SUNDANCE RESPONSES  Tuesday, January 26, 2010
ME TOO |
co-writer-co-director, Alvaro Pastor
 [PREMIERE SCREENING: Tuesday, Jan. 26, 9:00 pm -- Egyptian Theatre, Park City] We made lots of hard decisions making Me Too. I think, in fact, directing is making decisions all the time. For both of us, me and Antonio Naharro, the hardest one was to ask for the real Pablo Pineda to play Daniel on this film. It was difficult because when we realized that nobody else could play this role we had no choice. In fact the film couldn’t have been made without him playing this kind of alter ego of himself. How it affected the film? Well, the film was mad and the work with him was so amazing and surprisingly easy that you could never imagine the film without him. For me it was also difficult to decide if Antonio, the co-director of the film, was the best option for playing Daniel’s brother. Not because his quality as an actor but it could be very hard to work together as director and actor sharing decisions all the time. It was our first time doing that and finally the choice was good in spite of this issue because [it made] us a little bit crazy sometimes during the shooting.
# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 12:00 PM
LOUIS C.K.: HILARIOUS |
director, Louis C.K.
 [PREMIERE SCREENING: Tuesday, Jan. 26, 5:30 pm -- Library Center Theatre, Park City] The hardest decision was the location. I had to choose between Boston, Milwaukee, Cleveland and Minneapolis. The criteria was that I needed a theater that I could sell out twice in order to shoot two performances. Those were the cities where I was selling tickets the fastest. Minneapolis has great crowds but the theater is white and kind of sterile and the audience is separated from the stage. Cleveland is great but the show I had booked there was a little too late in the year. I wanted to shoot this when the material was peaking. By Cleveland, it would have gotten stale. Boston is my hometown and the Orpheum Theater, where I played in Boston, is a gorgeously disgusting old place where rats have been known to come on stage during shows. But it’s 2,600 seats and that’s a lot of tickets to sell twice over. Milwaukee won because it’s a worn-out old place with a long history dating back to vaudeville, but it’s also snug and intimate. We sold many tickets there very quickly. I don’t have much personal history with Milwaukee but I’ve played there throughout my career and always found the crowds to be a perfect mix of people who are very ordinary and yet up for going anywhere I felt like taking them. In any case I agonized over the location a lot because that one decision impacts every frame of the film, which takes place in only that location.
# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 12:00 PM
ALL MY FRIENDS ARE FUNERAL SINGERS |
writer-director, Tim Rutili
 [PREMIERE SCREENING: Tuesday, Jan. 26, 9:00 pm -- New Frontier on Main, Park City] The most difficult decisions on our film were made in the editing process and had to do with balancing music, tangent and story. We had one scene in particular that looked great and had a really good friend of mine and her son acting in it. Everywhere we placed the scene in our movie seemed to throw it out of balance or clutter the narrative. The last thing I wanted to do was lose some of those shots, and I especially didn’t want to cut my friend and her kid out of our film. We tried everything and the only thing that worked was to choose to serve the story and lose the scene completely. I called my friend as soon as I knew and told her she was cut from the film. I half expected that she would be upset by our decision but she was gracious and kind about it and didn’t kick my ass.
# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 12:00 PM
ODDSAC |
director, Daniel Perez
 [PREMIERE SCREENING: Tuesday, Jan. 26, 8:30 pm -- Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] Deciding not to do a tour documentary on the band, which was what was first proposed. I have strong feelings about the distance between performer and audience, and I didn’t want to contribute anything more to this gap. I wanted to make something that I would be psyched to see and here it is. That and deciding which kid to kill in a scene were pretty difficult. In the end it was a combination of his hair and fake blood that did it.
# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 12:00 PM
RUSSIAN LESSONS |
co-director, Andrei Nekrasov
 [PREMIERE SCREENING: Tuesday, Jan. 26, 9:00 pm -- Temple Theatre, Park City] The most difficult decision was the one to expose the mistakes of fellow film and TV program makers. The related question is why I decided to do it. There were two reasons for that. Firstly those mistakes were instrumental to the justification of an unjust war; secondly in many instances there were grounds to doubt that those mistakes were innocent. In other words, those mistakes were probably lies. To me personally they were shocking because I’d seen with my own eyes what havoc Russian bombs wrecked in the Georgian city of Gori, while my colleagues passed those images of destruction, of dead and wounded Georgians for the Ossetian victims of the Georgian bombardment of Tskhinvali, South Ossetia. I happen to know the cameramen who shot the footage. It is almost impossible to believe that those mistakes were innocent as that footage was simply lifted from Georgian TV. But perhaps the most shocking thing of all was that the Western media, some of the most respectable TV networks in the world, followed the Russians down the same route. In my film I demonstrate the inaccuracies in the representation of the war in Georgia in the programs of the BBC and the German ZDF. I made three films for the BBC. I cooperated with the ZDF and appeared in its programs. I have friends who work in and for both organizations. So was the decision we are talking about difficult? You bet it was. But I don’t regret it. Because I want Russia to become democratic and the West to stay democratic.
# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 12:00 PM
SOUTHERN DISTRICT |
writer-director, Juan Carlos Valdivia
 [PREMIERE SCREENING: Tuesday, Jan. 26, 6:00 pm -- Eccles Theatre, Park City] I chose to work with an ensemble of mostly non-actors in a choreographed and precise mise-en-scene that allowed little improvisation. I had become disenchanted with film and with filmmaking. I knew that only a strong element of risk could bring back my sense of wonder. What makes a story unique is not what you tell, but how you to tell it — and the choices you make are the core of creativity. We shut ourselves in a house full of mirrors with a revolving camera that observed everything — especially my troupe of inexperienced players. I wanted an atmospheric film with very natural performances. But at the same time I was looking for very specific nuances from characters I knew very intimately. The film has 57 circular sequence shots. There was no possibility to cut. Each take had to be perfect. Betraying this — cutting away to a reaction shot or an insert — would be equivalent to failure. The process took an enormous amount of concentration because the actors had no training and only the limited tools I gave them during rehearsal to get out of difficult situations. We didn’t stop production until the desired results were achieved, even if that meant retakes, reshoots and an extra week on a four-week shoot. I learned that silence, careful observation and working in an atmosphere of intimacy are the most important allies in the process of making a film that requires precision. Also creating a mystique and a sense of hope in the team, so they know that everything they do is important and possible. But above all, knowing exactly what you want beforehand, is essential. The decision to work like this and standing by that choice is what makes this film special. I think it works. And it made me believe in filmmaking as an art form again, which is why I started making films to begin with. To me, filmmaking is about creating states of mind, atmospheres and unique images that resonate emotionally and intellectually. The storytelling part is only what holds it together.
# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 9:00 AM
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