Clay Tatum and Whitmer Thomas wrote and star in the wonderful new comedy The Civil Dead, which Tatum also directed. On this episode, they discuss their long collaboration and friendship that goes back to Alabama at age 11, doing comedy events in Los Angeles with Power Violence, filming sketches, honing their craft, learning valuable lessons on the HBO/A24 production The Golden One, the importance of rhythm in comedy, the importance of trusting your own voice, and applying it all toward the modest indie film that won the audience award at Slamdance last year and is about to win audiences over […]

When Peter McCaffrey left the processing lab at New Zealand’s National Film Unit in the early 1980s to become a freelance camera assistant, his bosses told him he’d be asking for his job back in two weeks. There was no such thing as a film industry in New Zealand, they warned. 35 years later, McCaffrey still hasn’t looked back. Climbing the ranks from clapper loader to focus puller to camera operator, McCaffrey has built an impressive resume of large-scale credits including The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Thor: Ragnarok. Now, he has […]

British TV and film star Joanna Scanlan won the Best Actress BAFTA award last year for her incredible performance in After Love. She plays Mary, a devout convert to Islam who, shortly after becoming a widow, discovers her late husband’s secret family. In this episode, she takes us on a little tour of the meaningful aspects of her acting process—the investigative phase of initial script reading, the “harnessing” of feelings, the mystical “clicking in” that happens through the words, and why it’s always been about the love of it. Plus much more! Back To One can be found wherever you get […]

To say Guslagie Malanda plays Laurence Coly in Alice Diop’s Saint Omer feels incorrect; she becomes her. It’s a performance that holds such subtle power and authenticity that it’s easy to take it for granted. On this episode, Malanda explains why she turned down countless acting jobs after her first film, My Friend Victoria. She talks about the year-long pre-production period that she needed to prepare for the role, the nightmares that plagued her during that time, the breakthrough of learning to breathe, and much more. Back To One can be found wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, […]

Tallie Medel is an award winning actor, educator, artist, and one third of the legendary Cocoon Central Dance Team. Her fiercely authentic and nuanced performances in films like Dan Sallitt’s Fourteen have garnered attention from critics and audiences alike. This past year she gifted us with Becky in the acclaimed Everything Everywhere All At Once. In this episode, she talks about the communal environment on that production that benefited the performances, the importance of establishing true connection with her scene partners and using the present moment as a tool, how learning and teaching Clown has changed and shaped her work, […]

In The Menu, entitled dinner guests get more than they bargained for when they travel to a remote island to feast upon the culinary delights of a disillusioned celebrity chef (Ralph Fiennes). Despite being surrounded by exquisite works of gastronomical artistry during the shoot, cinematographer Peter Deming did not partake. “I didn’t taste any of it. I’m not a big food person,” said Deming. “I’ve actually talked to a number of people who said the first thing they did after seeing the movie was go have a cheeseburger.” While Deming may not have an appetite for ornate cuisine, the cinematographer certainly knows […]

As 2022 comes to a close, Filmmaker returns with our annual recap of the year’s most read posts. As I click through Google Analytics, this piece always becomes something of a revelation, a mixture of the predictable (our 25 New Faces list); the news-triggered (an old profile resurfacing on the director’s recent success, for example, or, more sadly, their passing); evergreen articles on filmmaking itself; and pieces for which strong content, aided by SEO and provocative headlines, meshed to attract an abnormally large slew of first-time readers. As in the past, the list is divided into two: the 10 most […]

If the Back To One podcast has one tradition, it is the yearly visit from its very first guest, the living patron saint of the working actor, Kevin Corrigan. This is his fifth time on the show (Ep. 1, Ep. 67, Ep. 133, Ep.185), and as you’ll hear, he still has a healthy supply of great stories, laughs, and inspiration to dish out. He talks about his recent stints on Law and Order: Organized Crime, City on a Hill, and the upcoming indie film Bang Bang; tells a hilarious story illustrating the ways he practices acting when not on a […]

The last time Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread, Bergman Island) was on this podcast (episode 174), we learned about how she approaches the work through a kind of “emptying out” of herself, and a “deconstruction” of everything in her obit, even her preconceptions regarding the role. This time she’s back to talk about her astounding work in Marie Kreutzer’s film Corsage, an imaginative re-telling (or perhaps a “correcting?”) of a year in the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Krieps talks about treating the work as an invitation to play, how dealing with the coldness of the character had an effect on relationships outside of […]

In just three (admittedly, very momentous) years, the marketplace for independent films has completely changed. During previous turning points over the decades, executives would use words like “waves” or “cycles” to describe instances of upheaval, but what’s happening now is more like a comprehensive reset. In a recent online article titled “The Sky is Falling, Take Shelter,” producer Rebecca Green wrote, “This year is unlike anything I’ve seen in the 20 years I’ve been working in this business.”  If Sundance and its films are a barometer for the independent film industry, consider this comparison: The pre-pandemic class of Sundance 2019 […]