new hope

After a summer of soul-searching in which I almost totally lost interest in films and filmmaking on both a personal and general level, this fall I find myself awash in new hope.

What were the reasons for my despair? For a time it seemed that everything I liked about the cinema--shooting in celluloid, the collective experience of watching with an engaged audience in a dark theatre, an auteur's uncompromised (but unpretentious) vision--was going the way of the dinosaur to be replaced by digital video, "second-screen" at-home viewing, and the popularity contest of crowd-funded content. On a personal level I was creatively frustrated, having recently walked a long gauntlet of rejections, and was considering giving up the ghost.

Then, this fall, things finally started to turn around. I finally got a few breaks and was reminded that trying to make films is not always just an exercise in self-punishment. Some mainstream movies came out that actually looked interesting for a change; I was encouraged. Then, last night, I saw P. T. Anderson's The Master and my new hope for the cinema was truly affirmed.

This incredible screenplay was perfected by Anderson over 12 years, brought to life by stellar performances from Amy Adams, Phillip Seymore Hoffman and especially Joaquin Phoenix, and shot on 65mm film (!?!) Needless to say, I was in heaven. Better still, the audience in the multiplex where I saw the film actually broke out in applause at the end (something I've never seen happen outside of a festival) and even the teenagers next to me sat through the whole thing attentively without flicking on a single smartphone screen.

Make no mistake--this is not a hopeful movie. It is disturbing, complex and ambiguous--and yet its existence fills me with hope. Brought to us by "angel" investor (and my new hero) Megan Ellison through her new company Annapurna Pictures, The Master is proof that auteur cinema is still possible in this day and age.  

"the biggest edge I live on"

“The biggest edge I live on is directing. That's the most scary, dangerous thing you can do in your life.... It's the fear of failing, the loss of face and a sense of guilt that everybody puts their faith in you and not coming through.”

-Tony Scott

Anyone who's ever made a film can sympathize. RIP, Tony Scott.

Read the full article this quote comes from here. 

beloved black box

The demise of my favourite neighborhood video store, La Boite Noire Laurier, has got me all riled up.

La Boite Noire is a 15-year-old Montreal institution, a veritable mecca for cinephiles. Instead of  categorizing by genre, the shelves are organized by country and then by director (I know!) and every director's shelf contains their entire oeuvre. Where else would I find a copy of Joseph Losey's The Servant so I could finish my first year Film Aesthetics paper? Or the last season of Big Love to fill the lonely evenings during my spouse's week-long absence? Not only did this place had everything, it was balm for the lonely heart--a reason to get out of the house. I know those shelves like the back of my hand.

Don't try to tell me that Netflix is the same. I love the feeling of satisfaction, after trudging through a blizzard in winter or gliding down the street on my bike in summer, of locating exactly what I came for, or serendipitously finding something equally interesting to watch. Since I got a cable movie package I haven't been down there as often and, honestly, I've missed it. In fact, La Boite Noire was the thing I missed most about Montreal when I moved away for a five-year period.

I know, I know, video stores are going the way of the dodo bird. But so is everything else I love about cinema, it seems. Kodak is going under!!! Archives are digitizing and getting rid of their prints. Cinemas will be forced to convert to digital or shut down, which will spell the few mom-and-pop theatres and rep houses that are left. Current Hollywood fare fits into two categories: either "tent-pole" or "Oscar-bait" (both those terms make me want to gag). With few exceptions, the pretentiousness of contemporary world cinema gives me little to be excited about. Indie and documentary filmmakers can hardly eke out a living, thanks in part to the pittance paid them by shrinking broadcast licenses resulting from the plethora of channels. Of my dozens of friends who obsessively watch Boardwalk Empire or Mad Men, I am the only one I know of who chooses to pay for that content. Teens nowadays would rather watch cat videos on Youtube than a well-written comedy (if such a thing even exists anymore), and an adult cinephile recently admitted to me that he no longer has the attention span to watch feature films (!).

As a filmmaker, this is all truly disheartening, and as a cinephile it's almost enough to make me lose interest completely. Call me old fashioned, but I guess I just wasn't made for these times.

Boite Noire Mont-Royal is still open, thank God, but I can't help but wonder for how long. In the meantime, Montrealers, please support them! We all could use more exercise (although they do have delivery)....

no excuses

I heard this talk by Economist Larry Smith on yesterday's Sunday Edition and found it both entertaining and revelatory.

In a nutshell, his argument is that the only things holding us back from realizing our full potential as human beings are our own excuses. It is much easier to rationalize not following our passions than it is to actually risk the financial sacrifice, isolation and rejection that often come with pursuing our "destinies".

It's a reminder that once we've found something to be passionate about, we must never limit ourselves in our pursuit of that passion; let the outside world do that for us if it will.

life's too short, indeed

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's latest collaboration, now playing on HBO Canada, is probably the edgiest, possibly the funniest, and certainly the broadest thing they've ever done.

In Life's Too Short, they build on the celebrity-self-flagellation of Extras and the cringe-inducing political incorrectness of The Office, adding to the mix what is perhaps the final frontier of socially-accepted prejudice: a "little person", self-portrayed by actor Warwick Davis (who often introduces himself in the show as "star of such films as Willow").

Davis' character is mocked by passersby for not being able to reach a doorbell, is used by Johnny Depp as a character study, hops into chairs, falls out of cars, climbs a bookshelf like a ladder, is dressed up as an elf, stands in for a child actor, gets stuck in a toilet, is constantly left hung out to dry by his slack-jawed secretary (played with brilliance by Rosamund Hanson), and is humiliated in almost every other imaginable way. The extent to which he "takes one for the team" in this show makes his performance incredibly brave.

What makes it funny is that his character is such an egomaniac--every bit as vain and self-aggrandizing as an actor twice his size. No matter how much the world puts him down, he never comes across as pathetic. The byproduct of this is that you really do begin to see the world through his eyes; even in this broadest of comedies there hides a very smart, on-the-mark commentary. Things like "dwarf-tossing" do actually exist in this world; should we really be vilifying people like Gervais and Merchant for making a comedy with a little person as its lead?

This show will surely alienate the uptight viewer (even I sometimes wonder while I'm watching whether I should really be laughing at this). Regardless, I definitely recommend checking it out; after all, life is too short to take ourselves too seriously.

Life's Too Short airs on HBO Canada Sundays at 10:30 pm, after Eastbound and Down.

déjà vu

Why shouldn't The Artist win Best Picture? Let me count the ways. I know that the Oscars have little to do with quality of films and a lot to do with the political-style campaigns staged by their producers/distributors, etc., but if you're going to call the award "Best Picture" you should try to give it to the best movie of the year (wishful thinking, I know).

Before I begin, let the record show that I have absolutely nothing against frothy comedies. I believe that films should entertain as well as enlighten (the gold standard occurring when they do both at once). Preston Sturges and Woody Allen, two of my favourite directors, are masters of the genre. The Artist, however, falls into a different category: a frothy comedy made up of dusted-off clichés that coasts on retro novelty for laughs and publicity.

It is not even a real silent film. It is essentially a "talkie" shot much like any other contemporary Hollywood movie (except for the Black and White, which I appreciate) that simply swaps title cards for spoken dialog, and not even through the whole running time. Furthermore, it takes the plots of three classics, A Star is Born, Sunset Boulevard and Singin' in the Rain, dumps them in a blender and purées until smooth.

Jean Dujardin is fairly convincing, the dog is cute, but don't get me started on Bérénice Bejo, who was just plain miscast. She has none of the fey moxie of a young 1930s starlet and her bad posture in the dancing sequence at the end of the film is an insult to the idols of musical comedy.

Almost everywhere you look, the critics seem to think The Artist is poised to take the prize, but I'm crossing my fingers that that won't happen. I haven't seen War Horse, The Help or Hugo yet, but from what I've heard they wouldn't be my cup of tea either. That leaves four serious contenders in my books: The Descendants, Moneyball, Midnight in Paris and The Tree of Life. I have a feeling I'm going to be disappointed. Not that it matters, really....

end of an era

The thing I've heard myself say would never happen is finally happening. I think it's pretty safe to say it now: film is on its last legs.

The recent death of Kodak as we know it was like a long sputtering flame going out. Ever since my film school days, people were saying that film was going the way of the dinosaur and ever since then I've fought against it. I've shot every single one of my projects on film (Kodak film, to be precise), including my student projects and a 50-minute documentary.

People told me I was crazy to shoot a documentary on film, but I did it and loved doing it. What the doubters don't realize (because they've never done it) is that you can let the film do most of the work, all you have to do is focus the lens. There were times I worked in such dark conditions I wasn't even getting a reading on my light meter but I would shoot anyway and still get a decent image on my Vision 2 500T 16mm stock. I could shoot almost straight into the sun with my 50D and still get lovely detail in the foreground. I calculated exposure so many times with these two stocks I got so I could guess it within a stop before checking my meter. The only roll I ever had to throw out was fogged because I put it in a plastic can--my own stupid mistake. Most of what I shot turned out beautifully; the same stuff on video would probably have looked completely ordinary.

It's not a simple question of resolution. The number of pixels in the latest video format is not what makes the difference. Film has a magic glow that can't be imitated. It also forces the filmmaker to "get it right". In documentary you must compose your shots properly, you can't just leave the camera running and hope you get something decent. In fiction you can't do a hundred takes or fix every little thing in post. It adds a certain exhilaration to the process that you don't get otherwise.

The first thing to become practically unavailable was the optical blow-up. Then it was 16 mm processing in general. Then black and white (there are only two labs in the world that offer 35mm true black and white processing). Then Kodachrome. They threatened to can the Super-8 format entirely, but relented (with proper marketing they could've triggered a hipster-chic renaissance but instead they dropped the ball). Now, digital intermediates are replacing traditional film finishes, reducing the latitude of the final product and making all movies look the same due to over-done colour correction. The gaffer on the shoot two weeks ago told me he hadn't worked on a short shot on film in four years. Labs are closing or scaling back all over the place. The writing is on the wall.

There are a few advantages to these changes (I will no longer have a closet full of answer prints for example), but overall the movies will lose out when everything is born digital, and not just in terms of image quality. Perhaps another time I will tell you about my experience working in the archives and how celluloid is the only true archival format, but I've had enough ranting for today.

Right now in my fridge I have 1000' of Vision 3 colour stock, four rolls of Kodachrome Super-8 (which can only be processed as black-and-white), a 400' re-can of B&Wh 35mm and 8 rolls of 35mm still film. I am undecided as to whether I should ration it carefully or come up with a project to blow it all while I still can.

art department

I had planned to blog frequently during the short film shoot I worked on last week, but I was working in the art department (in fact, I WAS the art department), and as anyone who's ever been on a low-budget fiction shoot knows, the art department never has time to do anything except work.

We (or, in this case, I) started crunch time at least a week before everyone else, rounding up the hundreds of things that need to be acquired, including everything from tools and hardware to vintage props and set pieces. During the shoot, I arrived on location long before the call time to try to get as much as possible in place before the lighting department took over with their dozens of stands and cables. When everyone else broke for lunch, I had to make adjustments, chase after the actors to ensure that they don't misplace their props, come up with last minute fixes to satisfy the director/DOP/continuity person's needs, etc. etc. I barely had time to scarf down a plate before the AD called out, "And, we're back." It was a night shoot so after trying to sleep until 11 am there was little time to run any errands during business hours. Then, once the actual filming wrapped, my work continued. So much to clean up, take down, return to rental houses, get refunds for, etc.

With the film in the can, I still have a few things left to take care of, not least of which is clean my apartment. My back room looks like a flea market and my hallway looks like an exploded hardware store. My fridge is empty and my kitchen table is littered with receipts, call sheets and random debris.

I am really looking forward to having my life back in order. The idea of writing scripts and leaving the practical problems of actually filming them to someone else seems more enticing than ever. Would I do this again? Ask me again once the dust has settled.

I always feel this way after a shoot: used up, emptied out, sore muscled, fog-headed. But maybe in a month's time, when I'm back to watching TV most nights, I'll wish I had something to make life interesting again. Maybe.

PS: I did learn two very important lessons during my dabbling as Art Director: 1) NEVER use LED Christmas lights in your set dec--they flicker like crazy on film. 2) Always, always, buy at least two of everything and have a back-up plan for irreplaceable set pieces. (Neon signs look great on film, but what do you do if one goes out in the middle of a night shoot? Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.)

no holiday

I had a little time to reflect over the Holidays, even with the upcoming shoot looming large and preparations monopolizing our time away from home. I thought about what I've accomplished film-wise in the last year and what I'd like to do in the coming one, but mostly I thought about how nice it would be to have an actual holiday like most people.

Our layover was longer than expected and in the airport we listened as flight after flight departing for tropical climes was announced. Montego Bay. Panama City. Santiago de Cuba. This made me wish we could just sneak onto one of those planes and leave the whole film thing behind.

That being said, I should really take the time to pause and appreciate all that I've done this year, which includes the following:

- I started this blog
- I did a one-week residency in the Wallace Stegner House, during which I wrote a treatment
- I came up with several solid feature-length ideas and wrote a short film script
- I applied for a bunch of grants and faced my rejection letters stoically
- I "finished" (in quotes because re-writing never seems to end for me) my second feature-length script, which was a semi-finalist in a prestigious US competition

...And all that while working a full-time day job. No wonder I need a holiday. 

Here is what I’d like to do in the coming year:

- Make it through the upcoming shoot (with my marriage and personal bank account intact)

- Find a producer for my screenplay (and not just any producer--hopefully a kindred spirit)

- Write the first draft of a new script or get well into two different ones

- Take in some sort of professional development

- Go on a "real" holiday (not a family visit and not a film festival) even for just one week

 

I know I’m not exactly aiming for the stars here, but my philosophy these days is to focus on attainable goals. Putting one foot in front of the other seems a lot less tiring than trying to fly to the moon right now.