Interviews
Interviews
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“Me and My Friends and a Bunch of Romanians”: Isaiah Saxon on The Legend of Ochi
Back in 2008, Isaiah Saxon and his collaborators—Daren Rabinovitch and Sean Hellfritsch—appeared on Filmmaker’s annual 25 New Faces of Film list based on the strength of their impressive work on indie rock music videos. Saxon himself had a direct hand in helming iconic filmic accompaniments for Björk’s “Wanderlust,” Grizzly Bear’s “Knife” and Panda Bear’s “Boys Latin.” All three narratives hinge on an intensely surreal collision of human and natural forces—utilizing puppetry, animation, stop-motion and special effects—endearingly lo-fi yet intensely meticulous in its execution. The same can be said of The Legend of Ochi, Saxon’s feature debut. Produced by A24 after […]
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“A Redemption Story That Gets Derailed By a Revenge Story”: Ariella Mastroianni and Ryan J. Sloan on Gazer
There are a set of rules that have long-guided ultra-low and microbudget production. Lots of daylight exteriors, one or two central locations (to minimize company moves and location rental cost), a small cast, no stunts, no child actors and a compressed shooting schedule. If today it’s not uncommon to see a 24-day schedule on films of $12 million, and most independents with sub $3-million budgets are boarded between 18 and 24 days, a filmmaker considering their first ultra-low-budget picture should think about going even lower, to 11 or 12 days, even. And, of course, shooting digital is probably the economically […]
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“Two Giant Oners Put Together into One Piece”: DP Hillary Fyfe Spera on Daredevil: Born Again
When it comes to the work of cinematographer Hillary Fyfe Spera, you’ll find two consistent elements – 1970s inspirations and Panavision glass. Both are present in Daredevil: Born Again, a new Disney+ series that continues the story of lawyer by day/vigilante by night Matt Murdock originally begun on Netflix. The season opens with Murdock (played by Charlie Cox) and his nemesis Wilson “Kingpin” Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) trying to forsake their daker halves before they’re ultimately pulled back into their respective alter egos as crime fighter and crime lord. The show’s final arc took a circuitous route to fruition. Nearly six […]
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“What is Remembered… Is a Political Act that Can Be Weaponized”: Vicky Du on Light of the Setting Sun
Vicky Du’s Light of the Setting Sun is both intimate and expansive, tragic and hopeful. It’s a globetrotting look at the filmmaker’s own family across three generations and a trio of countries: the U.S., where Du grew up; Taiwan, where her parents hail from and where many of her relatives still reside; and China, where 95 percent of the clan was massacred during the Cultural Revolution. It’s also a delicate unearthing, and a piecing together of personal history through archival footage and interviews with family members – some more reluctant than others to address the inherited trauma forever looming like […]
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“Coziness was a Creative North Star”: Andrew Ahn on The Wedding Banquet
In approaching The Wedding Banquet, director Andrew Ahn knew his reimagining of the 1993 romantic comedy directed by Ang Lee had to navigate nuances of queer and cultural identity that he still wrestles with today. So, in updating the original story—about a bisexual Taiwanese immigrant who tries to convince his traditionally-minded parents that he’s straight—Ahn chose to expand it, focusing on a foursome of queer friends who live together in Seattle and become unlikely co-conspirators in a similarly elaborate ruse. Involving not one but two same-sex couples navigating milestone moments, this version of the story (in theaters April 18) goes beyond […]
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“Audiences Think They Want Answers, but They Don’t”: Screenwriter Sam Stefanak on The Woman in the Yard
The Woman in the Yard is the latest production from horror factory Blumhouse, but tones down the jump scares in favor of visualizing the dark imaginary of a woman battling depression. It’s not what audiences have come to expect from the studio, and it has garnered wildly divisive reactions from audiences and critics alike. Woman follows single mother Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler), grieving her husband’s death, who is haunted by a female specter in the backyard that is pushing her to self-annihilation. It was a very personal project for first-time screenwriter Sam Stefanak, who was channeling his own demons during the […]
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“What’s This Bright Guy Doing in a Pickle Barrel?” Peter Riegert on Crossing Delancey
[This is the second of three interviews with key collaborators on Joan Micklin Silver’s Crossing Delancey. Click here to read the first part, an interview with screenwriter Susan Sandler, and click here to read an interview with co-star Amy Irving.] Filmmaker: You’d worked with Joan Micklin Silver before, on Chilly Scenes of Winter. What kind of an actor-director relationship did you have? Riegert: It was very comfortable. She was a very good writer—she wrote Chilly Scenes of Winter—and knew how to take [on] a script that she didn’t write. She knew how to cast. She had a wonderful eye for […]
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“I Found My Pickle Man”: Amy Irving on Crossing Delancey
[This is the second of three interviews with key collaborators on Joan Micklin Silver’s Crossing Delancey. Click here to read the first part, an interview with screenwriter Susan Sandler, and check back tomorrow to read the final part, an interview with co-star Peter Riegert.] Filmmaker: Joan Micklin Silver is a filmmaker whose reputation has really grown over the past decade, and I’m curious what her secret sauce was, for lack of a better term. What do you remember about working with her? Irving: Joan spent a lot of time figuring out her cast. If you look at all her movies, […]
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From the Jewish Repertory Theater to the Movies: Screenwriter Susan Sandler on Crossing Delancey
When Joan Micklin Silver died on the last day of 2020, cinephiles mourned the passing of a major American filmmaker, a status to which she may have begun to ascend in late 2014, when IFC Center presented a 35mm screening of her third feature Chilly Scenes of Winter with its original title and the director’s preferred ending—the first time in perhaps a decade that the film had resurfaced in New York’s repertory scene. At that time, Vadim Rizov spoke to Silver, then in her late 70s, about her struggles to break into the film industry (“‘At that point in time, […]
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“Even Stalin on his Deathbed Thought He Was a Good Person”: Todd Solondz on Palindromes
With Todd Solondz’s Palindromes currently rereleased by Monument Releasing in a new 4K restoration on the occasion of its 20th anniversary, we are reposting Matthew Ross’s interview with Solondz from our Spring, 2005 print edition. The film opens today at New York’s Metrograph Theater before traveling to Philadelphia, Atlanta and Los Angeles in the weeks ahead. It was nine years ago that Todd Solondz took home the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for his second feature, Welcome to the Dollhouse. One of the seminal indies of the late 1990s, the film earned more than $4 million at the box office […]
