Filmmaking

A FIVE SPOT DON’T COME FOR FREE

Tne NYC production community, which, for the purposes of pitching projects and raising money, has gotten used to automatically knocking off 15% from its production budgets may have to revise its spreadsheet calculators. Articles in The New York Times and Gothamist both reference an upsetting development: the New York City tax credit program for film has been a victim of its own success. The $50 million allocated by the legislature for four years of the program has run out in only 13 months and, for now, producers aren’t guaranteed it will be renewed. (It is due to come up for […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 15, 2006 Filmmaking
JARECKI/DENBY DUST-UP

Ray Pride’s column over at Movie City News contains a long interview with Why We Fight director Eugene Jarecki in which he takes issue with David Denby’s recent review of his film: PRIDE: I’m not asking you to respond to this specific review, but I was floored by the incredibly jejune review that David Denby wrote in the New Yorker of Why We Fight. This is merely a collage film; this guy went in with a point to make; this is not true filmmaking. Does that trouble you when a reviewer is so obstinate, so resistant to whatyou’ve made? JARECKI: […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 14, 2006 Filmmaking
THE FIRST $20 MILLION GROSSING SXSW HIT?

Over at the Movie City News “Hot Blog”, David Poland reports on what he predicts could, with the right distributor, become the first big hit to get picked up out of the SXSW Festival. The film is Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, and here’s what Poland has to say about it: First time director Scott Glosserman was here with his entire family for the premiere of Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon. Title sucks. Poster looks like a conventionally crappy cheapo horror film. The only two acting names you’re likely to recognize are Freddy Englund […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 14, 2006 Filmmaking
EARLY BEDTIME

Partizan, the European video company that was a producer of Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep, has posted a video podcast that includes a sequence from the movie, due out later in the year from Warner Independent. As it’s called a “podcast,” I’m hoping that the subscription, now lodged in my iTunes, will reveal further clips and maybe some original short-form work for the podcast medium from this great filmmaker.

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 13, 2006 Filmmaking
VIDAL ON THE OSCARS

Sheerly Avni has an interview with Gore Vidal up on Truthdig.com in which the American author discusses Oscar-nominated films Brokeback Mountain and Capote (both of which he approves of, saying of the latter, “The movie is quite brave about showing somebody who did not have any redeeming characteristics, nor did they pretend he had”). Of Capote himself, Vidal has some choice memories: Oh, Capote. [Sighs.] I spent half a century trying to avoid him, in life, and now suddenly I’m surrounded by him. He was a pathological liar. He couldn’t tell the truth about anything, and he’d make it up […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 12, 2006 Filmmaking
“MAKING MOVIES WITH KIDS IS FUN”

From Takashi Miike’s blog covering the production of his new film (helpfully translated and posted by the folks at Japan Film News): “So what’re ya shooting?” It’s a picture about a fierce battle between Aikawa Sho and a bunch of young boys.?So, half the actors are kids. “I’ve said this before but… is that really safe?” This is a wholesomely violent movie. You can revel in excitement that doesn’t fit within established genres, and after watching it I would like people to discuss human suffering with their mates over a few sakes at their local izakaya. Heh heh heh. Next […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 10, 2006 Filmmaking
OSCAR WINNER, THE MORNING AFTER

Anne Thompson has an interesting profile of Crash producer Cathy Schulman up on Reuters that covers the entirety of Schulman’s career, from her days working at Sundance to her ill-fated partnerships with Mike Ovitz and Bob Yari, and it discusses what’s up at her company, Bulls Eye, post the Oscar win.

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 10, 2006 Filmmaking
WHACK JOBS

The Washington Post runs its obligatory Sopranos story this week with David Segal’s “Death by Script,” a surprisingly entertaining look at the actors whose careers have taken a hit when their characters have been rubbed out on the show. Here’s actor John Fiore describing the events after he received the sad phone call from Sopranos creator David Chase: In an instant, Fiore knew he was a dead man. Well, his character was a dead man, and that meant his “Sopranos” gig was over, which for an actor is like getting whacked for real. Fiore did what anyone confronting a killer […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 9, 2006 Filmmaking
GARRETT SCOTT MEMORIAL

The Flaherty/International Film Seminars sent out an email announcing an informal memorial for Garrett Scott, whose 2002 film Cul de Sac premiered at the 2002 Flaherty Seminar, this Saturday in New York. From their email: “The New York Underground Film Festival will honor him at an informal event from 12pm to 2pm this Saturday, March 11th at Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Ave. at 2nd Street, in the Maya Deren (downstairs) theater. All are invited. A more formal memorial will be held in the coming weeks. We mourn the loss of such a talented artist and warm person.”

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 8, 2006 Filmmaking
SHE IS A PUNK ROCKER

Jack Boulware writes the first but certainly not the last profile of Laura Albert, the pen and voice behind the recently unmasked JT LeRoy. At the least, Boulware’s portrait should banish the term “40-year-old Brooklyn housewife” from articles about the literary hoax and hoaxer. The article traces Albert’s path from the NYC punk scene (she was interviewed for but not featured in Paul Rachman and Steven Blush’s American Hardcore) through her gigs as a cybererotica expert in San Francisco’s proto-dotcom days up through the success of “LeRoy” and his books.

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 8, 2006 Filmmaking

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