Interviews
Interviews
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From Twin Peaks to Monument Valley: Duwayne Dunham on Legend of the Happy Worker
It’s well known that George Lucas approached David Lynch to direct Return of the Jedi (1983), and that Lynch (thankfully) demurred, instead pursuing Blue Velvet (1985). Less well-known is the fact that the two films share an editor—Duwayne Dunham, an unlikely hyperspace lane between two otherwise distant cinematic galaxies. As a director himself, Dunham has a body of work that poses yet another wrinkle in space-time: since making his feature debut with Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993), he has specialized in tales of misfit youngsters, predominantly for the Disney Channel. The announcement that his new film, the long-gestating Legend […]
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“There’s Something Very Homoerotic About Intense Male Friendships”: Alex Russell on Lurker
The first time we see retail worker Matthew (Théodore Pellerin), it’s through the eyes of his new friend Oliver (Archie Madekwe), as the up-and-coming popstar films him with a camcorder. It’s an arresting opening image, given how much the rest of Lurker finds Matthew gazing at Oliver in adoration instead. “I need a real person,” the fickle musician says, soon after their chance encounter. He’s talking about seeking the honest opinion of a regular person on his music, not the blind adoration of a fan. Little does he know just how meticulously crafted Matthew’s personality really is. Having secured a […]
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“The Nova Convention… a Free Artistic Experiment”: Aaron Brookner and Rodrigo Areias on Nova ‘78
Aaron Brookner and Rodrigo Areias’s Nova ’78 centers around the Nova Convention, a late ’70s avant-garde extravaganza that took place at NYC’s now defunct Entermedia Theater (Second Avenue and 12th Street) in honor of William S. Burroughs’s return to the U.S. after living more than 20 years abroad. It was also a great excuse to gather a who’s who roster of counterculture icons to perform in the presence of the postmodern wordsmith who’d profoundly impacted them all. That would include Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye, Laurie Anderson and Julia Heyward, Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, Brion Gysin, Timothy Leary, Merce […]
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In Memoriam, An Interview with the Late Documentary Filmmaker Joel DeMott and her partner, Jeff Kreines
In my recent Filmmaker conversation with Julia Loktev about the making of her monumental documentary, My Undesirable Friends, I cited the work of the late documentary filmmaker Joel DeMott, because I believe there is a straight line between DeMott’s approach in the late 1970s to shooting vérité documentary using shoulder-mounted 16mm cameras and Loktev’s latter-day methods using iPhones. DeMott, who died in June, has been eulogized in obits in Documentary and The New York Times, so no need to recap her venturesome life and career here. Instead, my way of paying homage to the contributions of DeMott and her partner […]
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From Elitist to Egalitarian: Julian Radlmaier on Phantoms of July
The films of Julian Radlmaier have all been infused with a specific kind of longing for a better future in the sense of Marxist utopias. From his early films—A Spectre is Haunting Europe (2013) and A Proletarian Winter’s Tale (2014)—to the snappy meta-commentary Self-Criticism of a Bourgeois Dog in 2017 and 2021’s Bloodsuckers, aptly sub-titled “A Marxist Vampire Comedy,” Radlmaier has perfected the political allegory for our day and age. Static tableaux paired with outrageously funny one-liners (“Germany is sinking like the Titanic and we’re Leonardo DiCaprio”) make the films meme-friendly without compromising their devotion to labor politics and community. […]
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DP Larkin Seiple on Shooting his First Horror Film, Weapons
When cinematographer Larkin Seiple finished the Apple+ feature Wolfs, he was set on taking a well-deserved break. It was going to take a special project to coax him back behind the camera before he’d decompressed, especially for a project outside his home base in L.A. Then the script for Weapons arrived the day after wrap. “I read the script in like an hour and I was like, ‘Shit. It’s really good. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance to shoot something like this again,’” said Seiple. Unfolding in overlapping chapters, writer-director Zach Cregger’s follow-up to Barbarian follows a […]
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“I Have to Lead with the Primal”: Americana Director Tony Tost on Beginning a Film Career at 35
After 15 years working in series television, writing shows including Longmire, Damnation, The Terror, and most recently, Pokerface, Tony Tost moves into the world of feature filmmaking with his road-trip western caper flick Americana, whose cast boasts Zahn McClarnon, Paul Walter Hauser and Sydney Sweeney. Tost spoke with Filmmaker about his upbringing, his journey from academic and published poet to screenwriter, showrunner, and sage of the narrative craft — his Substack, Practical Screenwriting, is an endlessly rewarding font of experience, narrative nuts and bolts, and honest takes about the industry at large — all while musing over westerns, identity and […]
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“With a Director, I Ask Myself, Is This a Person I Would Like to Travel With?”: Realm of Satan Director Scott Cummings Interviews D.P. Gerard Kerkletz
In 2019, I began production on my debut feature Realm of Satan, only for the world to shut down as COVID-19 brought filming to a halt after just a few days. It wasn’t until 2022 that we were able to resume. Despite this catastrophic challenge, two people never wavered in their commitment and belief in me and the film: producer Caitlin Mae Burke and Austrian cinematographer Gerald Kerkletz. Because of them, we were able to resume filming in 2022, and I’m thrilled that Realm of Satan will have its NYC theatrical run next week at Nitehawk. Realm of Satan is […]
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“What Was I Going to Do, Edit Don DeLillo?”: Ben Rivers on Locarno 2025 Premiere Mare’s Nest
For a film about the end of the world, Mare’s Nest is hardly lugubrious. Then again, you could say the same about Ben Rivers’s entire oeuvre. Few directors who’ve kicked off their careers after the proverbial “end of history” have so assiduously used their cameras to imagine what that might look like; fewer still have pictured the Armageddon as existing somewhere between dystopia and utopia. It can be difficult to tell whether Rivers’s films are post- or pre-apocalyptic, if the solitary figures they often center on—like the old hermit riffing on Darwin’s theories from his dilapidated forest hovel in The […]
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How to Shoot Horses: Kate Beecroft on East of Wall
Kate Beecroft found East of Wall’s main character—now one of her closest friends—entirely by chance. She’s retold their origin story in so many interviews that it’s worth quoting her first iteration from the press kit: “Taking a wrong turn on a road in South Dakota led me to the deepest adventure of my life. I pulled up to a rundown ranch and found horse trainer Tabatha Zimiga and a tribe of intimidatingly bold teenage girls thronging out of their trailer, heads half-shaved like warriors, eyeing me up and down. Tabatha welcomed me into her world with one sentence: ‘Want to […]
