3 4 3 in oo8

I set a goal for this year that I would like to work with actors with a camera between us at least once a week. In truth I've shot three little shorts. That's great, but I might be setting my expectations too high. Maybe to slow myself down I should just do an on-camera rehearsal next week. I'm doing a pretty good job of not getting precious.
Last night we shot a little short with Eric Stevens, Michael Smolski, October Moore and Jen Ha. It was all exteriors. We used the ambient light from a card-lock fueling station behind my old studio. Our only light was a tiny battery powered LED LitePanel that we placed wherever we needed to keep things from getting totally muddy. I think the cameraman I was using last night was skeptical of mixing color temps and the motivation of the source, but he understood that it was primarily an exercise. Brian was excellent to work with. I did notice that I missed the ease with which Jordan and I work together. For me, I know we're doing a five minute short that's going to end up on Youtube at best. We're spending zero dollars and cents, using a location without permission and we have only three hours to shoot fifteen shots. I want to see the subject and the key elements in the shot. I don't really care if a soft light or an abstract reflection appears illogically. I've never heard a civilian go, "Well, the story was really good, but I couldn't understand why the color temp on the car in the background was so much cooler than the foreground." Never going to happen. Try telling that to a cameraman or lighting tech.
It was clear and very crisp last night. I didn't dress very warmly for some reason. It could be that my wife has been in Thailand on a job for a week and I'm ragged from being a single dad to three kids, one of whom is two and wants to nurse in the middle of the night and screams or sobs for most of the night when she can't. After a couple of hours of working in freezing temperatures I was pretty disconnected. But anything that happens at all happens exactly as it should; right? I responded by focusing on the basics, letting go of things that were sources of tension and, above all, maintaining a kind and patient attitude toward the actors and cameraman.
I couldn't exactly articulate or direct the physical actions of the actors to maximize cutting continuity. I asked for a general adjustment that would get us in the ballpark and let it go. I assured myself that that was the point of the exercise -- to make lots of mistakes, gain experience and get closer to mastery through doing. I realize already that I could have done a master of the sequence which would have helped with the continuity and covered the scene better. I have a habit of seeing and shooting things in pieces. I did this originally to save film back in the day. It also saves time and keeps things fresh. It prevents less experienced actors from robotically going through their motions in coverage while disconnecting from their inner objects. Even so, a little master run through of the last sequence last night would have been helpful all around. The awesome thing is I have a record of my work that I can review.

¡viva!
Signore Direttore

No Way

Brad Renfro died of unknown causes at the age of 25.
He had something special, but like a lot of us he was either afraid of it or he found drugs and alcohol more appealing than real life.
My heart goes out to him.

Signore Direttore

The Master Says 276

The greatest scientists are artists as well. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination circles the world.

Albert Einstein

Office Space

I've been offered office space at a local film related place of business. It's a good sized office that could be sectioned off to accommodate my equipment, my editing suite, a conference table as well as a much-desired small private, for my eyes only workspace for writing and other creative contemplation in the back.
The rent is very reasonable and includes utilities and an alarm system. It's very centrally located on Ankeny and SE 9th, just off of Burnside.
There's also an adjacent open space that could work well for rehearsals, casting and perhaps classes. Yes, I'm thinking of teaching class again. But rather than backslide into the habits that I've shed from coaching acting I think I want to teach an on-camera class that's structured so that I'm teaching actor-students how to prepare, but when it comes time to be on camera I'm going to be very hands off. Just give people the opportunity to make mistakes in a safe environment and the opportunity to review them. I don't want to teach technique beyond breaking down a script and learning how to rehearse. The basics will come through the doing -- "Oh look, you're out of focus. You must not have hit your mark." I don't want to offer critiques until the shooting is done. I want to preserve the flow of working with actors from behind the camera.
I'm thinking about doing it because A, nobody else in town in offering what I have in mind. B, a couple of extra bucks a month would be welcome. C, I miss teaching. And D, I miss meeting and developing relationships with actor-students in that context. The cool thing is that if it doesn't work out the way I'm hoping, I can still afford the office without the teaching income. So spread the word that I'm interviewing potential actor-students.

Ciao,
Signore Direttore

There Will Be Postmodernism

It seems to me that our culture has become far too self-conscious to allow itself to be absorbed by an operatic film like There Will Be Blood. We're more comfortable skimming surfaces. To be sure the surfaces are stunning and without flaw. In terms of picture, Robert Elswit does the West even better than Roger Deakins. There are of course other aspects of the film that remain in light or in plain view as it were. There were so many laughs during the matinee at Cinema 21 yesterday. Really they should be cracking up at the absurdity of most of the reality-based crap on television, including Fox News. This self-aware need to let everyone else know that we get it, is a real handicap when watching someone like Daniel Day Lewis, whose pyrotechnics are from another era. His flinty firebrand Daniel Plainview is more like the portrayals by Orson Welles, Charles Laughton or early Jack Nicholson than any of the icebergs toplining contemporary movies.
Or maybe it's not that at all. Maybe the audience senses a postmodern comedy in the grins and growls of Day Lewis's scenery chewing. It's as if he's channeling John Huston's insinuating snarl, not Huston the filmmaker but the actor playing Noah Cross in Chinatown. Some sort of meta-commentary on the pioneer spirit as depicted in epic Westerns. Perhaps Paul Thomas Anderson simply doesn't give Day Lewis anywhere to go. David Mamet cautions against the epic, asserting that the sprawling scope undermines story. Anderson blatantly disregards such perspectives as There Will Be Blood is plainly nihilistic. Daniel Plainview is driven by more than greed, he just wants to come out on top. This seems to be an egregious example of what historians call mentalite -- imparting a modern conception of psychology onto an historical figure or event. Anderson leans heavily on the contemporary idea and metaphor of "No Blood For Oil" without regard for framing ambition in the traditional context of industry and the Protestant work ethic. His argument isn't very conspicuous or cogent on the screen. Perhaps it's too soon to tell -- subversion is often viral and a mere twelve hours could be too soon to tell just how powerful his ideas are.
My see-sawing might be annoying you by now -- so many "perhaps's" and "maybe's". You might want me to be clearly on one side or the other of this film. Maybe I've been infected by Anderson's dissidence after all. For all of Anderson's praise of the simple story, he never gives us one. In the first act of the film I was close to dozing off. It wasn't boring per se, more hypnotic. At the exact moment I became aware of this, I noticed the oil pump pumping up and down in steady rhythm, the camera sweeping around it, the score's syncopated beat (the music, by Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead, is amazing and as anachronistically bombastic as Daniel Day Lewis's performance). And then, BOOM! Oil and personal catastrophe strike.
It's quite possible that the postmodernism of Anderson's films, this one in particular, is troublesome to traditional critics like Armond White or professors of History at Reed College. Maybe he is a great pretender, a thinking man's Tarantino, sampling classics, even classics that sample classics like Chinatown. Though with the confidence and assurance to know that there is no unifying classic to be made in our times. A nod to the abundance of information and content mixing the black hats and white hats into hats of the infinite shades of gray of the red and blue states - we like to think there's polarity, but the spectrum of today's world is muddy. If so, he manages to do this without winking at us. Maybe, like his mentor and dedicatee Robert Altman, he doesn't care how we feel about his films, acknowledging that in our various judgments we are all culpable and that we no longer need, nor deserve, Transcendence.
As much as I would like to sign off with that last turn of phrase I need to gush about Paul Dano for a moment. He's the real deal, able to stand toe to toe with Evil incarnate and wrestle with his own ambitious demons in the same breath. Daniel Day Lewis was at his greatest in the scenes that he shared the screen with Paul Dano.
I need to see this film again.

Forse,
Signore Direttore

The Clintons Eat High on the Hog

While the rest of us eat what's left. That's an old saying distinguishing the differences between house negroes and field negroes. Nevermind that both were enslaved and powerless however their owners may have fed and dressed them. Why perpetuate divisive stigmas on the oppressed? To keep them and the rest of America oppressed of course. Just ask the Clintons. Do the Clinton's really want what's best for America? Or do they just want to prolong and expand their power at any cost? Read this and the latter gets pretty loud and clear.

Enjoy your chitlins,
Signore Direttore

Guest Blogger: Henry

I like BIONICLES!

What Wedding?

Rarely do I jump out of my seat and bolt for the exit when the credits roll. I don't recall ever being the first person to leave the theater. After enduring ninety minutes of what felt more like a case study on borderline personality disorder than a dramatic film, I did indeed leap out of my seat and made it to the exit well before anyone else. It was a reaction. I didn't even have to use the bathroom.
I suppose one could say Margot at the Wedding is a very truthful rendering of cruelty and mental illness. But without much of a story, it just feels mean and crazy. Nicole Kidman gives a good turn as Margot, playing her character to full effect. An effect not unlike fingernails on a chalkboard. I suppose what Noah Baumbach is trying to do is render all of his characters with subtle flipsides to their most glaring character defects. But it just ends up being messy and psychotic. There's nowhere to go. It's an unraveling that hints at things not really ever changing that much. Baumbach lacks the chops of a Micheal Haneke or a Paul Thomas Anderson to reveal the characters' inner lives to make hinting at things being in stasis dramatic. He substitutes little details that you find in short stories in the New Yorker, i.e. a dead mouse at the bottom of the rich author's pool, for real dramatic action. Literary devices rarely translate directly into cinematic devices.
I must have liked something, right? The handheld camera work had a nice feel. Though most of the framing was frontal and boring. Okay, right, stuff I liked. Jennifer Jason Leigh. And the kid that plays Claude, Margot's pubescent son. That's about it for the likes. My biggest dislike was Jack Black. He was completely out of his element. His summertime B-movie schtick does not work in a serious film.
I really liked Baumbach's Squid and the Whale. I look forward to his next effort while I try to forget this one.

Better Luck Next Time,
Signore Direttore

Contemplate This With Me, Please:

Week in Review - oo8/2

Movies:

Where the Red Fern Grows - For the kids on family movie night. Simple and touching.

Ghostworld - I fell asleep the first two times I tried to watch this film. I'm glad I finally stayed awake. One of Steve Buscemi's best performances. I wanted it to be more magical visually than it managed to be. I love Thora Birch.

Sing-along Grease - Very fun and lively afternoon. That movie doesn't get old for me. Singing along with a theater full of people was pretty special.

Mysterious Skin - This film made me very uncomfortable. I considered turning it off. I can't say I'm entirely glad I stayed with it. I don't really like Greg Araki's films. I will say this was much better filmmaking than I've seen from him before.

Schizopolis - Not quite as straightforward as Grease, to say the least. If it wasn't Soderbergh, I would have bailed on a very unique film watching experience.

Wal-Mart - The High Cost of Low Prices - Yep, Wal-mart sucks. So does the filmmaking, especially the ending.

The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T - One of Soderbergh's ten favorite films of all time. I happened to find it in the children's section at the library yesterday afternoon. It's amazing looking. Timeless. I didn't connect to it to a top-ten extent, but I liked it and so did the kids.

The Edukators - Fuck yeah. I've been meaning to watch this for a long time. Excellent. Sexy, smart, suspenseful. Very good acting. Articulate idealism, huzzah!

Books:

Candygirl - Confessions of an unlikely stripper by Diablo Cody - Yeah, I don't know. Good for her for writing it down and launching a career. She might be skeevy, but she's no dummy. It had a distinct, I tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past, vibe to it. Glad I got it from the library rather than a bookstore, that's for sure.

The Resistance - Ten years of pop culture that shook the world - Pretty dry so far for being about a period of pop culture that I was in the middle of.

If You've Got 3 Bucks

And you've ever thought you were punk rock, you better get over to the Laurelhurst and see Control.
You have been warned!

Signore Direttore

The Master Says 275

Tell the story! Tell the story! That's what I saw in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The films that I love are very straightforward stories, like really old-fashioned stuff. I've never been a fan of whimsical or confusing storytelling.

Paul Thomas Anderson

I Couldn't Agree More

This from Reverse Shot's Eleven Offenses of 2007:

What, exactly, is Juno about? It’s not about teenage pregnancy—unless that means the subset of pregnant (white) teenage girls whose parents respond to the big news by joking about the potency (or lack thereof) of the father-to-be, or who conveniently give their babies to (rich, white) childless couples. It’s not about abortion, to be sure, despite its “abortion scene”—a parade of stereotypes that hinges on the intervention of a pro-life Asian girl with bad grammar (of course she has bad grammar, silly . . . she’s Asian!). It’s not about motherhood, excepting its contrivance that the arrival of an infant can transform a stiff, cold, deadeningly boring yuppie into a glowing beacon of feminine warmth. And if this movie is supposed to be about love, well, you’d think it would spend more time—or any time, really—developing its ostensible love interest, beyond turning him into a walking visual gag (Track suit. Got it. Yes, I am familiar with The Royal Tenenbaums). No, Juno is really about hype: the packaging of a smug, self-satisfied, faux-edgy, faux-quirky, faux-indie studio film into the cross-over story of the year, complete with its stripper-makes-good, soon-to-be-Oscar-winning screenwriter as star. So what if it makes buckets of money? In ten years, no one will care. You can bet your hamburger phone on it, home skillet. —CW

The Master Says 274

My cinema makes it pretty self-evident that I would rather spend more time with my cinematographer and my art department than with my actors.

Peter Greenaway

In The Zone

We shot our second woodshed scene tonight. One of the actors had to be out of here by 9:30. We had 14 shots to do in three hours. No rehearsal. No fiddle- faddling with the lights or the camera. Just go. All I said when we were getting started was, We have a lot of ground to cover. I don't want things to feel rushed. So I'm going to push the tempo and I'm going to ask everyone to stay focused and keep your energy up. And so it went. I was just sitting there and I was out of breath. October and Tara were great. They really kept the energy going and had a good time. It makes my job(s) so much easier when people are having fun.
The plan was to shot the interiors in three hours, release Tara then spend an hour doing exteriors. We did the whole thing in less than three hours. It was great to be in the zone like that.
I read an article the other day about the glut of independent films and how distribution is becoming more and more impossible. How there needs to be a new model for theatrical distribution. Pretty dismal outlook. I've been thinking about it for a few days. The main conclusion I came to is that filmmakers are going to have to find a way to make compelling films inexpensively so that they can survive when only seen by a niche audience.
After the last couple of exercises I feel like I'm on the right track -- working fast with limited resources. Thinking on my feet and utilizing all that's available, making the most of the actors and locations. All the while coming up with stories that the actors are making better than I imagined. I think it's a turning point in my work. For so long it was such a challenge to get it off the page. What I was directing was never quite as good as I'd imagined it when writing or previsualizing. Now things are consistently better than I imagined. It's magic. I really feel like I'm not doing anything. It's an effortless effort.

¡viva!
Signore Direttore

The Master Says 273

If you want your children to be brilliant tell them fairy tales. If you want them to very brilliant, tell them even more fairy tales.

Albert Einstein

The Master Says 272

You are confusing two concepts: answering questions and formulating them correctly. Only the latter is required of an author.

Anton Chekhov

Embracing Editing - Into Action

Today was the day. I had no reason or excuse at the ready not to cut the stuff we shot on Saturday. My idea is to cut some of these exercises to get back in the groove rather than add the pressure of my hopes for the success of other projects to the already daunting practice of editing. The weird thing is that when I started filmmaking, editing was one of the things I most readily embraced. I don't know why I I disconnected from it.
I do know that once I get all the footage in, I'm kind of eager to get cutting without really getting cozy with the footage. In short, I want to get ahead of myself. That usually typifies naivete or insecurity. I wish I could claim naivete, but I'm going to have to cop to the latter. Then there's laziness. It's a lot of effort to expend for nothing in return. No direct material compensation that is.
I fought off some minor anxiety and kept at it. It's especially tough to track improvisational footage. Eventually it started to take shape, though not until I went upstairs and washed some dishes. Maira Kalman's antidote for confusion.
For those of you that aren't regular readers of Finding Fellini, I theorized recently that editing could be another antidote for confusion. I wouldn't say that's happened right out of the gate. Hence the actual dishwashing break. Lo and behold, it was immediately after washing dishes that I was able to begin laying down an assembly. It was sunny today so I said just start the assembly and work at it for an hour and then go for a walk. Next thing you know two hours had passed.
There were several points that really made me laugh watching the footage. Both actresses are really there for each other. Christy did a wonderful job of externalizing her inner life, both with making her native language foreign and staying true to her objective. October listens so well as if what she's hearing is truly for the first time. We didn't slate and often I can't tell what the order of the takes was based on her performance. She externalizes the internal shift of making a life-changing decision well. I'm not entirely sure I was able to preserve it in the edit. Which might be a clue to go back and make that a priority if I did indeed sacrifice emotion for rhythm and, or continuity. Fresh eyes, both mine and someone else's will help.
In the end I found that covering improv is difficult, especially in a two-hander that you can't do much overlapping dialogue to motivate cuts. There isn't enough movement in the table scene to make all of the cuts as seemless as I'd like. I can't think of anything at present to remedy the problem in the future so I've created a wonderful example to show people and get some imput on how to improve my shot selection. What I did was frame a nice over the shoulder composition and then matched it when we turned around. It gives me no eye trace or graphic match when cutting back and forth.
I will try to post all or at least some of the Happy New Year exercise on the blog in the next few days.

A River Dertchee,
Signore Direttore

The Master Says 271

Well, for under $10,000 you can buy everything you need (to make movies). So now we have to undo the brainwashing of the past fifty years about what a movie can be: that it must be commercial, it must go down easy, it must be structured so that it appeals to the widest possible audience. Even people that read sophisticated books expect that when they go and see a movie it won't involve any thinking. They're willing to give more to a work of literature. A movie is supposed to be something light that you go to, and you have a good time, and you don't think too much, and you laugh, or you get scared, or you're in awe of the violence, and you go home, and you forget it. And that has to be broken.

Francis Ford Coppola

Good Morning

Yesterday was a big day. It started with speaking to a large group of about eighty people, about a third of whom in turn spoke about me. They had very kind things to say. I've known some of them for ten years or more and they mentioned things that I had said to them many years ago and that had remained poignant to them. It was very touching. I had to dry my eyes several times.
I came home from that to find Christy and October in my dining room ready to work on our first on-camera scene of the year. We jumped into that and it was great fun. Christy played a Chechen woman. Her accent seemed very good to me and she really had fun with her broken English. We ruined quite a few takes with our laughter. I had written a brief outline of a scene based on an article in the NY Times. There was a line in the article that really spoke to me. I wrote it down and by the end of the week a scene grew around it. I like that it can be that simple. That if we pay attention to what grabs us, often something will grow out of it.
I've heard it described as seeing the blinks - where most people go round not seeing much in the first place coupled with a tendency to blink when nothing but ordinary life is happening. Artists see what happens in those blinks and render it for the rest of society.
Anyway it was a fun and challenging morning. It's difficult to improvise a scene and then turn around and cover it from the other side. We didn't have a scripty or time to watch playback. We relied on our memories and we'll soon see how good they are. Both actresses did good work and the vibe in the room was awesome. One of the things I'm trying to work on is developing my instincts. I turn on the camera and say, Ok. They start talking to each other. I watch until I'm not interested and say, Ok or Cut. I give them some quick notes and we go again. It almost seems too simple. Like, shouldn't I be doing more? I guess I've been doing this for a long time and the ease is the fruit of my past labors. I've never really stuck with something long enough to experience this sort of, dare I say, mastery. When I say mastery, I don't mean the all-time great filmmakers as much as say a master carpenter -- someone that does a specialized job well. I think I'll stick with skilled journeyman for now.
After being praised and then working for a brisk three hours behind the camera, I was knackered. A nap just made me feel jelly-brained. We went to a cocktail party and to a late supper. No movie.
I'm really tired of Fox Tower and Regal Cinemas. By the time prints get to Portland they're pretty tired anyway so it's kind of a misnomer to call Regal first-run theaters. The bulbs in the projectors at Laurelhurst and McMenamin's are pretty weak but they're cozier and they don't ask you a bunch of promotional questions when you buy tickets or popcorn. They had this sign at the Fox Tower concession counter that urged customers to see a manager if the employees didn't offer a certain promotion. I told them that I was going to steal the sign and throw it in the trash. Their eyes got smiley but they didn't dare say a word. I was like, Okay guys look the other way. They did and I took the sign and trashed it. It hasn't returned. Lately there's been a truly awful video of Three Doors Down singing some rock ballad about the National Guard during the First Look. It's painful. I remember back in the day going to see Patti Ricks at the Fifth Avenue up by PSU. There was a Pontiac commercial played before the previews and everybody booed and hissed. Twenty years later we sit and take it. If I'm by myself I just put my headphones on and listen to music. But even then I feel a little polluted. So it's kind of a resolution for me to avoid Regal Cinemas from now on. If I go I want it to be a sneaky double-feature or some other subversive act. I always try to time it so I ask a question when they're about to ask me if I have a Regal card. It's often successful and I feel like a Jedi for a brief moment.
I checked into the Regal Card thing. For a guy that goes to the movies as much as I do, I would get a free movie every six months or so. I don't want another piece of plastic in my wallet and some corporation tracking my movie viewing and concession habits in exchange for $18/year.
At the Laurelhurst theater, they run local ads before the films. They're stills that are very lo-fi in design. They even throw up some random photographs and paintings. Last time I was there they were playing Elliot Smith very quietly over the sound system. And it's three bucks and walking distance from my house. Cinemagic, Clinton Street and The Bagdad are cheap and walkable as well. So long Regal!
We all got tickets to Sing-along Grease at Cinema 21 in our stockings. We're off to do that in a couple of hours. Should be fun fun fun.

A big pizza pie,
signore direttore

The Master Says 270

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

E. L. Doctorow

Week in Review - oo8/1

Movies viewed this last week:

Lars and the Real Girl - Yes. Turned all of my expectations but one upside down. The exception going in was that I absolutely knew Ryan Gosling was going to be good. He was better than good. Otherwise I thought it was going to be creepy and prurient. Instead it was about getting past the surface of things, especially things creepy and prurient, to find hope, empathy and community. Wonderful film.

Capturing the Friedman's - Much more interesting than the first time I saw it. Still don't like the b-roll. I'd see it again.

Charlie Wilson's War - see yesterday's post.

Yi Yi - Very good film. Long. Too long really. I think the story could have been told in the same patient way and been much shorter. Great story, it captured the beauty of ordinary human needs. The acting was amazing. At one point I was like, Oh, these people in Taiwan feel like I've felt. Emotion at a certain depth transcends culture and they achieved those depths consistently and expertly. The efforts toward naturalistic cinematography became mannered after a while. Edward Yang won some very prestigious awards for this 1999 directorial debut - National Board of Review's Best Film of '99, something at Cannes. Yet he hasn't made another film. Makes me curious.

Pasolini's Oedipus Rex - Strangely beautiful. At once clumsy and elegant. The thing about Pasolini is that it really goes beyond opinion. Like and dislike don't really matter. It's like saying you like or dislike the Mona Lisa. It's art. It informs you and makes an impression on you. It doesn't matter if you like it or not. I'm glad I saw it and I'll watch it again when something led me back to it.

Away From Her - I really wanted to like this film. I adore Sarah Polley and I wanted her to succeed in her move to directing. And she may well do so. However, her film didn't do it for me. It does get better as it goes along if you can stay with it, though I'm not sure I did for any other reason than I did so want to like it. It looks boring - like TV from the 70s - frontal and conventional. It deals with Alzheimer's, which is interesting, and the ever beautiful Julie Christie does a fine job portraying a victim of the disease. Based on a short story by the Canadian author Alice Munro. Polley is also Canadian. And as much as Canada doesn't seem to have a very distinctive culture in my arrogant opinion, this film does seem very Canadian. For whatever that's worth.

Books read in the last week:

The Power of Play by David Elkind - Not nearly as good as his classic, The Hurried Child. A reiteration of the problems and little talk of the solutions.

The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman - Wonderful. It's an illustrated journal filled with poignant observations of the ordinary. It made me want to paint the hallway, do the dishes and pay attention to the backs of people's heads. My daughter was looking over my shoulder when I brought it home from the library and I just started reading it aloud to her. She stayed with it until I was about halfway into the book. I read the rest to myself all in one sitting. Which I relate in hopes of saying more about its charisma than my stamina.

Steven Soderbergh Interviews - Like all of the books in the Conversations with Filmmakers series put out by The University of Mississippi Press there's quite a bit of repetition in the interviews. While it can be irritating, the nuances that emerge are worth it. Much of the book deals with the early years of his career and the rest stops after Traffic and Erin Brockovich. I read it backwards, thinking I didn't want to revisit the whole sex, lies ... hooha. If I could only read one interview it would be Emotion, Truth and Solitude by Michael Sragow in Salon. But it's all good stuff. My admiration for him really grows.

Horseman, Pass By by Larry McMurtry - I can't believe I hadn't read this book before now. I loved it and I don't romanticize that part of the country or that era anywhere near as much as I did in my past. Original Glory is all about nostalgia for that time and place. McMurty gets it a little better than I do. It's quite different than Hud, the movie based on the novel. Each stands on its own. I look forward to seeing the film again.

Adaptions - From Short Story to Big Screen by Stephanie Harrison - This is an amazing collection of thirty-five short stories that have been adapted into films. I love reading and rereading the stories. And I really get a lot out of the introduction to each section that connects the stories to the films and the authors to the directors. It's a fresh perspective on some of the greats.

The Master Says 269

The idea that you can make a movie about an ordinary person is almost gone.

Steven Soderbergh

Charlie Wilson's Whitewash

Oh, Mike Nichols, where have you gone? Let's just say that after taking the long way round to walk along the river esplanade to get from our house to Lloyd Cinemas on New Year's Day, a large popcorn seemed to be in order.
The popcorn at the movies has this weird palm oil aftertaste even without the butter flavoring -- it's a guilty pleasure nonetheless. As is Charlie Wilson's War. The political or historical aspects of the film are about as accurate as Hairspray. A pleasant, art-directed general telling of some events in the recent past. Let's just enjoy the show.
It is impossible not to be charmed by Tom Hanks in this film. He's truly wonderful. Alas he's Forrest Gump, so he's only going to get so sebaceous, but a little slimier might have worked to his and the film's favor. The real Charlie Wilson was guilty of a DUI hit-and-run. Throwing that in might have added a bit of gravitas to his early morning drinking treated with a wink and a nudge in the film. The scenes with Hanks and Phillip Seymour Hoffman are terrific, especially the high farce where Hoffman dances in and out of Hanks' office while the congressman tries to juggle a personal crisis with a global one. Hoffman has timing like nobody of the past thirty years.
Just as the door opening and closing scene is a joy it's also the thing that keeps this a movie and prevents it from being a film. Nichols and Sorkin consistently choose the facile over the incisive. Which is exactly where Julia Roberts dwells in the narrative. Talk about a missed opportunity. She shows a glimmer in her first scene of the driving force she could be, but that's it. I know many of you are saying, Yeah but she's Julia Roberts, come on! I give her more credit than that. So does Soderbergh. Too bad Nichols doesn't.
The other minor tragedy of this film is that Ned Beatty is treated like a buffoon. Another thing that underscores just how wrong this movie goes once you get beyond its veneer. In the end it almost becomes some sort of mash-up of Top Gun, Springtime for Hitler and a Unicef commercial.

Ciao,
Signore Direttore

Analogous Propostion

The great Maira Kalman asserts that, "Washing dishes is the antidote to confusion. I know that for a fact." I wonder if editing could also be an antidote to confusion. A task that one does to clean up after the meal. One could say there isn't much art to washing dishes. Certainly it might even be an affront to the art of editing to suggest such an analogy. Perhaps it's wrong-headed to even consider editing a task at all.
However I've slated a few resolutions for the coming year. One is to embrace editing. Which really means finish some god damn films. But I want to be gentle with myself and take some baby steps to overcome my deep fear about finishing things. I don't want to conflate the processes of post-production and my neuroses, so I'm aiming to 'embrace editing'.
We don't have a dishwasher in our home. We have three kids and we're a five small meals type a day of family. There's a lot of dishwashing that goes on around here. I have to say that when I'm standing there at the sink, my hands soapy, things are all right in the world. In fact the more I do it, it's not just something to get through. I start by saying to myself, I'm just going to do a few. Next thing you know I'm drying the ones on the rack, putting them away and going for another round. I'll often wipe down the counters and scrub the stove when I'm finished. If I happen to look at the time, it isn't unusual for the better part of an hour to have passed. There's something to be said for being unaware of time. It's what I've always loved about writing.
For me the writing of the films is the cooking, the shooting the meal. And for now the editing is going to be the cleaning up. In my restaurant working days I always liked the dishwashers more than the chefs. Besides, we all need clean plates. And we all need an antidote for confusion.
If I'm wrong, I'm already covered by my first resolution: to make loads of mistakes.

¡viva!
Signore Direttore

1988. One Night.

Spot on silk. Blot with finger. Rub with thumb. Press tightly against lapel. Slump against low wall surrounding dance floor. Drinks line up on wall. Wait for people dancing. Spot. Remove tie. Roll it up. Put in pocket. Turn. Reach for drink. Rocks glass. Empty. Look around. Take fruity drink. Down it. Take another drink. Knock it back. Stand tall.
Two women. From dance floor. Laugh. Glisten. Reach for drinks. Empty glasses. Look around. Pick point across the room. Walk. Two women follow. Look for M. At bar. Hold on. Rub neck. M. at bar. Walk straight . Bar. Stop next to M. M. kisses cheek. Smile. Money clip. Hundreds. Bartender listens. “Makers neat. Double.” Two women step up. “And a fuzzy navel. Stole our drinks. Vodka soda.” M. turns to look. Shrug. Smile. Pay with c-note for three drinks. Turn to women. Raise glass. Grin. Gulp. Empty glass on change. Walk away. Two women giggle. Sip drinks. Behind M. Tall. Curvy. Thick curly hair. Dark. Pull hair off neck. Kiss. Whisper. “Home.” M. turns. “Having fun.” Long kiss. Pull away. Nod. Hold hands. Smile. Peel note from money clip. “At home.” “At home.”

Sidewalk. Doormen. Nod. Cold air. Stop. Turn to look in window. M. laughing. Chatting. Breathe deep. Take step. Button jacket. Double-breasted. Rub neck. Pick a point. Walk. Hands in trouser pockets. Keys. Car door. Red. German. Two seats. Soft top. Knees buckle. Stand tall. Shiver. Key hovers over lock. Look up. Down the block. Fuzzy Navel and Vodka Soda arm in arm. Go into neon. Rub neck. Keys in pocket. Rub face. Knot tie. Car window reflection. Tuck tie into jacket. Smooth hair. Shrug shoulders. Open eyes wide. Yawn. Pucker. Walk.
Dragon on back. Tail over hip. Down leg. Dollar bills. High heels. Pole. Step up. Drop bill between fuzzy navel and vodka soda on bar. “Lager.” Switch to beer. Two women giggle. Glasses and bottle touch. Giggle. Drink. Turn. Watch dragon. Fuzzy Navel picks up five from change on bar. Waves it. Dragon Lady. Eyes on Deep Pockets. Grab ten with tits. Vodka Soda. A ten. From bar change. Dragon Lady arches back. Five disappears. Slide down to floor. Hello Dragon Lady. Vodka Soda slides ten up thigh. Eyes on Deep Pockets. Benjamin. Hold it out. Look away. Take it. Dance away. Fuzzy navel and Vodka Soda laugh. Drink. Touch Deep Pockets. Laugh. Flirt.
Vodka Soda gone. Ladies. Another round. Kiss Fuzzy Navel. Pull away. Giggle. Deeper. Sloppy. Giggle. Vodka Soda returns. “What’s so funny?” Another round. Cheers. Clink. Laugh. Drink. Smoke. Kiss Fuzzy Navel. No tongue. Laugh. Turn. Vodka Soda. Smile. Smooth eyebrows. Grin. Vodka Soda. Fuzzy Navel. Ladies. Kiss. Sloppy. Stand. Into bar stool. Vodka Soda. Dance between trouser legs. Turn. Lap dance. Dragon Lady in corner. Wears dress. Sips drink. Lights cigarette. Smiles. Lift Vodka Soda hair. Bite neck. Watch Dragon Lady. Fuzzy Navel. Dance. Grab hand. Kiss cheek. Muss hair. Bye.
Dragon Lady. “Maker’s neat.” Smile. Bartender. “Two Makers' neat.” Another hundred. Raise glasses. Nod. Drink. “Thank you.” Coat. Faux fur. Leopard. Cigarettes. Pocketbook. “Have a good night.” Gone.
Pick up change. Sidewalk. Cold air. Look around. Dragon Lady. Smile. Turns onto Fulton. Vintage car. Buick. Run to car. Top down. Zero to forty. Fulton. Wind in hair. Tie over shoulder. Buick ahead. Downshift. Next to her. Eyes front. Smile. Give it gas. Likewise. Cat and mouse. Buick turns right. Into Quickmart. Double back. Inside. Flourescent. Cigarettes. Outside. Next to Buick. Take off tie. Smile. Dragon Lady click click click. Heels. Parking lot. Into Buick. Start engine. Shake head. No smile. Two fingers to lips. Puff. Nods. Open pack. Out of red car. Buick window down. Cigarette. Lean for light. Fire. Reverse.

Open road. Zero to sixty. Sixty to eighty. Downshift. Sub-division. Split-levels. Blue. Green. Brown. Gray. Yellow. Ticky-tacks. Slow. Pass brown split-level. Park gray ticky-tack. Engine off. Top up. Tie back on. Smooth hair. Walk back to brown. Front door. Locked. Look around. Go around back. Locked. Climb up deck. Listen. Look sliding glass door. Dark. Open. Quiet. Slide. Inside. Kitchen. Tip toe. Fridge. Orange juice. From carton. Wash face and hands. Dry on towel. Bring towel to hall. Open door. Power Rangers. Little brother. Next door. Bathroom. Across hall. Slip in. Tip toe to bed. Sit. Wipe hands. Brush hair aside. Lean. “A.” Nothing. “A.” Louder. Eyes open. Scared. “Shhh.” Kick off shoes. Remove jacket. Get under covers. “No.” “Shhh.” Kiss. Pull away. Kiss. “No.” Light in the hall. Door open. A crack. “A.?” “It’s okay, mom. Bad dream.” Hall light off. Giggle. “Have to go. Have school tomorrow.” Kiss again. Pull away. “Smell like bar.” Undo belt. “No.” Lift hips. Drop trousers. “No.” Lean to kiss. Push back. Take hand. “No.” Pull away. Pull hand under covers. “Then leave?” Nod. “Promise?” Nod. Lay down. Closer. Reach under. Move hand. Covers pull tight. Press mouth to mouth. Tongues. Collapse. Kitchen towel. “Go.”
Through garage. Tennis racket. “Mom’s.” Hold tight. “Bring it back.” Nod. Grab can of balls. Kiss. Good night. Lock door. Lights out. Back to city. Push button. Garage gate open. Garage gate close. Find spot. Upstairs. Key in door. Open. Stop. Chain on door. Light on. M. closes door. Removes chain. Opens door. “Where?” “Tennis.” Racket. Balls. “Where?” “Tennis.” Step out of way. "Tennis?" Nod. Step inside. Close door. Light out.

2oo8 Resolutions

+ Make lots of mistakes

+ Direct actors on-camera once weekly

+ Shoot and edit a five-minute abstract short monthly

+ Embrace editing

+ Acknowledge, accept and embrace fear and resistance directly

+ Read fiction

+ Explore classical music

+ Daily Exercise - Not if, but what

+ Daily Meditation

+ Look at more paintings

+ Practice seeing the invisible

+ Listen actively - Don't interrupt or talk over people

+ Get out and explore

+ Monthly budgets

+ Don't expect pure states

The Master Says 268

Of this I am firmly convinced, that cinema today should be tied to the truth rather than to logic. And the truth of our daily lives is neither mechanical, conventional nor artificial, as stories generally are, and if films are made that way, they will show it.

Michelangelo Antonioni

Chekhov's Six Principles of a Good Story

1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature
2. Objectivity
3. Truthfulness
4. Brevity
5. Originality
6. Compassion

Billy Wilder's Ten Tips for Screenwriters

1. The audience is fickle.
2. Grab ‘em by the throat and never let ‘em go.
3. Develop a clean line of action for your leading character.
4. Know where you’re going.
5. The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
6. If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
7. A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.
8. In doing voice-overs, be careful not to describe what the audience already sees.
Add to what they’re seeing.
9. The event that occurs at the second act curtain triggers the end of the movie.
10. The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then—that’s it. Don’t hang around.

Philip K. Dick Reading List

The following are the most productive sources for Sci-Fi ideas according to Philip K. Dick:

Psychology journals
The works of CG Jung
Zen Buddhist writings
Taoist writings
Historical and medieval works (especially thos dealing with crafts, such as glassblowing)
Greek philosophy
Roman literature of every sort
Persian religious texts
Renaissance studies on the theory of art
German dramatic writings of the Romantic period

The Master Says 268

Many people, I guess, want to know exactly what it is they're supposed to think ... Well, my message is that I am not going to do their work for them.

Robert Altman

oo7 Review | Time Is On My Side

We shot our second round of Made Crooked epilogue scenes yesterday. We were on the front lawn of Reed College with Tara P. and Alex Cassidy. The younger Cassidy brother played Tara's boyfriend. Not only was Alex great to work with, it felt really good to have a witness to our story. I can't say where it came from, but I just knew that Tara had to have a boyfriend in her interview scenes. And it was perfect.
It was cold yesterday. And that's coming from a guy that doesn't get cold easily. Once we wrapped all the cold that had worked its way up from the cold and wet ground through my Vibram and Goretex boots and wool socks suddenly came into full focus in my upper legs. Tara was shaking between takes, but dropped it as soon as we rolled. I really like working with her. I suggest something to her and she instantly and easily makes it her own. My job becomes very simple. I decide if we should do it again with but the slightest of adjustments or move on. It's easy to tell that she's working from a special place because if she says guest house instead of guest room and you correct her, she's like, Oh, did I say that? Which tells me she's not watching herself, she's just kind of entering another little world. The adjustment I need to make to my directing with actors like her is to ask, are you aware you said guest house? rather than offering a reason why she should not say guest house.
Revisiting and retelling the story of Made Crooked is a wonderful thing. It's been such a long road that it's easy to forget its wonder. Sitting down to a hot bowl of pho after the shoot I said as much to Jordan. His reply: Of course it is. Why else would I be standing out in the cold that long? I'm glad he's committed because I booked our tickets for NYC to shoot Joey's bit in early February where we'll be shooting exteriors in Central Park.
So yesterday's shoot was our last bit of filmmaking for the year. It was a very busy and full year in that regard. Looking back at January and the subsequent months of oo7, I feel as if I'm in a very different place as a filmmaker. I wouldn't change a thing yet I don't think I would approach much of anything as I did this last year. Which is a very good feeling. No regrets combined with a confident sense of benefiting from my experiences.
I was able to apply a valuable lesson yesterday: Move faster while giving myself more time. In other words, I knew we could do what we had to do in a couple of hours but I didn't tell anyone that. Instead, I had everyone for the full day. So when one of the dogs ran out of the Cassidy's when picking Alex up, it was no big deal to take the time to get him back. Tara and Alex had a chance to get to know each other while Jordan and I agreed on the best spot out of the places I'd scouted. Once we were where we needed to be in terms of the the camera and orienting the actors, we ran with it, stopping only for a bit of brief rain that we didn't have to suffer because we had plenty of time.
This may sound overly simple, but one of the things I've come to really hate as a director is the feeling that I'm always fighting the clock. All things unexpected are perceived as threats rather than opportunities or simply life. I don't want actors paying attention to the time, but if I'm feeling its pressure, they are likely to feel it as well. Nor do I want to move on, or be pressured to move on, if I'm not getting what I need from a scene. And I most certainly don't want to ignore the bounty of happy accidents. I don't know if this is the ultimate answer but it's a solution worth further review.
I've got a couple of Master Says' up my sleeve for the next couple of days, but this is likely my last dispatch of the year. So Happy New Year to all -- may you bring this last year to a joyful close and enter the new year with open hearts and minds.

xo,
Signore Direttore

Light and Shadow 013 - David

The Master Says 267

I was so moved by the way he (Raymond Carver) told stories, what he told and what he didn't tell and how he made a story out of the slightest incident. I was just amazed by it and thought this is what we should do more of in film.

Robert Altman

The Master Says 266

If you're a certain kind of filmmaker, everything is personal, whether a movie is about yourself or not. But I think, for the most part, people who write about film have a very limited idea what personal expression is and how it can manifest itself. As a result you often find directors being encouraged to make "personal films" when they would probably grow faster and go further if they began to look outside of themselves. That was the real turning point for me: I wasn't interested in making films about me anymore, and my take on things. I thought, "I've got to get out of the house!" And I've had more fun and I think the work is better since that occurred to me.

Steven Soderbergh

i miei dieci di oo7

1. Michael Clayton
2. Control
3. No Country For Old Men
4. Lars and the Real Girl
5. Into the Wild
6. There Will Be Blood
7. Cathedral Park
8. The Bourne Ultimatum
9. Eastern Promises
10. Superbad



Have yet to see: The Lives of Others, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, 4 Months3 Weeks2 Days, Lust,Caution, Persepolis, Atonement, Paranoid Park

The Master Says 265

I never had a plan. I don't how you can plan for it. God knows what the next thing will be.

Tim Roth

Better Directing

With Jordan's encouragement, I've tried to let go of helping as much, or at all even, with the lights and the camera on set. The idea being to let things settle and flow during set-ups and in between takes. Doing nothing is okay. Getting quiet is very important. It's helping. I focus better. I have more stamina in terms of concentration and inventiveness. I'm not quite there yet but I can see how it's opening up the possibility to ask actors for more, and much like the Chandler quote below, get pulled by our collective momentum instead of pushing it.
Each time I get on set lately, I've felt it building. Rather than scolding myself for not having pushed myself to push for more from the actors, I've had faith that I'm learning a new way to ask for more and that I don't have it just yet. It will come with patience. I'm sure of it.

I hope everyone out there has a Merry Christmas. I'm going to take a break from ye olde blogge until after the holiday.

Buon Natale,
Signore Direttore

Groundeded

For most of my moving toward long life, I've made decisions and plans in a decidedly reactive and whimsical manner. New York City, you say? You know I think I'll move there, always wanted to; why not? And so I sub-rent my Portland apartment still furnished with my stuff, park my 67 Wildcat convertible in a friend's driveway under a tarp, send two boxes of stuff via UPS, buy a plane ticket, pack two suitcases and move to New York City with all of three hundred dollars and a credit card with a $600 limit. Six months later I'm making twenty grand a month doing some pretty interesting stuff with some pretty interesting people.
And so it goes in my life. I landed back in Portland with two kids and a wife and opened an acting studio. We were two years too late or two years too premature in terms of our readiness for a cross-country move, having overstayed our welcome in the big city. Our thinking was it would be better to struggle here than there for two years.
So even with wife and kids, I've still been flying by the seat of my pants. All along I've been concocting moves to Mexico, Scotland, Senegal, Klickitat Washington, South Dakota, et cetera. I've even considered a never-ending roaming of campgrounds throughout North America according to the seasons and chance. I've fantasized about earning a living doing any number of things. Things practical, mundane, humble, grandiose, industrious, wanton and so forth. We've had more children and they've all grown to the point of arousing my awareness to acute acknowledgment that it's not all about me anymore. So I pluck away at my dream of making movies and ignore the beck and call of evermore romantic and impetuous adventures. You could say that my family grounds me, geographically foremost and in staying put I am not so distracted as to ignore my emotional, psychological and spiritual roots. You could also say that I'm a bit worn down by the sturm and drang of my thrill-seeking ways and I don't feel as if I have too many more tricks up my sleeve.
Yet I still do not have a plan. I concoct plans for just about everything. But I don't have a plan that has been carefully considered and pursued with diligence, right action and ingenuity. I am a not so lonely reed blowing in the wind, lacking the discipline and courage to take honest stock of where I am and where I would like to end up. I keep it vague. I want to keep whistling in the dark. I want to envy David for being in grad school and Jonny for his cozy house and Richard for his law degree and Din for his business and The D's for their centeredness. But I don't want to work on becoming a theater actor in Houston and I'm not sure I want to give up my investment property for a cozy house and I don't want to be a lawyer or own my own business to the exclusion of having time for my family andmaking movies. As for The D's, I know they have their share of struggles to stay grounded, too. All things honestly considered, I just want to be me.
Seems like I'm gearing up for a new year. I've learned and grown a lot this year. Life is good. I want it to be better. And it will be with more focus on diligence, right action and ingenuity and less on envy, taking comfort and analysis paralysis. Alas, I have a lot to be grateful for and I'm more and more serenely aware that I'm right where I'm supposed to be.

Simply Human,
Signore Direttore

Mudged

A few months back we ditched cable. No more Saturday morning cartoon bonanzas for our children. Aside from the initial tantrums that gave way to grumbling before entirely dissipating, the benefits have been profound. One is that neither of our older children has been bombarding us with dozens of demands of branded plastic contraptions for Christmas this year because they saw it on a commercial. Another is they aren't fighting over shows and turns and so forth. Because I've largely conceded Netflix to children's shows, I've been taking what I can get off of the DVD shelf at the public library.
Yesterday I grabbed The Mudge Boy. Not a title that beckons, but some of my friends in NY worked on it and I remembered that alone. I remember one friend that had worked on it recommended I meet Tommy Guiry for Original Glory. Then when I sat down to watch it last night I saw that Emile Hirsch was in it. Funny that back in 2003 Guiry was the future "star" of that cast. Both performances were very good. Too effective in some ways, at least for my discomfort with reckless homosexuality and the tensions leading up to it. I'm not a fan of watching male-male sex. I accept it when it's romantic. When it's a result of wanton lonely lust, serving as some sort of substitute for hetero desires and intimacy, like Deliverance, prison stuff and especially abused adolescents, I get really, really uncomfortable.
And this entire film was filled with that tension. With no transcendence, no hope, nothing. Just plain cruelty and pain and suffering. There wasn't even any humor. If there's one thing that I know firsthand about being human is that no matter how awful things are, we find a way to distract ourselves, usually through humor. This was just grim.
And to make matters worse, the ugliest bits were sanitized in such a way that rang false and irresponsible. The kid that gets raped is wearing his dead mother's wedding gown. That alone is enough to let you know how depraved things are in The Mudge Boy. The rapist had spoken a lot about how well-endowed he was earlier in the film. One would think that a fourteen year old would bleed when sodomized no matter the size of his rapist. The kid's dad walks in right after it's over. The kid has to ask for help to get the wedding dress off. I'm thinking the dad is going to see some evidence of the rape on the wedding dress. Nope, it's totally pristine and the kid walks away as if nothing has happened to him physically. It would have been almost impossible for the kid to not have been injured and in a lot of physical pain after such an experience.
I checked Imdb to see if the writer-director got a career going from his Mudge Boy debut. Not so far. It was a very competent film both technically and artistically. And it received very favorable reviews for its "gutsy portrayal of rural life".
All I know is, I felt awful after seeing this film.

Left Cold,
Signore Direttore

The Master Says 264

The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.

Raymond Chandler

Woodshedding

We did some filming last night, a series of interviews to help Made Crooked come together. For a long time I've felt defensive and ashamed to have not finished that film yet. I mean, come on, you shoot a film in three days and it takes you going on two years to finish it. I think there's a lesson there. More than one. As time goes on I am starting to feel grateful to have let so much time pass. It isn't easy making a feature length film. Especially when your budget is less than five thousand dollars. Furthermore it's a long time to hold an audience's attention. I'm the kind of insecure perfectionist/idealist that won't ask you to come see something unless I believe in it. Taking our time with this has helped me support its strengths and let go of the pain of its weaknesses. I remain committed to buttressing its shortcomings and the time has allowed my experience with telling stories and this story in particular to develop. You know another thing that came to me just recently is that there are very few movies that I could watch more that a few times a year. I've seen Made Crooked a lot and letting a couple of months pass between viewings has been healthy.
So last night we shot David doing Pilates while reflecting and commenting on what happened nearly two years ago. Some of the compositions were stunning. I counted on David to come up with some interesting stuff and he did. For other things I fed him lines which he repeated or put into his own words. He said a couple of things that were outrageous. I love working the way we did last night. It was quiet in Studio Adrienne, we had the place to ourselves thanks to Adrienne Silviera's generosity. There was lots of space to move around and an adjacent room to stage our gear. I had a chair and a big HD monitor. Jordan and Brian handled all the gear. We teased each other relentlessly in a nonsensical manner as we always seem to do, creating a spirit that establishes that no one is allowed to take himself too seriously. When it comes to the work, Jordan and I almost don't need to talk that much about what we're shooting anymore. It just comes together most of the time. If he's going in a direction I don't like, I just tell him, No, come back over here, and that's that. I don't have to battle his ego or have a discussion about aesthetics. If he feels really strongly about something he tells me. I guess it's called trust.
I observed some things about myself last night -- some new things and some affirmations. One, I like to work small - simple set-ups and a tiny crew. Two, I don't like to work for very long at night - four to six hours tops. Three, I like to keep it moving. Four, since I've quit teaching acting I'm less and less interested in coaching actors. You bring your skills and I'll bring mine. If you lack skills or are having a rough time I don't worry about it. I'm there to work with you and I want the best we can do together, but there's a line that I'm less and less inclined to cross. Best of all, how good or bad you are has no reflection on my ego. I'm not going to sell you out or point fingers at you, nor am I going to take all the credit for your good work. What I'm doing is not Hollywood, it isn't even Indie. It's just electronic folk art. We're just woodshedding brothers and sisters, like bluegrass musicians coming together to work out a new tune on their guitars, banjos, fiddles and mandolins.
So bring your instruments and lets make us some movies!

Channeling the High Lonesome Spirit,
Signore Direttore

The Master Says 263

You can't give your photograph soul with technique. I want my photos to be fresh and urgent. A good photograph should be a call to arms. It should say, 'Fucking now. The time is ripe. Come on.'

Terry Richardson

Revisting Wes Anderson

My wife has a job in Bangkok next month, a photo shoot for a Japanese company that wants to riff or perhaps rip off The Darjeeling Limited. She needs to go see it soon. This coincides with my recent fascination with Armond White, who loves the film. I reread his review with a mind to seeing the film with a different perspective.
I don't think I can do it. My previously noted opinions stand. White praises Anderson's emotional honesty. To me, every actor seems to be holding his breath until "cut" is called. I don't see anything real being expressed. Emotion is certainly represented. White states, "... it returns common emotional power to today’s fragmented, disingenuous popular culture." I could easily rework that sentence as follows: ... it rejects common emotional power in favor of today's fragmented, disingenuous popular culture. Everything about Anderson's films is mannered -- the acting, the camera work, the music, the art direction, the writing. He merely reiterates and stylizes the luxury icons of the 70s and 80s - Mercedes, Porsche, Louis Vuitton, Cazal, Sulka, et cetera.
White also defends Anderson's idiosyncratic style as being an antidote to the "mass hypnosis of self-reflexive trash like Superbad". In defense of Superbad, it doesn't take itself seriously, present any stylistic stamp nor call itself cinema -- it's popcorn and laughs. I don't need an antidote for popcorn and laughs. I need a remedy for Anderson's relentless and deliberate artifice overelaborated in its delivery and stilted in every way from beginning to end. Were it the least bit ironic instead of pleading some deeply affected ennui I might find his work tolerable.
For irony to come across it would require that the full significance of any of Anderson's characters' words or actions are clear to the audience but unknown to the character, but the dead-pan tics of his actors betray a self-consciousness so pronounced that they appear to be depending on the significance of what they're saying for the very breath that they're holding during every take.
White calls Anderson's self-consciousness "plangent". Affectedly melancholy yes; sonorous, not in the least. He confers undeserving intelligence on Anderson the visual stylist with comparisons to Fellini. "The title metaphor of The Darjeeling Limited converts Fellini’s road-of-life metaphor in La Strada into the train itself (it’s an Orient Express seen through Anderson’s storybook wonderment)." To me, that's like saying The Gap ad that appropriated West Side Story (designed by my friend and former boss Happy Massee) "invokes the warring families of Verona in the mean barrios of New York expressing the clear superiority of Gap khakis over those sold by J.Crew." Just because Anderson makes a film set in India and uses a score from Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy doesn't mean he "... also tracks “the road of life” that is the actual translation of Ray’s classic Pather Panchali". Maybe that is what Anderson's up to, but I tend to think it's more like directions I used to hear in the art department when shopping for props for a 60s-themed commercial: "Copy this Lee Friedlander photo except get an Eames chair for the African-American to sit on." More crass commercialism than honoring the antecedent.
My wife is on her own when it comes to Wes Anderson. At least she'll be quoting a commercial bit of pretense for her commercial work rather than a work of art.

Unswayed,
Signore Direttore

The Master Says 262

She wouldn't go with Brad Pitt if you paid her
She's more into James Spader

Saint Etienne

The Master Says 261

Theater is, of course, a reflection of life. Maybe we have to improve life before we can hope to improve theater.

William Ralph Inge

The Master Says 260

The pram in the hall is the enemy of good art.

Cyril Connelly

The Master Says 259

You've got to work. You've got to want an audience to sit forward in their chairs sometimes, rather than sit back and be bombarded with images.

Sam Mendes

The Master Says 258

Steven (Soderbergh) has a dry sense of humor. He's evil is what he is. And as often as you can do a movie with guys like that, do it.

George Clooney

The Master* Says 257

As a person who's truly passionate about words, writing a screenplay never appealed to me because it is so skeletal, it's just dialogue on a page. It's only after having written a movie that I realized how much power there is in a screenplay, because if you're lucky enough to have it produced, the collaborative aspect of filmmaking is so colorful and so interesting and you can really create something lasting.

Diablo Cody

*I'm not sure if Juno's writer is a master as yet, but she's getting her work out there in a big way. Many are quite skeptical of her sudden rise to fame, fortune and praise. In any case I like what she's saying here enough to include in her The Master Says series albeit with an *. I'm not one to hold it against a woman for being smart and sexy.

Musing on the Golden Globe Nominations

Variety reported the Golden Globe nominees today. Some opinions came to mind before realizing that being too concerned about that kind of stuff isn't good for me. For one it infers that I'm someone whose opinion matters regarding Hollywierd. For another if I'm going to put stock in what writers say about movies I might be setting myself up for a perennial disappointment. Maybe if I were more cultural critic than filmmaker it would be more acceptable. There's a danger in thinking too much of oneself in any regard, especially for one who has a tendency to posture more than perform.
I mean let's say I was a bona fide working director. Would I comment publicly on award season nominations? No way. So is the temptation to blather about them an expression of insecurity at not being a working director or the misdirected energy of a frustrated aspirant? I realize too that while I make movies and ultimately want to play with the big boys, I am a movie fan. I'm cool with that. I just need to be careful that I don't confer unwarranted status on myself. Maybe that's what function sports serve in my life -- playing armchair quarterback or Monday morning baseball manager is a more appropriately unsophisticated outlet.
Let me say this about the Golden Globes: There's no way I would want to see Atonement in spite of its leading seven nominations. I might like to see the likely to be predictable Charlie Wilson's War, the film with the second most nominations, but it isn't out yet. Which just shows to go how artificial the whole thing is and maybe the true reason not to get into it in the first place.
Thanks for bearing with me while I learn to not believe the hype.

Ciao,
Senior Media Whore

Kicking the K-nowledge

I was looking to read this week's installment of Peet Gelderblom's Directorama. I usually get to it via The House Next Door. Before I could get to Peet's awesome comic strip this headline grabbed my attention:"In a world that has The Darjeeling Limited, Sidney Lumet should be imprisoned!": A Conversation with Armond White, Part I. I spent the next several minutes impressed, intrigued and challenged. Here's a taste:

SB: Well, that’s a good starting point. I guess you talk about this stuff all the time, but where is film criticism? Is it in the same place as it ever was, or—
AW: Oh, no, it stinks. (laughs) However bad movies are… criticism is worse! It’s gotten worse because people who call themselves critics have ceased to be… critical. I fear that they feel it’s their duty to promote Hollywood.
SB: You really think so? That most critics feel like Hollywood servants? Or is it that they’ve been… hoodwinked?
AW: Well, you can speculate on the reasons why, but I think that, from the reviews that I read almost everywhere, it’s like they feel their mission is to transcribe the movie for readers rather than interpret or critique it. I think that’s useless, frankly, because you can’t do a better job of transcribing movies than advertising. So if that’s what most critics are doing, then they’re just furthering the advertising, or as its commonly known, repeating the hype.

I highly recommend reading the entire conversation, both because it articulates ideas I've presented as well as disputes some of the things I embrace.

¡viva!
Signore Direttore

The Pornographers

What a strange film. The Japanese title includes the subheading, An Introduction to Anthropology. And that's how this film reads, like a collection of anthropological essays. With but a few characters it manages to be all over the place in a not so uncharasmatic manner. It makes sense in the end, but I found it hard to sustain my willingness to watch it in one sitting. Though I'm glad I didn't give up on it.
It's a truly beautiful film visually. It's shot in Cinemascope yet most of the frames are very cramped. They're either reduced by architectural frames within the frame, the atypically unglamorous actors' thickset physiques, extreme closeups or a combination of all of the above. All of these elements reflect the theme of voyeurism present in almost every scene. The compositions are often striking especially for a black comedy and dark social satire. As much as the film is set in the slums of Post-War Osaka, the lovely blacks and whites both crystallize that poverty as well as render it idyllic.
There's a lot of talk of incest, a topic with somewhat different historical context in Japanese culture, and the improbability of male-female relationships. One characters frankly states, “No one understands male-female relations. It’s complex, yet it’s vague.” That might be a good way to conclude my thoughts on the film itself.

Signore Direttore

The Master Says 256

I think you should take your job seriously, but not yourself - that is the best combination.

Judi Dench

Made Crooked and But A Dream Updates

Spent the afternoon working with Jordan on two of our many unfinished projects. I feel very positive and energized. I don't always feel like that in post-production, but I sure will take it when I can get it.
We reviewed Made Crooked for the first time in a couple of months. Rather than feel lazy about it, I think it's actually healthy for it to sit for awhile. I am undergoing a process of acceptance. It doesn't stink, in fact parts of it are quite good, but there are bits that just don't work. The challenge has been to find a way to get the good parts out into the world. I had a strong idea awhile back in the Fall but accomplishing it was going to beyond our resources. I recently had another idea that I think will work. I noted the areas of the film that needed help again today and wrote lines for the actors or in some cases questions to prompt their own responses. I'm hoping to shoot those additional scenes while David and Tara are in town over the holidays. And if my idea works I'll go back to New York to see Joey to shoot his scenes.
I also need to get some ADR from Joey for But A Dream. Watching the cut today I was getting some real hits in my chest. I thinks it's going to be good. I know it will be good to finish it. I found out last night at a dinner party that the original editor, an old friend and very accomplished cutter, just moved to Denmark. No wonder I lost touch with her. Oh well, it would have been fun to work with her, but Jordan is doing a good job.

Energized,
Signore Direttore

More Censorship

Upon coming home last night from another Christmas party I wanted to watch something easy. No subtitles. Just what Peter Greenaway would call a bedtime story for adults type of film. Our babysitter who lives in an apartment downstairs made his DVD collection available. Fond of Jeremy Piven, I selected Smokin' Aces against his advice and apologies that he even had possession of it.
I remember back in the late 80s hearing the word gratuitous to describe violence and sex in films. I thought it sounded a bit too PC at the time. Though I didn't often go see shoot 'em up and, or jiggle stuff. Nor did I own a television between 1985 and 1998. Saying something was gratuitous seemed like alarmist preaching to the choir. Like if you don't like movies like that, don't watch them. Somewhat like my disinvitiation to read my blog in my previous post.
But yesterday I was reading an article in The Oregonian about a man that came home in the middle of the afternoon to find three armed men in his home. The intruders had locked his two daughters in the bathroom. The article described in detail how they pistol whipped him. Images of bad movies came to mind. Apparently I've been seeing more violence that I'd thought over the years. I thought, my god these guys are imitating the movies they watch or at least the ones I've seen. Talk about gratuitous violence.
Okay, you need some quick cash. You decide to break into a house. If you carry a gun it's armed robbery -- a lot more serious than Breaking and Entering. If you're breaking into a home you want to do it when no one is home, it's safer and easier all around. So you knock on the door and you watch the place. You go in. Oh snap, there's a teenager and second grader home. You yell at them to go into another room and then you beat it. Even if there's a phone in the room and they call 911 and scream "Officer Down" or "Osama Bin Laden" before you can get out of the house, there's no way the cops are going to respond to that type of call in less than five minutes. If you're not weighed down by a firearm you can run away even faster. You do not need to lock children in a bathroom or pistol whip their dad. Not only did these guys not steal anything while they racked up felonies injuring and traumatizing their victims they were caught within a couple of hours. Chances are if they yelled at the girls to lie down on the floor or go to the basement and then ran away no one would have been able to provide an accurate description. You don't see this type of confrontation avoidance in movies.
But who's the idiot trying to apply common sense to three grown men robbing a house with guns? I don't think sitting these guys down in front of a Bergman film would prompt such behavior. Maybe they never even saw Smokin' Aces. I know I wish I wouldn't have. And there's part of me that wishes it didn't even exist. However we live in a culture that needs its Rambo's in order to have its Rocky's.

Ciao,
Signore Direttore

No Thanks For Your Comment

Last night I deleted a comment on an earlier post. I have mixed feelings about it. My action strikes me as resistant to debate in some ways. Perhaps a bit smug, maybe even cowardly.
Or perhaps bold. This blog has very few regular readers and even fewer that I do not know personally. While it exists on the world wide web, it isn't supported by any private or public monies nor does it propose to express the opinions of anyone but its author. I write it for pleasure and I assume any one who reads it regularly does so for their own enjoyment. So if you take issue with what I have to say or the quotes that I post, keep it to yourself. Especially if you're going to throw around words like bullshit in reference to ideas that I present. Were you proposing well-reasoned debate rather than negative personal opinion I might be inclined to welcome your comments.
I was reading and linking to a blog for several months of someone with whom it seemed I had a lot in common. As I became a regular reader, I often found myself in disagreement with her perspective and attitude. I even left a comment saying as much once. Then I realized, hey I don't know this person. She didn't seek me out. She's entitled to her opinion. What makes me think I need to let her know I, a complete stranger, disagree with her? So I deleted the link and I stopped reading her weblog.
I don't need to feed the negativity in my life. If you need to feed yours, please do so elsewhere.

Sincerely,
Signore Direttore

A Potential Godsend of the Writer's Strike

There's a movie called Nine to be directed by Rob Marshall that may not get made because of the writer's strike. It's a musical version of Fellini's 8 1/2. Please please please please please don't let this happen.

Horrified,
Signore Direttore

'Tis the Season

Our usual Saturday night routine of dinner and a movie was interrupted by holiday cheer last night. A family that lives close by that we know through our middle child's Montessori school had a party. They're really sweet people. I've always been able to speak very openly and easily with Julio, pronounced with a hard J. They had a full house but it was easy to find a spot in the play room and relax. We didn't know anyone aside from the hosts, which was a blessed respite from small-talk. As I gathered some plates of goodies for the kids downstairs in the adult zone of the party I overheard a long conversation comparing Volvo repairs, various Volvo dealer service departments and so on. I was scornful in my judgment for a brief moment but somewhat effortlessly shifted to a different frame of mind. Which mostly had to do with trying to balance sweets with carrot sticks and apple slices for the kids, my own boring middle class concerns. I bring this up because I just felt sort of all right about things. Often in that sort of situation I want to scoff or feel insecure. I want to feel less than that I don't own a late model Volvo and then make myself feel better than by embellishing my own freewheeling creative career as a "Film Director!" But I was just a guy filling two animal shaped paper plates with food for my children at a Christmas party. What kind of car I drive or what I do for work didn't come into play in my own mind let alone in some sort of anxious conversation. That's freedom.
I surprised my wife with La Vie en Rose on DVD when we came home, but after getting the over-tired children to bed we only made it through the first half hour before crashing ourselves. So there's no movie reviewing today.
In a correspondence with an actor friend about a project we worked on together, he referred to one of the characters as having had Elijah come and gone from her life. The reference gave me an earworm that is still with me. But what do you call an earworm that's all wrong? Like I initially thought the GoGo's song Our Lips Are Sealed was Honest On Tuesday. I know, I know. In my head this morning I'm hearing Hank William's Kaw-Liga as Eli-Jah. It strikes me that this deserves a post of its own or maybe is just totally irrelevant emphemera.
Back to the holidays for a moment. My children's schools celebrate as many Winter celebrations as possible - Hanukkah, Christmas, Solstice, La Posada, Kwaanza, Diwali, Martinmas, et cetera. My daughter is full speed ahead in her embrace of all of it. She announces what day of Hanukkah it is at dinner each day. I'm glad that they know of the various cultural celebrations and I don't dispute the validity of any however suspect I think it is that Jesus happened to be born so near the Solstice. But hey, God is powerful. A Greek Orthodox priest explained away my skepticism of the virgin birth that God, being all powerful, made that happen to get people's attention. All facile liturgical explanations aside, knowing about various celebrations and celebrating all of them is another story. I'll hang all the collage Stars of David that they bring home, but we're not Jewish. The open-minded inclusiveness seems as if it could be an affront somehow. Like we're playing around with centuries-old symbols, images and rituals to show how tolerant we are. On the other hand my son is harumphing about all the Hanukkah talk this last week. He actually said, This is America. I have no idea where he heard that. It wasn't me and I haven't let him hang around my ex-Skinhead cousins for years. I'm pretty sure if anyone else hears him spouting his xenophobia, it'll be assumed that I'm the culprit. Oh well.
Krishnamuurti said, "Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay”. Even so, I like to say Merry Christmas. But as I write this I am uncomfortable. I don't want my mind to decay nor do I want to offend anyone. Not to be PC, but to break out of the security of the privileges of the dominant culture. I suppose that's a fine line. Maybe I could dance around it semantically for a few sentences, but I won't.
At the end of the day I don't want to assume what holiday someone celebrates. Nor do I want to assert that the holiday I celebrate is the more valid. Especially since I don't believe in Jesus Christ as a savior. I just like Christmas trees and all the other Santa stuff. Which has a lot of corporate and commercial influence. It's easy to get lost in all this stuff. This is part of Nietzsche's assertion that God is Dead -- we no longer have a state mandate telling us how to believe, celebrate and worship. We're on our own, and as Nietzsche pointed out, most of us aren't up to the task of managing our own religion. I'm just as lost as the next guy in all this cultural and religious freedom.
In the meantime, I'll be getting a Christmas tree and buying presents and accepting invitations to holiday parties. I'm even going to go cook latkes tomorrow at my son's school.

Ho, ho, ho,*
Signore Direttore

*Oh yeah, even that has become suspect

... a Filmmaker's Quest for Mastery ...

When I wrote the subheading for Finding Fellini I took great care to acknowledge that I am on a journey. A quest for rather than toward mastery. I accept that while I may not achieve mastery, that it may not be my manifest destiny, it is my goal. It remains my goal three years later, though my concept of mastery has changed monumentally.
Admittedly my earlier concept of mastery was almost entirely solipsistic. I was concerned with my ideas and my achievement. I thought that was the alpha and omega of having vision. Somewhere along the way as I experienced the vicissitudes of my quest I began to see the need to be a more effective communicator. Having brilliant ideas wasn't enough working in a medium that requires collaboration no matter how much of an auteur one considers himself.
Making change usually depends upon a simple formula like eat less, exercise more and you'll lose weight. However when the human mind and emotions are involved that bit of addition and subtraction becomes advanced Calculus. When faced with trying to stop yelling at people and trying to shift to a less condescending tone I became more tense. It wasn't a matter of simply stopping or changing. There was something behind my cruel narcissism. I thought that perhaps I had what the DSM-IV classifies as a Narcissistic Personality Disorder. But just as alcohol is but a symptom for alcoholics, my narcissistic habits and tendencies were symptoms of something deeper. Besides no narcissist on a pathological level would be able to recognize their own affliction.
I always knew that I suffered through some tough stuff as a kid. We were very poor. My mom made some bad relationship choices. I was molested by my step-brother. So I had some shame over some of that stuff. I thought it was a matter of not discussing it in polite conversation. And yet on the other hand I thought it wasn't really a cause to be emotionally troubled. There are a lot of people that have suffered and survived much worse upbringings. The fact was is that I was troubled emotionally about something and I couldn't just get over it through will. In fact my will was making things worse. So I entered the darkness once more, trying to sort myself out. By talking through the aforementioned traumas I've discovered more truths of my life. The day to day stuff that became normalized in my perception. With some help I was able to challenge those perceptions and undo some of the kinks in my psyche. Perhaps watching your mother and other adults pull guns on each other is not normal. Nor is it normal for a nine year old to live in a tiny travel trailer by himself in his dad's girlfriend's backyard on 82nd while his mother runs off to track down her outlaw biker husband that smashed the house apart with clubs and chains before splitting town. I've learned that someone that watched television for eight hours a day may not have been offered a healthy opportunity to develop emotionally. I've learned that someone that transfers schools every year and sometime three times within a single school year may not have been offered a healthy opportunity to develop socially. Basically I've learned through looking into all the day to day activities and interactions in my childhood that I was not offered hardly any opportunity to develop into a functional person. A statement in and of itself that's evidence of my downplaying the trauma I've suffered.
So when someone says you don't get here from there, they're talking about a person like me. Now the wonderful thing about surviving my childhood, and I did survive many violent and literal threats to my life, and the reaction that was my earlier adulthood is that while I may still have some problems I have had the opportunity to work through much greater personality defects. In doing so I've become accustomed to working through changes. I don't accept plateaus. I am conscious. And the more conscious a human being is the more powerful he is. I've spent a long time on this planet feeling powerless over people, places, things and my own emotions. It gives me the strength of empathy for all the horrible suffering that's going on in the world.
My quest for mastery of the film medium has expanded to a quest for mastery of being a fully realized and conscious human being. I still want to be good at directing actors and writing screenplays and all the other things that it takes to be a good filmmaker. Mastery of the craft of filmmaking is essential to be sure. But mastery of kind, compassionate and effective communication in the deepest most organic sense is far more critical. Initially, I just wanted to change the tone of my communication in order to get people to do what I wanted them to do. If only they would listen, it would make getting my work done all the easier. Had I received what I had hoped for I would have totally short-changed myself. I just wanted to stop patronizing and belittling people and I ended up thinking about the way agribusiness treats animals and the way governments and multinational companies oppress people. In trying to find out why I felt insecure I became interested in early childhood development and education. In search of a source of strength to do all the work making films requires I became closer to my family and my family is growing closer to the human spirit that connects all of us. You, me, everybody. Some people call it God. I'm not sure I'm willing to go that far, but do what you like. For in learning to be patient with others I am learning to be patient with myself.

¡Viva!
Signore Direttore

Reality Check 001

MYTH: Democracy and Capitalism go hand in hand.

REALITY: Democracy and market economies are exactly what we should be seeking, because they are the foundation of equitable, self-organizing societies. Capitalism is the mortal enemy of both. It creates an illusion in the minds of the powerful that it is an engine of prosperity rather than an engine of destruction and upward redistribution.
By definition, design and practice capitalism is a system that concentrates economic power in the hands of the few to the exclusion of the many.

From Take It Personally - How to Make Conscious Choices to Change the World by Anita Roddick

The Master Says 255

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen

The Master Says 254

Context is why I don't do theory.

Richard Pepperman

The Last Waltz

Sometimes you hear someone hasn't seen a rather famous film. Many people go with a glass half-empty response like, "Man, I can't believe you haven't seen that." Others are more half-full with "Oh, you've got to see it!" I'm more often somewhat envious of that first hit that I can no longer get from my favorites.
Last night I finally experienced the joy of Martin Scorcese's famous concert film The Last Waltz. Recently I looked carefully at all of the covers of Rolling Stone magazine from the 60s through the 80s. The Band kept coming up. And again in the recent Dylan film. For so long I just couldn't pay any attention to 70s rock that wasn't punk. I wouldn't say I was missing anything. I just wasn't open to it. Now that I am, it's a wonderful thing. I've heard all or most of these songs on the radio and from my parents, but it's like a new discovery. Not only of the music but the history of the times. It makes me grateful to have grown up in that culture. I watched five minutes of Justin Timberlake's concert on HBO recently. While he may be talented there is not any evidence of the humility, integrity and sincerity that I saw in the The Last Waltz.

¡Viva!
Signore Direttore

The Master Says 253

I make movies to show that this is not the best of all possible worlds.

Luis Bunuel

This Week's Devil

We often see a film on Saturday night and I usually write about it on Sunday. We saw Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead this weekend. I didn't feel as if there was much to say about it. It looked good and it was well acted. It was very dark. As I watched it I felt myself grow tired of shrugging off violence and darkness not just in this film but overall. I thought more than a few times about Marisa Tomei's breasts for a couple days. She is quite perky, especially for a forty-three year old woman. I don't feel any shame for thinking about her tits. But I am aware of my prurience. I would rather not have her tits on my mind. It's so impossibly unsatisfying to obsess about them. There's no possibility of satisfaction. I watch this film and I'm filled with lustful desire that is totally unrelated to the rest of the film. I'm disconnected. And that's not why I go to movies. I go to movies to reconnect. To find some bit of the something that binds us all together. I don't go to be entertained or aroused sexually. I certainly don't want to be made to feel any more alienated. I want transubstantiation at the cinema. Anything less and I might as well watch television or pornography.
I'm not calling Mr. Lumet's film tv or porn. I have tremendous respect for him. He often seeks to show the dark side of humanity in his films and has done it masterfully, especially earlier in his career in films like Network, The Pawnbroker and Dog Day Afternoon. In those films there's something redemptive. A hint at deeper albeit horribly confused intentions. Not so in this Devil.

On a Soapbox,
Signore Direttore