Film Forum Plays With 'Paper Dolls' at Wednesday Premiere

You know how it goes: You read a film synopsis and say to yourself, “What the fuck is that?” To wit, the premise of Tomer Heymann’s charming, absorbing documentary Paper Dolls, which kicked off its New York run Wednesday night at Film Forum: A group of transgendered Filipinos, shunned in their native communities, settle in Tel Aviv as caretakers of elderly, mostly Orthodox Jewish men. At night. as the drag troupe Paper Dolls, they build a club audience even as their adopted culture turns against foreign workers and threatens both the ragtag family and professional stability they have established in Israel.

As one of director Tomer Heymann’s Paper Dolls, Sally Comatoy (right) gets a diction lesson from Chaim Amir (Photo: Strand Releasing)
And even that much, despite its seeming convolution, probably oversimplifies. The five years Heymann spent chronicling his subjects yields an omnipresence, depth and emotional texture revealing the Dolls’ limbo between gender, sexuality, religion, work and law. As their confidant both on- and off-camera, Heymann personalizes his story without condescending or overindulging himself; his classical tendency to symbolize his viewer–curious, unwavering, sympathetic–softens Paper Dolls‘ DIY edges as well as affirms its thoughtful, thought-provoking humanity.
“It’s really, really special being here,” Heymann said Wednesday, introducing his film. “This movie was already in Berlin and already in Los Angeles, but tonight, it’s the new print, so it’s really the real movie for me. So tonight I can look at the screen and say ‘bye-bye’ and ‘shalom’ to this movie. I especially need to say thank you to my amazing, beautiful characters–the Paper Dolls. I’m sorry they’re not here; right now they’re in London and Manila and they don’t have the choice or the freedom of the possibility to come here tonight. And they couldn’t go to Berlin, and they couldn’t go to Tel Aviv because–it’s crazy–they just don’t have the possibility. So when you watch this film, I’d ask that you send them your love.”
While you are at it, send Strand Releasing your love for picking this one up; it is a brave, rewarding, good film–the type you do not soon forget and, for weeks afterward, in the hype and furor of another bloated autumn, are grateful to have seen.

Three Coins in 'The Fountain': Venice Crowd Can't Make Heads or Tails of Aronofsky's Latest

A while back, when sources indicated to me that The Fountain was a front-runner for selection to this year’s New York Film Festival, they made it clear that their news was second-hand–they had not actually seen the film. Judging by the reaction to Darren Aronofsky’s latest thus far from Venice, I wonder if perhaps I should have taken that more seriously:

Rachel Weisz’s latest film was booed when it received its premiere at the Venice film festival [Monday].

The Fountain was jeered and derided during last night’s screening. One reviewer later called it a “flatulent dissertation on the benefits of dying.”

In one of the season’s storied festival traditions, Venice critics hand The Fountain director Darren Aronofsky to their colleagues from Toronto (Photo: Warner Bros.)
That could sound worse. Maybe. For Variety critic Leslie Felperin’s money, the “hippy trippy space odyssey-meets-contempo-weepy-meets-conquistador caper” is dull, repetitious and flatulent:

It’s hard to muster much engagement with characters who are so sketchily drawn. Izzi, for instance, is little more than a beatifically smiling presence. Weisz admittedly looks cute and pixie-like with a short-cropped hairdo, but Aronofsky hasn’t given his now real-life partner much of a role. Charismatic [Hugh] Jackman (and his chiseled cheekbones) does his best to carry the film through its many lulls, but it feels like a lot of time is spent watching him cry or trashing offices in frustration.

No doubt the filmmakers’ intention was to celebrate a love that transcends centuries, hence repeated use of lines, scenes and motifs. In the end, however, the effect is just monotonous, especially given overuse of Clint Mansell’s mournful orchestral score, slathered over scenes as if in hopes it will paper over the plot’s cracks.

There is plenty more where that came from, and surely plenty more on the way. Meanwhile, in a heartfelt defense over at CHUD, Devin Faraci just doesn’t get the outrage at all: “Who were the morons in attendance who booed this amazing work?” Good question, Devin, but I am sure you’ll meet them soon enough; The Fountain will be in Toronto next week for its North American premiere.

Page Six Gets Chivalrous After Vachon's Angelika Beatdown

I know I’m a few days behind on this, but even the slowest turnaround in town could not diminish the currency and vitality of the odd Page Six indie-film item. After all, who can forget last spring’s unqualified props for Steven Shainberg and Rachel Boynton, or the head-scratching smackdowns on Steven Soderbergh and Manohla Dargis–all hallmarks of the Page’s wordly, versatile renown?
The tradition continued Sunday with a lead item featuring producer Christine Vachon, whose new book (noted here last week) evidently tees off on the dank, noisy rat habitat of the Angelika Film Center.

“I hate the Angelika. I won’t see movies there,” she rants in A Killer Life, out later this month from Simon & Schuster.

“The seats are uncomfortable, the sound is crummy, you can hear the 4/5/6 train rumbling underneath you, and the film projectors are terrible,” Vachon rants. “Don’t even get me started on how the Technicolor [in] Far From Heaven looked on their screens. I couldn’t watch.”

Old news to most New York filmgoers, the Angelika’s perceived inferiority nevertheless scandalized Page Six, which officially reported a no-comment from an Angelika spokesman and a no-response from the chain’s mother ship in Los Angeles. Unofficially, an Angelika publicist planted the item; note the telltale description of “the beloved Houston Street mecca for independent releases–which helped many of [Vachon’s] quirky flicks become huge box office successes” (for the record, the Venice and Toronto smash Far From Heaven‘s opening weekend raked in around $210,000 on six screens, only one of which was at the Angelika), and someone dredged up the New York Press’s 2004 reader award for “Best NYC Movie Theater,” failing to note that the paper of Armond White would laud a bedsheet taped to a wall if it seemed the appropriately contrary move.
Anyway, I will be reviewing A Killer Life later this month as well as bringing you a dispatch from Vachon’s Sept. 25 appearance following Boys Don’t Cry at Lincoln Center. Hopefully the Angelika moles cannot sabotage the projection booth.
(Via Out of Focus)

Two For Tuesday: 59 Seconds Video Festival and Illegal Cinema

The big-hearted calendar crawlers at Blank Screen tip readers to a million and one NYC film events over the next few nights, but a couple in particular snagged my interest. First up, in, oh, about three-and-a-half hours at the Pioneer Theater, the 59-Second Video Festival kicks off with–wait for it–a program comprising 59 films by 59 international filmmakers, lasting 59 seconds each and screening around the world as a collection 59 times. The creators can explain it better; check out their Web site and let me know if/where I went wrong, and make the trip to the East Village for a little hometown crowd support.
Meanwhile, Brooklynites not feeling the commute love might consider Galapagos’ Para-Cinema series, which unspools an “Illegal Cinema” program tonight promising “a very special super-secret screening of lost classic film that features a prominent director’s version of the life of a 70s pop star with an eating disorder. Yeah, that one.” As Louis Armstrong said: If you have to ask, you will never know. But if you do not have to ask… wow. Tough call tonight. Flip a coin, I guess.

Live From Telluride, iW's Hernandez Covers Everything But the Room Service

My cap-tip of the day goes to indefatigable, indispensable indieWIRE kingpin Eugene Hernandez, who made the trip to last weekend’s Telluride Film Festival and appears to have spent about 72 consecutive hours running between the theater and his blog. Want to see director Douglas McGrath running down the timing of his film Infamous with a little picture called Capote? Eug has it. Chatting “imaginary portraits” with Fur director Steven Shainberg? Eug has it. Impressions of Little Children, The Last King of Scotland and Severance among other up and comers? They’re here.
Talk about a good week. And now he’s off to Toronto? Jesus Christ. Whatever he’s taking, I hope I can get my hands on some.

'Helen Mirren Fucking': The Joys of Discovering The Reeler, Vol. IV

As regular as rent checks and expired MetroCards, so the beginning of the month brings a purging of the Site Meter record at Reeler HQ. That is right: It is again time to reveal 30 of the most inspired cosmic accidents to bring readers my way in August. Maybe it was the heat, or maybe it was just a single Dakota Fanning item, but you people just get more and more depraved.
As usual, I could not and would not make these up, heavy on the sic, etc. etc.:
–Shyamalan genius
–matthew barney is a fraud
–helen mirren fucking
–voter disenfranchisement arkansas charlie daniels
–burka jokes
–stanley, please stay away from my tits
–cock sucking jake gyllenhaal
–Anjelica Huston porn
–“David Edelstein” and “ear” and “nose” and “throat”
–hate cindy adams (Bonus: from Beijing, China — Ed.)
–articles resembled with raunchy musics making teens wants to do sex
–if dakota fanning could go to any state what would it be?
–is a.o. scott a man
–Is Manohla Dargis a woman or a man?
–is david kirkpatrick a jewish name
–is it wrong to go naked infront your 12 year old daughter
–maria bergman in nature valley granola bar tv commercial
–who is lindsay lohan’s new best friend? “katy frame”
–alexander payne asshole
–ways to say fag
–widest cunt contest
–worlds largest tow truck
–powerpoint on hgh school freshman orientation
–puerto rican, welfare, ghetto, loud music
–female energy vaginas soul sex
–ass number one
–singer eaten by a bear
–woman that like to fuck and middletown;ohio
–autoerotic death photos pictures
–I just wanted to find a fucking diagram of a fucking oil filter for a fucking 2000 toyota avalon
PREVIOUSLY: ‘Famke Janssen Fucking’: The Joys of Discovering The Reeler, Part I (June 1, 2006)
‘Anne Hathaway Fucking’: The Joys of Discovering The Reeler, Part II (July 3, 2006)
‘Rani Mukherjee Fucking’: The Joys of Discovering The Reeler, Vol. III (Aug. 2, 2006)

This Weekend in the NYT: The Hamptons' Dignity Will Not Go Quietly

The New York Times earned its three-day weekend with a fistful of nifty film stories, including Lynn Hirschberg’s probing profile of Vera Farmiga, a glimpse at the birth of the Long Island Big Fish Film Festival and a long-awaited peek at The Brave One–the Jodie Foster/Neil Jordan “genre movie” that spent a romantic summer wooing fans on East 88th Street. But if we are choosing favorites, I vote for Sylviane Gold’s unbelievable story about this year’s Hamptons International Film Festival emphasizing the, well, international:
If nothing else, check out HIFF artistic director Rajendra Roy keeping it real for all of independent cinema:

Mr. Roy said he had chosen [opening-night film The Situation], which was directed by Philip Haas, to throw down the gauntlet and make a statement about the direction of American independent filmmaking. “This film’s view of its subject is very complicated — as is the world,” he said in a telephone interview. “We want to encourage American filmmakers to tell stories that have a more encompassing, more cosmopolitan take on the world. It’s time for them to move beyond the initial phase, beyond the personal storytelling. It will make for better movies.”

Whoa–wait a second. Did I just hear that? One more time, Raj:

Wow. Where to start? Maybe I am taking this too literally, but I suppose we should ask at what point glorified administrators determined gatekeeping was no longer enough and decided that “dictating content” is the new “lift ev’ry voice.” I always thought such presumptions were the purview of studio heads and publicists, with perhaps (of late, anyhow) the upper tier at CAA thrown in for good measure. I mean, I know how thousands of navel-gazing submissions must burden Roy each year, but even Sundance’s Geoff Gilmore and Tribeca’s Peter Scarlet–who likely have it a lot worse and have arguably earned the mandate to wish upon a star–would not conflate “initial phase” and “personal storytelling” in public. Tacky tacky tacky.
But let us just say Roy has the right idea. Where does this leave minority filmmakers? Should So Yong Kim have made In Between Days or be planning her forthcoming Treeless Mountain, both intensely personal stories about Korean youth? Where do those fall on the taste hierarchy? Should Ramin Bahrani have made Man Push Cart or Iron Triangle, both weaving narratives from the privation of ethnic New York? Should Cruz Angeles have bothered with Don’t Let Me Drown, or Thomas Allen Harris with his Paulding Avenue Trilogy?
And going back to Tribeca, I understand how that festival has poked a hole in HIFF’s hot-air balloon and that adaptation is essential to survival. I understand why Roy wants to reposition and redirect the Hamptons’ momentum away from Scarlet’s sluggish catch-all (which did him a favor, in part, by attracting and accepting some of HIFF’s shittier potential entries since 2002), and I do not disagree that solid international programming is a good way to do it. The problem with American filmmaking is not the content, however–it is that there are so many demands for content. Movies are portable, online video is booming and anyone with a cell phone can be a director. And there are scores of festivals for all of it. As such, Roy has more pressing issues than his programs’ international flavor; he simply cannot adjust fast enough. Thus the all-call to filmmakers to get it together, which is like Blockbuster blaming Netflix on lazy customers.
So: The bell is rung, you cannot unring it, it is not intrinsically a bad thing, and at any rate, it is all art. Be more selective and take all the passes you want, but at the very least, give me a fucking break.
(Photo of Rajendra Roy: Maxine Hicks / NYT)

Tully Follows 'Cocaine' High with Silver Jews, Ping-Pong Dream Project

The Reeler braved the ever-efficient F train Monday (holiday wait-time: 26 minutes, and do not think I did not count) to hit the New York premiere of Michale Tully’s Cocaine Angel at Barbès in Park Slope. The film anchored an unusual trio of works including Glynn Beard’s short film Son–basically a 20-minute father/son advice monologue–and Ryan Fleck’s Gowanus, Brooklyn, the short film from which Fleck adapted his recent Half Nelson. But it was Tully’s night: Not quite a literal homecoming (Tully is a Maryland transplant), but with Cocaine Angel star Damian Lahey on hand alongside scores of New York friends, it may as well have been.

Angel, Angel, down we go together: (L-R) Damian Lahey, Michael Tully and Brooklyn Independent Cinema Series curator Joe Pacheco introduce the Labor Day premiere of Cocaine Angel
“We world premiered at Rotterdam and North American-premiered at South by Southwest, which was kind of our goal,” Tully told me before last night’s screening. “Do European, get a little bit of a buzz, then come back to do SXSW. Then there were the regional festivals–Sarasota, Maryland, Independent Film Festival of Boston–which were just amazing. They were so fun and inclusive and great; I couldn’t recommend them enough.” Nevertheless, the Barbes screening may be it for Angel. “Honestly, I don’t know,” Tully said. “I’m exhausted. I feel like we had a great run, and it feels like it happned 18 years ago. It was three months ago. I’m moving on.”
Next up for Tully is post-production on his documentary about David Berman’s protean band Silver Jews, for whom Tully had previously directed a video and whose latest work took Tully to shoot in Israel. He is gunning for another South by Southwest premiere. Then there is the ping-pong comedy.
“It’s a bigger budget thing we’re trying to get through the system,” Tully said. “It’s never gonna happen, but–”
Wait, wait, wait, wait–a ping-pong comedy?
Tully sipped his beer and nodded. “It’s caled Ping-Pong Summer,” he said. “It’s basically The Karate Kid meets Wild Style. It’s something set in 1985. Just… I love ping pong, and I love The Karate Kid, and I love hip-hop, so we’re just taking that set formula, but trying to be honest and respectful, and still off-the-wall and funny.”
God damn I wish I could bankroll these guys sometimes.

'U.S. vs. Lennon,' Vachon Skedded for Lincoln Center This Month

Stop the weekend! At least for moment, anyway, while I get you up to speed on a couple of nifty events planned this month at Lincoln Center. First up is a preview of the documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon next Thursday, Sept. 7, with directors David Leaf and John Schonfeld dropping in to chat about the film with Leon Wildes, who worked all kinds of magic back in the day as Lennon’s immigration attorney. The screening starts at 8 p.m.; tickets will set you back $10.
A few weeks later on Sept. 25, producer Christine Vachon will be in the house for a screening of Boys Don’t Cry and to discuss her new book, A Killer Life: How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and Beyond, with Film Society poobah Richard Peña. Vachon will follow the event with a book signing; be the first on your block to own a copy. Unless you live on Killer Films’ block of Lafayette Street, of course, in which case I just don’t know what to tell you. The fun begins at 7 p.m. sharp, and tickets to this one also run $10. Buy them here.

The Return of Screening Gotham: Sept. 1-4, 2006

A few of this Labor Day weekend’s worthwhile cinematic happenings around New York:
–The Walter Reade Theater is hosting the epochal Bollywood extravaganza Sholay (left) today through Sept. 5. Starring Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra as convicts recruited to capture a nasty bandit (Amjad Singh) in the mountains surrounding a terrorized village, the film scored lukewarm reviews in its original 1975 release before becoming the biggest hit in Bollywood history and running for five years straight in Mumbai and New Delhi. The print obtained by the Film Society of Lincoln Center is evidently director Ramesh Sippy’s rare, original 200-minute cut, from which Indian censors hacked 15 minutes (and insisted on a new ending) and which lost more than a half-hour of footage upon its American release. As an added bonus, your pals at Asian CineVision have greased the skids to get you two-for-one tickets when you say “ACV” at the box office. Sheesh–now you kind of have to go.
–So earlier this summer, viewers were given a choice: “Among Manhattan, The Way We Were and Wall Street, which film would you prefer close out the 2006 Central Park Film Festival?” Fuck if this vote was not rigged: The Way We Were eked out a victory and will screen Saturday night at 8 at the Rumsey Playfield near East 72nd Street. Take a date and pack dinner, wine, Kleenex, razor blades, whatever.
–The Museum of the Moving Image hosts a Brazilian Independence Day party tonight in Astoria, featuring food, live music and two screenings of Marcel Camus’s Black Orpheus. I don’t have a joke for this that doesn’t involve Greeks, Brazilians and birth control, so I had better just call it a week. See you Tuesday with the latest installment of the Site Meter survey “Joys of Discovering The Reeler” and a dispatch from the Brooklyn Independent Cinema Series screening of Michael Tully’s Cocaine Angel (which you should also check out, by the way). Have a good weekend!

The Feeling is 'Mutual': Bujalski and Co. Celebrate New Film's NYC Release

The Reeler caught up Thursday night with Andrew Bujalski, whose acclaimed, self-distributed sophomore film Mutual Appreciation lands at Cinema Village today. Zink Magazine hosted the film’s release party at Joe’s Pub, where Bujalski welcomed cast (leading man Justin Rice’s band Bishop Allen provided the music), crew, friends and fellow filmmakers Ryan Fleck, Anna Boden, Phil Morrison and, all the way from Chicago, some guy named Joe Swanberg, who was celebrating his 25th birthday.

Appreciation society: Filmmaker Andrew Bujalski (L) with LOL director Joe Swanberg at the Mutual Appreciation release after-party Thursday at Grassroots Tavern (Photo: STV)
“You know, it was nice,” Bujalski said of the event. “It was great to see a lot of friends, it was great a lot of people could make it out, it was great there were people who starred in the film. I hope people come see the film. I had a good time. I loved the band. Am I answering the question or am I avoiding the question?”
I think so. Is he answering the question, Joe?
“He is,” Swanberg said.
“I didn’t get to see enough of the band,” Bujalski continued. “It was always in the corner of my eye when I was talking to people. Which is fine. I saw them last week; they got my full attention.”
Great. Of course, I always have to ask filmmakers who shoot in New York about the way they see it for their movies. How did Bujalski approach his first go as a New York filmmaker?
“I live in Boston!” he said. “I live in Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts.”
But you shot in Williamsburg, so I mean–
“Yeah, I like New York,” he said. “Every time I come here I have a better time. I was scared of New York for a long time; I’ve never really wanted to move here. But sometimes I come here and have such a great time over a weekend or whatever and I think, ‘What the fuck am I doing? I should move to New York.’ There are a lot of exciting young women in New York, and that’s great. But I hate competition.”
“Andrew is a regional filmmaker,” Swanberg said.
“I am a regional filmmaker,” Bujalski said. “Although I shot my second film in New York.”
So, like, urban provincial filmmaking?
“Fung Wah filmmaking,” Bujalski said. “Put that in the blog.”
Done.

'An Amazing Paradox': Andy Warhol Gets the Ric Burns Treatment at Film Forum

Let me just play devil’s advocate right up front: Is the world really so captivated with Andy Warhol that it needs another documentary about his life? Will four more hours expressing his influence, genius, method, tragedy, etc. really get us any closer to reconciling the man with his magnitude? Don’t we already have Chuck Workman’s Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol, Chris Rodley’s Andy Warhol: The Complete Picture, a few revised A&E Biographies and at least one more lost TV biography from the mid-’90s that I know I have around here somewhere? Isn’t there such a thing as too much Andy?
Yes, yes, yes and, well, not really.

Andy Forever: The subject of Ric Burns’s Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film, opening today at Film Forum (Photo: Gretchen Berg)
“Andy is so ubiquitously familiar, but nobody knows anything about his story,” said Ric Burns, whose epic new Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film today launches a two-week engagement at Film Forum in advance of its Sept. 20 PBS premiere. “It’s an amazing paradox. He was so successful at projecting that image–the sunglasses, the wig, the black leather jacket–and he always said there was nothing behind it. Well, damned if everybody didn’t believe him. So here’s this story, which is really one of the great artisitic biographies of the 20th century, and I think the most important one as well. And about someone who’s better know than anybody–he at least has greater name recognition–but I guarantee you if you walk out in the street and say, ‘Where’s he from? What kind of family did he come from? What drove him? What was he really after? What was he really like inside? Did people like him? Did his mom like him?’ I guarantee you you’re going to draw a blank. So once we got to that point, we realized we had a tiger by the tail, because you have a guy who has 100 percent household name recognition about whom nobody knows anything other than he painted something called Soup Cans or Marilyn.”

Read the full article »

Reeler Casting Call: Who Will Play Peter Biskind's Moustache?

The news that Peter Biskind’s 2004 opus Down and Dirty Pictures is on its way to a feature film adaptation has me virtually choking on intrigue. Besides the obvious imagination pique juxtaposing director Ken Bowser against plain-old Sha-Na-Na goner Bowzer, I wondered what kind of D-grade Boswell the filmmaker would have to be to follow his 2003 Biskind doc Easy Riders, Raging Bulls with this latest long, loving swallow.

You’ll never collect swag in this town again: Down and Dirty first choices Hugh Jackman and Owen Wilson with alter egos Weinstein and Redford
We’ll probably never know, but Variety’s Chris Gardner notes that Bowser finds the author’s sprawling history of the ’90s indie-film boom “outrageous” and “insane,” both qualities that should get plenty of mileage in a film community that finds the book largely “bullshit” and “apocryphal.” The running joke (still not funny, incidentally) around the Web is that neither Miramax nor the Weinstein Company are likely candidates to distribute the film, and Sundance is out as a premiere possibility. A faaaaar more pressing question, however, is what fucking actors would be crazy enough to participate above the line on this thing–the equivalent of pissing in Harvey’s coffee and playing keep-away with Bob’s glasses. And don’t even think any of your future films will appear at Sundance, or at a Sundance lab, or on the Sundance Channel, like, ever.
That said, somebody has to play the brothers, and somebody has to play Robert Redford and Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino and Sundance czar Geoff Gilmore and even distribution legend Jeff Lipsky, I suppose. So who will they be–any suggestions?

'Not Yet Rated' Redux: NYC Premiere Brings Out the Panelists

Ever the pathological completist, I could not pass up yet another opportunity Wednesday night to view yet another premiere of Kirby Dick’s MPAA exposé This Film Is Not Yet Rated at IFC Center. As I noted after a Not Yet Rated preview last spring, the film has tightened nicely since its Sundance bow, and on this, my fourth bleary-eyed run-through, I found myself appreciating Dick’s accomplishment even more: A smart, fearless, efficient political doc with enough entertainment value to transcend frothy-mouthed ideology. Whatever flimsy illusion of credibility the American film ratings system still maintained before Dick came along is officially dismantled here. Overhaul may not be immediate, but it seems thoroughly inevitable.

Anyway, last night was particularly notable for the panel discussion following the film: Dick joined fellow filmmakers Mary Harron and Michael Tucker, critic Owen Gleiberman, ACLU president Nadine Strossen and anti-censorship leader Joan Bertin. Having no shame in my game and feeling like trying something new, I filmed a portion of the discussion and uploaded it to YouTube. I admit the resolution looks terrible, but I’m working on fixing it. Meanwhile, right around the 2:24 mark, Dick offers a nice breakdown of the restrictive MPAA-Washington complex facing filmmakers today. Tucker is equally articulate at the top of the piece.
The film opens Friday–I swear my shilling here is done.

Indie Hearts Shattered as Gyllenhaal Keeps It Real in NYM Fall Preview

Look–you all know how I feel about Fall Movie Previews, and for better or worse, you are doomed to learn more once The Times gets its own “New Season” forecast on newsstands and I can finally undertake my 2006 Fall Preview Review. In the meantime, I cannot help but bring up New York Magazine’s new Fall Preview Issue, the 2005 version of which pleased me none too much and the current version of which leaves me similarly chilled.
But while I will save the clinical diagnosis for later, Emma Rosenblum’s nifty interview with Maggie Gyllenhaal deserves a nudge into the spotlight for its subject’s candor. I waited 90 minutes at the Sherrybaby premiere last night for a Gyllenhaal chat that never came through, but after reading this, to be honest, I really didn’t have that many more questions:

NYM: There’s a lot of raw sexuality in the film. Was that difficult for you?

MG: When I was shooting it, I was focusing on the pleasure. The scene when she’s fucking that guy in the basement after they just met, I think you could cry through the whole scene, but why? That would be so boring. For me, when I was filming that scene, I was thinking, This is great—pleasure, pleasure, pleasure. I’ve been in prison for three years and I want to have sex with a man! But when I watch it now, I think, Oh, man, that’s horrible, and I feel very disturbed by the sex. …

NYM: Now that you’re doing studio features, do you think you’ll keep doing independent films like Sherrybaby?

MG: With a movie like Sherrybaby, I love it, I’m proud of it, and I believe in it. But it’s so much work to get a little movie like that made, to get it seen, to get it bought, to get it into theaters—it’s almost like you have to be a producer. That makes me look at little independent movies more closely—like, do I really want to spend years, or not? I want people to see the movies I make. I’m not just acting for me.

In other words: Showing up to your premiere seven months pregnant is like having twins two months apart. And I wish Bart Freundlich would lose my number.
Anyway, there’s some other interesting but brief commentary about Gyllenhaal’s notorious 9/11 comments, which I applaud her for not only answering but also not ruling them out in some bold-faced, all-caps preemptive screed-by-publicist. She has not succumbed to A-list antipathy yet, bless her heart.
(Photo: Jeff Vespa/Wireimage)