Interviews
Interviews
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Color in Black and White: DP Robert Elswit on Ripley
“It’s the light! Always the light!” exclaims a priest to the murderous Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott) as they bask in the glory of a Caravaggio painting in Netflix’s new adaption of the Patricia Highsmith novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. There are a multitude of exquisite facets to cinematographer Robert Elswit’s work on the series, including the formal compositions that embrace the Italian setting’s architecture. But, more than anything else, it’s the light as Elswit harkens back to classic noirs, 1960s Italian cinema and the canvasses of the great masters of chiaroscuro. Elswit earned an Oscar nomination for his black and […]
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“America is Desperate for a Narrative”: Courtney Stephens and Callie Hernandez on Invention
Following a decade of work in experimental and documentary cinema, director Courtney Stephens steps into fiction for the first time with Invention, a remarkably resourceful microbudget drama that nonetheless resists strict categorization. Starring and co-conceived by Callie Hernandez, the film draws upon the actress’s real-life relationship with her late father, a medical doctor turned small-time huckster who made a name for himself on local television talk shows and public access programs in the ’90s and 2000s. In this fictionalized telling set in the Berkshires, VHS footage of those TV appearances weave through a story in which Hernandez, playing a version […]
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“We Have Complete Creative Control”: Chuck Russell on Witchboard
The first film directed by Chuck Russell I can remember seeing was the special effects-driven Jim Carrey vehicle The Mask at a multiplex with my family thirty years ago (the summer comedy opened on July 29th, 1994 in over 2,300 North American theaters). However, it was his work in the horror genre with co-writer Frank Darabont that really hooked me. Both 1987’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors—released when the filmmaker was only 28—and 1988’s remake of The Blob were gooey and gory, yes, but also competent adventure films, their charm derived from Russell’s nimble craftsmanship and the […]
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TikTok, Building a Slate, and the Life of an Independent Producer: It Ends With Us Producer Alex Saks
If you’re a TikTok-using film producer, then the feed of Alex Saks has undoubtedly been delivered straight to your phone by that platform’s ruthless and unerring algorithm. Over the past year-and-a-half, and across nearly 200 clips, Saks, a former ICM financing agent and more recently a producer of such films as The Florida Project, Thoroughbreds, and Sometimes I Think About Dying, has been dispensing on the platform pithy, direct pieces of advice on topics such as securing book rights, defining the role of the line producer, imposter syndrome and the state of the industry. There’s the occasional stitch or commentary […]
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“You Don’t Have a Lot of Control Over a Head Exploding”: MaXXXine Cinematographer Eliot Rockett
After the 1970s grit of X and the Technicolor sheen of Pearl, Ti West and cinematographer Eliot Rockett turn to the 1980s with MaXXXine. Shot with the same combo of Sony Venice and Vantage MiniHawks, the L.A.-set story finds adult actress Maxine Minx’s big break into mainstream films curtailed by a series of giallo-esque murders. With the movie freshly out on VOD, Rockett spoke to Filmmaker about the concluding chapter in the trilogy. Filmmaker: Ti talked in an interview about how MaXXXine is his first film shot in L.A. despite living there for 20 years. X and Pearl were both […]
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“I Wanted to Make a Black, Gay Paris, Texas“: Shatara Michelle Ford on Their BlackStar-Premiering Sophomore Feature Dreams in Nightmares
Three cross-coastal best friends reunite for a spontaneous road trip across the American underbelly in Dreams in Nightmares, the sophomore feature from writer-director Shatara Michelle Ford. Though a significant pivot in theme and scope from their lean yet intense debut feature Test Pattern, Ford’s latest continues to plainly indicts the oppression that finds Black, femme, queer bodies at a stark institutional disadvantage. After being laid off from their respective jobs in academia and finance, Z (Denée Benton) and Tasha (Sasha Compère) hop on the phone to reschedule a planned trip to the Dominican Republic. Instead of lounging in paradise, Tasha […]
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“I Can’t Run a Control Experiment with No Cameras”: Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber on War Game
On January 6th, 2023 in Washington, DC, the advocacy group Vet Voice stage an elaborate mass role-playing scenario inspired by the attempted insurrection in the Capitol two years before. The loser of a presidential election declares the result illegitimate and encourages the public to rise up, and an extremist militia group with sleepers inside the National Guard does just that. Within the simulation, one side roleplayed the incumbent presidential administration (with former Montana governor Steve Bullock portraying the president), while the other was the terrorist “Red Cell” attempting to stop Congress from certifying the election results. If the Red Cell […]
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“Playing in the Best Sandbox Ever”: DP Chris Teague on The Acolyte
Set a century before The Phantom Menace, The Acolyte follows a Jedi master (Squid Games star Lee Jung-jae) and his former apprentice (Amandla Stenberg) as they hunt for a killer who’s dispatching Jedi. The new series holds a distinction that no other live action Star Wars saga can claim—not the half dozen Disney Plus shows or the eleven feature films, not the Star Wars Holiday Special, not even that Ewok movie with Wilfred Brimley. The Acolyte is the first live action story set in the heretofore unseen High Republic era that served as the zenith of Jedi influence and power. […]
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“We’ve All Gone a Bit Broke Making It”: Lucy Walker on Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa
Nearly twenty years ago, Lucy Walker was making a film on the slopes of Everest following a group of blind teenage Tibetan climbers. While on the mountain, she heard of an incident that had taken place when a male guide attacked his wife and climbing partner, a Nepalese woman named Lhakpa Sherpa. Lhakpa’s cursed expedition was the focus of a damning book published a couple of years later, as well as a feature in Outside Magazine. At that point Lhakpa had summited Everest seven times but was living in a cramped apartment in Connecticut as an illiterate single mother, still […]
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“Everybody Passed on It”: Sean Wang on Dìdi
If having your first feature premiere at the Sundance Film Festival is an accomplishment, being nominated for an Academy Award the same week is pretty much unheard of. Nonetheless, that’s what writer-director Sean Wang experienced last January when his coming-of-age narrative feature, Dìdi, premiered to glowing reviews (and a distribution deal with Focus Features) while his nonfiction portrait of his two grandmothers, Nai Nai & Wài Pó, was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Short. Still in his 20s, Wang’s career has skyrocketed over the past year, and now Dìdi “younger brother” in Chinese) opens in theaters riding a […]
