Authors — Scott Macaulay

FREE MICHAEL MOORE!

On the 4th of July, this link, via Moviecity News is too rich to pass up: “Urge Ashcroft to brand Michael Moore what he really is — a traitor to America!” headlines a petition by Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood found on the Web site Conservative Petitions.com. “Free speech isn’t free when it costs lives,” the Web site says as it argues that Moore’s Farenheit 911 is endangering the lives of our troops. Those who click on the petition will find their names forwarded to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Speaker of the House […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 4, 2004
ARCHTYPAL FILMMAKER

When it comes to independent film careers, there are few more interesting than that of E. Elias Mehrige’s. In 1991 he finished his years-in-the-making Begotten, a Stygian montage of primordial imagery, summarized thusly by Marty Cassady, a reader at Imdb.com: “God disembowels himself with a straight razor. The spirit-like Mother Earth emerges, venturing into a bleak, barren landscape. Twitching and cowering, the Son Of Earth is set upon by faceless cannibals.” Mehrige worked with a tiny crew and hand treated the film to give it a look like it had been around for centuries. The film, which played at underground […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 3, 2004
HANDSHAKE DEAL

Via Pitchfork Media comes this news blurb about The Guatemalan Handshake, an indie film currently shooting in Eastern Pennsylvania starring musician Will Oldham (Palace, Bonnie “Prince” Billy) and directed by Todd Rohal. Previously, Rohal designed the DVD packaging for Dianne Bellino’s short Slitch and, in the process, met Oldham, who starred in that film as well. Writes Pitchfork: “The Guatemalan Handshake — which bears no apparent relation to The Dirty Sanchez, as far as our sources can tell– is presently in production, and follows a 10 year-old boy named Turkeylegs as he searches for his friend Donald (played by Oldham), […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 1, 2004
THE PRODIGAL CRITIC

Congrats — and welcome back to NYC — to Manohla Dargis, who returns, in print at least, to the Big Apple as film critic for the New York Times. She replaces Elvis Mitchell, who left last month, and joins A.O. “Tony” Scott and Stephen Holden. According to Nikki Finke’s piece, Dargis, who is being allowed to stay in L.A., was hired as much for her ability to write longer film think pieces as for her daily reviewing. Dargis has always figured out how to strike that balance between thoughtful ideas and rhetorical provocation, so here’s hoping that the Sunday Arts […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 26, 2004
BASIC BOLLYWOOD INSTINCT

The Asia Times’ Pepe Escobar is always a good read when it comes to the Mid East and the War on Terror, but today’s web edition of the paper contains this interesting story on Girlfriends, a film that seems to be Bollywood’s (delayed) answer to Basic Instinct. Predictably, the film, which deals frankly with a lesbian relationship, is being attacked — violently — by Hindu right-wing organizations seeking a government ban as well as critics and those on the left. The “grade C film” tells the story of a lesbian who falls in love with a man, causing her female […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 20, 2004
RED LIGHT, GREEN LIGHT

There’s a great lead article in Variety this week by Dana Harris and Claude Brodesser — sorry, subscription only — titled “Films Buried Alive.” And although the headline might lead you to think that the piece is about the many long-delayed films on the Miramax release shelf, it’s actually a perceptive article about the politics involved in greenlighting a studio film. It confirms in print something producers have long known: despite the importance placed by studio execs on the development process, the scripts that actually get greenlit by the studios are often the least developed ones. And if there’s one […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 20, 2004
ENEMIES OF THE STATE

Sitting here editing the latest issue of Filmmaker, I came across this interview segment from Andy Bichelbauer, the “Yes Man” featured in Chris Smith’s outrageously entertaining political doc The Yes Men forthcoming this fall from United Artists. The Yes Men are a group of political performance-art provocateurs who infiltrate government and NGO-type events and pose as World Trade Organization officials. But lately the group has been having problems dealing with the implications of the Patriot Act, which broadly construes a variety of behaviors as potentially terrorist acts. Within the art world, the first casualty is that of Steve Kurtz, a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 19, 2004
FREDERIQUE WOULD LIKE TO BE OF HOLLYWOOD

In our effort to present to you, our dear readers, with links and contacts you won’t find elsewhere, I present the following sincere e-mail received by a reader of this blog, who has crafted a Flash animation site promoting both herself and Keanu Reeves and The Matrix: “Hello, first congratulations for your website :-) I present myself: I am a 36 year old young woman, impassioned by the cinema, Internet and Flashmx. I invite you, by the present one, to come to visit my 4 galleries of animated photographs, dedicated to the Matrix trilogy and Mister Keanu Reeves, on the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 17, 2004
CLEAN BRIAN ENO

While writing the blogs below, I’ve been listening to the new CD remaster of Brian Eno’s great Here Come the Warm Jets, which was recently released along with three other Eno classics from the ’70s. Todd Haynes referenced this album in his Velvet Goldmine, and, if anything, it sounds more inventive and emotionally connecting after all these years. All four albums are thoughtfully reviewed at Pitchfork Media, and tracks from two of them — Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) and Before and After Science, along with a couple of other Eno albums, provide most of the soundtrack to Olivier Assayas’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 16, 2004
ROBERT QUINE, 1942 – 2004

Back in 1999, the first film I ever worked on was Raul Ruiz’s The Golden Boat (James Schamus’s first production), and, using some grant money that I raised at my job at The Kitchen, I got my friend John Zorn to do the score. (I ran into Zorn on the street a while ago and he told me he’d score another film of mine if I asked — “But you know the drill,” he said. “I’ll do it, fast, cheap, but I get complete creative control!” Anyway, John did amazing work for not much money, and one of the score’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 16, 2004

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