Art in General’s hosting a screening of Tarnation at 3, and Jonathan Caouette will be entertaining your questions while you all drink their wine at around 6.
Whatever you can get him to do in that mystical hour or so between when the movie ends and the reception begins remains to be seen.
3-6 PM Tarnation Screening
Jonathan Caouette interrogations (dress: Basic Instinct)
Art in General
79 Walker Street
East of Broadway somewhere, on the SE corner of some street
Art in General video program [artingeneral.org]
Category: making movies
Christo Party
Jason’s got his photos of The Gates up, I’m sure the rest of the camera-equipped world will follow.
Albert Maysles talks on WPS1 about the 25+year-long process of making his film about The Gates, The Gates. Maysles is making this film with collaborator Antonio Ferrera for HBO, but he also made other Christo and Jeanne-Claude films over the years. [Actually, a lot of them at the time were just Christo films. I’ll let the gender studies art historians figure that one out. Ask Coosje van Bruggen about it, too.]
Maysles has switched to DV lately, and revels in being able to be even less obtrusive and more flexible than 16mm used to let them be.
Kottke-gate [kottke.org]
Maysles-gate [wps1.org]
All The Vermeers In New York (Plus The One In Boston)
I can’t quite say why, but I had a pretty intense Jon Jost phase when I first moved to New York. I saw his All The Vermeers In New York several times, lured in by the title, but kept there by the film’s demanding and precise construction, and its underlying art-vs-money themes. [That said, I don’t remember it too well; better add it to the rental queue.]
Anyway, I’m sure–pretty sure. kind of sure. hoping–that when the Whitney Museum put then-Vivendi/Universal chairman Jean-Marie Messier on its board in the late 1990’s, it was NOT it in the hope of adding one more Vermeer to New York City’s collection.
FBI looking at Messier as part of its investigation of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft, which netted someone a Vermeer and some Rembrandts [bostonherald.com]
All The Vermeers In New York[imdb.com, amazon]
FYI, New York’s Vermeers are at the Met [5] and the Frick [3]
Oh My Heck! Brother Greg Whiteley’s New York Doll
I admit, a lot of Sundance went by me in a blur. No one I knew I knew was showing anything this year, and I knew non-film work would conspire to keep me out of Park City, so maybe I’m the only person who DIDN’T know about New York Doll. Well, in the last week, I’ve heard about it from three different people, each of whom called it one of the top films at the festival.
Greg Whiteley started shooting a documentary about his friend from church, Arthur Kane, when Morissey called [?!] and asked if his old band, the New York Dolls, would reunite and play for the first time in 30 years at the 2004 Meltdown Festival in London.
Turns out Brother Kane, who may be more familiar to rock fans as Killer Kane, joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the late 80’s, and when Morissey called, he was working in the genealogy library near the LA temple on Santa Monica. Imagining Kane fitting in in the Mormon Church, Blondie drummer Clem Burke said, “It would be like Donny Osmond becoming a New York Doll.”
It also turns out–and this is less of a surprise to music fans–that the New York Dolls were possibly the single greatest influence on glam-rock and punk in the early seventies, and were a key inspiration for everyone from Morissey to Blondie to the Ramones to the Sex Pistols. I’m not giving anything of the film away to point out that the Meltdown reunion–for which Kane dressed, not in feathery glam drag, but in a ruffled shirt inspired by the 19th c. Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, and which featured the three band members who hadn’t died of punk-lifestyle-related causes–was a star-filled, exuberant success. Additional tour dates were hastily set, then just days later, Kane died two hours after being diagnosed with leukemia.
The film includes interviews with the musicians who were inspired by the dolls as well as Kane’s bishop, who talked about the joy Kane was deriving from the upcoming reunion. Whiteley showed some of his rough footage at Kane’s funeral, then edited like crazy to get the film ready for the Sundance screenings last month.
As of right now, the film’s distribution is not decided.
Official Sundance info for New York Doll [sundance.org]
IndieWIRE email interview with director Greg Whiteley [indiewire.com]
Film details Mormon’s final wish: to reunite punk band [reno journal]
New York Dolls play SENSATIONAL comeback show at Meltdown [nme.com]
Arthur Kane, Punk Rock Bassist for New York Dolls, dies at 55 [NYT, via mills.edu]
Waiting For Halo
Microsoft has commissioned Alex Garland (28 Days Later, um, The Beach, but we don’t talk about that) to write a script for Halo–a v1.0, if you will–which will be offered to producers along with with the game’s film rights as a “turnkey” package.
This is a brilliant, precedent-setting move for a multitude of reasons:
But seriously, folks, I hope they call it Red vs Blue.
Halo, Hollywood [variety.com, via TMN]
Ridley Scott to direct Halo movie? [11/04, ign.com: “because Halo’s like Alien, and Halo 2’s so much like Aliens“–directed by James Cameron, yo.]
more games-to-film news at filmforce [ign.com]
Bunnies Multiplying Like Rabbits
What is it about bunnies and short films? First, the NY Times has a hi-larious, yet thoughtfully insightful interview with Jennifer Shiman, the creator of 30-Second Bunny Theatre. Then Chris Harding’s 50’s instructional film-style short for Hallmark features a hutchful of retro bunnies flogging greeting cards.
Spielbunny [NYT, oh wait, I wrote that. Not that that taints my judgment or anything…]
Classic films, re-enacted in 30 seconds by bunnies [angryalien.com]
Make Mine Shoebox corporate video [chrisharding.net]
Czech Republic, $@#! Yeah!
North Korea’s ambassador in Prague has demanded that Team America World Police be banned from the Czech Republic; it depicts Kim Jong Il consorting with Alec Baldwin, which, he says, would totally NEVER happen.
Replies Foreign Ministry spokesman Vit Kolar, “We told them it’s an unrealistic wish. Obviously, it’s absurd to demand that in a democratic country. And anyway, Alec Baldwin is still better than Vin Diesel.”
N. Korea Wants Czech Ban of Team America [guardian]
On Not Writing Alone In The Dark
Blair Erickson writes about his experience working with director Uwe Boll on an early treatment and script for the Tara Reid vehicle [sic] Alone In The Dark.
Even if it IS the Worst Movie Ever Of The Century Of The Week, it sure has generated a lot of ancillary entertainment opportunities.
Blair Erickson – Behind the Scenes: Uwe Boll and Uwe Boll’s “Alone In the Dark” [somethingawful.com]
Bad Review Revue: Alone in the Dark, funny funny funny [defectiveyeti.com]
Golden Gate Bridge Meets Its (Suicide Docu) Maker
After all, Eric Steel didn’t say he wasn’t going to film the jumpers off the Golden Gate Bridge when he applied for a permit to shoot the bridge all day, every day, for a year. According to the federal officials who issued him the permit, he described his project as, variously, “a day in the life” of the bridge or “a powerful and spectacular interaction between the monument and nature.”
Steel captured 19 jumpers on film, plus “hundreds” of unsuccessful attempts, including some that were thwarted by his crew’s alerts to authorities. Then he went to interview people affected.
If Tad Friend’s excellent, disturbing 2003 New Yorker piece is to be believed, bridge officials and politicians are rather warily pre-occupied with its reputation as a suicide spot. Which makes their protestations that they were shocked, shocked at the director’s “true intentions” ring a little hollow. Friend’s article is pretty damning of the bridge’s managing board, which adamantly opposes installing suicide-preventing fences.
When you tire of reading self-righteous condemnations from implicated public figures, there are plenty of snap judgments from utterly uninvolved people on Metafilter.
Film captures suicides on Golden Gate Bridge; Angry officials say moviemaker misled them [sfgate.com]
Suicide Documentary Angers Golden Gate Bridge Officials [ktvu.com]
LETTER FROM CALIFORNIA/ Tad Friend/ Jumpers/ The fatal grandeur of the Golden Gate Bridge/ Issue of 2003-10-13 [newyorker.com]
The GGB Suicide Documentary [mefi]
Related: Bureau of Inverse Technology’s conceptual(-only) art project, “Suicide Box,” which was shown at the Whitney Biennial [bureauit.org]
We’re Going To The Pan Pacifics, Fran!
“‘We’ve been given the mandate to compete on a more aggressive level,’ says [Paramount Classics co-pres David] Dinerstein, who also helped orchestrate the reported $2 million purchase of Mad Hot Ballroom, a Slamdance documentary widely described as Spellbound meets Strictly Ballroom.”
1) One of the odd, still-annoys-me things was that Strictly Ballroom was vaguely a documentary, too. The early scenes were all “talking-head-and-captions,” and then it just disappeared. Weird, edgy, or sloppy, whatever, it got him to Romeo+Juliet.
2) Every group with more than five adolescent dorks in it should get an agent, or at least look up “life rights” on Google before the cameras descend. Drill teamers, pep clubbers, band members, chess clubbers, debaters, science fair entrants, video gamers, D&D/RPG players, and incessant IM’ers, this means you.
Strictly Business [Village Voice]
On Jem Cohen’s ‘Chain’
Chain, was directed by Brooklyn-based filmmaker Jem Cohen. The movie tells the story of a pair of women seemingly stranded in an instantly familiar, parking lot-filled landscape of big box retail stores, fast food restaurants and malls. It looks like it could have been made in one pass through AnySuburbanTown, USA, but it was actually shot in 11 states and seven countries over seven years.
Don’t miss the unintentional National Security subplot.
Chain, dir. by Jem Cohen, is screening at the Curzon Soho in London on Feb. 8. It showed at MoMA Gramercy in a 3-screen format last year.
All the world’s a car park [Guardian, via archinect]
Wendy Mitchell on Jem Cohen’s Chain Times Three at MoMA [IndieWIRE]
Section 8: We Make Movies, Not Money
There’s a long profile in the NYT of Section Eight, Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney’s Warner Bros-based production company, whose deal is set to run out in a couple of years. I’m not quite sure what the takeaway is:
Trying to Combine Art and Box Office in Hollywood [NYT]
Previously: Speaking of Losers, We Found A Bag Of Mail [greg.org]
No one except me: greg.org posts regarding K Street
Someone Hasn’t Heard of ‘Napoleon Dynamite’.,.
In this week’s Arts & Leisure section, Adam Leipzig entertainingly/depressingly lays out the beyond-improbable odds of 1) having a successful independent film, and 2) getting your script made into a big studio hit.
Not that I would EVER question the brilliance of the editors who this week afforded me the opportunity to speak with Pamela Anderson, but I worry that if Leipzig’s arguments go unchallenged, too many doctors, dentists, and uncles will be dissuaded from investing in surefire hit films, and then where would our culture be? We’d only have 2,000 features trying to get into Sundance.
That said, while I could dig up data on indie films and indie scripts and indie budgets and indie returns on investment, I’m kinda wiped out right now. Leipzig’s numbers are empirically correct, but don’t reflect even the basic risk-mitigating, probability-enhancing factors that should accompany a deserving film.
What are the odds for films that were developed in the Sundance Institute writer’s workshop? How about for movies featuring a recognizable actor? Or the distribution pickup rate of films shown at IFC Market? Or of films by former IFC volunteers, even? How many $5 million films make back their investment? How many $100,000 films? How many films were self-distributed, and at what budget level does self-distribution start (or stop) looking viable?
The Sundance Odds Get Even Longer [NYT]
Regarding greg.org at Regarding Clementine
Demonstrating a curatorial wisdom so vast it puts the [sic] in Sicha, Choire has put me in his show at the Clementine Gallery.
I’ll be screening and editing a new/old short, footage we shot in the summer of 2001 that I haven’t been able to look at since, tomorrow (Friday) from 11-6.
Stop by and say hi if you like, and ask me what the hell I’m doing. Not that I’ll have an answer, mind you, but you’re welcome to ask.
The Show: Regarding Clementine
Clementine Gallery, 526 West 26 Street, Suite 211, New York.
Your Dream Project, Our Nightmare
Caryn James barely scratches the surface with her article-cum-warning about directors’ dream projects: “Here is a basic rule of moviegoing,” she starts, “when you hear about someone’s dream project, run from the box office fast.”
On the list of dreamers and their flops: Oliver Stone (Alexander), Kevin Spacey (Beyond The Sea), Scorsese (Gangs of New York, AND Last Temptation of Christ), John Travolta (Battlefield Earth)… seriously, there’s a year’s worth of articles to write on this. I’ll leave the comments open for a while, so feel free to add your own favorites.
The Making of The Megaflop: Curse of The Pet Project [NYT]