray on the road with traveling carnival workers, capturing the love and friendships but also the pain and loneliness felt by those whose job it is to provide a momentary escape for the rest of us on a Saturday night. I emailed Murray with five questions about her new project, and I've posted the trailer below. (Visit her site for more info as well as a higher-res version of the trailer.)
Filmmaker: All of your films so far have delved into specific subcultures. What's different and what's similar about traveling carny workers from the other groups you have depicted in your films?
Murray: It's true that in both my fictional films and docs I find myself in subcultures! In contrast to the trainhopping dropouts in TRAIN ON THE BRAIN and th cult activists in MOUTH TO MOUTH, the carnys in CARNY aren't consciously taking a stand against mainstream culture, though their lifestyle, like the train punks and communal living activists, creates an alternative society and "family" outside normal society.
Filmmaker: What challenges did you face gaining access and then gaining the trust of your subjects?
Murray: The carnys are typically a closed and wary bunch. My collaborator, Virginia Lee Hunter, has spent ten years photographing carnys, so she was the "in" -- she peaks the lingo (a whole special carny vocabulary) and knew the proper etiquette to follow in talking to the show owners, the ride jocks, and the rest. Gaining trust was a matter of putting in the hours -- over a year and a half hanging around the cotton candy machines and the balloon joints.
Filmmaker: What were the most surprising storylines that emerged during your filming?
Murray: A threesome relationship between a guy and two girls living in a 4 foot by 8 foot bunkhouse was a unique one. Eventually someone had to go... it was heartbreaking actually. Otherwise, characters who had spent half a lifetime in prison, fathers of fourteen kids scattered up and down the fairground route, and the brother of famous siamese twins trying to forge an identity for himself as Bozo the Clown all had fascinating stories.
Filmmaker: Which character would you be most interested in revisiting in ten years, and why?
Murray: Our most articulate champion of the carny lifestyle was a twentysomething lesbian making cotton candy. She was the oddball amongst the oddballs, and although committed to being a carny for life, I'd like to see if she doesn't end up running her own successful business somewhere. She was a real perfectionist.
Filmmaker: What kind of shape do you think these traveling carnivals will be in in ten years? Is it a dying way of life, or will there always be an audience?
Murray: There's an awful joke -- "What do you get with a room full of carnys? A full set of teeth." -- but its true, the lifestyle takes its toll, and I reckon carnys have a shorter lifespan than everyone else. As for the institution of the travelling fair -- they seemed to be doing a booming business in smalltown America, so I don't see it all coming to an end, but it's definitely going more corporate, and that brings big changes. Ironically, show owners born into traditional carny families seem the most sensitive about wanting to erase the typical carny image -- the tattoos, the rough living tramps...
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/15/2008 06:11:00 PM
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Monday, April 14, 2008
DENTLER, PIERSON ON THE MOVE
In Variety, Mike Jones has the very big news that SXSW festival director Matt Dentler will be leaving the fest to join John Sloss's Cinetic Media, where he will run the marketing and program operations of Cinetic Digital Rights Management. And in an equally notable development, Janet Pierson, who has worked as a producer's rep with her husband John, has been named as the new producer of the annual Austin-based film festival.
From Variety:
SXSW Film co-founder Louis Black said: "Saying that Janet will hit the ground running as head of SXSW Film is truly an understatement considering her knowledge and accomplishments."
Black continued, "SXSW has been privileged to have Matt Dentler working for it; the event has benefited extraordinarily from his leadership."
In his new position, Dentler will push and market client content to online portals. "I'll be helping indie filmmakers find the best possible home for their films from a strictly digital perspective, like VOD or online downloads," he said. "It goes hand in hand with what I was doing at SXSW."
Congrats to both of them on their new gigs.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/14/2008 08:06:00 PM
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HUNGRY MEN
I wrote about a couple of this year's Sundance docs earlier on the blog: Josh Tickell's Audience Award-winning Fields of Fuel, and Patrick Creadon's IOUSA. I was positive about the first, enjoying Tickell's breathless narration and ability to cram a huge amount of info on biodiesel, the alternative fuel source, into his feature. And I was less positive about IOUSA, finding its arguments limited by its focus on one particular contingent of deficit hawks. Another thing: Fields of Fuel is quite direct about what its advocating, coming up with an explicit multi-point plan to harness the power of biodiesel to help resolve our energy crisis, while IOUSA ended with a more generic "write your Congressman!" kind of message.
Both topics are even more now in the news than they were in January, and with the increased news presence comes the need for more complicated discussions about these issues. So, to provide a bit of balance to my largely positive take on Fields of Fuel, I'll note the current discussion over world hunger and poverty and whether or not the developed nations' various bio-fuel mandates are driving up the cost of food. Here's a link to a blog, Gas. 2.0, which is pro-biodiesel but does acknowledge that increased use of the alternative energy may be playing a factor.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/14/2008 07:46:00 PM
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Saturday, April 12, 2008
OBSESSION PAYS
If you're in America, there's a big deadline this week -- income tax filing on April 15. But there's another deadline across the border that filmmakers all over should consider as well. You have until April 18 to submit a film to the Mobile Stories "Obsession" contest. Here's information from the press release:
Obsession can lead to a lot of things….even winning $1,000. The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and iThentic are pleased to announce the launch of Mobile Stories: Obsessions – six three-minute films in which award-winning filmmakers give their “take” on obsession. Made for online, mobile, and cinema, the shorts are complemented by an interactive program of filmmaking tutorials and an opportunity for viewer-generated films to participate in the Canadian Film Centre’s Shortsnonstop Festival, presented by TELUS. Mobile Stories: Obsessions is a co-production of the National Film Board and iThentic with the participation of the TELUS Innovation Fund administered by the Canadian Film Centre, the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund, and with Canadian broadcast partner - IFC. The commissioned short films will be aired on the IFC later this year. Films and festival information at www.mobilestories.ca
Mobile Stories: Obsessions is a conversation in film. Six award-winning filmmakers — Malcolm Clarke, Shui-bo Wang, Hubert Davis, Renuka Jeyapalan, Apeman888, and Smiley Guy Productions — have created a film based on an obsession. From going bald; to fantasizing about a stranger, a loved one, or the past; to extreme customer service or the power of technology, these obsessions last far beyond their 3-minute running time. Viewers are invited to screen the films online and create their own films in response, for a chance to win $1,000 as part of the Shortsnonstop Mobile Movie Festival and a special screening at the CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/12/2008 12:18:00 PM
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Friday, April 11, 2008
THREE SHOTS
Over at Stream, Jamie Stuart has a nice piece up in which he looks at the three most important Hollywood movies of the year -- No Country for Old Men, Zodiac and There Will Be Blood -- and discusses the very different ways they went about creating their images.
An excerpt:
The fact that all three of these pictures used technologies in different a manner is ultimately irrelevant to the fact that they are all stories told with pictures, regardless of the chosen workflow. While they may be aesthetically different, each approach is completely legitimate. One similarity between them is a screen aspect ratio of approximately 2.40:1. What's dissimilar is the manner in which that widescreen image was achieved: No Country For Old Men used the Super-35 process, by which the entire camera negative is exposed while the image is composed for and later masked at 2.40:1; Zodiac was shot with the Viper FilmStream and arrived at its aspect ratio by altering the shape of the recorded digital pixels; There Will Be Blood did it the old-fashioned way by employing Panavision anamorphic lenses that optically squeezed the photographed image and subsequently stretched it back out during projection.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/11/2008 01:14:00 PM
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Thursday, April 10, 2008
IT'S HARD OUT HERE FOR A PIMP
In Variety, Anne Thompson reports on "post-studio stress disorder" in a remarkably frank piece about the tough job of producing, especially for those studio castaways who are now trying to downside their operations to fit the current economic climate.
Here are three graphs:
Arguably hardest hit are producers who grew up on big-studio largess and now find the gravy train has moved on without them. Producers and directors once accustomed to pitching a project at a studio and getting easy development money are stymied. Now they need to build muscles and an arsenal of skills they never exercised at the well-greased, slow-turning studio wheel.
Some are adapting to developing material themselves, attaching elements like stars, director and writer, handling legal questions and hustling for new financing sources, often with the help of agency packagers. These days you can't get anywhere without a movie that's just about ready to go.
"It's almost impossible to make a living off being a producer," says Endeavor agent Brian Swardstrom. "You have to be rich or lucky or you end up out of the business. You have to hustle to eke out a living. You can't just sit there like the old days when you could call your friends and get a kickback. That's long gone. Some like Scott Rudin and Imagine and Working Title are doing their own thing. Everyone else is hustling their ass off."
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/10/2008 11:49:00 PM
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COME TO PITCHFORK
Our friends (well, we don't know them, but we like to think of them as friends) at Pitchfork, the best music website, have launched their online music channel, Pitchfork.tv. Today, they have a choice offering; the brilliant Chris Cunningham video for Aphex Twin's "Come to Daddy." And here's what the site launched with on Monday: Radiohead performing "Bangers and Mash" in producer Nigel Godrich's home studio.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/10/2008 11:39:00 PM
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SIX DAY WEEK
Eugene Hernandez at Indiewire has the scoop on some rebranding at the IFP. The IFP Market has been rechristened Independent Film Week. The works-in-progress section will now be called the Project Forum. And, the event, which takes place September 14 - 19, will move to F.I.T. in Chelsea. No word on whether Tim Gunn will be moderating any of the filmmaker workshops.
IFP Executive Director Michelle Byrd is quoted in Eugene's piece:
"In the film industry, the word 'Market' suggests business transactions, but IFP's commitment to filmmakers and their projects extends long beyond the six days of Independent Film Week," said IFP exec director Michelle Byrd, in a statement. "Our goal is to provide a launching pad for career-spanning relationships, and we wanted our new name to encompass that broader mission."
For more info or to submit your project, visit the IFP website.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/10/2008 11:20:00 PM
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THREE TIMES IS THE CHARM
Dade Hayes in Variety reports on the big news coming out of the NYC Governor's Office: the state is tripling it's 10% tax credit for below-the-line production costs, taking it to 30%. The State Legislature approved the bill, and now it awaits Governor Patterson's signature. Add in the New York City rebate and you wind up with 35% against below-the-line costs associated with shooting in New York. The increased rebate is designed to make New York more competitive with Massachusetts and Connecticut, both of which have large rebate programs.
Just as significant is a change made to the structure of the tax credit -- it will now come back to the investors in one year rather than two.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/10/2008 11:15:00 PM
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IFP ROUGH CUT LAB DEADLINE TOMORROW!
Just a quick reminder if you were planning to submit your project to the IFP Rough Cut Lab, which I'll be mentoring this year with Gretchen McGowan. The deadline is tomorrow, Friday, April 11. You can read more about the program here, along with info on submitting your project. If selected, you'll join some very good company. Past Rough Cut Lab films include two big films on this year's fest circuit, Jennifer Phang's Gen Art Grand Prize winning Half Life and Tom Quinn's Slamdance Grand Prize-winning The New Year's Parade.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/10/2008 01:20:00 PM
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SHANE CARRUTH, PHONE HOME
Over at the Onion A.V. Club, Scott Tobias inducts a worthy feature into what he calls "The New Cult Canon": Primer, Shane Carruth's no-budget, intellectually forceful and narratively complex Sundance Grand Prize-winning sci-fi movie.
Here's Tobias:
The genius of Primer is that form matches content: Carruth is telling a story about a couple of young inventors working out of a garage, so it follows that he'd take a similarly analog approach to filmmaking. An autodidact with an engineering background, Carruth shot the film in his native Dallas, with his parents' house serving as a primary location. From the very first shot—which makes the windows of a darkened garage look like the view from an alien spaceship—the film has an eerie, fluorescent-tinged ambience that's appropriate for science fiction and true to the life of a scientist. Add to that an underlay of computer-generated music (also composed by Carruth, who wanted the score to move from simple acoustic sounds to something more ethereal as the film progressed), and Primer feels as much like an ingenious homemade gizmo as the time machine its characters invent.
In fact the scientific complexities of the plot threaten to derail the film altogether, as they teeter on the brink of utter incomprehensibility, and occasionally fall over it. What saves it, though, is the time machine itself, a wonderfully imagined box of very limited tricks that shows just how complex, and downright frustrating, real time travel might be. Back To The Future it's not.
The other saving grace is the stark purity of the camerawork, Shane Carruth staying within the confines of his budget by keeping shots simple yet perfectly composed, using natural and fluorescent lighting wherever possible in a way that gives the movie a distinctive sterile glow. It works remarkably well for the subject matter, and even adds to the sense of scientific experimentation. At its best it even achieves effects that other directors might spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on getting right.
Back in 2004 I interviewed Carruth, and we talked a lot about the ingenious no-budget production techniques he used to make his movie. An excerpt:
Filmmaker: So you wrote, you directed, you produced and you acted. How did you wind up as director of photography?
Carruth: I didn’t know anything about cinematography, and I didn’t know enough to know that I probably didn’t need to learn, that I just needed to find a d.p. I did a lot of reading and found out that cinematography was really just photography with a set shutter speed. I bought some tungsten slide film, because I knew that motion picture film was mainly tungsten, and then I just storyboarded the entire script [by shooting slides] with light that I had available to me. The slides helped so much — once I had an image that I liked, I was pretty much set as long as there wasn’t some kind of anomaly in shooting motion pictures. And then I bought some fluorescent banks from Wal-Mart for, like, $23. It took a long time, but I just set up each shot exactly the way that I wanted it and took slides of them, so by the time we were shooting we knew exactly what f-stop to use. We were going for as narrow a depth of field as possible — 2.8 mostly. Even for daylight stuff, we’d throw a ton of neutral density on there to get a really narrow depth of field.
Click on the link above for a lot more from the writer/director on the making of his film.
Of course, this post raises the question, what is Carruth up to now? I asked him that question in 2004, and here was his answer:
I have a script that I’m finishing now. I don’t honestly know the whole business side of it yet, but I’m hoping to make another film — hopefully on the strength of this one. We’ll see if it goes well.
Around the same time he told Amy Taubin in Film Comment he was writing "a coming-of-age romance between an oceanography prodigy and the daughter of a commodities trader. It's set against trade routes in East Africa and Southern Asia."
But there hasn't been much news since. The Primer website has a lot of great stuff on it and a discussion board that Carruth shut in 2007 to new members due to, he said, the amount of time it took to weed out the spam and porn postings. A couple people posted asking about new projects, but there's been no reply. Anyway, I thought I'd use this opportunity to kick some attention Carruth's way and to publicly wonder what he's up to. Primer was indeed one of the most original American indies of recent years, and I hope he's on the track towards bringing us something new. To close, here's an interview with Carruth found on YouTube:
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/10/2008 12:10:00 PM
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Tuesday, April 08, 2008
CATCH-UP BLOGGING
We just put the new Spring issue of Filmmaker to bed, so that's why there hasn't been much blogging here. Really, I was going to try to burn the midnight oil and throw some postings up, but then I read the now infamous New York Times"Death by Blogging" article and thought better of it.
So, here are a few things I would have posted about in greater detail if I had the time.
First, as you know from reading this blog, we try to keep up with and promote the work of our annual "25 New Faces" filmmakers. I don't know if it was because I was too focused on the issue, but I completely missed that 2006 New Face Carter Smith has his first feature in the theaters: the Universal horror film The Ruins. Completely missed it. Now, the film got slagged by a lot of reviewers, but I can't believe there's not something good about it. Darius Khondji shot it, and Harry Knowles posted an appreciative review. And having really liked the John Wyndham novel The Day of the Triffids when I was a kid, I know that it is possible for plants to be scary. So, at the least, this will be on my Netflix cue.
A good NYC indie producer, Karin Chien, is the guest this week on Lance Weiler's This Call is Being Recorded podcast.
The FilmInFocus site is opening up its webpages to outside bloggers. Just added are Docurama's Liz Ogilvie, who has been posting reports from Full Frame, and U.K. producer Keith Griffiths of the company Illuminations. Griffiths' first post is entitled "Lost London and the Fight Against 'Dentists,'" and here is a brief excerpt from a longer post on gentrified London which Griffiths has penned from the small town of Deal, which he refers to earlier in the post as "Sin City":
Before exiling myself to Sin City on-sea, I had my office in this corrupt seedy Soho for many years and have regretted the inevitable swift gentrification of this area, as well as the once bombed and semi-derelict riverside warehouses. The lost magic and menacing riverside East End is well represented in the highly underrated 1962 Basil Dearden film All Night Long, a "hip" reworking of Shakespeare's Othello. Here the cool, cult actor Patrick McGoohan (pictured above left) stars as jazz drummer Johnny Cousin (Iago), gathering at a private gig in a riverside warehouse owned by a rich patron, Richard Attenborough. The film features rare appearances of jazz legends Dave Brubeck, Johnny Dankworth and Charlie Mingus performing together and tantalising the demi-monde with a memorable score. This warehouse location, where the clink of glasses and a steamy undercurrent of jealous passions bubble, has probably been "refurbished" and is now the home of a somewhat anxious City trader.
Such gentrification is of course not just the privilege of Londoners and I remember filming an interview in 1987 with Ken Jacobs for a documentary we were making called New York Framed, where he spoke eloquently in defense of the hidden corners, and museums of decay in New York City, regretting the results of "when all the dentists move in and make things nice and make things new". (Incidentally I presented this film at The Donnell Media Center/NY Public Library in 1988 or '89, when a young and hungry producer called James Schamus was in the audience and grabbed my coat afterwards for a "chat".) Indeed all "dentists" are a major danger to our film cultures, as they seek to clean our stained teeth and fill in all the interesting cavities. In fact, I think that Putin's Dentists are alive and well working for the state body responsible for the film industry here, known as the UK Film Council. As an institution, they seem pathologically obsessed into transforming the veritable London Film Festival, with its programme stuffed with small secret corners of unfashionable and minority treasures, into a more gentrified "red carpet" affair. This red carpet threatens to not only suffocate the lost Soho of London and Night and the City but also bury along with it any "uncomfortable pleasures" that might dare to breed in the cracks of the pavements.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/08/2008 05:40:00 PM
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Thursday, April 03, 2008
FERRIS SAVES THE Q & A
Terry Kinney's Diminished Capacity packed the Zeigfeld Theatre last night to commence the Gen Art Film Festival. Asked about the origins of his involvement in the project,Matthew Broderick explained: "Terry sent me a script, which had printed in it all of the words we would eventually say."
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posted by Alicia Van Couvering @ 4/03/2008 08:35:00 AM
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Wednesday, April 02, 2008
POLITICALLY INCORRECT
Just over a month ago I blogged about a number of political mashups that focused on Hillary Clinton, and arguably the most ingenious of the bunch was one that cut together Clinton's famous weepy coffee shop speech and Tom Cruise's equally notorious leaked Scientology interview. It turns out that the individual who made that video, Hugh Atkin has been regularly making videos which he posts on ABC's Unleashed website as well as on his own personal blog.
Atkin's latest creation, a reworking of the Sarah Silverman "I'm Fucking Matt Damon" video, is currently doing the rounds of the blogs and is very funny. I'm embedding that video below along with another of Atkin's recent concoctions, a reworking of an interview with Fidel Castro. Castro Unplugged is kind of a slow burner, but utterly inspired and with some genuinely hilarious moments, especially for cinephiles.
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posted by Nick Dawson @ 4/02/2008 06:55:00 PM
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A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE?
One of the more curious projects out there right now is reported on by Jeff Wells today over at Hollywood Elsewhere. It's the adaptation of Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures, which is to be directed by Kenneth Bowser, best known for his Emmy Award-winning episode of American Masters on John Ford and his helming of the doc version of Biskind's previous Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Now he's heading behind the camera again for a dramatic adaptation of Biskind's book chronicling the rise of independent film -- or, more accurately, the growth of the mini-majors and the specialty film market. Wells has several pages up of the screenplay, and here's a link to a scene at the beginning in which October Films founders Jeff Lipsky and Bingham Ray react to a cut of the film we're watching that starts with Shakespeare in Love winning the Best Picture Oscar.
Here's Wells:
It's basically a series of scenes showing some famous indie players -- Bingham Ray, Harvey Weinstein, Jeff Lipsky, Quentin Tarantino, David Dinerstein, Cassian Elwes, Robert Rodriguez, Jeff Katzenberg, Tony Safford, Amir Mailin, Scott Greenstein, Allison Anders, Kevin Smith, Tim Roth, John Schmidt, Linda Lichter -- trying to out-do or out-finagle or out-bullshit each other. Arguing, sniping, boasting, bellowing, boasting, bitching, whining, moaning. It's pretty much Biskind's book -- all the good parts, I mean -- minus the narrative padding and commentary and windy perspective.
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/02/2008 12:21:00 PM
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