Authors — Scott Macaulay

WOUTER BARENDRECHT FILM FOUNDATION ESTABLISHED

A condolence register has been established for Wouter Barendrecht, who passed away suddenly this past weekend. You can post your thoughts and memories of Wouter, who was a real force in international cinema, and you can also find details about a newly formed Wouter Barendrecht Film Foundation. Here is the statement found on the page: To honour Wouter’s memory, a foundation has been established today, the goal of which will be to discover and support new filmmaking talent around the globe. While Wouter loved flowers, we would ask that if you want to honour him, a contribution to the Wouter […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 6, 2009
WOUTER BARENDRECHT, 1965 – 2009

I was stunned to receive a call from a friend this afternoon telling me that Wouter Barendrecht, co-chairman of the top arthouse international sales and production company Fortissimo Films, died suddenly this weekend in Bangkok. Wouter has been a bedrock of international art film distribution as long as I have been in the film business. His exquisite taste, championing of auteurs new and established, business savvy, uncanny networking ability and indefatigable good cheer at the festivals he seemed to effortlessly navigate were all things anyone who worked in world cinema strived to emulate. This is a devastating loss, for both […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 5, 2009
ADVENTURELAND DIRECTOR GREG MOTOLLA ON ’80S MUSIC, SUPERBAD FAME, AND VIRGINITY

With Adventureland hitting theaters today, here’s a reminder that Nick Dawson’s interview with director Greg Mottola is up now on our home page and in our Winter, 2009 issue, which leaves newsstands in about a week. Here’s an excerpt: Filmmaker: The main character is very sexually inexperienced, and in a way this is almost like The 40-Year-Old Virgin except that, unlike Judd Apatow‘s movie, James being a virgin is something we sympathize with rather than make fun of. Motolla: It was a somewhat different time 20 years ago, obviously, but there was a lot of discussion about whether to keep […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 3, 2009
KEIRA KNIGHTLEY, JOE WRIGHT CREATE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AD

Atonement director Joe Wright and star Keira Knightley have teamed to create a powerful ad attacking domestic violence that will premiere in U.K. theaters April 6. The film, entitled Cut, was produced by the British charity Women’s Aid and is part of a new U.K. domestic violence awareness campaign. As The Guardian reports, the agency that produced the clip, Grey London, is still negotiating with British broadcasters over inclusion of the film’s violent content. Commented Knightley: “I wanted to take part in this advert for Women’s Aid because while domestic violence exists in every section of society we rarely hear […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 2, 2009
WHY THE RECESSION COULD BE GOOD FOR FILMMAKERS

There are many reasons why the current recession is bad for films and filmmakers. Venture capital is drying up; lacking stock portfolio gains, individual investors don’t have the “mad money” that once fueled indie film production; and the entertainment conglomerates are cutting back by axing the specialty divisions that were the buyers for our films. However, there are reasons why which the recession may turn out to be a good thing for filmmakers, and some of these are the same reasons I just listed above. At the Steady Diet of Film blog, Erin Donovan posts, “Why the financial collapse is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 1, 2009
THE LATEST COMMERCIAL FROM ERROL MORRIS

We at Filmmaker are big fans of Errol Morris, who we have interviewed numerous times and have placed on our cover. Morris is a very successful commercials director (that’s part of what enables his ambitious doc work), and we’ve linked to some of his TV spots before too. So, in the interests of completeness, we embed his latest, a commercial directed with his customary real-person adeptness for Depends. The folks at AdGrabber, who picked this up, seem to be perplexed by Morris’s approach, though. “Many brands use analogies to help explain their product features and benefits. Even makers of diapers […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 31, 2009
STOPGAP FUNDING FOR NY FILM TAX INCENTIVE PROPOSED

An additional $350 million for the New York State Film Production Tax Credit program has been found to continue supporting the state’s popular film and TV tax incentives. The funds were announced as part of the budget that was proposed today; however, given that last year the state issued $460 million in film and TV tax incentives and that this new $350 million is capped, it’s clearly a stopgap motion for the program. The lack of long-term visibility means that TV shows in particular will be wary of setting up shop in New York for fear that the program will […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 30, 2009
STEVEN BACH, R.I.P.

William Grimes in the New York Times reports that Steven Bach, former U.A. studio executive and author of Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven’s Gate has died of cancer at the age of 70. As an exec he was associated with such films as Annie Hall, Cutter and Bone, and True Confessions, but he is perhaps best remembered for Final Cut. Says critic David Thomson in the Times obit: “It is the best book ever written about the making of a movie. It gives you an understanding of the battles, the egos, and how a film […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 29, 2009
IS TWITTER PUBLIC OR PRIVATE SPEECH?

Mark Cuban asks on his blog the question, “Are Tweets Copyrighted?” Wondering whether republishing a tweet violates copyright law, Cuban puts a legal spin on something that I wondered when I joined the service recently. In fact, the first day I was on I tweeted (?) the following: “Wondering: is Twitter quotable outside the Twitterverse? Or is that bad nettiquette?” The response I got was that tweets are public speech and yes, people can quote them. Funnily, this made sense to me even though I do think copyright law generally prevents people from quoting in full. In other words, I […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 29, 2009
DO YOU PAY BY THE WORD?

At GreenCine Aaron Hillis spies a freelance opportunity for some kind of film critic and relays this ad on Craigslist: Hi, We just finished a film and need to buy a one sentence quote from someone who calls himself a film critic. Thanks. Hillis writes: Now, in my relatively brief tenure as a full-time journalist, I’ve had my share of unprofessional favors asked of me, including one that permanently estranged a years-long camaraderie because I refused to watch a friend-of-a-friend’s movie with the explicit purpose of giving a pullquote for their forthcoming DVD. Yet while I laugh at the above […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 29, 2009

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