the making of, by greg allen
The LMDC announced today that 5,200 qualified entries were accepted into the Memorial Competition. That’s a much smaller yield than I estimated earlier.
Even so, it’s the largest design competition ever (my previous quality/quantity estimate still stands). Reuters reports that the evaluation schedule will now be “open ended given the volume of submissions [the jury] would have to sift through.” Finalists will still be announced in the Fall, but not necessarily by September.
also via GreenCine: The indie mini-major studio Fox Searchlight Pictures has launched a weblog with the ambitious tagline, “All the independent and arthouse movie news that’s fit to blog.”
Fortunately for what still feels like a one-man operation, the first post narrows the spotlight to Searchlight and news of their release slate. It seems intended to supplement the studio site’s Weekend Read mailing list, where FS filmmakers write about their work.
Welcome to the phenomena, kids. Now all you need to do is to move to New York.
On MovieCityNews: Leonard Klady shares some insights and some great war stories about interviewing directors and actors, a useful (and timely) resource as I prepare for some upcoming junkets. [thanks, GreenCine, and for the mention, too.]
Related posts: post-game post on Bingham Ray interviewing Alexander Payne at MoMA; Lily Tomlin and Will Ferrell-as-James Lipton interviewing David O. Russell at MoMA the year before (apparently involved some kind of pipe)
Rebecca Traitser writes in the Observer that the tide has turned (again), and studios are coming back to New York to develop new films. As John Lyons puts it, “I think there is a little sense of exhaustion creeping in with all the high-concept action-sequel movies.” Mr. Lyons, it turns out, was just named president of production for Focus Features (Congratulations, Mr. Lyons. Muffin basket’s on the way.) , and is staying put in New York, where ex-Good Machiners David Linde and James Schamus are, rather than decamping for LA.
Dreamworks and others are opening development offices here, mostly to scout books. But frankly, that doesn’t seem like a huge story. If a studio didn’t have a book person in NYC, the books just went west. Lyons’ choice to stay just consolidates mini-major power in New York. New Line and Miramax have always been NYCentric; Bingham Ray keeps UA’s center of gravity here (his reported brushoff line is, “Call me in LA.”); Christine Vachon stays here; Soderbergh moved here. Why, it’s the thinking person’s Hollywood.
Ah, summer, when screenplay-ready drama emerges from the investment banking industry. Last summer, it was CNBC’s Mike Huckman, who, in a scrappy burst of journalistic energy not often seen during the analyst-stroking bubble years, chased Salomon’s Jack Grubman into the street (Fifth Avenue) seeking comments on the breaking MCI Worldcom fiasco. And we all know how that turned out (hint: his kids are now at P.S. 6).
This year, it’s not street theater, but courtroom drama. At stake is a $56 million tax bill, not an eyebrow-raising amount by i-banking standards. But it’s everything, if market reversals leave your entire net worth sitting well within the $112 million spread of the court’s decision. And it’s even more everything if the star is not a mere Master of the Universe, but An Architect of the Universe itself, Dr Myron Scholes.
MBA’s have the Black-Scholes model for pricing options burned into our heads. In hyperbolic shorthand (this is for a screenplay, remember?), Black-Scholes made modern capital markets possible, creating the common language of risk and return. Grubman’s a cog in the machine. Scholes helped define. For all the good that‘ll do him. In a NYTimes article that’d make Dick Wolf proud, David Cay Johnston tells of The Architect’s encounter on the stand with a crack federal prosecutor.
The Guardian‘s Lee Roberts reports on Iranian film godfather Abbas Kiarostami’s debut stage production of the Ta’ziyeh, a compilation of classic tales of the death of Mohammed’s grandson, Hussein. The plays are a traditional part of fervent religious festivals in Iran, but are often considered vaudeville in the West.
Kiarostami lets a troupe of Ta’ziyeh players do their thing on stage, while synchronized images of Iranian audiences’ reactions to the same play are projected behind them. The result: the Roman audience sees both the play and the Islamic audience’s more unabashed reactions to it.
Kimberley Jones writes the scrappy tale of independent filmmakers who have to keep bootstrapping their films after Harvey Weinstein’s check surprisingly fails to materialize. It’s a fairly clear-headed, if mostly analysis-free, look at how promising films can be well-received, but still not “make it” into the “marketplace.”
Over at GreenCine, David Hudson puts these woes in context, though, pointing out that truly independent filmmakers have a long history of busking, throwing their print in the back of their car and hitting the road to show it wherever they can. More significantly, at least form my perspective, is the unexamined (here, anyway) potential for indie DVD distribution, using off- and online promotion to find a film’s audience. I know from my own experience that the audience SN01 has reached through this weblog far outnumbers the butts in the theaters when it screened. And that’s cool
When Business 2.0 wrote about Netflix’ potential as an independent film distribution channel, I kept doing a mental find-and-replace with GreenCine, which combines an independent sensibility with film-loving community. While Netflix may offer potential reach for an independent filmmaker, GreenCine’s subscribers seem far more likely to actually care about (and watch) non-studio films.
What Jones doesn’t mention until the end is the…endgame for first films in the…first place. If you use them as calling cards, as a base for building your long-term career, as a tool for making better the films you need to make, then it ultimately matters a little less that Harvey’s not yet returning your calls.
Matt Taibbi takes a look at the semantic evolution of the people attacking US troops in Iraq. They’re variously called “loyalists,” “remnants of ____,” and, of course, “terrorists.” But that’s just the tip of the descriptive iceberg.
Not the Heaps of BS they called apple pie when they wanted to go to war, and not the coverup for which Condoleeza Rice pushed George Tenet onto his sword. Go to Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo unimpeachable reporting on that impeachable offense. I’m talking about HBS, where Bush got his MBA. If he learned anything there, he’s apparently keepin’ it to himself.
On NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday, Terry Gross had a fascinating conversation with Edmund Andrews, economics reporter for the New York Times, who came back from Iraq with mundane, incredible stories of apparently unforeseen economic crises and chaos that are turning Iraqis’ lives upside down.
My favorites: the emergency $20 stipend paid to Iraqi civil servants causing wild swings in the dinar-dollar exchange rate. And near-riots when a shortage of small-denomination dinar bills leaves banks unable to make change. There’s plenty more where these came from.
When our DC neighbors’ rather inconsiderately left their wireless networks turned off this morning, I ran over to the Hirshhorn to see their new, temporary installation of the permanent collection. It’s pretty fresh, with room to breathe. A lot of wall and floor space is devoted to newer work, which had always gotten short shrift in the Hirshhorn’s rather staid, historical hang (like a history teacher in May, having to cover “WWII-to-present” in a week).
There are moments of real enjoyment, if not brilliance, but the limitations are the collections’ (pretty good, with a few greats), not the curators’. Turning from the all-black wall (Ad Reinhart, Frank Stella, Richard Serra) to find a rarely seen Robert Smithson spiral sculpture perfectly framed in the doorway is awesome, even if it doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
Maybe it’s my skewed NYC perspective, but the installation takes a luxurious approach to space; Wolfgang Laib pollen carpet has a huge gallery to itself. In an equally giant Ann Hamilton room, ceiling robots periodically sent sheets of white paper fluttering to the floor. Some tourists frolicked in the resulting paperdrifts, flailing goofily to catch the falling sheets. Their photosnapping attempts to capture what is, essentially, an experience, didn’t fare much better.
It’s always good to see a Tobias Rehberger, even if it’s taped off like a crime scene; and they thankfully purged a lot of the tchotchkes that made the sculpture hallways so avoidable.
One thing I don’t understand, though, is the Hirshhorn’s embarassing practice of selling its old mail. Seriously. There are two milkcrates in the giftshop, full of minor auction catalogues, reports, and obscure 1970’s exhibition brochures from other museums. Priced are based solely, it seems, on binding type. It’s enough to make me take a stand, Tyler Green-style: lose the trash bins. Or, at least, start throwing out more interesting stuff.
There’s been a great deal of political turmoil in Iran lately, most of it homegrown and not driven by the US administration’s “you’re next” rumblings. Jeff Jarvis has trained a consistent blogging eye on Iranian weblogs, which provide varied and in-depth accounts of student and public protests against the hardline religionists. The ayatollahs and their militant supporters answer calls for reform with violence.
Today, July 9th, is the four-year anniversary of student-led demonstrations at Tehran University, and politically explosive events were feared/planned/anticipated/rumoured as it approached. [As the BBC reports, they happened, too.] But you didn’t learn that from any of the major US news sources. Oh, Iran led the news, but with the sappy story of conjoined twins dying on a Singaporean operating table.
The timing and the ubiquity of this irrelevant tearjerker made me think back to, oh, Sunday, when the NYTimes ran an almost corny article on recently declassified State Dept. documents from the CIA’s 1954 overthrow of the Guatemalan government. When the CIA’s activities were discovered and reported in Guatemala, Headquarters recommended, “If possible, fabricate big human interest story, like flying saucers, birth sextuplets in remote area to take play away.” If it ain’t broke, I guess…
But I was also reminded of an amazing film I saw in April, one which seems eerily important now. It’s making the film festival rounds, and should be turning up on Sundance, the sooner the better. It’s Thierry Michel‘s 2002 documentary, Iran, Veiled Appearances. Michel gives a clear-eyed view at exactly the forces at play in Iran right now: swelling numbers of youth grown tired of revolution, and tightly wound religionists holding back the tide.
I spoke with Michel at length when his film screened as part of the Sundance at MoMA festival a couple of months ago. I suggested he might make a similar film here, in the US, and he admitted that he’d already become fascinated by the possibility. Turns out for a previous film, the excellent doc, Mobutu, King of Zaire, he had interviewed a friend/supporter/partner of the dictator, a man who left quite an impression on Michel. That friend: our own American ayatollah, Pat Robertson.
First, thanks to most of you for not coming today. It was kind of nervewracking, but my gallery talk went okay. There was a group of a dozen or so people who stuck through the whole thing, but a small mob would materialize whenever we’d stop to talk.
Two things that helped the crowd: Richie Hawtin didn’t open the Warm Up Series, he headlined it. That, and many of the galleries were air-conditioned.
Anyway, I hung out for the whole show, listening in the VIP room as a couple of dj’s compared notes on musician-friendly daycare. Then, as Richie went on and the and dusk arrived, I joined an eager crowd in James Turrell’s skyroom. [Actually, I jumped to help a friend move some pedestals out of the room, and I had it to myself for a few minutes while everyone else cooled it in line.]
Seventy-plus people, jammed, jabbering into the room. It took about twenty minutes, but peoples’ energy changed, and the room grew quiet. For the rest of an hour, thirty or so people sat and watched the sky change color. To a scratchy techno beat.
I drove home. At a light near the 59th St Bridge, I glanced around, and saw the man in the car next to me, a very normal-looking guy in his thirties, crying to himself. He caught me looking, I furrowed my brow in some kind of concern, and he nodded once. When the light changed, he turned, and I got on the bridge, wondering.