This Savage Art

Films for cell phones? Ughhhhhh.

Popularity: 6% [?]

One thing that I and many other’s who attended the IFP Conference¹ [ending today] got slapped in the face with constantly was how the film watching experience has changed and will continue to change. With new platforms for exhibition and distribution [my head is still spinning] the future is surely up for grabs. I don’t think theaters are going anywhere but a change in New York would definitely be welcome. Thing is, I live next a great theater, technically speaking. Audio is up to par, video projection is available. Films that play there, well, that’s another issue.

I’ve been hearing about the wonders of the Alamo Drafthouse for a couple of years now even though I haven’t been there and have myself had fantasies of building the ultimate film experience for discernible tastes. Feeding the masses has been catered to by the multiplexes but this corner of the market isn’t really getting served properly. I have been enjoying what the IFC Center has been doing. I’ve always been a big supporter of the Film Forum and even the Angelica whose been kind of slacking off lately. But, this is New York City! Cinephile capital of the world!

Just days after I was asserting this opinion [bitching] to a couple of collaborators of mine at the Conference about the shitty state of movie going it looks like Texas has come to save the day for New York.² The Alamo is looking to open up a theater in New York by 2008.

Popularity: 14% [?]

1. At some point next week I will post an entry on all my notes and musings on what I got from the IFP Conference this time around.[↩]
2. I’m not even going to touch that one.[↩]

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.

Popularity: 23% [?]

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! [↩]

Ahhh Fall. The season for all the good stuff. Check out the big list of things to come.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Note: This is my entry for The Ambitious Failure Blog-a-thon. To further enhance the experience of this post play the .mp3 of “The End” from The Doors while reading.

Apocalypse Now (1979)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

 

 The Doors - The End [11:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were goin’ all the way — Captain Willard

In Francis Ford Coppola exploratory journey into self backdropped against the Vietnam War he almost lost his most valuable asset – himself. Its turbulent history is recognized in the documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse which can be considered a companion piece and should be required viewing before anyone considers picking up a camera. In the documentary, Eleanor Coppola, wife of the director and credited co-director, points the camera on her husband as he expresses his frustration with questions he has created in the screenplay but feels he cannot answer. You feel the dread. Private conversations are recorded without his knowledge over the course of 238 days of production. This is where we start to see the wheels spinning and the man cracking:

“My greatest fear is to make a really shitty, embarrassing, pompous film on an important subject”

In his mind he was doing just that but it didn’t just end there, it was real, for him, his family and his cast and crew. The self-financed film went over budget and that was just the beginning. Two weeks into production in the Philippines, the original actor playing Captain Willard, Harvey Keitel, was replaced by Martin Sheen. The production forged ahead. Sheen continued, doing a scene that required him to lose himself in his character. He did. He lost all control of his faculties in a self-medicated meltdown on his 36th birthday. The results: a scene that will live in infamy and a heart attack that almost cost Sheen his life and Coppola the picture.

The film was originally intended to be shot over six weeks but ended up taking 16 months. Typhoons destroyed sets, causing delays of several months. This list of catastrophes is endless. The film dying a slow death wasn’t just paranoia or insecurity in the mind of director or the cast and crew — it was exacerbated by the Hollywood press from back home. The media was caught up in the great American malady of predicting failure before it actual happens, if not actually rooting for it. The film did get shot, all 200 hours of it. Upon completion of production Coppola had his hands full. It took 2 years for editor Walter Murch to bring the troubled film to a final cut.

Ambition¹ has never been a problem for Coppola. He went to the Philippines coming off the success of the first two Godfather films — classics by anyone’s measure. He was accepted and adored by the industry probably even cocky but I bet he never anticipated his own personal journey into madness up river. The film divided audiences. Upon the film’s initial screenings it was considered obnoxious and self-indulgent² by some. The hot topic of Vietnam was still a fresh and bloody wound in America and the film seemed to be rubbing salt in it with its perceived grotesque theatrics and arrogant self-importance³.

A three hour work-in-progress cut of Apocalypse Now was screened for an international festival audience in Cannes in 1979. It won the Palme d’Or that year for best film, the most prestigious prize a film could be awarded. It also went on to win Best Sound and Best Cinematography at the Academy Awards in 1980. Maybe now you’re probably asking yourself, “and how is this a failure?”

Before you accuse me of a cutting to black moment, hear me out. I took a contrarian approach when picking Apocalypse Now to hopefully make a point for further reflection. When is it considered a failure and by whom? Maybe it’s just semantics but there have been many films over the course of time that have suffered similar problems but didn’t succeed. Art is perception. The 1968 Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey debuted to theater goers walking out and scratching their collective heads. It was lambasted in the reviews. Weeks later it started to gain underground popularity and to this day is considered a masterful triumph yet to be matched. There’s no denying there are films that just flat out fail in every way; financially, critically and artistically. The other side of the overlooked masterpiece is a film like Waterworld but those aren’t necessarily the films I’m thinking of. Again it’s back to perception. Whose to say what works or doesn’t? Did The Fountain fail? Not in my book. But to some it did. Who validates failure and when is it valid? To quote the infinite wisdom of a screenwriter far greater in talent than most, “Nobody knows anything.”

So is Apocalypse Now considered an ambitious failure? In its overall history — absolutely not. I was obsessed with this film when I was all of maybe 13 years old. Its spectacle ignited my interest in cinema and to this day I still get lost in its allegory. Lets just say it made an impression. Part Odyssey, part Joseph Conrad-inspired nightmare of obsession gone awry, throw in a little Werner Herzog and you have classic storytelling at its core, audaciously revealing the mess that took place what might as well have been a million miles away in some foreign land (hmmm) — a film I consider a must see before you die. So…ambitious? As all hell. A failure? Not by a long shot but there was a time when it was considered to be, by its creators and by its naysayers and critics. We all came around.

Popularity: 19% [?]

1. The director, according to archival materials in the recent “Complete Dossier” edition, also stated that his plan was to create a single theater, in the geographical center of the United States (likely Kansas) that would show Apocalypse Now, and only Apocalypse Now. It would be specially tailored to the film, with 3D 70mm projectors, 5.1 surround sound, and the Sensurround system, which would vibrate the seats at the appropriate intervals. In his eyes, it would be “an event”, and he likened it to travelling to Mount Rushmore. — from Wikipedia[↩]
2. Gerald Perry interviews Francis Ford Coppola at a press conference for Redux[↩]
3. In Hearts of Darkness we see Coppola at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival press conference with his view of the film claiming, “My film is not about Vietnam, it is Vietnam.”[↩]

I like hearing about the underdogs. Maybe it makes me feel better about the possibilities – the big, bad world making room for the little guy. Even though in a lot of ways the independent manifesto has been co-opted into a marketing scheme that would have Cassavetes spinning wildly in his grave there are still dedicated filmmakers willing to throw there name into a hat and make it happen. Why should they stop? The time is now. Writer/director Scott Dacko seems to think so with his new feature The Insurgents. Read this PC Magazine article and see how he shot a HD film in NYC for $200k – films are getting made and filmmakers are getting creative and that is what is inspiring.

This comes at the right time because I’m currently outlining a new screenplay that will require me to follow a similar pre to post-production path Dacko did for his film. It’s a very scaled down paranoid thriller that I’m going to raise funds for upon completion. Looks like I will be getting my mandy.com listing ready.

Popularity: 8% [?]

I found this in one of my folders. I think I was trying to write an article for one of the online film resource sites. I just came off of making my digital short film, The Face of the Earth, and I had all this information fresh in my head. Kind of a postmortem analysis. Looking back now, I’m glad I wrote it down.

1. Use SAG talent (if you can) – If the budget can take the hit go for people who have experience and know how to conduct themselves on a set, rehearse, etc. It will save you time and aggravation in the end. The last thing you want to do is teach someone how to act while your making your film. If you can’t go this way, get non-union but make sure all the talent is non-union. If you have a cast of ten actors and one actor is SAG then you still have to become a SAG signatory. An audience can forgive a scene that’s shot a little too dark but they will never believe a film that has poor acting.
2. Cast with a pro – Again, if you can afford it, cast with a casting agent. It definitely doesn’t have to go this way but if you are going union get someone who has a pipeline to that water supply.
3. Date the DP – When looking for a DP look at it like you are searching for the perfect mate. Can you agree on a similar style of filmmaking? Bring them into your world. Show them the script, storyboards, photography, art books that reflect what you’re trying to capture. Is this a person you can confide in for the next X amount of weeks. If a DP says you can’t do that shot and doesn’t give you an alternative, get rid of him/her. The last thing you want is someone who is going to shoot down your ideas. Know what you want and bring as much information to the table to see what the DP thinks of your ideas.
4. Let someone else supervise the script – You have enough on your mind, you shouldn’t be worrying about continuity.
5. Snap, Crackle, Pop – Make sure the sound person checks and field-test the equipment before using it for your film. If there is something wrong you really don’t want to find this out when you’ve wrapped and you are looking and “listening” to the footage.
6. Timetables and momentum – When you are prepping for your shoot arrange to have it done within a period of time. Meaning, people get busy and if you have them locked up for three consecutive weekends for your film try with all your power to finish it within those three weekends. Cast and crew are already setting up their next job when they are done with yours so if you don’t get it within your timetable the next time will be within ALL of theirs.
7. Psychology rules – Try to understand everyone before you go into your project. There are so many personalities on a film set, if time allows take the time to find out who you are working with. Is this person upbeat? Is this person cranky? In the 25th hour do you really want someone who is petty or incompetent.
8. Call in back up – For every choice you make whether it is location, an actor or a camera have two other go to choices in an emergency.
9. A man’s got to know his limitations – You can’t exploit your resources if you don’t know what they are. If you are limited by budget understand fully what that means for your film.
10. Finish the film – Find a way to make this happen no matter what.

bonus!

11. The script isn’t the only thing made out of paper – When writing your short script write it to budget. If you have $500 to make a film don’t write a scene with car interiors, twenty SAG extras and a trained llama.
12. Time is of the essence – Time is not just money, it is gold.
13. The three r’s – Read, research, review. Be the absolute expert on making your film before you even buy film/video stock. It’s an overwhelming task but the more you know the better off you are. Read articles on filmmaking. Ask those who have done what you are about to do. Go over it all and use what applies to your film.
14. Signs are everywhere – On a limited budget you might have to make compromises with some crew members but don’t hire if you have second thoughts. If they show up an hour late or not at all without a courtesy call, bad sign no matter how good they are. This behavior will continue in one form or another through out your production. Make sure they are serious about working on your film. Let them know up front what they are in for with regards to money or other challenges. There are hundreds of talented people working on films, get the best you can afford on yours.
15. Thanks are in order – Filmmaking is hard on everyone especially during production. Tempers can run high and patience can become a luxury. Delegate with authority but respect is key in all situations. Thank your cast and crew for being part of your dream especially in the case where money is thin which is always. They are doing the unthinkable for you.

Popularity: 15% [?]