list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Stop Making Sense on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/Stop_Making_Sense/32998/default.aspx Title: Stop Making Sense
Year: 1984
Director: Jonathan Demme
Plot: Stop Making Sense was the first feature-length documentary effort of filmmaker Jonathan Demme. The director's subject is The Talking Heads, a new-wave/pop-rock group comprised of David Byrne, Chris Franz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison. The film was made during a three-day concert gig at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. What emerges on screen says as much about director Demme's taste and sensitivity as it does about the group and its visionary leader Byrne. Though some of the material in Stop Making Sense overlaps with the Talking Heads' earlier concert film The Name of This Band is Talking Heads, one never gets the feeling of by-the-numbers repetition; the group's energy is such that it virtually explodes from the screen. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 15
Number of Lists: 19
Number of blog posts: 3
Number of discussion threads: 1
SpoutRating: 4
]]>Fri, 13 Mar 2009 22:00:32 GMTStop Making Sense1984Jonathan DemmeStop Making Sense was the first feature-length documentary effort of filmmaker <a href="/players/P____87470/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Jonathan Demme</a>. The director's subject is The Talking Heads, a new-wave/pop-rock group comprised of <a href="/players/P____83754/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>David Byrne</a>, Chris Franz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison. The film was made during a three-day concert gig at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. What emerges on screen says as much about director Demme's taste and sensitivity as it does about the group and its visionary leader Byrne. Though some of the material in Stop Making Sense overlaps with the Talking Heads' earlier concert film The Name of This Band is Talking Heads, one never gets the feeling of by-the-numbers repetition; the group's energy is such that it virtually explodes from the screen. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide15Tag Target (>10)19314http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/t04128xm2dm.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Stop_Making_Sense/32998/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2009/3/13/41019.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 3/13/2009 6:00:32 PM
Body: The Internet seems eerily quiet today, which is probably due to all the blog writers being miles above wifi signals, flying towards Austin for SXSW. Of course, there are some posts here and there discussing rumors about Jon Favreau directing The Avengers and continued commentary on Watchmen’s box office future and Joaquin Phoenix’s “brawl” in Miami, but there’s not much new news to get excited about. So, I’ve decided to highlight some recent SXSW-related posts from other blogs in anticipation of the festival. I won’t be there this year, and the Bloggery posts will be taking a week off in order to let SpoutBlog focus on film reviews, interviews and other SXSW goodies, so this is my one chance to be a part of the SXSW fun, albeit from a very cold, very jealous perspective up here in NYC. I wish everyone down in Austin a good time and, more importantly, a lot of good movies. Pop Candy’s Whitney Matheson, who is attending SXSW, but not the film portion, reminds us homebound movie lovers that we (and she) can watch SXSW films, including Joe Swanberg’s Alexander the Last, on IFC’s Festival Direct channel this week. Anne Thompson notifies us that we can also watch some of last year’s films on Hulu. Lewis Wallace at Underwire directs our attention to SXSW Bingo, which should be played by any of you down in Austin. Not only does it look fun, but you can actually win an Amazon Kindle 2. Please let us know if you do play so we may follow your gaming via Twitter. I also hope to hear about more film critic fights, though if the guys at Pajiba aren’t kidding, I may not have to worry: There are several Southerners on staff. When we drink, some of us may get carried away by the atmosphere of our motherlands and start shit-kicking other movie bloggers. We apologize in advance (except for you, Harry Knowles. You had it coming). In honor of the festival’s attention to both film and music, The Screengrab will be taking a look at some favorite movies about music, any of which we should be able to rent in our respective neighborhoods. Here’s a bit from Andrew Osborne’s list, specifically his appreciation for Stop Making Sense: I never got a chance to see David, Tina, Chris & Jerry play live — not all at the same time, anyway — but dancing in the aisles with dozens of fellow Head-heads during the classic concert film’s theatrical run was the next best thing…kinda like Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience without the special glasses and shitty music. Indeed, Demme makes his subjects pop off the screen without 3D technology, pyrotechnics or any of the usual rock-doc clichés: all he needed was a lamp, a big suit, a good shot list and one of the best rock bands of all time. And of course there will always be the reviews, from which we homebound film fans can find out what films to check out — if they ever make their way to our respective necks of the woods, that is. Michael Tully of Hammer to Nail gives us an interesting disclaimer for his site’s forthcoming reviews: No contributor is allowed to write a review of a film that he or she worked on in any capacity. However, if a writer genuinely responds to a film made by someone else on the HTN team, this is fair game. We are here to primarily write about low-budget, under-the-radar films that might otherwise slip through the cracks, and to exclude a film from consideration for these tenuous reasons seems to betray the mission of our site. Our friendships with and connections to individuals within the indie film world shouldn’t be crosses to bear. If anything, they are proof that we are engaged and involved participants in this community. If you think this is all some incestuous circle jerk, read my review of Treeless Mountain or David Lowery’s review of Silent Light or Cullen Gallagher’s review of Billy the Kid. We love movies, and we’re here to write about them. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Fri, 13 Mar 2009 22:00:32 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com3/13/2009 6:00:32 PMThe Internet seems eerily quiet today, which is probably due to all the blog writers being miles above wifi signals, flying towards Austin for SXSW. Of course, there are some posts here and there discussing rumors about Jon Favreau directing The Avengers and continued commentary on Watchmen’s box office future and Joaquin Phoenix’s “brawl” in Miami, but there’s not much new news to get excited about. So, I’ve decided to highlight some recent SXSW-related posts from other blogs in anticipation of the festival. I won’t be there this year, and the Bloggery posts will be taking a week off in order to let SpoutBlog focus on film reviews, interviews and other SXSW goodies, so this is my one chance to be a part of the SXSW fun, albeit from a very cold, very jealous perspective up here in NYC. I wish everyone down in Austin a good time and, more importantly, a lot of good movies. Pop Candy’s Whitney Matheson, who is attending SXSW, but not the film portion, reminds us homebound movie lovers that we (and she) can watch SXSW films, including Joe Swanberg’s Alexander the Last, on IFC’s Festival Direct channel this week. Anne Thompson notifies us that we can also watch some of last year’s films on Hulu. Lewis Wallace at Underwire directs our attention to SXSW Bingo, which should be played by any of you down in Austin. Not only does it look fun, but you can actually win an Amazon Kindle 2. Please let us know if you do play so we may follow your gaming via Twitter. I also hope to hear about more film critic fights, though if the guys at Pajiba aren’t kidding, I may not have to worry: There are several Southerners on staff. When we drink, some of us may get carried away by the atmosphere of our motherlands and start shit-kicking other movie bloggers. We apologize in advance (except for you, Harry Knowles. You had it coming). In honor of the festival’s attention to both film and music, The Screengrab will be taking a look at some favorite movies about music, any of which we should be able to rent in our respective neighborhoods. Here’s a bit from Andrew Osborne’s list, specifically his appreciation for Stop Making Sense: I never got a chance to see David, Tina, Chris & Jerry play live — not all at the same time, anyway — but dancing in the aisles with dozens of fellow Head-heads during the classic concert film’s theatrical run was the next best thing…kinda like Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience without the special glasses and shitty music. Indeed, Demme makes his subjects pop off the screen without 3D technology, pyrotechnics or any of the usual rock-doc clichés: all he needed was a lamp, a big suit, a good shot list and one of the best rock bands of all time. And of course there will always be the reviews, from which we homebound film fans can find out what films to check out — if they ever make their way to our respective necks of the woods, that is. Michael Tully of Hammer to Nail gives us an interesting disclaimer for his site’s forthcoming reviews: No contributor is allowed to write a review of a film that he or she worked on in any capacity. However, if a writer genuinely responds to a film made by someone else on the HTN team, this is fair game. We are here to primarily write about low-budget, under-the-radar films that might otherwise slip through the cracks, and to exclude a film from consideration for these tenuous reasons seems to betray the mission of our site. Our friendships with and connections to individuals within the indie film world shouldn’t be crosses to bear. If anything, they are proof that we are engaged and involved participants in this community. If you think this is all some incestuous circle jerk, read my review of Treeless Mountain or David Lowery’s review of Silent Light or Cullen Gallagher’s review of Billy the Kid. We love movies, and we’re here to write about them. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/groups/Coming_Soon/2_27_Harrison_Ford_is_STILL_THROUGH_messing_arou/216/40602/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: SkyPilot
Post To: Coming Soon
Post Date: 2/23/2009 5:01:58 PM
Body: NEW TO THEATERS 2/27 The video game movie you never expected -- Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li Watch the trailer. What do you think? After the film, will we look like this: Or this: Harrison Ford is STILL through messing around! -- Crossing Over (limited) Starring Sean Penn, Ashley Judd, and Harrison Ford. The trailer makes it look like Crash, only all the stories are focused on immigration. And it looks like Ford's performance is another in his line of "I'm through messing around!" performance. Hey, he's sure good at this stuff, though... Harrison Ford's Top 3 "I'm Through Messing Around" Movies 1. The Fugitive 2. Clear and Present Danger 3. Air Force One 3-D Jonases, watchable at will! -- Jonas Brothers 3-D Experience Love 'em or hate 'em, you just can't deny that those Jonas Brothers made a concert movie. Want proof? Watch the trailer. Great concert films What's the best concert films you've ever seen? I highly recommend the Rolling Stones film Gimme Shelter (watch the trailer). Every time I see it, I'm chilled by the real violence that the Maysles captured with their cameras. As you may know, this was the concert where the Hell's Angels provided the Stones' "security." I also really enjoyed the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense. Jonathan Demme is credited as the director, but I've heard that the film's style is very much a brainchild of David Byrne. _______________________________________________ NEW TO DVD 2/23 -- WARNING! THERE IS POTTY HUMOR! City of Ember -- Watch the trailer. The guys on FilmCouch liked this one. Listen to the FilmCouch review. Wooo, Bill Murray! Read the SpoutBlog review. What Just Happened -- Watch the trailer. This Hollywood-based comedy didn't get good reviews, but it stars Robert Deniro, Sean Penn, John Turturro, and Bruce Willis. How can it not be good, right? Huh, I guess everybody poops once in a while. Extreme Movie -- This parody of teen sex comedies stars Michael Cera and was partly written by SNL's Will Forte and Adam Samberg. I can't remember it ever even playing in theaters...but everyone poops, am I right, people? 88 Minutes -- Watch the trailer. Starring Al Pacino. Who poops. Splinter -- Watch the trailer. A virus infects people with an insatiable thirst for human blood. This could be good; but isn't there a rule of thumb that whenever an effects guru directs a movie, you should run for the hills? I'd be happy if Splinter proves me wrong.
]]>Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:01:58 GMTSkyPilotComing Soon2/23/2009 5:01:58 PMNEW TO THEATERS 2/27 The video game movie you never expected -- Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li Watch the trailer. What do you think? After the film, will we look like this: Or this: Harrison Ford is STILL through messing around! -- Crossing Over (limited) Starring Sean Penn, Ashley Judd, and Harrison Ford. The trailer makes it look like Crash, only all the stories are focused on immigration. And it looks like Ford's performance is another in his line of "I'm through messing around!" performance. Hey, he's sure good at this stuff, though... Harrison Ford's Top 3 "I'm Through Messing Around" Movies 1. The Fugitive 2. Clear and Present Danger 3. Air Force One 3-D Jonases, watchable at will! -- Jonas Brothers 3-D Experience Love 'em or hate 'em, you just can't deny that those Jonas Brothers made a concert movie. Want proof? Watch the trailer. Great concert films What's the best concert films you've ever seen? I highly recommend the Rolling Stones film Gimme Shelter (watch the trailer). Every time I see it, I'm chilled by the real violence that the Maysles captured with their cameras. As you may know, this was the concert where the Hell's Angels provided the Stones' "security." I also really enjoyed the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense. Jonathan Demme is credited as the director, but I've heard that the film's style is very much a brainchild of David Byrne. _______________________________________________ NEW TO DVD 2/23 -- WARNING! THERE IS POTTY HUMOR! City of Ember -- Watch the trailer. The guys on FilmCouch liked this one. Listen to the FilmCouch review. Wooo, Bill Murray! Read the SpoutBlog review. What Just Happened -- Watch the trailer. This Hollywood-based comedy didn't get good reviews, but it stars Robert Deniro, Sean Penn, John Turturro, and Bruce Willis. How can it not be good, right? Huh, I guess everybody poops once in a while. Extreme Movie -- This parody of teen sex comedies stars Michael Cera and was partly written by SNL's Will Forte and Adam Samberg. I can't remember it ever even playing in theaters...but everyone poops, am I right, people? 88 Minutes -- Watch the trailer. Starring Al Pacino. Who poops. Splinter -- Watch the trailer. A virus infects people with an insatiable thirst for human blood. This could be good; but isn't there a rule of thumb that whenever an effects guru directs a movie, you should run for the hills? I'd be happy if Splinter proves me wrong. http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/9/17/35244.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 9/17/2008 12:01:21 PM
Body: Jonathan Demme has had an extremely successful career ever since directing Caged Heat in 1974. He won the Oscar for Best Director in 1992 with Silence of the Lambs, and helped Tom Hanks act his way to a Best Actor Oscar for Philadelphia. He’s also directed things as varied as a Saturday Night Live episode in 1980, the Talking Heads documentary Stop Making Sense, and Neil Young: Heart of Gold, with a new Young movie on the way in next year’s Trunk Show. Rachel Getting Married represents another big change for him, as the film was shot completely handheld, features a lot of improvised dialogue, and uses ambient music from musicians actually on the set. It’s about as close to a Dogma film as you can get these days. We sat down with Jonathan in Toronto, and read on to find out what inspirations he drew on for this film, why he wanted to cast director Paul Thomas Anderson as the male lead, and how he came to work with Anne Hathaway. This film seems to be a big change or a challenge in your career. What was your biggest challenge doing this film, which is completely different for you? Well, the big challenge and in a way the only challenge that I really felt was the same old challenge, you know, to try to make a good movie, to wind up the movie that worked and kind of delivered on the potential that I perceived in the script to be emotionally strong and also be funny and shed light on different stuff maybe if we got really lucky.

I was cocky about this movie, I trusted Jenny’s script, it moved me so much and I thought it was so fresh and it excited me, because I felt we have the potential here of making a movie that will be absolutely satisfying, justify wherever you watch it, it is watching it and we can get there in a different way. Part of what can be entertaining about this movie can be its very differences. So, there was that. There was a script, there was Anne and this wonderful cast we put together; Declan Quinn, he is our cinematographer. Declan was a gigantic part of my confidence on this movie because Declan not only does very beautiful lighting and he has a fantastic eye anyway. I worked with him, this is our fourth film together, but the others have all been documentaries. So, I have gotten very used to seeing the beautiful cinematography that Declan does when he shoots reality. And I thought, Jenny’s script feels so loose and it aspires to being, you are there, things are going to happen. So, I thought, ‘well if Declan is willing to operate this himself, then we can do a film that will hopefully really be terrific to watch and be very very unique,’ and he is going to shoot it like a documentary. We never rehearsed anything ever. We didn’t design shots beforehand. There was no such thing as Anne’s closeup or over Bill’s shoulder, never that.

 The whole point was that even Declan didn’t know shot by shot what was going to happen the next time the actors started acting. And I mean well, I am in my director’s chair in the other room, watching the monitor, the monitors are really good now, they used to be horrible, you get a really good image there. So, I’d sit there and like wonder what Declan is going to do and it is like “OK action” and then see it.

Declan’s brother if you are familiar with him is Aidan Quinn, the actor. Declan is grown up around acting. He, like me, has tremendous awe for actors. Declan is an extraordinarily gifted storyteller in his own right. He is an amazing man, amazing man. So, when Declan starts wading into those actors and they don’t know if he is going to land on them or not, he is going to come away with something much better than anything we could abstractly plan beforehand, I think. Can you about how you incorporated the music into this, it is so complicated and it sounds like it is environmental that it is part of the scene as well? Jenny had it in the script, she had written this to me wonderful startling odd thing and now the wedding party begins and Brazilian samba troupe shows up in the backyard of this [inaudible 16:43] home. And that made me think that you know, let’s make this… Their friends can be  he is a record producer, of course there would be a bunch of musicians there, and of course it is a house that is permeated with love of music. Their father, Paul, is a music business executive and the artists kind of love him, we can hear that during the toast when Donald Harrison speaks to him. So, we will have lots of instruments around.

I was very excited about the idea of… again with this idea of wanting it to be real, wanting it not only to seem real. I was hoping to try to make everything as real as possible. So, well, they’d really be a bunch of musicians and I house a lot of instruments, let’s go for it. 

And I was very excited about the possibility of doing something that I’d sort of wanted to do for a long time, which is the idea of normally what we do is we shoot the movie and than a composer comes in and there’s a composer’s response to what the actors did. And that music gets made and put on top of the movie.

 But, what if the actors  you flip it and the actors get to respond to the music that we’re hearing when we watch the picture. The music in the moment. That’s very Dogma. By the way, I know Dogma’s dead and everything, but I think the idea of dogma, which is also the idea of any documentary, which is you don’t manipulate the reality. Speaking of Dogma, Rosemarie DeWitt told us that you told the actors to watch After The Wedding. Why did you do that and what did you take away from that film? After the Wedding? Well, that was the thing about which I have also been told, by the way, is postdogma dogma. It’s feels like it would be closer to Celebration, right? Now, that’s Dogma. Celebration, we looked at that by the way, because again I wanted to, because we’re making a movie in America and we’re Americans and stuff like that. I wanted to try to remind us of what it’s like when fiction is done in an aggressively realistic way.

 So, we watched Festen, but the movie the I kept watching, and we had screenings, we got the whole cast together and watched was After the Wedding. We had the key crew people together and watched After the Wedding. Because After the Wedding, that was what my aspiration was, because I love that movie so much. And I get this very real sense that the actors, that real moments were happening, that it was spontaneous, that it seemed… we would argue, “Do you think they really  did that just happen or did they know it was going to happen?” But, whatever it was, it was great. It makes you start feeling, “Gosh, this is real.”

 And the camera in After the Wedding, it didn’t look like it had designed shots, but it felt like the camera was always lucky enough to be in the right place to capture the best perspective on what was going on.

 So, that was my thing. Let’s try as best we can to achieve this sense of freedom and spontaneity on both sides of the camera. How did you end up casting Anne Hathaway for this? Did you have a particular belief in her acting? I did always believe in her from day one and I think it is very funny because I think we tend to, anyone who like watches movies or plays and then thinks about it, we someone and we think, “They are really good at that.” And then, they do something different and they are really good at that, “We go ahhh wow! Who would have thought it,” but I think it is actually a logic that if Anne has been like in Princess Diaries, where she showed up as a teenager and I don’t want to belittle, but she showed up as a teenager and she was really obviously very gifted at doing that part, but to me, that leads me to believe that she is going to be gifted doing other parts. And I do think it is very exciting when we see someone do that, but I think it is amusing that it is surprising. Are you always trying to get something different out of your actors?? Well, you are hoping that they are going reinvent themselves, yes, in the new part, but with Anne, I had a very very simple kind of progression. I saw her first in the Princess Diaries, which by the way I saw it because I had kids that wanted to see it and I saw it at a drive-in in Bridgeton, Maine and a big success, so I was really impressed because of that, so there was that.

 And then, I was at the Golden Globes, I was one of the producers of Adaptation about probably it was… five years ago. And I had this funny director moment where I showed up on the, as everybody does, on the red carpet, walking along and there is Donald Sutherland and there is Charlize Theron and they are all like this… this crowd of celebrity and glamour and what have you, there was this young woman, about 10 yards away, who was moving in a certain kind of way and had this kind of wonderful thing about her and I was taken in. She also looked really pretty to be surface about it, looked really pretty and kind of gorgeous and wonderful and asked them, I asked “Who is… do you know who that is?” He was like “Oh that is Anne Hathaway,” “Ah! The girl from Princess Diaries.” Well, look at that man, she is really got it to put it crudely.

So, when I got, that’s a horrible thing, “she’s got it,” the camera loved it. But, I had that moment, so like the director in me was like “make a note of that, maybe I will be able to capitalize on that someday.” Maybe, I will be able to one day have a script where she can do something completely different and everything because there was this potential there. So then, when I got Jenny’s script, Anne was the only person I thought of to send the script, but I sent it to her representatives and I hadn’t taken it anywhere for finance, so it was just like kind of like, well there is a script I love and I am wondering if Anne Hathaway would be interested, actually in either of the sisters. I think, both parts are great.

And I heard back that Anne thought the script was really good, was very interested in the character of Kym and was willing to meet me. So, we met and we had a coffee in Greenwich Village for about an hour. And it was clear to me who she was and I thought oh gosh, you can see how keenly intelligent she is, how big hearted she is, how likable she is, which is going to be really important for this really maddening character that you want to like thump all the time. And we talked about it, Anne saw stuff in the script that I hadn’t appreciated enough yet and I got very very excited by the encounter and I know she’d be, longwinded, but that’s it, I knew she was going to be wonderful. Can you talk about the cultural diversity in this film? I think it’s really important, it struck me like this is the first movie of the Barack Obama, let’s hope, years. Because it had such an ease about the cultural differences and all of that. So, was that in the script or is that something you added? She wrote this four years ago. We never talked about that. To me, because we certainly wanted this to be the best wedding, to me there’s two things. One is, I like the pictures that I do to reflect the real America as it is today. And I’m a New Yorker and I can’t speak to what it’s like all over the country, but I can tell you that what we see gathered there at the wedding reflects very much what we see on the streets in New York and in workplaces all over our town.

Also, I wanted this to be the best, best, best wedding ever. And to me that meant the best crowd ever. The most exciting crowd, the most stimulating crowd. And that’s, again, what you end up with. I think a kind of a predominantly white crowd is boring. It’s just not  it doesn’t look like that.

 But, there’s an irony too, because it is an interracial marriage. We never talked about that. We never went, “Wow.” Because we all know interracial couples and stuff. All the other elements: the Indian wedding, the Brazilian dancers… Well, that’s Jenny Lumet’s fault. But, the thing I wanted to say there just in conclusion, that point that was Tunde Adebimpe who plays Sidney was the second person that I offered the part to. The first person I offered the part two was the American filmmaker who should be in movies because he’s so good looking and fabulous. And that is Paul Thomas Anderson. He came in and read the script at a table read with us. He was working on finishing up There Will Be Blood in New York. He was wonderful. And he passed the likeability test in a big way. I wanted, again because Jenny writes characters without regard to making them likable, and rooting interests and stuff. She tries to makes them real and fascinating and complicated.

We needed not only terrific actors, but I thought people in the audience would like despite their vagaries. So, Paul was adorable as Sidney. I offered him the part and he said, “Jonathan, you’ve got to be kidding me. It was fun to do the table read, but a) I’m shy, and b) I’ve got this little movie I’m trying to finish and stuff.

 So, our casting directors I asked them to please, please, our whole movie was cast from New York. And I asked our casting directors to bring in our most gifted, likable actors. And Tunde and also Mather Zickle, who plays Kieran, these are guys, they sat down across the table and I just liked them right away.

I liked being with them. I was fascinated by them. They were cute and funny and terrific. So, with Tunde, I was seduced a little bit by the fact that he’s the lead singer of a great cutting edge rock band called “TV On The Radio,” that is really wonderful. That kind of rock and roll allure.

 The other thing was I was excited by the fact that it made for an interracial marriage because that moves me. For me, and I’m the only person I can really go on, this makes it a richer and more meaningful experience, if possible.

 Now, P.S., when I saw the Obama convention, which Anne was at. And then, they did his speech, I don’t know if you all saw it, but 80,000 people. I was like, “Yo! It’s just like our movie!” So the film got such a great response in Venice and then here in Toronto, why was it rejected from Telluride? I’m not sure. All I know is that… I think the Sony guys showed it to whoever they showed it to, and they didn’t invite her to come. Wow. That seems like such an egregious mistake. Well, thank you. I’ve never been to Telluride, but we’re really happy to be here in Toronto. I imagine. The audiences seem to be too. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:01:21 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com9/17/2008 12:01:21 PM Jonathan Demme has had an extremely successful career ever since directing Caged Heat in 1974. He won the Oscar for Best Director in 1992 with Silence of the Lambs, and helped Tom Hanks act his way to a Best Actor Oscar for Philadelphia. He’s also directed things as varied as a Saturday Night Live episode in 1980, the Talking Heads documentary Stop Making Sense, and Neil Young: Heart of Gold, with a new Young movie on the way in next year’s Trunk Show. Rachel Getting Married represents another big change for him, as the film was shot completely handheld, features a lot of improvised dialogue, and uses ambient music from musicians actually on the set. It’s about as close to a Dogma film as you can get these days. We sat down with Jonathan in Toronto, and read on to find out what inspirations he drew on for this film, why he wanted to cast director Paul Thomas Anderson as the male lead, and how he came to work with Anne Hathaway. This film seems to be a big change or a challenge in your career. What was your biggest challenge doing this film, which is completely different for you? Well, the big challenge and in a way the only challenge that I really felt was the same old challenge, you know, to try to make a good movie, to wind up the movie that worked and kind of delivered on the potential that I perceived in the script to be emotionally strong and also be funny and shed light on different stuff maybe if we got really lucky.

I was cocky about this movie, I trusted Jenny’s script, it moved me so much and I thought it was so fresh and it excited me, because I felt we have the potential here of making a movie that will be absolutely satisfying, justify wherever you watch it, it is watching it and we can get there in a different way. Part of what can be entertaining about this movie can be its very differences. So, there was that. There was a script, there was Anne and this wonderful cast we put together; Declan Quinn, he is our cinematographer. Declan was a gigantic part of my confidence on this movie because Declan not only does very beautiful lighting and he has a fantastic eye anyway. I worked with him, this is our fourth film together, but the others have all been documentaries. So, I have gotten very used to seeing the beautiful cinematography that Declan does when he shoots reality. And I thought, Jenny’s script feels so loose and it aspires to being, you are there, things are going to happen. So, I thought, ‘well if Declan is willing to operate this himself, then we can do a film that will hopefully really be terrific to watch and be very very unique,’ and he is going to shoot it like a documentary. We never rehearsed anything ever. We didn’t design shots beforehand. There was no such thing as Anne’s closeup or over Bill’s shoulder, never that.

 The whole point was that even Declan didn’t know shot by shot what was going to happen the next time the actors started acting. And I mean well, I am in my director’s chair in the other room, watching the monitor, the monitors are really good now, they used to be horrible, you get a really good image there. So, I’d sit there and like wonder what Declan is going to do and it is like “OK action” and then see it.

Declan’s brother if you are familiar with him is Aidan Quinn, the actor. Declan is grown up around acting. He, like me, has tremendous awe for actors. Declan is an extraordinarily gifted storyteller in his own right. He is an amazing man, amazing man. So, when Declan starts wading into those actors and they don’t know if he is going to land on them or not, he is going to come away with something much better than anything we could abstractly plan beforehand, I think. Can you about how you incorporated the music into this, it is so complicated and it sounds like it is environmental that it is part of the scene as well? Jenny had it in the script, she had written this to me wonderful startling odd thing and now the wedding party begins and Brazilian samba troupe shows up in the backyard of this [inaudible 16:43] home. And that made me think that you know, let’s make this… Their friends can be  he is a record producer, of course there would be a bunch of musicians there, and of course it is a house that is permeated with love of music. Their father, Paul, is a music business executive and the artists kind of love him, we can hear that during the toast when Donald Harrison speaks to him. So, we will have lots of instruments around.

I was very excited about the idea of… again with this idea of wanting it to be real, wanting it not only to seem real. I was hoping to try to make everything as real as possible. So, well, they’d really be a bunch of musicians and I house a lot of instruments, let’s go for it. 

And I was very excited about the possibility of doing something that I’d sort of wanted to do for a long time, which is the idea of normally what we do is we shoot the movie and than a composer comes in and there’s a composer’s response to what the actors did. And that music gets made and put on top of the movie.

 But, what if the actors  you flip it and the actors get to respond to the music that we’re hearing when we watch the picture. The music in the moment. That’s very Dogma. By the way, I know Dogma’s dead and everything, but I think the idea of dogma, which is also the idea of any documentary, which is you don’t manipulate the reality. Speaking of Dogma, Rosemarie DeWitt told us that you told the actors to watch After The Wedding. Why did you do that and what did you take away from that film? After the Wedding? Well, that was the thing about which I have also been told, by the way, is postdogma dogma. It’s feels like it would be closer to Celebration, right? Now, that’s Dogma. Celebration, we looked at that by the way, because again I wanted to, because we’re making a movie in America and we’re Americans and stuff like that. I wanted to try to remind us of what it’s like when fiction is done in an aggressively realistic way.

 So, we watched Festen, but the movie the I kept watching, and we had screenings, we got the whole cast together and watched was After the Wedding. We had the key crew people together and watched After the Wedding. Because After the Wedding, that was what my aspiration was, because I love that movie so much. And I get this very real sense that the actors, that real moments were happening, that it was spontaneous, that it seemed… we would argue, “Do you think they really  did that just happen or did they know it was going to happen?” But, whatever it was, it was great. It makes you start feeling, “Gosh, this is real.”

 And the camera in After the Wedding, it didn’t look like it had designed shots, but it felt like the camera was always lucky enough to be in the right place to capture the best perspective on what was going on.

 So, that was my thing. Let’s try as best we can to achieve this sense of freedom and spontaneity on both sides of the camera. How did you end up casting Anne Hathaway for this? Did you have a particular belief in her acting? I did always believe in her from day one and I think it is very funny because I think we tend to, anyone who like watches movies or plays and then thinks about it, we someone and we think, “They are really good at that.” And then, they do something different and they are really good at that, “We go ahhh wow! Who would have thought it,” but I think it is actually a logic that if Anne has been like in Princess Diaries, where she showed up as a teenager and I don’t want to belittle, but she showed up as a teenager and she was really obviously very gifted at doing that part, but to me, that leads me to believe that she is going to be gifted doing other parts. And I do think it is very exciting when we see someone do that, but I think it is amusing that it is surprising. Are you always trying to get something different out of your actors?? Well, you are hoping that they are going reinvent themselves, yes, in the new part, but with Anne, I had a very very simple kind of progression. I saw her first in the Princess Diaries, which by the way I saw it because I had kids that wanted to see it and I saw it at a drive-in in Bridgeton, Maine and a big success, so I was really impressed because of that, so there was that.

 And then, I was at the Golden Globes, I was one of the producers of Adaptation about probably it was… five years ago. And I had this funny director moment where I showed up on the, as everybody does, on the red carpet, walking along and there is Donald Sutherland and there is Charlize Theron and they are all like this… this crowd of celebrity and glamour and what have you, there was this young woman, about 10 yards away, who was moving in a certain kind of way and had this kind of wonderful thing about her and I was taken in. She also looked really pretty to be surface about it, looked really pretty and kind of gorgeous and wonderful and asked them, I asked “Who is… do you know who that is?” He was like “Oh that is Anne Hathaway,” “Ah! The girl from Princess Diaries.” Well, look at that man, she is really got it to put it crudely.

So, when I got, that’s a horrible thing, “she’s got it,” the camera loved it. But, I had that moment, so like the director in me was like “make a note of that, maybe I will be able to capitalize on that someday.” Maybe, I will be able to one day have a script where she can do something completely different and everything because there was this potential there. So then, when I got Jenny’s script, Anne was the only person I thought of to send the script, but I sent it to her representatives and I hadn’t taken it anywhere for finance, so it was just like kind of like, well there is a script I love and I am wondering if Anne Hathaway would be interested, actually in either of the sisters. I think, both parts are great.

And I heard back that Anne thought the script was really good, was very interested in the character of Kym and was willing to meet me. So, we met and we had a coffee in Greenwich Village for about an hour. And it was clear to me who she was and I thought oh gosh, you can see how keenly intelligent she is, how big hearted she is, how likable she is, which is going to be really important for this really maddening character that you want to like thump all the time. And we talked about it, Anne saw stuff in the script that I hadn’t appreciated enough yet and I got very very excited by the encounter and I know she’d be, longwinded, but that’s it, I knew she was going to be wonderful. Can you talk about the cultural diversity in this film? I think it’s really important, it struck me like this is the first movie of the Barack Obama, let’s hope, years. Because it had such an ease about the cultural differences and all of that. So, was that in the script or is that something you added? She wrote this four years ago. We never talked about that. To me, because we certainly wanted this to be the best wedding, to me there’s two things. One is, I like the pictures that I do to reflect the real America as it is today. And I’m a New Yorker and I can’t speak to what it’s like all over the country, but I can tell you that what we see gathered there at the wedding reflects very much what we see on the streets in New York and in workplaces all over our town.

Also, I wanted this to be the best, best, best wedding ever. And to me that meant the best crowd ever. The most exciting crowd, the most stimulating crowd. And that’s, again, what you end up with. I think a kind of a predominantly white crowd is boring. It’s just not  it doesn’t look like that.

 But, there’s an irony too, because it is an interracial marriage. We never talked about that. We never went, “Wow.” Because we all know interracial couples and stuff. All the other elements: the Indian wedding, the Brazilian dancers… Well, that’s Jenny Lumet’s fault. But, the thing I wanted to say there just in conclusion, that point that was Tunde Adebimpe who plays Sidney was the second person that I offered the part to. The first person I offered the part two was the American filmmaker who should be in movies because he’s so good looking and fabulous. And that is Paul Thomas Anderson. He came in and read the script at a table read with us. He was working on finishing up There Will Be Blood in New York. He was wonderful. And he passed the likeability test in a big way. I wanted, again because Jenny writes characters without regard to making them likable, and rooting interests and stuff. She tries to makes them real and fascinating and complicated.

We needed not only terrific actors, but I thought people in the audience would like despite their vagaries. So, Paul was adorable as Sidney. I offered him the part and he said, “Jonathan, you’ve got to be kidding me. It was fun to do the table read, but a) I’m shy, and b) I’ve got this little movie I’m trying to finish and stuff.

 So, our casting directors I asked them to please, please, our whole movie was cast from New York. And I asked our casting directors to bring in our most gifted, likable actors. And Tunde and also Mather Zickle, who plays Kieran, these are guys, they sat down across the table and I just liked them right away.

I liked being with them. I was fascinated by them. They were cute and funny and terrific. So, with Tunde, I was seduced a little bit by the fact that he’s the lead singer of a great cutting edge rock band called “TV On The Radio,” that is really wonderful. That kind of rock and roll allure.

 The other thing was I was excited by the fact that it made for an interracial marriage because that moves me. For me, and I’m the only person I can really go on, this makes it a richer and more meaningful experience, if possible.

 Now, P.S., when I saw the Obama convention, which Anne was at. And then, they did his speech, I don’t know if you all saw it, but 80,000 people. I was like, “Yo! It’s just like our movie!” So the film got such a great response in Venice and then here in Toronto, why was it rejected from Telluride? I’m not sure. All I know is that… I think the Sony guys showed it to whoever they showed it to, and they didn’t invite her to come. Wow. That seems like such an egregious mistake. Well, thank you. I’ve never been to Telluride, but we’re really happy to be here in Toronto. I imagine. The audiences seem to be too. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/69and666/archive/2008/3/2/25785.aspx Post By: 69and666
Post To: 69and666 Blog
Post Date: 3/2/2008 4:34:45 PM
Body: The Talking Heads have long been known for letting their creative aspirations far surpass their ability to perform. If you have not seen this DVD... get up and get in your car and drive to the nearest store to buy it! This is the concert to have on DVD. Stop reading this a go to the store and buy it immediately!
]]>Sun, 02 Mar 2008 21:34:45 GMT69and66669and666 Blog3/2/2008 4:34:45 PMThe Talking Heads have long been known for letting their creative aspirations far surpass their ability to perform. If you have not seen this DVD... get up and get in your car and drive to the nearest store to buy it! This is the concert to have on DVD. Stop reading this a go to the store and buy it immediately! http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/Loved-It/MemberTagFilms.aspxLoved-It
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