American Psycho
In her first feature, I Shot Andy Warhol, Mary Harron remembered the craziness of the ‘60s. With her adaptation of novelist Bret Easton Ellis’ satirical gorefest, American Psycho, she coolly captured the money-driven insanity of the ’80s. From our print issue archives, and appearing online for the first time, is this Winter, 2000 cover story: Peter Bowen talks to Harron about social satire, interior design, and Leonardo. In 1991, Bret Easton Ellis’ satirical novel American Psycho caused a minor scandal. Readers and critics could not agree as to whether its icy portrayal of the young, handsome, successful Patrick Bateman, an uber-yuppie who divided his time between nouvelle cuisine and dissecting women, was a cruel misogynistic fantasy or scathing send up of ’80s materialism.… Read more
By Peter Bowen
I Shot Andy Warhol
[Editor’s Note: The following piece was originally published as the cover story of our Spring, 1996 edition. It appears online here for the first time.] When we invited Go Fish director Rose Troche to interview Mary Harron, the director and co-writer of I Shot Andy Warhol, we hardly anticipated such a happy chain of coincidences. On the subject of bio-pics, Harron’s film explores the political and psychological contradictions of Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Andy Warhol, while Troche is currently at work developing a film on Dorothy Arzner, perhaps Hollywood’s greatest female director. Both Solanas and Arzner, while ostensibly lesbians, continually thwarted history’s and popular media’s attempts to easily categorize them. Harron is also currently writing another bio-pic on… Read more
By Rose Troche
Behind Closed Doors
One of the most complicated (and epic, as it feels much larger than the sum of its two parts) documentaries I’ve seen in years, P.A. Carter’s Behind Closed Doors is this summer’s not-to-miss film for true crime devotees. Debuting on HBO July 16th and 17th, Carter’s meticulously-crafted picture begins with the double murder of 13-year-old Aarushi Talwar and her family’s servant Hemraj Banjade in the Talwars’s upper-middle-class home — a mystery that immediately unleashed a media circus in the staid Indian town of Noida. But it was the whiplash machinations surrounding the subsequent investigations and interrogations, trials and appeals, that kept the public riveted to this decade-plus-long soap opera. One in which class and privilege, and cultural clashes, played a… Read more
By Lauren Wissot
Beast Beast
The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), Filmmaker‘s publisher, announced today the 10 feature films selected for the Narrative Lab, part of the IFP Filmmaker Labs, IFP’s year-long fellowship for first-time filmmakers currently in post-production on their debut feature. The Lab will support the creative teams as they prepare to finish and release their films into the world. Recent films that have participated in the Narrative Lab have included Clementine; Dead Pigs; House of Hummingbird; Jinn; Lost Bayou; Menashe; Noah Land; Nancy; and The Third Wife. The program runs July 15-19 at the Made in NY Media Center by IFP located in DUMBO, Brooklyn. “In its 15th year, the IFP Narrative Lab continues to provide emerging, independent filmmakers with vital support as they… Read more
By Filmmaker Staff
(Center) Isabelle Grill
Photo by Csaba Aknay, Courtesy of A24
In the span of just two features, writer/director Ari Aster and cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski have forged a signature style that cloaks the heightened emotions of melodrama behind the veil of the horrific. In last year’s Hereditary, the Ordinary People-esque family tragedy unfolded in a haunted house, where a matriarch’s sense of being cursed manifested itself literally. In the new film Midsommar, the crumbling relationship between two American grad students plays out against the backdrop of an isolated Swedish community whose harvest festival isn’t quite as benign as it first appears. With Midsommar out now in wide release, Pogorzelski talked to Filmmaker about shooting horror in the mid-day sun, using different lenses for different segments of the story, and utilizing his… Read more
By Matt Mulcahey
I first was introduced to the incredible talents of Emmy Harrington on the set of Caveh Zahedi’s The Show About The Show, where she plays “Slut Machine,” and witnessed, first hand, her ability to adapt to all types of run-and-gun shooting environments and unorthodox directing styles and deliver a great performance take after take. You can also see her work in shows like High Maintenance and Jessica Jones, and an award-winning film she wrote, directed, and stars in — Two Little Bitches — is currently making the festival circuit. I sat down with her a couple of days after directing her in a little project of my own, and I ask her to assess that experience, plus she talks about… Read more
By Scott Macaulay
Being John Malkovitch
Parasite
Back to One, Episode 66: Jesse Eisenberg
Jul 16, 2019
Die Yuppie Scum! Director Mary Harron on American Psycho
Jul 15, 2019
“Our Work Was Bound to Cause Discomfort…”: P.A. Carter on his HBO-Premiering Doc Series, Behind Closed Doors
Jul 15, 2019
IFP Announces Feature Films Selected for 2019 Narrative Lab
Jul 15, 2019
The Unsettling Glow of Daylight: DP Pawel Pogorzelski on Shooting the Folk Horror of Midsommar
Jul 11, 2019
Vice Squad: Director Abel Ferrara and Screenwriter Zoë Lund on Bad Lieutenant
Jul 7, 2019
Bloody Thoughts: Abel Ferrara on The Addiction
Jul 7, 2019
Political Correctness, Gautier and the Politics of Gay Cinema: Pedro Almodovar Discusses Kika
Jul 6, 2019
“I Make Fiction Films Because I Like Representation”: Director Pedro Almodovar On All About My Mother
Jul 6, 2019
Remembering Ben Barenholtz, 1935 – 2019
“We Wanted to Satire Wealth and Philanthropy — It’s a Critique of Charity as a Mode of Thinking that Comes Almost Exclusively from a Place of Privilege”: Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt on Diamantino
Watch: Guts, Noah Hutton and Taylor Hess’s Short Doc on the Feminist, Anti-Colonial Environmental Lab, CLEAR
Watch: “Thirst,” Gaspar Noe’s Sebastian Music Video
Watch: Caveh Zahedi’s “Not Getting Stoned with Alex Ross Perry”
