David Byrne and Brian Eno did it right when releasing their new Everything that Happens Will Happen Today, I think. Even though 20+ years have elapsed since their last collaboration, this one was announced and then made available to fans just three weeks later — no time for record industry leaks to pop up on the internet but enough time to score feature coverage like the piece in the Sunday New York Times. A free song was provided at the end of July in return for your email address. Today, the record’s release date, an email went out reminding you […]
Over on his blog These Are Those Things, Ted Hope tracks a correspondence between fishing and film that has taken 17 years to play out. In a post entitled “Rock & Roll & Film & Fishing & Tripping,” Hope traces the ripple of a stone thrown in the lake by John Lurie in his cable show Fishing with John and watches it turn into an afternoon in which Caveh Zahedi and Will Oldham trip on mushrooms and then, later, yet another fishing trip, this time shared by Dean Ween and the Butthole Surfers. Head to Ted’s blog for the links […]
This article, written by Bergen Swanson, originally appeared in our Winter, 2002 issue. YOU’VE DONE IT! The screenplay you’ve been slaving over for months has finally been optioned by an edgy production company noted for offbeat films. Or, the movie that has consumed your life for the past two years has been picked up by a noted distributor. Emptying out your savings, selling your comic book collection, sleeping on friends’ couches – it’s all been worth it. But then the unthinkable happens. The company that bought your film or script files for bankruptcy, and your project gets thrown into legal […]
ROBERT ENGLUND AND TREVOR MATTHEWS IN DIRECTOR JON KNAUTZ’S JACK BROOKS: MONSTER SLAYER. COURTESY ANCHOR BAY ENTERTAINMENT. At a time when horror films are getting ever more brutal, Jon Knautz brings a comfortingly old- fashioned feel to genre filmmaking. The Ottawa-born writer-director, who grew up on a diet of slasher films and 50s creature features, went to Vancouver Film School to pursue his dream of making movies. Knautz’s graduation project, Apt. 310 (2002), a stylish, tightly scripted noir, was the first in a series of shorts that harked back to classic modes of filmmaking. After making the blood-spattered comedy horror […]
Alex Karpovsky, writer/director, 2006: Since being included in the list back in 2006, I teamed up with Indiepix to release my first feature, The Hole Story, on DVD. The film is now available at retail stores across the country, Netflix, and other outlets. I have also completed another feature, Woodpecker, which premiered at SXSW last March and is now bouncing along on the festival circuit. Currently, I am in post-production on my first feature-length documentary TJ and Dave, which focuses on America’s most revered long-form comedy improvisers, Tj Jagadowski and Dave Pasquesi. I’ve also done a bit of acting recently, […]
Here’s the sixth of our catch-ups with previous “25 New Faces” filmmakers. If you’ve been on the list and haven’t sent us an update, you can still email one to editor.filmmakermagazine AT gmail.com. David Russo, writer/director, 2003: I’m in post (special effects & animation) on my live action feature, The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle. I’d like to have it done for Sundance 2009 consideration, but I’m really taking advantage of both the Rockefeller and Creative Capital grants to make it thoroughly my own kind of vision. For me that just involves time, time & more time. The investors are […]
Independent film is, unfortunately at times, a cyclical business. In 2002 we commissioned producer Bergen Swanson to write “Hollywood or Bust: What if Your Producer Goes Bankrupt.” It was relevant then and may be relevant at now. It’s in our Web Exclusives. Here’s a taste: YOU’VE DONE IT! The screenplay you’ve been slaving over for months has finally been optioned by an edgy production company noted for offbeat films. Or, the movie that has consumed your life for the past two years has been picked up by a noted distributor. Emptying out your savings, selling your comic book collection, sleeping […]
Here’s the fifth of our catch-ups with previous “25 New Faces” filmmakers. If you’ve been on the list and haven’t sent us an update, you can still email one to editor.filmmakermagazine AT gmail.com. Don Handfield, writer/director, 2005: Life for me has changed dramatically for me since 2005, no pun intended. I am married now – to a beautiful woman named Tressa, and we had our first baby – a little girl – Robinson Dawn Handfield – just two weeks ago. She came in on the day of the recent earthquake and has been making her presence known with more little […]
An interesting conversation is developing over at Anne Thompson’s blog, in which she writes about some of the recent executive departures. Of course, the big news this week was Paula Wagner’s leaving UA, and in a piece about that development Thompson references Bill Horberg’s stepping down as head of production at Sidney Kimmel Entertainment. SKE has recently downsized after producing several films, including Charlie Kaufman’s ambitious and out-there Synechdoche, New York, which cost, reportedly, north of $20 million and, according to Thompson, was bought “for a song” by Sony Classics. She characterizes both Wagner and Horberg as being “ill equipped […]
The Long Now Foundation was established twelve years ago to “creatively foster long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.” One of its founding board members is Brian Eno, and he submitted a fascinating post to the site’s blog recounting the experience he had watching a theater piece in Oberammergau, in Upper Bavaria. From the post: In the early seventeenth century, as plague raced across Europe, the people of this small town made a deal with God: spare us and we’ll perform a Passion play every ten years. All of us. The whole town. True to […]