Author: greg

When I first saw the trailer for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, I was fascinated, then confused. It looked like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, but it had… Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow? It’s some weird studio stunt, I figured. But I was wrong.
Turns out Sky Captain is the culmination of one man’s nearly impossible-to-believe vision. Kerry Conran worked for four years, alone, to produce the six minutes of seamlessly melded CG and live action footage that ultimately led to his making a $70 million independent film:

Conran walked into [producer Jon] Avnet’s office in a plain black T-shirt, looking a little apprehensive. He had agreed to watch the original six-minute short with me and Avnet, and it was clear he wasn’t looking forward to it.
It opens with a black-and-white version of the film’s signature shot, a zeppelin docking at the Empire State. I had seen this sequence in one form or another perhaps a dozen times in the last three days. I can’t begin to guess how many times Conran has seen it: airship and skyscraper, two antique promises of progress meeting to announce our final liberation from earthly concerns. The short was rudimentary compared with what I’d seen, to be sure. And Conran grimaced throughout. But I was stunned when I considered the painstaking labor with no promise of reward, or even end, in sight. And I thought of all the computers in just this building, each one thousands of times as powerful as a Mac IIci, in the hands of eager, young, lettuce-munching dreamers, and I wondered what worlds they were constructing in their spare time between snowflakes. On the screen, Sky Captain flies to the rescue. I happen to know from Kevin that it’s Kerry himself behind the goggles. Naturally, he’s masked.
The short ended. Conran blinked a little and smiled. ”Wow,” he said. ”That was embarrassing.”

[via Gawker] It’ll cost you, but this may be the closest you’ll get to a hummer from Chloe Sevigny. Director/actor/antagonist Vincent Gallo is selling his meticulously assembled and tuned film production package on ebay.
According to the sale, Gallo designed and assembled and fine-tuned the package after Buffalo 66 and has shot 60,000 feet of film with it for Brown Bunny. According to Gallo,

The package would have to include everything needed to make the film: 2 cameras, a high quality and comprehensive lens collection, mobile yet sufficient lighting, sound equipment that could integrate with the cameras so as to avoid slating, a mic assortment that would never need backup, and a ton of extras that would meet the needs of his flexible and spontaneous production style, and last but not least, an extremely secure transportation case system.

The package also includes, remarkably, an “Angenieux zoom [lens] which was purchased from the Stanley Kubrick estate. It is the famous super long throw lens that Kubrick had made for Barry Lyndon. No other like it exists.”[12/04 update: actually, according to Ed diGiulio, who made the lens, they developed a prototype for Kubrick, but also built and sold several others as the Cine-Pro T9 24-480mm zoom lens.]
If the film’s credits are accurate, you can use this package to make a movie all by yourself. There are a couple of sound people listed, but otherwise it’s all Gallo, Gallo Gallo Gallo. No sign that he’s going to free his indentured tech servants as part of the deal.
Unlike critical response to Brown Bunny, Gallo’s ebay feedback is universally positive. He trades a lot of high-end audio equipment and pays very quickly. In 2001, Gallo dealt with an ebayer named Ian McKellen. We don’t know if that transaction involved a hummer, but Vincent did thank Ian for going “the extra mile.