Columns
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Will & Harper and the Netflix Effect
Every Tuesday Tyler Coates publishes his new Filmmaker newsletter, Considerations, devoted to the awards race. To receive it early and in your in-box, subscribe here. At this year’s 35th annual Producers Guild Awards (which took place on Feb. 25, two weeks before the March 3 Oscars), Netflix’s American Symphony took the prize for best documentary feature. The Matthew Heineman-directed film followed musician Jon Batiste’s meteoric year in which he won five Grammys (including album of the year) and premiered a new composition at Carnegie Hall—all while his wife, journalist and artist Suleika Jaouad, fought a rare form of leukemia. One […]
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“Your Own Formula, In You, Is Discovered in the Petri Dish of Confidence and Belief”: Peter Vack, Back To One, Episode 318
As an actor, Peter Vack is known for his work in television series such as I Just Want My Pants Back (series lead), Mozart In The Jungle, and Love Life, and recent independent films like PVT Chat, Eugene Kotlyarenko’s The Code and his virtuoso turn as an evil version of “Peter Vack” in Actors (written, directed, and co-staring his sister Betsey Brown). As a filmmaker, he has gotten a reputation for demanding an “all in” approach from his performers. His first feature, Assholes (called “the most disgusting movie ever”), won a jury prize at SXSW, and his latest, www.RachelOrmont.com, described […]
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The Apprentice and Other Post-Election Campaigns
Every Tuesday Tyler Coates publishes his new Filmmaker newsletter, Considerations, devoted to the awards race. To receive it early and in your in-box, subscribe here. I really didn’t want to write a newsletter about how a Trump victory might disrupt an already chaotic Oscar season, but here we are. When I had multiple publicists reaching out about their films on Thursday morning, proving our post-election malaise was limited to a single day, I realized that the show must go on—and the show, I fear, might become a lot dumber. I can’t help but think back to the 2017 Oscars, in […]
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“It Might Not Be Perfect, But I Am Not Lying To You”: Jack Dunphy, Back To One, Episode 317
Jack Dunphy is a writer, filmmaker, animator, actor and podcaster. His shorts have played in festivals around the world and his latest, Bob’s Funeral, won Best Nonfiction Short Film at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. As an actor, he starred in Peter Vack’s Assholes and Caveh Zahedi’s legendary, unfinished, 24-hour retelling of Joyce’s Ulysses. He can soon be seen in Paradise and Lunch, the new film from Jordan Tetwesky and Joshua Pikovsky, and Anything That Moves from Alex Phillips. His wonderful new podcast, Revelations with Jack Dunphy, in which he talks about his struggles with addiction and mental illness with […]
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Conclave and Other Campaigns
Every Tuesday Tyler Coates publishes his new Filmmaker newsletter, Considerations, devoted to the awards race. To receive it early and in your in-box, subscribe here. Here we are, on Election Day — or, if you didn’t prioritize reading this newsletter on Tuesday, Election Week — and there’s no better distraction from the realities of the world and its discontents than the movies. Or, at least that’s what I’m telling myself. If your election anxiety was triggered in the middle of Focus Features’ Conclave, you’re not alone. I’m very curious to see how that movie in particular will be received post-election, […]
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“The Things that Scare Me the Most Now are the Things I’m Most Interested in Doing”: Jaclyn Bethany, Back To One, Episode 316
Jaclyn Bethany is an Emmy-award-winning filmmaker, writer and actor based in New Orleans, Louisiana. She has been committed to creating art and telling stories exploring complex women, the intimacy of female friendship, sisterhood and queerness from the female perspective. Some upcoming film projects include Delusion, a short film in collaboration with Adult Film NYC; In Transit, written by Alex Sarrigeorgiou and featuring Jennifer Ehle and Francois Arnaud; and All Five Eyes, which she co-wrote with Greta Bellamacina, featuring Bellamacina and Honor Swinton-Byrne. In this episode she talks about her role as the co-artistic director of The Fire Weeds, a female […]
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Considering the Horrific Possibilities of this Year’s Oscars
Every Tuesday Tyler Coates publishes his new Filmmaker newsletter, Considerations, devoted to the awards race. To receive it early and in your in-box, subscribe here. If there’s one topic more troubling to me than catfiegory fraud — something we’ll get into in a future newsletter, I guarantee — it’s the notion of celebrating Halloween in November. But since Halloween falls on a Thursday this year, I’m afraid I’ll lose this battle; it’s looking like we’ll have two consecutive Halloween weekends this year and there’s nothing I can do about it but throw a side-eye to my friends’ upcoming Instagram posts. […]
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“I’m Good at Being Told What To Do, and I Genuinely Think That is a Skill”: Daisy Ridley, Back To One, Episode 315
Daisy Ridley shot to global fame for her portrayal of Rey in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Since then, she has been choosing diverse roles that showcase her talents in films with wide ranging budgets that prove her north star is the quality of the work and nothing else. She has three films that have come out in this year alone—Sometimes I think About Dying, Young Woman and The Sea, and her latest, Magpie. On this episode, she explains how coming up with the idea for Magpie and building her character from the ground up was an interesting exercise in […]
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Considering the Oscar Best Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay Categories
At this stage in the season, when it is entirely too early to make any meaningful predictions about what the Oscar nominees (much less the winners) will be, I like to look back at the Academy’s recent history to identify trends that can give us an idea of what voters are into, generally speaking. It’s not an exact science, of course — the contenders are drastically different every season — but there is one trend that I’ve noticed shaking out over the last decade or so: The Oscars for best original screenplay and best adapted screenplay are more likely to go […]
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“‘Knowing’ is Such a Sh*tty Place To Be — It Just Cancels Out All These Other Possibilities”: Maria Dizzia, Back To One, Episode 314
Actor, director, coach, teacher, Maria Dizzia is a perpetual student of the craft of acting, which makes her celebrated and in-demand for all those jobs. The movie My Old Ass and the play Pre-Existing Condition are a couple of her most recent projects. On this incredibly dense and gold-filled episode, she generously gives us a peek into the aspects of the work that she deems important to focus on, worth struggling with, or where she simply finds the most fruit. She talks about the huge importance of those first subconscious “offerings,” how to use the discoveries made when “alive” to […]
