Columns
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“If You’re Not Scared of an Old Short End, Then You Can Have It”: DP Annika Summerson on Censor
In the early 1980s, as Britain took a rightward turn that mirrored America’s own shift, the country’s bastions of righteousness took aim at the nascent videocassette market. Before home video releases were placed under the purview of the British Board of Film Classification, the job of protecting Britons from gory practical effects fell to the Director of Public Prosecutions. That office ultimately compiled a list of 72 films it believed were in violation of the country’s Obscene Publications Act. Films on the list became known as “video nasties.” Cinematographer Annika Summerson has seen her fair share of them. That’s largely […]
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“We Were Among the First Shows to Restart”: DP Ben Richardson on Mare of Easttown
When I spoke to cinematographer Ben Richardson shortly before the season finale of Mare of Easttown, the first thing I said was, “Don’t tell me anything that happens.” Anything is the operative word here. I didn’t want to know the outcome of the show’s central mystery—who killed young mother Erin McMenamin—before I had a chance to watch the climactic episode. But, equally, I didn’t want to know the conclusion of the domestic dramas surrounding detective Kate Winslet and the denizens of her blue-collar suburban Pennsylvania town—a region with an accent so distinctive Saturday Night Live built an entire sketch around […]
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Back to One, Episode 157: Susan Kelechi Watson
We’re catching the super talented Susan Kelechi Watson at an interesting moment. She plays Beth Pearson on the network television phenomenon This Is Us, which just finished its fifth season and announced that the sixth will be its last. On this episode, she talks about what makes a performance “leave the screen,” learning the power of minimalism from watching Sade, how sometimes being a little lost “in the wilderness” is an important part of her process, why she started building her post-This Is Us career many seasons ago, and much much more! Back To One can be found wherever you […]
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A Whole Other Toolbox: Theater Director Bartlett Sher on Making his First Feature, Oslo
One of the most impressive directing debuts I’ve seen this year is Bartlett Sher’s clear, concise and extremely moving drama Oslo, a movie that distills complex themes and conflicts into a remarkably accessible and riveting political suspense film. Adapting his own Tony Award-winning play, screenwriter J.T. Rogers tells the true story of the secret back-channel talks and unlikely friendships between a small group of Israelis, Palestinians, and a Norwegian couple acting as facilitators that led to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords. The script is a model of elegant structure, weaving precise journalistic details into a sophisticated ensemble character study in […]
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Back to One, Episode 156: Jean Smart
Jean Smart is the very definition of versatile. The three-time Emmy winner’s first act highlights include Designing Women, Frasier, 24, and now a new act in her career, filled even juicier roles, starting with Fargo, Legion, and Watchmen, has led to current HBO favorites Mare of Easttown, with Kate Winslet, and a starring role in Hacks. In this half-hour she talks about the importance of hearing the character’s voice, why not being an ingenue may have helped her career, frustrating ways the industry has changed for actors, her love for her current co-stars, why studio audiences throw her off her […]
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Sitcom Boot Camp: Matt Shakman on WandaVision
In a world where most episodic directors tend to specialize in hour-long dramas or half-hour comedies—and some specialize even further within those formats, becoming known for procedurals or prestige dramas or multi-cam sitcoms—Matt Shakman might be the most versatile filmmaker working in television today. He has directed one of the funniest comedies on TV (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), one of the largest scale and most popular premium cable series (Game of Thrones) and was behind some of the best episodes of Succession, Fargo and Mad Men. As comfortable with network crowd-pleasers like The Good Wife as he is at the […]
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“The Marvel Paradigm is to Come at It Like a Movie”: Kari Skogland on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Director Kari Skogland has long been a master of tonally complex television, having helmed episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, Boardwalk Empire, The Walking Dead and many other beloved series; she also executive produced and directed several episodes of one of the best limited series of the last ten years, the Showtime Roger Ailes drama The Loudest Voice. Yet the best work of her career is her most recent, as the director of all six episodes of Marvel’s Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. An extraordinarily ambitious expansion of the Marvel universe that takes full advantage of the opportunities television […]
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Back to One, Episode 155: Laura Donnelly and Ann Skelly from The Nevers
On a very special double episode, Laura Donnelly and Ann Skelly sit down for in-depth conversations on their craft and the magic they make together on the new HBO series The Nevers. Donnelly talks about an artistic breakthrough that happened in rehearsal for a play that changed her perception of herself as an artist. Skelly talks about coming to the realization, early on, that she was getting “too technical” and what she did to bring back her “sense of discomfort again.” And they both describe the fascinating ways their approach to the work complement each other, and how their mutual […]
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“On Every Movie I Do, I Try to Test Every Single Camera I Can Get My Hands On”: DP Pawel Pogorzelski on Nobody
In the middle-aged revenge fantasy movie, the protagonist’s onslaught of violence is a reluctant one. In your John Wicks or Takens, these are men forced back into action by a transgression so grievous it demands brutal retribution. They don’t want to, but they have to. As director Ilya Naishuller points out, Nobody is an inversion of that formula. When Bob Odenkirk’s retired assassin Hutch is jarred from suburban drudgery by a home break in, he loses only a few bucks, a kitty cat bracelet and some pride. Hardly a kidnapped daughter or a murdered puppy. Hutch doesn’t have to dust off […]
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“Before Directing, I Never Truly Understood Just How Exhausting and Taxing the Filmmaking Process Is”: David Weil on Solos
Showrunner David Weil’s Amazon series Hunters was one of the most audacious pieces of television I saw in 2020, a profound meditation on morality and history articulated with the exhilarating narrative rush of a great genre film. Epic in its sweep and ambition, the show made me eager to see what Weil would do next—where does a filmmaker go after such a bold swing for the fences? The answer turned out to be Weil’s new show (also for Amazon) Solos, which operates at the other end of the spectrum in terms of scale but is just as daring in its […]
