Authors — Scott Macaulay

TAYLOR GREESON ON MEADOWLARK

Taylor Greeson’s Meadowlark was a happy discovery for me while sitting on this year’s “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” Gotham Award panel. I didn’t know Greeson and hadn’t heard of his film. But I, along with the panel, responded to his formally ambitious mixture of crime-reconstruction film and personal documentary. Here’s the program note. “When I was twelve years old, my brother was murdered, I lost my virginity to a twenty-year-old man, and I was ordained with the priesthood in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.” So begins Meadowlark, Taylor Greeson’s quietly devastating […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 20, 2008
JAKE MAHAFFY ON WELLNESS

Jake Mahaffy is one of my favorite filmmakers in this week’s “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” series this week at MOMA. We selected him as one of our “25 New Faces” in 2005, and I’ve watched his shorts and his Sundance Lab project with interest since. His second feature, Wellness, won the Grand Prize at SXSW this year, and its emotional, political and spiritual themes only become more relevant by the day. Mike Ryan beautifully wrote about the film at Hammer to Nail. An excerpt: One of our greatest American philosophers, William James, writes about the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 20, 2008
INDIES BEHIND THE CAMERA AT SNL

SNL this weekend featured a short film directed by Noah Baumbach and starring the show’s guest host, Paul Rudd, whose very funny Role Models is in theaters now. Costarring Fred Armisen and Bill Hader, upcoming in Greg Mottola’s Adventureland, the film, says Karina Longworth at Spout, is “a cute bit of bromance,” but it’s also a kind of a small-screen mumblecore/indie film reunion. Joe Swanberg, whose in-post feature, Alexander the Last, was produced by Baumbach, was the d.p.; fellow Alexander producer Anish Savjani (Wendy and Lucy) produced; Swanberg and writer/director/actress Amy Seimetz operated the camera; and Guatemalan Handshake director Todd […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 18, 2008
TOM QUINN ON THE NEW YEAR PARADE

The second film in the “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” series this year is Tom Quinn’s Slamdance Grand-Prize-winning The New Year Parade. I asked him the same question I asked filmmaker Nina Paley, below, and here is his answer. The film screens Friday at 6pm and Sunday at 1:30pm at MOMA. While I don’t consider myself a political filmmaker, I think it’s amazing when storytellers capture the time they live in. Whether it be the invasion of Prague in ’68, Charles Burnett capturing Watts in ’77, or a home video of Christmas in ’86, there is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 18, 2008
THE SAME OLD STORY…

There’s not much new in this Bloomberg story about the indie film scene. Too many films have been made, distributors are shutting down, and the whole indie-film economy is out of whack. It’s just another one of these recaps being narrated not in Variety or Filmmaker but in the mainstream business media, and the constant retelling of this tale has to be having an effect on potential film investors. Gone are the stories of filmmakers hitting gold with their low-budget labor-of-loves. Those have been replaced with tales like this one, from the lede: The 55-year-old filmmaker borrowed $170,000 to complete […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 18, 2008
"BEST FILM NOT PLAYING" LAUNCHES WITH SITA SINGS THE BLUES

Beginning this week, on November 20, Filmmaker’s annual collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art and the IFP, the “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You,” unfolds at the museum. Five films we think are among the best that played this past year’s festival circuit and which don’t have, at the moment, distribution will be screened, and there will also be Q&A’s and a panel discussion as well. Thursday night’s opening film is Nina Paley’s wonderful and near-indescribable animated feature, Sita Sings the Blues. Here’s how we describe it in the catalog: Written, directed, and animated by Nina […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 17, 2008
VARIETY: KILLER SELLS STAKE TO GC CORP

Mike Jones has quite a scoop over at Variety‘s The Circuit: Christine Vachon (pictured at left) and Pam Koffler’s Killer Films, producers of such Filmmaker Mag favorites as I’m Not There, Savage Grace and Boys Don’t Cry, has sold a 50% stake in itself to GC Corp, a New York venture capital fund. The plan is for Killer to make bigger budget films, in the $40 – $50 million range, says GC Corp’s Adi Cohen. Cohen along with GC Corp’s Joseph Grinkorn (pictured, below right) will join Killer’s board of directors, and former THINKfilm senior v.p. Randy Manis will become […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 16, 2008
APPLE’S 5 BUCK MOVIES

In a sign of pricing flexibility that could bode well for future indie film titles sold by Apple’s iTunes Movie Store, Apple has just announced a new section called “This Week’s Great Movies for Under $5.” You can download to purchase titles like Basic Instinct, Terminator 2 and St. Elmo’s Fire, among others, for a fiver. It seems to be Apple’s attempt to compete with those cut-rate DVDs sold in bins at the checkout lane of the discount stores, and it points the way towards more elastic pricing of digitally delivered media by Apple.
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 16, 2008
GUS VAN SANT ON MAKING MILK

Several articles from Filmmaker‘s Fall issue are online here on the site, but one piece not included in our online offerings has just been posted on the FilmInFocus site. It’s an interview with Gus Van Sant by Peter Bowen that appeared in the special Gotham Award tribute section, and I think it’s an excellent look into Van Sant’s creative process on his latest film, Milk. And, by the way, the IFP is selling individual tickets to the Gothams this year. More info available here. Two excerpts: Filmmaker: How did your story veer from the historical record? Van Sant: Mostly we […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 13, 2008
BURROWING INTO THE BURROWERS

In the current issue of Filmmaker Karina Longworth reviews this year’s Fantastic Fest, and one of the titles she singles out for praise is J.T. Petty’s The Burrowers. She wrote: For my money, the most impressive film at Fantastic Fest with a studio credit attached was not a Secret Screening, but J.T. Petty’s The Burrowers. A monster film in plot detail only, this period Western plays as a moral drama heavily influenced by Terrence Malick. Unfortunately, the affiliated studio is Lionsgate, who have recently heavily cut back on their support for horror, and thus The Burrowers –– a film as […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 13, 2008

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