MCN Blogs
Ray Pride

By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Wenders shooting Calabria in 3-D

With his Pina Bausch documentary on hold, Wim Wenders is shooting the first 3-D movie starring Ben Gazzara. While unlikely to reach as many moviegoers as the first 3-D movie starring Ed Asner, ANSA reports the new film starts today in the southern Italian region of Calabria on Monday. It “explores the interaction wwfullheadofhair.jpgbetween immigrants and locals in the area around the coastal town of Badolato. ”People often talk of a global village and I believe the Calabrian town of Badolato is the perfect metaphor for this idea,” said Wenders at a press conference marking the start of filming. ”I have been given a great opportunity here in Calabria. We are telling a story that is not only important at a European and global level but could also educate people on the experiences undergone by migrants.’ The film is to star 78-year-old American actor Ben Gazzara as a town mayor where a local child, who will be cast in Calabria, is struggling to organize a soccer match… Wenders said he felt cinema had an important role to play in shifting the portrayal of refugee and migrant issues away from the political arena and into everyday life. He said the decision to shoot in 3D was part of his efforts to bring ”real life” to the big screen, allowing viewers ”to see reality as it really is,” he said. His interest in conveying reality reflects a broader trend within cinema at the moment, he added ”I think a new cinematic realism is taking hold as the public has had it up to here of films that have nothing to do with everyday life,” he said. ”Over its 120-year history, filmmaking has followed different trends – for example, the periods of realism and neo-realism in Italy. Realism fell out of fashion in the 1990s but is now returning, which I am very happy about.”

Be Sociable, Share!

Comments are closed.

Movie City Indie

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon