Category: making movies

The terminal bureaucracy squanders treasure (and, in the case of the state), life in pointless, oft times criminal endeavours, whose true purpose is nothing more than make-work for those employed to demonstrate, in their inactive mass – the power of the institution.
The young, warped by an educational system selling them perpetual adolescence, mistake the battleground for the struggle: they believe that make-work in that one-time area of strife and creation, Hollywood, somehow conveys to them the status of actually working in the Movie Business. It is as if a picnicker at the Gettysburg Memorial Park considered himself a soldier.

David Mamet eviscerates development, “the Dadaist vision of movie-making,” in the Guardian

Disney launched a production weblog for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy this week. Let’s see if they’ve learned anything since 2002, when Miramax published a completely artificial “weekly production diary” site for Full Frontal . The gap between between weeks 3 and 4 was like three months.

Disney launched a production weblog for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy this week. Let’s see if they’ve learned anything since 2002, when Miramax published a completely artificial “weekly production diary” site for Full Frontal . The gap between between weeks 3 and 4 was like three months.

Recently, in linking to this site, an otherwise highly accurate Internet publication called me a “film buff.” And while I’ve been known to enjoy a film or two in my time, I have to confess, I’m not buff. Anyone at the gym could tell you that, if I ever made it to the gym anymore.
But the question haunted me: if I’m not a film buff, what am I? When introduced, I say I’m a filmmaker, but sometimes I wonder if that’s just a euphemism for dilettante, the way “freelance” is for “unemployed” or “entrepreneur” is for “unemployable.”
So I thought I’d run a few personal branding options by my best friend’s publicist, Bumble, and see if I could get some free advice. No, as it turned out.
Next idea: just run a few options up the flagpole and see what happens. Work with me here, people.
Producer: No. Besides being simply a means to an end (Like anyone else, what I really want to do is direct.), this is a term used more to get one laid than to get one’s movie made. Also, no one knows what it means.
Aspiring filmmaker: No. Besides being technically inaccurate (I’ve made and am making a series of short films.), “aspiring filmmaker” covers so many people–from Tom Ford to the entire populations of Los Angeles and San Fernando Counties–it’s useless as a title.
Short film maker: No. More accurate, to be sure, but too often confused with short filmmaker, which Spike Lee is, and I am not. syn. poor and hopelessly unambitious. While nearly every filmmaker has made short films, very very few short film makers make features.
Documentary filmmaker: No. True, my films so far have been in documentary festivals, but I consider them more documentary-style. syn. hopelessly and eternally poor and dirty, and unpalatably activist. Also, it’s the title used for both Ken Burns and Michael Moore.
Documentary-style filmmaker: Yes, if I want to sound like a pretentious over-analytical ass. So, no.
Filmmaker/blogger: bwahahahaha! Would be the response I’d get from 10% of the people who knew what it meant. Back of head turning toward me would be from the other 90%. So, no.
“Filmmaker” or < air quote>Filmmaker< /air quote>: I’m holding this in reserve, in case I commit some horrible crime and get a trashy, condescending New York Magazine article written about me.
I have to admit, I was stumped. There was simply no term for someone who’s tried his hand at a couple of documentaries, decides he wants to make more, so he uses his publishing activities to ingratiate himself to entertainment industry players for his own personal gain?
Then just this morning, I was pointed to an article by Mediabistro‘s Newsfeed that answered my question perfectly.
From here on out, you will refer to me as The Editor of Vanity Fair.

The Times has an enjoyable story, “
Creepy Space, With Rats, Just $10,000 a Day” about the recurring popularity among film and TV producers of the few photogenic alleys in Manhattan. But the story doesn’t hold up and even misses the point, but not because the $10k location fee turns out to be blustery indie producer hearsay or because it lacks data of production that the Mayor’s Film & TV Office could provide with a phone call.

“The dilemma in film and TV in New York City is that writers don’t come from New York, but where they come from, there are alleys,” said Brooke Kennedy, an executive producer and a director for the Third Watch television drama. “And we don’t have that many to choose from.”
Chuck Katz, the author of…Manhattan on Film, said the alleys were popular because there is nothing like authenticity.

So alleys are authentic, but the city really doesn’t have that many. At least compared to wherever the writers “come from.”
Unless they’re all palookas from the South Side, the writers come from leafy suburbs; and that loading zone behind the shopping center is not an alley. No, the alleys where writers come from are in the movies and TV shows they saw growing up. From the earliest film noirs to Kojak, Hill Street, and TJ Hooker, alleys are an archetypal literary and cinematic device: the source–sometimes real, of course, but more importantly, imagined–of looming trouble and danger, just out of view, mere steps away, right around the corner.

“Fiachra Gibbons meets Nuri Bilge Ceylan in his apartment in Istanbul to talk about Mehmet Emin Toprak.” [via David Hudson, quoted by Greg Allen]

Bill Werde reports in the Times on the sad, dumb story of End of The Century, a highly praised documentary about The Ramones made by Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields.
The article makes it sound like the two novice filmmakers are out more than $235,000 for production and post- to make their film, even though $150K of that is to Chinagraph, a post- house where Gramaglia’s brother works, which is listed as a production company for the film. That’s how indie docs work, my friend, you get your family to do a lot of work for free. So $65K out of pocket for a feature documentary? Nice work.
No, their real problem is entirely of their own making, and it’s captured perfectly in this anecdote from the film’s screening last year at Slamdance:

Penelope Spheeris, the director of the punk rock documentary “The Decline of Western Civilization” as well as “Wayne’s World,” introduced “End of the Century” at the Slamdance festival. Afterward, she found Mr. Fields. “She was like, `Wow, do you have all the music rights?’ I was like: `Yeah! Sure! Totally!’ I had no idea what she was talking about.”

Yes, they made a movie about a band without getting rights or releases for the interviews, performances, footage, or music.
Similar thing happened to a friend of mine, whose parking lot documentary about Deadheads screened at Sundance, but the band harshed their buzz. Ultimately, they had to release it without the Dead’s music, causing it to stink like the inside of a fry god’s rusty Honda.
A rule of thumb for all you dumbass, cheapass filmmakers out there: Get and use Michael Donaldson’s Clearance & Copyright: Everything the Independent Filmmaker Needs to Know. Bonus: In Filmmaker, Donaldson talks admiringly about Morgan Spurlock’s deft lawsuit-dodging while making Supersize Me.

This Guardian exclusive wins the award for best comic timing of the week. It’s a diary of a young man who hooked up with Kevin Spacey online. Money changed hands. Drinks were plied. Gifts and trips were showered. Video was shot. But this time, apparently, no cell phones were stolen.
According to the Guardian, Spacey has set up a whole website just to meet young men who are ready to “do what it takes” to break into the film business.

In BFI’s May 2004 Sight & Sound, James Bell looks at the world of British shorts. His findings: proper support is very important, but hard to come by; when you need it most, there can be no reaction at all; when they can’t get someone else to do it with, people turn to handheld electronic devices to help them shoot, then they complain that it’s “not like the real thing”; people are going online for some action; the word “gag” comes up a lot; it rarely lasts longer than five minutes.
If this sounds suspiciously like the situation in our American shorts, just remember: in the UK, the whole thing’s funded by the government. [via GreenCine]

The classic “Cinderella story” speech from Caddyshack was written as an interstitial camera shot…Ramis took Murray aside and said, “When you’re playing sports, do you everjust talk to yourselflike you’re the announcer?”
Murray said, “Say no more,” and did his monologue in one take.
– Tad Friend’s great piece on Harold Ramis in the New Yorker.

When [I] asked about “the whole ‘Cinderella story’ from Caddyshack and that shot of Bill golfing under Mt. Fuji,” Sofia didn’t register. “I never saw it.”
Buy Caddyshack on DVD and carry it around with you. Give it –and a stern talking to–to Sofia Coppola when you see her.
Buy Murray’s book, titled–you guessed it–Cinderella Story: My Life in Golf. [Or don’t, if the “See Inside!” excerpt is any indication.]

If you’re planning to bumrush Bill Murray tonight at BAM to pitch him your 12-page script [“INT – ASSISTANT GREENSKEEPER’S HOUSE – NIGHT”], you’re a bigger chump than your ex said you were: it was Tuesday.
Don’t worry, you can still send a message “to” Bill at The Bill Murray Message Board, “just in case that actor ever visits this site”:

Date: 2/12/2004 – 9:42 PM
Name: Mickey
Comments : I am, at this moment, watching you on Letterman. and was very touched by your “psychic pull” remark re: your six children. I, admittedly, teared up as you said it – I have two children. (& love them dearly a good part of the time.) However, we are feeling that the psychic pull is more of a HAUNTING as our son enters young adulthood. I think boys should be banned! Girls are moodier and in a much more “in your face mode” but manageable. My question is, how can our 20 year old son and his two roommates generate a $400.00 cable bill for one month? We live in Vermont – not frickin’ L.A.. Please do not reply. I have had two glasses of Kendall Jackson and have NEVER before posted a message to a board/chatroom (cmpd wd?)My husband is out of town and I am just exercising a wild hair.

[4/21 Update: Check Joey’s play-by-play account of BAM’s Bill and Elvis Show at Tale of Two Cities. The line TOTC’s been waiting his whole life to hear from Jim Jarmusch (“It was so much fun getting Bill in a room with RZA and GZA.”) does absolutely nothing for me. I now feel very very stupid.]

[via GreenCine] Terrence Malick’s on-again, off-again, on-again-next-year biopic, Che is on again, only it’s now Steven Soderbergh’s Che.
Muy bien.

OK, one more post about Mel’s mammon from heaven, The Passion:
The Guardian reports on the miracle of Matera: Gibson raised the Italian hilltop town from the economic dead when he chose it as the main location for filming.
And Blessed are The Extras, for they shall obtain EU60-90/day
Not only were 600 of “the swarthiest” locals picked as extras in the film, but the town has been born again as a Christian tourist site. Antonio Foschino documents the local production of The Passion on his website, Sassiweb.it–The gregorio.org of Matera, he provides a Passion Package Tour; book early.
At least until high season starts, the town’s hotel maid won’t charge you a euro to tell about helping Gibson convert the minibar in his suite into a prayer altar. But at the site of the crucifixion scene [above], enterprising craftsmen are already stockpiling hand-carved Matera/Golgotha paperweights, the perfect complement to those Nativity Stone crosses you bought from Ricardo Montalban. [While supplies last. Supplies of rocks in Italy.]
Did Gibson’s inspiration for shooting in Matera come from Richard Gere, who made King David there, or from the last Christ movie to be shot in town, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s [ who the Guardian gleefully calls “a gay, Communist atheist,”] Gospel According to Matthew? Who knows? But Mel did describe his reaction the town had on him: “The first time I saw it,” he said, “I just went crazy, because it was so perfect.”
Amen, brother.