Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Trailer Watch: Brian Vincent’s ’80s NYC Art World Doc, Make Me Famous
Currently boasting 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and heading into its second weekend in New York theaters is Brian Vincent‘s Make Me Famous, a self-distributed documentary about the 1980s New York art world centered around painter Edward Brezinski. A notable figure from the era that spawned Nan Goldin, Jean-Michel Basquiat and David Wojnarowicz, he never attained their level of recognition and subsequently disappeared — a disappearance the filmmakers try to solve. From the press materials: A madcap romp through the 1980’s NYC art scene amid the colorful career of painter, Edward Brezinski, hell-bent on making it. What begins as an investigation […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 26, 2023 -
Some Thoughts on the Apple Vision Pro
Each Friday I write an original Editors Letter as part of the free Filmmaker newsletter. Always original and not usually archived on the site, the letters consist of essays, thoughts, recommendations and sometimes even early versions of pieces that appear later here. This week I wrote about the Apple Vision Pro and am reposting that piece in updated form here. To subscribe for free to the Filmmaker newsletter, click here. If you watched any of Apple’s WWDC keynote on Monday, or saw any of its videos, and thought that its new AR headset, the Apple Vision Pro, looked like science […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 10, 2023 -
“It is Like a Story From a Database That We Are All Implicated In”: Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Toshiaki Ozawa on Their DNA-Themed Short Film, T3511
Art and biology coexist in the work of artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg, who has created images — film, video, sculptural — as well as multimedia performance and process-oriented work that animate with emotional complexity increasingly urgent questions around identity and personal freedom. Much of her work uses DNA as both subject and artistic material, with the artist working herself with genome sequencing and DNA collection as well as exploring the implications of this same work being commodified at scale through consumer-facing companies like 23andMe. What’s particularly noteworthy are the emotional valences she brings to these questions. Neither a techno-thrillseeker or a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 7, 2023 -
“I Wanted You To Feel Like These Kids Need a Tetanus Shot By the End of It”: Weston Razooli on His Cannes-Premiering Neo-Fairy-Tale Adventure, Riddle of Fire
Weston Razooli’s debut feature, Riddle of Fire, premiering in the Cannes Film Festival’s Director’s Fortnight, begins with a charming and clever premise. After we watch a trio of masked kid adventurers steal a video game console from a warehouse, escaping from the pursuing security guard on their dirt bikes, they’re unable to play it. One of their moms has placed a parental lock on the TV, and, recovering from an illness, she’ll only give them the password if they get her a blueberry pie — something her own mom used to give her when she was sick as a child. […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 26, 2023 -
13 Films to Anticipate at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival
With the Cannes Film Festival underway and Vadim Rizov and Blake Williams readying their first dispatches, here, from our team, are 13 films that we think should be on your radar here on the Croisette. Asteroid City. Following Moonrise Kingdom and The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson’s newest film is his third to premiere at Cannes. Asteroid City boasts a typically sprawling ensemble cast of both returning regulars (Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe) and high-profile new additions (including Tom Hanks and Scarlett Johansson). While the thematic elements are familiar—dead and disappointing parents, extremely ambitious playwrights and a dedicated elementary school […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 17, 2023 -
New York State Budget Includes Expansion of Film and Television Tax Credits
New York state’s just-passed fiscal year 2024 budget includes an expansion of the New York Film Tax Credit, Governor Kathy Hochul announced yesterday. The amount allocated to the program has been raised substantially, from $420 million per year to $700 million. Additionally, the base credit, which was reduced to 25% in 2020, has been raised to its prior level of 30%. And within the details are other significant changes. For the first time, the New York credit will apply to above-the-line costs. Salaries of writers, directors, “specific producers,” actors, and composers will be eligible for the credit, capped at $500,000 […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 4, 2023 -
Binaural Recording, Room Tone, and Voices from the Past: Sam Green on His Documentary 32 Sounds
When it came time to title his 2018 documentary about The Kronos Quartet, director Sam Green chose A Thousand Thoughts. Referring to an older Kronos composition, the title also spoke to the film’s approach, which was to use the music and biography of the Bay Area classical group to summon up a range of allusive meditations on ephemerality, culture, legacy and death. For his latest documentary, ostensibly about the much larger and more amorphous topic of “sound,” Green has gone in the numerically opposite direction. 32 Sounds, which opens today at New York’s Film Forum, announces itself as a sort […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 28, 2023 -
Filmmaker Issue #122 Out Now (Along With a Flash Subscription Sale)
Filmmaker‘s issue #122 is arriving in mailboxes and at newsstands now, and in conjunction we’ve launched a Spring Subscription sale until Sunday. For the first time, we’re discounting our print and digital subscriptions by 50%. A one-year digital subscription — which includes our archives back to 2007 — is just $5. In the US, a print subscription is just $9. Both subscriptions include access to all paywalled content as well as Filmmaker on Exact Editions, which offers fantastic browser and tablet reading. (Check out a sample issue here.) Your subscriptions help underwrite all of our editorial content, including on the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 29, 2023 -
Filmmaker Seeks New Media and Audio Writers
At Filmmaker, we are seeking freelance writers to cover new media — AR, VR, XR, the metaverse, AI-generated work, etc. — as well as audio (podcasts, etc). Opportunities exist for regular print columns as well as web columns and one-off web pieces. Ideal writers will have published writing samples and deep knowledge of these topics and be able to cover them from a Filmmaker style, which is to mix critical appraisals with insights into the production, technical and financing issues that affect both individual works and the respective fields. If you feel you qualify and would like to pitch or […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 21, 2023 -
Case Study: Dramarama
At the end of the 2000s, Jonathan Wysocki went to both the Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Labs, then spent years on projects that would assemble pieces of financing before falling apart. All the while, he watched colleagues from those labs launch Kickstarter campaigns and make ultra-low-budget debuts. Deciding to take a similar approach, at the start of 2019, he raised $62,000 on the crowdfunding platform and an additional $180,000 in private equity and was shooting his first feature, Dramarama, by summer. Of course, as the timeline above suggests, Wysocki’s picture will forever be asterisked in the independent film distribution history […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 16, 2023
