Columns
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Insecure DP Ava Berkofsky on Avoiding “Seinfeld Shots,” Faking Coachella and Lighting Mega-Churches
A row of symmetrically stacked airport luggage carts; the tumbling red-and-blue cylinders of a 7-Eleven Slurpee dispenser; the still life of neatly arranged condiments and coffee creamers on a diner countertop. While the romantically and professionally struggling twentysomethings that populate HBO’s Insecure make their share of pilgrimages to taco trucks, clubs, and even Coachella, it’s those tableaus of Los Angeles at its most quotidian that make the sprawling city feel as if it’s being viewed through a different lens. With the show’s third season recently wrapped up, cinematographer Ava Berkofsky spoke to Filmmaker about how she “makes L.A. feel like L.A.” […]
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Back to One, Episode 25: Private Life‘s Kathryn Hahn
Kathryn Hahn has joked about her plethora of “best friend or randy crazy lady” roles in comedies like How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days, Anchorman and Step Brothers. But recent projects by Jill Soloway (Afternoon Delight and I Love Dick) and Tamara Jenkins (the new Netflix film Private Life) have cast Hahn in the lead role, and suddenly we have an exciting leading lady who’s much more than a scene-stealer extraordinaire. She lets us in on a fascinating process she has for getting into the “I” of the character, talks about the road that lead to Private Life […]
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Remembering Chantal Akerman, 1950 – 2015
Director Chantal Akerman died three years ago today, and I wrote the following remembrance in the Filmmaker newsletter just a few days later but never posted it online. I wrote it from the Venice Biennale College Cinema, where I arrive again today. So, it seems fitting to remember Akerman once again by finally posting it here. (Photo above, taken on an 1MP digital camera at the Rotterdam Film Festival, 2001.) Here in Venice, on the small island of San Servolo, we were talking about Jeanne Dielman. Tom Quinn, one of the filmmakers attending the Biennale College Cinema, had included a […]
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Back to One Podcast, Episode 24: Nicolette Robinson
When Nicolette Robinson made her Broadway debut in September, taking over the lead role of Jenna in Waitress, she was not just fond of Sara Bareilles’ hit musical, she had been listening to the cast album cathartically as she went through emotional ups and downs in her own life. This might be part of why I found her “Jenna” so connected to the material, so alive. We talk about what led up to that Broadway debut night, stepping through the complex engulfing that is Hamilton (her husband Leslie Odom Jr. won a Tony for the musical), and what her inner […]
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Back to One Podcast: Taran Killam
The hilarious Taran Killam lets us peek under the hood of his comedic craft in this half hour. He stars in the new ABC series Single Parents (premiering September 26th) and the comedy Night School (opening September 28th) opposite Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish. He’s probably best known for his six years on Saturday Night Live. We talk about how that “bootcamp” prepared him for almost anything. But his talent goes beyond comedy. He writes, directs (check out his film Killing Gunther on demand), and sings (he was King George III in Hamilton). Plus he finally answers a question I […]
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BlacKkKlansman DP Chayse Irvin on Shooting with Expired Ektachrome and the Spike Lee Dolly
Early in Spike Lee’s collaboration with Chayse Irvin, the venerable director asked his cinematographer if there was anything special he needed for BlacKkKlansman. Irvin answered, “a third camera”—an extravagance on a low budget movie, but one Irvin believed would allow him “to take massive risks on every scene, whether it be a unique angle or the freedom to use a lens that was flawed.” Irvin embraced that self-imposed mandate for boldness by employing imperfect vintage lenses, “flashing” the image with a contrast-reducing filter and dusting off long-expired film stock. Never one to wilt in the face of risky choices, Lee […]
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“The Episodes Generate Their Own Lives”: John Peter Kousakis on Directing the “No-Rules” NCIS: Los Angeles
John Peter Kousakis began his career in 1979 as a production assistant on the television mini-series The French Atlantic Affair, which led to work as a second assistant director on CHIPS. From there Kousakis worked as an AD on some of the most popular series of the era, including The Greatest American Hero, The Fall Guy, and The A-Team, but he caught the directing bug during his first foray into features, working as a second AD on the Burt Reynolds-Hal Needham car chase extravaganza Cannonball Run II. Since then he has moved back and forth between production management positions and […]
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Back to One, Episode 22: Linus Roache
Linus Roache has played upstanding characters on Law and Order and Homeland but he had to plumb the depths and reach the epicenter of narcissism to play Jeremiah Sand in Mandy, and it’s a frightening joy to behold. He talks about the draining yet rewarding time bringing this character to life and the guidance and trust he had from director Panos Cosmatos. Plus he answers a listener question about the faith life of his character, King Ecbert, in the TV series Vikings. Back To One can be found wherever you get your podcasts, including iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. And […]
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A Cut in Time: RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes and Maya Krinsky Break Down a Scene from Hale County This Morning, This Evening
“The discovering began after I moved to Alabama in 2009 to teach photography and coach basketball. Photographing in my day-to-day, I began filming using time to figure out how we’ve come to be seen.” — RaMell Ross, Hale County This Morning, This Evening The film Hale County This Morning, This Evening defies easy summary. It’s an ontological inquiry: a pushback against dominant narratives of what it means to be black in the historic South, an invitation to the African American diaspora to return to its roots and participate in the reimaging of blackness. It’s also a poetic exaltation of two young […]
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Reboot By The Sea
It might be hot. There are several quarries for swimming. It might be cold and rainy, and we’ll be in a non-heated, non-air conditioned barn. There will be mosquitoes. So began a long list of somewhat unsettling particulars describing conditions for the six-day DesignInquiry residency that took place at the end of June 2018 on Vinalhaven, an island halfway up the coast of Maine. I had applied six months earlier, intrigued by the year’s theme, “Rewrite,” and was delighted when I was accepted. I was stepping down from a decade-long leadership stint, having cocreated and chaired a new department in […]
