Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Ira Glass Still Hates Producing
One of my favorite Filmmaker video interviews is one from 2012 where, spontaneously, This American Life creator Ira Glass goes on a rant about the job of film producer. As you can see and hear above, his jeremiad is both passionate and quite specific — Glass is not going off about a job he hasn’t done. No, anyone whose name sits — or deserves to sit — above-the-line on a call sheet will recognize the laundry list of tediums and indignities that comprise a substantial chunk of the glamorous job of the producer. But, as noted above, Glass gave this […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 24, 2017 -
Watch (and Look): Teaser and Poster for LAFF Premiere, Everything Beautiful is Far Away
Several 25 New Faces — directors Andrea Sisson and Pete Ohs as well as star Julia Garner — grace the Los Angeles Film Festival premiere, Everything Beautiful is Far Away, which screens tonight at 9:10 PM. Here’s the festival capsule: Traveling across a barren landscape, Lernert digs through piles of rubbish in an attempt to build a body for his companion, Susan, the unresponsive robot head who hangs from the back of his pack. The pair come across Rola, a spirited young woman who lacks survival skills but makes up for the deficiency with sheer determination. This unlikely trio navigates […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 21, 2017 -
Parting Shot: Naomi Ackie
“A cheerful lass around town” is how actress Naomie Ackie describes herself on her Twitter account. It’s an ingratiatingly modest introduction that belies the sense of discovery surrounding this British actress who makes her feature debut in William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth. Ackie, who studied at London’s Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, had a career in U.K. television (Doctor Who is a notable credit) before she was cast by Oldroyd to play the quietly observant maid in his microbudget adaptation of Nikolai Leskov’s 1865 Russian novella, a role she imbues with an unexpected power. The success of the film […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 16, 2017 -
Editor’s Letter
As a number of our filmmaker readers wrap up classes and prepare to head into their senior year, whether high school or college, the question of film school arises. What’s the utility of film school in a time in which the very notion of film — or, perhaps, work within the film industry — is changing so much? This issue, Filmmaker brings you a suite of articles looking at a number of issues facing film schools — and, by extension, their students — today. Calum Marsh considers a number of broad trends affecting schools in this time of disruption, from […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 16, 2017 -
Pedagogical Praxis
George Bernard Shaw’s famous adage, “Those who do do, those who can’t, teach. He can do, does. He who cannot, teaches,” fails when it comes to film schools. Scratch the surface of most film school faculty lists, and you’ll find filmmakers who not only do but are also doing. Developing scripts, raising financing and shooting while on sabbatical, university-ensconced independent filmmakers have one foot in the ivory tower and one foot in the shape-shifting world that is today’s independent film production. Inevitably, then, they bring their hard-fought wisdom into the classroom, which means they must also grapple with one tough […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 16, 2017 -
All Day and a Night: Josh and Benny Safdie on Good Time
I’m in the Safdie brothers’ office in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, looking at a giant Japanese King of New York poster, and we’re talking about fired FBI director James Comey, whose awkward dinner with Donald Trump has just hit the news. “The guy is 6 foot, 8 inches,” Benny says. Or maybe it’s Josh. My tape recorder isn’t turned on yet, and the two talk rapid-fire, trading sentence fragments and out-exclaiming each other. “And he refused to play basketball with Obama! The one president who played basketball, Comey would be the tallest guy on the court, and he didn’t want […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 16, 2017 -
Eleven Recommended Titles at BAMCinemafest 2017
BAMcinemafest, the Brooklyn presenting organization’s annual festival of top new American independent films, kicked off last night with Aaron Katz’s stylish L.A. murder mystery Gemini and runs through the 24th, with Alex Ross Perry’s Golden Exits as closing night film. The festival, which gains stature and momentum every year, mixes a fair swatch of local NYC auteurs with out-of-towners whose work strikes allied notes of idiosyncratic auteurism. Below, from myself and Vadim Rizov, are a series of picks and capsule reviews for recommended films in this year’s edition. Princess Cyd. Stephen Cone’s fifth feature is his first not grounded in […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 15, 2017 -
Making Rent in Bed-Stuy at the Metrograph
Brandon Harris — whose insightful, politically sagacious and ruefully funny blend of memoir and criticism has graced the pages of the New Yorker, n+1 and Filmmaker, where you’ll recognize him as a Contributing Editor — has just released his debut book, Making Rent in Bed-Stuy, a cultural memoir on neighborhoods, race, millennial culture and filmmaking. Appropriately, he has also programmed a series of relevant films this weekend at New York’s Metrograph Theater. Running through the 12th, the films include Spike Lee’s Crooklyn (next to Do the Right Thing my favorite 40 Acres joint, actually), Jay-Z: Fade to Black, and Sebastián Silva’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 9, 2017 -
Watch: All of David Lynch’s Bizarre and Beautiful TV Commercials
With his new Twin Peaks: The Return scrambling our minds every Sunday, we at Filmmaker are experiencing a collective case of the feels for David Lynch these days. Giving us our fix until Episode Six streams this weekend is this video of Lynch’s television commercials compiled by Jeff Keeling. As with many directors, Lynch directed many of his best short TV spots for overseas brands, so look for work here like a Twin Peaks tie-in spot for Japan’s Georgia coffee that I, at least, have never seen before. A complete list of commercials included is below. (I venture to say […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 9, 2017 -
Explosive Memories: Five Questions for Dawson City: Frozen Time Director Bill Morrison
The poetics of decomposition are the haunting, thrilling and, in the case of his latest feature, Dawson City: Frozen Time, historically revelatory stuff of the cinema of Bill Morrison. In varying degrees and across films like The Miner’s Hymn, The Great Flood and Decasia — the latter dubbed “the best film ever made” by Errol Morris — Morrison has made the excavation of lost cinematic images both an informative and sensory-impactful experience. In the new Dawson City: Frozen Time, Morrison both dramatizes and draws upon the discovery of over 500 silent era films found iced and buried in a swimming […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 9, 2017
