The always excellent KCRW podcast “The Business” has an interesting juxtaposition today. The first half of the program features an interview with Monica Karo, President of Integrated Sales, OMD on the effect of the recession on TV ad buying. The second half is an interview with Saw 2, 3, and 4 director Darren Lynn Bousman on his seven-or-so year saga to bring Repo: The Genetic Opera to the screen. “Darren Lynn Bousman was a kid who loved rock opera… and he’s got the wedgies to prove it,” says The Business’s Claude Brodesser-Akner as he intros the latter segment. In it, […]
One of the challenges any film faces these days is building a community of people around it — an audience that is energized and inspired by not just the movie, when it comes out, but the idea of the movie before it hits the theaters. One film sure to draw passionate engagement is Gus Van Sant’s upcoming Milk, and already its website is drawing moving and personal postings on Harvey Milk and his importance to multiple generations of gay and lesbian men and women. Check out the Milk site and read not only about Harvey Milk’s life but also the […]
On his blog, The Camera Eye, D.P. Keith Duggan has a straightforward, practical post on how he shot and lit the low-budget road movie Route 30. The film stars Dana Delany and is described as a “hilarious backwoods comedy,” and it was made with “no AD’s, no honeywagons, no equipment trucks of any kind.” But shooting on two Panasonic HVX200 cameras and carrying four P2 cards and a small amount of lighting and grip equipment in half the interior and on the roof rack of the director’s SUV, Duggan found a way to light the movie and give it a […]
William Horberg, exec producer of Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, has a blog, and in today’s post he compares his first reading of Kaufman’s script — in one of those annoying “you have to read this in two hours and then hand back immediately to a bonded messenger” sittings — to his first assignment at script coverage back in 1986. (Hat tip: Ted Hope.) From the piece: As a test, the first screenplay I was given to read and analyze as a sample of my reading, writing and comprehension was, believe it or not, How To Get Ahead In Advertising, […]
Ballast, which picked up several Gotham Award nominations yesterday, closes at New York’s Film Forum today But the film’s website has just been updated with screening dates across the county as well as in New York. (The film will move to the Cinema Village and the Brooklyn Heights Cinema for one week beginning Friday.) Here are the other upcoming dates that have been announced so far: Walker Art Center Minneapolis MN Oct 29 Q&A with director Lance Hammer following screening. Music Box Theatre Chicago IL Oct 31 – Nov 06 Q&A with filmmaker Lance Hammer on Friday, October 31. Screening […]
If you saw the original interview — or even if you didn’t — this is hilarious. See more funny videos at Funny or Die
IFP announced today the nominees for this year’s 18th Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards. Lance Hammer‘s self-distributed first feature Ballast received the most nominations with four, including for Best Feature and Breakthrough Director. The awards will be handed out on Tuesday, Dec. 2 at New York City’s Cipriani Wall Street. Full list of nominees are below. Best Feature BallastLance Hammer, director; Lance Hammer, Nina Parikh, producers (Alluvial Film Company) Frozen RiverCourtney Hunt, director; Heather Rae, Chip Hourihan, producers (Sony Pictures Classics) Synecdoche, New YorkCharlie Kaufman, director; Anthony Bregman, Charlie Kaufman, Spike Jonze, Sidney Kimmel, producers (Sony Pictures Classics) The VisitorTom […]
After I produced my first feature (Tom Noonan’s What Happened Was…), I imagined what my next year would be like. I’d be flying all over the world going to countless festivals with the film. But I quickly realized two things. One, festivals don’t care much about hosting producers, and, two, I wasn’t flush enough to float myself on a year of globetrotting and had to get back to work. In today’s diminished conventional distribution environment, film festivals are increasingly seen by first-time filmmakers not as tony travel spots but rather as cogs in a new machine that might connect them […]
Digital Strategist/Consultant Alex Johnson, who writes at, among other places, The Workbook Project (and is one of the professionals featured in its Mindshare Program) has a really interesting essay up on the site discussing the value of a name. No, not a well known actor who is attached to your film, but your name, and how that moniker can help (or hurt) you in the Google-ruled world of online brand recognition. Starting off by discussing her problems of being commonly named, she goes on to detail what she’s done about it while also musing on the pro’s and con’s of […]
JULIETTE BINOCHE IN DIRECTOR ABEL FERRARA’S MARY. COURTESY ABEL FERRARA & ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES. After more than 30 years as a director, Abel Ferrara shows no sign of losing any of the raw intelligence, energy and vitality that have made him a continuing force in American cinema. The Italian American Bronx-born director, now 57, began directing shorts as a film student at SUNY Purchase in the early 1970s and made his feature debut in 1976 with the porn film 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy under the pseudonym Jimmy Laine. His debut proper was the legendary DIY grindhouse movie The […]