Category: making movies

If screenwriter/director Avary doesn’t reveal enough for you in his Q&A session with the Guardian, go to his weblog–which he must deplore. And when you view his webcam, he may flip you off personally.
He was working on the script for David Fincher’s remake of Dogtown and Z Boys but the Guardian has him adapting Bret Ellis’s Glamorama now. But since I missed his garage sale (an army of professional rummage sale zombies rummaged it clean as soon as the garage door opened), I’m not the most up-to-date source of Avary goings on.

Filmmaker reports that in the face of religious boycotts, the missionary-meets-boy tale, Latter Day, was dumped by its Salt Lake venue, Madstone Theaters. Actually, this is good news; it means they might be open to dumping Mel Gibson’s controversy-baiting The Passion of Christ, which is scheduled to open Feb. 25.
In the Village Voice, Ed Halter hears the good news about Mormon Cinema. [O me of little faith…] I think I may have been friends with one of the silly Mormon comedy producers. If not, I’m sure gonna be friends with them soon.
Other things I just posted about that turned up in the Voice [Choire’s making money for this, too. Note to self…]: Independent film’s dead! Long live independent film!, and John Cage festivities, this time at Anthology Film Archive (tomorrow night, tickets available until after the films start, from the sound of things).

Gotta run, but before I do, the fine fine folks at Filmmaker Magazine timed the launch of their weblog to the opening of the under-the-radar Sundance Film Festival. Sundance is not, as its name suggests, held in a warm, sunny place, but in Park City, in the state of Utah. It may not be of any interest to you, but if it is, the festival has a little website.
Also at Filmmaker this month, the makings of a great short film, tips from a festival programmer. [via GreenCine]

I see through fellow Best NY Blog nominee Lockhart Steele‘s feeble ruse to get me to post more non-NYC stuff. Even as I’m powerless to thwart it.
Tommy Ryk’s documentary, Work Sucks, I’m Going Skiing follows the antics of a New York hotel developer in South Beach. No story there, folks. Throw a rock in SoSoHo (as I called it in 1990, when then-friend Tony Goldman put me up in the Park Central) and you’ll hit a New York hotel developer.
No, Ryk’s film is about The Creek, a hostel-turned-hotel, full of wacky young artists, guests, and contractors. It opens at the Made in Miami Film Festival. According to this Herald article, Ryk was hired to shoot web video of artists redoing the guestrooms, but instead turned his cameras on guests who stayed on to help renovate; ersatz security guards auditioning for porn flicks, a cast of characters you could never write without sounding like Weekend at Bernie’s III.

Christopher Guest talks at length with the Guardian‘s Richard Grant about the incredible levels of authenticity required for making fake documentaries.
Hilarious anecdotes from This is Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind ensue. If Grant’s right when he calls it “the funniest film ever made,” the DVD of Spinal Tap is twice that funny; the outtakes and deleted scenes are easily as long and as good as the original version. A Mighty Wind opens next week in the UK.
Oh, and Jamie Lee Curtis says she gets better dinner reservations when she calls herself Baroness Haden-Guest. I’m sorry, but is that something you actually call yourself? Isn’t that why you employ a herald? I need to check with some titled friends on that and get back to you.

Just ask Dharma. According to the Formula, you can have only one creatively named character per sitcom. Fortunately, Wired Magazine articles have no such limit. And so, in this month’s wacky episode edition, Choire and Xeni team up to report on NYC Midnight, a DV Dojo -sponsored contest to write, shoot, and edit a film in New York, all in 24 hours.
What’s that, the contest was in October? And it started in May with a rewritten press release on Daily Candy? So Choire and Xeni had to sit on this great story for months, at least until the damn check cleared? That’s magazine publishing for you. I’d call it tired, but it’s the end of the year; everything’s tired.

Finally, someone’s asking the right questions in Iraq, like, “how’d they get that shot?” Virginia Heffernan reports in the Times on the ultimate embeds: the soldiers who go into battle armed with digital video cameras (“the camera is our first weapon”) to record US military activity. Like Saddam Hussein’s medical checkup, which includes shots–like the glowing underside of Hussein’s tongue–that Heffernan rates as high art.

what’s the opposite of independent? Film, that is. image: nytimes.com/getty images

Excellent story in the Guardian by Chris Payne about a film school outside Havana whose students’ production–an actually independent feature film– doesn’t officially exist, but nonetheless is getting plugs for Sundance. There’s more story here to be told.
Also from Havana, the Biennial. Maria Finn’s Times article has an interesting angle: the economic impact of international art world attention on Cuban contemporary artists. Even emerging artist-level prices (ie, in the thousands or low five figures) enable artists to live like kings in the dollar-starved Cuban economy. But collector friends who just came back from Havana noticed how outsize success–or at least the trappings of it on the ground, which also often signal collaboration or acquiescence with the regime–polarizes artists.
From what I’ve heard, and from what Blake Gopnik’s ecstatic survey in the Post says, the quality of the art was incredible. But alongside the disparities it creates, an internationalized Cuban contemporary art market runs the risk of exploitation. In the Outsider Art market, this meme is already too well established: art world slickster “discovers” a naive, native genius, buys up all his work, establishes some “gatekeeper” stranglehold on his production, and manipulates the prices to her own–not the artist’s– advantage.

Hide your peasant bread, people. the half-assedly Atkinsing Neil Labute just landed in New York, and he’s loaded for bear claws. Yesterday in his Slate diary, Labute wrote about an eating a meeting for his next project, a screen adaptation of Vapor, the second novel from Amanda Filipacchi.
Amanda Filipacchi picked me up at the 10th Street Lounge many years ago, and we went on a date. We saw an HBO-sponsored movie at Bryant Park. It was pleasant, but there was no real connection. We parted in the park, and I went alone to meet friends for drinks at the Royalton. Some time later, she re-entered my life as the rather serious girlfriend of my now-wife’s physics post-doc colleague at Columbia.
Without going into details, I have a feeling she found the right writer to adapt her book. [3/23/05 update: Of course, I could be totally wrong. Amanda emailed recently and alluded to the collaboration in the past, not-happening tense.]

Finally, POV is back, and in a relevant way. By relevant, I don’t just mean talking money. But that’s what she’s doing, with a post about fundraising for independent films. Liz reviews the Money Matters issue of The Independent, which is published by the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers.

It’s the dialogue, stupid. (Or is that, “It’s the dialogue. Stupid.”?) After only three episodes, I’m getting fed up with the uncertain, equivocating, sometimes borderline incoherent dialogue that constitutes the majority of HBO’s K Street. I know it’s improvised, and that non-actors are supposed to be non-acting, but unless the unacknowledged agenda of the producers is to show that no one in Washington knows what the hell they’re talking about–ever–something needs to be done. Politicians are expected to deliver content-free platitudes or sermons on camera; everyone else (except for the vaguely metrosexual Californian) needs to have something–anything–to say.
Seriously, if these people are expecting to get paid to consult, they need to cough up some value-added, and I haven’t seen any since Carville delivered his one-liner to Howard Dean in Episode One. You don’t need full-blown scripts, but Sunday should be Googleday for the K Street crew, yielding some talking points for each character.
Why, even the most cursory surf of anti- and pro-RIAA sites and articles would’ve yielded a meatier discussion and plausible pitch for the RIAA’s business than the K Streeters put out. Ditto the Saudi thing this week. I hope “Nobody reads beyond the cover of Time magazine” is just a line, not a scriptwriting strategy. Even so, waving it around and calling it story is like putting your textbook under your pillow and hoping it’ll soak in while you sleep.
Some other suggestions:
1) If you want to play an inside game, play inside, fellas. For example, in the music sharing episode, why did Francisco make the appointment for the pitch? Wouldn’t it more intriguing if the stalker-y lesbian lobbyist knew someone at the RIAA? Or if she was expected to know someone, but she had to beg off because of undisclosed restraining orders?
2) Speaking of inside games, why not turn up the heat with some actual headlines? Check out Talking Points Memo, where Josh Marshall’s been posting up a storm about actual Republican lobbyists, who, like K Street star Mary Matalin, just left the administration, but who are setting up shops to help companies get sweet rebuilding contracts in Iraq. Nice work if you can get it, and you don’t have to worry about ratings.
3) Of course, you could combine #2 and 3: The Register reported in April that Hilary Rosen is rewriting Iraq’s copyright laws.
There. That’s five value-adds right there. Just call my people if you’d like some more.

A friend showed me a website for a DC spa that was so hilariously and transparently metrosexual, I almost posted it here last week (at the risk of either reigniting the whole tired metrosexual discussion, or, far more likely, being woefully behind the curve). But I resisted.
Until I saw the Grooming Lounge make a huge, sponsor-like appearance on tonight’s premiere episode of K Street. [F’rinstance, the Lounge pitches a manicure with this butched up rationale: “After all, your mitts are the first thing you offer a prospective boss or wife.”] Then within minutes, the character appears in Thomas Pink, the source of dandy’s shirts now that Britches is no more.
Forget all my speculation about Trent Lott’s cynical opposition to K Street: he’s just shoring up his rough-handed, unibrow-sporting anti-metrosexual base.