Movie City Indie Archive for October, 2005
More Terry cloth: Gilliam tells tales
After explaining once more how he and Brothers Grimm co-writer Tony Grisoni wound up credited as “dress pattern makers,” the Telegraph’s David Gritten sits for a listen. They met “last week at a pub near his home in Highgate, north London, he was amiable. He has a broad, slightly dazed grin, and hair that is spiky but with a little mane reaching down his back. He was wearing deck shoes with monkey designs on them. Wheezy laughter punctuates his conversation. How difficult could he be? Yet Gilliam is a visually minded director, who complains that most filmmakers never look at paintings. He formulates a visual notion of a film in his head, then fights stubbornly to capture it on screen. Who has he fought? Anyone who opposes him: studio heads, financiers, producers. He does not shirk confrontation – rather, he rushes towards it….
MGM accepted Gilliam’s… script grudgingly. As he tells it, when he and Roven pitched it to a boardroom of executives, one said: “Why do you want to make this morbid movie about animals eating children?” “I nearly shouted: ‘It’s fairy tales! These are the stories Western civilisation grew up on!’ ” … Gilliam defends The Brothers Grimm: “It is a beautiful-looking film,” he says fiercely… “Studios are obsessed by a film’s opening weekend. If it doesn’t hit a pre-determined mark, they don’t spend another penny on it. But I’m huge on DVD. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas didn’t do well at the box office, but it’s big on DVD. One thing I know about my films, they have longevity and they make their money back in the end. I know I keep getting cheques in the post.”
Good timing?: an influential musician just wants to direct
Gifted musician-producer Jim O’Rourke, a member of Sonic Youth since 2001, and who has recorded his own solo albums under the titles of Nic Roeg films, is pursuing a career as a director, ContactMusic.com insists. The composer of “Insignficance,” “Bad Timing” and “Eureka” (which, ouroboros-like, inspired the Japanese epic of the same name) has been contributing to soundtracks for some time, such as for Love, Liza.
Lions Gate roars in UK: taking the Redbus
While the Image Entertainment video deal simmers, Lions Gate Entertainment was feeling peckish, so they’ve bought “a British film distributor that holds the library rights to such films as Bend It Like Beckham and The Mothman Prophecies for $35 million,” reports the CBC, “in a cash-stock deal.” “We are acquiring a company with a strong distribution infrastructure, a valuable library and a gifted, experienced and highly entrepreneurial senior management team,” Lions Gate chief executive Jon Feltheimer said in a release. “With the addition of our theatrical product, catalogue and the other resources we will provide, we intend to mirror in the U.K. the successful growth strategy we have executed in North America.” The deal gives Lions Gate the ability to self-distribute its motion pictures in Britain and adds the library of rights of more than 130 films to its holdings.” [You can read the original press release here.]
A history of violence above the 49th parallel
Upon the Canadian opening of A History of Violence Maclean’s Brian D. Johnson weaves a northern perspective: “Although it’s a U.S. production, with American stars, “if we’re talking creative categories,” says Cronenberg, “it’s a true Canada-U.S. co-production.” It was shot in Ontario with a local crew. And it subverts a classic American genre with a distinctly Canadian sensibility…. If violence is the primal theme of American cinema—ricocheting through Coppola, Scorsese, Eastwood—[this] may well be the movie of the year, and a bold Oscar candidate… I t’s as if this master outlaw from film’s wild frontier has shown up on Main Street, swung open the saloon doors, and taken a place at the bar alongside Francis, Marty and Clint…
“The movie, which could be subtitled Scenes from a Marriage, is a story of trust framed by two carnal interludes between husband and wife. The first is sweet and tender. The second is a bruising confrontation on a staircase, an angry struggle that dissolves into lovemaking… Cronenberg agrees the film “does have political undertones, or overtones, although it’s not overtly political. Those are things that Viggo and I discussed a lot when I was trying to convince him to do the movie. You have a man who’s defending his family and his home against bad guys with guns. It raises the question of retribution. Is anything justified when you’re attacked? It’s also hard not to notice that George Bush uses American Western movies as a model for his foreign policy — Osama bin Laden wanted dead or alive.” Johnson concludes, “Cronenberg has always treated mutilation, and mutation, of the flesh as metaphor. His real goal is to make us feel an exotic discomfort with our own mortality. What’s most disturbing about A History of Violence are not its flashes of heroic retribution, but the moments of intimate terror as a woman looks into her husband’s eyes and sees a stranger.” [More at the link.]
Sarah is magic: the New Yorker does Silverman
The New Yorker’s Dana Goodyear profiles comedian Sarah Silverman on the eve of the release of her new film: “In September, Silverman took Jesus Is Magic, the concert-movie version of a one-woman show she did Off Broadway… to the Toronto Film Festival, where it was screened at midnight for a crowd of 1,200. The next night, there was a party for her at the Club Monaco on Bloor Street in the fashion district. She arrived at ten-thirty wearing a knee-length gray woollen skirt and high-heeled black loafers. She looked around uncomfortably and said she didn’t know anyone. Strangers came up and introduced themselves… and photographers took pictures of her with festival notables. “This is a lot of attention… I want to walk around, but I’m afraid.”
In a downstairs room… an Us Weekly reporter asked her what was on her iPod, and a movie-theatre manager from Chicago told her that he and his workmates were recently talking about “scatting,” and who they would let do this to them. “You were my choice,” he said. Silverman listened graciously, then found her way out… She said she hadn’t minded the obscene confession. “When he came up to me and said ‘I want to tell you a story that might not be that flattering,’ I was like, Ugggh. People want to hurt your feelings.” Outside another première party, she was accosted by autograph collectors waving blank white sheets of paper for her to sign… A young man in glasses, a red polo shirt, and a baseball cap called out to her, “I loved The Aristocrats,” and asked for her autograph. There was a hint of malice in her outwardly game response. She signed, “Vagina Silverman.”
Little Nemo of Arabia?: the first Saudi cinema will show only cartoons
“Some 20 years after public screenings of films were banned, the first cinema will open next month in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia,” reports Agence France-Presse, “but showing only cartoons, [said] a source from the firm handling the project… The cinema will open for women and children at a Riyadh Hotel at the Eid al-Fitr feast at the end of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan on November 2 or 3… The move was made possible following an agreement with Riyadh municipality. The pan-Arab Saudi newspaper Al-Hayat said [Monday] that the 1,400-seat cinema will hold three one-hour shows to screen foreign cartoon films dubbed in Arabic every evening.” Crowds of 50,000 are predicted during the first two weeks. “The paper said the project was a prelude to the start of real cinema screenings for Saudi Arabia, given that cafes in main cities already show films, sports games and video clips on large television sets. Cinema was once shown in private clubs in Saudi Arabia until all public screenings were banned because they were considered against Islamic law in the early 1980s.Saudi Arabia is the only country to have banned cinema houses in the Muslim conservative Arab Gulf region.”
The war within The War Within: the society of the spectacle
In Joseph Castelo’s The War Within, Hassan, a Pakistani suicide bomber, takes refuge in the house of a childhood friend in New Jersey while planning to blow up Grand Central Station. in the Stranger, Annie Wagner talks to co-writers Ayad Akhtar and Tom Glynn. Akhtar says, “This gets a little academic and bizarre, but we talked about a sense of alienation, or people living within something that Guy Debord called the society of the spectacle. We were trying to get underneath the level of political discourse that has become pretty stale about a lot of these topics. And to identify the root human cause of people going out and blowing themselves up in some giant statement of protest and murder. So when you start trying to understand why the Other has so much contempt, hate, and disdain for this way of life that they would want to come and decimate it or kill themselves… You start to look at the world that we live in a totally different light. And you start to recognize—the notion of the “society of the spectacle” is a little bizarre, but it’s about individuals sense of being alienated and isolated from something that’s always larger than it, that consumes, that mass produces.
It’s something that [novelist Don] DeLillo talks about too, writing in this age where writing is over and the age of terrorism has begun. Who is giving voice to the oppressed? It’s no longer [political writer] Franz Fanon. It’s now the bomb.” [Much more at the link.]
Duly indie: 2929 and these four walls
Variety’s Ian Mohr reports on one more distribution wrinkle from Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner’s 2929 Entertainment, “an initiative dubbed Truly Indie that gives filmmakers access to the marketing and sales tools needed to roll out a film without a traditional distributor. Move is the latest from upstart 2929, which has been tinkering with traditional distribution models for its own indie pics by releasing them simultaneously via its theatrical and cable arms.” Filmmakers retain right to their pictures, most of the b.o. will go to producers, but, as Variety notes, “each deal will vary.” According to 2929, the Truly Indie program will supply filmmakers basic marketing services offered by theatrical distribs, including publicity, promotion, press screenings and advertising.” Wagner tells DV, “Despite the promise of the digital revolution, these filmmakers still face almost insurmountable hurdles in reaching theatrical audiences. We wanted to find new ways to open the market to these films. Truly Indie offers a much-needed safety net for quality independent films.” Fest favorite Cavite, repped by John Pierson and a roomful of his U of Texas students, is among the first test subjects.
Tristam Shandy: Michael Winterbottom's Cock and Bull plus a necessary measure of true celebrity
In the Guardian, John Mullan provides background on the man behind “The Continuing Life of Tristram Shandy”, the basis for Michael Winterbottom‘s A Cock and Bull Story: “I wrote not to be fed, but to be famous,” [Laurence Sterne] said. There had been bestselling novels before, but never an author who so openly revelled in his celebrity. He insisted always on wearing his clerical black – “Shandying it”, as he put it – around the drawing rooms of London, a jester in a priest’s costume. This is how he is painted in his portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, wig askew, the foxy smile letting you know he is a mischief-maker. To ensure Reynolds’ interest, he inserted into Tristram Shandy a passage celebrating his paintings. A Reynolds portrait was, he knew, a necessary measure of true celebrity.”
The Hire fired: BMW's axing its mini-movies
Friday’s the finale for BMW’s The Hire mini-movies; the site’s shuttering, reports Motor Trend.
Aussie Duncan Macleod has an appreciation of the immodestly budgeted, Clive Owen-starring, branded shorts at Duncan’s TV Ad Land, listing credits and noting that after Friday, “if you want to see the BMW films online, you’ll need to browse around the sites of advertising agency Fallon and film production companies such as Anonymous Content and RSA Films.” If you own a BMW, you can get the DVD for free, otherwise, it’s $3.75 for postage.
Legal priorities: classing Hollywood with hardcore
The Reporter’s Brooks Boliek runs down a booby-trapped congressional action to take sex out of movies: “Tucked deep inside a massive bill designed to track sex offenders and prevent children from being victimized by sex crimes is language that could put many Hollywood movies in the same category as hard-core… films. The provision added to the “Children’s Safety Act of 2005: would require any film, TV show or digital image that contains a sex scene to come under the same government filing requirements that adult films must meet. Currently, any filmed sexual activity requires an affidavit that lists the names and ages of the actors who engage in the act. The film is required to have a video label that claims compliance with the law and lists where the custodian of the records can be found. The record-keeping requirement is known as Section 2257, for its citation in federal law. Violators could spend five years in jail. Under the provision inserted into the Children’s Safety Act, the definition of sexual activity is expanded to include simulated sex acts like those that appear in many movies and TV shows.” [More details at the link; here’s the Cameron Crowe-ish trailer.
1 Comment »Capote meets Davy Crockett?
Capote director Bennett Miller offers another facet of his Truman show: he tells the Washington Post’s Desson Thomson that he believes contemporary audeinces will “respond to the story of one man’s bittersweet rise to fame 45 years ago, because it’s about how everyone else got there. “Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame and all may sound trite nowadays… But there was a starting line, and I think that’s the clearest example of someone crossing that line.
Whether Capote created or formed or directed it or not, he was an indicator of what was to come. . . . Sometimes, in the natural cycle of things, there comes a time when you look back. I personally feel a collective sense of discontentment and disgust with so much of what the culture has become,” Miller says. “I think you can look back to [“In Cold Blood”] as the genesis of certain components of it. This story is crystalline. It’s the Davy Crockett of modern culture, in a way.”
Skoll: toasting a new production Participant
A backgrounder on eBay founder Jeff Skoll‘s Participant Productions prodco, from Bruce Newman of the San Jose Mercury News: “With a personal fortune currently estimated at about $4 billion, and his own philanthropic foundation in Palo Alto that doles out genius grants to social entrepreneurs, Skoll is not someone to be underestimated. But Hollywood wasn’t built on hugs… “If you have the possibility to do good by being provocative, then you’re going to be OK,” said Mark Gill, president of Warner Independent Pictures… “But if you want to try to do good by being worthy and warm, goodbye. That’s just not where our culture is these days.” … “When I first started talking to people about investing in movies, I heard over and over that the streets of Hollywood are littered with the carcasses of people like me,” Skoll said. “But not many, if any, of them came here to do projects that actually bring value to the world.”… Each Participant picture will try to extend its themes through accompanying “social-action campaigns.” Said Participant’s president, Ricky Strauss, “It’s a key part of our business to use the social-sector organizations….” At its quiet Beverly Hills headquarters, the Participant team decides which projects to finance using a calculus never before seen in the movie business… “One metric of success that we use is whether more good comes from the film than just putting the money directly to work in a non-profit organization involved in the same issue,” Skoll said. “We’ve actually had cases where we looked at the risk profile of a film and said, ‘The way this looks, chances are we’re going to lose a million, 2 million, even 5 million dollars. But maybe we’ll get $10 million or $20 million worth of social value from it.’ We will take risks on projects where we think we might lose money, because we hope that the good that comes from that outweighs the risk. It’s a different kind of philanthropy.” [More at the link.]
Scott-free association: Tony tumbles the Domino
Martin A. Grove has a marathon banter with Tony Scott about that kooky Domino. Speaketh the non-Sir Scott: “I always like to try and experiment. As long as people will support my habit and pay me to try different things I’ll continue to do it. I love it. I hate repeating myself… A camera is strapped to my forehead the whole time in pre-production where it’s photographing something I see in the streets in my car… I’ll say, ‘There’s a role model for a character.’ Or, from magazines and books I pull up (articles and photos). I flip through ‘Soldier of Fortune’ magazine and different stuff. There might just be one corner of one picture that’s an inspiration for something about an interior of a character. It’s funny, my life began as a painter and I still think and function like a painter… I started out using multiple cameras—a close and a wide—on doing performance stuff because I’m able to cut many different takes. Sometimes on performance I’ll have 3 cameras, all of them just grabbing bits and pieces—hands or different things. When I do action stuff I use several cameras. But the true strength of multi-cameras is you can get it in one take or two takes because you don’t have to go back for coverage. People think it’s an indulgence, but it’s a very smart indulgence because in the end it saves you time (and) it saves the actors’ having to find the performance the same again. People always say, ‘Oh, it’s indulgent.’ It’s not. It’s smart.”
Lack of patience and less humor: Andy Klein hates his job
in LA CityBeat, fillum editor Andy Klein reveals his frustration at his chosen profession, mostly through an excruciating, failed attempt at humor: “I should have known better than to pick up the phone on deadline day, but now… I was stuck on the line with a publicist, a publicist I hadn’t even heard of, who was excitedly pitching me a brand-new film festival… “We have 23 premieres! … A star-studded tribute to Whit Bissell, who once spent the night here! There’ll be catered crullers and Peet’s Coffee in the media hospitality suite! I’m sure you can find space…” I did a rough calculation… the number of pages in the… section, minus the number of new releases opening that week, multiplied by the money constant (my budget, converted into kroner, divided by one thousand). For some unknown reason, the answer came out in furlongs per fortnight, so I had to factor in Planck’s constant and convert the result into a number representing the quantum probability that adequate space and human resources might materialize to cover [the event]. The answer, unsurprisingly, was zero.” The word count, however, comes to over 2,750, and it only gets worse at the link.
