| Filmmaker Magazine

MICKIE REALIZES DREAM

When Canada’s entertainment conglom Alliance Atlantis announced a few months ago that it would be shuttering its film production and sales divisions, independent filmmakers wondered where its Managing Director of Motion Picture Sales Charlotte Mickie would wind up. Throughout the ’90s, Mickie has been a reliable and accessible presence on the scene, picking up many noteworthy American indies and often propelling them to solid international sales. Among the many titles in her Alliance Atlantis catalog are Bowling for Columbine, The Station Agent, Welcome to the Dollhouse, and In the Company of Men. So, we were happy to hear yesterday that […]

by Scott Macaulay on Mar 20, 2004

FCC — WTF!

Um, is anyone else out there following the very scary goings on at the FCC these days? I know there’s been a lot to write about — the Oscars, The Passion of the Christ — but the collective entertainment blogosphere has been awfully quiet when it comes to Congress’s proposed changes to the FCC charter. From the Howard Stern/Clear Channel ban to some of the measures detailed in this Washington Post article, risk-taking programming is under siege at the moment. Note the article’s last paragraph: by only one vote, a Senate provision sponsored by Senators Byron Dorgan and Trent Lott […]

by Scott Macaulay on Mar 10, 2004

BETTER THAN NEW

Vincent Gallo fans — and perfectionist filmmakers with money to spare — must check out this eBay page in which Gallo sells the camera, lights and sound package used to create The Brown Bunny. (Being a fan, I hope this doesn’t herald a retreat from filmmaking for Gallo.) The package contains two Aaton 16mm cameras, Super Baltar lenses, the last Nagra 4 STC made by the company, and an Angeniuex zoom purchased from the Kubrick estate! Writes eBay seller nbvbn, who, by the way, has a seller rating of 76 with 100% positive results, “Vincent Gallo, the director of Buffalo […]

by Scott Macaulay on Mar 8, 2004

THE EUROPEAN GRADUATE SCHOOL

Holly Willis, Karol Martesko and I founded Filmmaker back in the fall of 1992 and for many years after that Holly served as our West Coast Editor before moving on to her current position as editor of the quite excellent Res magazine. We were trading e-mails recently, and Holly asked if we’d link this site to the European Graduate School, where she is working on her second Ph.D. When she wrote to me that the program was “ridiculously perfect — it brings together amazing philosophers with filmmakers for intensive three-week seminars in a tiny town in the mountains of Switzerland […]

by Scott Macaulay on Mar 7, 2004

DANGER AFTER DARK

Haute Tension If you’re a regular reader of Filmmaker, you’ll recognize Travis Crawford‘s byline. He’s often in our pages writing about cutting-edge genre films, Asian auteurist work, and unclassifiable Euro arthouse pics. (See his feature on Bruno Dumont’s 29 Palms in our current issue.) But when he’s not writing for Filmmaker, Crawford is, among other things, programming the Philadelphia Film Festival‘s “Danger after Dark” program, the genre-section that allows him to cherrypick the best new titles as well as the essential works that have been on the fest circuit for the past year. Crawford is the king of the long, […]

by Scott Macaulay on Mar 4, 2004

SUPER SIZE THIS!

Count Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me along with Bowling for Columbine and The Thin Blue Line when discussing contemporary documentaries which have actually produced real social change. In an upcoming Filmmaker piece, Spurlock discusses the influence Moore has had on his Sundance hit Super Size Me, in which the filmmaker explores America’s fast-food mania by eating only McDonald’s food for one month. (By day 21 he’s gained almost 20 pounds and is on the verge of liver failure.) Today, in an echo of K-Mart’s decision to stop selling bullets following Moore’s cinematic targeting in Bowling for Columbine, McDonald’s has turned […]

by Scott Macaulay on Mar 3, 2004

THE 2004 INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARDS

The biggest surprise at the 2004 IFP/Los Angeles Independent Spirit Awards occurred during John Waters’s opening monologue. As Waters spun out an outlandish, increasingly hilarious story involving him being imprisoned in an MPAA cell for participating in screener bootlegging, none other than MPAA topper Jack Valenti appeared to grab the microphone away from Waters, handcuffing and dragging the mustachioed director offstage. Indeed, the tale of the screener battle — recounted by IFP/Los Angeles (a co-plaintiff) Executive Director Dawn Hudson — was, more or less, the afternoon’s sole political topic of discussion. There was no Michael Moore rant and, perhaps remembering […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 29, 2004

SARAH JACOBSON MEMORIALS

We were sad to receive this note from Ed Halter today about the filmmaker Sarah Jacobson: “As many of you know, Sarah Jacobson was battling terminal cancer for the past half a year or so. Well, I’m sorry to report that last night she passed away. Because Sarah knew so many film people, I’m helping her family spread the word about two memorial events happening this week in her memory. On Monday, February 16th, at 3pm, there will be a memorial service for Sarah at the synagogue on 17th Street between 2nd and 3rd street in Manhattan. (Sorry, I don’t […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 15, 2004

THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION

It’s hard to find original gift ideas. While searching for a Valentine’s Day present, I remembered a conversation I had with the director Sara Driver in Rotterdam. She told me about Boym Studio’s Buildings of Disaster series. Small postmodern totems, the series consists of bonded nickel sculptures of sites like the Chernobyl nuclear reactors, the Unabomber’s Cabin (pictured, right), the L.A. freeway during the O.J. Simpson chase, the Waco Complex, and, yes, the World Trade Center. Reading about the sculptures, one would imagine them to be pieces of ghoulish kitsch. Seeing them in person, though, they come off as strange […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 13, 2004

OVERLOOKED

Of course, with the Academy nominations come and gone, it may seem kind of pointless to hype an un-nominated performance. But given the nods to Naomi Watts and Benicio del Toro for their work in 21 Grams, I just wanted to mention my favorite performance in the film which I was surprised to see absent from the various year-end lists. I’m not talking about Melissa Leo, who has her supporters, but rather Charlotte Gainsbourg. Playing Penn’s wife — a Brit transplanted to Memphis who just wants a second chance at a child with Penn — Gainsbourg, in a quiet, unshowy […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 10, 2004

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