Screenwriters
Interviews - Screenwriters
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Canadians in “Space”: Stéphane Lafleur on Viking
While Stéphane Lafleur’s third feature, 2014’s Tu Dors Nicole, chronicled the summer malaise between of aimless Quebecois post-grads, his follow-up, Viking, explores a different, slightly otherworldly strain of existentialism. High school gym teacher David (Steven Laplante) gets the opportunity to revive his dreams of becoming an astronaut by joining a behavioral research team called the Viking Society that will mirror the first manned mission to Mars. This B-team plans to replicate the mission in a controlled environment that resembles the probe—i.e., a Quonset hut in the desert—where they will game out potential interpersonal conflicts between the five-member crew in order […]
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“It’s Not Funny if It’s Not Bright”: Greg Mottola on Confess, Fletch
I read Confess, Fletch for the first time in high school and, ever since, it’s remained a personal favorite. That often surprises people when I tell them that, not least because the name “Fletch” is less associated with Gregory Mcdonald’s genuinely funny novels than Chevy Chase’s considerably goofier incarnation of the journalist-sleuth in 1985’s Fletch and 1988’s Fletch Lives. The original Fletch adaptation essentially retains the structure and basics of Mcdonald’s original but changes the tone to better suit Chase. For better and worse, Mcdonald’s books string together often hilarious dialogue exchanges with aspirationally Hemingway-esque connective prose; they work better when the emphasis is on […]
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19 Months from Conception to Completion: Daniel Goldhaber on How to Blow Up a Pipeline
Daniel Goldhaber’s second feature, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, takes its title and broader inspiration from Andreas Malm’s non-fiction manifesto, published by Verso. Malm’s book is heavy on the language of comrades and cadres, an exhortation to ecoterrorism to the already sympathetically inclined—and, as a friend pointed out, it’d be more accurately titled Why to Blow Up a Pipeline, as instructions aren’t provided. While Goldhaber’s version of How to Blow Up a Pipeline isn’t a manual as such, its commitment to depicting the means by which one might achieve its title goes much further than most. Eight protagonists from all over the country […]
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Magic, Misdirection and the Amazing Kreskin: Michael Bilandic and Owen Kline on Funny Pages
Director Owen Kline texted me recently to let me know he was in my neighborhood, so we linked up in Washington Square Park to see what was good. He’d just gotten back from Cannes where his debut feature, Funny Pages, was a smash hit. I was excited to hear some glamorous, and hopefully debaucherous, tales from the Croisette. Instead, the very first words out of his mouth were, “Pick a number between between one and a thousand. And don’t tell me what it is!” He looked me dead in the eyes, on some mentalist shit, scribbled furiously on a clipboard for […]
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“The Stories I Tell Are Just a Way To Get To Know My True Self”: J. Sean Smith on Her Student Short Film Showcase Winner #Whitina
Issues of identity and immigration take Instagram by storm in #Whitina, director J. Sean Smith’s short film, originally helmed as her thesis for the University of Southern California’s Film & Television Production MFA program. The film’s title references the conflict between protagonist Genesis’s (Inde Navarrette) Latinx heritage and her mannerisms and interests, which more closely reflect those of her white classmates. This disconnect has caused a palpable resentment among her culturally rigid Latinx peers, who write off Genesis as a white girl wannabe and an assimilationist snob. However, this tune quickly changes when Genesis helps her former friend (and current […]
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“I Believe That Filmmaking Is a Dream Capturing Machine”: Jorge G. Camarena on His Student Short Film Showcase Winner Spaceship
Fusing harsh realities with otherworldly wonders, Jorge G. Camarena’s short film Spaceship is an adept blend of melancholy and magical realism. An MFA graduate of the AFI Conservatory’s directing program, Camarena had a robust career in music video and commercial work before pursuing his postgraduate studies. The visual slickness of his commissioned work coupled with a desire to tell stories of people living on the margins (or as he describes, “hidden in plain sight”) makes for a final product that is both sharply focused and totally vulnerable. This description also feels apt for Spaceship’s protagonist, a trans woman and single […]
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“To Be a Good Director Is To Be a Good Listener”: Jun Hee Han on His Student Short Film Showcase Winner Uncle
The shattered illusions of childhood innocence are comedically contrasted with a run-down Seoul porn theater in Jun Hee Han’s short film Uncle. A graduate from UCLA’s MFA program in film directing, Han had an unlikely catalyst for his filmmaking career. After studying philosophy as an undergraduate at Rice University in Houston, Texas, Han was tapped for mandatory military conscription in his birthplace of South Korea. Feeling disconnected from his heritage while growing up in the U.S., his time in the army ignited a passion to tell stories connected to his home country—an artistic pursuit that directly resulted in Uncle, which […]
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“I Think the Funniest Things Are Truthful”: Akanksha Cruczynski on Her Student Short Film Showcase Winner Close Ties to Home Country
The downtown digs of a wealthy couple become a source of luxury and languish for a displaced dog sitter in Akanksha Cruczynski’s Close Ties to Home Country. The Columbia College Chicago MFA grad stars as a version of herself in the short, which allows her to reflect on many of her own anxieties about her overarching place in the world. Born in India and raised in Saudi Arabia, the filmmaker has grown accustomed to ignorant remarks ever since relocating to Chicago to pursue higher education. Many of these comments have been repeated and parodied in Close Ties to Home Country, […]
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Read Interviews With The 2021-22 Student Short Film Showcase Winners, a Collaborative Award From The Gotham, JetBlue and Focus Features
The winners of the third annual Student Short Film Showcase, a collaborative award bestowed by The Gotham, JetBlue and Focus Features, are currently available to stream here at Filmmaker, on Focus Features’s YouTube channel and in the air as part of JetBlue’s in-flight entertainment selection. More than 20 graduate film schools submitted works to be considered for the Student Short Film Showcase, and the winners selected for the 2021-22 slate hail from diverse backgrounds and schools across the country. Columbia College Chicago grad Akanksha Cruczynski creates an amusing yet melancholy work of autofiction with Close Ties to Home Country, which […]
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“We Wanted the Film to Feel Like a Memory, a Dream of Childhood…”: Director James Ponsoldt on His Coming-of-Age Neo-Noir, Summering
In Summering, James Ponsoldt‘s return to cinema following several years of episodic television work, four young girls, best friends about to enter different junior high schools, find their final moments of group bonding upended by a shocking discovery: a dead body. Encountered near a secret spot they dub Terabithia (after the YA novel and film Bridge to Terabithia), the gruesome find turns into a challenge. What if rather than calling the police or telling their parents these friends could actually solve the mystery of this deceased middle-aged man’s identity and cause of death? It’d be both a kind of end-of-summer […]
