I've seen Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West about, oh, a dozen times now, most recently two days before my birthday in the company of nine friends who had never seen it before. Of those nine, five liked it and four were, well, not quite so enamored, likely turned off by its eccentric structure and length.
Anyone who's seen Son of a Seahorse can no doubt attest to that's picture peculiar structure and sense of time, and I'm not being pretentious when I say that our little character comedy was deeply influenced by Leone's film. Indeed, it's one of those films that changed my entire perspective on cinema, changed my conception of what films are and can be. Understand, I'm not saying that it was merely a good or even great film, but that I'm talking about something more galvanic: it fundamentally changed me as a human being, and I can only think of about a dozen or so films that have done that.
And because it's such an important film for me, and because its treatment of time, space, and story structure is something I find consistently astonishing, I sometimes forget that one of the other things that sets it apart from Leone's other westerns is that it is in many ways a feminist film.
This will surprise those who argue that spaghetti westerns are inherently misogynistic: But wait, they say, what about, oh, the aborted half-rape scene with Charles Bronson? What about the skeezy sex scene with Henry Fonda? What about the way she's forced into selling her home, the way in which she's completely dependent on and victimized by these men of violence? Cardinale's character is in many ways a pawn, bandied about and caught in the middle.
The film depicts a world in which women had few options and no power; isn't that, then, the very thing feminism seeks to correct? It registers with great empathy her desperation to stay alive; it shares in her frustrated impotence. The film, through her eyes, shows us what is terrible and frightening about violence. Compare this to Leone's earlier westerns. They might not make the always-named man-with-no-name a hero, but because he is, by dint of his sheer awesome bad-assery, the character to which our sympathies are most aligned, his violence isn't particularly scary.
Compare this with Bronson-- the closest thing to an Eastwood character the film has. The character has two moments of absolute brutality: the aforementioned stripping and almost-rape of Cardinale and the savage torture-- much tsk-tsk'd by Alex Cox in his, er, idiosyncratic spaghetti western book 1,000 Ways To Die-- of the dude in suspenders.
If the Eastwood characters of the Dollars trilogy had committed actions like these, it would have killed our sympathies for the character. He would cease to be a bad-ass and start to be a truly reprehensible monster (a slippery slope that I'm finding to be explored quite interestingly, by-the-by, in the PS3 game God of War III). And that would have killed those films. Not that, to be clear, I need or prefer the lollipop of likability in my protagonists, but because the Dollars films in particular (unlike the more meditative Once Upon a Time) are entertainments, dealing in delightful and exquisite surface pleasures first and substance second.
If Once Upon a Time in the West is more substantial, it's because our sympathies, our point-of-view, are most closely aligned with Cardinale. It's really her film, and we regard the men in it, from Fonda to Bronson, through her eyes; we view their violence through her eyes. Just as the male gaze is often present in films even when there isn't a male present to do the gazing, this female gaze-- terrified, trapped, bristling against her place in life and wanting better-- is present even in scenes, like the family massacre or the torture of the man in suspenders, when Cardinale is nowhere to be seen.
Cardinale's presence in the film is what allows the violence to hit us harder and deeper, and what allows us to experience a kind of emotional journey that Leone's earlier epic cartoons-- no matter how pleasurable and iconic those assured masterpieces are-- just weren't capable of.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Three Films By Kentucker Audley
I find it difficult to write about Kentucker Audley's films,
not because I have nothing to say,
but because I don't have words for it.
These slender sixty-minute features
feel strangely timeless,
languid and elliptical in the same breath,
making no points, but simply observing,
simply observing.
These three films are distinct:
Team Picture, a comedy,
Open Five, thick with Memphis,
Holy Land, as prickly as its "hero",
experimental and profane and smoking too much
and yet and yes, holy.
But all three also blend together.
But all three also are Audley's.
They remind me of the only poet worth a damn,
they remind me of William Carlos Williams
and his wheelbarrow of rain water
and his so sweet and so cold plums.
Concrete, brief, bold, naive, fresh, true:
image and sound, voice and body,
time and moment,
without addition
without imposition
yet also not without author:
the films are very much his,
the films are very much him.
For a filmmaker like myself
who analyzes and argues,
(and overanalyzes and overargues)
it's a magic trick I can't untangle
one I can't break down into wires and handkerchiefs
one I regard with burning envy.
not because I have nothing to say,
but because I don't have words for it.
These slender sixty-minute features
feel strangely timeless,
languid and elliptical in the same breath,
making no points, but simply observing,
simply observing.
These three films are distinct:
Team Picture, a comedy,
Open Five, thick with Memphis,
Holy Land, as prickly as its "hero",
experimental and profane and smoking too much
and yet and yes, holy.
But all three also blend together.
But all three also are Audley's.
They remind me of the only poet worth a damn,
they remind me of William Carlos Williams
and his wheelbarrow of rain water
and his so sweet and so cold plums.
Concrete, brief, bold, naive, fresh, true:
image and sound, voice and body,
time and moment,
without addition
without imposition
yet also not without author:
the films are very much his,
the films are very much him.
For a filmmaker like myself
who analyzes and argues,
(and overanalyzes and overargues)
it's a magic trick I can't untangle
one I can't break down into wires and handkerchiefs
one I regard with burning envy.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
McNelly and Motlagh and Bears, Oh My!
Well, no bears, actually. Sorry.
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly, whose first feature Blanc De Blanc I found so impressive, is trying to raise funding for his second, Up Country, via Kickstarter. I've always been kinda dubious when it comes to filmmakers asking strangers to donate money, but if ever I was going to chip in on one of these things, it'd be for McNelly's film: his first one is that good, and for an all-too-brief stretch of time he programmed an ambitious but poorly-attended series of independent films, Indies For Indies. This is a guy who's actually given back to the independent community that is so often so callously invoked by people trying to guilt you into funding their film. He's the real deal, and if you've got a few bucks to spare, you might want to consider chipping in.
Amir Motlagh, whose film whale was the subject of one of my early reviews, recently announced via twitter that his film is going to be available via IndieFlix starting June 22, on YouTube Rentals starting July 6, and then on Netflix later in the year. It's really exciting that his film, which is undeniably personal, idiosyncratic, and experimental, is going to be readily available to a wider audience. I highly recommend seeing it.
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly, whose first feature Blanc De Blanc I found so impressive, is trying to raise funding for his second, Up Country, via Kickstarter. I've always been kinda dubious when it comes to filmmakers asking strangers to donate money, but if ever I was going to chip in on one of these things, it'd be for McNelly's film: his first one is that good, and for an all-too-brief stretch of time he programmed an ambitious but poorly-attended series of independent films, Indies For Indies. This is a guy who's actually given back to the independent community that is so often so callously invoked by people trying to guilt you into funding their film. He's the real deal, and if you've got a few bucks to spare, you might want to consider chipping in.
Amir Motlagh, whose film whale was the subject of one of my early reviews, recently announced via twitter that his film is going to be available via IndieFlix starting June 22, on YouTube Rentals starting July 6, and then on Netflix later in the year. It's really exciting that his film, which is undeniably personal, idiosyncratic, and experimental, is going to be readily available to a wider audience. I highly recommend seeing it.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
SON OF A SEAHORSE reviewed.
A.A. Dowd, a critic we respect as much for his biting prose as his discerning taste, wrote a review of Son of a Seahorse. And, to be sure, it ain't a rave; the notice is mixed with a definite lean towards the negative. And while of course we have a different opinion about the film's success or worth, we still really dug the review because he gets us, he understands where we're coming from, and it does give a prospective viewer a pretty good idea of what the film is like and whether or not they think they're going to dig it.
...
Read more here.
The new DVD will be coming soonish, double-pinkie-swear promise.
The Russells are [not] cut from any shape or variety of traditional Hollywood cloth. These two are loud and proud indie guerillas. They favor marathon takes and lengthy digressions, long shots and longer conversations. It's tempting to lump them into the mumblecore camp, except their sense of humor is somehow both drier and broader, with an affinity for garish caricatures and bizarro non-sequitors.
...
If Son of a Seahorse often seems like a different movie scene to scene, its saving grace is its uniting principle: that marriage is the most rewarding pain in the ass you'll ever willfully subject yourself to. It's hard not to have a certain affection for any film that deals with married life in a way that's neither cloying nor rigorously cynical. The Russells, husband and wife filmmakers with a word or two to share on the subject, invest their hit-or-miss comic enterprise with an endearing breadth of genuine feeling.
Read more here.
The new DVD will be coming soonish, double-pinkie-swear promise.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Murdering is funnier than killing.
A good low-budget director is above all able to adapt (and aptly) to whichever circumstances should arise. For example: in The Man Who Loved, there was a scene that featured pretty much every member of the cast, and it took us a lot of hoop-jumping to find a day that worked for everyone. And so imagine our dismay when almost everyone showed up-- that is, everyone but one, who was to be something of a major focus in the scene. There was no way we could reschedule the scene, and so we redistributed her dialogue to other characters and lamp-shaded her absence. And doing so actually helped us focus on what the scene was actually about.
Similarly, we're more than happy to rewrite lines for an actor, to make it flow more naturally for them, to let them put their own spin (and thus their own selves) into it. At the same time, our writing aims to be flavourful and precise, and thus somewhat immutable: you might be able to preserve the meaning of the words and the underlying emotion, but changing the words changes the feel of the words, the rhythm, the timbre, and-- when writing comedy-- the funny.
There's a line in Olivia Forever!! in which Olivia refers to her Halloween costume from "the two years previous"; Adrienne often flipped the word order to "the two previous years". Now, both versions mean the same thing, but "the two years previous" has a slightly dry or academic feel that communicates something about the character and her personal style. "The two previous years" communicates nothing but the facts; all the flavour is lost. And, this being a film about the hazards of idiosyncrasy, and Olivia being a character who derives a great deal of pleasure from verbiage, it was important that we preserve that flavour, and so this was one case in which we couldn't let it be rephrased. The punchline to all this? We ended up cutting the entire scene-- including the line-- anyway.
Not that, again, our scripts are considered holy and untouchable. We're constantly cutting and revising, looking for ways to punch it up, to be more precise, more flavourful. Recently, we were going over the following dialogue in rehearsal:
RODNEY: And you weren't planning on killing me?
OLIVIA: It hadn't occurred to me.
RODNEY (mishearing): It had?
OLIVIA (louder, clearer): Hadn't.
And it occurred to us that the word "killing" got the meaning across, but didn't have much flavour.
"Let's change that to murdering," we said: "'murdering' is a funnier word than 'killing'."
We crossed it out and they read it over again: it did, indeed, seem funnier. The word was more precise, communicating more of a sense of deliberate violence, which will hopefully stand in stronger and more comedic contrast to the polite, friendly tenor of the conversation. And it's a more flavourful word: "killing" starts strong but quickly becomes a slippery mush of l-sounds that mumble their way into "ing"; "murdering", by contrast, consists of three distinct syllables, the first two of which rhyme and are expelled forcefully outward: nothing soft, lilting, or indistinct about it.
It is, in our estimating, just the right word.
Similarly, we're more than happy to rewrite lines for an actor, to make it flow more naturally for them, to let them put their own spin (and thus their own selves) into it. At the same time, our writing aims to be flavourful and precise, and thus somewhat immutable: you might be able to preserve the meaning of the words and the underlying emotion, but changing the words changes the feel of the words, the rhythm, the timbre, and-- when writing comedy-- the funny.
There's a line in Olivia Forever!! in which Olivia refers to her Halloween costume from "the two years previous"; Adrienne often flipped the word order to "the two previous years". Now, both versions mean the same thing, but "the two years previous" has a slightly dry or academic feel that communicates something about the character and her personal style. "The two previous years" communicates nothing but the facts; all the flavour is lost. And, this being a film about the hazards of idiosyncrasy, and Olivia being a character who derives a great deal of pleasure from verbiage, it was important that we preserve that flavour, and so this was one case in which we couldn't let it be rephrased. The punchline to all this? We ended up cutting the entire scene-- including the line-- anyway.
Not that, again, our scripts are considered holy and untouchable. We're constantly cutting and revising, looking for ways to punch it up, to be more precise, more flavourful. Recently, we were going over the following dialogue in rehearsal:
RODNEY: And you weren't planning on killing me?
OLIVIA: It hadn't occurred to me.
RODNEY (mishearing): It had?
OLIVIA (louder, clearer): Hadn't.
And it occurred to us that the word "killing" got the meaning across, but didn't have much flavour.
"Let's change that to murdering," we said: "'murdering' is a funnier word than 'killing'."
We crossed it out and they read it over again: it did, indeed, seem funnier. The word was more precise, communicating more of a sense of deliberate violence, which will hopefully stand in stronger and more comedic contrast to the polite, friendly tenor of the conversation. And it's a more flavourful word: "killing" starts strong but quickly becomes a slippery mush of l-sounds that mumble their way into "ing"; "murdering", by contrast, consists of three distinct syllables, the first two of which rhyme and are expelled forcefully outward: nothing soft, lilting, or indistinct about it.
It is, in our estimating, just the right word.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
The Best Sentence Ever.
John Adams finished off his inaugural address with a truly epic sentence. It can be summed up as "If all these things are qualifications for the job, then I'll be President and I'll do my best." But, as in most things, summing it up takes the beauty out of it. Take your time, don't skim, and enjoy the ride:
"On this subject it might become me better to be silent or to speak with diffidence; but as something may be expected, the occasion, I hope, will be admitted as an apology if I venture to say that if a preference, upon principle, of a free republican government, formed upon long and serious reflection, after a diligent and impartial inquiry after truth; if an attachment to the Constitution of the United States, and a conscientious determination to support it until it shall be altered by the judgments and wishes of the people, expressed in the mode prescribed in it; if a respectful attention to the constitutions of the individual States and a constant caution and delicacy toward the State governments; if an equal and impartial regard to the rights, interest, honor, and happiness of all the States in the Union, without preference or regard to a northern or southern, an eastern or western, position, their various political opinions on unessential points or their personal attachments; if a love of virtuous men of all parties and denominations; if a love of science and letters and a wish to patronize every rational effort to encourage schools, colleges, universities, academies, and every institution for propagating knowledge, virtue, and religion among all classes of the people, not only for their benign influence on the happiness of life in all its stages and classes, and of society in all its forms, but as the only means of preserving our Constitution from its natural enemies, the spirit of sophistry, the spirit of party, the spirit of intrigue, the profligacy of corruption, and the pestilence of foreign influence, which is the angel of destruction to elective governments; if a love of equal laws, of justice, and humanity in the interior administration; if an inclination to improve agriculture, commerce, and manufacturers for necessity, convenience, and defense; if a spirit of equity and humanity toward the aboriginal nations of America, and a disposition to meliorate their condition by inclining them to be more friendly to us, and our citizens to be more friendly to them; if an inflexible determination to maintain peace and inviolable faith with all nations, and that system of neutrality and impartiality among the belligerent powers of Europe which has been adopted by this Government and so solemnly sanctioned by both Houses of Congress and applauded by the legislatures of the States and the public opinion, until it shall be otherwise ordained by Congress; if a personal esteem for the French nation, formed in a residence of seven years chiefly among them, and a sincere desire to preserve the friendship which has been so much for the honor and interest of both nations; if, while the conscious honor and integrity of the people of America and the internal sentiment of their own power and energies must be preserved, an earnest endeavor to investigate every just cause and remove every colorable pretense of complaint; if an intention to pursue by amicable negotiation a reparation for the injuries that have been committed on the commerce of our fellow-citizens by whatever nation, and if success can not be obtained, to lay the facts before the Legislature, that they may consider what further measures the honor and interest of the Government and its constituents demand; if a resolution to do justice as far as may depend upon me, at all times and to all nations, and maintain peace, friendship, and benevolence with all the world; if an unshaken confidence in the honor, spirit, and resources of the American people, on which I have so often hazarded my all and never been deceived; if elevated ideas of the high destinies of this country and of my own duties toward it, founded on a knowledge of the moral principles and intellectual improvements of the people deeply engraven on my mind in early life, and not obscured but exalted by experience and age; and, with humble reverence, I feel it to be my duty to add, if a veneration for the religion of a people who profess and call themselves Christians, and a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for the public service, can enable me in any degree to comply with your wishes, it shall be my strenuous endeavor that this sagacious injunction of the two Houses shall not be without effect."
"On this subject it might become me better to be silent or to speak with diffidence; but as something may be expected, the occasion, I hope, will be admitted as an apology if I venture to say that if a preference, upon principle, of a free republican government, formed upon long and serious reflection, after a diligent and impartial inquiry after truth; if an attachment to the Constitution of the United States, and a conscientious determination to support it until it shall be altered by the judgments and wishes of the people, expressed in the mode prescribed in it; if a respectful attention to the constitutions of the individual States and a constant caution and delicacy toward the State governments; if an equal and impartial regard to the rights, interest, honor, and happiness of all the States in the Union, without preference or regard to a northern or southern, an eastern or western, position, their various political opinions on unessential points or their personal attachments; if a love of virtuous men of all parties and denominations; if a love of science and letters and a wish to patronize every rational effort to encourage schools, colleges, universities, academies, and every institution for propagating knowledge, virtue, and religion among all classes of the people, not only for their benign influence on the happiness of life in all its stages and classes, and of society in all its forms, but as the only means of preserving our Constitution from its natural enemies, the spirit of sophistry, the spirit of party, the spirit of intrigue, the profligacy of corruption, and the pestilence of foreign influence, which is the angel of destruction to elective governments; if a love of equal laws, of justice, and humanity in the interior administration; if an inclination to improve agriculture, commerce, and manufacturers for necessity, convenience, and defense; if a spirit of equity and humanity toward the aboriginal nations of America, and a disposition to meliorate their condition by inclining them to be more friendly to us, and our citizens to be more friendly to them; if an inflexible determination to maintain peace and inviolable faith with all nations, and that system of neutrality and impartiality among the belligerent powers of Europe which has been adopted by this Government and so solemnly sanctioned by both Houses of Congress and applauded by the legislatures of the States and the public opinion, until it shall be otherwise ordained by Congress; if a personal esteem for the French nation, formed in a residence of seven years chiefly among them, and a sincere desire to preserve the friendship which has been so much for the honor and interest of both nations; if, while the conscious honor and integrity of the people of America and the internal sentiment of their own power and energies must be preserved, an earnest endeavor to investigate every just cause and remove every colorable pretense of complaint; if an intention to pursue by amicable negotiation a reparation for the injuries that have been committed on the commerce of our fellow-citizens by whatever nation, and if success can not be obtained, to lay the facts before the Legislature, that they may consider what further measures the honor and interest of the Government and its constituents demand; if a resolution to do justice as far as may depend upon me, at all times and to all nations, and maintain peace, friendship, and benevolence with all the world; if an unshaken confidence in the honor, spirit, and resources of the American people, on which I have so often hazarded my all and never been deceived; if elevated ideas of the high destinies of this country and of my own duties toward it, founded on a knowledge of the moral principles and intellectual improvements of the people deeply engraven on my mind in early life, and not obscured but exalted by experience and age; and, with humble reverence, I feel it to be my duty to add, if a veneration for the religion of a people who profess and call themselves Christians, and a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for the public service, can enable me in any degree to comply with your wishes, it shall be my strenuous endeavor that this sagacious injunction of the two Houses shall not be without effect."
Saturday, May 01, 2010
TURTLENECK # 1: THE MAN WHO LOVED (2007, the Russells)
There's something wrong with Sarah. Something inside her that she doesn't quite understand. Her husband, George, hopes it'll just go away on its own. But his passivity only seems to make things worse.A tense yet delicate portrait of a marriage in crisis, The Man Who Loved is directed by wife-and-husband filmmakers Mary and Tom Russell with verve, humour, honesty, and an eye for everyday beauty.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
+ Directors' commentary.
+ Trailers for future Turtleneck releases Son of a Seahorse (# 2) and Olivia Forever!!
+ Cinema du Kitteh: a collection of three 2006 shorts (Cat Singles, Cat-astrophe, and The Invaders From Above) created by the Russells and starring the feline thespians of The Man Who Loved.
You can purchase this film either through CreateSpace or Amazon. The cost to you is the same either way, $15, but CreateSpace gives us a significantly larger royalty-- $7.80 per disc, as opposed to Amazon's $3.30.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
OLIVIA FOREVER!!: The IMMORTAL DEFENSE Shoot.
This film is a period piece, taking place in 2004, and we've been pretty stringent about avoiding anachronisms, with one exception. That exception is the presence of Immortal Defense, Paul Eres's astonishing 2007 tower defense game (it's definitely worth the $9.99, but if you're unsure, download the free demo-- it's over thirty levels). With Paul's kind permission, we wrote his game into our script. Today we shot that scene.
Sometimes, the appearance of one work of art nestled within another makes perfect sense. Look at, for example, Reign Over Me; Shadow of the Colossus, and its motifs/imagery of collapsing giants, fits perfectly within the context of Sandler's 9/11 trauma.
Olivia Forever!! and Immortal Defense don't quite fit in that way; thematically, our little bauble and Paul's philosophical/metaphysical science fiction are miles apart. But in the scene itself, a comparison is made between Olivia and the game. It's not a particularly deep comparison-- it doesn't reveal anything new about the character-- but it carries tremendous significance for the character making the comparison, becomes a cherished memory, a part of their story, a token of love.
There's been some fresh hullabaloo about whether or not games are art. And while that's never been a question for me, while I've always come down squarely on the Art side of the argument, I can say that one characteristic of art is that it is potentially transformative: it can transform us, or be transformed by us, given a significance in our lives that even its creators might not have intended. Mary and Tom first met, first spoke, first bonded over a mutual appreciation of Taxi Driver-- hardly a romantic film, but one that is forever tied to our story and our lives, just as Immortal Defense will always be part of Tedward's and Olivia's, a totem to a time and a feeling, lush and sensuous, bursting with colour and light and possibility.
Sometimes, the appearance of one work of art nestled within another makes perfect sense. Look at, for example, Reign Over Me; Shadow of the Colossus, and its motifs/imagery of collapsing giants, fits perfectly within the context of Sandler's 9/11 trauma.
Olivia Forever!! and Immortal Defense don't quite fit in that way; thematically, our little bauble and Paul's philosophical/metaphysical science fiction are miles apart. But in the scene itself, a comparison is made between Olivia and the game. It's not a particularly deep comparison-- it doesn't reveal anything new about the character-- but it carries tremendous significance for the character making the comparison, becomes a cherished memory, a part of their story, a token of love.
There's been some fresh hullabaloo about whether or not games are art. And while that's never been a question for me, while I've always come down squarely on the Art side of the argument, I can say that one characteristic of art is that it is potentially transformative: it can transform us, or be transformed by us, given a significance in our lives that even its creators might not have intended. Mary and Tom first met, first spoke, first bonded over a mutual appreciation of Taxi Driver-- hardly a romantic film, but one that is forever tied to our story and our lives, just as Immortal Defense will always be part of Tedward's and Olivia's, a totem to a time and a feeling, lush and sensuous, bursting with colour and light and possibility.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
OLIVIA FOREVER!!: The Halloween Party.
On Friday, we got another twenty seconds in the can. If that doesn't sound particularly promising, well, it is and it isn't.
The shoot in question was for a cut-away gag. The movie's going along, a scene's in progress, someone mentions something that gets us into this scene, scene does it's thing (ha!), and we're back to the original scene. We have a couple of these sorts of gags planned, one of which involves a Sasquatch we're still in the process of trying to acquire without spending too much money.
That's a tricky thing, actually: part of how we can justify making films of perhaps limited commercial appeal is that we make it out of our own pocket, and part of how we can justify making films out of our own pocket when we don't have that much in our pocket to begin with is that we make our films cheaply and quickly. We pride ourselves on being the scrappy low-budget filmmakers. Our most expensive film to date cost under five hundred dollars. And so we can't in good conscience justify spending almost as much for a Sasquatch costume that's going to have at most thirty seconds of screen-time, even if perhaps those thirty seconds would be worth it.
The shoot we had on Friday, this cut-away gag Halloween Party shoot, hardly cost us anything in terms of dough (which, of course, we like) but did take a lot of preparation and planning and coordinating of schedules. Our actors aren't getting paid for their work and have day jobs; finding a day that two actors have in common for a rehearsal and shoot is sometimes a chore. Finding a day when a third can join them can be nearly impossible. Having learned this lesson in the past, we like to write around "guest stars"-- limiting most actors to one really good scene. See, for example, Son of a Seahorse, where we did this extensively.
But this film, and this scene, aren't really amenable to that approach. For the Halloween Party to be convincing, we needed it to look like a party. And so, in addition to our two leads, we had planned on seven background characters. I'm not going to call them "extras", because it's vaguely dehumanizing. And, having worked on a few horror sets as an extra, I can vouch that most directors treated me and my fellow extras like cattle, flesh-and-blood cogs in place to realize their vision. And if I ever treat a fellow human being like that, I hope someone punches me in the God-damn face.
So: background characters. Seven of them. We even had a bio in mind for each, what their relationships were with one another, et cetera. Not because the viewer would pick any of that up-- it is, again, only a twenty second shot, with the focus squarely on the two leads-- but because it would give the actors something to do rather than stand there bored out of their wits.
I confirmed the day before the shoot with some of them and the day of the shoot with the others. One I saw in person less than two hours before the shoot. You can probably see where this is going: of the seven, only two showed up. We were so disheartened that we didn't give our two background actors their bios, as it's a little hard to explain a web of relationships between just two people.
We, of course, made due, as that's what you have to do when you're the scrappy low-budget filmmaker. We even put Tom in the shot, his face obscured by a Virtual Boy, so that we'd have a third background character. Because we're a two person crew, this necessitated balancing the boom mike rather precariously on a light-stand. We shot about a dozen takes in about as many minutes, turned out the shop-lights and watched one of those aforementioned horror movies in which the lowly extras were treated so poorly. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and when we were done, we had twenty seconds of footage.
And over the weekend, we were faced with that fact-- we had expended a lot of time and energy for twenty seconds of footage. We have a shoot coming up on Wednesday that might net us another thirty, maybe forty. We're lucky if we get a shoot a week-- usually something comes up with one actor or another and we have a week or two with nothing. And so getting these tiny little fragments for a feature-length film, well, it's a little maddening, no doubt about it. It's a long ways from Seahorse, where we'd typically shoot ten or fifteen minutes at a time.
At the same time, we're kinda consciously trying to shoot all this small stuff now so that it makes it into the film. We've been working on this film for so long that we just want to be done with it; if we shot all the major (i.e., long) scenes, we might just declare the film done before we've shot the little piecemeal stuff. We'll say, "Well, we don't really need it", and maybe we really don't. I mean, you don't really need anything-- there's always a way to make it work, and one should always be flexible.
We don't need a Halloween party cut-away gag, and we don't need a Sasquatch, but at the same time they add something to the film, and they're things that we want. By shooting them now, with all these other, bigger, more necessary scenes still ahead of us, we ensure that they don't get lost in our eventual frustration and apathy.
At the same time, we want to cut down on that frustration and apathy, and so we're aiming to alternate some of these little shoots with some bigger ones. And maybe even doing two shoots a week, if we can.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Four Things I Noticed About HATARI!
Somehow, Tom had gone his entire life without ever seeing Hatari!, the 1962 Howard Hawks film, something which his Mary, who had seen the film several times, remedied this evening. It's a remarkable film, one that I look forward to seeing many, many times in the future. But four things stuck out during this first viewing, those being:
-- How episodic the film is. While each scene and sequence definitely exists in the context of the others, you don't get the sense of some arbitrary over-arching thing or some sort of threat; there's no headlong rush towards some kind of final confrontation. The film ends when the hunting season ends. There's a lot of attention to process, and I wonder how many procedurals, police and otherwise, would benefit from a more episodic structure.
-- Also, how languid the film is. It's two-and-a-half hours, takes its time, is unhurried. It reminds me of something Capra once said about It Happened One Night, which had opened as a flop both critically and commercially before slowly building word-of-mouth: "People found the film longer than usual and, surprise, funnier, much funnier than usual. But, biggest surprise of all, they could remember in detail a good deal of what went on in the film and they found that everybody else did and that it was great fun talking about this and that scene. And let's go see it again and take the Johnsons." I think films that are longer than usual are funnier, more exciting, and more memorable than usual because they are long. The extra time gives you more of a sense of the characters, of the setting, gives you a greater feel for the work.
-- That said, there are some characters that I'd like to have a little less time with. After the first ninety minutes or so, Red Buttons start to wear awfully thin.
-- And somewhere around the ninety minute mark, the film transforms from lots-of-manly-action plus comedy to lots-of-comedy plus manly action, and, the gratingness of Red Buttons aside, I had no problem with this shift. In fact, it felt right, and part of that I think has to do with qualities number one and two-- how episodic and long the film is. Those qualities give the film the freedom to shift gears, to build in another direction. It's not merely a matter of "mixing" genres, of shoehorning one into another, but of shifting them smoothly, of creating enough room for something else.
-- How episodic the film is. While each scene and sequence definitely exists in the context of the others, you don't get the sense of some arbitrary over-arching thing or some sort of threat; there's no headlong rush towards some kind of final confrontation. The film ends when the hunting season ends. There's a lot of attention to process, and I wonder how many procedurals, police and otherwise, would benefit from a more episodic structure.
-- Also, how languid the film is. It's two-and-a-half hours, takes its time, is unhurried. It reminds me of something Capra once said about It Happened One Night, which had opened as a flop both critically and commercially before slowly building word-of-mouth: "People found the film longer than usual and, surprise, funnier, much funnier than usual. But, biggest surprise of all, they could remember in detail a good deal of what went on in the film and they found that everybody else did and that it was great fun talking about this and that scene. And let's go see it again and take the Johnsons." I think films that are longer than usual are funnier, more exciting, and more memorable than usual because they are long. The extra time gives you more of a sense of the characters, of the setting, gives you a greater feel for the work.
-- That said, there are some characters that I'd like to have a little less time with. After the first ninety minutes or so, Red Buttons start to wear awfully thin.
-- And somewhere around the ninety minute mark, the film transforms from lots-of-manly-action plus comedy to lots-of-comedy plus manly action, and, the gratingness of Red Buttons aside, I had no problem with this shift. In fact, it felt right, and part of that I think has to do with qualities number one and two-- how episodic and long the film is. Those qualities give the film the freedom to shift gears, to build in another direction. It's not merely a matter of "mixing" genres, of shoehorning one into another, but of shifting them smoothly, of creating enough room for something else.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Stumbling Towards "Brand".
Like a lot of filmmakers who got into this crazy, quixotic enterprise with art, as opposed to commerce, in mind, we've struggled with the m-word. No, not that m-word. The other m-word. Marketing.
And though one of us recently affixed his name to what some could term an anti-marketing screed, it must be said that we've never really been against marketing. It's an important tool, a means to an end, that end being, butts in the seats or, more accurately, DVDs in players.
Last year, we released two of our films on DVD. The Great Russell Self-Distribution Experiment of 2009 was, in no uncertain terms, a disaster. We weren't expecting to turn a profit, or even frankly to break even-- at a three dollar royalty per disc, we'd have to have sold a lot of discs to even come close. For us, success was designated as, getting the films out there to people instead of continuing to create in a vacuum. Creating in a vacuum is the most frustrating, most alienating thing, and we wanted to break out of that. Having sold less than a dozen discs between two films in the space of a year, I would say that we're still in that vacuum.
A big part of this, I think, was a failure of marketing. There are a lot of indie filmmakers out there, like us, toiling away in obscurity, like us, pestering critics and bloggers to watch their films, like us, having nothing to show for it, like us. And they're using Createspace, just like we are, and sending everyone the more "legitimate" Amazon link, just like we did, and hoping that they'll plop down "X" number of dollars on an unknown entity.
And, being on twitter and frequenting various indie blogs, I've been on the other side of this-- I've followed the link to that Amazon page, read the description, glanced at the cover, and said, "Maybe" instead of "Yes." And to be honest with ourselves, if we had no knowledge of our films, if we were just following a link and looking at the cover, we would have "maybe'd" ourselves.
And so, the first goal of The Great Russell Self-Distribution Experiment, 2010 Edition, is to correct that. We want to remove "maybe" from the equation. We might not get "yes"-- after all, this isn't exactly a booming economy we're living in-- but we'll settle for "I'm adding this to my list".
Part of this involves getting some reviewers to pay attention to our stuff-- something we're getting slightly (if only slightly!) better at. Part involves making sure the marketing materials are eye-catching, distinctive, attractive, and memorable-- something which, as you're about to see, I think we have gotten better at. And part of it involves creating/defining our "brand"-- and, yes, I did throw up in my mouth a little just typing that, and, yes, we feel queasy talking about ourselves as some kind of commodity someone's about to synergize through an aggressive new media paradigm. But if we're going to be successful at all this time around-- not necessarily financially successful, as even at our most optimistic I don't see us turning a profit from filmmaking in the near future, but in terms of introducing eyeballs to films-- it's going to be through promoting not individual films but a body of work by two idiosyncratic but capable artisans.
We hope/feel that our new approach will encompass all of these aspects, and, acting according to the theory that seeing all the wires makes the trick charming and true instead of irritating and false, we'd like to explain point-by-point how we're trying to address these goals through our DVD cover design for the new editions of The Man Who Loved and Son of a Seahorse, which should be releasing in May and June, respectively.
A. The Front Cover Image. Our biggest mistake the first time around was that our front cover images were not particularly compelling.
Look at the front cover for the old Man Who Loved DVD: it's just a close-up of Adrienne Patterson's face. And, don't get us wrong, it's a nice face (hi Adrienne!), even when contorted into such an awful expression, but it doesn't really catch your eye.
Generally speaking, close-ups of faces are a mistake in DVD cover and poster design. It works for studios because studios don't have faces, they have stars. Take a picture of Johnny Depp wearing a hat and you can guarantee "x" number of butts-in-seats, because people will come out to see Johnny Depp (brand loyalty). Johnny Depp is a marketable commodity. Adrienne Patterson and David Schonscheck are, at this time, not. Putting their face and only their face on a DVD isn't going to interest anyone, and we know this because last year we put their faces and only their faces on our DVDs. It makes the whole thing look cheap and kinda fly-by-night: not the sort of vibe you want a potential viewer to have. So if there's one thing we want our fellow indie filmmakers to take away from this piece, it's that.
Our new front covers, on the other hand, are dominated by a strong visual element. One that, hopefully, gives you some feeling for the film and makes you want to see it. Said visual element also doubles as a typographical element, with the hand and the seahorse each bearing the title of the film. Without the title, the image falls apart, becomes less striking, less dynamic.
B. The Name. Turtleneck Films, right in the upper right hand corner. We considered putting the full website address on the front cover, but it definitely detracted, looked too messy. And I think just "Turtleneck Films" does the trick about as well-- the first thing you're going to find if you google those two words next to each other is this website. So, if A is intended to catch the eye and stop you from dismissing us, B is intended to give you somewhere to go to learn more.
Now, if someone is browsing Amazon or Createspace or wherever, this is all they're going to see before deciding whether or not they want to buy it. All they give you is the front cover. So, if the front cover is intended to persuade would-be buyers, while the rest is intended to make you repeat customers, to keep checking out our stuff.
C. The Spine Number. Probably the smartest thing Criterion ever did, marketing-wise, was putting a number on a spine. The best boutique labels, from Benten to Dragon Dynasty, all employ the spine number to lend a certain amount of prestige-- which, being us, we're careful to undercut with our cute little cartoon turtle.
You'll notice that said turtle's neck wraps around to the front cover. This is to intended to emphasize the spine number. You've just bought the DVD, you look at the front cover, see the neck, follow it to the spine, see the number. This is also why we moved the spine number from its traditional location-- the bottom-- to the top. We want you to see that spine, to see that # 2 so that you look into # 1 and look forward to # 3. More than a mark of prestige, a spine number is a canny form of advertising.
D. The Personal Touch. In many ways, we need this to try and balance out the pretension and impersonality inherent in utilizing a spine number. We are two people, and only two people, bereft even of interns to abuse, shooting these films in our home, using the computer in our rather drafty back-room to design the cover art, create the menus, beg and plead with the software when it decides inexplicably to stop working. We do pretty much everything ourselves, and we're well aware that emphasizing this fact-- the mom-and-pop, cottage-industry, folk-art and craft-show vibe-- will endear us to some.
E. Added Value. If you ask someone to spend $15-20 on a bare-bones DVD of a low-budget self-distributed film that they haven't heard much of anything about, let's face it, they're not going to bite. But if you give them some bonus materials, they might be more willing. Commentary tracks and shorts indicate that you've taken time, and thus helps to combat that nasty "thrown-together fly-by-night" image some people get of independent filmmakers. This might be the little something extra that makes the decision for a potential viewer-- movie + commentary track + shorts is definitely worth $15-20-- which is why we're going to list all the extra features as part of the summary on that Amazon page, and why we're going to emphasize them every chance we get on our own website (which our Potential Viewer found thanks to item B). And if you have more than a few Criterions or Bentens, you're well aware of how supplements can both deepen your appreciation of the film and make you a repeat customer.
A feature you don't find in boutique label releases are trailers, as they detract rather crassly from the whole film-as-art-object vibe. We use them on our DVDs though because (1), it's the best way to get that repeat customer to repeat, and (2) it's not a DVD Company pushing its wares but Tom and Mary, Husband and Wife Filmmakers pointing you in the direction of their other work-- which means that we can get away with it. Apropos (1), I suppose the ideal solution would be Criterion's canny catalogue liner insert/list of titles in numerical order, but our current distribution model doesn't allow for inserts of any kind-- not even a chapter list.
To wrap this up: as filmmakers working outside the festival system, dependent on critics' reviews that, for the most part, haven't been forthcoming, we realized we needed to step up our game. It'd be great if we could just make these films and then send them to a distributor who falls in love with the films and gives us oodles of money so that their boy geniuses can take care of the rest. Graphic design and DVD authoring are time-consuming, not entirely satisfying forms of expression, forms that definitely lack compared to the filmmaking which they exist to support. They're not a necessary "evil"-- they're just necessary.
Hopefully, some of the above will resonate with and be of assistance to other filmmakers who find themselves better-suited to making films than promoting them.
And though one of us recently affixed his name to what some could term an anti-marketing screed, it must be said that we've never really been against marketing. It's an important tool, a means to an end, that end being, butts in the seats or, more accurately, DVDs in players.
Last year, we released two of our films on DVD. The Great Russell Self-Distribution Experiment of 2009 was, in no uncertain terms, a disaster. We weren't expecting to turn a profit, or even frankly to break even-- at a three dollar royalty per disc, we'd have to have sold a lot of discs to even come close. For us, success was designated as, getting the films out there to people instead of continuing to create in a vacuum. Creating in a vacuum is the most frustrating, most alienating thing, and we wanted to break out of that. Having sold less than a dozen discs between two films in the space of a year, I would say that we're still in that vacuum.
A big part of this, I think, was a failure of marketing. There are a lot of indie filmmakers out there, like us, toiling away in obscurity, like us, pestering critics and bloggers to watch their films, like us, having nothing to show for it, like us. And they're using Createspace, just like we are, and sending everyone the more "legitimate" Amazon link, just like we did, and hoping that they'll plop down "X" number of dollars on an unknown entity.
And, being on twitter and frequenting various indie blogs, I've been on the other side of this-- I've followed the link to that Amazon page, read the description, glanced at the cover, and said, "Maybe" instead of "Yes." And to be honest with ourselves, if we had no knowledge of our films, if we were just following a link and looking at the cover, we would have "maybe'd" ourselves.
And so, the first goal of The Great Russell Self-Distribution Experiment, 2010 Edition, is to correct that. We want to remove "maybe" from the equation. We might not get "yes"-- after all, this isn't exactly a booming economy we're living in-- but we'll settle for "I'm adding this to my list".
Part of this involves getting some reviewers to pay attention to our stuff-- something we're getting slightly (if only slightly!) better at. Part involves making sure the marketing materials are eye-catching, distinctive, attractive, and memorable-- something which, as you're about to see, I think we have gotten better at. And part of it involves creating/defining our "brand"-- and, yes, I did throw up in my mouth a little just typing that, and, yes, we feel queasy talking about ourselves as some kind of commodity someone's about to synergize through an aggressive new media paradigm. But if we're going to be successful at all this time around-- not necessarily financially successful, as even at our most optimistic I don't see us turning a profit from filmmaking in the near future, but in terms of introducing eyeballs to films-- it's going to be through promoting not individual films but a body of work by two idiosyncratic but capable artisans.
We hope/feel that our new approach will encompass all of these aspects, and, acting according to the theory that seeing all the wires makes the trick charming and true instead of irritating and false, we'd like to explain point-by-point how we're trying to address these goals through our DVD cover design for the new editions of The Man Who Loved and Son of a Seahorse, which should be releasing in May and June, respectively.
A. The Front Cover Image. Our biggest mistake the first time around was that our front cover images were not particularly compelling.
Look at the front cover for the old Man Who Loved DVD: it's just a close-up of Adrienne Patterson's face. And, don't get us wrong, it's a nice face (hi Adrienne!), even when contorted into such an awful expression, but it doesn't really catch your eye.
Generally speaking, close-ups of faces are a mistake in DVD cover and poster design. It works for studios because studios don't have faces, they have stars. Take a picture of Johnny Depp wearing a hat and you can guarantee "x" number of butts-in-seats, because people will come out to see Johnny Depp (brand loyalty). Johnny Depp is a marketable commodity. Adrienne Patterson and David Schonscheck are, at this time, not. Putting their face and only their face on a DVD isn't going to interest anyone, and we know this because last year we put their faces and only their faces on our DVDs. It makes the whole thing look cheap and kinda fly-by-night: not the sort of vibe you want a potential viewer to have. So if there's one thing we want our fellow indie filmmakers to take away from this piece, it's that.
Our new front covers, on the other hand, are dominated by a strong visual element. One that, hopefully, gives you some feeling for the film and makes you want to see it. Said visual element also doubles as a typographical element, with the hand and the seahorse each bearing the title of the film. Without the title, the image falls apart, becomes less striking, less dynamic.
B. The Name. Turtleneck Films, right in the upper right hand corner. We considered putting the full website address on the front cover, but it definitely detracted, looked too messy. And I think just "Turtleneck Films" does the trick about as well-- the first thing you're going to find if you google those two words next to each other is this website. So, if A is intended to catch the eye and stop you from dismissing us, B is intended to give you somewhere to go to learn more.
Now, if someone is browsing Amazon or Createspace or wherever, this is all they're going to see before deciding whether or not they want to buy it. All they give you is the front cover. So, if the front cover is intended to persuade would-be buyers, while the rest is intended to make you repeat customers, to keep checking out our stuff.
C. The Spine Number. Probably the smartest thing Criterion ever did, marketing-wise, was putting a number on a spine. The best boutique labels, from Benten to Dragon Dynasty, all employ the spine number to lend a certain amount of prestige-- which, being us, we're careful to undercut with our cute little cartoon turtle.
You'll notice that said turtle's neck wraps around to the front cover. This is to intended to emphasize the spine number. You've just bought the DVD, you look at the front cover, see the neck, follow it to the spine, see the number. This is also why we moved the spine number from its traditional location-- the bottom-- to the top. We want you to see that spine, to see that # 2 so that you look into # 1 and look forward to # 3. More than a mark of prestige, a spine number is a canny form of advertising.
D. The Personal Touch. In many ways, we need this to try and balance out the pretension and impersonality inherent in utilizing a spine number. We are two people, and only two people, bereft even of interns to abuse, shooting these films in our home, using the computer in our rather drafty back-room to design the cover art, create the menus, beg and plead with the software when it decides inexplicably to stop working. We do pretty much everything ourselves, and we're well aware that emphasizing this fact-- the mom-and-pop, cottage-industry, folk-art and craft-show vibe-- will endear us to some.
E. Added Value. If you ask someone to spend $15-20 on a bare-bones DVD of a low-budget self-distributed film that they haven't heard much of anything about, let's face it, they're not going to bite. But if you give them some bonus materials, they might be more willing. Commentary tracks and shorts indicate that you've taken time, and thus helps to combat that nasty "thrown-together fly-by-night" image some people get of independent filmmakers. This might be the little something extra that makes the decision for a potential viewer-- movie + commentary track + shorts is definitely worth $15-20-- which is why we're going to list all the extra features as part of the summary on that Amazon page, and why we're going to emphasize them every chance we get on our own website (which our Potential Viewer found thanks to item B). And if you have more than a few Criterions or Bentens, you're well aware of how supplements can both deepen your appreciation of the film and make you a repeat customer.
A feature you don't find in boutique label releases are trailers, as they detract rather crassly from the whole film-as-art-object vibe. We use them on our DVDs though because (1), it's the best way to get that repeat customer to repeat, and (2) it's not a DVD Company pushing its wares but Tom and Mary, Husband and Wife Filmmakers pointing you in the direction of their other work-- which means that we can get away with it. Apropos (1), I suppose the ideal solution would be Criterion's canny catalogue liner insert/list of titles in numerical order, but our current distribution model doesn't allow for inserts of any kind-- not even a chapter list.
To wrap this up: as filmmakers working outside the festival system, dependent on critics' reviews that, for the most part, haven't been forthcoming, we realized we needed to step up our game. It'd be great if we could just make these films and then send them to a distributor who falls in love with the films and gives us oodles of money so that their boy geniuses can take care of the rest. Graphic design and DVD authoring are time-consuming, not entirely satisfying forms of expression, forms that definitely lack compared to the filmmaking which they exist to support. They're not a necessary "evil"-- they're just necessary.
Hopefully, some of the above will resonate with and be of assistance to other filmmakers who find themselves better-suited to making films than promoting them.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Princeton Holt's COOKIES AND CREAM.
Princeton Holt, a New-York-based director with whom I am acquainted via twitter, recently announced that his debut feature, Cookies and Cream, has been picked up by Celebrity Video Distribution. It'll be hitting DVD this July, and you might want to consider picking it up; a few words follow to try and sway you in that direction.
According to its synopsis, the film is about " a racially-mixed single mother who maintains an adult entertainment gig to take care of her daughter and herself", which sounds pretty salacious. What's most remarkable about the film is that it exhibits a tremendous amount of distance and restraint. By this, I'm not merely referring to the lack of nudity, sex scenes, and (for the most part) dirty talk-- though those decisions are interesting, commendable, and greatly undercut any nascent hints of tabloid sensationalism. What I'm talking about instead is formal distance and directorial restraint.
Holt seldom strives for effect or tries to punch it up. It's mock-verite/gonzo porn opening aside, there's thankfully very little of the deliberately ugly shaky-cam aesthetic that's infested the current American independent cinema. As I've written elsewhere, the shaky-cam approach is a schizoid one because it untethers its subjects from the everyday reality it so desperately wants to capture, presenting us not with people and bodies moving through time and space but with fractions of faces, headless slivers jittering about.
Cookies and Cream, in contrast, presents us with people, often head-to-toe, listening to and observing them patiently. Holt is so patient, in fact, and so confident that his characters will reward the viewer's patience, that he sometimes apes one of Woody Allen's best tricks by staging parts of his dialogue scenes with the actors out of the camera's range. Consider two frames from this minutes-long shot:
In the second frame you can see the two characters, but in the first, it seems empty, like one of Ozu's pillow shots (which were, of course, never truly empty). The two characters are in fact in the tunnel under the bridge, and as they talk with one another, they slowly worm their way out of it, slowly come into view, dots turning into people. Another director would have cut it much closer. A bad director might have framed the same shot but not given us characters worth looking for or dialogue worth listening to.
Holt's method suits his character. Carmen is played by Jace Nicole with a business-like distance and icy remove. She didn't fall into this career, I don't think, but rather planned on it with mercenary objectivity, counted out exactly how many days and how much money she'd need to do in order to create the life she wants for her daughter. This daughter, tellingly, is not on screen until almost the last scene in the picture. While you can pick up on Carmen's motivation fairly early on, by withholding the daughter's presence the film keeps us at the proper distance, keeps us interested in Carmen instead of merely rooting for her.
Because we never see her in any kind of sex act, there's really nothing carnal about this porn star: we don't get the mask, the persona. Or, rather, we get a different sort of mask and persona, as Carmen is always guarded, always wary of other people. There's a telling, painful moment in which she flinches when the man she's dating touches her face: gentle, intimate, warm. These aren't qualities she responds to. Even when she's talking to her daughter, when she explains to her that everything that she's doing is for her, it's presented logically, as an argument, as something intellectual instead of something emotional.
That last phrase could be used to describe the film as a whole, but with the caveat that there's a certain sadness that the film can register even if Carmen can't. And if this sounds like your cup of tea-- and I would say for the most part that it was mine-- you might want to keep an eye out for it this July. That's not to say that it's a perfect film-- for one thing, every time a character utters the film's tagline ("the show must go on") it manages to carry less resonance-- but it's an interesting and a promising one, a deliberately thoughtful film from a deliberately thoughtful director.
Monday, April 12, 2010
OLIVIA FOREVER!!: Story of a ring.
Early into Olivia Forever!!, and by early we mean less than a couple minutes in, Tedward (played by David Schonscheck) proposes to Olivia (Adrienne Patterson). Well, sort of.
We intended it to be slightly ambiguous-- he asks, but does so in such a way that if she says no, he can pretend that he was kidding. Which is, not to spoil anything, more-or-less what happens. We wanted to add to this by having Tedward reach behind him for a hidden ring. He starts to ask, his arm goes behind the television set, she says no, his hand comes back, empty.
And we agreed early on that we should really leave it at that. Keep it subtle, underplayed, make it something that adds to the scene if you pick up on it but doesn't harm it if you don't. We didn't want to do the obvious thing and cut into the box, and see him put it back. Too schmaltzy, said us.
But it became clear as we were cutting the scene together that, no matter the take or the angle, it was too subtle. He's doing something with his arm, but it's nothing that anyone would really pay attention to. No one would ever pick up on it but us. And so, we decided we needed an insert shot of the ring.
But how to do it so that it wasn't schmaltzy, obvious, and boring? Everyone else would cut to the box in his hand, so how could we add something to that? How could we make that moment, that shot, into something special instead of something merely ordinary?
Our simple, hopefully elegant solution was to start outside the box-- an old box, its felt entangled with wisps of dust-- and to dissolve inside of it, to see the ring itself. It's the sort of little cinematic touch that we love to see in films-- watch how much aching emotional resonance Scorsese gets out of the trick in his Age of Innocence-- and the sort of thing that might ever-so-slightly set us apart from the cult of realism that often plagues American independent films.
Don't be afraid to be obvious-- better something be obvious than to be nonexistent. And don't be afraid to be stylish. What both things have in common-- obviousness and style-- is that both are the tools of the bold, of the confident, of the ballsy, and low-budget films are in need of balls.
We intended it to be slightly ambiguous-- he asks, but does so in such a way that if she says no, he can pretend that he was kidding. Which is, not to spoil anything, more-or-less what happens. We wanted to add to this by having Tedward reach behind him for a hidden ring. He starts to ask, his arm goes behind the television set, she says no, his hand comes back, empty.
And we agreed early on that we should really leave it at that. Keep it subtle, underplayed, make it something that adds to the scene if you pick up on it but doesn't harm it if you don't. We didn't want to do the obvious thing and cut into the box, and see him put it back. Too schmaltzy, said us.
But it became clear as we were cutting the scene together that, no matter the take or the angle, it was too subtle. He's doing something with his arm, but it's nothing that anyone would really pay attention to. No one would ever pick up on it but us. And so, we decided we needed an insert shot of the ring.
But how to do it so that it wasn't schmaltzy, obvious, and boring? Everyone else would cut to the box in his hand, so how could we add something to that? How could we make that moment, that shot, into something special instead of something merely ordinary?
Our simple, hopefully elegant solution was to start outside the box-- an old box, its felt entangled with wisps of dust-- and to dissolve inside of it, to see the ring itself. It's the sort of little cinematic touch that we love to see in films-- watch how much aching emotional resonance Scorsese gets out of the trick in his Age of Innocence-- and the sort of thing that might ever-so-slightly set us apart from the cult of realism that often plagues American independent films.
Don't be afraid to be obvious-- better something be obvious than to be nonexistent. And don't be afraid to be stylish. What both things have in common-- obviousness and style-- is that both are the tools of the bold, of the confident, of the ballsy, and low-budget films are in need of balls.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
So, About That Manifesto...
Filmmaker and critic Michael Tully recently drafted a "manifesto", which you can read here. In brief, he says that the film you make is more important than how you make it, that the behind-the-scenes story is irrelevant, he doesn't want to fund your film, and that he's tired of the endless panels about new media, internet marketing, raising finances, et cetera.
It's prompted a lot of criticism, especially from social-network-y filmmakers; his manifesto over-states his case, as both manifestos and Tullys often do. I signed it because I agree with it generally, in broad strokes, if not exactly 1:1. For example:
There's a story Akira Kurosawa told about a particularly expensive and arduous scene he shot for one of his films. It was such an absolute bear of a shoot that when he realized in editing he didn't need the scene, part of him fought the process. In the end, the scene hit the cutting room floor, because it didn't work for the film: all that matters is the end product. (Which reminds me somewhat of something Mike D'Angelo wrote about tricky single-take shots.)
So, yeah, I agree with that point. But at the same time, a film's back story can be compelling; Children of Paradise, a three-hour epic costume drama, was made in secret in Nazi-Occupied France. It's a great film in its own right, but the sheer audacity of its making does indeed deepen your appreciation of it. So, while I can definitely say "your back story doesn't matter if it's not there on the screen" at the same time, I can't come out and say, "I don't want to hear anything about how you made your film".
In fact, I do want to hear it. And I want to talk about it. That's why we blog about each of our shoots. That's why our new DVDs are including commentary tracks and supplemental features. Part of it is to provide more information to you, the viewer, and part of it is frankly and obviously to market us. Not just the film, but the people who made it: a married couple, financing the films with our pocket change, paying our actors in pizza, making the films we want to make the way we want to make them.
It's an image, one that's both carefully constructed and completely true. We play up our humbleness, the mom-and-pop-ness. We do it together and with equal billing both because we enjoy doing it together and because it'll get us farther ahead than either of us separately: Tom is, after all, yet another white guy in his twenties, and Mary is the woman filmmaker, less common than Tom but not a novelty. The married couple with equal billing? Bam!
But that image would be nothing if there weren't films attached to them. There are a lot of filmmakers who never actually make films, instead spending their time networking and attending seminars and learning buzzwords. The kind of people fuck-faced morons like Dov Simens appeal to. Not artists, but rather the prey for bullshit artists.
Social networking and marketing are useful and necessary tools, but only when used to actually do something. With a film, you'd be an idiot to not use them. Otherwise, it's just annoying-- just a simulacrum.
That, I think, is what Tully is really rallying against-- the marketing-of-marketing, the buzzword-thicket of nothing-actually-done. It's in opposition to that simulacrum which prompted my own signing.
It's prompted a lot of criticism, especially from social-network-y filmmakers; his manifesto over-states his case, as both manifestos and Tullys often do. I signed it because I agree with it generally, in broad strokes, if not exactly 1:1. For example:
There's a story Akira Kurosawa told about a particularly expensive and arduous scene he shot for one of his films. It was such an absolute bear of a shoot that when he realized in editing he didn't need the scene, part of him fought the process. In the end, the scene hit the cutting room floor, because it didn't work for the film: all that matters is the end product. (Which reminds me somewhat of something Mike D'Angelo wrote about tricky single-take shots.)
So, yeah, I agree with that point. But at the same time, a film's back story can be compelling; Children of Paradise, a three-hour epic costume drama, was made in secret in Nazi-Occupied France. It's a great film in its own right, but the sheer audacity of its making does indeed deepen your appreciation of it. So, while I can definitely say "your back story doesn't matter if it's not there on the screen" at the same time, I can't come out and say, "I don't want to hear anything about how you made your film".
In fact, I do want to hear it. And I want to talk about it. That's why we blog about each of our shoots. That's why our new DVDs are including commentary tracks and supplemental features. Part of it is to provide more information to you, the viewer, and part of it is frankly and obviously to market us. Not just the film, but the people who made it: a married couple, financing the films with our pocket change, paying our actors in pizza, making the films we want to make the way we want to make them.
It's an image, one that's both carefully constructed and completely true. We play up our humbleness, the mom-and-pop-ness. We do it together and with equal billing both because we enjoy doing it together and because it'll get us farther ahead than either of us separately: Tom is, after all, yet another white guy in his twenties, and Mary is the woman filmmaker, less common than Tom but not a novelty. The married couple with equal billing? Bam!
But that image would be nothing if there weren't films attached to them. There are a lot of filmmakers who never actually make films, instead spending their time networking and attending seminars and learning buzzwords. The kind of people fuck-faced morons like Dov Simens appeal to. Not artists, but rather the prey for bullshit artists.
Social networking and marketing are useful and necessary tools, but only when used to actually do something. With a film, you'd be an idiot to not use them. Otherwise, it's just annoying-- just a simulacrum.
That, I think, is what Tully is really rallying against-- the marketing-of-marketing, the buzzword-thicket of nothing-actually-done. It's in opposition to that simulacrum which prompted my own signing.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
New SON OF A SEAHORSE poster and snake oil.
SON OF A SEAHORSE is a dispatch from a personal hell with punchlines. It's the story of Nick: angry for good reasons and no reasons, self-destructive, self-loathing, slippery, brought to larger-than-life by DAVID SCHONSCHECK.
He's aided and abetted by a collection of stylized performances that run the gamut from gleefully over-the-top to deliciously deadpan, all marshaled by directors MARY & TOM RUSSELL in service of a SHARP and DEFIANT THROAT-PUNCH of DIY COMEDY.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Olivia Forever!!, Fifth Shoot.
We shot with Steampunk Legend Jake Hildebrandt (pictured above) on Saturday. Tom's uncle, Mike Brennan, was kind enough to let us shoot at his collision shop, B & K Collision. Dearbornites might recall that B & K has sponsored the annual homecoming ceremonies and fireworks several times over the last few years.
So it wasn't completely surprising to us when Mayor Jack O'Reilly showed up. I mean, it was still totally random-- one minute we're shooting, the next minute we look out at the parking lot and there's the Mayor on his cell phone.
Between takes, Mary went out to chat with him-- they had been neighbors growing up, and of course, since Tom ran against Mayor O'Reilly in the 2007 Special Election, he knew who we were.
Because both Steampunk Legend Jake Hildebrandt and Tom are employed as part-time civil servants, and because the local newspaper recently printed some rather troubling remarks about the future of our department that someone is purported to have overheard the Mayor say at a rotary club, Jake suggested we "Michael Moore" the Mayor and ask him to set the record straight on camera. Tom declined.
During one the takes, the Mayor and Uncle Mike stood outside the building, chatting indistinctly, occasionally laughing boisterously, no doubt unaware that our mike could pick them up as background noise. Amusingly, a number of technical errors resulted in only one usable take-- which was, you guessed it, the one guest-starring Mayor Jack O'Reilly and Mike Brennan as Background Laughing Guy Numbers One and Two, respectively.
Now, we had promised some screen-grabs from our January shoot, and intending not to disappoint, here they are. This was the scene that introduced David Schonscheck's character.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Olivia Forever!!, Fourth Shoot.
So, it's been awhile. From technical issues to personal issues to scheduling conflicts, we haven't shot a lick since January. We have, however, been preparing-- trying to firm up some actors, locations, props and effects, revising portions of the script, lots of stuff. We've been busy but we haven't felt particularly busy, and as two people who need to keep busy to ward off bouts of moodiness and depression, it's been a hell.
But! On Friday, we had a shoot and a rehearsal. In less than twelve hours, we'll be shooting another scene, one that functions as a sort of experiment in comedy, using obscenely long pauses between each character's lines of dialogue as our main joke. We've been looking forward to this one for a while.
We cut together today's shoot shortly thereafter. Running under the opening credits, it's an audio-only sex scene. The first cut of it ran about a minute and twelve seconds, the last cut under a minute. Usually, we're the sort that's shameless about extending a moment, drawing it out-- we are, after all, the people who made Son of a Seahorse, which starts with a 22 minute phone conversation-- but this particular sequence needed to be compact and tight.
We're getting better at this, better at making these kind of precise decisions, more confident in our abilities as filmmakers, more comfortable with making comedies and entertainments instead of genre-less drama-comedy-slice-of-life stuff. Experimental in some aspects, yes, highly personal and idiosyncratic, certainly, but still comedies, still unafraid to embrace punchlines, sight gags, and surprises.
But! On Friday, we had a shoot and a rehearsal. In less than twelve hours, we'll be shooting another scene, one that functions as a sort of experiment in comedy, using obscenely long pauses between each character's lines of dialogue as our main joke. We've been looking forward to this one for a while.
We cut together today's shoot shortly thereafter. Running under the opening credits, it's an audio-only sex scene. The first cut of it ran about a minute and twelve seconds, the last cut under a minute. Usually, we're the sort that's shameless about extending a moment, drawing it out-- we are, after all, the people who made Son of a Seahorse, which starts with a 22 minute phone conversation-- but this particular sequence needed to be compact and tight.
We're getting better at this, better at making these kind of precise decisions, more confident in our abilities as filmmakers, more comfortable with making comedies and entertainments instead of genre-less drama-comedy-slice-of-life stuff. Experimental in some aspects, yes, highly personal and idiosyncratic, certainly, but still comedies, still unafraid to embrace punchlines, sight gags, and surprises.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Read This.
We're not usually "read this" type bloggers, but, hey, read this. It's a fascinating piece by The Siren on Merle Oberon. Thoughtful stuff; follow it up with a amusing anecdote about the making of Wuthering Heights.
Heck, follow it up with her whole site. There's a reason she's one of the ten blogs we list over on that sidebar.
Heck, follow it up with her whole site. There's a reason she's one of the ten blogs we list over on that sidebar.
Friday, March 12, 2010
DVDs You Should Buy (Besides Ours)
The second-most-asked question I've gotten since I've started reviewing indie and self-distributed films (the first being, would you review mine?*) is "How do I see it?" And the answer pretty much varies from film-to-film, though folks in Pittsburgh might want to check out Indies for Indies, a weekly screening series curated by Lucas McNelly that kicked off last week with Amir Motlagh's whale.
I reviewed an earlier cut of whale, one which its director says has been improved upon by at least "44%" in its final version, last year. It's now available for purchase in various formats ranging in price from $4 to $14.
I reviewed Ryan Andrew Balas's film Carter, and interviewed the director. The film is again available to view for free online, and a DVD edition is available for $10.
I loved Josh Bernhard's The Lionshare and it made my best of the decade list. It, too, is available online and for purchase.
[*-- And the answer is, yes, of course! Send me an e-mail at milos_parker at yahoo dot com. However, I'm currently working my way through a backlog of screeners and I always view a film at least twice before writing a review. So bear in mind it's going to take awhile-- probably two or three months in most cases. And, yes, as someone who's more-or-less in the same boat with our own films, I know exactly how frustrating that can be. Sorry.]
I reviewed an earlier cut of whale, one which its director says has been improved upon by at least "44%" in its final version, last year. It's now available for purchase in various formats ranging in price from $4 to $14.
I reviewed Ryan Andrew Balas's film Carter, and interviewed the director. The film is again available to view for free online, and a DVD edition is available for $10.
I loved Josh Bernhard's The Lionshare and it made my best of the decade list. It, too, is available online and for purchase.
[*-- And the answer is, yes, of course! Send me an e-mail at milos_parker at yahoo dot com. However, I'm currently working my way through a backlog of screeners and I always view a film at least twice before writing a review. So bear in mind it's going to take awhile-- probably two or three months in most cases. And, yes, as someone who's more-or-less in the same boat with our own films, I know exactly how frustrating that can be. Sorry.]
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Lucas McNelly's BLANC DE BLANC
There's a scene fairly early in Lucas McNelly's Blanc de Blanc, in which one character makes dinner for another. The chef goes by the name of David and is a stranger to the diner, Jude. He ended up crashing on her couch the night before, was still there when she went for work, and is still there when she returns home. Still there, in her house, and cooking her dinner. It's an invasion of her space and her person that's at once creepy but well-meaning (he felt bad about crashing), a dichotomy of which David is simultaneously ignorant but also acutely, painfully (self)-aware. It's within the fuzzy spaces between these seeming opposites-- creepy and well-intentioned, ignorant and aware, dangerous and romantic-- that the film's central mystery lies: can this man be trusted? Who is he, really?
The film gives us theories and possibilities: David is an innocent amnesiac, or David is on the run from his past and wants a fresh start, or David is actually perpetrating a cruel and manipulative game on Jude, though we don't know why or to what end. None of these really takes precedence over the other, none of these are ever officially denied or validated in the film, though a careful second viewing will reveal what I think is a pivotal clue in the film's first few minutes, one that's led me to formulate my own theory. The mystery is never definitely answered to the audience's satisfaction, which is part of what makes the film so very satisfying.
It is, in short, a true mystery film, the same way that Turn of the Screw is a truer mystery story than, say, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The only reason to come back to Ackroyd after the first reading has exhausted its novelty is to see the clues pointing to its famous twist; the same is true of a lot of so-called mystery films. I shudder to think of anyone watching Orphan once, let alone a second or third time. But by denying catharsis and explanation, by hinting at a twist that's never revealed, Blanc de Blanc constructs a mystery with real staying power.
It's also a lot of fun, playing jazz with various genre elements. There's a locked box, a golden macguffin without a key. Or consider the bald smoking man who follows Jude around and insists that David is in fact a man named Archie. He's almost a caricature of menace, ever-so-slightly-fey, always accompanied by musical cues that would feel at home in a more conventional thriller but here creates a sense of comic danger, of riffing. The music intrudes on the film, and underlines his intrusion into their lives.
It's helped in that regard by the film's smart, bifurcated structure. Roughly the first half-hour could be described as a sort of deconstruction of romcoms, which have always gotten their traction from the notion that obsessive, stalker-like behaviour is romantic. The creepiness is underlined but often in a comedic way: Jude horrified as one of her friends insists that this total stranger crash on her sofa, Jude surprised to find David cooking her dinner.
When Jude texts her brother, asking him to check up on her, it's not done with furtive shaky close-ups of a cell phone screen but, in a snazzy little bit of style that also appeared in Joe Swanberg's LOL, with subtitles, distancing us from the danger.
The scene with the brother that follows is also comic in tone, with said brother serving as a sort of mouth-piece to the audience's own desire to throttle the passive Jude for letting herself get into this situation. The tone of these performances and dashes of style don't push the potential creepiness from our minds, but it does neuter it for awhile, making Jude and David's eventual hook-up believable and a more than a little sweet.
Their love scene is filmed in a long take and done in silhouettes, and the music McNelly uses is lover's-languid and rhythmic, purposefully slowing time down to a crawl and giving us time to reflect. It's a stylish, smart, and perfect use of music.
I can't say that, however, for all the music in the film, as I personally think there's a little too much of it. Almost every scene has music underneath it or uses music as a transition. Many filmmakers think that music will liven up a dead scene or speed up the "feel" of the film; neither are true. In fact, music slows a film down, especially in dialogue scenes, because its rhythm is at odds with the rhythm of the film-- the cutting, the dialogue, the emotion.
McNelly's film doesn't have any bad scenes or dead weight, doesn't need to be "sped up" and thus slowed down; I think if he had less music, it would make those stylish uses of music-- the opening, the love scene, the scenes with the smoking man-- much more effective. He's a good enough filmmaker that the film doesn't need the crutch of a wall-to-wall score.
Good enough, in fact, that the film is still very, very good, perhaps even great; good enough that the film still works and the transition from romance to thriller is at once acutely noticed and seamless. It's stylish, fun, mysterious-- and, above all, highly recommended.
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Rohmer: Suzanne's Career
Let me come right out and say it: the two men at the center of Suzanne's Career, Guillaume and Bertrand, are extremely unpleasant people. Guillaume seduces Suzanne, not through any subtle charms but by way of ugly bullying, manipulation, and insults. His philosophy is that women like to be forced. Later, he and Bertrand spend a few weeks living off of Suzanne's money; she treats them to movies and dinners and other entertainments until she's flat broke. And this isn't unintentional. It's Guillaume's stated purpose to bankrupt her.
Why on earth does Suzanne let this happen? Why, after he's insulted her so crudely and she's decided to leave, does she settle back down on the couch beside him? Partially, she is a product of her times-- as the otherwise execrable Mad Men evinces so well, many women were raised to think themselves inferior to men. And partially, it's a matter of her personality, a personality that is better understood through Bertrand, who shares it.
The Guillaume-Suzanne and Guillaume-Bertrand relationships mirror each other pretty acutely; both Suzanne and Bertrand are the recipient of Guillaume's abuse and insults. He bullies both of them, and both of them, in turn, react passively. Through out the film's fifty-odd minutes, Guillaume will ask Bertrand to come out and do something, often to play some kind of role in one of his debauched schemes; Bertrand will say no; Guillaume will ask again, more forcefully; Bertrand will immediately say yes. Just as Suzanne immediately recants her desire to leave, Bertrand puts up no fight. He likes to be forced.
Not to get all homoerotic-subtext-y here, but I think Bertrand is as much in love with Guillaume as Suzanne is. He says he is particular about the women he pursues, but the putative object of his desires, Sophie, never really commands his focus as much as Guillaume does. And in the scene where Guillaume cruelly asks each of his women, both Suzanne and Bertrand, what they would do if the one made a pass at the other or vice-versa, he's abusing both of them in the same way, treating both of them like objects, conquests, ancillary to his ego. If he pulls back the curtain slightly for Bertrand, explaining his stratagems, it is not because his feelings towards Bertrand are any different than his feelings towards Suzanne, but because Bertrand is biologically male.
It is Suzanne, though, who breaks the cycle. Suzanne is engaged to be married, and by taking that massive step towards adulthood, she exacts, as the narration so memorably puts it, her "revenge". She's matured to some degree, whereas Bertrand remains the same.
We didn't enjoy Suzanne's Career as much as the first Moral Tale-- for one thing, Bakery Girl was extremely funny even as its male lead was unpleasant, and for another, the pace was kinda draggy and had us sleepy-eyed by the end-- but neither did we hate it. As much as we might despise Guillaume and alternatively feel both pity towards and frustration with his two willing victims, we found it a complex and somewhat rewarding piece of cinema. Not necessarily something that we really dig, or that we want to see again, but we can already start to see what some of our friends see in the late director.
Why on earth does Suzanne let this happen? Why, after he's insulted her so crudely and she's decided to leave, does she settle back down on the couch beside him? Partially, she is a product of her times-- as the otherwise execrable Mad Men evinces so well, many women were raised to think themselves inferior to men. And partially, it's a matter of her personality, a personality that is better understood through Bertrand, who shares it.
The Guillaume-Suzanne and Guillaume-Bertrand relationships mirror each other pretty acutely; both Suzanne and Bertrand are the recipient of Guillaume's abuse and insults. He bullies both of them, and both of them, in turn, react passively. Through out the film's fifty-odd minutes, Guillaume will ask Bertrand to come out and do something, often to play some kind of role in one of his debauched schemes; Bertrand will say no; Guillaume will ask again, more forcefully; Bertrand will immediately say yes. Just as Suzanne immediately recants her desire to leave, Bertrand puts up no fight. He likes to be forced.
Not to get all homoerotic-subtext-y here, but I think Bertrand is as much in love with Guillaume as Suzanne is. He says he is particular about the women he pursues, but the putative object of his desires, Sophie, never really commands his focus as much as Guillaume does. And in the scene where Guillaume cruelly asks each of his women, both Suzanne and Bertrand, what they would do if the one made a pass at the other or vice-versa, he's abusing both of them in the same way, treating both of them like objects, conquests, ancillary to his ego. If he pulls back the curtain slightly for Bertrand, explaining his stratagems, it is not because his feelings towards Bertrand are any different than his feelings towards Suzanne, but because Bertrand is biologically male.
It is Suzanne, though, who breaks the cycle. Suzanne is engaged to be married, and by taking that massive step towards adulthood, she exacts, as the narration so memorably puts it, her "revenge". She's matured to some degree, whereas Bertrand remains the same.
We didn't enjoy Suzanne's Career as much as the first Moral Tale-- for one thing, Bakery Girl was extremely funny even as its male lead was unpleasant, and for another, the pace was kinda draggy and had us sleepy-eyed by the end-- but neither did we hate it. As much as we might despise Guillaume and alternatively feel both pity towards and frustration with his two willing victims, we found it a complex and somewhat rewarding piece of cinema. Not necessarily something that we really dig, or that we want to see again, but we can already start to see what some of our friends see in the late director.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
DIY Pet Peeves
There are some things in a lot of independent films that irk us, take us out of the experience, occasionally enrage us, and just plain turn us off. Here's a few of 'em.
Films about filmmakers and/or artists, making films and/or art, especially from a debut filmmaker. Also, any endeavor, creative or otherwise, that once undertaken by the character serves as a complex metaphor for the filmmaking process.
Films that have no concept of money. I was going to say, "films about people in abject poverty who nonetheless have spacious apartments with breathtaking views", but found "no concept of money" not only more succinct but also farther-reaching, as it also encompasses those films in which money and the damning pressure it exerts over everyday lives seemingly does not exist. This is not, by the way, any attempt to condemn films about rich people-- only those films about rich people that don't know they're about rich people.
(Which reminds me of a story about a relative of mine, who has done quite well for himself financially, who wondered if we were still doing this whole filmmaking thing, and, in an attempt to persuade us away from it, mentioned that he had a friend who was an actor; said friend, he said, had been doing it for years, had even been in some fairly high-profile films, but he had yet to make a living at it. In a good year, he said, his friend still only made $250,000, and in a bad year, he made as little as $30,000. We tried to hide our disbelief; Tom makes just under $10,000 a year and we wish we could have a year as bad as his friend's.)
Films where romance is the most important thing in the world. Rom-coms are, by their very nature, excused. But there are more important things than dating, romance, and sexual attraction, for example: failure, ambition, self-destruction, self-invention, discovery, pain, joy, anger. And love. Love is the most important thing of all, and something quite different than romance.
Nose hairs. For reasons documented over here.
Wall-to-wall music. Music is not cinema. Music is rhythm and film is rhythm, and music can be used in cinematic ways, both to set an atmosphere and to manipulate the viewer one note at a time. But music-rhythm disrupts cinema-rhythm. When it's used to "speed up" every dialogue scene, it only succeeds in slowing it down.
Verbal placeholders. I know we're, like, improvising and stuff, and so, like, yeah, you know, we're, um, doing that, but it makes me want to reach into the screen and strangle them.
Mockumentaries. To be brief, they are both aesthetically and morally just plain wrong.
All that being said------ there are plenty of films, both low-budget and studio-funded, that are guilty of one (or two [or five]) of these pet peeves that we still really dig. Good filmmaking trumps everything. For example, some films about artists/filmmakers and the artistic process that we dig include Stardust Memories, The Lionshare, Mutual Appreciation, Boogie Nights, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Hollywood Ending, LOL, and the television show Home Movies. There are some nose-hair-a-riffic films that we still find entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking. Verbal placeholders are used elegantly by Andrew Bujalski, who scripts every syllable; there's a bravura monologue in Aaron Katz's Quiet City that uses "like" to build a rhythm instead of halting it. District 9, which we found to be a great science fiction film, takes the form of a mockumentary but does so not in some lame attempt to make it more "real" but to world-build.
It is, in the end, more about how you use something than what you use.
Films about filmmakers and/or artists, making films and/or art, especially from a debut filmmaker. Also, any endeavor, creative or otherwise, that once undertaken by the character serves as a complex metaphor for the filmmaking process.
Films that have no concept of money. I was going to say, "films about people in abject poverty who nonetheless have spacious apartments with breathtaking views", but found "no concept of money" not only more succinct but also farther-reaching, as it also encompasses those films in which money and the damning pressure it exerts over everyday lives seemingly does not exist. This is not, by the way, any attempt to condemn films about rich people-- only those films about rich people that don't know they're about rich people.
(Which reminds me of a story about a relative of mine, who has done quite well for himself financially, who wondered if we were still doing this whole filmmaking thing, and, in an attempt to persuade us away from it, mentioned that he had a friend who was an actor; said friend, he said, had been doing it for years, had even been in some fairly high-profile films, but he had yet to make a living at it. In a good year, he said, his friend still only made $250,000, and in a bad year, he made as little as $30,000. We tried to hide our disbelief; Tom makes just under $10,000 a year and we wish we could have a year as bad as his friend's.)
Films where romance is the most important thing in the world. Rom-coms are, by their very nature, excused. But there are more important things than dating, romance, and sexual attraction, for example: failure, ambition, self-destruction, self-invention, discovery, pain, joy, anger. And love. Love is the most important thing of all, and something quite different than romance.
Nose hairs. For reasons documented over here.
Wall-to-wall music. Music is not cinema. Music is rhythm and film is rhythm, and music can be used in cinematic ways, both to set an atmosphere and to manipulate the viewer one note at a time. But music-rhythm disrupts cinema-rhythm. When it's used to "speed up" every dialogue scene, it only succeeds in slowing it down.
Verbal placeholders. I know we're, like, improvising and stuff, and so, like, yeah, you know, we're, um, doing that, but it makes me want to reach into the screen and strangle them.
Mockumentaries. To be brief, they are both aesthetically and morally just plain wrong.
All that being said------ there are plenty of films, both low-budget and studio-funded, that are guilty of one (or two [or five]) of these pet peeves that we still really dig. Good filmmaking trumps everything. For example, some films about artists/filmmakers and the artistic process that we dig include Stardust Memories, The Lionshare, Mutual Appreciation, Boogie Nights, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Hollywood Ending, LOL, and the television show Home Movies. There are some nose-hair-a-riffic films that we still find entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking. Verbal placeholders are used elegantly by Andrew Bujalski, who scripts every syllable; there's a bravura monologue in Aaron Katz's Quiet City that uses "like" to build a rhythm instead of halting it. District 9, which we found to be a great science fiction film, takes the form of a mockumentary but does so not in some lame attempt to make it more "real" but to world-build.
It is, in the end, more about how you use something than what you use.
Monday, February 01, 2010
Gone Baby Gone
DVDs for Son of a Seahorse and The Man Who Loved are now out-of-print. Shiny new fancy-pants editions are coming soonish-- probably late spring for the first, and summer for the second. This new editions have a number of new supplemental materials, including commentary tracks, as well as remixed/optimized audio. All of this, like everything that came before, is being done completely by our own hand.
More information about the new DVDs, as well as online viewing, will be made available as soon as we have more to reveal.
Critics and bloggers who would like screeners to review can send us an e-mail at milos_parker at yahoo dot com.
If you'd like to support our work financially in the interim, you can always buy a copy of Tom's novel Jolt City through Amazon.com for $20 (we'll get $3.34 of the transaction).
More information about the new DVDs, as well as online viewing, will be made available as soon as we have more to reveal.
Critics and bloggers who would like screeners to review can send us an e-mail at milos_parker at yahoo dot com.
If you'd like to support our work financially in the interim, you can always buy a copy of Tom's novel Jolt City through Amazon.com for $20 (we'll get $3.34 of the transaction).
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