pioneer spirit

As a little girl, I always dreamed of being a pioneer. Rather than dressing in sparkly princess outfits like other girls did, I wore long skirts and aprons, planted wheat and baked mud pies with my cousins at the playhouse on their farm. My great grandparents on both sides were real pioneers; they crossed the ocean to make a new life for themselves and their descendants in the immense and inhospitable Canadian Prairies, never to return to their homeland. The courage this must have taken them was not lost on me, even as a young child.

Today I stumbled on this photograph of Canada's first woman prospector, Kathleen Rice, and was struck with that old familiar call to adventure. Rice was recently inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame for her discovery of Manitoba's first nickel deposits. Like my other hero, Amelia Earhart, she eschewed the security of a husband and family life, blazing her own trail in a male-dominated profession. I couldn't help but recall how I romantically once pictured myself living in some remote setting with a team of huskies and a shotgun for protection, and how far my actual life seems from that dream. Looking out the window of my office today at the gridlocked highway of large city, for a moment I felt I had failed.

Then I remembered a phone conversation I had a while back with my 85-year-old grandmother. Feeling lonesome and homesick, I told her how I often missed her and everyone back home, and how I was sorry for leaving them. She simply replied, "Don't feel guilty. Just do what you have to do."

What defines a pioneer? In my view it's someone who leaves behind what's safe and familiar in order to pursue their dreams. Seven years ago I left my home and family, moving to the city with the dream of making a feature film. I haven't realized that dream yet, but there is still time--it's not a race.

Unlike Ms. Rice, I had the good fortune of finding a partner to share my adventure with, and although we may not live in a cabin in the wilderness I like to think of myself as a bit of a pioneer after all. I'm sure that Kate Rice and Ameila Earhart had more than a few moments of regret in their loneliest hours anyway; one of them crash-landed somewhere in the South Pacific and the other died penniless in an old folks' home in Minnedosa, Manitoba. These pioneering women were not defined by having fulfilled their dreams, but rather by having pursued them. That is, I am convinced, an attainable goal for anyone, myself included.

  

   

fear and loathing in the happiest place on earth

In a world where fiction films are scrubbed clean of logos by the producers for fear of being sued, it is truly refreshing to see someone stick their neck out. The makers of Escape From Tomorrow certainly did, by shooting most of their psychological horror comedy on-location in Disney theme parks without permission from the notoriously litigious corporation.  

Reviews I've read of the film were mixed, focusing on its effectiveness as a parody. There is more to it, however, than an attempt to skewer Walt Disney Corp. The film tells the story of a father's downward spiral in the "Happiest Place on Earth" after he just learned he lost his job and can no longer provide for his children. It is superbly scored and visually rich, shot in cinema-vérité style black and white close-ups with low-fi but effective special effects. Although the script is a bit uneven, the overall effect of menace and the omnipresent theme of fantasy run amok more than make up for its shortcomings, in my view.  

As described in this interview, the story idea was inspired by writer/director Randy Moore's own childhood visits to Disney World with his father. The opening scene, in which the main character (father Jim White, played by Roy Abramsohn) is deliberately locked out on the hotel balcony in his underwear by his resentful young son, foreshadows the climax. In other scenes, Jim ogles a pair of French teenage girls, gets inebriated at an Oktoberfest show, and slurs out an apology to his wife and children after drunkenly puking out the side of a ride. Moments like this, though couched in an absurd fantasy, still have depth and strangely even ring true to life.

Filmmakers often like to say that their work speaks for itself, but in the 21st Century, when backstory about a given production is readily available and great spec scripts are often inspired by first-hand experiences, I think this movie's context is just as important as its concept.

Escape From Tomorrow is in theatres now. If you're a fan of cult classics, I highly recommend getting out of the house and supporting the box office rather than streaming it illegally. At the risk of sounding preachy, in order for films like this to get made there needs to be a market for them.

street scenes

Recently I've become fascinated by two artists whose work is inspired by that ultra-practical yet creepily voyeuristic technology we've all become familiar with in the past few years: Google Street View.

The first such artist is Montreal's Jon Rafman, who seems driven by a documentarian's compulsion for magnifying reality. The result of what must be hundreds of hours spent poring over Street View searching for remarkable scenes, his work confirms that constructing narratives out of images is a basic human impulse. We look at the puzzling and/or surreal moments he digs up, such as this:

...or this:

...and immediately start imagining who these people are and what they are doing, or what the circumstances were that led up to that moment. Our natural curiosity makes us want to know what happened and what happens next, like we do when we're decoding a fictional story.

The thing is, these aren't fictional characters. These are real people who probably live in the area close to where they were captured by the Google Street View camera's "9 eyes", their faces and license plates blurred to avoid litigation. These folks were just going about their daily realities or clandestine activities when they became suspended in time by the serendipitous passing of the Street View Vehicle, to be pictured in that geographic location forever (or at least until Google decides to update its Street View images).

The act of traveling the streets of the world and discovering traces of its bizarre ephemeral events via the internet is one feature of the Street View technology that captures the imagination and gets creative juices flowing; Tre Baker of Google Street Scene flips that concept on its head and painstakingly recreates the Street View aesthetic to pay hommage to scenes from fictional films.

A movie shoot is essentially the act of immortalizing a non-existant world. A production takes over a location or a backlot somewhere, constructs a piece of a fictitious universe, then records it in a certain light, for all time, on film. People are often dismayed when they visit locations from famous movies only to find that they don't look anything like they did on-screen (one such example being the monastery tower in Vertigo, which was actually a model matted into the shot in post). Baker, who by day is an online editor for a publishing company in Arkansas, treats us to snapshots of moments our favourite films as though they actually occurred in the real world. Baker told me that what he enjoys most about making these "is watching something once larger than life, a scene from the silver screen, come back down to earth almost literally. And it's not just the little arrows or the blur patches. It's turning these film scenes into what resembles our real lives."

With regards to the street addresses, Baker says "I have never tried to be factual or accurate. I've seen others say that I'm staying true to the locations, but more than 50-percent of the time, I'm making them up." He points out that, "Movies are rarely filmed where they're set," and says he hopes that "the reader can suspend their disbelief a little." I think he's succeeded in this; because the addresses are mostly fictitious, there is no disappointment in finding out that the location does not fit the movie in our memory, only the fun of recognizing a long-forgotten scene or iconic character with his/her face blurred out.

Furthermore, moments such as this:

...or this:

...remind us of how closely tied the cinema is to roads. Virtually every film ever made has a street scene or highway in it and the symbolism of roads fits perfectly with the Hero's Journey so often repeated in narrative cinema. A movie's setting is just as important as its characters or plot and contributes just as much to its effect and meaning, much as the real places in our lives contribute to the fabric of our identities.

Baker says, "When Google Street View first appeared, and after you had checked out Times Square or wherever, you probably headed to your house. After that, you looked up your childhood house, your college dormitory. It's all there on the Internet now. Not only can you see these places, but you get to see them through the eyes of a third-party. You can't get much more impersonal than the Google Street Car. You may still miss your grandmother who passed away in 2009, but there she is, still in 2007 on Google Street View, just another blurry figure tending to her garden. So bringing Jack Nicholson or the Tenenbaums' house to that same level is an interesting and fun challenge."

Sometimes Baker's movie scenes appear more believable than the images taken from the real Street View, but plausibility is beside the point. Whether they choose to assume the stance of documentary or fiction, these two artists are using a technology intended to help us navigate our world in a fascinating way: to reflect on human beings' obsession with narrative and place.

art of life

If you're not familiar with the work of legendary documentary filmmaker Les Blank, who passed away on Sunday, you need to rectify that situation.

Burden of Dreams, about the making of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, is probably his best-known work and is far better than the fiction film whose production it documents. His many short verité pieces on both obscure and famous musicians including Sprout Wings and Fly and The Blues According to Lightnin' Hopkins, are remarkable and uplifting portraits of people who live to make music. His light-hearted documentary experiments Gap-Toothed Women and Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe are studied in Film courses as prime examples of California avant-garde cinema of the 1970s and 80s. His aptitude as a camera man was immortalized in the 1968 Hollywood classic Easy Rider; he shot the handheld, psychedelic acid-trip sequence in the New Orleans cemetery, which is easily my favourite part of that film.

I was lucky to have met Les and to have had my work judged by him seven years ago at the fantastic Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana. He was a notorious "man of few words", but finally after seeing each other at numerous parties, we did engage in some small-talk. He said he was saddened that the music-making rural Louisiana of his early films was now all but gone thanks to Wal-Mart and satellite TV. He talked about swimming in the ocean and, late in the evening, he quipped that he'd like to put me in the sequel to Gap-Toothed Women. I told him how much I enjoyed seeing his work (the festival had screened an extensive retrospective) and he said he'd enjoyed my film too. I couldn't have been more thrilled, until my film was given an award for Artistic Vision at the end of the festival. Coming from him and his fellow jury members that was, to this day, the single greatest compliment I have ever received as a filmmaker and remembering that moment has gotten me through a lot of dark times.

There will always be a special place in my heart for Les Blank and his films; he had a love of life and a documentary sixth-sense that are truly rare among filmmakers. I hope that the flood of recognition he is getting now will introduce many new people to his work, and I hope for his sake that there is beer in Heaven. RIP, Les.

lessons learned

OK, as you've probably guessed, I had no time to write while I was away in Banff at Women In the Director's Chair as I had promised. My stay there was exhilarating, inspiring and exhausting but more than anything it was busy! Now that I'm back, I can still make a top-ten list of the things I learned while there. So, here they are:

10) Be respectful but not overly polite. (Or, as our fabulous acting teacher put it, "Don't be so fucking polite!!") Everyone on set is there to make your vision happen, so don't waste their time over-apologizing and pussy-footing around. That being said, I still believe it never hurts to say please and thank you.

9) Be generous with everyone. Don't be annoyed when people have a million questions for you and don't expect them to guess the answers! Answering questions is your job. Take the time to make sure they understand what you want them to do. Chances are they're giving you their all, so give them yours!

8) Make sure everyone knows why you're telling your story. This may not sound important, but it is. If you have a personal connection to the material, your producers, keys and cast at least should be aware of it.

7) A director is like a psychologist. They must quickly figure out what makes each actor tick and be able to relate to them on that level.

6) Allow actors some "alone time" on set to internalize your direction. Don't overload them, but don't abandon them either.

5) Don't go into your close-ups too early in a scene; it leaves you nowhere to go, cinematically.

4) If your protagonist doesn't have a lot of lines in the scene, allow them a lot of reaction shots. This is how the audience knows they're the protagonist and they will empathize with them more.

3) Always ask yourself, "What is the central conflict of the scene?" If your scene's central conflict isn't clear or doesn't link up with the central conflict of the film, it may not be necessary.

2) "An ounce of behaviour is worth a pound of words." Another nugget from our acting teacher; it's equally true on-set and in the edit suite.

1) There are no unimportant moments. Every look, every breath, every blink is a moment of drama. Suck the marrow out of each and every one.

rocky mountain adventure

Greetings, dear readers and Happy New Year!

I apologize for my long absence. I had been taking a break from this blog to look after my more pressing projects of never-ending grant proposals and scriptwriting.

I am pleased to announce that I'll be a participant in the upcoming Women in the Director's Chair Workshop at the Banff Centre and will be leaving for the "Blue Canadian Rockies" tonight. While respecting the confidentiality of the workshop I will try to blog a bit about my personal experiences and any revelations that may occur. In keeping with the hopeful tone of my last post, I hope I may enlighten you while I grope towards my own enlightenment.

Stay tuned for more about this once I reach my destination...

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.

movie miracle

Since I haven't been posting much recently, I thought I would update you all on why. I am getting ready for a shoot! A friend is directing, my husband is producing, and I am doing art direction so it is something of a family affair.

Sure, we are still short some crew and extras, and the list of details to take care of seems to grow longer instead of shorter, but when we had our tech visit to the locations on Sunday the panicky feeling subsided and I was able to get a sense of the magic to come.

It's true--auteur filmmaking is absurd. It is a monumental effort and expense for something that will be seen by few people and that usually ends up costing you (instead of making you) money. But when it all comes together (and it usually does) it can be exhilarating and tremendously rewarding.

The hair-pulling frenzy of pre-production is a reminder that every movie is a miracle, even a bad one. Just to succeed in coordinating the amount of talent and resources required to follow one unified goal through to the end is an astounding feat, let alone producing a finished product that is actually good. The variables are infinite and the obstacles seem insurmountable.

Why do we do this again? No time to think about that--all we can do at this point is put one foot in front of the other and try to enjoy the experience.

guilty pleasures

The Film Society of Lincoln Center's magazine Film Comment has a section entitled "Guilty Pleasures" in which they invite actors and directors to share their favourite bad movies. I thought I would try my hand, since normally I stick to pretty high-brow fare on this blog. Here are my top "so bad they're good" picks:

Road House (1989)

Patrick Swayze plays a bouncer hired to keep out the riff-raff at a roadhouse bar called the Double Deuce (scuzzy dive, awesome name). "When the dancing is over, things get dirty." Pure, unadulterated 80's kitsch.

They Live (1988)

John Carpenter (Halloween) is the master of cranking out low-budget camp and has a huge cult following. In this choice nugget, "A drifter discovers a pair of sunglasses that allow him to wake up to the fact that aliens have taken over the Earth." Whenever the drifter (played by WWF wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper) punches someone, he uses what seems to be  the sound of a car door slamming. So bad, it's hilarious.

Short Circuit (1986) Also see: *Batteries Not Included (1987) and Heartbeeps (1981)

Long before Wall-E, there was a host of "Boy and His Robot" movies made in the 1980s, in which robots display more caring emotion than their human counterparts and thus win the love and friendship of the young protagonists. Heavy on the guilt and less on the pleasure for me, these are probably among the worst movies I've ever seen. But, as a child of the 80's, I have a bit of a soft spot for them.

There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)

This one I'm not so guilty about--it stars Marylin Monroe and Ethel Merman and is a good old-fashioned lavish 1950s spectacle about (you guessed it) show business. If you're feeling low, I highly recommend it for a dose of eye-and-ear-pleasing musical technicolor therapy.

Pillow Talk (1959)

I'm not guilty about this one either, although it may be the epitome of fluff. Animosity builds between Manhattanites Doris Day and Rock Hudson, whose shared phone line puts them at odds. Having only heard his voice, Day doesn't recognize Hudson when he tries to woo her while posing as a Texas hayseed. Musical hi-jinx ensues.... The makers of romantic comedy today couldn't hold a candle to these guys.

What Happens in Vegas (2008)

My case in point. I don't really remembers what happens in this movie, just that it was really bad but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. (I guess I had low expectations.)

National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985) and Christmas Vacation (1989)

The latter is a holiday classic and the former is just plain corny fun; Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo are side-splitting as Clark and Ellen Griswold. I haven't seen their third film, Vegas Vacation yet but will keep an eye on the satellite for it.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)

I'm talking about the original, not the TV series remake with Sarah Michelle Gellar. I was a pre-teen when this movie came out and I remember watching it with my friends at at least one slumber/birthday party. Kristy Swanson's Buffy was my ultimate female role model--sexy, tough, and kind of an outcast. I haven't watched it in years and don't intend to, lest seeing it as an adult detract from my idealized memory of it.

As you can tell, most of these picks date from the days before my good taste prevented me from watching them. What are some of your guilty pleasures?

bummed out*

Tonight's première of the RIDM documentary festival reminded me of what a rich city Montreal is when it comes to cinema. In his hilarious introductory speech, board president and indie producer Mila Aung-Thwin joked about how they will not be announcing a merger with Montreal's other film festivals, since certain journalists have been complaining that there are TOO MANY in this town. Too many film festivals? Sheesh! I think that too many festivals is a great thing for cinephiles (although it's not as great for filmmakers, since they usually don't make any money from having their films shown at them).

Anyway, that is a discussion for another day. Today I'm going to talk about....asses. Yes, that's right. Bums. Or, as world-renowned choreographer Philippe Decouflé refers to them in Frederick Wiseman's new doc Crazy Horse, "les cocos". Of the film's 2h15min run-time, there is probably an hour and a half of close-ups on women's bare tushes--floating in the air, being waggling at us, stroked by other dancers and at one point, multiplied by mirrors to look like waves atop the ocean (eye candy in its purest form, even for me, a straight woman). The remainder of the film shows us the excruciating tantrums at production meetings, the brutal evaluating of dancers' bodies at auditions and all the less glamorous aspects of what it takes to put on the world's "chicest" strip show, revered by intellectuals and oglers alike.

After the screening, someone actually yelled out "Sexist!! BOO!!" and I was disappointed because this person had completely missed the point. Although it may look like soft porn, you need to read between the lines. Underneath the disguise this is actually a film about the collaborative creative process: the inspiration, the obsession, the egos, the hopes and dreams and most of all, the hard, hard work. These people are not just in it for the money, they don't do it to exploit women--they do it because they view the striptease as High Art. And I agree. The infinite variations they've come up with on a woman taking 5 minutes to remove her G-string are indeed a sublime accomplishment.

While watching the film, I had a realization about cinema in general: the point of cinema is not to just to get to the point. The point of cinema is to draw out a moment for as long as possible, to create a reverie during which we forget where we are, who we are, and even what we're looking at. In this, what he calls his "most abstract film yet", Wiseman has done just that.

Crazy Horse plays once more at RIDM on Saturday the 12th at 5:30pm, and opens at Cinema du Parc on November 25th. 

*Thanks to friend, filmmaker and pun-master extraordinaire Ameesha for that one!

vampire love

I don't know what it is about the vampire myth that is so enduring. Much has been written on the seemingly endless cycle of repetition and variation on this theme, so I won't spend a lot of time speculating; however, I'd like to compare and contrast two examples of it that I happened to see on the same night this weekend: HBO's dramedy True Blood, and the 2008 Swedish film Let the Right One In. It's like comparing apples and oranges, but I still think it's an interesting cultural exercise.

I haven't always been a True Blood fan but in Season 3 (when Sookie was nursing viking bloodsucker Eric back to health from magic-induced amnesia) things got pretty hot and heavy and I admit I was hooked (apparently I wasn't the only one--the Season 3 finale drew 11.4 million viewers). There is something inexplicably sexy about the idea of making it with a vampire and the show has coasted on this for quite some time, rehashing one of the most deeply-rooted American archetypes: the good girl who loves bad boys.

For me, the other most appealing aspect of True Blood is its small-town Louisiana setting; as the brilliantly-constructed opening credits sequence establishes, the swampy ground of Bon Temp is rife with voodoo, sex and holy rolling. In classic HBO fashion, the seedy underbelly is sliced open and its entrails exposed for us to feast on.

Unfortunately, Season 4 transitions from vampire sex to war on witchcraft, and for me the show has officially jumped the shark. The writers must sense that their audience will eat up whatever drivel they dish out, penning such appallingly bad dialogue as "This fucking sucks!" when Marnie the witch gets taken down. I'm sure they'll keep True Blood on life support for a few more seasons, but I think the whole thing is getting ridiculously campy and over-the-top.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Let the Right One In. This love story disguised as a horror movie is delightfully refreshing, and not just because it seems to have been shot entirely at -30 in the dead of the Swedish winter. Its protagonist, Oskar, is an almost albino-blond 12-year-old who is so innocent and sweet he hardly seems of this world. Of course, the school bullies have a field day terrorizing him. One day, he meets a girl his age (Eli) who seems to understands him but, strangely, she goes around barefoot in the snow and can only come out to play at night. People in the neighborhood start dying mysterious, untimely deaths as Oskar and Eli get closer, until he finally beings to understand her dark secret....

The film's style is old-fashioned and it looks like it was shot 20 years ago on a $10,000 budget, but in a good way (think of what a horror film would look like if directed by Ingmar Bergman c. 1984). That being said, its restraint makes it suspenseful, and its well-spaced, creepy FX scenes give just the right amount of goosebumps. Hard-core horror fans might disappointed (although I'd encourage them to give it a chance), but for me this movie's subtle thrills and endearing protagonist make it a great thinking-person's scary movie and represents a much more sensitive, decidedly un-American take on the vampire love theme. I haven't yet seen the US remake (entitled Let Me In), but without young Kare Hedebrant's angelic face and captivating performance, it surely couldn't compare. If you need something to watch while handing out candy tonight, I highly recommend the original.

Happy Halloween!

"drive" fan

I was going to write a post devoted to Drive, the retro-80's chase movie I had been anticipating seeing for some time, but I'll never top this brilliant "illustrated reaction" by Lisa Hanawalt.

However, I'll still say this: While the grown-up part of my brain thinks that the best part of this movie was the opening sequence, and that it's just a little too "cool" and its style trumps its substance, the teenager in me is totally agog.

It's the kind of movie I would have seen at seventeen and then stayed up all night talking about over coffee with my friend. I feel like plastering my walls with posters and fan art devoted to it. Even though I found the lyrics to a certain song way too on-the-nose while watching the movie, I have a compulsion to listen to the soundtrack on repeat through my headphones while writing Ryan Gosling gushing fan letters in spite of (or perhaps because of) the goofy grin he wears throughout the film.

I haven't had this kind of reaction to a movie in quite some time (to specify how long would be to divulge my actual age). Anyway, if you're looking for something to watch this weekend, go and see Drive. Unleash your inner teenage fan girl in the process....