Interviews
Interviews
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Writer/Director Kitao Sakurai on Designing the Deliberate Randomness of The Eric Andre Show and The Passage
Adult Swim’s Tim And Eric, Awesome Show! Great Job and The Eric Andre Show ushered in a revolution of on-screen-comedy. Their new perspectives offered something so irradiated, shocking, non-linear and “random” that explaining them seemed inscrutable. You’d flip the channel if your grandma joined you at the television in fear you might have to justify it to her—in fear she might discover you’re insane. “These shows can only be the result of drug induced, inhuman, and unconscious improvisation!” The artists responsible for making you laugh are high, and maybe you ought to be while watching too. Those who “get it” […]
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We the Animals Star Raúl Castillo on Embodying Toxic Masculinity, His Theater Roots and Owning Your Space as an Actor
His portrayal of “Richie” on the HBO series Looking brought Raúl Castillo some serious recognition and started moving him into bigger and better parts. One such role is “Pops” in the astonishing queer coming-of-age film We The Animals (in theaters now) directed by Jeremiah Zagar from the Justin Torres best-seller. Castillo talks in depth about his process of bringing this complex character to life, and the importance of owning your space as an actor. Plus we do a deep-dive into the straight man’s approach to same-sex on-camera kissing. Back To One can be found wherever you get your podcasts, including […]
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“Even Before It’s a Vision, It’s a Need”: Director Jeremiah Zagar Talks the Creative Process and his New We the Animals
“I will do everything you do.” Filmmaker Jeremiah Zagar (In a Dream) dubs that his motto, his ethos, while on set. And when you watch his simultaneously epic and beautifully specific film We the Animals, it will come as no surprise that Zagar created for his collaborators such a collaborative, safe space for taking risks. Premiering at Sundance Film Festival this year where it won the NEXT Innovator award, it’s the first narrative feature for Zagar. His documentarian’s eye combined with his ability to draw vulnerable and vibrant performances from his cast creates sparkling portrait of three young boys discovering […]
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“It Certainly Doesn’t Hurt to Make Films For This Little Money”: Ricky D’Ambrose on Notes on an Appearance
Writing about Ricky D’Ambrose for last year’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, Vadim Rizov described the script of his debut feature, Notes on an Appearance, then in postproduction, as “giv[ing] a sense of a disciplined, honed gaze refined over years of self-tutoring.” That autodidact’s precision manifests, in shorts like Six Cents in the Pocket (2015) and Spiral Jetty (2015), in straight-on close-ups of people against blank white walls or monochromatic wallpaper, or of pictures and texts and cups of coffee on tables as the sun streams through the window, and an almost monastic sound mix of epistolary voiceover and […]
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“I Had a Moral Crisis”: Bing Liu on Minding the Gap, Personal Doc Voiceovers and Cycles of Abuse
Bing Liu’s first feature documentary, Minding the Gap, draws upon a deep trove of skater tapes he’d kept since his teen years. The film tracks three male skaters growing up (or failing to) in economically dispossessed Rockford, IL. Two are the director’s old friends: in between countless beers, Zack is introduced as he prepares to have a child he clearly isn’t ready for with his girlfriend Nina. Keire doesn’t have any attachments beyond family, but finding his first job is a struggle; the ultimate goal is to get out. The third character is the filmmaker himself. What all three subjects have in […]
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“David Duke Called Us Out By Name”: BlacKkKlansman Screenwriters Charlie Wachtel and David Rabinowitz
When I went to see BlacKkKlansman earlier this summer, I was startled to completely lose it two minutes in. The opening scene is a fire-breathing racist monologue by Alec Baldwin as a segregationist leader. I knew the premise of the film — the true story of how black police officer Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) infiltrated a Colorado branch of the KKK with the help of a white partner, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), in the late ’70s — and figured a fair amount of racist invective would be involved. What I did not expect was to hear Baldwin spit out the words “fucking Jews” […]
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Back to One Podcast: BlacKkKlansman Actor Topher Grace Talks Playing Evil People, Working with Great Directors, and the Epidemic of the Hollywood Earpiece
Seven seasons on the sitcom That ’70s Show led Topher Grace to roles in Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, In Good Company, a not entirely successful turn as “Venom” in Spider Man 3, and lighter projects like Win A Date With Tad Hamilton and Valentine’s Day. He then decided to change the trajectory of his career. He told his agents he wanted to work exclusively with great film artists in environments that inspired him. Worthy projects like Interstellar, Truth and War Machine followed. And this year, Grace’s next chapter continues with David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake and the challenging role […]
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“My Best Tool is Empathy”: Four Female Cinematographers on “The Female Gaze”
“I think women drill down and they’re not afraid of emotion,” says cinematographer Joan Churchill about females working behind the camera in film. Joined by other lauded DPs Ashley Connor (The Miseducation of Cameron Post), Agnès Godard (35 Shots of Rum) and Natasha Braier (Neon Demon) on a panel as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s The Female Gaze series, the women discussed the breadth of their work. Running currently through August 9th at the Walter Reade Theater in New York City, the series shines light on incredible cinematographers throughout the decades, all of whom are women. Some […]
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“I Love Unpacking Human Behavior…”: Five Questions for Night Comes On Director Jordana Spiro
Opening in theaters today is the debut feature from actress and short-film director Jordana Spiro, whose Night Comes On subversively wraps both a coming-of-age tale and story of sister bonding within a work of hardboiled revenge. Dominique Fishback, the breakout star of HBO’s The Deuce, plays Angel, a teen who, after being sprung from juvenile detention, trades sex for a handgun and hits the road, traveling towards the man who murdered her mother years ago. She picks up her younger sister, Abby, from her foster home, and as their relationship is teased out, the film’s rhythms shift, with the hours […]
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“One of the Rules Was To Not Centralize Whiteness in Any Way”: On the Path Towards Terence Nance’s New HBO Show, Random Acts of Flyness
The following article appears in Filmmaker’s Summer, 2018 print edition and is being posted today to mark the premiere, this Friday, of Terence Nance’s Random Acts of Flyness on HBO. When Brooklyn-based filmmaker and musician Terence Nance last appeared in this magazine’s print pages, it was in our 25 New Faces section — in 2012 — and he had been working on his debut feature, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, since 2006. A loose-limbed autobiographical drama detailing Nance’s own near-romantic relationship with an attractive friend (Namik Minter, who played herself in the film), the film unspools, I wrote, “like some […]
