A couple of weeks ago, I called About Schmidt the Thinking Person’s My Fat, Greek Wedding and linked both back to the 1955 Academy Award sweeper Marty. Now, after giving it some thought, Vogue‘s Sarah Kerr notes an “odd coincidence” in a Slate discussion of the films of 2002: “Did you know that Payne is of Greek extraction and that in his boyhood his father owned a Greek restaurant in Omaha? Ring a bell with another movie this year?”
[Listen to Payne talking about Omaha on Studio 360.]
[MoMA‘s Film Department will honor Payne with its 2nd Work In Progress Award in February.]
Author: greg
Putting the Director in Director of Photography
Sifting and digitizing footage for S(J03) until the batteries in my camera ran out, when I watched two DVD’s back to back, XXX and Don’t Look Now. At a stretch, I can say XXX is research for the Animated Musical. Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 thriller, though, is a concentrated course in editing in general and intercutting in particular.
When I cited the seduction scene in Out of Sight as inspiration for intercutting scenes 1 and 2 in Souvenir, a couple of readers suggested seeing the similar Donald Sutherland/Julie Chrystie love scene in Don’t Look Now, “one of the subtlest, most affecting erotic sequences in the history of cinema.” Similar? Apparently, in the Out of Sight DVD commentary,Soderbergh cops to copying this scene; frankly, I think he improved on it.
Roeg’s a cinematographer-turned-director, and it shows. Venice looks awesome in the dark (blown out sunlight at the end of a long alley) and the light (endless boats crossing shimmering canals). And Roeg never met a mirror or semi-transparent surface he didn’t like (or shoot); when the unsettling Scottish sisters confront Christie’s grieving mother in the ladies’ room, there are so many reflections you wonder where the camera was.
The love scene is unexpectedly intense (think twice before watching this one with the in-laws), and not just because I went into the movie thinking Julie Chrystie was the one in The Belle of Amherst. The intercutting is quite effective and interestingly different from Out of Sight. The differences between Roeg’s and Soderbergh’s scenes are both consistent and convenient. Don’t Look Now: impassioned married sex between people who know each other well is intercut with the aftermath, stolid scenes of getting dressed for dinner. The sex is guaranteed, just part of the fabric of life. Out of Sight: Self-conscious flirtation between pursuer and pursued is intercut with the payoff, uncertainty banished and anticipation building to a striptease and one hot night in the sack.
Roeg packs his film with foreboding cuts; pay attention, because everything seems intentional or freighted with meaning. Handheld camerawork (a church accident and late-night chase along a canal, in particular) crops up unexpectedly and with great emotional effect. Some of the love scene cuts are a bit obvious, though; a shot of Julie Chrystie rolling over cuts to a shot of her turning around and putting on lipstick, and there’s a silly pelvic thrust as Sutherland puts on his pants. Even if it feels a little heavy-handed or self-indulgent sometimes, Roeg’s is an expressive style of filmmaking that’s largely dropped from sight these days.
Except, of course, for the “exciting faux-documentary style of Bloody Sunday; the feverish intercutting in Adaptation, Chicago, The Hours, Solaris, even The Two Towers!” which Slate‘s David Edelstein points out…
On Fame. Not Fame, Fame.
If you thought the best thing in this Guardian story about Kevin Spacey’s popularity in London is the phrase “pashmina intelligentsia,” you’re too easily pleased:
On one occasion, the actress Sienna Miller was sitting next to Spacey at a bar. She had just seen The Usual Suspects and was excited to find herself close to one of the film’s stars.
Approaching him she said: ‘I just wanted to say I can’t believe I’m sitting in a bar drinking champagne next to Kevin Bacon.’ ‘Spacey,’ said Kevin. ‘Yeah, it is, isn’t it?’ said Miller.
Which reminds me, I saw a part of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil the other night on TV, and I realized its similarities to Adaptation haven’t been mentioned anywhere. [Of course, my mentioning them here isn’t going to help me get ahead at Spacey’s online film company, Triggerstreet. What the hey, here goes.]
S(J03): Tape Logging Complete
Just finished logging in the third and final tape for S(J03), and I’m pretty relieved/excited. At first, three hours of footage for a 5-minute film seemed daunting, like we’d never be able to cull it down, but after watching it all, it’s won’t be a problem. That makes it sound like there’s only 5 minutes of usable footage in the whole day, which is not the case at all. With a lot of long takes and exploring, there is more extraneous stuff; it’s just that there are some shots which are so clearly good, you can flag them right away.
When we shot the ironing scenes at the hotel, for example, we went start-to-finish on three shirts. (Ironing? Huh? Read the script.) By the third shirt, Patrick, the cinematographer, had really gotten a feel for it; his intimacy and comfort with the camera come through as he shot the entire shirt in one continuous take.
As soon as I get the Powerbook set up for editing, I’m off. Detailed logging means I’ll probably only capture about 20 minutes of video, which is very manageable.
The Best Boxing Day, EVER
New New Yorker Jason Kottke made my Boxing Day by including greg.org on his weblog’s “not recommended at all” list. It’s right under Gawker (who I’d come to imagine as a top, so that’s unsurprising). Thanks, Jason! (And unless you’re just a single clone hitting reload, welcome, all Kottkeians, to greg.org.)
On Why We Should All Go To Austin, Texas
View from the window at Le Gras, 1826, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce
image: Ransom Center, UT Austin
Or specifically, the Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin:
1) to see the world’s first photograph, a view out his window taken by a Frenchman, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, in 1826. Jim Lewis writes about it on Slate.
2) to read the unpublished manuscript of Minstral Island, a futuristic musical by Thomas Pynchon and Kirkpatrick Sale, which they recently acquired. [Fill out your research application before you go. Oh, and get Pynchon’s written permission if you want to make a copy. I’m sure he’s listed.]
Just One. Last. Shot
This morning, I ran off to shoot one more pre-sunrise shot of the mountains and highway for S(J03), a cold, dark 2.5 hour round trip from SLC.
With the sweet Powerbook that Santa brought me, I’ll get some stills up this weekend or next week, depending on the editing schedule. Stay tuned for a rush course in short filmmaking!
S(J03) Logging, Story Structure Notes, and J-Lo
What a way to spend Boxing Day. I logged two of the three hours of footage we shot Monday for S(J03), which took most of the afternoon. Now that I know what we have to edit, the question is, how can I best tell the story in the script? Technical issues and changes on the ground complicate things a bit.
Technical issues: Unstable monitor settings which we didn’t solve until about 11AM means that some really good shots from the morning are just too dark to use. Others are too good not to use, even if they are a little dark. The solution: work the lighting into the story, using it to mark the passage of time. As it works out, this jibes well with the daily routine in the cleaners, which is staggered half-a-day from the dry cleaning process. (i.e., they do the first steps (cleaning and pressing) in the afternoon/evening and the last two steps (bagging and sorting for pickup) the next morning.) The light/shadow/darkness in our footage maps onto the process well.
Changes on the ground: In the script, the main character spends a day working at the dry cleaners. Rather than negotiate and explain this to Joe, the cleaners owner, over the phone, I just asked if we could shoot without disrupting their routine. Joe was nervous because Monday is their busiest day. Looking at the footage, an arc emerged: we started exploring the facility, then observing the people, then asking questions. After building up a degree of familiarity and trust, the man quietly and naturally offered to help. This evolution from observer to participant, and the growing trust it entails, was more satisfying than what I’d originally intended, so it became an organizing principle for the film.
Finally, the J-Lo Factor. Watching the footage, there are so many wonderful details and vignettes, it feels like I’d have to make an hour-long documentary to include them all. Not gonna do it. With the basic structural principles in place (light>>dark, start>>finish rather than just day>>night, reticent observer>>trusted participant) a rigid narrative, sequential arc seems less imperative. The film is more reflection than narrative, we decided, especially in the dry cleaners. Pushing this forward, we came up with the idea of intercutting between two timestreams: ironing and driving, getting ready and going.
Steven Soderbergh, in what I still feel is one of the sweetest examples of this technique, just brings it home in the seduction scene in Out of Sight. I’ve mentioned this before. If my repetition bores you, by all means, clue me into other great scenes.
This all relates to notes I made on the table today at lunch. Check out a transcript here.
Just Like The Ones I Used To Know
Mom’s house, those chocolate cookies with powdered sugar on them, embarassing family pictures, elaborate meals. For several fleeting moments, you’re ten years old again. You actually feel it. Why? It seems like every other year, but those visceral feelings of actually being back in time… What could be different?
Then, as you surf the news at Google [sure didn’t have that when I was a kid!], and as you read the Times and the Guardian [that, either.], it breaks on you like a dawn. Something extra this year. It’s a clock, alright, but not as in “clock, turning back the,” more like “clock, doomsday.”
What really makes you feel like you’re ten again is the Doomsday Clock, the one your uptight Viet Nam vet civics teacher told you was inching perilously close to midnight. [Uptight? He’d blink hard a few times before answering a question, trying to hold it all together.] Go figure. Hadn’t thought of that for a while.
Thank you, President Bush. And thank your friends. For a Christmas just like the ones I used to know.
Thanks For Coming. Nice To Meet You. What Are You Drinking?
Greg.org got quoted in The Juice, MSNBC entertainment polymath Jan Herman’s weblog, for my post about the Peter Eisenman & Co’s (aka the Gang of New York) “stealth deconstructivist memorial” proposal for the WTC site. Why “stealth”? Because what they pitched as the most humble building turns out to be the most massive of all monuments. So, why stealth?
Anyway, I have changed the title of my next movie to celebrate The Juice: henceforth, it will be called Souvenir (Jan 2003).
New Short Film: Souvenir (January 2003) Location Shooting
I haven’t posted much about it at all, but I wrote a new short script, S(J03), which I’m going to do a rough shoot of Monday in Springville, Utah. If it goes well, we’ll come back and shoot it in film during Sundance. It’s about a guy who takes quiet pleasure in ironing. I imagine it’ll be about 5 minutes long, and we’ll try to get a rough cut ready to show the folks at Lincoln Center’s New Directors/New Films by Jan. 8. Another self-imposed, ridiculously short deadline, which we have no reason to believe we’ll meet.
Here is the location schedule for the one-day shoot. Check back for a blow-by-blow account.
Souvenir (November 2001) Screening Recap
I’m quite behind, obviously. Thursday went very well, as I wrote earlier. Souvenir (November 2001) screened last in a program of four short films which, in the words of Festival Director (and MoMA curator) Sally Berger, were “different from all the Sept. 11-related things we’ve been saturated with…These ‘makers use a more essayistic, and in one case [mine, -ed.], narrative form to explore issues and ideas.” The other three films were:
Before the screening, I met David and Etienne in the theater, when we were caught off guard by the opening music from Souvenir; the projectionist was checking the levels. Family showed up, a wave of people I didn’t know, then a couple of familiar faces. The whole thing was more nervewracking than I’d imagined. Sally Berger got up to introduce the films, then we were off.
I was very interested to see the other three films, which were very different from each other and very good in their own ways. Inevitably, I was caught up, trying to anticipate what kind of context the program was creating for my film. (The only line I remember from Beaches: “But enough about me, let’s talk about you. What do you think of me?”) The various settings, pacing, tone and styles worked well, though, and people seemed to take Souvenir in quite readily.
Watching it on the big (did I say big, I meant HUGE) screen was intoxicating; repeatedly, self-consciousness would build (“oh no, this shot’ll be too long!”), and then a gorgeous image or a nice cut would come. People reacted to lines I worried were too obscure. A couple of shots were kind of dark, but if you look back to the location notes, lighting was one of our major challenges then, too.
Then, it was over. Lights came on, the woman in front of us bolted, I knew no one’d stay for the Q&A, and they did. Norman and Etienne both took questions, Sally talked about putting the program together, and then people asked about Souvenir, how memorials change over time, what French people thought, what should happen on the WTC site, about repeated references to emptiness and voids in the film (something I hadn’t really considered), and then it was over. People came up, we got shooed to the lobby, we talked and talked, there were hangers on, it was very, very cool. Just like you’d see in a movie. theater.
So Now I Know
Coatcheck
So you’re at the Annie Liebovitz party, where even the Christmas trees are tall and skinny, and there’s no coatcheck. The safest place to leave your things: next to the bag containing $1,000 worth of marijuana, watched nervously by its owner.
Finally, the voices in my head have a name, and that name is Gawker.
Wellwishers Multiplying Like Rabbits
Thanks to all y’all (as we’d say in NC, at least when our parents weren’t around) who’ve sent your kind wishes and congratulations re Souvenir. Since 1) You mailed from work, 2) you mailed from outside New York, and 3) there were far more of you than bodies in the theater, I conclude most of you weren’t actually at MoMA yesterday. So thanks for the vote of confidence, too, I guess.
So far, the winner of the farthest-away-wellwisher goes to Aussie Matthew Clayfield, who writes about his prodigious film production activities on his weblog, Esoteric Rabbit Films. According to his site, he has yet to graduate to wearing pants. He’s 16.
Souvenir Screening: (Too Much) Like A Dream (Team)
I’m beat, but I have to mention one experience from the premiere that caught me totally offguard. My film, Souvenir was shown with three other short films, including Etienne Sauret and David Carrara’s haunting WTC: The First 24 Hours. Sauret captured the empty shock and silence of Ground Zero, images of a time and place otherwise closed to the media, like these fragments of the Towers’ trademark steel columns.
Still, WTC: The First 24 Hours, dir. by Etienne Sauret. Image: thefirst24hours.com
Then in Souvenir, this MIT webpage briefly flashed across the screen during the Google search. Professor Helene Lipstadt had helped students build the Reflecting Wall, a painted wooden replica of these columns, which went up within three days of the attacks.
MIT’s Reflecting Wall, Sept. 14, 2001 Image: Donna Coveney, MIT
My mind went immediately to the the WTC proposal put forward yesterday by Richard Meier, Charles Gwathmey, Steven Holl, and Peter Eisenman.
Meier, Gwathmey, Holl and Eisenman WTC Proposal image: LMDC
There’s no mention of such a reference at all in either their presentation or their written proposal. Instead, they refer to “a new typology in the tradition of innovative skyscraper design…quiet abstraction…screens of presence and absence…[and] interlaced fingers of protective hands.” So this “Dream Team” never imagined their proposal for rebuilding closely references the wreckage of the Twin Towers? You must be dreaming.
“Partly collapsed” office towers, by Peter Eisenman. NYT caption: “…the buildings would echo the devastation wrought on 9/11 and offer a striking memorial to the fallen towers.”
In September, Eisenman contributed a design for office buildings on West Street (facing Ground Zero) to NY Times critic Herbert Muschamp’ ambitious exercise, “Don’t Rebuild. Reimagine.”. In the Magazine’s Flash presentation, Eisenman describes the buildings:
You get the effect of …a moment of frozen time, where the buildings are collapsing, and what we tried to do was record in the buildings that moment, a moment of impact on the surrounding buildings that would be recorded as part of the memorial.
Even though they avoid mentioning it, the “Dream Team” has proposed to freeze a different moment in time, the first 24 hours.
Post Script: A reader (from Eisenman’s Yale, by the way) pointed out another connection, one that I didn’t make yesterday: the formal similarities to Steven Holl’s just-finished building, a dorm at MIT.