Authors — Scott Macaulay
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“It’s Really Sharp on the Neurotic Relationships that Americans Have with Money”: Robin Schavoir and Paul Felten Discuss The Jag
The titular sports car of Robin Schavoir’s The Jag is parked in an imaginary space off-stage at the Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research, where the play is currently running in a production directed by Paul Felten. The existence of this symbolic object structures the matrix of resentment, envy and desire searchingly embodied by The Jag‘s on-stage trio: struggling screenwriter Tyler (Gilles Geary), rich guy art collector Brian (Mickey Solis), and nursing student Cori (Giovanna Drummond). (A fourth character, the renter of the Catskills home the three converge at, and voiced by a “downtown icon,” is only heard via recited emails […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 27, 2025 -
“Fire is Like Sex — Neither Good Nor Bad But What You Bring To It”: Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens on Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency
In the first two films in their trilogy of environmental-themed documentaries, Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle married — literally — their loving spirit of “ecosexuality” with urgent debates around the preservation of our natural resources. In 2014’s Goodbye Gauley Mountain — An Ecosexual Love Story, Stephens returned to her West Virginia home with Sprinkle only to find the eponymous ridges she remembered from her youth undergoing the environmentally-destructive coal-mining process of mountaintop removal. In the film, as Wren Awry wrote for Filmmaker, Stephens says, “Sometimes I feel like fighting [mountaintop removal] is a losing battle. Then I imagine that some […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 23, 2025 -
Free Webinar: CRISIS/OPPORTUNITY: Four New Innovative Distributors Rethinking the Indie Model
8 Above’s June webinar, co-sponsored by Filmmaker Magazine, profiles four new adventurous and innovative distributors that have emerged on the US independent film scene. Join Scott Macaulay (Filmmaker) and Jon Reiss for a conversation with Elizabeth Woodward (Willa), Munir Atalla (Watermelon Pictures), Elizabeth Purchell (Muscle Distribution), and Theodore Schaefer & James Belfer (Cartuna x Dweck). 🎤 What The Webinar Will Cover How each company approaches curation, audience building, and community engagement What makes these new distribution models unique—and replicable How filmmakers can find the right fit for their work in a shifting ecosystem Whether you’re prepping for a release, scouting […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 21, 2025 -
Filmmaker ‘s New Issue and News from Our Editor-in-Chief
Every Friday I write a free newsletter that’s a riff on various topics — filmmaker sustainability, the health of our ecosystem, new players and ideas, the plight of the producer, the rise of AI and more are frequent subjects. This week, I used the newsletter to announce two upcoming events, our new issue, and my news that after the next issue in September I’ll be stepping down as Editor-in-Chief after 33 years. Read all of this below, and if you’d like to sign up to the newsletter, which I’ll be writing for almost three more months, you can do so […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 20, 2025 -
Going Up: Knoxville’s Elev8or Pitch Competition
With submissions currently open for the 2025 Elev8tor Pitch Competition at FILM FEST KNOX (deadline July 9!), we’re unpaywalling Scott Macaulay’s article on the program from Filmmaker’s Summer, 2025 print edition. — Editor There’s a familiar ritual when you arrive at a film festival: check into your hotel, AirbnB or friend’s couch, pick up your lanyard and head to the opening night event. Most often, that event is an out-of-competition, relentlessly inoffensive opening night film provided by a sponsor that stimulates polite but limited conversation at the afterparty. I’ve participated in that ritual so many times that I was pleasantly […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 18, 2025 -
Editor’s Letter
Welcome to the summer 2025 edition of Filmmaker. As that sentence connotes, Filmmaker is a quarterly publication, and our publishing cadence is such that, for our print edition (as opposed to the web), we can step outside the frenetic daily news cycle a bit. Yes, we try to sync up the films we feature to their release cycles, but we were happy to make one of our occasional exceptions for Vadim Rizov’s interview with Wes Anderson about The Phoenician Scheme, which will have been in theaters for a few weeks by the time you read this. We’ve been trying to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 18, 2025 -
“You Think You’re Scared of These Creatures, Well, Look Into Our Own Dark Hearts”: Sean Byrne on His Cannes-Premiering Shark Attack Horror Film, Dangerous Animals
For most viewers, sharks and horror cinema were permanently conjoined with Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film Jaws, one of the first wide release summer blockbusters, and one with shocks far more intense than its PG rating would indicate. Today, shark horror has migrated to the small (and vertical) screen, with TikTok’s algorithm serving many of us — me, somewhat inexplicably, included — a never ending gallery of shark attacks, menacing underwater shark approaches and the occasional gliding shark beauty shot. Australian director Sean Byrne’s Cannes-premiering Dangerous Animals confidently mines these lingering fears and fascinations as it mashes up the shark horror […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 17, 2025 -
“A Redemption Story That Gets Derailed By a Revenge Story”: Ariella Mastroianni and Ryan J. Sloan on Gazer
There are a set of rules that have long-guided ultra-low and microbudget production. Lots of daylight exteriors, one or two central locations (to minimize company moves and location rental cost), a small cast, no stunts, no child actors and a compressed shooting schedule. If today it’s not uncommon to see a 24-day schedule on films of $12 million, and most independents with sub $3-million budgets are boarded between 18 and 24 days, a filmmaker considering their first ultra-low-budget picture should think about going even lower, to 11 or 12 days, even. And, of course, shooting digital is probably the economically […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 19, 2025 -
“The Biggest Challenge Was That Janis Has Led an Incredibly Interesting and Varied Life”: Director Varda Bar-Kar on Janis Ian: Breaking Silence
Even if you don’t count yourself has a diehard Janis Ian fan, the singer-songwriter’s songs, such as her 1967 hit “Society’s Child,” when they appear in Varda Bar-Kar’s compelling bio-doc, Janis Ian: Breaking Silence, will strike a memory chord, so ubiquitous they have been across radio playlists for more than half a century. It’s a real strength of Bar-Kar’s film, which is organized around several of Ian’s most memorable albums, including the eponymous 1993 release, that she weaves these compositions into a rich fabric that places Ian’s personal life story — her coming out, her relationship with and 2003 marriage […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 7, 2025 -
Seven Documentary Organizations Sign Letter Decrying DOGE National Endowment for the Humanities Cuts
Seven filmmaker support organizations, including the International Documentary Association, Women Make Movies and Third World Newsreel, have signed a letter protesting Trump administration cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities that will affect both independent documentary filmmakers and non-profit organizations. In addition to funds for future grants, the administration is rescinding grants awarded during the Biden administration — monies that filmmakers and organizations had already planned to spend. The New York Times reported today: Starting late Wednesday night, state humanities councils and other grant recipients began receiving emails telling them their funding was ended immediately. Instead, they were told, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 4, 2025
