Authors — Peter Bowen
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“The Violence in the Film is Simply a Reflection of the History of Human Beings”: Writer/Director Jim Jarmusch and Actor Forest Whitaker on Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
With Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai newly released by Criterion Collection today, Filmmaker is publishing online for the first time Peter Bowen’s interview with Jarmusch and actor Forest Whitaker from our Winter, 2000 print issue. In Jim Jarmusch’s latest adventure, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, the title character, played by Forest Whitaker, is set on a collision course with the mob after a local boss’s daughter (Tricia Vessey) witnesses him making a hit. Soon, Ghost Dog is declared a “liability,” and a hit is ordered on him as well. Naturally, this mysterious urban samurai easily eludes […]
by Peter Bowen on Nov 17, 2020 -
Die Yuppie Scum! Director Mary Harron on 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 […]
by Peter Bowen on Jul 15, 2019 -
Political Correctness, Gautier and the Politics of Gay Cinema: Pedro Almodovar Discusses Kika
The following interview of Pedro Almodovar about his film Kika appeared in our Spring, 1994 issue. It is being reprinted here online for the first time. In addition to pumping (very bright red) new blood into Spanish film after Franco’s death, Pedro Almodovar has also blazed the path for a camp style that has been followed around the world. Mixing together high fashion, television melodrama, comic strips, and street corner pornography, Almodovar has spun off stories as tangled and absurd as they are have been uncannily close in capturing a particular moment of Spanish history. Now on the way to […]
by Peter Bowen on Jul 6, 2019 -
“… the Way Someone Would Shoot a Film in an Architectural Magazine”: Gus Van Sant on Last Days
The below interview with Gus Van Sant originally appeared in our Summer, 2005 issue. The subject matter of Gus Van Sant’s new film, Last Days, appears on the surface to be the stuff of a sensationalistic movie of the week. A moody, confused, perhaps drug-adled rock star Blake (Michael Pitt) — who bears more than a coincidental resemblance to Kurt Cobain — wanders aimlessly through a dilapidated mansion just before his end comes. Van Sant’s two previous films, which form a loose trilogy with Last Days, were also torn from the headlines: Gerry was inspired by a newspaper article about […]
by Peter Bowen on Jul 5, 2018 -
Golden Years
In his review of Andrew Haigh’s 2011 drama Weekend, in which two men meet and fall in love over the span of three days, New York Times critic A. O. Scott writes, “Each one, without quite saying so, is grappling with basic questions about love and identity. What can I mean to another person? Whom do I want to be with? Who do I want to be?” In Haigh’s new film, 45 Years, Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay are a couple about to celebrate their 45th anniversary for whom these same questions prove as necessary — and the answers as […]
by Peter Bowen on Oct 28, 2015 -
Silver Anniversary: The IFP Gotham Awards at 25
The IFP Gotham Awards celebrate their 25th anniversary this November with a ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street. Along with awards going to the top independent films of the year, the Gothams will present Tribute Awards to Robert Redford, Helen Mirren, Todd Haynes and Steve Golin. Here, Peter Bowen culls the archives of IFP, Filmmaker’s publisher and parent organization, to find 25 memorable moments from the Gotham’s history of celebrating New York and independent filmmaking. 1991 The Cost of Film In 1991, IFP executive director Catherine Tait stood before a seated crowd of some 400 people at Roseland to explain what […]
by Peter Bowen on Oct 28, 2015 -
All Tomorrow’s Yesterdays: Remembering Alain Resnais (1922 – 2014)
One of cinema’s greats, the French director Alain Resnais, died yesterday, March 1, at the age of 91. The director of such landmark films as Last Year at Marienbad, Hiroshima, Mon Amour, and Night and Fog, he premiered his latest film, Life of Riley, just one month ago at the Berlin Film Festival. In 2000, coinciding with a retrospective organized by both the American Cinematheque and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Peter Bowen wrote the following short essay, and we collected appreciations from three independent directors — Christopher Munch, Keith Gordon and Radley Metzger. It is reprinted below. Perhaps […]
by Peter Bowen on Mar 2, 2014 -
Christian Marclay’s The Clock
Christian Marclay’s The Clock returns to New York beginning tomorrow, July 13, through August 1 at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center. For details click here, and note that on the weekends the installation will run 24 hours. At special Twitter account, @LCClock, will post wait times. The following piece appeared in our Fall, 2011 issue. Christian Marclay’s The Clock video installation is many things. Structurally it is a 24-hour video installation in which film clips from across the history of cinema are meticulously edited together so that the fictional time inside each clip matches exactly the time at […]
by Peter Bowen on Jul 12, 2012 -
‘Til the End of Time
While the title of Eve Sussman’s (and her collaborative team Rufus Corporation’s) whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir –– shown as part of New Frontiers at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival –– refers to a seminal abstract artwork dealing with space, the video itself is all about time. In fact, this experimental piece’s apparent story about an American geophysicist named Holz (Jeff Wood) working in a post-Soviet industrial metropolis called City-A has no fixed time at all. That’s because the sum of the video’s parts aren’t just greater than the whole –– there is no whole. Through an algorithm, which Sussman has dubbed “the Serenity […]
by Peter Bowen on Jan 17, 2012 -
What Lies Beneath: David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method
Originally published in the Fall 2011 issue. David Cronenberg is a Tribute honoree at this year’s Gotham Independent Film Awards. A Dangerous Method opens in theaters Nov. 23. David Cronenberg’s new film A Dangerous Method is a period piece dealing with the personal and historical relationship between Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightly). It’s a work that in some ways feels out of place in the Canadian filmmaker’s filmography, and in other ways, perfectly Cronenbergian. The screenplay by Christopher Hampton (who also penned a stage play from which this was developed) is meticulously […]
by Peter Bowen on Nov 22, 2011
