Category: interviews

Video Artist Guy Ben-Ner on WPS1

guy_ben-ner_elia.jpgGuy 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 Israel in the Venice Biennale.

At Venice, Ben-Ner talks with PS1 curator Bob Nickas about his work and how he uses adaptive techniques for shooting under directorial duress. He references silent film, in which the camera couldn’t move, and nature documentaries, where you can’t direct animals. Ben-Ner uses his kids in his videos, which requires a certain creativity to get anything down on tape.

Ben-Ner’s segment lasts about 15 minutes, and then Nickas and his too-smart sidekicks spiral out of control, gushing over Vezzoli’s Caligula trailer–in exactly the critically unaware way that bugs so bad. While Ben-Ner sits silently by for the next 30-40 minutes, the curator/writer conversation encapsulates exactly the kind of hermetic, bitchy Venetian oneupsmanship that shouldn’t be recorded, much less broadcast. Don’t miss it.

WPS1 Venice Conversation – The Bob Nickas Roundtable [wps1.org, updated link to clocktower.org, July 2018]

VV Talks With Hustle & Flow Director Craig Brewer

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 and put the kind of money behind them that they would a blockbuster. What’s wrong with that?” He cracks, “Look, we didn’t make The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. [Hustle] has a commercial, mythological, hero’s-journey structure to it. I have always wanted it to be reflective of The Commitments, Footloose, Flashdance, and Rocky.”

Yes, interesting. Slate’s Christopher Kelly thinks it’s train wreck interesting, at least: “Funny, though, that this ‘vision of what’s hip and what Hollywood isn’t doing,’ as Singleton has described it, should look exactly like what Hollywood’s been doing for years.”
Rhyme Scheme [vv]
The Pimp Who Saved Hollywood [slate]

Hiroshi Sugimoto: The Kultureflash Interview

sugimoto_math2.jpgSherman 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 some more background on the models, which were also photographed by Man Ray and studied–in their day, in the 1910’s and 20’s–by Duchamp, Brancusi, and others.
By happy coincidence, the same series are on view at Sonnabend until June 11.
Artworker of the Week: Hiroshi Sugimoto [kultureflash]
previously: On Math & Art in France

Marc Forster at MoMA: A Word Association Game

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 being nice to his richer, little brother for life)
Maggie Gyllenhaal: good sport, Harvard Law material
Maggie Lyko: one of the greatest women in America, who happens to have left for Mexico.
Marc Forster: Sick. [flu-sick, not gross-sick. Both he and Ferrell are getting Theraflu-high on stage]
Meeting Marc Forster: genial. [nice, easy-going, surprisingly not wearing clogs. Says, “I know,” when I introduce myself. Politely doesn’t mention the restraining order.]
My oblique Monster’s Ball oral sex scene reference in my speech: too oblique. Only Forster and the writer get it. Embarassingly, only Forster says it was funny.
Jamie Niven’s inadvertent and unacknowledged oral sex sight gag when the tech guy got down on his knees behind the podium to fix the mic during his speech: hi-larious, that man is grace under pressure personified.
Sean Combs: left the P. Diddy at home.
Best description of Everything Comes Together: The Dead Baby Movie.
Will Ferrell: makes even repressed movies about dead babies, racist executioners, and manipulative closet cases funny.
MoMA atrium: nice place, whaddya pay?
Mini cheeseburger hors d’oeuvres: Get back here!
Bresaola hors d’oeuvres: pre-touched meat
Champagne with straws: generously provided
Diet Coke at the pre-event champagne-only reception: cruelly absent

Finally figured out what Bjork and Matthew Barney have in common

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 we sure miss you.” in the Observer (UK)]
Related: Bjork released a 2-disc DVD version of Medulla, with more acapella than ever and a making of documentary by Spike Jonze. It’s only available in the rest of the world outside the US, the UK and Iceland. Wait, is that a trick question? Where else is there?

Finally figured out what Bjork and Matthew Barney have in common

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 we sure miss you.” in the Observer (UK)]
Related: Bjork released a 2-disc DVD version of Medulla, with more acapella than ever and a making of documentary by Spike Jonze. It’s only available in the rest of the world outside the US, the UK and Iceland. Wait, is that a trick question? Where else is there?

ReadyMade Interviews Brad Bird

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 visit greencine.com, where I’ll be forced to acknowledge how much cinema is going on around me that I’m disconnected from.
Then I read an intervew like Brad Bird’s at ReadyMade, and it really charges my batteries.
Brad Bird, How did you get that f*&%ing awesome job? [readymademag.com, via scrubbles]
previously: Mike Mills, How did you get your f*&%ing awesome job?

That Guy From Kottke.org Interviews That Guy From The VW Commercial

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 that I started unconsciously moving a bit like Gene Kelly. The director at one point even told me that I was moving too much like Gene and I needed to move more like me.”
Golf GTi Commercial and Elsewhere [kottke.org]
previously: Definition of “to be Jar-Jarred”
VW commercial shot on the same soundstage as Oliver!
Musical, Re-animated, with Xanadu references

Noah Baumbach on ‘The Squid and the Whale’

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 had an epiphany at a screening of the Louis Malle classic Murmur of the Heart, organized by his friend Wes Anderson (a Squid producer).
“I thought I should deal with this moment in my life,” he said after an early morning screening on Wednesday. “But it’s why it took me a long time to get it done. There was a censor in me, not in a literal way, more in general, wondering what people might think and who would care – it’s only my story. Letting go of that censor was really important; personally, it was a breakthrough.”
Mr. Baumbach’s mother, Georgia Brown, was a film critic for The Village Voice, and his father, Jonathan, is a film critic and novelist who teaches at Brooklyn College. Neither parent, as portrayed in the film, is particularly sympathetic. Mr. Baumbach said it was all right with his real-life parents “because they’re writers.”
The director had [Jeff] Daniels borrow some of Jonathan Baumbach’s clothes for his wardrobe. “I liked to use things that connected me to that time, in a Proustian way,” he said. [nice. -g.o]

Discussion of an actual film, buried in Tony Scott’s nerdy “Sundance is all about scamming free stuff” article.

Quentin who? Uma Who? Now on WPS1

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 his muses, the equally unknown Uma Thurman. It was the inauguration of their new series, “Great Collaborations.” Here’s hoping them all the best success, and that they’ll eventually be able to rope in some recognizable names.
Any-who, since I’m pretty sure nobody was there, WPS1 is offering the first chance to hear Uma and Quentin talk about their work together.
Great Collaborations: Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman [WPS1.org

SoHo Filmmakers Report #2: Spike Jonze

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 asserts that Spike Jonze is “the heir to the Spiegel Catalogue fortune”:

To: greg.org
From: [name withheld]
Subject: Spike Jonze is not a Spiegel heir at all
Body:My name is [snip] and I live in [a Midwestern city… I am the great-[grandchild] of Modie Spiegel Sr, the man who made the Spiegel company a nationally known enterprise.
I have become interested in my family’s geneaology, and Googled Edward Spiegel. Your post about Spike not being a Spiegel heir was one of the first listed. [Umm, yeah. Hope you’re not too upset about that “scion of my butt” comment. -g.]
You make a very good point in your post, and nearly everything you say is true, but I felt I should correct you on your errors and provide you with a few facts.
Spike’s great-grandfather Arthur was considered the “boy genius” of the family. It was actually he who came up with the idea for buying on credit, and the catalogue was basically his idea. He left Spiegel to form his own movie business.
Now here is where you make your most egregious mistake. Arthur died in 1912, and although his company fell apart soon afterwards, he had made it quite successful. Also, after his death, (of pneumonia by the way) his widow remained close to the family for many years, but it is true that none of her children were ever involved in the company.
You are correct that Spike is not an “heir” is terms of money. [Hmm. but if a ‘scion’ is also a ‘descendant,’ not just an ‘heir,’ does that mean he IS a scion?] Sidney left the company after a fight with Modie’s son Modie Jr., and Modie eventually gave the shares of the company to his four children: Modie Jr, Freddie, Polly and John [one of these is the writer’s grandparent. -g.]
Modie Jr. ran Spiegel Inc. for nearly thirty years after his father retired, and after it was sold to the Otto family, the money from the sale was split amongst him and his siblings.
I have no idea how the idea got started that Spike was an heir. I believe that he has denied it on occasion, but it still seems to get mentioned in every article about him. [no kidding. -g.]
Sincerely, [snip]

Thanks for filling in the gaps that resulted from my not rummaging through Spike’s quarterly statements.
Related: Spike Jonze: Scion of my BUTT

Tribeca Filmmakers Report #1: Quentin Tarantino

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 ‘I’ll call you’ to a fast-receding blackout Navigator.]
Shill Bill [artforum diary]
Tarantino’s Airport Pick-Up Service [defamer]
[update via GreenCine: Sheldrake publishes a complete transcript–or maybe you should call it a fanscript–at AICN. Yow.]