The following interview of Errol Morris originally appeared in Filmmaker‘s Fall, 1998 issue. In 1988, Fred A. Leuchter, an engineer from Massachusetts who made a living designing more “humane” electric chairs, was hired by Ernst Zundel, the publisher of several pro-Hitler, Holocaust-denying tracts, to conduct a forensic investigation into the use of poison gas in Nazi concentration camps. On his honeymoon, Leuchter travelled to Auschwitz and, with his wife sitting in the car reading Agatha Christie novels, illegally chipped away at the brick, collecting mortar samples which he transported back to the States. Testing these samples for traces of cyanide gas, Leuchter “proved” that the Holocaust never occurred. Taking these findings, Zundel published The Leuchter Report, which sold millions of copies around… Read more
By Scott Macaulay
Robin Weigert as Calamity Jane -Photo: Warrick Page/HBO
When HBO pulled the plug on Deadwood a dozen years ago, it left the denizens of the lawless South Dakota boomtown dangling at the end of a Season 3 cliffhanger. The show’s ostensible hero (marshal Seth Bullock, played by Timothy Olyphant) and villain (saloon owner Al Swearengen, played by Ian McShane) were left equally battered and bruised by a common enemy in ruthless mining magnate George Hearst. Imagine if the original Star Wars trilogy ended after The Empire Strikes Back and you’ll get a sense of the incompleteness that has haunted Deadwood fans over the years – myself included. HBO has salved that wound with Deadwood: The Movie, a fitting farewell full of perfectly played grace notes that picks up… Read more
By Matt Mulcahey
Homo Economicus
“Working with computer graphics, labor becomes so present in your mind because you’re hunched over a computer for such a long time trying to deliver something that looks right,” the artist Alan Warburton told me. What’s “right” tends to be a seamless and effortless look, which means there is a paradox to the trade—all that work, at best, appears as if it never happened at all. Warburton’s art practice, which mines his commercial work at post-production studios, departs from these objectives. His labor is noticeable, rather than invisible—imperfect and unfinished in projects like his animation series Homo Economicus (2018). That series is reminiscent of Robert Longo’s Men in the Cities for an “auto-fill, auto-content-aware generation,” as the bodies of three… Read more
By Joanne McNeil
Cutting My Mother
“I’m not an editor… I’m not a director. I’m also not an actress.” But Cindy Silver is the mother, teacher, and compliant subject of her son, writer and director Nathan Silver (Stinking Heaven, Thirst Street), who asks his mother to act in nearly all of his films. In his new docuseries Cutting My Mother, playing Anthology Film Archives today beside Exit Elena (also featuring Cindy), he asks more of her than he ever has before. He asks her to direct her own film. [Silver’s short, Solo, plays at the Anthology as part of the program.] As a child, Nathan drew depictions of his mother with scars and his father, Harvey, shot portraits of her on black and white film. She’d… Read more
By Aaron Hunt
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
Being John Malkovitch
Parasite
“There’s This Idea that Filmmakers are Social Workers, Which They’re Not!”: Errol Morris on His Portrait of a Holocaust Revisionist, Mr. Death
Jul 20, 2019
“If I’m Not Nervous About Getting Fired Between Wrap and Dailies…I Probably Didn’t Push Myself Hard Enough”: Cinematographer David Klein Discusses his Emmy-Nominated Work on Deadwood: The Movie
Jul 19, 2019
Cindy Silver: The Dancer, Teacher, Mother, Reluctantly Abides In Cutting My Mother
Jul 18, 2019
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
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”
