FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA TALKS TO TORONTO AT TIFF

By Allan Tong

Last Sunday, a sold-out audience awarded Francis Ford Coppola a standing ovation when he strolled into the 548-seat Cinema 1 at TIFF’s Bell Lightbox, the new multiplex at the center of the world’s largest film festival after Cannes. To the adoring audience, Coppola smiled warmly and cracked, “I’m very embarrassed I left my black shoes on the plane,” as he sat down at center stage in tan shoes and a dark suit with TIFF Festival Director Cameron Bailey.

This event was a rare 85-minute chat directly with his audience and enjoyed all the hype of a red-carpet premiere.  In fact, right after the talk Coppola unveiled his latest movie, Twixt, at a posh gala.  Though Twixt has been enduring harsh reviews, Coppola was jovial as he recounted doing a location scout in Turkey and drinking one night in Istanbul.  “I fell asleep and had vivid dream.  I began to realize in the dream that I was being given a story, a Gothic strange story….The call to prayer came in the morning and woke me up, and I thought, No, no, I have to get to the ending.  That was the germ of the screenplay.”

Coppola revealed that he wanted to be a playwright he was a young man, then dreamed of being a screenwriter.  “I never had any idea that I would become an important Hollywood director,” citing his early dramas The Rain People and The Conversation as the career direction he wanted to take.  “Then as now to make those ‘personal films’ I had to get a job, and that job was The Godfather [scattered applause] and that made me something I didn’t know I was going to be.  I became a big-shot kind of director.”  That sudden wealth and power opened up “endless possibilities”  like launching a movie studio and making an iconic Vietnam War film, Apocalypse Now.   “In my heart I wanted to make little art films.”  However, Coppola took enormous risks and (to his credit) put his own wealth on the line to make his films.  His “day job” remains the winery he runs … Read the rest

IFC BUYS LYNN SHELTON’S “YOUR SISTER’S SISTER”

By Jason Guerrasio

indieWIRE reports that IFC Films has bought Lynn Shelton‘s You Sister’s Sister. The film, which stars Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mark Duplass and Mike Birbiglia, premiered this week at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The film follows Jack (Duplass), who still reeling over the death of his brother a year earlier, gets a suggestion from Iris (Blunt), his best friend and dead brother’s ex, that they take a trip to his father’s cabin to get his bearings. And there he’s unexpectedly confronted by Hannah (DeWitt), Iris’ sister.

IFC plans to release the film in 2012.

Read our interview with Lynn Shelton about the film.… Read the rest

JAMES FRANCO & GUS VAN SANT ON “MEMORIES OF IDAHO”

By Jason Guerrasio

One of the free programs at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival that caught our eye was James Franco and Gus Van Sant‘s installation, Memories of Idaho, which acts as a meditation on Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho and its lead actor River Phoenix. Here’s a discussion Franco and Van Sant had this past weekend with Noah Cowan at the Bell Lightbox about Memories of Idaho.

If you’re in Toronto the installation will be at the Lightbox until Sept. 18. Here’s more about it from the TIFF release:

In 1991, Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho and its central performance by River Phoenix had an enormous cultural impact, not least on a budding young actor named James Franco (127 Hours, James Dean). Now Franco has collaborated with Van Sant to create Memories of Idaho, a meditation on the seminal film in multiple parts. At the work’s core are two new films, projected sequentially, in a darkened, generic space. The first film, My Own Private River, is a feature-length chronological reassemblage of excised scenes and alternate takes from the original shoot, radically foregrounding Phoenix. The second film, Idaho, comes from one of three scripts Van Sant used to create the original film, its Super-8 texture meant to be a “ghost” of his original conception. Van Sant contributes ghosts of his own, large-format photographs of actual Portland street hustlers who appeared in, and provided inspiration and source material for, the film. Presented at TIFF Bell Lightbox Atrium, 350 King Street West. September 8 to 18. (*One of the film elements of “Memories of Idaho,” My Own Private River, was previously shown at Gagosian Gallery Los Angeles, February 26 to April 9, 2011.)

… Read the rest

FAMILIAR PLEASURES AT TORONTO: “YOU’RE NEXT” AND “SLEEPLESS NIGHT”

By Scott Macaulay

When you go to a film festival, you’re hoping for the new — films with a radical cinematic language, or content you’ve never seen before. A film that might have provided that to me at the Toronto International Film Festival has proven elusive. (I missed, for example, Steve McQueen’s Shame — the only oversold press and industry screening I’ve encountered so far.)

But sometimes in your quest for new sensations you can be gobsmacked by the familiar, especially when it’s done very, very well. Indeed, the two most satisfying films I’ve seen so far at the festival are straight-up and smartly executed genre films — low-budget ones — that excite due to both genuine thrills but also canny, fresh attitudes towards their stories.

Adam Wingard has been making fresh and satisfying genre movies for years. His Pop Skull is a twitchy, glitchy take on addiction made for only $3,000 that suggested a cross between Lodge Kerrigan and Gaspar Noe. Last year’s A Horrible Way to Die grafted 12-step psychology onto the story of a serial killer. His new You’re Next, realized on a considerably larger budget, is more straightforward — a noir-inflected home-invasion thriller in the vein of the recent The Strangers. What’s new, though, is the balance between gore and humor.

After a chillingly violent preamble, the movie opens with an indie-film staple: the family reunion scene, in which several sets of sibling couples return home for the holidays. The parents couldn’t be nicer, but rivalries exist among the kids. (Joe Swanberg, one of several directors featured as actors in this film, is most engagingly smarmy as the strait-laced, passive-aggressive creep.) And then, just as dinner arguments escalate, a crossbow arrow slices through the window, killing one of the dinner guests.

What follows is both believable and relentless, as the kids and parents bunker down and try to save their lives from unknown, animal-masked attackers. The girlfriend of one of the brothers, played by a plucky Shami Vinson, emerges as the heroine; she grew up on a survivalist compound and is, in the words of her surprised … Read the rest

TORONTO: WOMEN IN CHAINS

By Alicia Van Couvering

I heard a woman complaining in the women’s bathroom after Trishna. “But she just did what he said for two hours! It was like looking at a sphinx.” Later that day I found myself staring into the eyes of a thirteen-year-old Russia girl named Nadya as she dutifully trudged across the floor, on display in front of a group of Japanese fashion designers, close to paralyzed with alienation and helplessness.

 

The latest by Michael Winterbottom, Trishna follows Freido Pinto as a very poor oldest daughter of a rural Indian family in an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Victorian novel Tess D’Aubervilles. When a rich, British-educated galavanting young Indian man named Jay (a “playboy or operator type,” in the parlance of Whit Stillman’s Damsels in Distress) sees her dancing with other hotel staff, he follows her home, asking her about her life, her prospects. She offers no visible regret or deeper expectations for her life than staying with her family and helping them all get by. Bewitched, he sets her up with a job a resort hotel that her father owns — the money he offers makes it impossible for her to say no, though we don’t really know if she wants to go or not. Pinto maintains a close-to-unreadable stoicism throughout almost all of the film. But “want” is irrelevant when you have financial needs like hers, and only as she is exposed to Jay’s monied life does she even begin to contemplate what she might “want” to do with her life. Even that contemplation is muted, however, with the men in her life happy to speak for her to outsiders or fill in the blanks with their own words when she faces the choices they offer with silence. It’s never quite clear if she’s Jay’s servant, his girlfriend, his mistress or his fiancee — in one blissful moment, it seems like it could be the latter, and in that moment of joy she reveals to him the bitter choice she had to make to abort his baby many months prior. His arms are wrapped around her when … Read the rest

“GIRL MODEL” DIRECTORS ASHLEY SABIN AND DAVID REDMON

In both narrative and documentary film, the character of the fashion model has long been a symbol of not only glamor but also a kind of post-modern alienation. Depicting a Russian teen model casting and one young girl’s travel to Japan for modeling work, Girl Model, David Redmon and Ashley Sabin’s absolutely riveting new documentary, is set in a morally adrift culture in which the image of childhood is a globally traded commodity. Nadya is an innocent-looking, blonde 13-year-old for whom modeling work is both a dream and way out of the poverty she’s grown up with in Siberia. But the modeling contract she signs is full of loopholes and onerous clauses (if she gains a centimeter around her waist, it’s void, for example), and, with her parents remaining in Russia, she has no real protectors in Japan.

As a character, Nadya is both heartbreaking but also something of a heroine, refusing to be beaten down by the world she’s found herself in. Fascinating for different reasons is the film’s other main character, Ashley. A former model in the 1990s, Ashley is the scout who organizes the casting, selects Nadya, and brings her to Japan. Intelligent and beautiful but also conflicted and mysterious, Ashley comes off as both predator and victim, a woman smart enough to understand the moral dilemmas of her world while being unable to stop working within it. In Girl Model Redmon and Sabin illuminate both these characters while using their stories to create a hauntingly lonely film that in its poetic reach is about much more than one corner of the modeling world.

I spoke to Sabin via Skype while Redmon worked in the background and joined in to answer a couple of my questions.

Filmmaker: Let me start by asking you what came first with this movie — was it the idea of following girl models in general, or was it one of the subjects?

Sabin: What came first was the main scout, Ashley. She approached us after watching two of our films at MoMA. She was interested in us making a film about … Read the rest

MAGNOLIA NABS BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT’S “GOD BLESS AMERICA”

By Jason Guerrasio

Deadline reports that Magnolia Pictures has bought the world-wide rights for Bobcat Goldthwait‘s latest dark satire, God Bless America.

The film will be released through Magnolia’s genre label, Magnet, with a VOD premiere in 2012 followed by a theatrical release.

Premiering at this year’s TIFF Midnight Madness section, the film follows a 45-year-old man (Joel Murray) and a teenage girl (Tara Lynne Barr) as they go on a Bonnie and Clyde-esque rampage after the country unites in the ridicule of a simpleminded contestant on a television singing competition.

“I feel like the American Empire is starting to crumble, and we’re using Reality TV as the new Roman coliseum,” Goldthwait told us via e-mailed as part of our 5 Questions For… interviews. “This movie is about a man who doesn’t want to be a part of that anymore.”

Magnolia released Godthwait’s previous film, World’s Greatest Dad, in 2009.… Read the rest

TORONTO IS A PUZZLE

This is my first time at TIFF, and I have to admit, it is a puzzle. Look at this picture — that’s only the press and industry screenings! Notice the puzzlement and confusion of the professionals, even.

I also find the transportation system puzzling, and spend a lot of time in taxis. Everyone likes to complain about traffic in Toronto and it is de rigeur to show up to a screening at the AMC Theatres panting and sweating.

I had two films premiere this weekend (three cheers!!) and they were very well-received (three cheers!!) But mostly every buyer I meet looks sad, trudging down the street. They say, “there is nothing to buy. Nothing. I want a film. Where are the films to buy?” This is sad for them but, frankly, very exciting for those of us on the selling side. I can’t imagine buyers walking around desperate to spend money a few years ago. Things are looking up for us. Here is a sales person, Michael Lerman of the Film Sales Company, looking up:

and another one, Dana O’Keefe from Cinetic, looking sharp in front of the poster for his new film, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY, which he had sold long ago.… Read the rest

TORONTO: JOHN LYDON IS IN A BAD MOOD

By Allan Tong

John Lydon is in a bad mood.

He’s hungover from partying after the premiere of the Norwegian coming-of-age drama, Sons Of Norway, here at the Toronto International Film Festival. My photographer Linda and I arrive at a stuffy, claustrophobic mezzanine at the posh Hazelton Hotel. The busy publicist warns us that Mr. Lydon is an “unpredictable” mood.

Great, though I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, John Lydon is Johnny Rotten, the surly singer of The Sex Pistols and the 56-year-old godfather of punk. That’s how he’s credited in this film in a cameo appearance near the end though he’s credited as executive producer under his birth name.

Journalists who stagger out of their interviews assure me that Lydon is in unusually fine spirits, pleasant and polite, even signing autographs. As I wait, I go over my questions about this film. Sons of Norway is based on screenwriter Nikolaj Frobenius’ life growing up in Norway as a young punk rocker as embodied by 14-year-old Nikolas (Åsmund Høeg) growing up with his free-spirited hippie parents until his mother (Sonja Richter) is killed in a traffic accident. The Pistols’ seminal album, Never Mind The Bollocks, fills a spiritual vacuum in the boy’s soul, and overnight he snips his long hair, spikes it and sniffs speed as he plays guitar in a punk band.

However, his eccentric dad (Sven Nordin) steals the focus of the film as he quits his architectural job, builds a homemade motorcycle for two, and takes the boy to a nudist camp. Problem is, Sons of Norway sets us up for a generational clash that never happens, and though it’s charming and funny in places, overall it lacks conflict and direction. Just what is this film saying? Director Jens Lien and Frobenius weren’t telling after their screening though they were overjoyed when they met Lydon at a Public Image Limited gig in London late last year and, after calls and emails, convinced him to appear in their film.

A San Francisco journalist comes out to report that he had a great interview with Lydon who even signed a … Read the rest

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR “PAUL WILLIAMS STILL ALIVE” DIRECTOR STEVEN KESSLER

As director Stephen Kessler notes in his documentary, Paul Williams Still Alive, in the ’70s, the tiny blond singer was everywhere. He could be found on daytime game shows (The Gong Show) and nighttime dramas (The Love Boat), on The Muppets as well as in the lead of a Brian DePalma film (The Phantom of the Paradise). And then he faded from the cultural limelight. How much of his disappearance can be explained by the simple fact that people — audiences and performers — get older? Or does the fade of Williams’ quirky and emotional star say something deeper about the state of our culture? For Kessler, the subject was also a re-entry to the feature business; it’s been over a decade since his films The Independent and Vegas Vacation. We talked to him about all of this, as well as what he’s learned from directing commercials.

Filmmaker: When did you first encounter Paul Williams? And when
did you first decide to make a documentary about him?

Kessler: About five years ago, I was looking around online to buy an album from one of my favorite dead entertainers, Paul Williams. As it turned out, he wasn’t dead. I found out he was playing a gig up in Winnipeg. That’s where I met him.

Filmmaker: How did you first approach Paul about the documentary? How did you sell him on it?

Kessler: In Winnipeg, I told Paul I wanted to make a doc about him, and he turned me down. I told him that most people didn’t know his music anymore, and they should. And a film could help that. And he told me that I could film him for that one day, and we’d see how it went. That was the beginning of almost three years of filming.

Filmmaker: The film seems to trade on the idea that Paul Williams is a little bit of a “lost” figure in terms of cultural recognition. For you, this film seems to come after a decade-plus break since your last film. What have you been … Read the rest