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Back to One, Episode 121: Kevin Alejandro
Kevin Alejandro is finishing his fifth season playing Detective Dan Espinoza on Netflix’s Lucifer. He’s also graced your small screen in such series as The Returned, Southland, and True Blood. In 2017 he graduated from the Warner Brothers television director’s workshop and directed an episode of Lucifer. Since then he started his own production company and has turned into a multi-hyphenate, churning out award winning shorts, including the absolutely hilarious Adult Night. He’s back in the director’s chair on Lucifer’s fifth season (part 1), which drops August 21st on Netflix. On this episode, he talks about how the need to […]
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Back to One, Episode 120: Paapa Essiedu
The brilliant young British actor Paapa Essiedu speaks about the work with wisdom that belies his years. He plays Kwame on Michaela Coel’s groundbreaking new HBO series I May Destroy You. In 2016, his Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Company received great acclaim. In this episode he compares those two characters, who are each facing defining moments in their lives, and talks about the “conscious unconsciousness” necessary to embody them. He discusses the various ways curiosity is useful, and why it’s so important to immerse yourself in the world of the story. Plus lots more! Back To One can be […]
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“You Get to Be Your Own Editor as You’re Watching It”: Catherine Hardwicke on Quibi Series Don’t Look Deeper
Ever since she made her directorial debut in 2003 with Thirteen, Catherine Hardwicke has been one of the American cinema’s great chroniclers of young people navigating the transition to adulthood. In films as diverse as Lords of Dogtown, Twilight, Red Riding Hood and The Nativity Story, Hardwicke has explored teenage crises and discoveries with serious intent and the sharp attention to visual detail that she developed as a production designer on movies like Three Kings and Vanilla Sky. Her work on those films and other often demonstrated a bold and original approach to color, and this is true of her […]
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“The Key Word on Set was ‘Darker'”: DP Jeremy Osbern on The Big Ugly, The First Feature to Shoot on a RED Gemini
Writer-director Scott Wiper’s The Big Ugly is the best kind of genre film, a crime movie aware of the traditions in which it’s working but not beholden to them; combining elements of ’40s and ’50s crime fiction (Jim Thompson seems to be a particular touchstone) with the flavor of ’70s Sam Peckinpah and Walter Hill filtered through the visual grammar of ’90s Tony Scott, The Big Ugly synthesizes its influences into a unique and compelling western noir. Its emotional power comes largely from Wiper’s richly textured script and the performances by his consistently riveting ensemble, which includes Vinnie Jones, Malcolm […]
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Back to One, Episode 119: Stacy Martin
Part of Stacy Martin’s performance, in her wonderful new film Archive, involves essentially playing robots at various stages of development. She talks about the challenge that posed for her as an actor, and how director Gavin Rothery’s complete command of his vision helped her process. She takes me back to her days at the Actors’ Temple in London, and how an intensive workshop there changed her life and prepared her for the remarkable experience of her first film, Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac. She shares an important bit of direction that Lars gave her that blows my mind. We swap stories […]
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Back to One, Episode 118: Mireille Enos
Mireille Enos made a splash on Broadway in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, then her big break in television came with The Killing, where she played Sarah Linden to much acclaim for four seasons. World War Z opposite Brad Pitt followed, and now the second season of the action-drama hit series Hanna premiered on Amazon this month. Enos talks about how exceptional writing helps multi-season work, learning about story-craft from Tom Stoppard, the importance of being open to intuition, and how empathy helps you build yourself as an actor. Plus much more! Back To One can be found wherever you […]
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Back to One, Episode 117: Cristin Milioti
She claims she doesn’t know how to talk about her process, but on this episode, Cristin Milioti eloquently lifts the hood and let’s us peek in on the engine fueling her incredibly varied work, across all genres on the stage and screen, like the Broadway musical Once, How I Met Your Mother, The Wolf of Wall Street, the USS Callister episode of Black Mirror, this year’s Modern Love and the huge Sundance hit Palm Springs, which just dropped on Hulu and in drive-ins across the nation. She talks about feeling protective of her characters, why it’s necessary to let go […]
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Back to One, Episode 116: Ron Cephas Jones
Ron Cephas Jones won a Emmy for his work on the hit series This Is Us. His latest series, Truth Be Told, just got picked up for a second season on Apple TV. In this episode, he takes us back to his early days at LAByrinth Theater in New York City, starring in Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Jesus Hopped The A Train, and explains how Philip Seymour Hoffman, who was directing, forever changed his approach to work. He also talks about the importance of collaboration for the actor, why the script never leaves him in the days leading up to production, […]
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Filmmaker’s Summer 2020 Issue is Online and Available for Purchase
As previously announced, Filmmaker‘s Summer 2020 issue is being published as a PDF, and it’s now online and available for single-issue purchase. It’s our largest page-count ever (244 pages!), and our designers, Caspar Newbolt and Charlotte Gosch, tweaked the whole design to make it a beautiful and comfortable experience on both a tablet and a laptop in either portrait or landscape view. For the first time, we’ve also enabled the issue to be purchased individually as a PDF for $5.95, and you can do that by clicking here or on the button below using PayPal or your credit card. On […]
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Back to One, Episode 115: Eve Lindley
Eve Lindley enjoys puzzles, so you can imagine her delight at finding out that she was recently a crossword puzzle clue. The breakout star of AMC’s Dispatches From Elsewhere sat down with me (outside, with physical distancing, and following strict safety protocols) to talk about why she loves auditioning, her belief that “it’s all in the text,” how picking the brain of Jason Segel (creator and star of Dispatches) helped her find her character, and much more! Plus we get deep about hopes and hurts as we gaze at the New York City skyline. Back To One can be found […]
