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.

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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.

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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: 29% [?]

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.

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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% [?]

I know the city is getting swallowed up by Mumble Mania right now but as far as I can tell other films are still being shown throughout our fine metropolis. I told you about attending the ACE Film Festival on Sunday. There was an excellent film there called Little Chenier directed by Bethany Ashton Wolf that takes place on the pre-Katrina Bayou. It’s a moving piece with authentic Cajun flavor down to its local dialect. In a Q&A Wolf explained how a month after the wrap every single location was destroyed. Luckily it exists on film which you will be able to see soon, it just got picked up for distribution by Radio London Films. Also worth mentioning: (all shorts) The Doorstep, Villains and Aesop’s Diner.

A few words on the festival itself – it’s not easy being the new kid on the block but like Woody Allen says, “80 percent of success is just showing up.” While attending my one day at the first American Cinematic Experience Film Festival I saw signs that the two runners of the festival, Tom O’Malley and Luke Szczygielski, got a lot right with their first run. ACE flags on the street corners (The Tribeca Film Festival makes this kind of announcement downtown – these guys did their homework.) Well put together printed materials. A premium venue located in Manhattan for the screenings. Unfortunately that venue proved to not be the most optimal place to show a film. The space itself is full of old New York grandeur but my biggest complaint was that the echo from the high ceilings plagued every single film. While some films I didn’t mind that I wasn’t privy to what the actors were saying, the dialogue was lost in others and it was frustrating. With a little tweaking, some lessons learned and a new place to screen films I think this can grow to be a serious festival in the future. I wish them all the best.

Tuesday I checked out a double feature of Born To Win and Klute, part of the Film Forum’s NYC Noir series. This is my element, I have arrived. The early bird special crowd, cinemaniacs and film freaks (myself included in the latter that is although I am forty now so eating at 5:00 is getting more and more appealing.)

I always found a likability in George Segal and that hasn’t changed with Born To Win as he plays a strung out ex-hairdresser looking to score. Yeah, sure, some of the slang is dated but it’s slang that I heard growing up. Freehole. My uncle would have gotten a kick out of that one. Keep an eye out for a pre-Johnny Boy/Mean Streets DeNiro if you rent this. Next was Alan J. Pakula’s Klute. Always on the “to see” list but never seen, I can’t believe I let this one slip by. What can I say other than I am now proclaiming Gordon Willis the greatest cinematographer on earth. Damn, does he know how to compose a shot. I think this film, for better or worse, is the template for a lot of modern crime/drama/thrillers¹ and an excellent character study. You can read the screenplay I found online from this PDF I created.

Yesterday I checked out The Panic in Needle Park. I guess a lot of the same people were showing up to see the whole noir series because I saw some familiar faces from Tuesday. The crowd is half the fun. This is no multiplex crowd, hell no. I almost thought for a moment I might have to go toe to toe with this 85 plus year old man because he wouldn’t stop ripping into his wife about what time they were going to get out after the second film of the double feature. A couple of guys behind me were shooting the shit and one wondered why they didn’t program Born To Win and Panic on the same day. Now I know why. It would have been too much. Both films deal with drug addiction in a very honest way. A lot of the nuances of each film overlap each other² . It was the drug culture in the city circa 1971. Brutal, gritty and very real. Jerry Schatzberg’s film based on a screenplay written by John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion from John Mills’ book is harrowing. It’s probably one of the first films to deal with this subject in this way by chronicling the minutia of day to day junkie life.

So as I wait for my New York Film Festival tickets³ to arrive I’ll bide my time with one more. The French Connection concludes the NYC noir series at the Film Forum playing for a week. C’mon ya gotta go, it’s New York State law.

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1. Sharon Stone owes her career to this film not to mention Jane Fonda. [↩]
2. Characters in both films suffer from receiving hotshots - a lethal dose of poison laced heroin. [↩]
3. As a member of the Lincoln Center Film Society you get first dibs on festival tickets. Fucking expensive tickets! $35 for the first showing of the opening night screening of The Darjeeling Limited (I opted for the second showing at $20) and I still don’t know if I actually got them! [↩]

In an attempt to reconnect with the industry and hopefully create some new alliances I’ve purchased three separate day passes to the IFP Conference running the week of September 16th – 21st. Each day addresses a specific area of filmmaking. I will be attending the 16th [Making Your First Feature], the 17th [Filmmaking 2.0] and the 19th [Real Deal on Deals]. It runs parallel with the IFP Market which I have attended in the past; twice as a volunteer with the Market, once as a screenwriter with a project entered and once just attending the Conference. What’s the key to getting the most out of this week?

• Prepare to network. Networking can be extremely exhausting so try not to take it or yourself too seriously. Meet people, learn, talk up a project if you have one. Everyone is there to push so find what your approach will be to the social aspect of it all.
• Pace yourself. Again, it’s only five days but…Years back when I had my screenplay [what eventually became gearing up too.

  If anyone is attending the Conference this week and wants to meet up and talk shop feel free to contact me.

  Popularity: 18% [?]