Monday, September 29th, 2008
Jamie Stuart continues his series of shorts from the 46th New York Film Festival with an appearance from Steven Soderbergh and a chance encounter with a woman in distress… or is she?
Approximate running time: 6:02.
Download the short here by right clicking and choosing Save Target or Save Link. (35M)
Please visit Jamie’s site at www.mutinycompany.com.
To see all the videos in this series please go to
http://filmmakermagazine.com/nyff46.php. … Read the rest
Monday, January 17th, 2005
I know as a blogger I’m supposed to ferret out obscure links from publications you’ve never heard of. But here I go again — two links in a row from the New York Times. Still, if you’re a producer you’ll be interested in this sobering piece about Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney’s Section 8, proving that the producing biz is a tough one even if you’re an Oscar-winning director and matinee-idol movie star.
An excerpt:
“[Says Soderbergh,] ‘I think you could make an argument that it is not important to have too much taste as a producer if you are working for a large company. It’s hard to find commercial stuff that doesn’t make you feel bad in the morning.’
As such, producing quality movies, which means securing financing, overseeing scripts and coddling the insecure actress or director on set when needed, has proved a hard education for the two men. ‘There is the weird paradox of having a company like this if the personalities are like mine and George’s,’ added Mr. Soderbergh. ‘If you are going to do something and do it well, you have to apply yourself. But we both have day jobs. It has become overwhelming. We both talk about how can we sustain it. It’s just such a mountain of work.’”
The piece goes on to talk about the financial risks involved in producing and gives another viewpoint on the much-discussed firing of writer/director Ted Griffin from Warner’s Untitled Ted Griffin project. (“‘It is a scarlet letter for the company,’ Soderbergh said. ‘It shouldn’t have happened…’)… Read the rest
Sunday, April 4th, 2004
Years ago, before I worked in film, I was a curator and programmer at The Kitchen, New York’s center for contemporary performance and video. In my first year there, the organization produced a one-off TV special entitled “Two Moon July,” and in it David Byrne performed a work of solo performance art that involved the Talking Head running in giant circles through The Kitchen’s Soho loft space, chanting out the names of future movies culled from the AFM issue of Variety. It might sound a bit slim, but it was a nice piece — there is something oddly poignant and culturally optimistic about all the cinematic potential that lies within the margins of those sales listings.
It wasn’t until I moved into film production that I realized that with that poignancy and optimism came the pain and heartache produced by all those film projects that never see a first-day’s call sheet. Witness, for example, the recent high-profile flame-out of Terence Malick’s Che, which would have starred Benicio del Toro. The production — for which production personnel had been hired, some of whom had given up their U.S. apartments for the summer and moved down to Ecuador for the shoot — was halted when Malick, who had been pitting two groups of producers against each other for his services, pulled out to direct another film, The New World, for New Line. (A U.S. distribution deal was apparently the prize both producers were seeking; Che hadn’t come up with one yet.)
But occasionally I do experience Byrne-like moments of optimism, and I slid into one recently as I put together a list of films in production, pre-production, or just out of post for Filmmaker to track in the months ahead. I am optimistic about each of the below films for various reasons. While I haven’t seen any of the films listed here, I have either read the scripts, know the filmmakers, or know something about the production and the footage, and I think that they might be pretty special.
1. The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. … Read the rest
