January 23, 2008
From the Great Opening Paragraphs Department, Matthew Placek interviewed NZ documentary filmmaker Pietra Brettkelly for V Magazine:In March of 2006 I traveled with Vanessa Beecroft to Rumbek in South Sudan on two separate occasions to produce an image for...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:42 AM
December 4, 2007
In an attempt to figure out why his well-reviewed film, Delirious, grossed only $200,000 at the box office--or rather, to figure out why a small, independent film is subjected to the same make-or-break Opening Weekend metrics as a studio blockbuster--Tom...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:00 AM
October 8, 2007
Ted at Big Screen Little Screen has a nice phoner with Mike Mills on the occasion of his new documentary, Does Your Soul Have A Cold?, which premiers on IFC Oct. 22. In the movie, Mills follows around a group...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:27 PM
August 2, 2007
Charles Thomas Samuels ["S"] interviewed Michelangelo Antonioni ["A"] in Rome in 1969. I finally figured out the occasional non-sequiturish statements in the transcript were originally photo captions.S: In an interview I had with him, John Updike said something that fascinated...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:50 PM
June 2, 2007
Open news conference at the Cannes Film Festival are such absurdist theatrical frenzy, I half wonder if movie publicists didn't cook them up as a job security measure. The event serves up celebrities for an intense, dadaist interrogation by the...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:14 PM
April 14, 2007
Holy smokes, I'm in like. Geoff sat down with editor/polymath Walter Murch for BLDGBLOG to discuss, of all things, the music of spheres. At least obliquely. I'd say they were Renaissance men, but as their discussion shows, the Renaissance was...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:34 AM
September 9, 2006
Now the story can be told. It's interesting how long it takes stuff to bubble across the Internet. A recent spate of blog discussion of Claude Lelouch's 1976 cult short film, C'etait un Rendezvous was prompted by the film's...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:10 PM
August 31, 2006
You could make a really good-looking movie right now for ten grand, if you have an idea. That’s the trick. I was watching Alphaville this weekend, and I’d love to do like a ten-minute version of Alphaville here in Manhattan....
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
2:50 PM
August 2, 2006
Much like the 24-hour interview-a-thon itself, Claire Bishop's report from the Serpentine Pavilion starts out hilariously--my original title for this post was to be "LOLOLOL"--and ends with unexpected substance and insight. Whether her declaration is the first, I don't care,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
6:06 PM
July 24, 2006
I interviewed Ed Burns the other day about his new movie, The Groomsmen, which follows a group of childhood friends through the emotionally fraught run-up to one posse member's wedding. And while you're poking around on The Groomsmen, check out...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:01 AM
July 20, 2006
Here's a radio interview with critic Joel Siegel, who's apparently trying to pad his reactionary conservative resume by loudly walking out of a press screening of Kevin Smith's Clerks 2. The interview is with Smith, although Siegel doesn't seem aware...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:44 PM
July 13, 2006
John Ford would probably be pissed at you if you read this article about him in the UK Independent, but go ahead, it's worth the risk. John Ford: Ford focus [independent.co.uk via rw] There's a 2-disc anniversary edition of The...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:23 PM
May 19, 2006
And let me put it this way: when you're talking about the films of James Mangold and you see the words "star," "stud," and "special" together that can only mean two possibilities: Joaquin Phoenix or Sylvester Stallone. And if...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
4:06 AM
May 16, 2006
Because I happen to know that she prefers the US spelling, "autarchically," I believe this interview with Sofia Coppola is translated from the French:SC/...I had been interested also by this period myself, the XVIIIth century in France, for quite a...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:43 AM
May 3, 2006
After you sit back and digest the delicious hilarity that Mr. Hankey's creators will be appearing as "part of The Stanley Kubrick Masterclass series," peruse the NFT description of the event: In London for this 'Skillset Masterclass', Parker and Stone...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:54 AM
April 20, 2006
Nice. If this guy worked for anyplace but The Onion AV Club, he'd have left this interview shaking like a leaf wondering how he's gonna get his story done.JL: My favorite moments are when you see someone lash out at...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:26 PM
March 21, 2006
I like interviews with creatives as a way to learn more about their process and to understand better how a work came to be. Interviewing someone can be a chance to learn from someone I admire how he sees the...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:36 AM
February 22, 2006
JH: What was the germ of the idea for Metropolitan? WS:Like many things it started with annoyance at something Iíd read in the New York Times...- Josh Horowitz does a phoner with the temporarily Parisian Whit Stillman on the occasion...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
4:21 AM
February 15, 2006
Wow, a fascinating, long interview with the Dardenne Brothers that was presented at the National Film Theatre in London last weekend. They really were a mess when they started out. Geoff Andrew interviews Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne [guardian via kultureflash]...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:46 AM
February 9, 2006
I find Soderbergh's DVD commentary tracks are consistently entertaining and enlightening. And now that it turns out he has Mark Romanek on with him for the director's commentary of Bubble, I think the question of which format--theater, ppv, or DVD--is...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:13 PM
January 29, 2006
Steven Soderbergh is on Fresh Air Weekend today, talking about the production and release of Bubble. Check out PublicRadioFan.com to find a live stream of the show on some public radio station or another. [publicradiofan.com] Later, check out the Fresh...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:27 AM
January 25, 2006
Nice. Andy has a very interesting interview with Brokeback Mountain producer and Focus Features co-head Jim Schamus. A lot of talk about the marketing for the film, a little about Larry Miller, not much about the production [perfect, easy, on...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:25 AM
January 4, 2006
Doesn't seeing this Nordic Brady Bunch Variety Hour-presents-Grease music video make you dream of what might have been, if only those machers in the Finnish film industry had stayed put, instead of moving en masse to Bombay? "I Wanna...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
6:22 AM
December 6, 2005
Forget Louis Malle, my evening trying to catch up with with peripatetic curator Hans Ulrich Obrist for a few minutes at Art Basel Miami Beach last weekend felt like it was directed by Fellini. Or Scorsese [think After Hours]. Or...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:35 AM
November 5, 2005
Caryn James acknowledges that talking about Terrence Malick's career involves a lot of speculation--before she proceeds to speculate on his "20 year absence" from filmmaking:Logic and cheap psychology suggest that fear of success or fear of failure might be involved....
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:46 AM
Stuart, our man in Los Angeles, files this report from a KCRW-sponsored screening of N.Y. Doll last weekend where director Greg Whiteley and his producers Ed Cunningham and Seth Lewis Gordon, discussed making the film:Greg had known Arthur had been...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:30 AM
October 30, 2005
On the occasion of the theatrical re-release of Michelangelo Antonioni's classic film, The Passenger, its owner and star lead actor Jack Nicholson reminisces about working with his mentor. It kills me that this is all we get from a 90...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:12 AM
October 9, 2005
On the occasion of the UK opening of Mike Mills' Thumbsucker, the Observer (their Observer, that is) gives the nearly aristocratic Tilda Swinton a good, hard, philosophical fawning over:I ask Swinton what were considered virtues in her family. She thinks...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:49 AM
September 29, 2005
Noah Baumbach's latest film, The Squid And The Whale, gets the full court press this week in the Voice, not surprising since it's full of auteur-y Voice-y hooks (like Baumbach's mother Georgina Brown was a longtime film critic for...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:33 AM
September 28, 2005
AB: Were you always going to adapt it [Thumbsucker]? MM: No, not at the beginning because I hadn't done it before but quite quickly on I thought, "Wait a second I can't imagine directing something I didn't write. Let me...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:02 AM
July 16, 2005
Guy Ben-Ner's in the zone these days; his ingenious video, "Elia - a story of an ostrich chick," made like one of those anthropomorphizing Disney nature documentaries from the 50's, is included in PS1's Greater NY show. Now, he's representing...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:52 AM
July 6, 2005
Memphis's own Brett Ratner mouths off, which, after scoring $9mm for your film that'd been passed over by every studio dawg in town, is just fine."What is interesting is the 'indie blockbuster' idea; that Hollywood's going to buy cheaper movies...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:20 AM
June 5, 2005
I heard different parts of Thelma Schoonmaker's interview twice, and it was pretty great. It makes an impact when someone can be so articulate and lucid about her process; I imagine working with Scorsese will do that to you. The...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:29 AM
May 17, 2005
Sherman Sam interviews the artist Hiroshi Sugimoto about his London show at Gagosian. Sugimoto's latest works, originally shown at the Fondation Cartier, are photographs of early 20th-century mathematical and mechanical study models from the collection of Tokyo University. Sugimoto provides...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:54 AM
April 17, 2005
On the occasion of his cashing out on some serious equity (3,500 sf, Dakota, all orig. woodwork, bought around the time Gimme Shelter came out), Albert Maysles tells the NYT Magazine the first things that pop into his mind:Favorite household...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:00 AM
April 14, 2005
Typing the first thing that comes into my mind: Isabella Rossellini: [gulp] hi Ryan Gosling: unexpectedly wry David Benioff: composed (but watch out, the dude killed off Agamemnon) Will Ferrell's brother: his biggest fan, (but with the unenviable job of...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:09 AM
April 11, 2005
A few weeks ago, the new identity system for The Sundance Channel caught my eye. Built on a string of images and boxes that pulses, tugs, and scrolls leftward off the screen, the system cleanly embodies the idea of a...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
6:46 AM
March 29, 2005
They're Nos 1 & 2 on my list of "People I never imagined would live in New Jersey, ever." And yet, they do. [via Liz Hoggard's interview with Bjork: "We miss you in London! Do you miss us? Hmm? Cuz...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:10 AM
March 25, 2005
I have to confess [or maybe I don't; just take a look back over the last couple weeks' posts], I've barely had a film-related thought or activity in far too long. It's to the point where I'm actually afraid to...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
3:06 AM
February 11, 2005
Jason interviewed David Bernal, aka Elsewhere, the popping dancer who recreated Gene Kelly's Singin' in The Rain dance scene for a recent British VW GTi commercial: "...they had us watch the original Singing in the Rain scene so many times...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:34 AM
January 28, 2005
The writer-director Noah Baumbach, 35, based the film on his own experience of his parents' divorce. He said that he had struggled for years to find his voice as a filmmaker after making Kicking and Screaming in 1995 but...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:49 PM
|
TrackBack
January 24, 2005
While the entire New York film world was focused on my Reel Roundtable screening of greg.org-as-videoblog January 10th, the Museum of Modern Art, in a moment of magnanimosity, hosted a discussion with the obscure director Quentin Tarantino and one of...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
2:12 AM
|
TrackBack
December 21, 2004
I have removed the identifying information from this email, after assuring myself of the writer's veracity. If I can give the entertainment journalism world just one gift this Christmas, it'd be a sharp thunk on the melon of anyone who...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:55 PM
|
TrackBack
So after playing softball with his own corporate overlords the Weinsteins at a MoMA Q&A last Thursday, Quentin Tarantino chased some skirt on his flight back to LA. Read the dovetailing eyewitness accounts below. [greg.org making wiggling-thumb-and-pinky-as-phone gesture and mouthing...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:33 AM
|
TrackBack
December 14, 2004
Cinecultist Karen is at it again, this time working the crowd of above-the-line talent at the The Life Aquatic junket. No word on the buffet, which I would expect to contain smoked salmon, shrimp cocktail, or some other agua-themed items....
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:31 AM
|
TrackBack
December 7, 2004
The Gothamist Life Aquatic contest is over, and Congratulations! Everyone's a winner. A few people won more than the rest, obviously. And G-mist and Cinecultist's Karen--whose brainchild this publicity coup was--got the big prize, a phone interview with director Wes...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:21 AM
|
TrackBack
October 27, 2004
Gothamist has an excellent interview with Errol Morris about his Switch ads featuring former Bush voters who are now voting for Kerry. Morris talks at length about The Fog of War and its relevance today, his interviewing techniques, and how...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:45 PM
|
TrackBack
October 22, 2004
My boy David O. Russell may be shooting negative karma beams at the back of Sharon Waxman's head, but that's not stopping him from spelling "P&A" with a capital "N-Y-T." It feels like those multimedia interstitials for I [Heart] Huckabee's...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:36 AM
|
TrackBack
October 18, 2004
Wingnuts on both ends of the political spectrum, it's not about you. So take a chill pill, throw another fat Costco steak on the grill, and read Matt Stone & Trey Parker's interview with Heather Havrilesky in Salon. I so...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:13 AM
|
TrackBack
October 14, 2004
Ousmane Sembene on WNYC, of course, which I already posted John Waters on WPS1 [although for my money, no Waters interview is better than this Oct 1998 dicussion of Pecker on Fresh Air, which makes me cry laughing to this...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:23 AM
|
TrackBack
October 11, 2004
Senegalese master filmmaker Ousmane Sembene is in town to promote his latest film, MoolaadÈ, which screens at the NYFF and opens Friday. The Village Voice's J. Hoberman calls MoolaadÈ "the most richly entertaining movie anyone has ever made on the...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
2:00 AM
|
TrackBack
October 10, 2004
While the discovery of an underground cinema in the center of Paris has been widely covered, little or no attention has been paid to what the films actually played there. Les Arenes de Chaillot (The Chaillot Arenas) was created...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:30 AM
|
TrackBack
September 27, 2004
Wong Kar Wai Week continues. Remember that "interview" with Wong Kar Wai I just linked to? Turns out it's the Access Hollywood Movie Minute version. The HBO Original Series version--long, convoluted, emotional tumult spread out over the whole thing, lots...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:30 AM
|
TrackBack
September 17, 2004
Richard Kelly was on Fresh Air last week to discuss the director's cut of Donnie Darko, which is platforming out into theaters now. Who noted that theatrical re-release is fast becoming a standard marketing element for a remastered or new-version...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
2:58 AM
|
TrackBack
August 25, 2004
The Iceland Review interviews Dagur K·ri, whose first film, >Noi the Albino, received wild critical acclaim in countries where it's been released [cough cough, US??] [via TMN] The interview starts: "With his floppy hair, shaggy beard and frumpy red sweater,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
3:01 AM
|
TrackBack
July 29, 2004
I first came across Jay Rosenblatt's short film in March, as I was surfing across the Silverdocs site, getting ready to submit my own tape. It wasn't just the title, but the combination of title and picture. Rosenblatt was holding...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:37 AM
|
TrackBack
July 27, 2004
Oy. If I see one more mention of Spike Jonze being the "heir" to "the Spiegel catalogue fortune..." This title is nothing but an artifact of lazy-ass entertainment journalism.[not you, Gawker. I know you're not journalism.] 1. Spike's, aka Adam...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:41 PM
|
TrackBack
June 2, 2004
J. Hoberman interviewed Ghost in the Shell anime director Oshii Mamoru at Cannes, where he screened his latest work, Innocence. As Hoberman reports it, the interview was straight out of the Keanu junket in Lost in Translation, with the director...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:50 PM
|
TrackBack
May 13, 2004
It's the most annoying question I kept getting from Lost in Translation fans. Well, now's your chance to find out. Over at Greencine, David's collecting captions for this pic. My choices: "Why'd I write 115 pages if you can...
[read the full post...]
March 30, 2004
In the last couple of weeks, I've decided to shoot a fourth short film, which may be part of the Souvenir Series, or may not. We'll see. It was not in the original outline of the series, and it's out...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:09 PM
March 29, 2004
I saw Captive, the debut feature from Gaston Biraben, at New Directors/New Films last night; it's a subtly powerful movie that gripped the sellout audience at MoMA Gramercy. Captive is a fictionalized telling of real events, a surreal, politically charged...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:17 AM
February 29, 2004
If you want to win, just impart your filmmaking wisdom on greg.org Congratulations to Oscar winners, Independent Spirit Award winners-- and greg.org interviewees--Sofia Coppola and Errol Morris. And don't forget Dany Wolf and Gus Van Sant with their Palme d'Or...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:40 AM
|
Comments (0)
Errol Morris, you just won an Oscar and an Indpendent Spirit Award. Where are you going next? "I'm going to Nordstrom! Daddy needs a new pair of shoes." Buy Sperry Top-Sider 'Stripers' like the ones Morris wore to both award...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:47 AM
|
Comments (0)
February 20, 2004
Last week, in the Sony Classics offices on Madison Avenue, I sat down to talk with Errol Morris, whose current documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, was nominated for an Academy...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:03 PM
February 6, 2004
[via NYT] They're putting the band back together, Elroy. For the first time since The Fog of War was nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Academy Award, Robert McNamara and Errol Morris took their show on the road. They...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:47 AM
|
Comments (0)
January 29, 2004
From Yahoo News coverage of the Golden Globes[note: annoyingly slippery link]: Director Sophia Coppola holds her award after winning Best Screenplay for a motion picture for her wok on the film 'Lost In Translation' during the 61st annual Golden...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:00 AM
|
Comments (0)
January 26, 2004
As you can see by my interview with her last year. On the subject of pretend-journalists, Lost in Translation beat out indie underdog Finding Nemo for best comedy/musical at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Golden Globes last night. The 80-page...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:45 AM
January 24, 2004
On the occasion of Elephant's release in the UK, Simon Hattenstone goes on a publicity pilgrimage to Oregon to interview Gus Van Sant for the Guardian. Gus sends him for coffee before buzzing him up, and later serves him blueberry...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
4:31 AM
|
Comments (0)
January 14, 2004
[via TMN] Considering the number Google searches I still get for Mike Mills, two years after I posted about his Jack Spade-sponsored documentary, Paperboys, and considering how tight Spike, Sofia, Roman and I have become since then, I should be...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:44 AM
|
Comments (0)
December 16, 2003
Vadim Perelman, first-time director of House of Sand and Fog, whose tantrums made many people angry in Hollywood (this is news? at least his were entertaining, as are his accounts: ""So I go to his [Harvey Weinstein's] suite at the...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:49 AM
|
Comments (0)
December 10, 2003
Gus Van Sant, Elias McConnell, and Dany Wolf at Cannes 2003, image: festival-cannes.com There he is, scorched in Death Valley and on the Saltflats of Utah; in a mold-closed school with a barebones crew on scooters; and on the...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
3:59 AM
|
Comments (0)
November 21, 2003
While I was being protective of her, Sofia was opening up to me, revealing that her inspiration for the Suntory whiskey commercials in Lost in Translation was a photo of her father Francis and the emperor of Japanese cinema,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:39 AM
|
Comments (0)
September 25, 2003
Nothing wrong with bigname film folks making commercials. Errol Morris (whose The Fog of War I just saw and will write about soon) directed the Apple Switch ads. Swedish master Ingmar Bergman made some cake by selling cakes of...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:01 AM
|
Comments (1)
August 31, 2003
Last Sunday, on the occasion of the impending release of her new film, Lost in Translation, I joined a couple of journalists in a group interview with Sofia Coppola. The interview took place in New York City at the end...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:43 AM
|
Comments (12)
July 17, 2003
On MovieCityNews: Leonard Klady shares some insights and some great war stories about interviewing directors and actors, a useful (and timely) resource as I prepare for some upcoming junkets. [thanks, GreenCine, and for the mention, too.] Related posts: post-game post...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:29 AM
|
Comments (0)
June 3, 2003
Hearing a story on the wide-ranging political turmoil which followed The Road to Europe, a documentary on the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, I wanted to know more; but the reports I found still left me unsatisfied. Deutsche-Welle, The...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:32 PM
