INTO THE SPLICE: “MACHETE”

By Nicholas Rombes

It was only later that I discovered that I had been charged admission to Machete as a “student.” I am not one, and haven’t been for many, many years. I was glad not only because it saved me two dollars, but also because I didn’t have to resort to the Harvey Korman moment near the end of Blazing Saddles, when he cuts in line to buy a ticket for the film itself, pulls out an I.D., holds it up with a skeptical smile and asks the ticket lady, “Student?” to which she replies flatly, “Are you kidding?”

At 9:30 on a Saturday night, the Cineplex is a jittery beehive of teenage triumphalism. I’m there with a film-buff colleague, and I feel a bit guilty and out of place, as if I’ve been let into a secret world by mistake. A violent thunderstorm rattles the lobby, the lights flicker, and for a moment we’ve all exchanged our real lives for our movie lives, and we’re extras in a film called Blood Zombies, about a bunch of people trapped and hunted in a Cineplex. Machete is playing in one of the smallest auditoriums, down a far hall and around a corner, next to the exit that no one ever uses.

The film begins, and before not too long the title delivers on the goods, as Machete (Danny Trejo) hacks his way through villains and into a trap, the blood spurting across walls and doors and windows and floors. The machete is the ultimate film cutter, slicing across and through the axis of action, redistributing body parts, to each according to his need. The theater practically sloshes with blood, gallons of it waterfalling down the aisles, soaking our shoes. And then it’s quiet again, as Booth (Jeff Fahey) offers a suitcase full of money to Machete to assassinate Senator McLaughlin (Robert DeNiro).

By the time he says of himself, “Machete don’t text,” we are fully on his side. We have been sutured into the film, into the splice, adopting Machete’s point of view, and it is a wonderful thing, to hold … Read the rest

FILMMAKER FLASHBACK: WINTER, 1993

By Scott Macaulay

Leading up to our 18th birthday, I’ll be revisiting on the blog one issue of Filmmaker a day. Below is Winter, 1993.

In our second issue of Filmmaker, attorney Robert Siegel interviewed Steven Starr, former head of the motion picture department at William Morris who left the agency to produce Tom DeCillo’s Johnny Suede (the first motion picture to star Brad Pitt) and direct his first feature, Joey Breaker. (Subsequently, Starr launched the web video site Revver and produced the documentary FLOW.) Peter Broderick interviewed Alex Cox, and I wrote the cover story on Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant, interviewing Ferrara, distributor Paul Cohen, and the late, great Zoe Lund, who wrote the screenplay and acted in the film. Two other pieces popped out. The first was a dialogue between directors Alex Rockwell (whose In the Soup won Sundance) and Quentin Tarantino (debuting with Reservoir Dogs). The great thing about directors interviewing each other is that the conversations often veer in directions an outside journalist interviewer would never take them. Like this discussion of the video assist:

Rockwell: You find a rhythm of a film in your actors. You’re right, because that’s one of my beefs. You know that trend in Hollywood, “Let anybody direct, we don’t need auteurs anymore.” People get freaked out by that but in the Hollywood system, that’s fucking normal, man! The bottom line is that there really aren’t that many directors because ultimately, you’re right, they surround themselves with great d.p.s, with all these kind of people. So they just kind of sit back and hang out at craft services or look at a video assist. Whereas a low-budget film, you’re forced to deal with your actors because you have to be right there, you have to be part of everything.

Tarantino: I didn’t have a video assist when I did this movie nor did I want one because I didn’t want to run the risk of being buried in the monitor. For me, it’s very important to be, boom, right there with the camera.

Rockwell: I used

… Read the rest

VENICE COMPETITION TITLES ANNOUNCED

The Venice Film Festival have announced their slate of competition films vying for the Golden Lion. Included in the list is the opening night film, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan as well as Kelly Reichart‘s Meek’s Cutoff and Sofia Coppola‘s Somewhere.

Also announced are out of competition titles The Town, directed by Ben Affleck; little brother Casey Affleck’s documentary on Joaquin Phoenix, I’m Still Here; and Robert Rodriguez’s Machete.

The festival runs Sept. 1-11.

The full list of titles are below.

“Attenberg,” Athina Rachel Tsangari, Greece
“Barney’s Version,” Richard J. Lewis, Canada/Italy
“Black Swan,” Darren Aronofsky, USA
“Black Venus,” Abdellatif Kechiche, France
“Detective Dee and the Mystery of Phantom Flame,” Tsui Hark, China
“Happy Few,” Antony Cordier, France
“Meek’s Cutoff,” Kelly Reichardt, USA
“Miral,” Julian Schnabel, USA/France/Italy/Israel
“Noi Credevamo,” Mario Martone, Italy
“Norwegian Wood,” Anh Hung Tran, Japan
“La Passione,” Carlo Mazzacurati, Italy
“La Pecora Nera,” Ascanio Celestini, Italy
“Post Mortem,” Pablo Lerrain, Chile
“Potiche,” Francois Ozon, France
“Promises Written in Water,” Vincent Gallo, USA
“Road to Nowhere,” Monte Hellman, USA
“A Sad Trumpet Ballad,” Álex de la Iglesia, Spain
“Silent Souls,” Aleksei Fedorchenko, Russia
“The Solitude of Prime Numbers,” Saverio Costanzo, Italy
“Somewhere,” Sofia Coppola, USA
“13 Assassins,” Takashi Miike, Japan
“Three,” Tom Tykwer, Germany… Read the rest

RODRIGUEZ TAKES A MACHETE TO ARIZONA

By Scott Macaulay

Cinco de Mayo trailer:

… Read the rest