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
iPod REDESIGN

“If Microsoft Redesigned the iPod.” Via Stereogum.

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 8, 2006 Filmmaking
GORDON PARKS, 1912 – 2006

Multiple sources are reporting the sad news that pioneering black director and photojournalist Gordon Parks died today in New York. He was 93. In 1969, Parks completed his first film, The Learning Tree, based on his own novel about growing up in Kansas in the 1920s. In doing so, he became the first black American to write and direct a studio motion picture. Later he would go on to achieve commercial success with the seminal “blaxploitation” film Shaft. More recently he appeared in an HBO documentary on his work, Half Past Autumn: The Life and Works of Gordon Parks. His […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 7, 2006 Filmmaking
FILM INDEPENDENT LAUNCHES SITE

Film Independent (formerly the IFP/Los Angeles) has launched their new website. Surf over there for news about the Spirit Awards, the upcoming L.A. Film Festival, and the organization’s other programs. Also up are a series of interviews by Lisa Garibay with folks like Michel Gondry and Capote producer Caroline Baron, winner of this year’s AMC/American Express Producer’s Award.

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 7, 2006 Filmmaking
RETURN OF THE B’S

Gersh agent David Kopple emails to say that he has helped organize what looks like a great event at the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood on Thursday, March 9: a tribute to his grandfather, B-movie producer Jack Broder. Broder was a Russian-Polish immigrant who helped create the distribution company Realart Pictures and who produced 15 low-budget genre pictures in the ’50s and ’60s. The evening features screenings of two of Broder’s films: Kid Monk Baroni, which features Leonard Nimoy in his first starring role as an NYC-gangster-turned boxer, and the comedy Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 7, 2006 Filmmaking
Garrett Scott

I just arrived here in L.A. for the Spirit Awards and was stunned to hear that filmmaker Garrett Scott died yesterday. He was a great documentarian, a thoughtful colleague here in the NYC indie world, and a friend, and this is really an incredible loss. Scott was at the beginning of his career but on the basis of his two docs — Cul de Sac and Occupation: Dreamland, co-directed with Ian Olds — his was a great talent. He was able to synthesize an astutely critical take on contemporary society and politics with a real empathy for his subjects. Watch […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 3, 2006 Filmmaking
FILM SCHOOL ON THE WEB

Defamer performs a public service to film students and would-be studio producers by linking to The Smoking Gun which offers for download the budget for M. Night Shamalayan’s $71.6 million The Village.

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 2, 2006 Filmmaking

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