FILMMAKER FLASHBACK: WINTER, 1996

By Scott Macaulay

Spike Lee was our cover in Winter, 1996, and there were two tie-ins. First, his movie Girl 6 was about to be released. And, second, John Pierson’s Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes was just being published. For Filmmaker, Pierson gave us an expanded version of a talk he had with Lee and Kevin Smith that includes this interesting note from Lee. I had forgotten that Lee’s intended first feature was Messenger, an autobiographical tale about a young bicycle messenger. The film collapsed in pre-production when financing was pulled.

Kevin: I want to do goofy young filmmaker questions, the kinds of things that I would really like to know too. If you had done Messenger first as planned, would your career have been any different?

Spike: Yeah, I might not have a career. [laughter] It was too ambitious, and it would not have been a good film. It was not a great script. Once again, there’ve been too many things that have happened in my career that couldn’t just be happenstance or coincidence. Something’s definitely been guiding me. God, or whoever, knew that [cracks up with laughter] if I’d done that film it would’ve been suicidal. That’s why that film did not happen.

There’s not much else online from this issue, but it’s interesting to see interviews with Todd Solondz, Chris Smith and others making their first and second films. Also, we had a piece on a new filmmaking group calling themselves the Cambria Liberation Collective. The director in the group was Dante Harper, and he made an amazing, neglected indie called Delicate Art of the Rifle that still holds up today. Recently when we were compiling our “25 New Faces” list I spoke with an industry colleague, a producer at a really big production company. He said, “There’s this guy you have to put on, this screenwriter who in a couple of years has racked up these amazing deals.” The writer turned out to be Harper, and the films he’s been developing include Black Hole for David Fincher, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters for Tommy Winkola, … Read the rest

FILMMAKER FLASHBACK: SUMMER, 1995

By Scott Macaulay

Summer, 1995. Safe. The Usual Suspects. Kids. Living in Oblivion. Double Happiness. The Brothers McMullen. The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love. Art for Teachers of Children. All in the same issue. What a quarter for independent film releases!

Julianne Moore from Safe was on the cover, inaugurating our irregular tradition of the big-head cover photo. Larry Gross interviewed Haynes, and it’s a great interview. An excerpt:

Gross: Leaving the world of the film for just a second, do you ever feel ambivalent about making a film that’s this pessimistic? Is somebody watching the film gonna say “I should give up, there’s no hope” or do the opposite and develop a new political awareness at the end?

Haynes: If the film is constructed with any kind of target, it targets that unbelievably persistent “warm feeling” in Hollywood filmmaking that every clumsy narrative is moving towards achieving in the last five minutes, where the central character is really the director, is really the writer, is really you and we’re all the guys and we’re all in it together and we get the girl and feel so good about life. It’s so upsetting to me, I can’t tell you. It’s such a fucking lie and that’s what I wanted to dispel in most of the films I’ve made. So, to feel really sad for one fragile woman for two hours… If anything, what Safe does is refute the sense we make of identity, the sense we make of cures, the sense we make of notions of wellness and health. I think its most hopeful place is in the middle of the film. [Carol] gets angry in the hospital and says, “It’s the chemicals that did it to me.” There’s something about saying “It’s the chemicals,” which up to that point, until you know that it may be the chemicals, all you can think of is, “It’s her. She’s a mess. It’s in her head. She’s a nut. She’s a fruitcake.”

I interviewed Maria Maggenti, who discussed the influence of Go Fish on… Read the rest

BRANDON HARRIS’S SEMINAL INDIES

By Brandon Harris

Yesterday on the blog we asked what films inspired young viewers (in their 20s or below) to identify with the independent film movement. Here are responses from filmmaker, critic and Filmmaker Contributing Editor Brandon Harris.

Short Cuts (1993) – Saw it on cable TV sometime in 1994. I was too young to understand its significance at the time, but I believe it was the first American Independent film I ever saw. The fact that I watched it all at that age probably explains alot about me.

Clerks (1994) & Chasing Amy (1997) – Saw both of these during winter break, 1997. My older cousin David can still quote Clerks essentially line for line. My first prolonged exposure with American Independent cinema, the first time I can remember noticing a film’s low budget style. Probably introduced the concept of irony to me.

The Funeral (1996) – If only because one Saturday afternoon while I was watching it (certainly sometime in the summer of 98′) I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker.

Lone Star (1996) – To this day I can’t help but watch all of it whenever it’s on television. It was the first time I saw an American Independent narrative that seemed to deal with the ways in which different communities, even ones right on top of each other, see history in vastly divergent ways. Given how my home life was so different from the places I went to school, how the cultural disposition of my family and my school friends might as well have been worlds apart despite being contained within the same city and being essentially within the same class, I completely identified with its themes.

The Limey (1998) – Very similar to Pi in its importance to me (see below) – seeing it, theatrically, on a weekday, with perhaps two other people in an art house theater, one I would start working five years later, it spoke to me in a way few films (even ones which are much better) are capable of doing. Seeing it now is like visiting an old friend.

Pi (1998) – … Read the rest

REVISITING THE TOPIC OF INDIE MOVIES AND YOUTH

By Scott Macaulay

This is perhaps the longest gestating blog post in Filmmaker Blog history.

Back in December, Ted Hope commented on the graying of the arthouse audience in a post entitled “Can Truly Free Film Appeal to Younger Audiences?” He asked:

What is it that new audiences want? What must the indie community do to engage them? It is really surprising how few true indie films speak to a youth audience. In this country we’ve had Kevin Smith and NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, but nothing that was youth and also truly on the art spectrum like RUN LOLA RUN or the French New Wave (PARANORMAL ACTIVITY not withstanding…). Are we incapable of making the spirited yet formal work that defines a lot of alternative rock and roll? And if so, why is that?

The post inspired a long comments thread, much of which focuses on the issue of marketing, and whether today’s independent films are marketed to youth correctly, or whether today’s indies are giving young audiences the experiences they want. Amongst these comments is one by producer Cotty Chubb, who tackles the issue of young content. An excerpt:

If there’s no reason to go to the theater to have an emotional (comedic, dramatic, it doesn’t matter) experience that answers questions you have — about being a child of divorce, about how to figure out how to live or love, or about what happens you become intimate and it’s all too much — whatever it is that you’re living — if you lose the habit of seeing movies because the people that make them don’t give two shits about you except for your ability to spend money — you stop going, except for the thrill rides or the exceptional rude boys.

That’s why I thought Judd Apatow was going to matter when I saw Knocked Up. That’s why I think 500 Days of Summer is important. It was honest and funny and smart and generous and Joe Gordon Levitt is uniquely transparent in his emotion. And it grossed 32+MM$.

I think Ted and Cotty combine to make a great point here having to … Read the rest

PARTYING LIKE ITS 1994

By Scott Macaulay

In the beginning days of Filmmaker, Kevin Smith’s Clerks was one of our big topics, a movie that really connected to our readership and helped define the whole indie movie DIY thing. And now, 12 years later, Smith has made a sequel.

Somehow, the timing feels right…

… Read the rest

THE PASSION OF THE CLERKS

By Admin

Following in the footsteps of Richard Linklater, whose sequel to Before Sunrise was a hit with critics and audiences this summer, the Associated Press reports that Kevin Smith “has begun work on a sequel to Clerks, his homemade indie classic from 1994.

“That $27,000 movie, shot at night in a store where Smith worked, chronicled the adventures of Dante and Randal, two guys who talk about life, death, sex and movies while working at neighboring stores.

“The sequel, [to be called The Passion of the Clerks], picks up 10 years later.

” ‘It’s about what happens when that lazy, 20-something malaise lasts into your 30s. Those dudes are kind of still mired, not in that same exact situation, but in a place where it’s time to actually grow up and do something more than just sit around and dissect pop culture and talk about sex,’ Smith said during an interview at his Hollywood office.”

“A new 10th anniversary DVD of Clerks debuts September 7, and Smith said working on that three-disc set inspired him to write about what became of those characters.” The three-disc 10th-anniversary DVD release of Clerks, titled Clerks X, will be released by the Miramax Collectors Series. It will include the original theatrical version of the film, an extended Sundance Film Festival (news – Web sites) cut and a new documentary.
… Read the rest