Interviews
Interviews
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The Road Within Director Gren Wells at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival
Recently released by WellGo USA, The Road Within is the directorial debut of screenwriter and actress Gren Wells (A Little Bit of Heaven). Starring Robert Sheehan, Dev Patel and Zoe Kravitz, the film tells the story of three escapees from a psych ward (Tourette Syndrome, OCD and anorexia sufferers, respectively) on a transformative road trip. It won the Audience Award at the Champs-Élysées and is currently available in the States on digital platforms. Filmmaker: How do you think your next film will be different than your first? Wells: I think you start to define who you are with the second […]
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Map It: Going On Location With Dirty Looks Programmer Bradford Nordeen
Between fighting for real estate and fighting for an audience, it can be hard pulling off a successful film series in New York. Independent programmers can’t be blamed for relying on the lure of unconventional spaces to draw distracted filmgoers. While it’s fun to see a film on a rooftop or a pier, these spaces often serve as exciting backdrops for otherwise conventional content. Few film series actively exploit the connections between site and content to say something meaningful about the spaces around us. That’s what makes On Location different. This ambitious month-long series of “queer interventions” (the schedule can […]
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“We Lost U2. What About Ennio Morricone?”: Phil Joanou on State of Grace, Making Heaven’s Prisoners and Working for Blumhouse
In September 1990, the American cinema changed forever when Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas exploded onto the country’s multiplex screens. I’ve written elsewhere about that film’s influence and impact, which was so massive that its unfortunate side effect was to eclipse several other excellent mob films that were released at the same time. Indeed, the period was a remarkable one for terrific gangster movies – Miller’s Crossing, King of New York, Men of Respect, and The Godfather, Part III all premiered in the fall of 1990. To varying degrees time has been kind to all of these films, but none has aged […]
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“We Didn’t Fictionalize Much”: Sean Baker on Tangerine
Shot on three iPhones 5s’s with a pair of unknown actresses as leads, Sean Baker’s Tangerine was a hazardous proposition, but the finished product justifies every ounce of risk involved in the production, showing just how far the crew could stretch a minuscule budget. Shot on and around real Los Angeles streets and shops, the film keeps pace with transgender sex workers Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor) as they zigzag around the city on Christmas Eve on dual missions. Sin-Dee’s embarking on a “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” revenge mission against her two-timing boyfriend […]
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“We’d Revert Back to the Idea of a Cauliflower”: Debra Granik on Stray Dog
Much more than a companion piece to her Oscar-nominated feature Winter’s Bone, Debra Granik’s Stray Dog sets its sights on a peaceful and welcoming side of Missouri rarely seen in American cinema. Ron “Stray Dog” Hall, a Missouri-bred Vietnam vet and biker, goes above and beyond to help both those in his RV park community and fellow veterans suffering from PTSD. It’s rare to see a film that focuses both on the goodness of the human spirit and the painful, lifelong regrets that it may hold, but Granik allows the layers of the narrative to unfold with a nonjudgmental eye. […]
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“One Light in the Right Place Takes the Place of Three or Four in the Wrong Place”: DP Darren Genet on The Vampire Diaries
I first became aware of cinematographer Darren Genet when I encountered his work on All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, a surprisingly lyrical and beautiful horror film that had more in common with the work of Terrence Malick and ’70s-era Peter Bogdanovich than with other teen slasher films. Awestruck by Genet’s visual originality and technical precision, I continued to follow his work as he ventured into television (CSI: Miami) and continued to evolve as a feature cinematographer on films like Jada Pinkett Smith’s criminally underrated directorial debut, The Human Contract. That film exhibits all of Genet’s strengths: a bold and […]
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Queer Film Pioneer Monika Treut on Of Girls and Horses
A legend in lesbian cinema, Monika Treut has been making films for 30 years, starting with her 1985 narrative feature Seduction: The Cruel Woman (featuring Udo Kier – not bad for a debut film), and right through to this year’s Of Girls and Horses, a poetic coming-of-age tale that also serves as a celebration of nature’s transformational power. Along the way Treut has also explored the nonfiction realm, turning her lens on everything from gender identity (1999’s Gendernauts) to Taiwanese food (2012’s The Raw and the Cooked). Filmmaker was fortunate enough to catch up with the Hyena Films co-founder (along […]
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“Nikki Sixx Told Me He Didn’t Like It When I Called Him a 40-Year Old Heroin Addict”: Penelope Spheeris and Anna Fox on The Decline of Western Civilization
A holy grail for both cinephiles and rock and roll enthusiasts finally arrives on DVD this week in the form of Shout Factory’s superbly assembled The Decline of Western Civilization boxed set. The first two Decline films are essential artifacts of the late ’70s punk rock movement and the ’80s metal scene in Los Angeles; the third, made in the ’90s, is a sober chronicle of Hollywood’s gutter punks, homeless kids tossed aside by “polite” society. All three movies contain terrific concert footage of seminal punk and metal bands (including Fear, the Circle Jerks, and Faster Pussycat, among many others) […]
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Stinking Heaven Actors Hannah Gross and Deragh Campbell
Filmmaker‘s Taylor Hess recently attended and reported on the U.S. in Progress series at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival. While there, she spoke to a number of female directors, producers and actresses. Below, her conversation with Hannah Gross and Deragh Campbell, who both appear in Nathan Silver’s Stinking Heaven. Filmmaker: I Used To be Darker was your first film together, and Deragh, your first time acting? Campbell: Right, I’m not trained. My college degree is in writing and my background is publishing and writing. In a lot of ways I look at acting as another way of interacting with material and […]
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Applesauce Producer Melodie Sisk
Filmmaker‘s Taylor Hess recently attended and reported on the U.S. in Progress series at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival. While there, she spoke to a number of female directors and producers. Below, her conversation with Applesauce producer Melodie Sisk. Filmmaker: What was your timeline on Applesauce? Sisk: Applesauce moved so fast! We essentially had no real pre-production and had to jump right in. This made our schedule erratic, we’d shoot a few days at a time, jumping around between holidays, and then, just like that, we premiered at Tribeca exactly five months to the date of our first day of shooting. It […]
