When I was thirteen years old I spent a good deal of my free time posting on an online message board dedicated to Wes Craven’s Scream film series. I was a nerdy, creative kid stuck in suburbia, and I’d stay up late on my parents’ basement desktop computer writing long, elaborate, I’m-sure-illegible fan fiction stories to post on the message board. This was a subculture on the forum: users would regularly post their own fictional horror stories (some inspired by the Scream movies, some original). The stories would often feature the characters from Scream mixed with new characters inspired by […]

Glen Powell gives me hope for the future of the movie industry. He crushed the role of legendary astronaut John Glenn in Hidden Figures and donned some ’80s duds in Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some, but he really grabbed my attention in the brand new Netflix rom-com Set It Up, where, in my humble opinion, he has crafted a classic, for-all-time, romantic lead performance opposite the incomparable Zoey Deutch. We talk about his process in general and do a deep dive into his work in Set It Up in particular. And by the end, I come closer to understanding why […]

When I interviewed cinematographer Paul Cameron about his work on the Westworld pilot, he likened the show’s mechanical hosts to the workers on set. “By the end of the day, half the hosts have been shot up and need to get washed down, the lead pulled out and get re-programmed to be put back into work the next day,” said Cameron with a laugh. “It’s kind of like a film crew.” For Season Two of HBO’s sci-fi/western hybrid, cinematographer Darran Tiernan was among the crew getting the metaphoric lead pulled out every night. Tiernan lensed five of the ten episodes, […]

Lea Thompson has a lot of wisdom to share. Her work as an actor spans three decades with hit films like the Back To The Future trilogy and Some Kind of Wonderful to successful television shows like Caroline in the City and Switched at Birth. She recently started a second chapter as a director. Her first feature film The Year of Spectacular Men (opening Friday June 15th) stars her daughters, Madelyn and Zoey Deutch, and was written by Madelyn. We talk about how this true family affair was stitched together with nothing but love, and how actors need to be […]

I don’t think I’d be out of line if I said the DP job market is heavily saturated. IATSE wouldn’t tell me the actual number of jobs available last year, but according to the internet there were 157 TV shows in production and roughly 250 features released (both union and non-union). Currently, there are more than 2,000 Local 600 members on the active DP roster, and while some of them are retiring this number doesn’t include the many operators stepping up and shooting on their way to re-rating. Add to that a small number of in-demand cinematographers who take up […]

It used to be so simple: Release a movie in theaters and, several months later, it would come to your local video store. Nowadays, each and every film’s release pattern and chosen distribution platforms are—or, at least, should be—idiosyncratic, unique, and specifically tailored. “The first thing you have to ask yourself,” distribution consultant Michael Tuckman says, “is who is your audience, and work backwards from there to figure out what windowing you’re going to do.” If the target audience is a young demographic who spend most of their time on devices, then, according to The Orchard’s Paul Davidson, “a SVOD […]

The brilliant J. Smith-Cameron blew us away in Margaret (written and directed by her husband, Kenneth Lonergan) and in the acclaimed series Rectify. Currently she’s starring in the new play Peace For Mary Frances (with Lois Smith), and the praiseworthy film Nancy (written and directed by Christina Choe and co-staring Andrea Riseborough and Steve Buscemi), which opens Friday June 8th. We talk extensively about her work in the latest two pieces and how her desire for rehearsal is sometimes satisfied in a roundabout way on a TV shoot. She also shares what she does right before she steps on the […]

Since its May 5th launch, Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” video has been viewed more than 215 million times on YouTube, a testament to the power of the internet as mass medium. According to Variety, the average ticket price for the first quarter of 2018 is $9.16; using that math, a music video shot in two days with nine rolls of film has been viewed by as many people as Avengers: Infinity War. “I was a bit shocked at the scale and speed of the reaction. It was released on a Saturday evening and on Sunday morning I woke up to […]

Sami Gayle has played Nicky Reagan on the hit CBS drama Blue Bloods for eight seasons, performed on Broadway a few times, acted opposite Adrien Brody in her first film, and she’s only 22. She now stars in Candy Jar, a fun and smart new Netflix film set in the world of high school debate, which was written by her brother Chad. We talk about the unique way the work deepens when you have played a character over a period of time, and why “quality over quantity” is the approach she’s taking with her career. This episode can be listened […]