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One-on-One Q&A: Kris Swanberg, Director/Co-Writer, "It was great, but I was ready to come home."

thefilmpanelnotetaker — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 13:01:06 GMT

One on One Q&A with Kris Swanberg
Director/Co-Writer,
It was great, but I was ready to come home
Interview by Erin Scherer

Kris Swanberg (left) with Jade Healy
in It was great, but I was ready to come home

Kris Swanberg's directorial debut, It was great, but I was ready to come home debuted at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival to glowing reviews. This marked Kris' first major foray into narrative, after previously working in the documentary milieu in projects such as the short, Bathwater, and her Nerve.com web series, Boys and Girls. It was great, but I was ready to come home will next play on Saturday, April 18th at the Atlanta Film Festival.

Erin was inspired to interview Kris upon seeing such phrases as "it was great but i was ready to come home" and "ready to come home swanberg" turn up on the Google Analytics page for her blog. The interview was conducted via e-mail.

Erin: How did you become interested in film? How old were you, and what were your earliest endeavors?

Kris: I first got interested in being a filmmaker at the end of my teenage years. I went to a high school in Germantown, Tennessee, right outside of Memphis that had a great television program. Unfortunately, it was pretty discriminating against female students and I wasn’t really allowed to work the cameras or do anything technical that the boys were encouraged to do. That, of course, infuriated me and I went off to college determined to learn those very things. I had always been interested in different cultures and had decided to become a documentary filmmaker. I spent most of my time in film school doing just that.

Erin: You met Joe while you were a freshman at Carbondale. Did you two collaborate on anything while you were still in school?

Kris: Yeah, Joe and I helped each other on a lot of projects in film school, but I don't think we really collaborated on anything specific. We mostly just helped the other one with whatever they were up to.

Erin: I once read an interview with Joe, and he said that Kissing on the Mouth was based on an idea you had in college. What was the original idea, and did it differ from the final result?

Kris: Kissing On The Mouth was in part inspired by a Super 8 project I did for my intro film class in college. It was called "ex" and was an audio documentary project about people's most recent breakups. It was sort of experimental and had some visual narrative elements running parallel to the interviews. It was something that Joe really liked and when we talked about what project we wanted to make out of school that came to mind. Kissing On The Mouth, of course, became a very different project than "ex" which was only about 5 minutes long. It definitely had some similar elements though like all the audio documentary interviews that ended up in the final film.

Kris Swanberg (right) during the making of
Kissing on the Mouth with Kate Winterich

Erin: Do you think that working with Joe gave you a lot of confidence to make It was great, but I was ready to come home?

Kris: Absolutely. Joe has always had the confidence to make anything he has had the inspiration for. I've always admired that and watching him follow through with all of his projects has definitely inspired me to make mine.

Erin: Following your graduation from college, you worked as a school teacher, and you are in the process of finishing a master's degree in education. However, you told me at the Indie Go Go party at SXSW that you had been laid off from your job. Are you looking for another teaching job right now?

Kris: I taught high school in a low-income neighborhood in Chicago for two years, but last year the school closed down and all of the faculty and staff was laid off. Even though I was sad to say goodbye to all my students and to a job that I thought I was really getting good at - I definitely felt like it came at a good time. Not only have I had more time to work on my film, but I've also started my own business making ice cream and I'm glad to have more mental energy to work on those things. But I'm not entirely finished with being a teacher. Education is still a great passion of mine.

Erin: While you were teaching, what did you teach specifically? (Did you teach elementary school? Junior High? High School? Any specific subject?)

Kris: I taught film and video to 10th-12th graders.

Erin: In your short documentary "Bathwater," you profile the bathtime rituals of mothers and their children, with the mothers addressing their children in several languages. What was your intent in making the movie? How did you find the families?

Kris: At the time (and today!) I had a great interest in language and in the transference of language from parent to child. I was also interested in the ritual of bathing a child. Its something that we share across cultures and even species. I thought of combining all of those things into a short documentary using verite footage. I found the subjects on craigslist. I just advertised that I was looking for bilingual mothers and I got a lot of responses.

Kris Swanberg's Short Documentary Bathwater

Erin: With the exception of It was great, but I was ready to come home, most of your own film work (exclusive from Joe's) has been documentaries. Do you think you will return to the form, and perhaps even make a feature length documentary?

Kris: Right now I think I'm more interested in making narratives, but I could definitely see myself making more docs in the future.

Erin: It was great, but I was ready to come home debuted at SXSW last month, but you shot the movie in December. How did you manage to turnaround so quickly and get it into competition?

Kris: Well we shot the film over three weeks in Costa Rica with David editing a lot of it while we were in production. In early January I flew David to Chicago so we could finish editing here and he was able to get a pretty good cut outside of a week. Then we overnighted it to Janet [Pierson] at SXSW. As for getting it into competition - that wasn't something we asked for or even expected. We were very surprised and grateful.

Erin: How did you script the movie? Did you have an outline, or did you do what Joe and Greta did with the latter half of Nights and Weekends, and get together with Ben Kasulke over breakfast and discuss what you wanted to shoot that day?

Kris: We didn't have a script or an outline. I had phone conversations with everyone involved before we left but we didn't start to have real plans until we were already in Costa Rica together. Our entire trip was sort of a constant production meeting and we were always checking in with each other and looking at footage an reassessing what we were doing. It was almost as though we were writing the script as we were going along.

Erin: I take it that It was great... came from the desire to explore an idea--in your case, female friendships--and the story grew out of that. Am I right?

Kris: Yes. I have been wanting to make a film that explores female friendship for a while. The other themes explored in the film came about after that initial intent.

Posing for the camera with Jade Healy (left) in
It was great, but I was ready to come home

Erin: At the premiere of the movie, David Lowery stated that the movie he saw on screen was different from the one you had gone to shoot. What were you originally intending on shooting, and how did that differ from the final product?

Kris: I'm very proud of the film we made and as far as I can remember that's exactly what I wanted to make!

Erin: How did you coordinate the shoot? Did you have a tightly planned schedule? Shooting the movie in Costa Rica, did you have a problem with customs? (Getting equipment, etc.)

Kris: Costa Rica was an amazing country to shoot in and we didn't have any problems at all. As far as our schedule it varied depending on where we were in the shoot. Most days we shot between 3-5 scenes but some of those were heavily planned and some weren't and then of course some days we shot more or less. It depended on where we were and what we had to get done.

Erin: I read in Paste and at The Spout Blog that you are now running an ice cream business. Can you tell us more about it? What are your current flavors, and where can one buy it?

Kris: Yes, I have an ice cream business in Chicago called Nice Cream. You can check it out at NiceCreamChicago.com. I sell my ice cream in pints to different grocery stores and cafes in the city. I change my flavors seasonally so right now for the Spring flavors I have Earl Grey Tea Ice Cream with Shortbread Cookies, Vanilla Bean Ice Cream with Lavender and Graham Crackers, Cream Cheese Ice Cream with Carrot Cake, and Chocolate Ice Cream with German Chocolate Frosting. They're delicious!

Originally posted on:The Film Panel Notetaker - Miss a panel discussion? Don't worry! We took notes for you.

The Incredible Shrinking (Expanding?) Film Critic Profession @ SXSW, March 14, 2009

thefilmpanelnotetaker — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:01:25 GMT

The Incredible Shrinking (Expanding?) Film Critic Profession
SXSW Film Festival
Austin Convention Center, Austin, TX
Saturday, March 14th, 2009
Notes by Erin Scherer

Moderator:

Gerald Peary, Director: For The Love Of Movies, Film Critic for The Boston Phoenix

Panelists:

Marjorie Baumgarten, Senior Film Editor/Critic, Austin Chronicle
Shawn Levy, Film Critic, The Oregonian
Karina Longworth, Spout.com
Scott Weinberg, Cinematical, FEARnet

"What is the current state of film criticism?" Is the question moderator Gerald Peary sought to answer in this panel. He opened the panel by saying:

"It's in the best shape that it's ever been in, because there's so many critics, critics for every taste. There are more good critics now than at any point in American History, but at least in the print world, there are critics getting kicked off right and left. It's a shrinking, shrinking world in which many critics who have had their jobs for many years are being laid off, and the papers are disappearing, all part of being the end of the print world."

Peary recalled the story of a "art film" distributor calling him, ranting that "ten, fifteen years ago, every major city had a solid critic who everyone trusted. A "soft critic" who liked art films. Nowadays, the critics are writing for other critics, and not the general public, and web people have no influence at all."

Scott Weinberg commented that if the distributor had to rely on reviews to sell their movies, that they were probably not a very good distributor, then added:

"The question that irritates me is, "What is an art film? Is Benjamin Button an 'Art Film?' Is Slumdog Millionaire an 'Art Film'? Guess what? Friday the 13th is an 'Art Film'! Some people created it, it's a piece of art. I don't get these designations."

Much of the panel was devoted to the impact of the web on film criticism.

Both Weinberg and Karina Longworth responded to the distributor's rant that web critics lack relevance by mentioning that filmmakers actually want to have their films reviewed by bloggers like themselves, if mainly for publicity. Longworth stated that she was often "drowning" in requests for reviews.

In the past, it was much more difficult to obtain press credentials, due to the lack of legitimacy of blogs and irresponsible web reviewers.

"A lot of times, people are writing reviews to get invited to the next junket. Those sites I have a problem with--the sites that are only helping the marketing along without any honest insight or negativity." Weinberg said.

With more festivals and events willing to let bloggers in, Karina Longworth has seen the status of the web critic improve over time. "That was a big problem, in like, 2005. Now, not so much. Cannes is the only one that won't give me press credentials as a blogger."

Weinberg mentioned that "What I think is cool about the blog world is that the more CNN mentions a blog, the more people like Karina and my fellow bloggers earn more respect as columnists, bloggers, and writers. Right now, I think it's still anybody in in the basement with a keyboard can write, "I LOVE The Watchmen, LOL."

Yet the future is a little more bleaker for print critics: Shawn Levy, Marjorie Baumgarten, and Peary all commented on the shrinking size of their reviews: they used to be able to print 800 to 1000 word reviews; now they're lucky to print 500. Peary pointed out that as newspaper critics have cut their staff, film critics are often among the first to be cut. Peary cited an article from Variety that mentioned that 28 Critics have lost their jobs over the past several years.

Even with the opportunity of everyone and anyone to review a movie on the web, Longworth and Weinberg do not feel threatened.

"It's not just anybody writing," Longworth stated. "There's a difference between going to the movies casually, and writing a blog post about it, and someone who is dedicated, whether it's something they do in their free time, or as a profession. There's a process of natural selection: people who have something to contribute become a major part of the discussion very quickly."

Overall, they concluded that the presence of film critics can help stimulate the conversation on films, especially ones that don't get wide releases. Critics have a breadth of knowledge on the subject they're writing about, and at their best, can function as a Consumer Reports for the potential ticket buyer (or badge holder).

As Karina Longworth established: "Our goal is to get comments. Our goal is to get people talking."

Natasha Vargas-Cooper: I'm a film critic for eonline.com. I have a question that we all get asked: Do you watch movies twice?

Baumgarten: Hardly ever. There's never the opportunity. Sometimes I'll watch a movie Tuesday Night, and have a review in by 10:30 the next morning.

Vargas-Cooper: Sometimes I get a comment like, "You need to see the movie again!"

Baumgarten: I'm not the Pauline Kael type of "I don't want to see it a second time. I don't need to."

Weinberg: There are so many films I haven't seen, so if I'm going to pop in, like Nightmare on Elm Street again, why not watch Peeping Tom again?

Q: I would like any of you to address the question of availablity for audiences. You go to a film festival. You see ten good films, but if I don't live in a major city, or if the film is not released on DVD, your review may sound great, but I may take no action because I can't see it.

Weinberg: If you really like a film, we want you to be frustrated. We want you to send e-mails to the filmmaker and pester them and ask, "When can I see it?" We don't want to literally frustrate you, but if there's an independent film I love that might not go anywhere, I'll treat it like There Will Be Blood.

Longworth: I'm kind of in the habit of pestering people I know in distribution, so I yell at them about movies.

Q: In the last few election cycles, I have seen a maturation of political blogs. Some are hybrid, some are print and web, and some have been just web. But in the last four years, the blog of record has become a reality, as far as who's available to the sources, what sources make themselves available to them, and also being read regularly, I'm wondering where film criticism stands in its evolution.

Peary: I just talked to Michael Barker from Sony Classics, where he's going to places like The Huffington Post into having a film critic, which they don't have right now.

Longworth: They don't have their own freelancers. They don't pay anybody.

Weinberg: I was reviewing for like, six years before anyone paid me. I figured I was paying my dues, I was honing my craft.

Q: For the better part of 30 years, Americans had Siskel and Ebert on their television screens every week. You have political shows, you have sports shows, and every other sort of panel show. Why do you think we're living in an era right now where there are only two shows devoted to film criticism, and both of them feature members of the Lyons Family?

Peary: We live in a very philistine, very anti-intellectual culture, and that's impacted our film criticism. Film critics are looked on too suspiciously by most of the public: "Why don't you like movies? Can't you just enjoy a movie? Why do you have to criticize it?"

Levy: I don't think that it's a natural thing for television to have criticism.

Q: But sports shows have it all the time!

Longworth: That's an argument, that's not criticism.

Originally posted on:The Film Panel Notetaker - Miss a panel discussion? Don't worry! We took notes for you.

IFP Script to Screen - Writers in Collaboration - March 7, 2009

thefilmpanelnotetaker — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:01:09 GMT

IFP’s Script to Screen Conference

Writers in Collaboration
March 7, 2009
New York, NY

Writer/Director Ira Sachs (Forty Shades of Blue, Married Life) moderated a discussion on the collaborative writing process. He started the conversation by saying that everything he does is about how well he works with other people. “There’s almost nothing that isn’t about trying to negotiate between your own instincts and what you share and look for from others…This panel is about how you work communally, but still have a vision.” Below are highlights from the discussion with writers who collaborate with either a partner or a team for film and/or television.

(Photo by Brian Geldin)

Moderator:
Ira Sachs, Writer/Director, Married Life

Panelists:
Ryan Fleck, Writer/Director, Sugar & Half Nelson
Todd A. Kessler, Co-Creator, “Damages”
Daniel Zelman, Co-Creator, “Damages”

Sachs: How did you start working collaborators?

Fleck: (Anna Boden and I) started working together in film school…I started helping her with her projects, she started helping me with mine, giving me notes on the scripts that I was working on…I directed Half Nelson, but she was always there, very much involved with that. On Sugar, we co-directed that together.

Kessler: Daniel, Glenn and I, Glenn’s my brother so I’ve known him for a long time. Daniel had been a friend of ours since college…Basically, we’re writing and producing television. That’s something an individual can’t do alone…We do 13 episodes a season so that’s 13 scripts. Sometimes scripts are written in a week…one person can’t write that much…The core of our collaboration was that we wanted to work together and not have to bring in other people. If anyone has seen Damages, you’re aware that there’s a lot of betrayal and manipulation and narcissism…all the things that we experienced working with other people. So we wanted to limit some of that and the three of us got together.

Sachs: How do you work in the writing stage?

Zelman: There are two different phases. There’s the writing that begins prior to the season’s beginning…the first season was the pilot…The three of us sit in a room and just talk a lot and discuss what we’re interested in. It really begins with a character. Damages began with the character played by Glenn Close (Patty Hewes)…We began by discussing her and what it was we wanted to explore through her. It really just becomes a brainstorming session…Once the season is up and running, that’s the second phase…We divide up the script and we all write pieces of that script and then we pass our pages back and forth…There’s a lot of re-writing of other people’s materials. We kind of create a factory mill where every scene goes through every writer. We feel that by the time it goes through that process, it’s better than it would be than with any one of us.

Sachs: How are each of the collaborations you’ve worked on different? What’s worked best for you?

Kessler: On The Sopranos (for which Kessler wrote during seasons 2 and 3), David Chase is the creator of the show and was kind of infamous for having very long stretches of time between each season…The more time you have, the better off you are because you have more time to think about the stories and the characters. Because you had to generate so much material so quickly, you’re able to read books and live lives and see what’s going on in the world that you can bring to the work…We would start with David coming back. He’d have these long sheets of paper, episodes 1-13…He would have these mileposts in the season, the second season for example, the character of Big Pussy, would die by the end…There were these long arcs and it was our job as writers to help fill in those spaces. That’s something we’ve put to use on Damages, what we call tent pole scenes.

Sachs: One of the things I realized collaborating with co-writers on screenplays is you get systems into place. How can those systems be helpful and how can they also inhibit creativity? How did you work together with Anna?

Fleck: When we started writing Sugar, we needed to get out of the city. It was really distracting. The McDowell Colony (where they went) is a great place to go…If you don’t have the luxury of going away somewhere, just start writing…When Anna and I worked together, there was no science, no pattern…We typically separate…We come up with an outline…come up with the main beats and then we’ll separate and start writing the scenes…We’re usually not writing together until we’re re-writing.

Audience Question: How do you avoid legal problems amongst collaborators? What degree of trust do you need to have?

Fleck: I think when you’re first starting, there’s a degree of mistrust…I think that’s healthy to have…You don’t need a lawyer to get everything worked out on paper. Ultimately, that’s not going to matter…unless there’s millions of dollars at stake, you’re not really going to go sue them.

Zelman: I totally agree with what you’re saying that at the end of the day, a lawyer for contracts are not going to protect what most needs to be protected…It’s almost like a spiritual question…There is so much time and energy put into doing these projects, that it’s like a marriage. If you just don’t feel a fundamental trust with the people you’re collaborating with creatively, it’s a leap of faith…You just have to be committed to each other and understand that you’re going to splice through those moments. If you don’t have that faith, it’s a very dangerous place to be.

Audience Question: How did you work with your co-writer on Forty Shades of Blue?

Sachs: I worked with a co-writer named Michael Rohatyn, who was not the co-writer on my next film (Married Life) who was Oren Moverman. The process for me is generally I have an idea for something that I’m interested in. I often take a good stab at a first draft myself just to try to get as much of the instinctual things that are personal. The more autobiographical stuff tends to come out alone. I think that’s true for my co-writers as well. I send them off to go write at certain times…For me it’s very important as an artist and I project this as well for my co-writer, that they have the space at a certain time where they are just playing with their own memories and ideas and that they don’t need to verbalize everything to me for it to become something that I want to see on the page…One of the biggest challenges of collaboration is, and it’s the same with an actor, I try to talk very little to the actors, except when I need to…I want to see what they’re going to bring me. That’s a very good part of collaboration, trying to tap into what that person has that you don’t have.

Originally posted on:The Film Panel Notetaker - Miss a panel discussion? Don't worry! We took notes for you.

One-on-One Q&A: Ry Russo-Young, Writer/Director, "You Wont Miss Me"

thefilmpanelnotetaker — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:01:00 GMT

One-on-One Q&A with Ry Russo-Young,
Writer-Director, You Wont Miss Me
Interview by Erin Scherer

Ry Russo-Young's latest film, You Wont Miss Me, premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. The film stars Stella Schnabel, who collaborated with Russo-Young on the story. You Wont Miss Me follows Shelly Brown, a 23 year old recently released from a mental institution. The film was shot using a variety of mediums, including 16mm, Super 8, Mini DV, and High Definition, in order to, to quote Russo-Young, "speak to our entire visual existence today".

Russo-Young's previous feature, Orphans, won a Special Jury Award in the Narrative Feature Competition at the 2007 South By Southwest Film Festival. Orphans is now available on DVD alongside Russo-Young's 2005 short, Marion on Carnivalesque Films. You Wont Miss Me will also be playing at this year's SXSW, with its first screening Friday, March 13th at 9:30pm the Alamo Lamar Theater, Theater 2.

The following interview took place as a phone conversation on the morning of February 23, 2009, the day after the Oscars. Erin's method of recording the conversation was pretty dubious, holding a shotgun mic to a speakerphone, but she did the best she could.

Erin: Having done a lot of searches of you on Google, it sounds like you have been involved with the arts from a pretty early age. What were your first forays into the arts? Did you take dance lessons? Theater? Describe some of your earliest artistic endeavors.

Ry: When I was a little kid, I was really into imaginary things, playing pretend with outfits and kind of imagining an alternate world. So when I got into acting when I was an early teenager, like 12 or 13, it was very similar to the imaginary things--only now there was a word for it, it was called acting. Then I got into photography when I was in high school. I've always been interested in the arts, it just felt natural to me.

When I got into photography, I was shooting photographs of narratives, and when I discovered film, it made a lot of sense. All of my loves kind of came together.

Erin: Looking at your website, I noticed you made your first movie in 16mm before you were even out of high school. How did that come about? Was it sort of an independent study, a senior thesis, or was it just something you did on your own in the off hours?

Ry: Actually, my high school had a filmmaking course, where you could shoot on 16mm, and so I did that in my high school filmmaking class. I don't know if they still have it, but it was part of a class I took in school.

Erin: On top of making movies, you've done mixed media and performance art as well. Can you explain some of the projects you've done, and what they are about?

Ry: I have this project called "Peep Show" that's a series of short films shot on Super 8. Each one is a collaboration with a specific idea. Each person does some kind of sexual show. They design the show with me, and then they perform it. Then it will be installed in a gallery as a bunch of tiny holes in the wall that you look through, and you see all these little shows that are sort of like the older peep shows. It's like a projection of people's sexual fantasies through the lens of a camera.

That's one project I've done. Another project is called "The Middle Ground", where I align my family history with "Little Red Riding Hood", and I try to combine them. It was a show that had a lot of video on it, and audience participation, and it was about growing up, leaving your family, falling in love, understanding relationship dynamics, and how fairy tales inform how you see romantic relationships.

Erin: In Marion, you re-enact Psycho on three seperate screens. How did that idea come about, and why did you decide to re-enact Psycho?

Ry: I was watching Psycho at the time, and was really into it, and I've always been really into Hitchcock. I just kind of got the idea while watching it. I was studying it the way a student of film would study it, look at how people are doing things, and I was doing that with Psycho. I was especially fascinated with the lead character, the way she was sort of a female archetype, and the way [Hitchcock] has characters killed so early on in the film, and the controversy surrounding that. I was watching Psycho and just got the idea.

Erin: You wrote Orphans in the year after you graduated from college. Did you think that you would likely be shooting it yourself?

Ry: Yeah. When I wrote it, I wrote it to be made. I definitely though I was going to be the one to...well, not necessarily shoot it myslef, be behind the camera, but I knew that I was going to make it for no money, and probably shoot it within the same year. It was written to be made.

Erin: But it took a little while longer to shoot it.

Ry: I wrote it, and I shot it. There wasn't that much of a gap between writing and shooting.

Erin: How did you decide to shoot it in Jeffersonville? Did you go location scouting, was it a house you kind of knew about, or did you happen about it one day?

Ry: What happened was that I was working at a vintage clothing store at the time. I'd gone up to the boss' house--the boss had a house up in Jeffersonville and I had gone to her house for the weekend. It was kind of a magical house in the summer. We had a pool, we were swimming, and and we just had an amazing time up there. I found the house really, really inspiring. There was something about the location, and at the same time, that's when I was writing Orphans. I think I subconciously, without even realizing it, started imagning it being set in that house the whole time while writing it. After I finished it, I sort of realized: that is the house. And so then I went up and scouted the house and the location, as well as a few other houses, and ended up shooting in that house.

Lily Wheelwright and James Katharine Flynn in Orphans.

Erin: One of the stars of Orphans, Lily Wheelwright, died just days after the movie's premiere at South By Southwest in 2007. What was your relationship with her prior to Orphans? I know you attended the same school together. Were you close friends, or mutual acquaintances?

Ry: We weren't close friends. She was someone I knew. She was friends with people I was sort of friends with. We were different ages. She was like, some girl I went to high school with that I knew, but not really, really well. I knew a lot of people that knew her.

The around the time I was making Orphans, I actually asked my high school drama teacher to name the ten best actresses that came out of my high school that were within the age range of what I was looking for, and she named Lily's younger sister, Josephine. So I auditioned Josephine, and I thought that she was too funny, and the character kind of has a more innate sadness about her. She said to me, "Well, my sister's acting these days. You should audition her." And I auditioned Lily, and I thought that Lily was perfect for the part. She had the quality that I was looking for.

Erin: How did you come to cast James Katharine Flynn? I know you worked with her in Marion. Did you write the role of Sonia with her in mind?

Ry:After writing Orphans and making Marion, I knew I wanted to work with James Katharine Flynn, particularly because she was so good in Marion. I didn't write the part for her, though.

Stella Schnabel in You Wont Miss Me

Erin: The casting of someone with a legacy might usually be to attract funding for a film, but you and Stella basically grew up together.

Ry: Lola [Schnabel, Stella's sister] was my childhood best friend, and Stella was her younger sister...another weird younger sister. Shortly after Orphans, Stella told me she was acting. I'd never worked with Stella before. I knew her, but she was a different age than me, so she wasn't like my childhood best friend. I thought she would be interesting on camera. I just felt, "Let me run a test and see what I can do with her." We got together, and made a character of Shelly Brown. I interviewed the character for about five hours on video, with my cinematographer shooting. What happened was that I went home with the footage, edited the interview down, and started writing the script, the story, based on the original interview.

Erin: I haven't seen the movie yet, but Karina Longworth, in her review, had this to say about the movie:

Writer/director Russo-Young and co-writer/star Stella Schnabel remind us how rare it is to see a film about the inner life of a beautiful, troubled young lady without the objectifying filter of the male gaze, without the beauty and the trouble fusing into a fantasy cipher of a postmodern damsel in distress.

A trend in recent, more mainstream independent films have had this character that's almost become a stock character: this sort of adorable, quirky girl that captures the heart of the male protagonist. Natalie Portman's character in Garden State is the most notorious example I could think of. Did you have that type of character in the back of your head when you were putting this together?

Ry:Once you'll see it, you'll definitely understand that this character is far from those quirky kind of indie-type girls. In some ways, it's actually an antidote to that character.

Erin: That's what I meant, actually.

Erin: Why did you choose to shoot this on multiple formats?

Ry: I chose multiple formats because I felt that it would be the best way to capture this character, and the way you're looking at this character from all these different angles, and all these different situations. It gives a more generous portrait, who she really is and what she's about. I wanted to show the diversity in different ways of looking, and the formats are part of that. One minute, she's being the sweetest person in the world, and the next, when she's being cruel to someone. It's about the way you see those things, and how the emotional temperature of the scene is carried through the actual texture of the medium it's shot on. Does that make sense?

Erin: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense--

Ry: It also changes your way of looking. Like if you're looking through a magnifying glass, looking at something straight, and if you're looking at it over the hill, it changes the way you're seeing things.

Ry Russo-Young (left) with Greta Gerwig in Hannah Takes the Stairs

Erin: How did you get cast in Hannah Takes The Stairs?

Ry: I met Joe on the festival circuit, at the Chicago International Film Festival when I was there with my short, Marion. Basically, we kept in touch, and then he asked me if I wanted to do it.

Erin: What was it like working with Joe?

Ry: It was good! It was a lot of fun!

Erin: What filmmakers have inspired you in the past? You mentioned Hitchcock a little bit earlier.

Ry: That's a really hard question to answer, because it really depends what I'm working on at the moment. It all sort of depends on what I'm interested in making, and what I'm watching. For example, when I was making Orphans, I was watching a lot of Bergman. Bergman definitely inspired me. And I guess for You Wont Miss Me, I was watching more--actually, you know, I don't know what exactly inspired me. I think it was more documentaries in general, a general cultural moment in the time we are living in, with everything like the implication of YouTube and reality television to the banal.

Erin: Are you working on anything else right now?

Ry: Yeah, I'm in the early stages of a new movie.

Erin: Are you willing to share some details, or would you rather wait until later?

Ry: I'd rather wait until it's more developed.
Originally posted on:The Film Panel Notetaker - Miss a panel discussion? Don't worry! We took notes for you.

Indie Film Blogger Road Trip at Anthology this Tuesday

thefilmpanelnotetaker — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 22:01:05 GMT

If you're in New York on Tuesday, I hope you'll head on over to Anthology Film Archives for the World Premiere of Sujewa Ekanayake's documentary Indie Film Blogger Road Trip, a film that I had the pleasure of being interviewed for last summer.

Opening 9 minutes of Indie Film Blogger Road Trip.

Here's all the details below, and for more info, visit the film's official blog here.

Indie Film Blogger Road Trip
World Premiere
Tuesday February 17, 2009
8 PM
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue
New York, NY 10003
$9 ($6 for Anthology members)

Director & several bloggers featured in the film will attend the screening. There will be a brief Q & A session/discussion following the screening.

About Indie Film Blogger Road Trip:

In the feature length documentary Indie Film Blogger Road Trip independent filmmaker & blogger Sujewa Ekanayake (Date Number One, DIY Filmmaker Sujewa blog) travels to several U.S. East Coast cities in the Summer of 2008 and discusses the thriving world of indie film journalism on the web, related Internet writings & other matters relevant to the indie film community with over a dozen bloggers who write about indie film and or media professionals who rely on indie film blogs to accomplish their daily work. Subjects discussed in the film include: professional development and breakthroughs as film journalists, the intersection of race and indie filmmaking, the role blogs play in keeping indie film fans & writers who do not live in major cities connected to the scene, several takes on the amount of participation by women in both the indie filmmaking world & indie film blogging world, debates regarding the value of blogs when compared to traditional/print media reviews and articles, the effect of digital production on minority filmmaking, several view points on whether the indie film blog world is an actual community in a traditional sense, motivations for blogging about indie films, benefits of blogging about indie films, difficulties involved in being an independent blogger or journalist, questions and many answers regarding whether blogs are ultimately a positive thing or a negative thing for the indie film world, promotional & distribution strategies adopted by makers of independent horror movies, the role blogs play in supporting work done by media production organizations, screening events, film festivals, and museums, what the near future may hold for both indie filmmakers and indie film bloggers.

Indie Film Blogger Road Trip features: Anthony Kaufman (indieWIRE, Village Voice, Anthony Kaufman's blog), Brandon Harris (Cinema Echo Chamber, Hammer to Nail, Spout, Filmmaker Magazine), Stu VanAirsdale (The Reeler, Defamer), Melissa Silverstein (Women and Hollywood), Erica Ginsberg (Docs In Progress, Docs Interactive), Chuck Tryon (The Chutry Experiment, Newcritics, Fayetteville State University), Gabe Wardell (Atlanta Film Festival, Gabe's Declaration of Principles, ATL 365 blog), Paula Martinez (Atlanta Film Festival, Paula's After Thoughts), Tambay Obenson (The Obenson Report, Beautiful Things), Noralil Ryan Fores (ShortEnd Magazine), Armando Valle (Horror 101, Armando Valle blog), KJ Mohr (National Museum of Women in the Arts, My World Bank Lunches), and Brian Geldin (The Film Panel Notetaker). Film was produced, directed, videotaped, edited by Sujewa Ekanayake, and features music by Kevin MacLeod. Indie Film Blogger Road Trip is a warm, multi-faceted, reflective introduction to - and a celebration of - a young, influential 21st century creative community.

Originally posted on:The Film Panel Notetaker - Miss a panel discussion? Don't worry! We took notes for you.

Independent Film Week - "Medicine for Melancholy" - Sept. 15, 2008

thefilmpanelnotetaker — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:02:00 GMT

Medicine For Melancholy – Opening Night Film
Independent Film Week
Monday, September 15, 2008
Clearview Chelsea Cinemas – New York, NY

(Medicine for Melancholy actor Wyatt Cenac and director Barry Jenkins)

Photo by A.M. Peters

Before the screening of Independent Film Week’s opening night film Medicine for Melancholy, New York State Governor’s Office For Motion Picture and Television Development Commissioner Pat Kaufman announced the winner of I Love New York’s New York City Regional competition, “Love in New York.”

Filmmaker Magazine editor-in-chief Scott Macauley introduced Medicine for Melancholy and its director Barry Jenkins, one of the magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film (which by the way is celebrating its 10th anniversary. A party was held later in the evening at Strata for the commemoration).

Macauley said he first saw Medicine for Melancholy at SXSW at its premiere screening and thought it was fantastic with “a real visual imagination” and is also “really smart about politics.” Macauley said of the middle sequence in the film that “a lot of other people would have maybe not been bold enough to include this sequence. It’s a little digressive from the main story, but for me it’s one of the things that really made the film.”

The following are some highlights of the post-screening Q&A with Jenkins and one half of the film’s stars, Wyatt Cenac who plays Micah (Tracey Heggins who plays Jo was not there). By the way, the Q&A was done almost entirely in the dark, as the house lights had yet to come on, which made for a rather fun discussion.

Q: What camera did you shoot on?

Jenkins: Panasonic HVX.

Q: What was the budget of the film?

Jenkins: We can’t really talk about the budget. If you drove a car here tonight, the car you drive probably cost more than the total budget of this film.

Q: What was your inspiration?

Jenkins: I moved to San Francisco after living in L.A. I met a woman in San Francisco. She broke up with me. I need to prove myself as a filmmaker, so I’m going to make a movie. I channeled all the energy from the break up and living in San Francisco. I wrote the script really quick in about three weeks. I wrote it to be shootable for myself and five friends. Once the script was together, I raised enough money to do this.

Cenac: There’s no greater motivator than hate. That’s a lesson you should all take out. Hate something enough.

Q: What was your casting process? Did you have Wyatt in mind?

Jenkins: I had no idea who he was. We wrote the movie and tried to cast in San Francisco, but San Francisco was 7% African-American. 1% of San Francisco is actors. If you take 1% of 7%, we couldn’t find anybody in San Francisco, so we went to L.A. Tracey was the first one we saw. We saw other women, because I’m a director, and I can’t make up my mind. And then we saw 50 guys. None of them were working. A friend of ours happened to know Wyatt. Justin, our producer, sent me a clip on YouTube called “My Best Black Friend.” It was a weird pilot that Wyatt was in about a white guy who has a reality show with a best black friend.

Cenac: Not just his best black friend, his only black friend.

Jenkins: Months later we were casting and Justin said, what about that one guy? So we called Wyatt.

Cenac: You didn’t call me. I got a Myspace message.

Q: Can you explain your choices of music?

Jenkins: Everything in this movie is kind of designed to be doable. We need to get the rights to these songs. I had a playlist from iTunes. 80% of the music in the movie is from that playlist. The rest of the music was pulled together by Greg O’Bryant. It was important to have music I thought reflected the fact that this black guy living in this quote-on-quote un-black world. Also being able to make the movie really fast, we wanted to music know ahead of time what the scenes were going to be cut to.

Cenac: This is on a complete side not, but there’s a woman in the third row who’s either completely passed out or dead. (Huge LOL from the audience)

Q: How much rehearsal time did you have?

Jenkins: None. Wyatt and Tracey were both SAG ultra, ultra low budget actors, but we still had to pay them for every day they worked on the movie. We couldn’t afford to pay them any money, so we couldn’t bring them out to San Francisco for rehearsal. So they got there literally 12 hours before we shot the first shot. But we shot it in sequence, so it worked. We got two people who don’t really know each other. As we were making the film, they kind of got to know one another.

Q: How much of it was improvised?

Jenkins: Really not much of it was improv’d. There’s certain jokes in the film where I would write a joke and Wyatt would take the liberty of extending it. The only completely improv’d scene was the Bill Cosby scene.

Q: How long did it take you to shoot film?

Jenkins: We shot 15 days in November (of 2007). And we had the rough cut by New Year’s Day, and we mixed in February (2008). It was a really quick process.

Q: Can you talk about your style. A lot of your sequences seemed like a hybrid of experimental and documentary.

Jenkins: James (Laxton, director of photography) and I lived together in film school. We shot designed about half of the film. As an exercise, we wanted to kind of figure out ways to shoot it. As far as the color, we decided really early on that we wanted reflect the title, Medicine for Melancholy. We wanted that melancholy reflected in the actual image. We knew we were going to de-saturate the colors palates. We super saturated in production, and de-saturated in post to kind of protect their skin tones. There’s certain places in the movie where the characters just react with one another and all these issues with race, and at those moments, it’s the most color. Karina Longworth of Spout.com wrote one of the first reviews of the film. She said the film is 93% saturated and it’s reflective of San Francisco’s 7% African-American. If you look at our color files, the film is 93% saturated. We didn’t do that intentionally. We really tried to reflect what was the emotional connection with the characters.

Originally posted on:The Film Panel Notetaker - Miss a panel discussion? Don't worry! We took notes for you.

New York International Latino Film Festival - Nickel N’ Diming Financing - July 24, 2008

thefilmpanelnotetaker — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:01:15 GMT

New York International Latino Film Festival
Nickel N’ Diming Financing – Find the Right Deal
July 24, 2008

On Thursday, I attended for the very first time the New York International Latino Film Festival, which presented over 100 films throughout the week. Earlier in the day after picking up my press badge from the Roger Smith Hotel, I hopped over to the Directors Guild Theater to see the film Mancora from Peru (the filmmakers were not present for that, so unfortunately, I have no Q&A notes, other than to say that I thought it was a fairly good film, which sort of reminded me of Y Tu Mama Tambien, which is the much better of the two.) Then I went over to Showbiz Software for a panel discussion on film financing, coordinated by Edwin Pagan, who made a brief introduction. The panelists touched on a number of topics ranging from ways to go about finding funding for your first films to finding a universal appeal for a broader audience, and a brief case study on how the indie film Quinceañera was funded by a community. Here are highlights from the discussion:

Moderator:
Bienvenida Matías – Executive Director, Association of Hispanic Arts

Panelists:
Pooja Kohli Taneja – Founder, FilmKaravan – Curator, Filmmaker, Producer
Fernando Ramírez, Esq. – Entertainment Attorney
Phil Bertelsen – Filmmaker, Producer
Nicholas Levis – Ovie Entertainment, Producer
Slava Rubin – IndieGoGo, Co-Founder
Mike Sergeant – Filmmaker, Producer

Matías: How do you get your first money to make your film?

Bertelsen: The first money is the hardest. I’m sure that’s not a newsflash. Typically it comes from well-established relationships including friends and family. Ultimately, the first money comes when you can demonstrate the reliability of your project. The trick is to get around the whole catch 22 when they say, what have you done before? If there was kind of a magic formula to that, I would have bottled it by now and sold it and paying for the rest of my career.

Kohli: I think before you get into the game, you need very little money to actually build alliances…people who get on board early, which can be organizations or grants…that align with your project.

Rubin: IndieGoGo is an online marketplace to connect filmmakers to fans. We’re giving the tools to filmmakers for fundraising. The filmmakers have already raised tens of thousands of dollars on IndieGoGo. Some of them have already had established films in their prior careers and their building their audiences online to turn that into money for their next films. Many of the filmmakers for the first time are raising between $500 to $10,000.

Bertelsen: Your first money can be a very strategic proposition. It doesn’t require everything up front. It’s about building partnerships, whether it be with established filmmakers, production companies, websites, etc. A lot of times, the early work of getting the first money is just a matter of forming relationships who can give you credibility as a filmmaker and give your story the legitimacy you know that it has.

Matías: Many filmmakers here are everything…we produce, direct, hand out the coffee, edit. How do you feel about that?

Levis: Start with a package that ultimately you want to get to an investor. These partnerships are intended to tell a sophisticated investor what you’re looking for and that the return for them is there. My belief is that you strengthen yourself by delegating to individuals that will strengthen your project. You may be an amazing director, but you find a producer who is better at producing. Just because you’re a great producer, doesn’t mean you’re a great distributor. Finding your alliances and building a team…the bigger the team is that you trust, the further you’ll go.

Matías: When should filmmakers think of getting an attorney as part of the team?

Ramírez: Let me first say that I tend to think of funding as falling into two broad categories:

Obtain secure funding from grants and foundations (ie. The Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation). That tends to be for the most part for social-themed documentaries. It takes a long time however. They usually want to see a body of work and someone with experience. It’s also an investment that’s going to pay off on their part.
Private equity…trying to get money from sophisticated investors. That tends to be a significantly more complicated process because you’re dealing with securities. You have to go through processes like registering with the SEC or blue sky agencies or coming up with documents that will have enough information for sophisticated investors to make an informed decision regarding their investment, because it is a really risky business.

Levis: The earlier you bring in council (and accounting), the better. Building that team is such an imperative aspect. At times, it may seem a little overwhelming, but there’s a lot of individuals out there that realize that risk. A great filmmaker or producer does not make a good lawyer or account, so asking as many questions as you can and getting free advice, so that way when you are approaching grants or private equity, you’ve got your numbers down. You have all those answers that are so important to them.

Rubin: One of the things that’s important to ask yourself is what are your goals for your movie? It can be just an artistic expression. It can be because you want to change your career and do this for a living…whether it’s a success or not. Be realistic. Christopher Nolan (director of The Dark Knight) is obviously now a rich man. His first movie cost $11,000.

Matías: When thinking about how to raise money, how do you divvy up the budget so you can understand who you’re going to approach?

Bertelsen: I think it starts much like Slava was saying by asking what your goals are. Ask yourself, who is the audience for this film? When you start to examine your project, you make decisions on who would be appropriate person to bring this to. For example, you’re not going to bring a low-budget indie horror film to a structurally themed documentary production company. It goes without saying, but you’d be surprised at how many first-time filmmakers don’t read the guidelines and don’t pay attention to what’s being asked of them when it comes to how to prerequisite their projects. You want to be very targeted. You’ve got to do your homework and know what it is they’re looking for. Tailor your projects to those interests the best that you can.

Kohli: I think it’s very important to do that homework he mentioned. Who are the players in the market and what they do? Exactly the way you have goals for your films, they have goals for their money. You need to be ready to understand who is most interested in your project. Be realistic. Who was the last you? Who did exactly what you’re trying to do? Learn from their mistakes.

Sergeant: Be creative and you have to be willing to really go that extra mile. I was going to do a narrative film depending on what it would cost. When you’re doing a narrative film, anybody who’s an investor or wherever you raise money, they want to know, ‘how can I get this back?’ A movie is one of the quickest ways to lose millions of dollars really fast.

Ramírez: All that information on how prepared you are should be a in a business plan. There’s a series of books out there, one that I’ve talked about on panels before is by Louise Levinson, Business Plans for Filmmakers. You’re going to have to do the research on what the market is and projections. What type of films like yours have made money? You also have to be honest for instance, these films like mine, have not made money, but most have. I was watching Quinceañera…I was so shocked in the interviews…I think they had an idea for a movie. They went to somebody. They had the money before they even had scripts. I had to rewind that. I don’t think that really happens

Levis: With the packaging and everything’s in place, there are so many key elements where things can go awry. It must be frustrating even after you’ve made a few films to locate the money. The global market is such a changing one. Last tear investors on Wall Street were really aggressive, but with the economy changing so much since last year, the opportunities are not there. Europe is looking to us now, because their money is so much stronger. Right now the pound is two-to-one. That means if you can start to talk to individuals there now that for instance say they’d like to shoot in New York City…what would cost 500,000 pounds here, I can easily get $1 million American. Things kind of equal the same. The day rate here, the day rate there. That’s true with a lot of European money. They’re really looking to the U.S. because everyone wants that U.S. affiliation. The opportunity to present yourself with a co-production company out of Spain or France or London…what you’re doing ultimately is giving them the opportunity to send their money and it goes further. Your business plan should also think about what happens outside the U.S.

Rubin: The Hollywood system has a term called pre-selling of foreign territories.

Matías: Historically, it has been difficult for us as Latinos and Latinas to be able to break into making these films and finding this money. Have things changed? Is it easier? Do we have topics that people want? Are our own communities willing to support what might not be mainstream, even by indie definitions?

Bertelsen: It is an increasingly global marketplace. I think that only adds value to our stories as Latinos, as people of color, and women in a world where we have to make up the majority. I think the goal is to find a way to reach that audience.

Ramírez: I often hear that a film has to have a universal appeal. How as a filmmaker of color and you want to make a film that portrays the experience of your community in a way that’s appealing? How can we make films that can get picked up by distributors?

Kohli: From a South Asian angle, filmmakers like Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta tell South Asian stories, but these are not stories for the South Asian market. These are stories that people all over the world want to hear. I think a good film from any angle, the simplest way for you to have a barometer is if people can somehow relate to it. A story we can feel, we can be a part of. That in the simplest form is a success. If you can take what is in your film to an audience that is not you…you don’t want people like you sitting in the audience watching this film, but you want people who are not like you to be able to see like you. Vanaja that went to over 100 festivals and won about 30 awards was released by Emerging Pictures, it did numbers that were less than 10% in South Asian markets. Be able to convince someone who’s not you about the story. I think people want not to educated the audience with every film. Try not to beat them on the head with it. You can get the story across in a way that delivers the message, but if you’re going for an audience that’s not your core audience, you need to make it slightly easy for them.

Bertelsen: The onus on us as filmmakers of color is to prove those economics. In addition to all the things to get in the room, be prepared to make the argument with the market research.

Matías: To get back to the issue of Quinceañera, the film did not have a script when they got the money. They had an idea. They had lived in the neighborhood. They had been involved with the whole ceremony of the quinceañeras. They were connected to a whole group of people who had money. It was the group of people who gave them the money, and they said, now I have to go out and make a script. They made the script in a very short amount of time. The reason that film works is they worked with the community. They found the Madrina, the woman in the community who really knew how to teach everyone how to participate in a quinceañera ceremony. That’s really what gave the film its authenticity of a right of passage for a young woman.

Originally posted on:The Film Panel Notetaker - Miss a panel discussion? Don't worry! We took notes for you.

Silverdocs - Guggenheim Symposium - Spike Lee - June 19, 2008

thefilmpanelnotetaker — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:01:22 GMT

Prolific filmmaker Spike Lee was honored at the Charles Guggenheim Symposium on June 19th. Clips from Lee's documentary work were played including 4 Little Girls, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, We Was Robbed and Jim Brown: All American. And a preview of Lee's upcoming narrative feature, Miracle at St. Anna (In Theater Sept. 26), was also screened. Denver Post film critic Lisa Kennedy moderated a discussion with Lee. I've read a lot on other blogs that Lee came across as arrogant, but I thought he was just responding honestly to Kennedy, who for the most part, seemed to know her Lee film history well, but often times became redundant in her questioning and struggled to come up with questions. Below are highlights of the opening remarks and some of the questions asked during the discussion.

Guggenheim Symposium - Spike Lee

Silverdocs AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival

Silver Spring, MD

June 19, 2008

AFI President Bob Gazzale introduced the discussion referring to Charles Guggenheim, for whom the symposium is named. Gazzale said: "Without question (Guggenheim) is one of the central figures in American film history. A documentary filmmaker who chartered a record of this nation's history, of its people and its stories across five decades... Charles made over 100 documentaries. From films that documented political campaigns: Stevenson, Kennedy, McGovern to name just a few...films about architecture, the civil rights movement. We all remember the film about the Jonestown flood...a levee that broke in 1889. His work defines you and me. The heroic struggles of every man and every woman, and the dignity in that struggle. At the very heart of all of his films, even if it's about the St. Louis arch, they are films about inspiration probably best defined a moment in the very end of the film about Bobby Kennedy when Kennedy says, 'You can do something about tomorrow.' That's Charles Guggenheim. That's the spirit that carries us into this room today...and to our honoree tonight. He arrived in our collective cultural consciousness in the 1980s a fierce and a fearless voice in American film. His narrative work is of such a singular place in our world that...I think if not he, who? Who would be telling these stories? Who would be challenging us to see America as a diverse and vibrant and complicated place that it is filled with art and music and hope and color and anger and inspiration. Who would create those characters that are smart people on screen who smash stereotypes. Each well written, well spoken, well acted work. They are people we all aspire to be. They are heroes and yet they're humble. When his name is on a film, you better be up for a challenge. Think of the end of Do the Right Thing. A quote from Malcolm X. A quote from Martin Luther King. He's a filmmaker who does not ask us to think his way, he asks us to think. This is never more true than when you look at his nonfiction work. He's made several documentaries including Four Little Girls, which is reason enough for us to gather here tonight. But then a storm began to brew out over the Atlantic Ocean and it became Hurricane Katrina, a natural disaster and a national disaster. It tore the roof off of America we had become a little too comfortable with. And if it weren't for our honoree tonight, the truth would be gone like the storm itself. The tragedy and its causes would be lost in a sea of sitcoms. But instead, we have a documentary that reminds us who we are as a nation and how far we have to go. And it reminds us of what Bobby Kennedy said that you can do something about tomorrow. So we gather tonight to honor a great man of American film and a great man of America. His name is Spike Lee.

Lisa Kennedy then made her introduction: "Because Bob did such a lovely job of contextualizing what Spike really means to us and has meant to us for more than two decades now, I want to take a moment to probably be a little bit more personal. When I started writing, Spike was also starting to make feature films. I used to think he did something along with a couple of other filmmakers that came after him called letting us in on the black 'familiar' -- little moments, conversations, looks, gestures, ways of talking, but also things like progress. It just reminded me that he got it. He got the texture of African American life. He loved it. You know, that was a long time ago when he started doing that. And I know think of that 'familiar' as our 'familiar,' the 'American familiar.' There are perfect storms of incompetence and frightening weather and bad engineering that allowed for something like the levees breaking in New Orleans. And then there's this other thing that I also think was a perfect storm, but storms the wrong word, because it's so positive and I think what better week to be talking to Spike Lee...what better year to be talking to Spike, than a time where an African-American man is running for president. (Big applause from the audience.) At the same time, there are levees that are starting to give way and have been giving way. Spike connects us to our moment. He connects us to bodies. I think he does that in this documentary. And one of the things I think is amazing about this body of work...his legacy as a filmmaker is that you look at his narrative films, they're so vibrant. They have style, they have vigor, they have music, they have so much texture and they're bold. And the acting in them is extraordinary. He works so beautifully with performance. That's his narrative work. His documentaries are just as challenging, and it's amazing. I think this is a man who makes documentaries that allow other people to tell stories...to tell their stories...to tell our stories. And it has to be in part because he has competence that he's told his stories the way he wants to and he has the peace and the wherewithal to hear someone else's story and I think that comes across in the clip reel we're going to see where he talks to the parents of the little girls that died from that bomb in 1963. This will be the 45th anniversary of that bombing a the 16th Street Church in Birmingham. Not only does he talk to them, he builds a kind of trust. I think there's a trust he also built with audiences that as I said, can think for ourselves. I think that's extraordinary. I always want to go out of a documentary having more questions. Not more questions as in, 'why didn't they do it this way?' but more questions because I think that it's a challenge. I don't want someone to answer the truth of the world for me. I think Spike Lee's done an extraordinary job with his films. When the Levees Broke is an amazing documentary. The funny thing is, whenever we told Spike this...it took me a long time to look at it because that's my family. My great aunt left there and went to Houston and she died. She was very old, but she lost something. She was the storyteller in my family about the power of New Orleans as a place to live. So I don't think I've ever said to Spike, thank you for a movie that broke my heart and challenged me. What we're going to see in this clip real is...I do think there is hope and distillation of what he does so well.

(Clip reel presented)

Kennedy: When you decided to make Four Little Girls, did you want to make a documentary? When did you start that process?

Lee: In film school, I wrote I wanted to do a narrative film about this. That was 1981. I never forgot about that story. For me, it was better to do it as a documentary. I was in Birmingham, my family's from Alabama. I spent the night (at the family's) house. They trusted me. Ellen Kuras, a great cinematographer, she shot it. She also shot Bamboozled and Summer of Sam. The hardest thing about this was I had to really pray on including those post-mortem shots. I thought about that long and hard. They were in the cut, they were out of the cut. But finally I decided that the audience should see what those sticks of dynamite did to these four girls who were never allowed to grow up. The whole thing about the documentary, how I approached I wanted to talk with the people, who knew in their own words, tell us what they thought they might have become if they had been allowed to live.

Kennedy: I saw (Ellen Kuras) talking about the interview with Maxine McNair and how moving and difficult that was as a DP. Normally, you're behind the camera and you have a little distance, and I was sort of curious...did you find moments like that as well? Where do you position yourself? Do you protect yourself?

Lee: You know what, it's not about protection, but you have to ask questions. And you know you're asking questions and people break down. You can never say the wounds heal. You're still digging up a lot of emotions. I guess being a parent, too, that on top of that, these great people talk about their loss.

Kennedy: How does a filmmaker build trust?

Lee: They see my films. If you're a documentary filmmaker and your subjects don't trust you, you're not going to have a film. They don't know me, but they know me through my work.

Kennedy: What other film films or narrative features helped you prepare for Four Little Girls?

Lee: Narratives tell the story, whether it's a documentary or feature films. For me, it's still telling the story, so I don't they there's a distinction.

Kennedy: When I saw When the Levees Broke, one of the things I loved is when you decide to let your voice enter the picture. What triggers that? When do you decide to do that? Is there a moment when you think it works? I think it's very powerful because you don't use it very much?

Lee: You need to hear my questions again to hear my answer. People who have seen my documentaries, we don't use narrators. There's no narration in any of these. Sam Pollack I'd like to thank, who's the editor.

Kennedy: How did We Was Robbed Come about?

Lee: I got approached by these people that were putting together a bunch of films by directors from all over the world. They could be about anything, but could only be 10 minutes. There was no limit on the subject matter. I read the story about how Al Gore was 10 minutes away from making his concessional speech, so I tracked all these people down and turned my camera on.

Kennedy: You're working on the Kobe Bryant film. Can you talk about the structure of that?

Lee: There was a film in Cannes three years ago about Tze Chung, the great soccer player. In that film, they have 20 cameras on him. I liked it. I said, this would work better with basketball. This past April 13, there was a game at the Staples Center, the Lakers versus the then world champions San Antonio Spurs. We had 30 cameras on Kobe. It's going to air on ESPN and ABC when they kick off the next basketball season.

Kennedy: How did Jim Brown, All American come about?

Lee: Jim's one of the most fascinating people I ever met. He's an activist. He's the greatest football player. At one point, the biggest movie star in Hollywood. He's always been relevant. It was just natural. He said, 'Spike, I don't care what you show.' He is so secure in who he is. He gave me complete freedom.

Kennedy: Let's talk a little bit about that guy who's running for president. Do you think if Obama becomes president...?

Lee: There's no if! (Rousing applause from audience.) It changes the way the world looks at the United States. It changes everything. It's going to be Before Obama (BB) and After Obama (AO). And some folks need to get used to this. It's gonna be a new day. And it's not just going to be a new day, but a better day. I'm going to be at that inauguration, too.

Kennedy: What does that mean for artists? What does that mean for you?

Lee: As artists, you reflect what you see in the world. I think you'll see a lot of art reflect the good this country is going to embark on.

Kennedy: Are there documentaries you'd like to see you don't want to make?

Lee: There are narrative films. I'd love to see a great film on Martin Luther King. I don't think I can do it. Marcus Garvey. I can't do everything. Gotta leave room for Tyler Perry. (Great big LOL from audience.)

Kennedy: I know you have the Kobe Bryant coming up.

Lee: One on Michael Jordan, too.

Kennedy: Tell me about that.

Lee: We're going to be doing it. This one about Michael is going to be about his last year in Chicago. The bulk of the filming is done. We had a camera every single day. We hope to have a world premiere in Cannes next May.

Kennedy: What are some of the things you learned from James McBride's research on Miracle at St. Anna?

Lee: Before James wrote the book, he interviewed a lot of the black men from the 92nd Division. In fact, he compiled a lot of those people into characters. Again, Judy (Lee's researcher) sent me everything she could on the war effort, the participation on land, African Americans in World War II and then the specifics on where it takes place in Italy. It takes place in Tuscany and the whole thing was happening while the country was in a civil war. The fascists run by Mussolini were in cahoots with Hitler and the Nazis. For me as a filmmaker, I can't have enough research. Judy sends me everything.

Kennedy: Don't you think there's still opportunities for documentaries about that part of the greatest generation that we haven't really heard of?

Lee: There's plenty of stuff. It's wide open. Myself and Ken Burns do not have a monopoly on the great stories that need to be told.

Originally posted on:The Film Panel Notetaker - Miss a panel discussion? Don't worry! We took notes for you.

One-on-One Q&A with Dawn Scibilia and Alan Cooke, "Home"

thefilmpanelnotetaker — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:01:17 GMT

The Film Panel Notetaker’s One-on-One Q&A with…

Dawn Scibilia – Director, Producer, DP, Editor
&
Alan Cooke – Producer, Writer, Narrator

Over the weekend, I got a pleasant surprise when Alan Cooke sent me an instant chat message from Ireland on Facebook. He asked me if I had seen the documentary he produced, wrote, and narrated called Home. It was a film that I was familiar with, but had not yet had the opportunity to see, so I asked him if he could send me a screener. He put me in touch with the film’s director Dawn Scibilia. We spoke on the phone, and met the next rainy day outside of BAM where Dawn gave me the DVD. (I had just come from Sujewa’s documentary shoot where he interviewed Tambay Obenson nearby in Brooklyn.) I immediately took the DVD home with me to watch. It is a beautifully shot and well-told story of Alan’s experience coming from Ireland to live in New York City, as well as other stories told by people who call New York home, whether they came here as immigrants or were born and raised here. Some familiar faces include Liam Neeson, Susan Sarandon, Woody Allen, Mike Meyers, Frank and Malachy McCourt, and more. The film resonated with me very well. I don’t come from too far away, Western New York State, but I can certainly relate as New York has become my home. I wanted to find out more about the making of Home, so I did a One-on-One (or Two) Q&A with Dawn and Alan. They are currently seeking distribution opportunities here in the U.S.

In the mean time, here are a few ways in which you can see Home before then—Home will air on Thirteen/WNET New York this Thursday, July 3 at 10pm, and to purchase a DVD of Home, visit http://homethemovie.com/.

TFPN: Who came to who first to propose making the film? Dawn, did you already have the topic in mind, or did Alan pitch it to you? How did it all come about?

Scibilia: In 2000, I was toying with the idea of a documentary about how New York had changed in recent years. I had even shot some footage, mainly streetscapes, buildings and parts of the city I wanted to remember as they were. After 9/11, I abandoned the idea for obvious reasons. In 2004, I met actor Alan Cooke who was interested in doing a one man show about his experiences in New York as a recent Irish Immigrant. We got to talking and decided to merge our ideas and our talents.

Cooke: Dawn was documenting the city visually before I met her and I was writing fragments about my own life as a newly arrived immigrant. I was renting an apt for my landlord and Dawn was going to take it, we got chatting and had an interest in the changes and effects of New York and on my own transformation being away from home. We went out the next day with a MiniDV camera and began a journey of capturing the city in its essence of energy, in the visual and poetical sense. As we moved deeper into the piece we discovered a language that existed on the city streets and found ourselves with a work that was growing organically with no preconceived plan, just following our hearts and passions and the calling of the streets of New York.

TFPN: How did you select all the people to be interviewed in the film? How did you gain access to the celebrities?

Scibilia: We thought it would be interesting to get well known people who would open up to us and reflect on the city just as we were doing. And we believed we could pull it off. We each came up with a list of people who had an interesting relationship with the city and would want to share it with us because of their love of the city, people who were inspired by the city and understood its history. We wanted a mix of Irish immigrants like Liam Neeson and native New Yorkers like Susan Sarandon and Pete Hamill, or an interesting mix of both as in (Frank and Malachy) McCourt who were born in Brooklyn, went back to Ireland and then decided to return to New York. After unsuccessful attempts at getting past agents and managers, we found ways of meeting them and pitching them in person. Some face to face meetings were pure accidents. Only in New York!

Cooke: We came upon them in situations like bars and theatres and movie premieres. I met Liam Neeson in Central Park, by an eight million to one chance! We got them because we had passion and an original idea and they saw in our eyes a desire to capture something honest, poetic and real.

TFPN: Were you at all inspired by any other films on immigration? If so, what are some of the great films on the immigrant experience in America that you've seen?

Scibilia: We watched Wings of Desire and Baraka for its poetry and the great New York: A Documentary Film by Rick Burns which was a great way to quickly delve into the city’s history and some of its most devoted citizens.

Cooke: I personally took my influence from the street culture of New York and from other poetic films like Wings of Desire, Joyce’s Ulysses, Kerouac, dreamers and notions of myth and the human journey. I love films that involve a single characters transformation for I feel that is what happened to me. Our film Home is a reflection of all of these inspirations layered into the film.

TFPN: What message would you like your film to deliver?

Scibilia: It wasn't our intention to send a message or answer questions, but if I had to give you an answer I guess it would be, life itself is a journey. And if you should find yourself in New York, recognize and appreciate its importance to your journey and all who came before you.

Cooke: It has been seen by maybe one million people so far in festivals and on TV. We have had many wonderful reactions, I want the film to move people and show that all of our journeys have meaning and New York. Moments can change you forever. The film delivers a message of hope that New York still has a spiritual power and you can be fully realized on many different levels if you choose to call it HOME.

TFPN: (To Cooke) Was your narration in the film based on any previous writings you've done, or was it written solely for the film?

Cooke: The narration was based on my experiences and some writing I was working on. I just expanded it as I went along. As Dawn created pieces of film, I would write around them and vice verse. It was a very organic response in how the film was created. Being an actor helped because it meant I was able to create some truth in my voice and it was also part of how I shaped the words, looking for the realness in what I was trying to say. I learned a huge amount from the process and the audiences so far have reacted very strongly to my narration. They have said it’s like I’m bringing them on a journey…a personal journey on the streets.

TFPN: What has been the reaction from people who have seen the film, particularly from immigrants?

Scibilia: There’s a strong identification with the film. They've all made a point of telling me that they felt as though they had just seen themselves on the screen. So I'm happy to know I've done my job as a director. For me personally, the biggest compliment of all is when a New Yorker tells me that it completely captured the city for them, because that means we satisfied the most jaded audience members perhaps in the world! And since this is my home town, it meant a lot.

Cooke: Some have been moved to tears. I believe we have caught the essence of the immigrant’s journey in New York, the strife, the self-belief, the challenges and the moments of real transformation. People from London, New York, San Francisco, Australia…have all responded in saying how poetic and how beautiful the piece is…it’s very endearing.

TFPN: The film is being distributed in Ireland right now. How's that going? What has been the reaction from people there?

Cooke: We have our first theatrical release in Ireland. I’m very excited. We have shown it on TV here and in some small one-off screenings. People have been very moved by my story. I am brining so much back home to them.

TFPN: What are you both working on next?

Scibilia: I'm polishing a screenplay I've just completed and hope to direct – a film noir set in NYC. I'm hoping to take it to the IFP Market this September.

Cooke: I’m half way through a book about New York, an extension of the film and a more personal and expressionistic look at a series of moments I have had in the city. I hope maybe to make a film about my journey in Ireland sometime soon, and I am trying to audition again for the stage. That is my first love as a professional stage actor, but life can throw some funny roads at you!

Originally posted on:The Film Panel Notetaker - Miss a panel discussion? Don't worry! We took notes for you.

Zeitgeist 20th Anniversary Salute at MoMA Presents Two Films From Todd Haynes

thefilmpanelnotetaker — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:01:15 GMT

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York began a celebration this week of the distributor Zeitgeist Films 20th anniversary with a retrospective of some of their best releases from over the years. Friday night, Todd Haynes presented two of his earlier films from the Zeitgeist collection, the short Dottie Gets Spanked and the controversial feature Poison , both shot by the great indie cinematographer Maryse Alberti, who most recently lensed Alex Gibney's documentary Taxi to the Darkside and whom I've had the personal privilege to work with on two short films in my own early days of independent film, a mere eight years ago compared to Zeitgeist's, Haynes' and Alberti's longevity. As an aside, Dottie Gets Spanked stars two former One Life to Live castmates, J. Evan Bonifant (ex-Al Holden) and Barbara Garrick (Alison Perkins). I state this because a few weeks ago, I posted notes from from the OLTL 40th anniversary panel discussion (speaking of anniversaries) at the Paley Center. Haynes also cast Garrick in his 2002 film Far From Heaven. She is a great character actress and I hope to see her in more of Haynes' films. Where is this aside going, you might ask? I suppose it just shows the point I addressed in my intro to the OLTL notes where I said "both genres (that being soaps and independent film) when done right, are often bold, risky, and deal with thought-provoking socially relevant issues." Nuff said. For more reading on Haynes, check out The Film Panel Notetaker's notes (here and here) from last year's New York Film Festival. And here are my notes from Friday night's discussion featuring highlights from the opening remarks and audience Q&A:

Zeitgeist: The Films of Our Time

Todd Haynes' Dottie Gets Spanked and Poison

MoMA

New York, NY

June 27, 2008

Haynes opened by thanking MoMA for bringing him to New York from Portland, Oregon. "This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to pay tribute to these two unbelievably talented, brilliant, smart and innovative distributors." Haynes is speaking of course of Zeitgeist co-founders Emily Russo and Nancy Gerstman, who were also present. "They are without a doubt the best distributors and best people I've ever worked with in distributing any of my films," Haynes said. On his films, Haynes said Poison was conceived, financed and approached at the time as an art project, outside the realm of traditional film financing and production. Russo and Gerstman were so committed to what Haynes was doing (along with Apparatus Productions partners Christine Vachon, producer of many of Haynes' films, and Barry Ellsworth, who shot the black and white scenes in Poison) that they wanted to distribute Poison even before it was completed."We had distribution of this art film at a time when that isn't something that filmmakers in their right mind should ever expect," he said. The film became the subject of great discourse and debate. It was one of the early films that sort of "branded with the new queer cinema mantle" that fell into a lot of controversy from the far right. On Dottie, which Haynes said was sort of the most autobiographical film he ever made, came three years after Poison and was made for ITVS , then was picked up for distribution by Zeitgeist. Haynes also dedicated the screening of Poison to Jim Lyons who both stars in and edited the film, and passed away last year.

Immediately following the screenings of Dottie and Poison, Haynes took some questions from the audience. Here are some of the highlights:

Q: Which of the Jean Genet stories (in Poison) were related to which of the stories you wrote?

Haynes: The clearest source for the film was Miracle of the Rose. It's sort of encapsulated in the prison story. I felt in a more general sense that I was interpreting aspects of Genet in all of the stories and I was very clearly interpreting the two more American genres...the horror film and the tabloid documentary story...into a vernacular that I felt I could speak in which is an American one. A lot of the same kinds of questions about transgression, about issues of the outsider, about issues of disease and the monster and so forth were things that I had encountered in Genet's writing. I felt this interest in bringing to a discussion that related to what was happening at the time, which is very much in the height of the AIDS scare. I was living in New York. It was sort of the center for a lot of political activity and activism and a lot of struggling that went on around those issues. I was also very much aware as we all were of how the media was beginning to depict AIDS and creating this sort of comfortable us versus them boundary. Those were the kinds of things I wanted to challenge, but I think even more than that, I felt that the gay community, which at that point was in a state of shock, where it wasn't being expressed through activism and through political activity. There was a retreat. There was an almost sense of culpability following the experimentation of the 70s and sexual experimentation that characterized that decade that people sort of felt that they had brought this on themselves. Genet had only recently died around that time and I felt like he was somebody that I could try in my own humble way to apply to some of these questions and embolden some of the issues that I felt might have been getting lost in the public assault around HIV.

Q: Genet did a film (Un Chant D'Amour) in the late 1940s or early 1950s which had a prison sequence in it. Was that an inspiration?

Haynes: I knew the film well when I made Poison and I love that film. Un Chant D'Amour is an exquisite work on film by this playwright and fiction writer and poet Jean Genet. I didn't want to literally re-produce those scenes. They're too specific to that film. There are some proverbially erotic scenes in that film that were shocking for it's time. Maybe the most provocative is the one you described where one inmate sticks a little piece of straw through a hole in the granite wall and smokes a cigarette and exhales the smoke into his neighboring inmates cell who inhales it and blows it back out. So simple and so minimalist...so powerful.

Q: What was it about the early 1990s that allowed you to push the envelope and make the kind of films you wanted to make? Why did you decide to make a feature after making so many shorts?

Haynes: I don't know if anyone would do that today. I bet it would have even been easier in the 60s and 70s to conceive of and get support for and get interest behind a film like this possibly. For me, and I think this is true for many ways Christine Vachon and Barry Ellsworth, were interested in aspects of experimental filmmaking...had all gone to Brown University where there was this very interesting theoretical program where any film classes were taughtwhich was called at the time semiotics. It has since expanded in a full-fledged department called Modern Culture & Media. We've seen these kind of departments of critical theory expand at universities throughout the country and the world. We were being exposed to critical theory, post-Freud and feminist, that looked at Hollywood classical cinema from the critical perspective. We were also witnesses the end of that purist era of American experimental film...the Stan Brakhage era, let's say, which was amazing work, but very anti-narrative. That period was beginning to be re-examined by some experimental filmmakers like Sally Potter whose film Thriller we had all seen in college. It was these filmmakers who were beginning to take genre and references to Hollywood film and references to narrative formulas and formats and applying them to experimental strategy. I think that excited all three of us in different ways. For me, in a weird way, my education was even more in Hollywood traditions and classic genre traditions than even experimental traditions. This melding of the two opened up our eyes. At the same time, Blue Velvet came out in theaters. You sort of saw in a sort commercial venue or parallel platform, something very similar where in a narrative film, experimental strategies...and playing around the idea of artifice and pushing the boundaries was being played out in commercial cinemas with great critical response and great potential for a lot of filmmakers. Probably gave birth to a whole generation of filmmakers. With all of that in mind, I think we sort of informed what Apparatus was about, a non-profit organization aimed at what we call the experimental narrative where narrative was being accepted from a critical perspective. It was something that was very much a part of that time and a real sense of necessity...some political response to the climate of HIV. And yet all of those films approached their narrative strategies with a sense of innovation and different from one to next.
Originally posted on:The Film Panel Notetaker - Miss a panel discussion? Don't worry! We took notes for you.