CONGRESSMEN JUST WANT TO HAVE FUNDRAISING

By Admin

Robert Greenwald’s upcoming documentary The Big Buy: How Tom DeLay Stole Congress about Representative Delay’s questionable fundraising policies is now being used as a fundraiser tool by Delay himself. Weeks ago The New York Times reported on the film and on how a

“host of liberal organizations in Texas and nationwide, including People for the American Way, Democracy for America and the Pacifica radio station in Houston, are expected to sponsor the film’s release.”

In response, Mr. Delay issued a fund-raising email – with every link going to a donation form – that quotes the New York Times article:

A documentary…is being put to use by Mr. DeLay’s political opponents in an attempt to unseat him…distributed this spring by the Hollywood producer and liberal provocateur Robert Greenwald.”

Delay pleads “Much like Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9-11, this movie is a blatant attempt to influence the outcome of an election. The director himself said, “It was important to get this out as soon as possible…given the elections this November.” So Delay – on the very day that his former aide Tony Rudy pleads guilty for conspiring with Abramoff – gets the word out that he needs money to fight filmmakers like Greenwald. To hear more, see Greenwald on theThe Colbert Report.… Read the rest

YOUTUBE — HERE TO STAY

By Scott Macaulay

CNET covers Youtube:

Executives from heavyweights such as Yahoo, America Online and Turner Broadcasting were buzzing about YouTube’s sudden success at the Digital Hollywood conference here this week. Even though it’s not clear exactly how YouTube will make money, no company generated as much excitement at the gathering of Hollywood studios, electronics manufacturers and Internet media companies….

… Read the rest

A DEFINITION OF MENTORSHIP

By Scott Macaulay

In Simon Reynold’s great history of post-punk, Rip It Up and Start Again, the critic describes trips taken by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt (who, with Eno, co-created Oblique Strategies, a set of simple directives on playing cards — example: “Don’t avoid what is easy” — intended as creative aids) to the British art school Watford in the ’70s where Eno would help students with projects. On some nights Eno and Schmidt would give Colin Newman, founding member of Wire (pictured), a lift, and Newman’s quote is a good description of how one generation supports another when it comes to the practice of art:

In my view, humans are inherently creative, but there is a process by which a particular individual becomes an artist, meaning that they can say they are an artist without being pretentious. If that happened at any given point to me it was during those car journeys. As soon as I stepped in that car I was no longer just a rather poor student but a friend and an equal, an artist sitting in a car with other artists. I could babble on about my ideas.”

Also, Reynolds’ blog takes note of an event tonight in New York at the Cantor Media Center, one associated with the NYU Gray Gallery’s Downtown Show, which closes this weekend:

Another free Downtown Show event worth checking out is Friday 3/31′s Nightclubbing: The Original Punk Rock Music Video Series, which is at the Cantor Film Center, 36 East Eighth Street, starts at 6PM, and has live footage of Contortions, DNA, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, Suicide, Talking Heads, Bush Tetras, Lounge Lizards, the Voidoids, Cramps, Pylon, John Cale, Bad Brains, and many more, and is followed by a discussion between the curators of the event Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong moderated by Amos Poe.

Many of the bands contained in the program, which are also written about in Reynolds’ book, are featured in TV Party, the old public access show recently re-issued on DVD.… Read the rest

JOHN AUGUST’S WORST WORKING HABIT

By Scott Macaulay

From “10 Things I Hate About Me” posted on the great blog by the screenwriter of Go, Big Fish, and Corpse Bride, among others:

Particularly when I’m re-writing a script, I suffer from what my friend John Gatins refers to as the line-painter dilemma. Here’s the short version:

A guy is hired to paint the yellow line down the middle of a country road. The first day, he paints five miles. His supervisor is impressed. The second day, he only paints two miles. His supervisor thinks, “Well, maybe he had a bad day.” But the third day, the guy only paints half a mile. The supervisor asks the guy what’s wrong — why is he getting so much less done?

“Well,” the guy says, “I have to keep walking back to the paint can.”

The screenwriting equivalent, of course, is that at the start of each day’s work, one’s instinct is to go back to page one and read-slash-revise up to where you left off. Which is a very counter-productive habit.

… Read the rest

HYBRID DISTRIBUTION

By Scott Macaulay

The Hollywood Reporter’s Gregg Goldstein has a piece up about alternative distribution, discussing how films like Anytown, USA, The Dogwalker, and Tennis, Anyone are getting in front of audiences after being passed on by traditional distribs. In the piece, Peter Broderick coins the term “hybrid distribution” to describe these filmmaker/alternative distrib partnerships. Among the companies discussed: Without a Box, Truly Indie, Emerging Pictures and Film Movement.… Read the rest

SNEAKER ENVY

By Scott Macaulay

Coolhunting reports that Adidas has hired seven directors to make short films for each of their new “adicolor” hues. The first is by the animation and design house Tronic. On their website, the outfit states, “The strength of Tronic lies in our ability to leverage our various backgrounds as architects, designers, art directors and directors to establish a collective fusing of ideas, images, movement and experience. By actively shaping all projects through a rigorous conceptual process, we transcend preconceived notions of how to arrive at a particular creative solution within any of the media that we work.”

Their film for Adidas? Jenna Jameson playing whack-a-mole. Downloadable for PSP or iPod.… Read the rest

QUAID PRO QUO

By Admin

Randy Quaid’s recent $10 million lawsuit against Focus Features, Del Mar Productions, and producers David Linde and James Schamus, over his payment for performing in Brokeback Mountain has raised lots of interesting questions about the role of mini-majors, the fate of independent film, the need for name actors, as well as the sanity of Mr. Quaid. A good round up of opinions can be found at the IFCblog. Also worth a look is Sharon Waxman’s article “Lawsuit Over ‘Brokeback Mountain’ Reveals Unease Over Pay for ‘Arthouse’ Films” in today’s New York Times.… Read the rest

CAMERA SHY

By Admin

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who has recently gained notice in the Indie realm for his excellent work in both Mysterious Skin and the coming-soon Brick, recently demonstrated his own filmmaking acumen with a short film Pictures of Assholes on YouTube.com, which chronicles an exchange between him and two rather nasty paparazzi. In his notes on YouTube.com, Gordon-Levitt adds:

The only other thing I’ll say is (and I had trouble deciding whether or not to be so blunt with my opinion, but here goes) I do believe that the myth of “Celebrity” is not just innocently shallow entertainment, but a powerful and fundamental part of a larger movement revolving around greed, apathy and hierarchy that is currently dragging us down, down, down, lower and scarier, and perhaps weaker than we’ve ever, ever been. Smile!”

… Read the rest

THE WRITER’S LIFE

By Scott Macaulay

Josh Friedman is blogging again following his cancer surgery. The screenwriter (War of the Worlds, The Black Dahlia) has a great post up in which describes waking up the day he’s to go the hospital and musing on his mortality. Friedman’s thoughts on the finite-ness of it all remind me of the end of The Sheltering Sky, Bertolucci’s adaptation of Paul Bowles’s great novel, and then he slips in this contemplation on the act of writing:

At the end of the day, why do we write? We write to remember, we write to be remembered, we write to discover who we are, or determine it for others. Our words will always outlive us, immortalizing us if not always powerful enough to make us immortal. Although if we choose our words well, there will always be a way back to life, a way to and fro through time. Someone will always feel us like it was yesterday, someone will smell our skin again, if we choose our words well.

And then, truly embracing the paradox that is the life of the Hollywood screenwriter, he reveals yet another reason why New Line has a monster hit on its hands later this year. Read the post by clicking above to see what I’m talking about.

(Thanks to Green Cine for the link.)… Read the rest

ZAHEDI’S SIRIUS REQUEST

By Scott Macaulay

One of the things I’ve learned producing independent films and trying to get them publicity: it’s really hard to break into national television and radio media if you’re an indie movie. The bookers on Letterman, Leno and all the morning shows will consider your movie if you break $5 million at the box office and are in the top 50 markets… but usually not before unless you’re already a major celebrity.

Still, I would have imagined that an exception might be made for Caveh Zahedi. Over at Zahedi’s blog, the writer/director of the autobiographical I am a Sex Addict is issuing a plea to Howard Stern to book him as a guest. And, truth be told, he does have some things going for him. First, his co-star, Rebecca Lord, is a famous French pornstar who has appeared on Stern’s show several times. And second, Zahedi is marvellously erudite interviewee on Stern’s favorite topic: sex, particularly it’s merchandized, consumer 21st century culture pornographic kind.

Apparently, Stern’s booker has passed on Zahedi, so Zahedi is taking his plea to the web where he’s posting blog entries giving Stern a taste of what he might get if he talked with the director on the air.

Here’s from his latest:

One day, I decided it would be exciting to have sex with a submissive. I got on the phone, and started calling escort services to request a submissive, but it turns out that there are way more dominants in the world than submissives, by a ratio of about 100 to 1. After several hours on the phone, I finally found a submissive named Raven who told me she used to work at “The Chateau.” I had never heard of the Chateau, but I had always been a big Kafka fan so my imagination started to run wild. I made an appointment for Raven to come to my apartment later that night and spent the next several hours fantasizing about all the things we would do together. When she finally arrived, one of the first things she said to me was: “I have

… Read the rest