Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Harmony Korine in the Paris Review, World/Life Boundaries, H.P. Lovecraft, Coding, Film Locations and More: Sunday Links
On the rerelease of his collage novel, A Crackup at the Race Riots, Harmony Korine is interviewed by Christopher Higgs at the Paris Review. Here, Korine describes the process that created the book 15 years ago: At that point in my life I had no idea how to contain my ideas. The creative process was more explosive for me. And I didn’t have a filter, and I didn’t try to filter anything, as much as just try to get stuff down. So, I would just write everywhere. I would wake up in the morning and hear a conversation on the […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 12, 2013 -
David Foster Wallace’s This is Water Turns Viral Video
The L.A.-based production house The Glossary created this homage to writer David Foster Wallace, condensing and illustrating his celebrated Kenyon College commencement speech into nine or so minutes — and scoring over two million YouTube views in the process. Comprised of director Matthew Freidell and producers Allison Freidell and Jeremy Dunning, producer, The Glossary self-funded this video without obtaining rights to Wallace’s audio. In an interview with Ad Week, the trio describe the video as “a passion project” and say that “sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.” And while the video was prompted by Matthew’s love of […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 10, 2013 -
The Independent Screenwriter: Larry Gross
“The independent screenwriter” — is the term a tautology or oxymoron? While the word “independent” is often applied to directors and sometimes producers, it’s rarely seen appended to the job title of screenwriter. Is that because so many independent directors write their own scripts? Because screenwriters-for-hire are inevitably drawn to the world of Hollywood? Or, perhaps, because the term means little when applied to the craft of screenwriting? After all, while a director is reliant on others to provide financing and labor, a writer can always sit down with pen, paper or word processor. In this new, occasional column, we […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 8, 2013 -
Solving Storytelling Problems at Tribeca Hacks
Technology-centered hackathons identify real-world problems and then attempt to solve them through rapid prototyping. Artistic hackathons — 48-Hour Playwriting contests and the like — use compressed time periods to stave off creators’ perennial demons (procrastination, usually manifested by a compulsive desire to clean one’s apartment). But hackathons that merge the creative with the artistic pose unique challenges. There’s the artistic element, the technology element and then also the fusion of the two, which is actually a third thing entirely. Storytelling craft, choice of content but also appropriateness and originality of UI and methods of engagement all become the criteria by […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 7, 2013 -
Letters from Blocked Filmmakers: Jessica Vale
Although the title of this column may make you think of “writer’s block,” filmmakers can be blocked by external forces as well as internal ones. In last week’s post, Drew Whitmire wrote about the internal factors — a relentless perfectionism and self-questioning — that have prevented him from finishing his first film. In today’s post, Jessica Vale writes about a series of events that brought her to Liberia to shoot footage about a medical mission there, a trip that led her to then embark on a larger feature documentary. But a number of factors stopped that feature in its tracks […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 7, 2013 -
Big Data and the 25 Best Film Schools
Big Data — the term is everywhere right now. Sometimes used as a shorthand for the companies that are in the business of collecting, aggregating and sifting through large data sets (often comprised of personal info), it more properly refers to the data sets themselves — collections of information so gigantic they require advanced technologies to interpret. There’s much creepy potential in Big Data, but it is here to stay. The question, then, is whether the technologies of Big Data can be marshaled for progressive and creative goals. At Arts Fwd, Erinn Roos-Brown argues that arts organizations can learn from […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 6, 2013 -
Ted Hope Offers 17 Facts About the Film Business
At his Hope for Film blog, producer and San Francisco Film Society executive director identifies and speculates on 17 current conditions of the film business, prompting us to consider how we’ll consequently evolve our own practices to take them into account. The post accompanies the launch of the SFFS’s A2E (Artist 2 Entrepreneur) program, a new pilot program “designed to give filmmakers the necessary entrepreneurial skills to achieve a sustainable creative life amidst this changing paradigm.” (It was this weekend, but you can read the schedule here.) I’m particularly interested in Hope’s point number four, below, in which he writes […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 5, 2013 -
The Kids from Kids, Savages, the Internet, Screenwriting, Soderbergh, Mellow Pages and More: Sunday Links
For Narratively, Carolyn Rothstein revisits the kids from Kids, 20 years later, in “Legends Never Die.” Chloe Sevigny and Rosario Dawson are stars, Justin Pierce and Harold Hunter have passed away, and the others are living their lives in diverse and at times unexpected ways. As her interviewees tell it, Kids was not just about people but a city: The kids say the film was accurate, except for the most fantastical stuff. There’s no denying they weren’t sober during filming. Even the scene with Javier Nunez, at fourteen, by far the youngest of the skate crew, and three other little […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 5, 2013 -
Scorsese, De Niro, Lewis and Bernhard Recall The King of Comedy
“Look at this world we’re living in,” a videotaped Sandra Bernhard said Sunday at the Borough of Manhattan Community Center Theater. “It’s a shit show! Whatever we presented in The King of Comedy went so far beyond our wildest expectations that [the movie] seems almost homespun.” The occasion was the closing night of the 12th Tribeca Film Festival and its screening of Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, restored in luscious 4K and attended by the director, star (and Tribeca co-founder) Robert De Niro, and, in a surprise appearance, Jerry Lewis, who plays the film’s aggrieved and assaulted late-night talk […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 1, 2013 -
Letters from Blocked Filmmakers: Drew Whitmire
Independent films get made, often miraculously, and we cover those films here at Filmmaker. But what about all those other projects that never, despite the best of intentions, make it through production, much less hit theaters? In this new series, “Letters from Blocked Filmmakers,” we’ll be hearing from directors who have struggled for years to realize their films only to come up short. Is the system to blame? Bad luck? Themselves? I’ll let the filmmakers answer these questions in their own words. I’m happy to be opening this series with this letter from Drew Whitmire, who has been attempting to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 30, 2013
