Authors — Scott Macaulay

FOLLOW THE MONEY!

I met with a young filmmaker the other day who told me that she couldn’t decide whether she should try to make her film for $2 million, $1 million, $500,000 or even do it no-budget at $150,000. She said she wanted to make sure that whatever she did, her film would make its money back. My response was to recommend that she construct her budget based on the creative and production needs of the film as well as the resources she’s able to tap into. But to bring in the specter of profitability? Well, as I explained, a $150,000 film […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 27, 2005
CINEMAD NO. 9

Sundance and Cinvegas programmer, journalist and very occasional Filmmaker contributor Mike Plante emailed to say that the new issue of his spirited film zine Cinemad is now online. Click on the link for the current issue, which contains interviews with Bruce Conner, Crispin Hellion Glover, Alejandro Jodorowsky and more. Plante also passes on some festival deadlines in his email which I’ll cut and paste below: “Some rad festivals coming up: MadCat Women’s International Film Festival seeks provocative and visionary films and videos directed or co-directed by women. Films can be of any length or genre and produced ANY year. MadCat […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 20, 2005
THREE WITH PRIDE

Over at Movie City Indie, Ray pride has scores of new posts and links up, three of which particularly caught my eye. First, he notes the forthcoming Rubber Johnny, a new short film and 40-page book by the greatest director in the world… er, I mean, the interesting U.K. music video director Chris Cunningham. The film will be scored by Cunningham’s frequent collaborator Aphex Twin. And then there’s an interesting article in the French-language Liberation about how French distribution great Marin Karmitz, citing economic reasons, has unilaterally made the decision to release Gregg Araki’s new film, Mysterious Skin on digital […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 18, 2005
BOLLYWOOD BECKONS INDIES

My friend Bergen Swanson emailed about a film he recently produced in India with Plum Pictures — Rajapur, directed by New York-based Nanda Anand. Here’s more about the film on IFC Insider, including comments from fellow producer Celine Rattray as well as On the Road Production’s Dileep Singh Rathore. On the Road is an India-based service company specializing in bringing foreigners to shoot in India. Writes Andrea Meyer in the article: “Celine Rattray of Plum Pictures (Lonesome Jim), one of the producers of Rajapur, an indie that recently wrapped in Jaisalmer, a town in the Rajasthan Desert, says of the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 13, 2005
HELP “BRUNO”

NYU film student and short filmmaker Sam Goetz worked for a bit in my production office, and I got to watch his odd and original comedy shorts. He’s now working on his final film at NYU, Bruno, the story of a asthmatic, nihillstic bicyclist, Derke, and his polar opposite cousin Bruno, a gentle pianist. Goetz says he’s not sure if the piece is a comedy or a drama because it “changes constantly and radically.” To realize his vision, Goetz is raising money via the web. Check out his website for more about him and his films and for his rather […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 12, 2005
ANDREA DWORKIN

Feminist author and anti-porn crusader Andrea Dworkin died last Friday of complications from surgery. As author Susie Bright writes in her weblog, Dworkin was the first woman to take porn seriously. “She was the one who got us looking at porn with a critical eye,” Bright notes. “She made you feel like you could just stomp into the adult bookstore and seize everything for inspection and a bonfire. The funny thing that happened on the way to the X-Rated Sex Palace was that some of us came to different conclusions that Miss Dworkin. We saw the sexism of the porn […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 11, 2005
TOUCHE, GUYS…

Check out Gawker today for a funny take on what makes Filmmaker different from some other magazine out there..
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 4, 2005
WELCOME BACK, RAY

Our colleague Ray Pride got hit with a particularly lengthy bout of server outage over at this blog at Movie City News. After almost two months, though, he’s back with his typically exhaustive and thought-provoking series of links and postings. Welcome him back by busting his bandwith and clicking above..
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 30, 2005
CUBAN SHOOTS AND SCORES

Listen closely and you’ll hear cheers echoing the corridors of cyberspace. Entrepreneur Mark Cuban, owner of 2929, HDNet, Magnolia Pictures and the Dallas Mavericks, has announced on his blog that following a request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation he’ll be financing Grokster’s legal bills in MGM vs. Grokster, a case that winds up at the Supreme Court this Tuesday. The case revolves around the question of whether or not file-sharing services and peer-to-peer networks can be sued if their technology allows users to download or trade copywritten content. The entertainment industry is hoping to overturn a 1984 verdict in a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 27, 2005
SEX IS COMEDY

Interesting article by Anne Thompson in today’s Hollywood Reporter. Her lead: “You can laugh about it. Fantasize about it. Be punished or killed for it. But what you can’t do is take sex seriously at the movies.” She goes on to examine the box-office fate of a number of sexually provocative serious-minded films and gathers some thoughts by industry types on why eroticism seems to fail in the theatrical marketplace. From producer Peter Guber: “If you spell fun, it sells. Sex inside a comedy candy-coats sex and allows the audience to feel comfortable. Laughter covers up insecurity. Sex sells, but […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 18, 2005

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