Interviews
Interviews
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Talking Sex Work with The Red Umbrella Diaries Producer Audacia Ray
It was a little over half a decade ago that I read at one of Audacia Ray’s intimate Red Umbrella Diaries events on the Lower East Side. Since then this sex worker storytelling series founder – whose resume also includes stints as a bodyworker, escort, and executive editor of $pread magazine – has become one of the foremost voices of sex work advocacy through her Red Umbrella Project (RedUP), harnessing the media to de-stigmatize the oldest profession in the world. Now, after waging battle against violence and for the public health of those in a long-marginalized industry, she’s executive produced The Red […]
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“To Make an Independent Movie is Delusional in a Way”: Alaska is a Drag‘s Shaz Bennett and Melanie Miller at US in Progress
US in Progress is a biannual event held in June during the Champs-Elysées Film Festival in Paris and in October during the American Film Festival in Wroclaw. It’s a five-year-old industry event that aims to strengthen transatlantic film collaborations and partnerships between European industry and emerging American filmmakers. The fifth US in Progress recently held in Wroclaw featured six films in various editing and post-production stages. The participants included: Mike Ott and Nathan Silver, Actor Martinez Shaz Bennett and Melanie Miller, Alaska is a Drag Zachary Shedd and Daniel Patrick Carbone, Americana Benjamin Kruger, It Had to Be You Joel […]
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Somewhat North of Boston, They’re Showing Films: Executive Director Jay Doherty on the SNOB Film Festival
This weekend (November 12 – 14) the SNOB [Somewhat North of Boston] Film Festival takes place in Concord New Hampshire. Earlier this week we talked to Jay Doherty, Executive Director of the festival about its history, what sets it apart from other festivals, and some of the films being shown. Filmmaker: How did the SNOB Film Festival start? Doherty: This is the 14th annual festival. It started with a group of people who were interested in bringing independent film to central New Hampshire. They started the Somewhat North of Boston film festival as kind of a joke that a lot […]
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“We Got Over 90 Setups One Day”: John Sayles on Eight Men Out
Few directors in the history of American film have presented a perspective on the human condition as complex, varied, and compassionate as that of John Sayles. The quintessential independent filmmaker, he once said, “I’m interested in the stuff I do being seen as widely as possible but I’m not interested enough to lie.” He has remained true to that ethos from his directorial debut, The Return of the Secaucus Seven, to his most recent gem, Go For Sisters. No one tells the truth with as much humor, pain, sympathy, irony, or expansiveness as Sayles, a man to whom no aspect […]
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“Something Stupid, Like Ninja Turtles, Could Be Something Magical in the Future”: Miguel Llansó on Crumbs
When a dormant spaceship hovering above the Earth comes to life again, strange things begin to happen in the abandoned bowling ally where Birdy (played by the diminutive actor Daniel Tadesse) and his partner Candy live. This sets Birdy off on a hero’s journey through strange landscapes and the detritus of contemporary civilization. Spanish director Miguel Llansó’s Crumbs, a post-apocalyptic surrealist Ethio-sci-fi odyssey, is filled with stunning landscapes, backdrops and characters – futuristic Nazi Teutonic knights, reliquaries to Michael Jordan, Santa Claus. It’s laced with a refreshingly nutty surrealism reminiscent of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Luis Buñuel, stunning cinematography by Israel Seoane […]
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“If You Move in a Hasty Manner, I’ll Put a Bullet in You”: S. Craig Zahler on Bone Tomahawk
With its careful widescreen compositions and painterly period-motivated lighting, Bone Tomahawk possesses a classical visual style that belies its pulpy genre mash-up logline of western-cum-cannibal horror film. There are no elaborate tracking shots in the feature debut of writer/director S. Craig Zahler. No Steadicam moves, no booming Technocranes, no extreme close-ups. “All of that stuff, to me, is like the director is sitting next to the viewer and saying, ‘Hey now, look at this.’ And I wanted as little of that as possible,” said Zahler. “You see a lot of first-time directors really out to impress the hell out of […]
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“I’m Not Like Wes Anderson Designing His Own Clothes”: Trey Nelson on Lost in the Sun
It can be dangerous to make bold claims for a filmmaker on the basis of one feature, but then Lost in the Sun’s Trey Nelson is hardly a novice. While Lost in the Sun is his writer-director feature debut, Nelson has been working in television, documentaries, and commercials for years, racking up hundreds of credits for networks like A&E, National Geographic, and the History Channel. His experience is evident in every frame of Lost in the Sun, a remarkably assured sun-drenched noir that invites comparison with the early work of Malick and Bogdanovich but has a tone and sensibility all […]
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“It’s Better Than Sitting Around Thinking About Dying”: Frederick Wiseman on In Jackson Heights
Having to reschedule interviews is nothing new, but when it’s because the filmmaker has to attend a rehearsal for a ballet adaptation of his 1967 debut film, I have to count that as a first. Titicut Follies — the collaboration between Frederick Wiseman, contemporary ballet choreographer James Sewell and musician/composer Lenny Pickett — was given a preview during the 40th Toronto International Festival ahead of the ballet’s October 2016 premiere at the Skirball Center at NYU. However, the topic of our conversation was the North American premiere of In Jackson Heights at TIFF, with Wiseman arriving shortly after giving an introduction at […]
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“I Can’t Try to Be an Activist If People Don’t Know My Real Story”: Tangerine’s Mya Taylor
“I can’t keep beating around the bush because I’ll eventually run out of bushes to beat around,” sighs Mya Taylor. We’ve just spent 90 minutes together in her hotel room at the 59th London Film Festival. In that time, I don’t speak much, but when I do, I’m drawing parallels between Taylor and Marlon Brando. To be fair, I’d just seen Stevan Riley’s Listen to Me Marlon, so referencing some uncovered Brando philosophy from the documentary during my conversation with Taylor felt pertinent at the time. Mya Taylor is a black trans-woman born in 1991, so in retrospect, the comparison is pretty ridiculous. […]
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“I’m a Cheap Guy”: John Carpenter on Vampires
John Carpenter is a unique case among American filmmakers, in that his work is immensely popular and acclaimed yet still weirdly underrated – he’s acknowledged in many circles as great, yet he’s even better than most people think he is. Just about everyone agrees that he directed two of the greatest horror films ever made, Halloween and The Thing, though the second of these was largely considered to be a critical and commercial disappointment when it was released in 1982. And there’s no denying the massive influence of his 1981 action classic Escape From New York, or the prescience of […]
