This Savage Art

So I’ve been gone for a while. Get over it and stop your blubbering.

Lately the balance between life and art has been a cross between not getting pulverized by oncoming traffic and screaming into an empty canyon. Yeah, that’s what’s it has been. Life life has been a constant assessment/reassessment of everything I thought I knew and proved to be wrong about. Pushing myself everyday and testing every nerve just to keep my boy happy and healthy. That’s a good thing.

The career, not so much. In order: no word from that producer I told you about. Project is cold and stiff as far as I’m concerned unless someone wants to tell me otherwise. Nicholl, dead. No surprise there. Sundance Lab, they told me to fuck off too. Austin is still up in the air. The funny thing about all of it is, I don’t think I’ve even skipped a beat. Maybe it’s age or just a thicker skin. I read the e-mails and I moved on which is what everyone should do.

All I want to do is watch Mad Men. I just watched the second season and was truly inspired. It goes without saying that it is one of the best shows on now or ever imho. Very rich in theme and character. My cup of coffee. That brought me to a fine little gem of a site after I Googled “Mad Men Scripts.” It’s called Writing The TV Spec Script run by “Colm” from Galway I gather. It gives some great insight into doing just that. I’ve played around with the idea of writing for TV. Chops need to be strong, really strong. Something to think about. It might be worth investigating. There’s a link to seven Mad Men scripts including the pilot available as PDFs for download. Check ‘em out.

So this is what’s on the agenda for this month. Continue working on the second draft of a previous screenplay I started a while ago. Then maybe spec out a Mad Men script. From there? Stay alive long enough to maybe see some of this come to fruition.

Oh yeah, what do you think of the sites new look? I added a Television section of links on the sidebar.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Ever once in a while I write a post to get people to see a film I deem worthy of accolades — take that for what it’s worth. This is one of those posts. I saw Ballast at the recent New Directors/New Films series at Lincoln Center and thought the film was a beautifully grounded look at the lives of a fragmented family living in stressful times on the Mississippi Delta. As part of a new self-distribution model the Thursday night 8:00 screening is part of the IFP’s First Weekend Series. With the purchase of a $25 ticket you get the screening, a Q&A with filmmaker Lance Hammer and an after party with the filmmaker and NYC’s film community. You will truly be supporting a film that deserves it so check it out.

Popularity: 41% [?]

[The following is an orphaned mini-review that I dug up from my draft archives. I thought it was relevant considering the recent changes in the film's distribution plan.]

At first glance director Lance Hammer’s debut film Ballast can easily be dismissed as a poverty level dirge of depression and bad luck for a lonely group of people who live on the Mississippi Delta. That would be a mistake. It’s more like a slow burn meditation on what it takes to survive when all life has given you is nothing in return for a life of suffering. It is the story of a fragmented family of three who try to figure out what will happen next after another member commits suicide. Immediate and pulsing with a Southern Gothic bloodline, the film deliberately ramps up into the desperate but dignified circumstances of this small collection of characters. The flat tone resembles the flat landscape but is never dull. Post-screening Hammer described his editing technique for this film as “using the moments in between” but he could have easily been speaking about his characters lives who seem to all too easily slip through the cracks.

Recent film news reveals that Hammer will look to go it alone when it comes to distribution and film rights.

Hammer says conventional distribution advances for a small film like “Ballast” range between $25,000-$50,000. “If you made a $50,000 project, that makes sense,” Hammer said. “If you happen to spend more money than that, it becomes difficult to justify giving up creative control.

After reading the news of the coming apocalypse for independent films it’s good to see an example of a filmmaker controlling his own destiny.

Related: For more inspiration read the interview with Lance Hammer at The Filmlot.

[...]

Ballast screened Sunday, March 30th at the 2008 New Directors/New Films series for the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

This post can also be seen at Big Screen Little Screen where I’m guest blogging.

Popularity: 22% [?]

While some sites are dicking around with reviews of Kung Fu Panda [I kid, I kid] there’s an avalanche of good stuff on the interweb today:

• A massive film resource database is here for all to enjoy. The Moving Image Source. Well…enjoy! [via The Reeler.]
• Writer/director/one of the reasons I pray to the film gods Paul Schrader and cinematographer extraordinaire Ed Lachman speak at BAM. [Video clips.]
• More Schrader. Notes from Kevin B. Lee on the underappreciated Light Sleeper.
• Steven Boone crashes Antoine Fuqua’s Brooklyn block party.
• How dare you disrespect Abel Ferrara!!!

Popularity: 25% [?]

2001: A Space Odyssey entered the cinematic landscape 40 years ago today.

Tomorrow….a new being enters the world.

Popularity: 28% [?]

Go see Ronald Bronstein’s Frownland this weekend at the IFC Center. It is probably the best representation of the freedom of what was and what is truly missing in the independent film scene now. Relentless and unapologetically pained, its characters and audience are in sync with the same level of discomfort. Frownland has all the makings of a midnight movie – an institution that no longer exists. It’s the antithesis of what typically and theoretically makes a commercial film “work.”

If you believe the film community has lost it’s individual voice for the offbeat, the dangerous or the button-pushing type of filmmaking that some may be hesitant to get behind go to this screening even if just to see what the buzz is all about and while you’re at it, support a true independent vision. It might make you angry, it might give you hope that films this weird and fucked up can still get made with a little persistence. At the least you will take away one simple fact; Juno it ain’t.

Related:

The New Yorker review.

An endorsement from Filmmaker Magazine.

The Village Voice review.

[This Savage Art] review of Frownland.

Jeremiah Kipp [ aka my AD on The Face of the Earth ] interviews Frownland writer/director Ronald Bronstein.

Popularity: 20% [?]

It begins tomorrow September 16th and runs through the 21st. Looks like a solid lineup of panelists. I’ll be there Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

Popularity: 16% [?]

When a lot of independent [for lack of a better word] filmmakers that are getting recognized now for their brilliance were making there bones back in the 90’s there was a charge in the air. It was real. You know, all the Spikes, Mikes, Slackers and Dykes. Sayles, Jarmusch, Spike, Haynes and many more. There was no agenda other than making the most creatively compelling film you could make with what little you had – by any means necessary. Time has passed and the climate has changed but it’s good to see the spirit of that style of filmmaking is still alive and kicking with Frownland.

In Ronnie Bronstein’s valentine to the immediacy of 16mm independent filmmaking, Frownland takes a look at a small circle of socially retarded individuals living on the fringes of white urban twenty-something life. At the center is Keith, an inarticulate brain aneurysm waiting to happen. As he performs his reverse commute out of the city, feebly attempting to sell coupons door-to-door, Keith is challenged by the simple minutia of life. There is so little this character can actually handle but when he attempts to it is pure heartbreak.

To keep in time with the fractured nature of the film let me quickly segue into the quote that sums it up beautifully from heir director:

More succinctly, Frownland is my own small contribution to the sinking barge of the 16mm indie model; both an overripe tomato lobbed with spazmo inaccuracy at the spotless surface of the silver screen and a mad valentine to the craggy tradition of unadulterated cheap-o-independent expression. Its inelegance is its spirit. – Ronald Bronstein

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the way you sell a film. I’m sorry I can’t describe it better than that but I look at this as a good thing. Films that I have had trouble articulating immediately after seeing them are the ones that have never left me like some chip that’s been embedded under my skin. Bad Lieutenant, Lost Highway and now, Frownland. Props to all involved in making this film, selling out the IFC Center screening last Wednesday night and reminding us what it’s really all about.

I still can’t get the snot bubble out of my mind.

Popularity: 16% [?]