Director Interviews
-
Hal Hartley, Fay Grim
PARKER POSEY IN HAL HARTLEY’S FAY GRIM. COURTESY MAGNOLIA PICTURES. For a period in the 1990s, Hal Hartley was one of a group of directors, along with Jim Jarmusch and John Sayles, who really defined what American indie filmmaking was all about. Hartley’s Trust (1990), Simple Men (1992) and Amateur (1994), set in the suburbs of Long Island but seen from Hartley’s unique perspective, were idiosyncratic, literate films which set the bar high for other writer-directors aiming to portray contemporary American life. Since the mid-90s, though, Hartley has broadened his focus, both thematically and geographically: Flirt (1995) told love stories […]
-
Christoffer Boe, Allegro
ULRICH THOMSEN IN CHRISTOFFER BOE’S ALLEGRO. COURTESY INTERNATIONAL FILM CIRCUIT. Christoffer Boe likes Cannes. After graduating from the Danish Film School in 2001, his student film Anxiety played at the 2002 festival, where it won a prize from French critics, and then Boe returned to the Croisette the following year with his debut feature, Reconstruction. A dazzlingly inventive and playful film, Reconstruction‘s tale of love and parallel universes in Copenhagen beguiled critics and was awarded both the Camera D’Or and the Prix Regards Jeune. Boe was celebrated as international cinema’s most precocious wunderkind, and his film played all around the […]
-
Oren Rudavski, The Treatment
IAN HOLM AND CHRIS EIGEMAN IN OREN RUDAVSKY’S THE TREATMENT. COURTESY NEW YORKER FILMS. After studying at Oberlin College and NYU Film School, director and cinematographer Oren Rudavsky carved out a niche for himself in filmmaking: if you have seen a documentary about Judaism made in the last 20 years, most likely Rudavsky was involved in it. He has made numerous documentaries for television, many of them Jewish-themed, and has recently graduated to making documentary features, with notable success. The highly-praised A Life Apart (1997), an examination of the Hasidic lifestyle in America co-directed by Rudavsky with Menachem Daum (and […]
-
Ray Lawrence, Jindabyne
GABRIEL BYRNE AND LAURA LINNEY IN RAY LAWRENCE’S JINDABYNE. COURTESY SONY PICTURES CLASSICS. Ray Lawrence pulled one of world cinema’s most surprising disappearing acts. His debut film, Bliss (1985), an adaptation of Peter Carey’s novel co-written by Lawrence and Carey himself, played in competition at Cannes, garnered rave reviews and dominated the Australian film awards. Lawrence joined Peter Weir, Fred Schepisi and Bruce Beresford as an Australian director worthy of global attention – but then did not make another film for 16 years. However, when his sophomore effort, Lantana, finally came out in 2001, it cemented Lawrence as one of […]
-
Edgar Wright, Hot Fuzz
Brit Edgar Wright’s film career began when, straight out of college, he wrote and directed his ultra-low budget debut feature, A Fistful of Fingers (1994), an affectionate comedic homage to spaghetti westerns. The film played a few festivals, and was enough of a success to get Wright work directing sitcoms and sketch shows, where he worked with many of the best British comic performers around. His friendship with actors Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson resulted in the trio creating Spaced, a television series about the oddball residents of a house in London which achieved cult status. The show, which playfully […]
-
Mike White, Year Of The Dog
MOLLY SHANNON (AND PENCIL) IN MIKE WHITE’S YEAR OF THE DOG. COURTESY PARAMOUNT VANTAGE. Chuck and Buck (2000), an incendiary examination of male sexuality, announced the film’s writer and star, Mike White, as an unusually daring and original talent. His next foray as a screenwriter, The Good Girl (2002), was another subversive take on American life, and all the more refreshing in that it was a studio movie which dared to ask difficult questions and featured a raft of indie stalwarts (plus star Jennifer Aniston). Though White’s subsequent films, Orange County, School of Rock and Nacho Libre (all starring Jack […]
-
Jake Kasdan, The TV Set
JUDY GREER, DAVID DUCHOVNY AND WILLIE GARSON IN JAKE KASDAN’S THE TV SET. COURTESY THINKFILM. Writer-director Jake Kasdan comes from a filmmaking family: his father is Hollywood heavyweight Lawrence Kasdan, director of Body Heat (1981), The Big Chill (1983) and Grand Canyon (1991), and his younger brother Jonathan has just written and directed his first film, In the Land of Women. Jake’s own debut came in 1998, when he wrote and directed the quirky private detective movie Zero Effect, which he followed up in 2002 with Orange County. In between, Kasdan directed several episodes of two high-quality but short-lived Judd […]
-
Scott Frank, The Lookout
JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT AND JEFF DANIELS IN SCOTT FRANK’S THE LOOKOUT. COURTESY MIRAMAX FILMS. Scott Frank is one of Hollywood’s most respected scriptwriters, and now one of its most promising directors. Frank’s first produced script was high school comedy thriller Plain Clothes (1988), but his breakthrough came in 1991 when his original scripts for both Dead Again and Little Man Tate came to the screen. Since then, he has shown great talent at adapting novels: he was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Out of Sight (1998), having already turned another Elmore Leonard novel, Get Shorty (1995), into […]
-
Brian Cook, Color Me Kubrick
JOHN MALKOVICH AS IMPOSTER ALAN CONWAY IN BRIAN COOK’S COLOR ME KUBRICK. COURTESY MAGNOLIA PICTURES. Color Me Kubrick: A True…ish Story is the fascinating story of English conman Alan Conway (flamboyantly portrayed by John Malkovich) who made his career out of impersonating Stanley Kubrick. Conway found out that hardly anyone actually knew what Kubrick looked like, a discovery which led him to take his deception to extravagant, and often ridiculous, extremes. He used his borrowed identity to obtain huge amounts of money and seduce the young and impressionable, and got so immersed in the activities of his affluent alter ego […]
