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Kim Voynar

By Kim Voynar Voynar@moviecitynews.com

Posted Friday, May 13th, 2011 - Comments Off on A Word on Without
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A Word on Without

Mike Tully has a piece up on his indieWIRE blog about the Maryland Film Festival (never been to that one, but this isn’t the first time I’ve heard raves about it, so I need to add it to my bucket list, I guess). One thing that caught my eye in the write-up was Tully’s shout-out to Mark Jackson’s Without, a film of which I’m also a big fan.

I didn’t review Without from Sarasota, where I saw it, because it was in the narratives competition and I was on the jury. It will be on my upcoming SIFF preview as a recommended film for folks to try to catch at SIFF. Prior to winning at Sarasota (against, I should add, a stack of very good competition films), Without received a Special Jury Mention at its Slamdance debut, along with a second Special Jury Mention for lead actress Joslyn Jensen.

And I should mention here, too, that if Without had been playing at Sundance in the Midnight category, Jensen would have been garnering mention in the same “Girls of Sundance” articles that were talking up Elizabeth Olsen, Felicity Jones and Brit Marling. She’s a terrific new talent, and if she chooses wisely with her projects and steers clear of crappy studio rom-coms, she could really be something. She reminds me a bit of Brittany Murphy circa 8 Mile, walking the line between fragility and strength and emotional in a layered, complex performance.

Jackson’s direction is technically proficient, but beyond that the way he builds suspense in this film, through story outline and seamlessly tight editing choices, is really impressive. The interesting thing is, after briefly talking to Jackson at the Sarasota closing party, I’m not sure he even has any idea yet just how good he is, or why people are taking such notice of his little film. He struck me as completely unaffected and rather overwhelmed by all the positive attention his film is getting.

I’m hoping to connect with both Jackson and Jensen when they’re in Seattle for SIFF, to catch up with how things are going for them. I hope Jackson’s able to step back, take a deep breath here, and process and hang onto WHY people are impressed with this film. Watching Without, you get that sense that you’re bearing witness to the on-screen birth of two potentially big talents. He has that same potential I talked the other day with regard to Daydream Nation director Michael Goldbach.

It’s new directors like Goldbach and Jackson (and, for that matter, Mike Tully) who make me feel good about the future of independent film, particularly low-budget indies. Smart indie films that rely on story and character rather than effects, tightly directed, for a low-enough budget that they can actually make their money back (as Tully did in a matter of months with Septien)? Good stuff.

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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