list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Breathless 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/Breathless/4398/default.aspx Title: Breathless
Year: 1960
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Plot: The first feature film directed by Jean-Luc Godard and one of the seminal films of the French New Wave, Breathless is story of the love between Michel Poiccard, a small-time hood wanted for killing a cop, and Patricia Franchini, an American who sells the International Herald Tribune along the boulevards of Paris. Their relationship develops as Michel hides out from a dragnet. Breathless uses the famous techniques of the French New Wave: location shooting, improvised dialogue, and a loose narrative form. In addition Godard uses his characteristic jump cuts, deliberate "mismatches" between shots, and references to the history of cinema, art, and music. Much of the film's vigor comes from collisions between popular and high culture: Godard shows us pinups and portraits of women by Picasso and Renoir, and the soundtrack includes both Mozart's clarinet concerto and snippets of French pop radio. When Breathless was first released, audiences and critics responded to the burst of energy it gave the French cinema; it won numerous international awards and became an unexpected box-office sensation. ~ Louis Schwartz, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 10
Number of Lists: 46
Number of blog posts: 13
Number of discussion threads: 12
SpoutRating: 4
]]>Sat, 04 Jul 2009 06:15:35 GMTBreathless1960Jean-Luc GodardThe first feature film directed by <a href="/players/P____91804/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Jean-Luc Godard</a> and one of the seminal films of the French New Wave, Breathless is story of the love between Michel Poiccard, a small-time hood wanted for killing a cop, and Patricia Franchini, an American who sells the International Herald Tribune along the boulevards of Paris. Their relationship develops as Michel hides out from a dragnet. Breathless uses the famous techniques of the French New Wave: location shooting, improvised dialogue, and a loose narrative form. In addition Godard uses his characteristic jump cuts, deliberate "mismatches" between shots, and references to the history of cinema, art, and music. Much of the film's vigor comes from collisions between popular and high culture: Godard shows us pinups and portraits of women by Picasso and Renoir, and the soundtrack includes both Mozart's clarinet concerto and snippets of French pop radio. When Breathless was first released, audiences and critics responded to the burst of energy it gave the French cinema; it won numerous international awards and became an unexpected box-office sensation. ~ Louis Schwartz, All Movie Guide10Taggedy Taggged (6-10)4613124http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/u44019nmg4h.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Breathless/4398/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/groups/Movie_Polls/Re_Which_of_these_film_movments_have_produced_film/657/40557/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: Risselada
Post To: Movie Polls
Post Date: 2/19/2009 3:15:26 PM
Body: [quote user="pippin06"] This is out of my league too. I consider myself an average to above average filmgoer/viewer but am not sure if I've seen anything in any category (maybe I have and I didn't know it...but maybe not). Like I said, I saw a lot of French films in college, but who knows if they fall under New Wave or something like that... ...but maybe we could somehow start a discussion somewhere where people schooled in these film schools could make recommendations for beginners. That would be cool, right? Or, maybe it's already somewhere...anyone know? [/quote] Ok, well I'll try to give some insight on what I know about them and any recommendations I may have. Czechoslovakian New Wave may be one of the lesser movements listed here. It kind of started in the 60s. A discription from wikipedia says "Trademarks of the movement contain long unscripted dialogues, dark and absurd humour, and the casting of nonactors." I don't know if I've actually seen any, but some of the more popular ones are available from the Criterion Collection like The Shop on Main Street (which people have mentioned on Spout before), Closely Watched Trains, and lots of Milos Forman's (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Man on the Moon, Amadeus) early work like Loves of a Blonde and The Fireman's Ball. Dogme 95 was an official movement started by Lars Von Trier and a few other Danish filmmakers that had specific rules about it. You could actually submit your film to them to be labeled as an official Dogma 95 film. You can probably find the rules online somewhere, but it involved using only digital film and found locations, props, and costumes. You aren't supposed to add any special effects. The full rules are of course available at good old wikipedia. The most famous of the films would probably The Celebration, The Idiots, and my favorite, Julien Donkey-Boy. The French New Wave is a pretty broad movement usually referring to the iconoclastic filmmakers from France. I think the tail end of the 50s is really when this started to get into full swing. Like Tennenbaums mentioned earlier, Jean Luc-Godard and François Truffaut are often the most identifiable filmmakers with the movement, although there are probably dozens if not more who have been lumped into this movement. SkyPilot mentioned Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le Flambeur. I have seen that one and was disappointed. I've also seen Godard's Breathless and Truffaut's Jules and Jim both of which I did not enjoy. Truffaut's The 400 Blows I appreciated a bit more, but still not a favorite. Some people throw Éric Rohmer into this category as well, although some argue his style is considerably different and stems from somewhere other than many other of the French New Wave filmmakers. I have enjoyed what little I've seen of his work. Expressionism was a movement in Europe in the early 20th century. It stressed intense emotion conveyed through exaggerated and distorted style and forms. The Germans took this movement and put it in film. I'm sure you recognize famous directors like F. W. Murnau and Fritz Lang. Some of these films had extremely expressionistic and highly unrealistic visuals like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Some like The Last Laugh were just more more distorted versions of reality. With all the Dracula talk that has happend on Spout at times I'm guessing you've also heard of Nosferatu. Some of Lang's works that came a bit later that are well known might also count like M and Metropolis. When I looked into it, I can't really define Iranian New Wave any better than just saying it's basically films that were made in Iran. I guess the most popular filmmaker is Abbas Kiarostami. Look him up and you may recognize a lot of his films. Maybe not. I have seen two films from Majid Majidi and would recommend The Color of Paradise. It's kind of recent though so I don't really know if it's a good representation of the first wave of the Iranian New Wave. Italian neorealism is what it probably sounds like. Italian films that stressed trying to give a realistic depiction of every day working class people. They did this by shootings things on location and often with non-actors. And a lot of the the "boring" action of normal life that might not find it's way into other films is here. Although I sure don't find it boring. The time frame we are looking at is the later forties. The most famous example is Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief which I would highly recommend, although De Sica's Shoeshine and Umberto D are also amazing. Other big name directors are Luchino Visconti and Roberto Rossellini. The Japanese New Wave like the French New Wave were a bunch of iconoclastic filmmakers that started with works being released around the end of the 50s through the 70s. You could put Seijun Suzuki in this category who is one of my favorite directors. Tokyo Drifter, Fighting Elegy, Branded to Kill, and Youth of the Beast are all fims of his that I love and are available on the Criterion Collection. Hiroshi Teshigahara also has some of his movies released through Criterion, one of which, Woman in the Dunes, I just saw recently and is amazing. Shohei Imamura also has some of his movies available through Criterion (this is basically just a big Criterion ad). Nagisa Oshima is probably the biggest name from this moment in my mind and I'm rather embarassed to say I still haven't seen any of his films. Mumblecore core is the newest term on this list and has gotten a lot of press on Spout, so maybe you've heard of it. I don't know if I've really seen any movies that would fit this category hardcore, but you probably recognize the trend in independent cinema. I think it has a lot to do with young adults living in big cities. Very low budget. Lots of slang and hip music and culture references with a realistic style. Correct me if I'm wrong on this. Joe Swanberg had a short film series on Spout for a while I think. New French Extremity is the other really new term here. I just came across the name recently to refer to a recent wave of confrontational French films ove the past decade or so. You know how we had a group here on spout called "extreme films"? Well a lot of these would probably fit in nice there. They show you the extreme fifth, cruelty, and violence of humanity often in graphic detail. You may recognize a lot of these names. Gaspar Noé's Irreversible is one of the most well known state side I think. It's the one that runs backwards. I've seen his I Stand Alone and let me say it's pretty striking and depression, very confrontational to the dark and depressing side of the human condition. Other examples are some of Claire Denis' and Leos Carax's recent work, Bruno Dumont (The Life of Jesus, Humanité), Catherine Breillat (Fat Girl). Maybe you have also heard of the infamous Baise-moi (Fuck Me). If you listen to a lot of the horror fans we have on the site too you may hear them rave about many of the violent horror films comming out of France recently. These could probably fit in well too. The most well known now being High Tension. As for New German Cinema, you've heard of Werner Herzog right?? He's one of my favorites (check out The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Stroszek, Fitzcarraldo). Well he and some other German folks such as R. W. Fassbinder (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, The Marriage of Maria Braun, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (the guy made well over fourty films in a span of sixteen years including the fifteen hour long Berlin Alexanderplatz)), Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire, Paris, Texas), Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum) and several others started making the first original movies starting in the late 60s since before the rise of the Nazis (Werner Herzog even made a remake of the classic German film Nosferatu). Finally Germany was a force in the world of Cinema making original and revolutionary films again. Anyone have anything to add?
]]>Thu, 19 Feb 2009 20:15:26 GMTRisseladaMovie Polls2/19/2009 3:15:26 PM[quote user="pippin06"] This is out of my league too. I consider myself an average to above average filmgoer/viewer but am not sure if I've seen anything in any category (maybe I have and I didn't know it...but maybe not). Like I said, I saw a lot of French films in college, but who knows if they fall under New Wave or something like that... ...but maybe we could somehow start a discussion somewhere where people schooled in these film schools could make recommendations for beginners. That would be cool, right? Or, maybe it's already somewhere...anyone know? [/quote] Ok, well I'll try to give some insight on what I know about them and any recommendations I may have. Czechoslovakian New Wave may be one of the lesser movements listed here. It kind of started in the 60s. A discription from wikipedia says "Trademarks of the movement contain long unscripted dialogues, dark and absurd humour, and the casting of nonactors." I don't know if I've actually seen any, but some of the more popular ones are available from the Criterion Collection like The Shop on Main Street (which people have mentioned on Spout before), Closely Watched Trains, and lots of Milos Forman's (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Man on the Moon, Amadeus) early work like Loves of a Blonde and The Fireman's Ball. Dogme 95 was an official movement started by Lars Von Trier and a few other Danish filmmakers that had specific rules about it. You could actually submit your film to them to be labeled as an official Dogma 95 film. You can probably find the rules online somewhere, but it involved using only digital film and found locations, props, and costumes. You aren't supposed to add any special effects. The full rules are of course available at good old wikipedia. The most famous of the films would probably The Celebration, The Idiots, and my favorite, Julien Donkey-Boy. The French New Wave is a pretty broad movement usually referring to the iconoclastic filmmakers from France. I think the tail end of the 50s is really when this started to get into full swing. Like Tennenbaums mentioned earlier, Jean Luc-Godard and Fran&ccedil;ois Truffaut are often the most identifiable filmmakers with the movement, although there are probably dozens if not more who have been lumped into this movement. SkyPilot mentioned Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le Flambeur. I have seen that one and was disappointed. I've also seen Godard's Breathless and Truffaut's Jules and Jim both of which I did not enjoy. Truffaut's The 400 Blows I appreciated a bit more, but still not a favorite. Some people throw &Eacute;ric Rohmer into this category as well, although some argue his style is considerably different and stems from somewhere other than many other of the French New Wave filmmakers. I have enjoyed what little I've seen of his work. Expressionism was a movement in Europe in the early 20th century. It stressed intense emotion conveyed through exaggerated and distorted style and forms. The Germans took this movement and put it in film. I'm sure you recognize famous directors like F. W. Murnau and Fritz Lang. Some of these films had extremely expressionistic and highly unrealistic visuals like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Some like The Last Laugh were just more more distorted versions of reality. With all the Dracula talk that has happend on Spout at times I'm guessing you've also heard of Nosferatu. Some of Lang's works that came a bit later that are well known might also count like M and Metropolis. When I looked into it, I can't really define Iranian New Wave any better than just saying it's basically films that were made in Iran. I guess the most popular filmmaker is Abbas Kiarostami. Look him up and you may recognize a lot of his films. Maybe not. I have seen two films from Majid Majidi and would recommend The Color of Paradise. It's kind of recent though so I don't really know if it's a good representation of the first wave of the Iranian New Wave. Italian neorealism is what it probably sounds like. Italian films that stressed trying to give a realistic depiction of every day working class people. They did this by shootings things on location and often with non-actors. And a lot of the the "boring" action of normal life that might not find it's way into other films is here. Although I sure don't find it boring. The time frame we are looking at is the later forties. The most famous example is Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief which I would highly recommend, although De Sica's Shoeshine and Umberto D are also amazing. Other big name directors are Luchino Visconti and Roberto Rossellini. The Japanese New Wave like the French New Wave were a bunch of iconoclastic filmmakers that started with works being released around the end of the 50s through the 70s. You could put Seijun Suzuki in this category who is one of my favorite directors. Tokyo Drifter, Fighting Elegy, Branded to Kill, and Youth of the Beast are all fims of his that I love and are available on the Criterion Collection. Hiroshi Teshigahara also has some of his movies released through Criterion, one of which, Woman in the Dunes, I just saw recently and is amazing. Shohei Imamura also has some of his movies available through Criterion (this is basically just a big Criterion ad). Nagisa Oshima is probably the biggest name from this moment in my mind and I'm rather embarassed to say I still haven't seen any of his films. Mumblecore core is the newest term on this list and has gotten a lot of press on Spout, so maybe you've heard of it. I don't know if I've really seen any movies that would fit this category hardcore, but you probably recognize the trend in independent cinema. I think it has a lot to do with young adults living in big cities. Very low budget. Lots of slang and hip music and culture references with a realistic style. Correct me if I'm wrong on this. Joe Swanberg had a short film series on Spout for a while I think. New French Extremity is the other really new term here. I just came across the name recently to refer to a recent wave of confrontational French films ove the past decade or so. You know how we had a group here on spout called "extreme films"? Well a lot of these would probably fit in nice there. They show you the extreme fifth, cruelty, and violence of humanity often in graphic detail. You may recognize a lot of these names. Gaspar No&eacute;'s Irreversible is one of the most well known state side I think. It's the one that runs backwards. I've seen his I Stand Alone and let me say it's pretty striking and depression, very confrontational to the dark and depressing side of the human condition. Other examples are some of Claire Denis' and Leos Carax's recent work, Bruno Dumont (The Life of Jesus, Humanit&eacute;), Catherine Breillat (Fat Girl). Maybe you have also heard of the infamous Baise-moi (Fuck Me). If you listen to a lot of the horror fans we have on the site too you may hear them rave about many of the violent horror films comming out of France recently. These could probably fit in well too. The most well known now being High Tension. As for New German Cinema, you've heard of Werner Herzog right?? He's one of my favorites (check out The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Stroszek, Fitzcarraldo). Well he and some other German folks such as R. W. Fassbinder (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, The Marriage of Maria Braun, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (the guy made well over fourty films in a span of sixteen years including the fifteen hour long Berlin Alexanderplatz)), Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire, Paris, Texas), Volker Schl&ouml;ndorff (The Tin Drum) and several others started making the first original movies starting in the late 60s since before the rise of the Nazis (Werner Herzog even made a remake of the classic German film Nosferatu). Finally Germany was a force in the world of Cinema making original and revolutionary films again. Anyone have anything to add? http://www.spout.com/blogs/tmclancy/archive/2009/1/12/39378.aspx Post By: tmclancy
Post To: le cinéphile sporadique
Post Date: 1/12/2009 2:48:27 AM
Body: I have always appreciated the idea of the New Year. That one moment, when admidst all of life's turmoil, we turn our attentions to the year ahead, decide on ways we can improve ourselves, and bid farewell to all of the joys and miseries of the past year. And of course I know all too well the awkward feeling of ringing in a new year alone in love. Be it the evils of societal pressure, or a simple reminder that I am again alone on the birth of a new year, I always crave partnership when I am in this situation. This may be just one reason why indie director Alex Holdridge's In Search of a Midnight Kiss (2007) struck such a chord with me. As a film, I see it as the remake of Godard's Breathless (1960) that Jim McBride failed to make with his Breathless (1983). Both this and the McBride film are set in Los Angeles, but where McBride went wrong, in trying to transfer a story that only made sense in 1959 Paris to 1983 LA, Holdridge completely avoided, creating an entirely new story that actually makes sense in its setting. Of course, as close as this film struck to me, I will not even try to exalt it to the philosophical genius of Godard, but I will admit that it made more sense to me on a day-to-day level. Perhaps this is only evidence of its culture-specific significance, while Breathless (1960) is a timeless masterpiece. Either way, the Godardian handheld, black-and-white cinematography that captures the landscape of Los Angeles as well as the organic relationship between Wilson (Scoot McNairy) and Vivian (Sara Simmonds) brings to mind first and foremost the brief, failed Parisian romance of Michel and Patricia. Appropriately, Wilson is not a petty car theif who shoots a policeman like Michel; instead he is a lonely, unsuccessful screenwriter, whose only crime is revealed in an amusingly awkward scene at the beginning of the film, in which his best friend walks in on him masturbating to a photo-shopped picture of his girlfriend, prompting him to force Wilson to put a personal ad onto Craig's List. Luckily for him, the beautiful and refreshingly dysfunctional Vivian is the first to respond. Where the film goes wrong is in the starved filler dialogue as Wilson and Vivian wander around LA, trying to judge whether or not they want to welcome the new year in with one another. However, this proves to be a VERY short lag, that is picked up at the point in which Wilson makes a confession to Vivian, a la artist Frank Warren's "PostSecret" project (postsecret.blogspot.com). His confession is that of the masturbation incident, which plunges the very new couple into their first disagreement. Overall, it is a beautiful film that draws its strengths from the reality of the loneliness of modern life, as well as the beauty of some good, old-fashioned Godardian cinematography. I look forward to seeing what Holdridge has to offer up in the future.
]]>Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:48:27 GMTtmclancyle cinéphile sporadique1/12/2009 2:48:27 AMI have always appreciated the idea of the New Year. That one moment, when admidst all of life's turmoil, we turn our attentions to the year ahead, decide on ways we can improve ourselves, and bid farewell to all of the joys and miseries of the past year. And of course I know all too well the awkward feeling of ringing in a new year alone in love. Be it the evils of societal pressure, or a simple reminder that I am again alone on the birth of a new year, I always crave partnership when I am in this situation. This may be just one reason why indie director Alex Holdridge's In Search of a Midnight Kiss (2007) struck such a chord with me. As a film, I see it as the remake of Godard's Breathless (1960) that Jim McBride failed to make with his Breathless (1983). Both this and the McBride film are set in Los Angeles, but where McBride went wrong, in trying to transfer a story that only made sense in 1959 Paris to 1983 LA, Holdridge completely avoided, creating an entirely new story that actually makes sense in its setting. Of course, as close as this film struck to me, I will not even try to exalt it to the philosophical genius of Godard, but I will admit that it made more sense to me on a day-to-day level. Perhaps this is only evidence of its culture-specific significance, while Breathless (1960) is a timeless masterpiece. Either way, the Godardian handheld, black-and-white cinematography that captures the landscape of Los Angeles as well as the organic relationship between Wilson (Scoot McNairy) and Vivian (Sara Simmonds) brings to mind first and foremost the brief, failed Parisian romance of Michel and Patricia. Appropriately, Wilson is not a petty car theif who shoots a policeman like Michel; instead he is a lonely, unsuccessful screenwriter, whose only crime is revealed in an amusingly awkward scene at the beginning of the film, in which his best friend walks in on him masturbating to a photo-shopped picture of his girlfriend, prompting him to force Wilson to put a personal ad onto Craig's List. Luckily for him, the beautiful and refreshingly dysfunctional Vivian is the first to respond. Where the film goes wrong is in the starved filler dialogue as Wilson and Vivian wander around LA, trying to judge whether or not they want to welcome the new year in with one another. However, this proves to be a VERY short lag, that is picked up at the point in which Wilson makes a confession to Vivian, a la artist Frank Warren's "PostSecret" project (postsecret.blogspot.com). His confession is that of the masturbation incident, which plunges the very new couple into their first disagreement. Overall, it is a beautiful film that draws its strengths from the reality of the loneliness of modern life, as well as the beauty of some good, old-fashioned Godardian cinematography. I look forward to seeing what Holdridge has to offer up in the future. http://www.spout.com/groups/Friends_of_Foreign_Flicks/Re_Has_anyone_seen_Alphaville/591/39206/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: Risselada
Post To: Friends of Foreign Flicks
Post Date: 1/7/2009 1:20:21 PM
Body: [quote user="unclefestering"] The other night I watched Alphaville as part of an effort to watch movies that I always heard were good, but I had avoided for some reason or another. I really enjoyed the movie, but found myself confused and it took me a long time to realize why. I was watching a science fiction movie with no visual effects. Despite being set in the future, Alphaville was clearly Paris and everyone was dressed in 60s fashions and driving 60s cars. The characters talk about traveling from galaxy to galaxy, but seem to do it by driving on highways. Has anyone else been confused by this disconnect that Godard clearly intended? [/quote] Godard is strange like that I think. Actually I've only seen one of his movies, Breathless. And it turned me off enough not have have sought out any of his other movies after that. Although if there was one movie I was interested in seeing of his next it actually was Alphaville. Do you like any of his other films?
]]>Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:20:21 GMTRisseladaFriends of Foreign Flicks1/7/2009 1:20:21 PM[quote user="unclefestering"] The other night I watched Alphaville as part of an effort to watch movies that I always heard were good, but I had avoided for some reason or another. I really enjoyed the movie, but found myself confused and it took me a long time to realize why. I was watching a science fiction movie with no visual effects. Despite being set in the future, Alphaville was clearly Paris and everyone was dressed in 60s fashions and driving 60s cars. The characters talk about traveling from galaxy to galaxy, but seem to do it by driving on highways. Has anyone else been confused by this disconnect that Godard clearly intended? [/quote] Godard is strange like that I think. Actually I've only seen one of his movies, Breathless. And it turned me off enough not have have sought out any of his other movies after that. Although if there was one movie I was interested in seeing of his next it actually was Alphaville. Do you like any of his other films? http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2009/1/6/39158.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 1/6/2009 4:00:59 PM
Body: Criterion, who had already shown the Wes Anderson love with their Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic discs, announced back in 2007 that they were going to be putting out an edition of Bottle Rocket. This was met with much joy, especially because the previously released version, which came out back in 1996, was about as bare bones as you could get. The only real special feature it could claim was widescreen on one side of the disc, and full screen on the other. Big whoop. The new version, which just came out in late 2008 has a ton of features, and is available in both standard and Blu-ray editions. But it also contains one of the single most sour notes ever hit in an Anderson DVD. It’s so extremely painful that it makes the package almost worth avoiding. Just to be fair, here’s a list of everything the new edition of Bottle Rocket includes: a new digital transfer, approved by Wes Anderson and director of photography Robert Yeoman DTS HD 5.1 soundtrack Commentary track from Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson The Making of Bottle Rocket documentary with interviews from the actors, director, and producer James L. Brooks, directed by Barry Braverman The original 13 minute Bottle Rocket short film Eleven deleted scenes Storyboards and location photos Photographs by Laura Wilson The Shafrazi Lectures, No 1: Bottle Rocket, a sort of scholarly lecture about the movie Murita Cycles a 1978 short film from Barry Braverman Altogether, that’s a lot of Bottle Rocketry for anyone. But the biggest draw for most people will be the new transfer, and the commentary from Wilson and Anderson, who also wrote the film. You think they’d have some interesting insights into the making of this film. After all, Wilson and Anderson have known each other since college, and have collaborated on several films together. Instead what you get is a sleepy commentary from Wilson, with Anderson constantly prodding him and desperately trying to add some value to the track. At one point Anderson asks Wilson if he got the suggested questions or topics that were sent to him, in case they ran into long silences on the commentary, to which Wilson replies, “No. What questions?” Unfortunately, it ends up sounding like someone from Criterion called them that morning, and said “Oh, we need to record you guys in about two hours.” Both Wilson and Anderson sound pretty much bored by the entire process, and there are several moments where vast expanses of silence pass by like icebergs in the night. Even if they ran out of stuff to talk about from Bottle Rocket, couldn’t they just shoot the breeze? No funny stories from the set? No anecdotes about all the Wilson brothers? No, instead you get stuff like Wilson saying to Anderson, “Hey, isn’t that your hair in that shot?” Why not just feature Anderson by himself? He did a great solo job on The Royal Tenenbaums commentary. I don’t know much about the history of DVD authoring, so I’m not sure if there’s ever been a time when a DVD producer has gone back to the talent to say “I’m sorry, this just isn’t usable. Can you guys try that again?” The only commentary that comes to mind that is this inexplicably bad is from The Goonies, when Sean Astin has to leave in the middle because he had to attend a dinner with Joe Pantoliano. No kidding. The other extras on the disc almost make up for this, particularly the eleven deleted scenes. There’s a scene called “Temple Nash Jr.” where Dignan, Bob, and Anthony are asking all kinds of gun questions of a redneck gun nut. It’s hilarious enough to be a standalone short film. Most directors comment on deleted scenes, but sadly Anderson doesn’t chime in on why these were cut. I’m assuming it must have been for time. The Wilsons’ mother Laura, a professional photographer, took photos during the making of the short film and during its Sundance run, and also documented the crew’s initial meetings at Columbia Studios. These are shot in black and white, and they look terrific. There’s something about young Wes Anderson with his shock of Eraserhead hair that smacks of an Ivy League prep school, even though he was born and raised in Texas. Plus, seeing the pure joy on both Anderson and Wilson’s faces as they jump Toyota-commercial style off of the Columbia steps is a treat. The only bad thing about the doc The Making of Bottle Rocket is that it’s only 26 minutes long. Filmmaker and longtime friend of the Wilson/Anderson set Barry Braverman gets pretty much everyone involved in the film on camera, and the best quote comes from James Caan, who says about his experience working on the movie, “Well, it was like three days. It was like being in the left hand corner of the Hollywood Squares or something.” There are some great remembrances in this that aren’t in the commentary track, and it’s also been shot in high-def widescreen as well. It’s too bad they couldn’t have made this feature length. Also included on the disc is a short film from Braverman, this one made in 1978. It’s called Murita Cycles, and is about Braverman’s father who ran a bicycle shop on Staten Island for years, and Wilson and Anderson both said it was one of their inspirations for the Bottle Rocket short. It’s a touching look at an eccentric guy who goes from normal father to packrat kook and is documented and interviewed by his son. The Shafrazi Lectures, No 1: Bottle Rocket is an 11-minute, very strange discussion of the film from Tony Shafrazi, the owner of the Shafrazi Gallery in New York. He’s the artist who spray painted “KILL LIES ALL” on top of Picasso’s “Guernica” in the Museum of Modern Art in 1974. It’s a near-incoherent praise of the film, and he compares it to films like East of Eden and Breathless, while displaying scenes on sheets of paper that he’s holding up in a dark room. It’s hard to decide if it’s sincere or not, since they including fake Charlie Rose style interviews from “The Peter Bradley Show” on the Tenenbaums disc. It’s almost worth watching just for the sheer bizarre factor. “I don’t like all this serious stuff,” Shafrazi remarks at one point. There’s one other special feature nearly as painful as the commentary, but for different reasons. That’s an anamorphic test scene that was shot when they considered shooting the movie in the widescreen Panavision format. It looks completely gorgeous, and would have made Bottle Rocket even prettier than it already is. Granted, it’s a fairly perfect movie by my standards, but the movie geek in me yearns for a non-existent widescreen version of this to get unearthed sometime. Maybe in an alternate universe. DVD booklets are not always worth remarking on, but this one includes Dignan’s complete 75-Year Plan along with essays from James L. Brooks and Martin Scorsese, all done in Dignan’s handwriting, which I assume is from illustrator Ian Dingman. If I admit that I’m giving serious consideration to scanning and framing the 75-Year Plan, then at least I’m on the first step to recovery from Anderson addiction. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:00:59 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com1/6/2009 4:00:59 PMCriterion, who had already shown the Wes Anderson love with their Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic discs, announced back in 2007 that they were going to be putting out an edition of Bottle Rocket. This was met with much joy, especially because the previously released version, which came out back in 1996, was about as bare bones as you could get. The only real special feature it could claim was widescreen on one side of the disc, and full screen on the other. Big whoop. The new version, which just came out in late 2008 has a ton of features, and is available in both standard and Blu-ray editions. But it also contains one of the single most sour notes ever hit in an Anderson DVD. It’s so extremely painful that it makes the package almost worth avoiding. Just to be fair, here’s a list of everything the new edition of Bottle Rocket includes: a new digital transfer, approved by Wes Anderson and director of photography Robert Yeoman DTS HD 5.1 soundtrack Commentary track from Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson The Making of Bottle Rocket documentary with interviews from the actors, director, and producer James L. Brooks, directed by Barry Braverman The original 13 minute Bottle Rocket short film Eleven deleted scenes Storyboards and location photos Photographs by Laura Wilson The Shafrazi Lectures, No 1: Bottle Rocket, a sort of scholarly lecture about the movie Murita Cycles a 1978 short film from Barry Braverman Altogether, that’s a lot of Bottle Rocketry for anyone. But the biggest draw for most people will be the new transfer, and the commentary from Wilson and Anderson, who also wrote the film. You think they’d have some interesting insights into the making of this film. After all, Wilson and Anderson have known each other since college, and have collaborated on several films together. Instead what you get is a sleepy commentary from Wilson, with Anderson constantly prodding him and desperately trying to add some value to the track. At one point Anderson asks Wilson if he got the suggested questions or topics that were sent to him, in case they ran into long silences on the commentary, to which Wilson replies, “No. What questions?” Unfortunately, it ends up sounding like someone from Criterion called them that morning, and said “Oh, we need to record you guys in about two hours.” Both Wilson and Anderson sound pretty much bored by the entire process, and there are several moments where vast expanses of silence pass by like icebergs in the night. Even if they ran out of stuff to talk about from Bottle Rocket, couldn’t they just shoot the breeze? No funny stories from the set? No anecdotes about all the Wilson brothers? No, instead you get stuff like Wilson saying to Anderson, “Hey, isn’t that your hair in that shot?” Why not just feature Anderson by himself? He did a great solo job on The Royal Tenenbaums commentary. I don’t know much about the history of DVD authoring, so I’m not sure if there’s ever been a time when a DVD producer has gone back to the talent to say “I’m sorry, this just isn’t usable. Can you guys try that again?” The only commentary that comes to mind that is this inexplicably bad is from The Goonies, when Sean Astin has to leave in the middle because he had to attend a dinner with Joe Pantoliano. No kidding. The other extras on the disc almost make up for this, particularly the eleven deleted scenes. There’s a scene called “Temple Nash Jr.” where Dignan, Bob, and Anthony are asking all kinds of gun questions of a redneck gun nut. It’s hilarious enough to be a standalone short film. Most directors comment on deleted scenes, but sadly Anderson doesn’t chime in on why these were cut. I’m assuming it must have been for time. The Wilsons’ mother Laura, a professional photographer, took photos during the making of the short film and during its Sundance run, and also documented the crew’s initial meetings at Columbia Studios. These are shot in black and white, and they look terrific. There’s something about young Wes Anderson with his shock of Eraserhead hair that smacks of an Ivy League prep school, even though he was born and raised in Texas. Plus, seeing the pure joy on both Anderson and Wilson’s faces as they jump Toyota-commercial style off of the Columbia steps is a treat. The only bad thing about the doc The Making of Bottle Rocket is that it’s only 26 minutes long. Filmmaker and longtime friend of the Wilson/Anderson set Barry Braverman gets pretty much everyone involved in the film on camera, and the best quote comes from James Caan, who says about his experience working on the movie, “Well, it was like three days. It was like being in the left hand corner of the Hollywood Squares or something.” There are some great remembrances in this that aren’t in the commentary track, and it’s also been shot in high-def widescreen as well. It’s too bad they couldn’t have made this feature length. Also included on the disc is a short film from Braverman, this one made in 1978. It’s called Murita Cycles, and is about Braverman’s father who ran a bicycle shop on Staten Island for years, and Wilson and Anderson both said it was one of their inspirations for the Bottle Rocket short. It’s a touching look at an eccentric guy who goes from normal father to packrat kook and is documented and interviewed by his son. The Shafrazi Lectures, No 1: Bottle Rocket is an 11-minute, very strange discussion of the film from Tony Shafrazi, the owner of the Shafrazi Gallery in New York. He’s the artist who spray painted “KILL LIES ALL” on top of Picasso’s “Guernica” in the Museum of Modern Art in 1974. It’s a near-incoherent praise of the film, and he compares it to films like East of Eden and Breathless, while displaying scenes on sheets of paper that he’s holding up in a dark room. It’s hard to decide if it’s sincere or not, since they including fake Charlie Rose style interviews from “The Peter Bradley Show” on the Tenenbaums disc. It’s almost worth watching just for the sheer bizarre factor. “I don’t like all this serious stuff,” Shafrazi remarks at one point. There’s one other special feature nearly as painful as the commentary, but for different reasons. That’s an anamorphic test scene that was shot when they considered shooting the movie in the widescreen Panavision format. It looks completely gorgeous, and would have made Bottle Rocket even prettier than it already is. Granted, it’s a fairly perfect movie by my standards, but the movie geek in me yearns for a non-existent widescreen version of this to get unearthed sometime. Maybe in an alternate universe. DVD booklets are not always worth remarking on, but this one includes Dignan’s complete 75-Year Plan along with essays from James L. Brooks and Martin Scorsese, all done in Dignan’s handwriting, which I assume is from illustrator Ian Dingman. If I admit that I’m giving serious consideration to scanning and framing the 75-Year Plan, then at least I’m on the first step to recovery from Anderson addiction. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/10/7/35995.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 10/7/2008 11:01:06 AM
Body: Product placement in movies is now so overdone that we may not even notice it unless a particular film or TV show really hits us over the head with a blatant in-your-face product shot. Otherwise, seeing commercial goods everywhere merely seems like everyday life in capitalist America. Just look at any of the websites that tally up products spotlighted in mainstream movies and you’ll probably be surprised (though not shocked) at how many brands appear in each new release. Did you notice that Blades of Glory contains 38 separate products? Probably not. Many of those products couldn’t have gotten their money’s worth, because the movie doesn’t allow the audience to walk away recalling any one particular item. At a time when TV’s Top Chef and 30 Rock show us how lame blatantly whorish and ironic product placement can get, and while moviegoers are being subjected to more subliminal, suggestive and unintentional advertisements (Speed Racer, Wall-E and Beverly Hills Chihuahua respectively have us thinking about McDonalds, Apple products and Taco Bell, though some of these associations are not necessarily the movie’s fault), it’s good to remember that not all product placement is superfluous or despicable. Some of it is actually funny, smart and beneficial to mankind. Movie: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial Product: Reese’s Pieces In case you don’t believe the part about product placement being beneficial to mankind, just imagine what could have happened if E.T. had featured either of Steven Spielberg’s first choices in candy placement, M&Ms or Hershey’s Kisses, rather than Reese’s Pieces. Would the delicious peanut butter candies still exist today? Okay, they might, but they certainly wouldn’t have become so popular so fast. Don’t forget that advertising is not simply about a greedy corporation marketing a product for profitable gain; it’s also about alerting us to wonderful new products that we otherwise might not have noticed. And isn’t your choice of sundae mix-ins better thanks to millions of moviegoers noticing the existence of Reese’s Pieces? Movie: Back to the Future Product: DeLorean DMC-12 On the opposite side of the spectrum from Reese’s Pieces, the DeLorean DMC-12 (popularly referred to as simply the DeLorean), is possibly the least necessary product ever to be placed prominently in a film. Maybe if it were actually a time machine it would be a must-have and the DeLorean Motor Company could have been back in business despite having gone bust a few years prior to the release of Back to the Future. Instead, the DeLorean is just a cool car, yet one that highly appeals to huge BTTF fans. And of the 6,500 DMC-12s still in existence, it’s likely that a large percentage are possessed by people who’ve installed a mock Flux Capacitor and own a vanity license plate that says something like “MCFLY” or “88 MPH” or “OUTATIME”. Get ready to see more tributes to the movie, too, since a car manufacturer in Houston has begun making new DMC-12s in limited production. Movie: The Wizard Product: Nintendo A year after Mac and Me seemed to indicate that really, really prominent and shameless product placement was possibly a bad idea, The Wizard came out and provided the opposing argument. Then and now people have looked at the film’s promotion of Nintendo’s latest and much-anticipated blockbuster video game (and the the system’s “so bad” Power Glove controller) as one of the low moments in product placement, but for anyone who cared about video games in 1989, the chance to even get a glimpse of Super Mario Bros. 3 was worth the price of admission for an otherwise lame kiddie version of Rain Man. Movie: Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle Product: White Castle Like The Wizard’s promotion of Nintendo products, the employment of the White Castle fast food brand in Harold and Kumar is about reminding an audience about something it already likes and desires. But unlike The Wizard, Harold and Kumar doesn’t make the sponsorship seem like such a cheap grab for cash. Sure, the stoner comedy could have used any fast food place, real or made up, but for anyone who has devoured a whole Crave Case with one other friend at four in the morning, the specifically branded joke is all the more appreciated. Movie: Wayne’s World Products: Pizza Hut; Doritos; Reebok; Nuprin; Pepsi Tina Fey may seem like the smartest SNL vet ever, but each time 30 Rock does the ironic product placement shtick, a number of Mike Myers and Dana Carvey loyalists likely shout at their screen, “Sheah, right! As if that’s not a 15-year-old gag.” And Fey isn’t the only one guilty of recycling the joke, although occasionally movies like Talladega Nights and Josie and the Pussycats can get away with it, because it’s kind of a necessary gag when satirizing things like NASCAR and pop music. Even the reflexive use of product placement in Fight Club somewhat descends from the Wayne’s World scene. Movie: Best in Show Products: Starbucks; Apple; J. Crew; L.L. Bean Product placement doesn’t always have to be about favorably advertising a brand. It can also be about making fun of a brand, or making fun of a certain kind of person that brand is geared toward. In the mockumentary Best in Show, Starbucks is made fun of for having so many locations, while Apple is merely employed in the joke. Catalog clothing companies J. Crew and L.L. Bean are also simultaneously the butt of a joke and the means with which Christopher Guest makes fun of two of his film’s characters. Movie: Good Bye Lenin! Product: Coca-Cola Product placement can also be about employing a product that serves as an idea. Coca-Cola is a brand that has been featured in tons of films as more a symbol of capitalism and the West than of soda pop (see my old post on Coca-Cola in cinema here), and in this German comedy, a giant Coca-Cola billboard serves to represent the westernization going on outside the window of the room of an oblivious woman being duped to believe the Berlin Wall never fell. Movie: One, Two, Three Product: Pepsi The Coca-Cola placement in Good Bye Lenin! recalls Billy Wilder’s film One, Two, Three, which also deals with the division of East and West Berlin and also employs the iconic brand for the same kind of symbolic representation of capitalism. In Wilder’s film, though, the product is much more prominent, as the plot revolves around a Coca-Cola executive (played by James Cagney). Yet after so much mention of Coke, especially with the association of overbearing consumerism and cultural imperialism, you’re more likely to come away from the film wanting a bottle of Pepsi, instead. Of course, it also helps that the final shot in the film is of Cagney holding a bottle of Coca-Cola’s main competitor. Movie: Breathless (À bout de souffle) If you’re surprised that there was product placement as long ago as 1961, when One, Two, Three was released, let’s go back even further to 1960, and to another country, France. Jean-Luc Godard’s breakthrough and groundbreaking film probably wasn’t meant to increase sales of the New York Herald Tribune, but what male viewer could resist purchasing a subscription after watching and hearing Jean Seberg peddle the newspaper at the beginning of the film? Perhaps now the film even still inspires young men to subscribe to New York magazine, as a substitute for its now unavailable ancestor. Oh, and just so you know, product placement can be found many, many decades earlier than the 1960s. Movie: Minority Report Products: Lexus; Guiness; American Express; and others The product placement in Minority Report is considered an example of overkill, but that’s also the point. The film is set in a not-so-far-off future in which ads are everywhere, and most of them are personalized to address the consumer directly by name. It’s one of many futurist ideas in the film meant to exaggerate the present while predicting the direction technology is going. Already people receive personalized spam and internet ads, and advances in personalized marketing are growing closer and closer to what exists as a joke/prophesy in Spielberg’s film. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:01:06 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com10/7/2008 11:01:06 AM Product placement in movies is now so overdone that we may not even notice it unless a particular film or TV show really hits us over the head with a blatant in-your-face product shot. Otherwise, seeing commercial goods everywhere merely seems like everyday life in capitalist America. Just look at any of the websites that tally up products spotlighted in mainstream movies and you’ll probably be surprised (though not shocked) at how many brands appear in each new release. Did you notice that Blades of Glory contains 38 separate products? Probably not. Many of those products couldn’t have gotten their money’s worth, because the movie doesn’t allow the audience to walk away recalling any one particular item. At a time when TV’s Top Chef and 30 Rock show us how lame blatantly whorish and ironic product placement can get, and while moviegoers are being subjected to more subliminal, suggestive and unintentional advertisements (Speed Racer, Wall-E and Beverly Hills Chihuahua respectively have us thinking about McDonalds, Apple products and Taco Bell, though some of these associations are not necessarily the movie’s fault), it’s good to remember that not all product placement is superfluous or despicable. Some of it is actually funny, smart and beneficial to mankind. Movie: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial Product: Reese’s Pieces In case you don’t believe the part about product placement being beneficial to mankind, just imagine what could have happened if E.T. had featured either of Steven Spielberg’s first choices in candy placement, M&Ms or Hershey’s Kisses, rather than Reese’s Pieces. Would the delicious peanut butter candies still exist today? Okay, they might, but they certainly wouldn’t have become so popular so fast. Don’t forget that advertising is not simply about a greedy corporation marketing a product for profitable gain; it’s also about alerting us to wonderful new products that we otherwise might not have noticed. And isn’t your choice of sundae mix-ins better thanks to millions of moviegoers noticing the existence of Reese’s Pieces? Movie: Back to the Future Product: DeLorean DMC-12 On the opposite side of the spectrum from Reese’s Pieces, the DeLorean DMC-12 (popularly referred to as simply the DeLorean), is possibly the least necessary product ever to be placed prominently in a film. Maybe if it were actually a time machine it would be a must-have and the DeLorean Motor Company could have been back in business despite having gone bust a few years prior to the release of Back to the Future. Instead, the DeLorean is just a cool car, yet one that highly appeals to huge BTTF fans. And of the 6,500 DMC-12s still in existence, it’s likely that a large percentage are possessed by people who’ve installed a mock Flux Capacitor and own a vanity license plate that says something like “MCFLY” or “88 MPH” or “OUTATIME”. Get ready to see more tributes to the movie, too, since a car manufacturer in Houston has begun making new DMC-12s in limited production. Movie: The Wizard Product: Nintendo A year after Mac and Me seemed to indicate that really, really prominent and shameless product placement was possibly a bad idea, The Wizard came out and provided the opposing argument. Then and now people have looked at the film’s promotion of Nintendo’s latest and much-anticipated blockbuster video game (and the the system’s “so bad” Power Glove controller) as one of the low moments in product placement, but for anyone who cared about video games in 1989, the chance to even get a glimpse of Super Mario Bros. 3 was worth the price of admission for an otherwise lame kiddie version of Rain Man. Movie: Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle Product: White Castle Like The Wizard’s promotion of Nintendo products, the employment of the White Castle fast food brand in Harold and Kumar is about reminding an audience about something it already likes and desires. But unlike The Wizard, Harold and Kumar doesn’t make the sponsorship seem like such a cheap grab for cash. Sure, the stoner comedy could have used any fast food place, real or made up, but for anyone who has devoured a whole Crave Case with one other friend at four in the morning, the specifically branded joke is all the more appreciated. Movie: Wayne’s World Products: Pizza Hut; Doritos; Reebok; Nuprin; Pepsi Tina Fey may seem like the smartest SNL vet ever, but each time 30 Rock does the ironic product placement shtick, a number of Mike Myers and Dana Carvey loyalists likely shout at their screen, “Sheah, right! As if that’s not a 15-year-old gag.” And Fey isn’t the only one guilty of recycling the joke, although occasionally movies like Talladega Nights and Josie and the Pussycats can get away with it, because it’s kind of a necessary gag when satirizing things like NASCAR and pop music. Even the reflexive use of product placement in Fight Club somewhat descends from the Wayne’s World scene. Movie: Best in Show Products: Starbucks; Apple; J. Crew; L.L. Bean Product placement doesn’t always have to be about favorably advertising a brand. It can also be about making fun of a brand, or making fun of a certain kind of person that brand is geared toward. In the mockumentary Best in Show, Starbucks is made fun of for having so many locations, while Apple is merely employed in the joke. Catalog clothing companies J. Crew and L.L. Bean are also simultaneously the butt of a joke and the means with which Christopher Guest makes fun of two of his film’s characters. Movie: Good Bye Lenin! Product: Coca-Cola Product placement can also be about employing a product that serves as an idea. Coca-Cola is a brand that has been featured in tons of films as more a symbol of capitalism and the West than of soda pop (see my old post on Coca-Cola in cinema here), and in this German comedy, a giant Coca-Cola billboard serves to represent the westernization going on outside the window of the room of an oblivious woman being duped to believe the Berlin Wall never fell. Movie: One, Two, Three Product: Pepsi The Coca-Cola placement in Good Bye Lenin! recalls Billy Wilder’s film One, Two, Three, which also deals with the division of East and West Berlin and also employs the iconic brand for the same kind of symbolic representation of capitalism. In Wilder’s film, though, the product is much more prominent, as the plot revolves around a Coca-Cola executive (played by James Cagney). Yet after so much mention of Coke, especially with the association of overbearing consumerism and cultural imperialism, you’re more likely to come away from the film wanting a bottle of Pepsi, instead. Of course, it also helps that the final shot in the film is of Cagney holding a bottle of Coca-Cola’s main competitor. Movie: Breathless (À bout de souffle) If you’re surprised that there was product placement as long ago as 1961, when One, Two, Three was released, let’s go back even further to 1960, and to another country, France. Jean-Luc Godard’s breakthrough and groundbreaking film probably wasn’t meant to increase sales of the New York Herald Tribune, but what male viewer could resist purchasing a subscription after watching and hearing Jean Seberg peddle the newspaper at the beginning of the film? Perhaps now the film even still inspires young men to subscribe to New York magazine, as a substitute for its now unavailable ancestor. Oh, and just so you know, product placement can be found many, many decades earlier than the 1960s. Movie: Minority Report Products: Lexus; Guiness; American Express; and others The product placement in Minority Report is considered an example of overkill, but that’s also the point. The film is set in a not-so-far-off future in which ads are everywhere, and most of them are personalized to address the consumer directly by name. It’s one of many futurist ideas in the film meant to exaggerate the present while predicting the direction technology is going. Already people receive personalized spam and internet ads, and advances in personalized marketing are growing closer and closer to what exists as a joke/prophesy in Spielberg’s film. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/9/15/35151.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 9/15/2008 1:01:19 PM
Body: It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Barry Jenkins’ film Medicine for Melancholy, and we’re lucky enough to have Barry be big fans of Spout as well. His little film has had a long journey since it premiered in Austin at SXSW earlier this year, and it’s continuing to take him around the world. We spoke with Barry in Toronto about the genesis of the movie, what has happened since that first screening in Austin, how he found the actors, and if this film represents a love letter from him to the city of San Francisco. Read on for the full interview. Well, the first thing I was going to say was thank you for all the shout outs you always give Spout and Karina whenever you discuss the movie. That question about the de-saturation in the film always comes up. So your check’s in the mail for that. [laughs] No, I always mention Karina, man. You guys were like one of the first people to publish about the film at South By, when nobody knew about it. So I was thankful and I pay it forward. That’s good. The last time Karina spoke to you, you’d never been to Austin. You hadn’t been to SXSW before. Exactly. Then your film sort of became one of the most buzzed about and talked about breakout films at the festival. How did that change things for you and for the movie? It was, making it with just me and my friends, this really small crew and not very expensive equipment. So we felt that once we did get in SXSW, we knew it was a good thing. But even still, we thought the movie would play there, and then maybe it would play another film festival. And then we’d sell DVDs off the website. But I think having that buzz coming out of South By, I think it really made us all kind of take the project more seriously. We saw the potential that maybe it could catch on, and we could actually get it to audiences. Having now been to Austin, what did you think of the city? Everyone’s always saying, oh Austin’s such a cool place, but no one can really say why that is. The great thing about going to Austin is everybody who worked on the film, we all were students together at Florida State University, which is in Tallahassee, Florida, which is a college town with a great film school. I think we all dispersed and moved to all these different places. Every now and then we’d all get together and have this nostalgia for this almost incubator kind of feeling that we all felt in Tallahassee. And I think premiering the film in Austin, we were all like, man this is just like Tallahassee, but much bigger. There’s something that feels very possible in the air in that city. And I think that’s the reason why they can host a festival that large, despite the fact that the city feels so small. It was a really good experience. So talking directly about the film, how did you find Wyatt and Tracey for this? Well we tried to cast in San Francisco, but I guess it’s just the irony of ironies, when you’re dealing with a city that has a devolving or diminishing African American population, we just couldn’t find black actors just to come out and read for the parts. So we went down to L.A. We used basically the actor’s equivalent of Craigslist, which is to post things on these things like NowCasting.com. And we didn’t have any money, so we got people who really didn’t have any credits. Tracey Heggins was the first woman that we saw, and of course, we then saw 50 other women. Because I’m an idiot, I couldn’t pull the trigger. And then we actually saw about 50 guys, and we really weren’t satisfied or happy with any of the people we had seen. And a friend of ours just happened to know, she was like, “Oh, I know this guy Wyatt Cenac. You should audition him.” I was like yeah, sure, whatever. I’ll see anybody. And so we called Wyatt up. He was doing a lot of stand up at that point in L.A., and so he wasn’t really committed to too many things. So he came out, read cold, and was just perfect. In a way it was really great because I felt like Tracey and Wyatt themselves, they weren’t really the characters that I saw when I wrote the script. But they were so specific and unique in their auditions, that I realized these two people can make the movie go. And so yeah, we went with the both of them. Yeah and I think using actors that audiences haven’t really seen a lot of, I know Tracey’s done a fair amount of television, but, it kind of helps feel like they’re more real. They didn’t feel like this was a polished performance. It felt like these were real people. Thanks, I appreciate that. You know, it’s funny, because now that Wyatt’s on “The Daily Show,” it’s like I was just screening the film for the staff of the Telluride Film Festival. Because I work at that festival, so we just had a little staff screening before the festival. And the minute the first image comes up, they’re like hey that kind of looks like that guy on Comedy Central. I was like yeah, it is. But we made this movie before he was on Comedy Central, but I guess you can put it that way. It’s just fine. [laughter] Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. Is he being on “The Daily Show” sort of a result of what is happening with Medicine? Or did that happen separate of the movie? You know, I think it definitely happened separate. Wyatt is a great standup. And I think he travels in a completely different circle that this film doesn’t travel in, which is the standup scene in L.A. with UCB, “Upright Citizen’s Brigade.” And I think, really, he had kind of been building momentum there, and was almost just like, I think, really I kind of believe in Karma. I think there was some really good positive energy with the film. Because after SXSW, he kind of got the audition for Comedy Central and “The Daily Show,” and we flew him out there. And he did it. And they had never seen the movie, or even heard of it. But it was like all these things, the timing was right. He just nailed it. And now he’s on the show. The movie has some strong words about the current state of race in San Francisco and the housing situation, too. Would you consider it to be sort of your love letter to San Francisco? You clearly love the city, watching this. Would you consider that to be true? Or would you just say it happens to be set in San Francisco? No, no, no. I think it’s definitely, without a doubt, a love letter to San Francisco. Sometimes, depending on my mood, I’ll say it’s a love hate letter to San Francisco. But when I originally got the idea for the film years ago, after watching Claire Denis’ Vendredi Soir, I kind of wrote a brief little paragraph about it. And the last line of the paragraph says could be set in Chicago or New York City. And it was just about two characters after a one night stand spending the day together. But looking back on it, there was no way in hell this movie could have been set in New York or Chicago, because it’s just such a San Francisco movie. I really felt like what made the movie worth making, because I sat on the idea for about five years, was the fact that I felt like there was a real importance to the city as almost a third character in the film. It really kind of drives, particularly the paranoia that the character of Micah is feeling. It’s like the environment is what makes the movie plausible to me. Then the housing rights discussion, or the meeting that they stumble across, I found that personally to be a little bit jarring. It shook me out of the moment for a second. Was that on purpose? And how did you come to put that in the film? You know, it is jarring, because it’s a definite narrative break from the rest of the film. It was something that I felt was important to really round out the A) the depiction of the city that we were giving. And then B) that we were all these things that Micah was consumed with. Originally, when I first wrote the script, I wrote it as a conversation between the two leads. It just felt completely false. In thinking about it, I was like, this is just really important to me. It’s really important to capture this aspect of the City of San Francisco. So I thought, you know what, it’s worth it to allow a moment for the actual city to speak for itself. We literally, we knew we were going to have the characters walk by and look in. We felt like the fact that these two people could be walking down the street and they could have passed this meeting and stopped and listened. We thought that was enough of an entryway for the audience. Even though it was jarring, they would get into that perspective, the point of view of Joe and Micah listening to that meeting that they would just go with it and really hear the city speak for itself. We didn’t write any of that. That’s was a real meeting. We just set the camera in the corner and we just let it roll. We had our actors walk by. It’s one of my favorite moments in the film. I think of all the sequences that are somewhat jarring because there are a few other places where we take a few liberties, maybe too many liberties. But we’re young so [laughter] felt people would give us leeway. But that was the one that stands out to me. I thought it was important to have in the film. Well, since you mentioned other moments that stand out or that kind of shake the viewer a little bit, because you said, at least when you talked to Karina earlier in the year, you said this film is like Do the Right Thing meets Before Sunrise with a little bit of French new wave thrown into it. Yes. Does that still stand up for you, that analogy? I think it definitely still holds up for me. Although I feel like the more I watch the film, the more I see those new wave influences from when I first went to film school. I kind of binged on Godard and Breathless and those movies when I first started learning about cinema. I didn’t grow up wanting to be a filmmaker. I happened to stumble into film school and new wave was the first thing I was introduced to. I do think that analogy still holds up. It’s something that I wouldn’t make, unless asked me to make it. So it’s not something that I openly push upon the film. But I definitely think, in a way, the spirit that we made the movie in. We shot it in 15 days with a five man crew. We shot it in November and it debuted at South By on March 6, which is a small gestation window. I think that energy, that new wave energy, is definitely there. Before Sunrise, Sunset it’s obvious. The whole two characters walking. I really would have mentioned Claire Denis’ Vendredi Soir, which was the actual inspiration for the film, but I am nowhere near the filmmaker that Clare Denis is. I like to leave her name out of my mouth as much as possible. [laughter] Well, we spoke to Spike Lee a couple of times, speaking about Do the Right Thing. We talked to him a couple of times in Toronto and he was there promoting his film Miracle at St. Anna. St. Anna, yeah. And then he at both of the times that I was scheduled to talk to him, he ended up speaking about Sarah Palin and Obama. Sarah had just given that inflammatory speech, like last week. He clearly had some strong thoughts about that. He said, “Obama needs to go on the offensive.” With Obama, this is an incredible year for politics. We have Obama, the first African American nominee, which is pretty amazing. Although oddly enough, a lot of people are saying, well, he’s black but is he black enough? Right. Which is a weird statement in itself but that applies to Medicine for Melancholy as well. When you get into the issues of race then who Tracey’s character may or may not be dating, I like the fact that we don’t ever see him, so we don’t really know who he is. Thank you very much, sir. That was a great choice because I think that would have grounded it too much to be like, oh, well, now he legitimately has a reason to be so upset. I agree with you. It would have made it more of a mission statement for me, which I don’t think the film is, one way or the other. Right. Well, what are your thoughts about the whole… you may not even want to talk about this, but Obama, the possibility that he may be our next president and the whole issues that are surrounding… No, no, no. Actually I would love to talk about it, because it is something we talked about. We didn’t really speak about it until after the film was in post. When I wrote the film it wasn’t this whole Obama mania. That stuff didn’t exist. It was a foregone conclusion that Hillary was going to get the nomination. After we shot the film and we were cutting the film and we were doing South by Southwest and the primaries were going on, I think it was when Obama gave that whole speech on race and how we need to find a common ground and have those discussions and relearn how to articulate this issues that we are all so consumed with as Americans. I feel like for the character of Micah, I feel like that’s truly the arc and I think why all the issues of housing rights and gentrification…. I think that’s why it’s important for him to have those discussions and go through this journey with Joe. I feel like when he wakes up on that couch the next morning, he’s going to learn to better articulate the things that he was experiencing, which is for him everything is black and white. It’s like the white people are moving into San Francisco and the black people are being forced out. But really, San Francisco is a small space and everything is driven by economics. What’s happening is the people who make six figures are moving in and the people who make five figures are moving out, whether they be black, white, Chinese, Korean, Hispanic, whatever. I really feel like that’s what Obama stood for when the primary was going on and he was completely to the left. Not completely to the left but when the change was actual real change… I think in that way the film and this year in the primary election and the race for the presidential nomination, I really feel like that’s where the two come together. Relearning to articulate this kind of black and white issue that has always consumed Americans since the “dawn of time” or whatever date you want to affix to that. The title, I know you said at the Q&A at the film that the title was you saw the Ray Bradbury short story collection and you thought that was applicable. Now, would you say, in the film that the characters both serve as a medicine for each other’s melancholy? I definitely think so. I think that’s why it felt OK to take Bradbury’s title. Even though the film wasn’t an adaptation of that actual short story, there are some similarities. I definitely think so. I don’t think it’s a cure for melancholy. I think it’s a medicine. I think they both feel a little bit better about what ails them. Or, at the very least, they’ll have a better understanding of what it is that’s causing the melancholy and they can learn to work on it. And that’s why the ending isn’t a happy ending. It’s kind of an open ending. I like to use the term productive. I think it’s a productive ending, and it’s been a productive journey for the both of them. American audiences are used to having a moment, particularly in independent films, where you don’t really know what’s going to happen   a moment where it seems like it’s going to turn sinister. That moment in this movie, for me, was when they’re at the taco truck and those two guys come up. You’re like are these guys going to roll them? Are they trying to sell them drugs? But, then it turns out they’re extremely the opposite end of the spectrum. They’re hydration guys. Do those guys really exist in San Francisco? When I first wrote the screenplay, it actually was going to be a kid who comes up and tries to sell them some pot, because that would actually happen in San Francisco. You’re right. After I wrote it and I read it, I said to myself exactly what you just said. I thought, you know what, I’m not going to do that. Let’s go completely in the opposite direction, and let’s just make this so ridiculous. In looking back on it, I think it’s a great moment, because the film needs a little bit of levity, and I think those guys really provide it. And there are no actors in the film aside from Tracey and Wyatt. Those two guys don’t go around selling vitamin water, but they’re friends of mine. They hang together all the time. They’re just a couple of really fun guys. When I thought about how to reconceive the scene, I was like it’s got to be a cheating yard. These guys will do this, and they’ll be really funny. They showed up, and it was just perfect. It’s one of my favorite scenes in the movie. And you know what, those guys always get the biggest laughs on the screen. Here’s this guy on the “Daily Show.” who has all these great jokes in the movie, and these two guys, my buddies, get the biggest laugh in the movie. I love it. I know you had a notice in the credits that you had a music supervisor or coordinator on the film. Did that mostly come from you? Did it come from the music person? I can say about 80% of the music came from me. And then the other 20% was between the editor, Nat Sanders, and the actual music supervisor. What the music supervisor did   my buddy Greg   was just make it all legal. He had produced another independent film, and he knew that I had a list of songs that I wanted. And he was said, you just can’t put those songs in. You have to figure a way to legally get them, and that was really what he did. I like to write to music. In most of the scenes, I think the reason why they cut so well to music is because I wrote them with those cues in mind. And we made the movie so fast that I couldn’t really be there with Nat while he was editing the movie. At least, not at first, because he was editing while we were shooting it. And so, it was great to have those definite songs for those definite set pieces that had a definite energy. I could just orally communicate to him, and then come in to do the editing. They just totally worked out. Yeah, it had a great soundtrack. Thanks, I appreciate it. Well that’s all I have. Actually I have one thing I’d like to say. Sure. Go ahead. Because you touched on the housing rights meeting and that being jarring, I made the comment that there are a few other places where I think it’s drawing to. I felt that because we knew that it was going to be extremely jarring in that scene, we tried to work our way up to that. I think there are two other places where we jar the audience, almost in preparation for that meeting. We tried to earn the right to do that. I think when they’re riding the bikes and the song is clipping, it’s a very weird audio cue. I think that’s the first place where we sort of break the rules a little bit. I think with the carousel, especially with the way it ends, with the diaject sound coming back in, after the store fades out, we took another step further towards breaking that wall. And then with the documentary scene, dropped into the narrative, that’s when we completely go beyond. But hopefully, when audiences watch the movie, I hope it prepares them for that moment. What’s next with the film? Are you going to another festival? Yeah. We’re going to IFP Week in New York next week. And then we’re going to go to London, Vienna and Stockholm before we are finally released by IFC with the day and date model, in February. Wow. Well that sure beats selling DVDs on a website somewhere. You know what, it’s funny. It’s been a hell of a journey from South by Southwest. I am sitting on the 19th floor of a hotel in Toronto talking to you right now. The last time I spoke Sprout, I was sitting in my buddy’s studio apartment in L.A. in my underwear trying to work. And that wasn’t even that long ago. That’s pretty amazing. No, it wasn’t that long ago. It’s a charmed little film. Thank you guys for plugging us initially. No problem. I hope at least you have pants on now. I do. I’m not alone. Charlie’s here too. So he made sure I put the pants on. Nice. It was a requirement. Well cool, Barry. I wish you much continued success. And hopefully, we’ll be talking to you down the line with your next movie. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. And if and when I do make another movie, damn right, I will definitely come to Sprout. You guys have been very good to me. Great. That’s so nice of you to say. Thank you. We appreciate that. Thanks, man. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Mon, 15 Sep 2008 17:01:19 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com9/15/2008 1:01:19 PM It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Barry Jenkins’ film Medicine for Melancholy, and we’re lucky enough to have Barry be big fans of Spout as well. His little film has had a long journey since it premiered in Austin at SXSW earlier this year, and it’s continuing to take him around the world. We spoke with Barry in Toronto about the genesis of the movie, what has happened since that first screening in Austin, how he found the actors, and if this film represents a love letter from him to the city of San Francisco. Read on for the full interview. Well, the first thing I was going to say was thank you for all the shout outs you always give Spout and Karina whenever you discuss the movie. That question about the de-saturation in the film always comes up. So your check’s in the mail for that. [laughs] No, I always mention Karina, man. You guys were like one of the first people to publish about the film at South By, when nobody knew about it. So I was thankful and I pay it forward. That’s good. The last time Karina spoke to you, you’d never been to Austin. You hadn’t been to SXSW before. Exactly. Then your film sort of became one of the most buzzed about and talked about breakout films at the festival. How did that change things for you and for the movie? It was, making it with just me and my friends, this really small crew and not very expensive equipment. So we felt that once we did get in SXSW, we knew it was a good thing. But even still, we thought the movie would play there, and then maybe it would play another film festival. And then we’d sell DVDs off the website. But I think having that buzz coming out of South By, I think it really made us all kind of take the project more seriously. We saw the potential that maybe it could catch on, and we could actually get it to audiences. Having now been to Austin, what did you think of the city? Everyone’s always saying, oh Austin’s such a cool place, but no one can really say why that is. The great thing about going to Austin is everybody who worked on the film, we all were students together at Florida State University, which is in Tallahassee, Florida, which is a college town with a great film school. I think we all dispersed and moved to all these different places. Every now and then we’d all get together and have this nostalgia for this almost incubator kind of feeling that we all felt in Tallahassee. And I think premiering the film in Austin, we were all like, man this is just like Tallahassee, but much bigger. There’s something that feels very possible in the air in that city. And I think that’s the reason why they can host a festival that large, despite the fact that the city feels so small. It was a really good experience. So talking directly about the film, how did you find Wyatt and Tracey for this? Well we tried to cast in San Francisco, but I guess it’s just the irony of ironies, when you’re dealing with a city that has a devolving or diminishing African American population, we just couldn’t find black actors just to come out and read for the parts. So we went down to L.A. We used basically the actor’s equivalent of Craigslist, which is to post things on these things like NowCasting.com. And we didn’t have any money, so we got people who really didn’t have any credits. Tracey Heggins was the first woman that we saw, and of course, we then saw 50 other women. Because I’m an idiot, I couldn’t pull the trigger. And then we actually saw about 50 guys, and we really weren’t satisfied or happy with any of the people we had seen. And a friend of ours just happened to know, she was like, “Oh, I know this guy Wyatt Cenac. You should audition him.” I was like yeah, sure, whatever. I’ll see anybody. And so we called Wyatt up. He was doing a lot of stand up at that point in L.A., and so he wasn’t really committed to too many things. So he came out, read cold, and was just perfect. In a way it was really great because I felt like Tracey and Wyatt themselves, they weren’t really the characters that I saw when I wrote the script. But they were so specific and unique in their auditions, that I realized these two people can make the movie go. And so yeah, we went with the both of them. Yeah and I think using actors that audiences haven’t really seen a lot of, I know Tracey’s done a fair amount of television, but, it kind of helps feel like they’re more real. They didn’t feel like this was a polished performance. It felt like these were real people. Thanks, I appreciate that. You know, it’s funny, because now that Wyatt’s on “The Daily Show,” it’s like I was just screening the film for the staff of the Telluride Film Festival. Because I work at that festival, so we just had a little staff screening before the festival. And the minute the first image comes up, they’re like hey that kind of looks like that guy on Comedy Central. I was like yeah, it is. But we made this movie before he was on Comedy Central, but I guess you can put it that way. It’s just fine. [laughter] Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. Is he being on “The Daily Show” sort of a result of what is happening with Medicine? Or did that happen separate of the movie? You know, I think it definitely happened separate. Wyatt is a great standup. And I think he travels in a completely different circle that this film doesn’t travel in, which is the standup scene in L.A. with UCB, “Upright Citizen’s Brigade.” And I think, really, he had kind of been building momentum there, and was almost just like, I think, really I kind of believe in Karma. I think there was some really good positive energy with the film. Because after SXSW, he kind of got the audition for Comedy Central and “The Daily Show,” and we flew him out there. And he did it. And they had never seen the movie, or even heard of it. But it was like all these things, the timing was right. He just nailed it. And now he’s on the show. The movie has some strong words about the current state of race in San Francisco and the housing situation, too. Would you consider it to be sort of your love letter to San Francisco? You clearly love the city, watching this. Would you consider that to be true? Or would you just say it happens to be set in San Francisco? No, no, no. I think it’s definitely, without a doubt, a love letter to San Francisco. Sometimes, depending on my mood, I’ll say it’s a love hate letter to San Francisco. But when I originally got the idea for the film years ago, after watching Claire Denis’ Vendredi Soir, I kind of wrote a brief little paragraph about it. And the last line of the paragraph says could be set in Chicago or New York City. And it was just about two characters after a one night stand spending the day together. But looking back on it, there was no way in hell this movie could have been set in New York or Chicago, because it’s just such a San Francisco movie. I really felt like what made the movie worth making, because I sat on the idea for about five years, was the fact that I felt like there was a real importance to the city as almost a third character in the film. It really kind of drives, particularly the paranoia that the character of Micah is feeling. It’s like the environment is what makes the movie plausible to me. Then the housing rights discussion, or the meeting that they stumble across, I found that personally to be a little bit jarring. It shook me out of the moment for a second. Was that on purpose? And how did you come to put that in the film? You know, it is jarring, because it’s a definite narrative break from the rest of the film. It was something that I felt was important to really round out the A) the depiction of the city that we were giving. And then B) that we were all these things that Micah was consumed with. Originally, when I first wrote the script, I wrote it as a conversation between the two leads. It just felt completely false. In thinking about it, I was like, this is just really important to me. It’s really important to capture this aspect of the City of San Francisco. So I thought, you know what, it’s worth it to allow a moment for the actual city to speak for itself. We literally, we knew we were going to have the characters walk by and look in. We felt like the fact that these two people could be walking down the street and they could have passed this meeting and stopped and listened. We thought that was enough of an entryway for the audience. Even though it was jarring, they would get into that perspective, the point of view of Joe and Micah listening to that meeting that they would just go with it and really hear the city speak for itself. We didn’t write any of that. That’s was a real meeting. We just set the camera in the corner and we just let it roll. We had our actors walk by. It’s one of my favorite moments in the film. I think of all the sequences that are somewhat jarring because there are a few other places where we take a few liberties, maybe too many liberties. But we’re young so [laughter] felt people would give us leeway. But that was the one that stands out to me. I thought it was important to have in the film. Well, since you mentioned other moments that stand out or that kind of shake the viewer a little bit, because you said, at least when you talked to Karina earlier in the year, you said this film is like Do the Right Thing meets Before Sunrise with a little bit of French new wave thrown into it. Yes. Does that still stand up for you, that analogy? I think it definitely still holds up for me. Although I feel like the more I watch the film, the more I see those new wave influences from when I first went to film school. I kind of binged on Godard and Breathless and those movies when I first started learning about cinema. I didn’t grow up wanting to be a filmmaker. I happened to stumble into film school and new wave was the first thing I was introduced to. I do think that analogy still holds up. It’s something that I wouldn’t make, unless asked me to make it. So it’s not something that I openly push upon the film. But I definitely think, in a way, the spirit that we made the movie in. We shot it in 15 days with a five man crew. We shot it in November and it debuted at South By on March 6, which is a small gestation window. I think that energy, that new wave energy, is definitely there. Before Sunrise, Sunset it’s obvious. The whole two characters walking. I really would have mentioned Claire Denis’ Vendredi Soir, which was the actual inspiration for the film, but I am nowhere near the filmmaker that Clare Denis is. I like to leave her name out of my mouth as much as possible. [laughter] Well, we spoke to Spike Lee a couple of times, speaking about Do the Right Thing. We talked to him a couple of times in Toronto and he was there promoting his film Miracle at St. Anna. St. Anna, yeah. And then he at both of the times that I was scheduled to talk to him, he ended up speaking about Sarah Palin and Obama. Sarah had just given that inflammatory speech, like last week. He clearly had some strong thoughts about that. He said, “Obama needs to go on the offensive.” With Obama, this is an incredible year for politics. We have Obama, the first African American nominee, which is pretty amazing. Although oddly enough, a lot of people are saying, well, he’s black but is he black enough? Right. Which is a weird statement in itself but that applies to Medicine for Melancholy as well. When you get into the issues of race then who Tracey’s character may or may not be dating, I like the fact that we don’t ever see him, so we don’t really know who he is. Thank you very much, sir. That was a great choice because I think that would have grounded it too much to be like, oh, well, now he legitimately has a reason to be so upset. I agree with you. It would have made it more of a mission statement for me, which I don’t think the film is, one way or the other. Right. Well, what are your thoughts about the whole… you may not even want to talk about this, but Obama, the possibility that he may be our next president and the whole issues that are surrounding… No, no, no. Actually I would love to talk about it, because it is something we talked about. We didn’t really speak about it until after the film was in post. When I wrote the film it wasn’t this whole Obama mania. That stuff didn’t exist. It was a foregone conclusion that Hillary was going to get the nomination. After we shot the film and we were cutting the film and we were doing South by Southwest and the primaries were going on, I think it was when Obama gave that whole speech on race and how we need to find a common ground and have those discussions and relearn how to articulate this issues that we are all so consumed with as Americans. I feel like for the character of Micah, I feel like that’s truly the arc and I think why all the issues of housing rights and gentrification…. I think that’s why it’s important for him to have those discussions and go through this journey with Joe. I feel like when he wakes up on that couch the next morning, he’s going to learn to better articulate the things that he was experiencing, which is for him everything is black and white. It’s like the white people are moving into San Francisco and the black people are being forced out. But really, San Francisco is a small space and everything is driven by economics. What’s happening is the people who make six figures are moving in and the people who make five figures are moving out, whether they be black, white, Chinese, Korean, Hispanic, whatever. I really feel like that’s what Obama stood for when the primary was going on and he was completely to the left. Not completely to the left but when the change was actual real change… I think in that way the film and this year in the primary election and the race for the presidential nomination, I really feel like that’s where the two come together. Relearning to articulate this kind of black and white issue that has always consumed Americans since the “dawn of time” or whatever date you want to affix to that. The title, I know you said at the Q&A at the film that the title was you saw the Ray Bradbury short story collection and you thought that was applicable. Now, would you say, in the film that the characters both serve as a medicine for each other’s melancholy? I definitely think so. I think that’s why it felt OK to take Bradbury’s title. Even though the film wasn’t an adaptation of that actual short story, there are some similarities. I definitely think so. I don’t think it’s a cure for melancholy. I think it’s a medicine. I think they both feel a little bit better about what ails them. Or, at the very least, they’ll have a better understanding of what it is that’s causing the melancholy and they can learn to work on it. And that’s why the ending isn’t a happy ending. It’s kind of an open ending. I like to use the term productive. I think it’s a productive ending, and it’s been a productive journey for the both of them. American audiences are used to having a moment, particularly in independent films, where you don’t really know what’s going to happen   a moment where it seems like it’s going to turn sinister. That moment in this movie, for me, was when they’re at the taco truck and those two guys come up. You’re like are these guys going to roll them? Are they trying to sell them drugs? But, then it turns out they’re extremely the opposite end of the spectrum. They’re hydration guys. Do those guys really exist in San Francisco? When I first wrote the screenplay, it actually was going to be a kid who comes up and tries to sell them some pot, because that would actually happen in San Francisco. You’re right. After I wrote it and I read it, I said to myself exactly what you just said. I thought, you know what, I’m not going to do that. Let’s go completely in the opposite direction, and let’s just make this so ridiculous. In looking back on it, I think it’s a great moment, because the film needs a little bit of levity, and I think those guys really provide it. And there are no actors in the film aside from Tracey and Wyatt. Those two guys don’t go around selling vitamin water, but they’re friends of mine. They hang together all the time. They’re just a couple of really fun guys. When I thought about how to reconceive the scene, I was like it’s got to be a cheating yard. These guys will do this, and they’ll be really funny. They showed up, and it was just perfect. It’s one of my favorite scenes in the movie. And you know what, those guys always get the biggest laughs on the screen. Here’s this guy on the “Daily Show.” who has all these great jokes in the movie, and these two guys, my buddies, get the biggest laugh in the movie. I love it. I know you had a notice in the credits that you had a music supervisor or coordinator on the film. Did that mostly come from you? Did it come from the music person? I can say about 80% of the music came from me. And then the other 20% was between the editor, Nat Sanders, and the actual music supervisor. What the music supervisor did   my buddy Greg   was just make it all legal. He had produced another independent film, and he knew that I had a list of songs that I wanted. And he was said, you just can’t put those songs in. You have to figure a way to legally get them, and that was really what he did. I like to write to music. In most of the scenes, I think the reason why they cut so well to music is because I wrote them with those cues in mind. And we made the movie so fast that I couldn’t really be there with Nat while he was editing the movie. At least, not at first, because he was editing while we were shooting it. And so, it was great to have those definite songs for those definite set pieces that had a definite energy. I could just orally communicate to him, and then come in to do the editing. They just totally worked out. Yeah, it had a great soundtrack. Thanks, I appreciate it. Well that’s all I have. Actually I have one thing I’d like to say. Sure. Go ahead. Because you touched on the housing rights meeting and that being jarring, I made the comment that there are a few other places where I think it’s drawing to. I felt that because we knew that it was going to be extremely jarring in that scene, we tried to work our way up to that. I think there are two other places where we jar the audience, almost in preparation for that meeting. We tried to earn the right to do that. I think when they’re riding the bikes and the song is clipping, it’s a very weird audio cue. I think that’s the first place where we sort of break the rules a little bit. I think with the carousel, especially with the way it ends, with the diaject sound coming back in, after the store fades out, we took another step further towards breaking that wall. And then with the documentary scene, dropped into the narrative, that’s when we completely go beyond. But hopefully, when audiences watch the movie, I hope it prepares them for that moment. What’s next with the film? Are you going to another festival? Yeah. We’re going to IFP Week in New York next week. And then we’re going to go to London, Vienna and Stockholm before we are finally released by IFC with the day and date model, in February. Wow. Well that sure beats selling DVDs on a website somewhere. You know what, it’s funny. It’s been a hell of a journey from South by Southwest. I am sitting on the 19th floor of a hotel in Toronto talking to you right now. The last time I spoke Sprout, I was sitting in my buddy’s studio apartment in L.A. in my underwear trying to work. And that wasn’t even that long ago. That’s pretty amazing. No, it wasn’t that long ago. It’s a charmed little film. Thank you guys for plugging us initially. No problem. I hope at least you have pants on now. I do. I’m not alone. Charlie’s here too. So he made sure I put the pants on. Nice. It was a requirement. Well cool, Barry. I wish you much continued success. And hopefully, we’ll be talking to you down the line with your next movie. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. And if and when I do make another movie, damn right, I will definitely come to Sprout. You guys have been very good to me. Great. That’s so nice of you to say. Thank you. We appreciate that. Thanks, man. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/8/20/34163.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 8/20/2008 9:01:41 AM
Body: A special round-up this afternoon, featuring bloggy memories of Manny Farber: “What I found, and find, most valuable in his criticism is his ability to apprehend the entirety of a film—he got it from every angle,” writes Glenn Kenny. “I doubt that Farber was particularly surprised by Godard’s Breathless, because his criticism actively anticipated that film.” “To prove my size, and yours, here’s some of his enormity.” Ryland Walker Knight offers images of two of Farber’s paintings. “He remains our best,” says Ray Pride. “A curmudgeon, but a painstaking one who concedes that his effects are like the layering and smearing and reworking of layers of paint, that he is ‘unable to write anything at all without extraordinary amounts of rewriting.’” Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:01:41 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog8/20/2008 9:01:41 AMA special round-up this afternoon, featuring bloggy memories of Manny Farber: “What I found, and find, most valuable in his criticism is his ability to apprehend the entirety of a film—he got it from every angle,” writes Glenn Kenny. “I doubt that Farber was particularly surprised by Godard’s Breathless, because his criticism actively anticipated that film.” “To prove my size, and yours, here’s some of his enormity.” Ryland Walker Knight offers images of two of Farber’s paintings. “He remains our best,” says Ray Pride. “A curmudgeon, but a painstaking one who concedes that his effects are like the layering and smearing and reworking of layers of paint, that he is ‘unable to write anything at all without extraordinary amounts of rewriting.’” Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/8/20/34149.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 8/20/2008 9:01:03 AM
Body: A special round-up this afternoon, featuring bloggy memories of Manny Farber: “What I found, and find, most valuable in his criticism is his ability to apprehend the entirety of a film—he got it from every angle,” writes Glenn Kenny. “I doubt that Farber was particularly surprised by Godard’s Breathless, because his criticism actively anticipated that film.” “To prove my size, and yours, here’s some of his enormity.” Ryland Walker Knight offers images of two of Farber’s paintings. “He remains our best,” says Ray Pride. “A curmudgeon, but a painstaking one who concedes that his effects are like the layering and smearing and reworking of layers of paint, that he is ‘unable to write anything at all without extraordinary amounts of rewriting.’” Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:01:03 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com8/20/2008 9:01:03 AMA special round-up this afternoon, featuring bloggy memories of Manny Farber: “What I found, and find, most valuable in his criticism is his ability to apprehend the entirety of a film—he got it from every angle,” writes Glenn Kenny. “I doubt that Farber was particularly surprised by Godard’s Breathless, because his criticism actively anticipated that film.” “To prove my size, and yours, here’s some of his enormity.” Ryland Walker Knight offers images of two of Farber’s paintings. “He remains our best,” says Ray Pride. “A curmudgeon, but a painstaking one who concedes that his effects are like the layering and smearing and reworking of layers of paint, that he is ‘unable to write anything at all without extraordinary amounts of rewriting.’” Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/captainryannn/archive/2008/8/8/33738.aspx Post By: CaptainRyannn
Post To: CaptainRyannn Blog
Post Date: 8/8/2008 5:01:23 AM
Body: Since January 1st, 2008, I've been keeping track of all the films I've watched. Because I don't feel like taking the time to highlight each movie up until this point, I will start at the previous week, Week 29 and continue from now on. 328. The Dark Knight (2008) -My second time seeing it. Such a great movie. Although not good enough to be considered 'best film of all time'. 329. Teeth (2007) -The storyline attracted me to it. Within the first 20 minutes I wanted it to be done. I hated this thing so much. 330. Heima (2007) -Such a beautiful documentary for such an amazing band; Sigur Ros. Check them out if you haven't yet. 331. La Haine / Hate (1995) -One of the best French films I've seen. If there's one thing I'll remember about this movie years from now, it'll be the ending and how shocked I was after it was all said and done. 332. À ma soeur! / Fat Girl (2001) -There was something sad in the way that the relationship between Anais and her older sister works out. I can't quite place my finger on it. The whole mood of the story is it's strongest part. Even a week after watching it, it still lingers with me. 333. C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005) -I had heard much about this before but now finally got around to watching it. I enjoyed this quite a bit. It deals with real people and real family issues. 334. Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) - When I first saw this when it came out, I really liked it. After viewing it for a second time, I can't remember why. It's filled with unrealistic dialouge and characters I didn't care about. 335. À bout de souffle / Breathless (1960) -What had been hailed to be the 'crown jewel' of the French New Wave was also the last thing I saw before I feel asleep on Thursday. I think I'm going to have to give this another try. 336. Son of Rambow (2007) -After the rave reviews and catchy trailer, I had been looking forward to this. But after finally viewing it, I was left unfulfilled and wanting something more. 337. Phone Booth (2003) -Are there plot holes? Sure. Is the story likely? Nah. I mainly watched this for mere entertainment and nothing more. 338. Dazed and Confused (1993) -Immediately reminded me of American Graffiti except this took place in the 70's. I always fall for the movies that focus on how familar characters interact with one another. Although American Graffiti played this out much better, I thought this was pretty alright. 339. Batoru rowaiaru / Battle Royale (2001) -Although the dialouge seemed kind of cheesy, I can look past that because this was one hell of a ride. A group of 9th. graders put on an island and ordered to kill each other. Man, if only America had the balls to put something like that out. 340. Dazed and Confused (1993) -Yes, I watched it again. 341. Cool Hand Luke (1960) -My dad told me I would like this film. I did more than like it. Although many of us have never worked on a chain gang, the theme and spirit that this movie has is something that we can all relate to. 342. 21 (2008) -The only reason I watched this is so I could have an opinion about it when I hear kids talking about it in the hallways. I thought it was decent. Although it had many cliches, it was a little better than I expected it to be. 343. Vanishing Point (1971) -One of the first movies from the 70's that I fell in love with. Probably one of the best road chase movies out there, it's easy to tell why Quentin Tarantino decided to use it as his inspiration for Death Proof. 344. Casablanca (1942) -Classic, classic, classic. What else can I say? 345. The Breed (2006) -Such a horrible movie. Don't ever watch it.
]]>Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:01:23 GMTCaptainRyannnCaptainRyannn Blog8/8/2008 5:01:23 AMSince January 1st, 2008, I've been keeping track of all the films I've watched. Because I don't feel like taking the time to highlight each movie up until this point, I will start at the previous week, Week 29 and continue from now on. 328. The Dark Knight (2008) -My second time seeing it. Such a great movie. Although not good enough to be considered 'best film of all time'. 329. Teeth (2007) -The storyline attracted me to it. Within the first 20 minutes I wanted it to be done. I hated this thing so much. 330. Heima (2007) -Such a beautiful documentary for such an amazing band; Sigur Ros. Check them out if you haven't yet. 331. La Haine / Hate (1995) -One of the best French films I've seen. If there's one thing I'll remember about this movie years from now, it'll be the ending and how shocked I was after it was all said and done. 332. &Agrave; ma soeur! / Fat Girl (2001) -There was something sad in the way that the relationship between Anais and her older sister works out. I can't quite place my finger on it. The whole mood of the story is it's strongest part. Even a week after watching it, it still lingers with me. 333. C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005) -I had heard much about this before but now finally got around to watching it. I enjoyed this quite a bit. It deals with real people and real family issues. 334. Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) - When I first saw this when it came out, I really liked it. After viewing it for a second time, I can't remember why. It's filled with unrealistic dialouge and characters I didn't care about. 335. &Agrave; bout de souffle / Breathless (1960) -What had been hailed to be the 'crown jewel' of the French New Wave was also the last thing I saw before I feel asleep on Thursday. I think I'm going to have to give this another try. 336. Son of Rambow (2007) -After the rave reviews and catchy trailer, I had been looking forward to this. But after finally viewing it, I was left unfulfilled and wanting something more. 337. Phone Booth (2003) -Are there plot holes? Sure. Is the story likely? Nah. I mainly watched this for mere entertainment and nothing more. 338. Dazed and Confused (1993) -Immediately reminded me of American Graffiti except this took place in the 70's. I always fall for the movies that focus on how familar characters interact with one another. Although American Graffiti played this out much better, I thought this was pretty alright. 339. Batoru rowaiaru / Battle Royale (2001) -Although the dialouge seemed kind of cheesy, I can look past that because this was one hell of a ride. A group of 9th. graders put on an island and ordered to kill each other. Man, if only America had the balls to put something like that out. 340. Dazed and Confused (1993) -Yes, I watched it again. 341. Cool Hand Luke (1960) -My dad told me I would like this film. I did more than like it. Although many of us have never worked on a chain gang, the theme and spirit that this movie has is something that we can all relate to. 342. 21 (2008) -The only reason I watched this is so I could have an opinion about it when I hear kids talking about it in the hallways. I thought it was decent. Although it had many cliches, it was a little better than I expected it to be. 343. Vanishing Point (1971) -One of the first movies from the 70's that I fell in love with. Probably one of the best road chase movies out there, it's easy to tell why Quentin Tarantino decided to use it as his inspiration for Death Proof. 344. Casablanca (1942) -Classic, classic, classic. What else can I say? 345. The Breed (2006) -Such a horrible movie. Don't ever watch it. http://www.spout.com/blogs/ibetolis/archive/2008/7/29/33254.aspx Post By: Ibetolis
Post To: Film for the Soul
Post Date: 7/29/2008 6:03:20 PM
Body: No. 11 - A Bout De Souffle (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)Ranked - #29'There's no need to lie. It's like poker. The truth is best. The others still think you're bluffing, so you win' - (Michel Poiccard)Somehow I managed to miss this film during my ill-fated Film Studies A-level that I failed spectacularly some 15 years back. I just wasn't ready for this film then, my idea of great cinema happened to be whatever was on the local cinema that week. I fidgeted in class, flicked ink balls at my mate and generally ignored the whole thing. The odd thing though was that the next week we were shown 'The 400 Blows' and I was enraptured and have seen it a dozen times since.Minutes into the film you can sense the text book being ripped up and even 45 years later it appears more daring, original and dangerous than a whole year's worth of Hollywood product. Reacting to what the French New Wave pioneers dubbed 'Le Cinema Da Papa' (Dads Cinema), A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) was hailed a true revolutionary movie on release. Breathless is also rather generic, that's to say that the themes and genre are nothing new, rehashing those cheap gangster films from Godard's youth.I felt that the film was something of a love letter, steeped in cultural references and in-jokes, several leading critics and directors appear in cameo roles; Jean-Pierre Melville appears as a celebrity novelist whilst Traffaut, Chabrol and Goddard even make bit appearances. Our protagonist Michel Piccard, played masterly by Jean-Paul Belmondo marking the beginning of what went on to be an extraordinary career, adores the persona of Humphrey Bogart, even going as far to quote him from time to time, he evens looks longingly at a film poster of his beloved hero.Breathless is famous for it's revolutionary use of the 'jump cut', a sudden edit in the middle of action or dialouge (see video clip below for an example), a technique that's now something of a standard practice. At the time however it broke all the conventional film making rules, yet it may have been more accidental than political as John Dawson from Senses of Cinema writes -'The film, loosely (with a minimal and constantly changing shooting script) based on a 'crim on the run' storyline by François Truffaut, ended up as a rough cut of around two hours long – more the length of the despised blockbusters then and now. To be considered a commercial product the movie needed to lose about 30 minutes, so rather than cut out whole scenes or sequences, Godard elected to trim within the scene, creating the jagged cutting style still so beloved of action filmmakers. Godard just went at the film with the scissors, cutting out anything he thought boring and as a result the whole movie does indeed feel rather 'breathless', each scene seeming to rush jerkily to a finish, with barely enough time to make full sense. Who would have ever guessed that what is now a cinematic cliché (at its most excessive in the late '60s and the '70s) could have had so practical a raison d'etre?'As for the actual story of the film, for what there is, we begin in Marseilles where our antihero, Michel, a wannabe hood, steals the first of several cars and kills a traffic cop on his way to Paris. While trying to pick up money owed to him by fellow crooks, he renews his friendship with well-off American girl called Patricia (Jean Seberg), who's selling newspapers on the Champs Elysees. The pair talk a lot, a murder investigation goes on around them and, ultimately, she betrays him to the cops; the final scene baring the result of this portrayal is one of the more famous scenes in the film.So much had been made of this film I was almost certain that I was going to be disappointed, in fact the truth is I've now watched this three times in as many weeks. We are talking about a real landmark of cinema history here, basking in the same light as Citizen Kane or The Battleship Potemkin, films that challenged and changed cinematic techniques. Much of what is so striking about this film was quickly assimilated into the cinematic language - jump cuts, natural lighting, unnatural sound, philosophical dialogues, cinematic homages (Bogart, Melville, Hawkes) and so on. Simply put this is a great film that I couldn't recommend highly enough, please do yourself the favour and watch it now. Originally posted on:Film for the Soul
]]>Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:03:20 GMTIbetolisFilm for the Soul7/29/2008 6:03:20 PMNo. 11 - A Bout De Souffle (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)Ranked - #29'There's no need to lie. It's like poker. The truth is best. The others still think you're bluffing, so you win' - (Michel Poiccard)Somehow I managed to miss this film during my ill-fated Film Studies A-level that I failed spectacularly some 15 years back. I just wasn't ready for this film then, my idea of great cinema happened to be whatever was on the local cinema that week. I fidgeted in class, flicked ink balls at my mate and generally ignored the whole thing. The odd thing though was that the next week we were shown 'The 400 Blows' and I was enraptured and have seen it a dozen times since.Minutes into the film you can sense the text book being ripped up and even 45 years later it appears more daring, original and dangerous than a whole year's worth of Hollywood product. Reacting to what the French New Wave pioneers dubbed 'Le Cinema Da Papa' (Dads Cinema), A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) was hailed a true revolutionary movie on release. Breathless is also rather generic, that's to say that the themes and genre are nothing new, rehashing those cheap gangster films from Godard's youth.I felt that the film was something of a love letter, steeped in cultural references and in-jokes, several leading critics and directors appear in cameo roles; Jean-Pierre Melville appears as a celebrity novelist whilst Traffaut, Chabrol and Goddard even make bit appearances. Our protagonist Michel Piccard, played masterly by Jean-Paul Belmondo marking the beginning of what went on to be an extraordinary career, adores the persona of Humphrey Bogart, even going as far to quote him from time to time, he evens looks longingly at a film poster of his beloved hero.Breathless is famous for it's revolutionary use of the 'jump cut', a sudden edit in the middle of action or dialouge (see video clip below for an example), a technique that's now something of a standard practice. At the time however it broke all the conventional film making rules, yet it may have been more accidental than political as John Dawson from Senses of Cinema writes -'The film, loosely (with a minimal and constantly changing shooting script) based on a 'crim on the run' storyline by François Truffaut, ended up as a rough cut of around two hours long – more the length of the despised blockbusters then and now. To be considered a commercial product the movie needed to lose about 30 minutes, so rather than cut out whole scenes or sequences, Godard elected to trim within the scene, creating the jagged cutting style still so beloved of action filmmakers. Godard just went at the film with the scissors, cutting out anything he thought boring and as a result the whole movie does indeed feel rather 'breathless', each scene seeming to rush jerkily to a finish, with barely enough time to make full sense. Who would have ever guessed that what is now a cinematic cliché (at its most excessive in the late '60s and the '70s) could have had so practical a raison d'etre?'As for the actual story of the film, for what there is, we begin in Marseilles where our antihero, Michel, a wannabe hood, steals the first of several cars and kills a traffic cop on his way to Paris. While trying to pick up money owed to him by fellow crooks, he renews his friendship with well-off American girl called Patricia (Jean Seberg), who's selling newspapers on the Champs Elysees. The pair talk a lot, a murder investigation goes on around them and, ultimately, she betrays him to the cops; the final scene baring the result of this portrayal is one of the more famous scenes in the film.So much had been made of this film I was almost certain that I was going to be disappointed, in fact the truth is I've now watched this three times in as many weeks. We are talking about a real landmark of cinema history here, basking in the same light as Citizen Kane or The Battleship Potemkin, films that challenged and changed cinematic techniques. Much of what is so striking about this film was quickly assimilated into the cinematic language - jump cuts, natural lighting, unnatural sound, philosophical dialogues, cinematic homages (Bogart, Melville, Hawkes) and so on. Simply put this is a great film that I couldn't recommend highly enough, please do yourself the favour and watch it now. Originally posted on:Film for the Soul http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/Classic/MemberTagFilms.aspxClassic
Number of films tagged: 816

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]]>Sun, 23 Aug 2009 22:54:36 GMT8163121453Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/romance/MemberTagFilms.aspxromance
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]]>Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:12:04 GMT17780236Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/betrayal/MemberTagFilms.aspxbetrayal
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]]>Mon, 17 Aug 2009 01:37:08 GMT406560145Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/robbery/MemberTagFilms.aspxrobbery
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]]>Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:33:51 GMT379842103Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/dating/MemberTagFilms.aspxdating
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]]>Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:09:23 GMT3253987Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/police/MemberTagFilms.aspxpolice
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]]>Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:41:30 GMT49130421Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/forbiddenlove/MemberTagFilms.aspxforbiddenlove
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]]>Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:03:45 GMT11511830Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/criterion/MemberTagFilms.aspxcriterion
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