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.