Authors — Matt Prigge
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“You Give The Other Artist You Work With Individual Space To Be Free”: Ira Sachs On Writing Frankie With Mauricio Zacharias
Ira Sachs will get a lot of the credit for his latest film, Frankie, an ensemble drama with an all-star cast anchored by top-billed Isabelle Huppert, playing an international movie star whos been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Many will call it “Ira Sach’s Frankie” and single him out as its main creator. But just as the film isn’t only about Huppert’s character (Brendan Gleeson, Marisa Tomei, Greg Kinnear play her blended family), Frankie is not just about Sachs. Only one of his features, his 1996 debut The Delta, has been written solo. And four of the rest, Frankie included, have […]
by Matt Prigge on Sep 20, 2019 -
“If You Really Want To Make Something You Get Creative”: Experimental Documentarians Talk About Thinking Outside The Box At IFP Week 2019
Documentaries don’t have to play by the rules of fiction films. Take a non-fiction hit like Won’t You Be My Neighbor?: It doesn’t merely tell a linear story so much as jump around subjects, with Fred Rogers’ life as a basic foundation. (Compare/contrast with the forthcoming Tom Hanks-starrer A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which zeroes in on one slice of his career.) But some documentaries go way out there. The IFP 2019 panel “Out of Bounds” rounded up four creatives — two filmmakers, one editor, and a producer tasked with helping people like them find funding and distribution — […]
by Matt Prigge on Sep 20, 2019 -
“Certainly Show Business Has Made Me Very Angry At Times”: Kasi Lemmons Talks Directing Harriet At IFP Week 2019
When Kasi Lemmons got the job of directing Harriet, a biopic about the abolitionist Harriet Tubman, she didn’t get to choose her star: That was already done for her. Cynthia Erivo, the Tony- and Grammy-winning performer and scene-stealer of Steve McQueen’s Widows, had been cast a year before the acclaimed director and actress had come on. But it didn’t take long for her to agree with the casting. “As I was doing my research, I got this picture of his woman, who is tiny, and strong, and fast, and who uses her voice to communicate, and who is a formidable […]
by Matt Prigge on Sep 20, 2019 -
“Just Keep Asking”: True Crime Filmmakers Talk About Pushing A Classic Genre In New And More Ethical Directions At IFP Week 2019
True crime has been having a moment, as they say, for a while now. In a way it’s never not been having a moment, but the genre has rapidly evolved in the digital age, when more information is available to more people, when conspiracy theorists run wild on Reddit and 4chan, and when there’s simply more content being produced. All this means not only more crime content, but also shows and movies that are more thoughtful, more creative, and even more conscious of ethical or moral quandaries that may crop up in the process of covering true crimes. The panel […]
by Matt Prigge on Sep 17, 2019 -
“Technology Has Come A Long Way”: Todd Douglas Miller And E. Chai Vasarhelyi On Going Big With Apollo 11 And Free Solo At IFP Week 2019
Documentaries have been making bank at the box office the last couple years, which is heartening for anyone worried the blockbusters are the only game in town. Still, you don’t necessarily have to see small, intimate fare like Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, RBG and Three Identical Strangers on a giant screen. You can’t say the same about Free Solo and Apollo 11. One finds cutting-edge cameras hanging alongside mountain climber Alex Honnold; the other unearths 65mm footage of the eponymous spaceflight. Both played IMAX theaters, and they were an even better fit on the world’s biggest screens than the […]
by Matt Prigge on Sep 17, 2019 -
“You Get To Be In Places You Have No Business Being”: Political Filmmakers Talk About Telling Big Stories With A Small Focus At IFP Week 2019
For documentarians, especially ones who focus on politics, it’s not enough to have a strong and vital subject. You need a way to get audiences engaged. The participants at the “Politically Engaged” panel at IFP Week 2019 know that all too well. Take Jehane Noujaim. Along with her creative partner Karim Amer, she makes docs about hot topics: the Egyptian Crisis in 2013’s The Square, the Cambridge Analytica Scandal in this year’s The Great Hack. But they’re not expository info dumps. They’re verité, following people, not merely ideas. Noujaim realized that earlier on. She got her start working with the […]
by Matt Prigge on Sep 16, 2019 -
‘100 Percent It’s Not A Fad’: Jon M. Chu And Other Asian-American Creatives On The Post-‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Bump
The IFP Week 2019 panel “Staying in the Room,” which brought together four Asian-Americans involved in the entertainment industry, happened the weekend of two milestones. For one, Hustlers, co-starring Crazy Rich Asians’ Constance Wu, overperformed, nabbing the top spot at the North American box office. The other was news that comedian Bowen Yang was named the first Asian-American to be cast on Saturday Night Live, ever. The latter was overshadowed by footage of another new SNL hire, Shane Gillis, saying racist stuff about Asians, including a slur that was presumed to have died out with the last generation or two. […]
by Matt Prigge on Sep 16, 2019 -
Optimal Value
What’s the main reason to go to film school? You could say to broaden the mind, to learn about cinema history, to meet future collaborators. Those are all true, but at base, the chief reason is to learn a skill. Ideally, you exit your program (whether it’s undergrad or graduate) ready to enter the industry. Perhaps you won’t be doing what you expected when you first applied, but you also don’t want to emerge with no idea what’s next. That said, film school can be tough. There are countless ways to do it, and it can be hard to focus and […]
by Matt Prigge on Jun 19, 2019 -
No Money, No Problem?
They’re the two most beautiful words in the cinematic language: tax credits. Almost no one who practices the seventh art got into it to learn about business; if anything, they got into it to avoid it altogether. Alas, it’s almost impossible to participate in the most expensive art form without being at least semi-fluent in business jargon. State film tax incentives are a crucial part of most American films’ financing these days, be they giant Marvel productions filming in incentive-rich Atlanta or a tiny indie shooting in Albuquerque, mere miles from the set of Better Call Saul. As of this […]
by Matt Prigge on Mar 14, 2019 -
You Can Go Home Again: Alfonso Cuarón On Sound, Vision and Memory In Roma
Alfonso Cuarón reached the point in his career when he could do whatever he wanted. His last film, Gravity, was one of those that checked off all the boxes: It was a hit. It was critically adored. It won Oscars, including one for him. It was progressive, with a strong female lead (Sandra Bullock). It pushed the limits of filmmaking, commercial and otherwise. It used special effects in creative and innovative ways. It told a small, borderline minimalist story, focusing on at most two characters, but usually just one. And all this after such acclaimed pictures as Children of Men, […]
by Matt Prigge on Dec 17, 2018
