David Gordon Green
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How Halloween Production Designer Richard Wright Shot the Film’s Opening Credits with a Few Hundred Dollars, an Old Bolex and a Fridge Full of Rotting Pumpkins
While the new Halloween ignores the plots of the many sequels that followed John Carpenter’s 1978 original, it doesn’t spurn the movies themselves. The film is crammed with loving homages to the franchise — even the Michael Myers-less Halloween III: Season of the Witch gets a brief shout-out. The latest Halloween installment establishes its fondness for its predecessors in the opening credits, which pay tribute to Carpenter’s progenitor with a slow push-in to a rotting pumpkin that magically restores itself to health as the camera creeps closer. Though the sequel’s production budget was a reported $10 million, only a few […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Nov 2, 2018 -
“Let Logic Steer the Ship”: Michael Simmonds on Shooting Halloween (2018)
In his book Making Movies, Sidney Lumet wrote that he once asked fellow director Akira Kurosawa why he’d framed a shot in his period epic Ran in a particular way. Kurosawa replied that if he’d panned the camera an inch to the left he would’ve seen a Sony factory. Panning an inch to the right would’ve revealed an airport. I don’t know if Halloween cinematographer Michael Simmonds has read Lumet’s book, but after chatting with him I’m confident he would appreciate that anecdote. Simmonds, whose diverse credits range from the horror sequel Paranormal Activity 2 to the acclaimed documentary Project […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Oct 31, 2018 -
Five Questions for Stronger Director David Gordon Green
David Gordon Green finds it difficult to focus on one type of project at any given time, and as a result, frustrates his agents in working out how to market him. But the Arkansas-born, South Carolina-based writer/ director, whose diverse filmography includes early aughts independent standouts like All The Real Girls and George Washington as well as mainstream hits like Pineapple Express, is okay with that — so long as he is aggressively working on projects that he is both passionate about and that challenge him. Opening today in theaters is his modestly-budgeted drama Stronger, which depicts the true story […]
by Tiffany Pritchard on Sep 22, 2017 -
SXSW: Five Questions for Hunter Gatherer Writer/Director Josh Locy
Virginia-born Josh Locy makes his feature debut at SXSW with Hunter Gatherer, a drama about forty-something African-American-man beginning life anew after prison — and after the support network he thought he had fail to reengage with him in his new life. Locy originally planned to become a Baptist minister, but a detour led him to the director David Gordon Green, for whom he worked, and the job of art director, which he now practices on various independent and studio films. Below, he discusses the origins of his story, what he learned from Green and how working in the art department […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 12, 2016 -
“Maybe The Mechanic Would Be Good for This”: DP Tim Orr on Manglehorn
When I ask cinematographer Tim Orr if – after ten feature films together with director David Gordon Green – their references are most frequently their own movies, Orr replies, “Well, you don’t want to make the same movie over and over again.” No one is going to accuse the duo of that. In a collaboration that dates back to their days at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Orr and Green have made everything from lyrical Malick-esque meditations and medieval stoner comedies to surreal odes to lovelorn locksmiths. The latter describes Manglehorn, an odd mixture of magical […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Jun 25, 2015 -
Trailer Watch: David Gordon Green’s Joe Starring Nicolas Cage
Joe, David Gordon Green’s adaptation of the Larry Brown novel, sees the peripatetic filmmaker returning to the Southern-fried family drama of his Undertow days, if not with considerably more grit. Premiering at the Venice Film Festival, where Tye Sheridan — riffing off the remnants of his Mud daddy issues — scooped up the Marcello Mastroianni prize for Best Young Actor, Joe follows the eponymous cypher, played by Nicolas Cage, who takes Sheridan under his wing and away from his troubled home life at the local lumber company. As you may glean from the trailer, Sheridan’s father doesn’t take too kindly to the boy’s new […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 28, 2014 -
Venice International Film Festival 2013
To get to the Lido — the strip of beachy land upon which the Venice Film Festival is held every year — one must take the vaporetto (or water taxi) from the Marco Polo Airport. While waiting for the transport to arrive, one is stuffed into a rectangular holding pen that sways and jerks with the current, provoking a mild but unmistakable seasickness in the more sensitive among us. Little did I know I was to experience almost exactly the same feeling the following morning while watching festival opener Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón’s first since 2006’s Children of Men. It’s an […]
by Ashley Clark on Oct 21, 2013 -
Venice 2013 Critic’s Notebook: Palo Alto, Parkland and Joe —To Live and Die in the USA
In the year of our Lord, 2013, the chances are that if you stand in any one place for long enough, some or other cultural product bearing traces of the involvement of prolific polymath James Franco will drift into your orbit. This general rule of thumb goes treble for festivals, and this year’s Venice has been no exception. Unfortunately (or fortunately, if my festival flatmates’ vituperative reactions were anything to go by) I missed the Franco-directed, necrophilia-laced Cormac McCarthy adaptation Child of God, and I also spotted his name in the written credits, presumably as a talking head, for the […]
by Ashley Clark on Sep 3, 2013 -
Five Questions with Prince Avalanche Director David Gordon Green
In 2011, an Icelandic-British film called Either Way won Best Film and Best Screenplay at the Torino Film Festival. Just over a year later, David Gordon Green, an American filmmaker whose own projects have debuted at Torino, has remade Either Way into the comedy Prince Avalanche starring Paul Rudd (Knocked Up) and Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild). The movie studies two men who leave their city lives to paint traffic lines down a wrecked highway. As they move through the hot summer and learn more about one another, an unexpected friendship develops. Much to everyone’s surprise, Green pulled off shooting this feature film in Texas over […]
by Alexandra Byer on Jan 20, 2013 -
SHORT WATCH: HAMMER TO NAIL WINNER “ONCE IT STARTED IT COULD NOT END OTHERWISE”
Over at Hammer to Nail, Michael Tully has announced the winner for the inaugural edition of his monthly Short Film Contest. This month’s winner, Kelly Sears’ Once It Started It Could Not End Otherwise, is available to watch online, and it’s unforgettable; a nightmare-ish collage of refracted high school memories, manipulated yearbook photos, and an escalating sense of dread. You can stream Once It Started It Could Not End Otherwise over at Vimeo. My advice – don’t watch it at work unless you want your coworkers to see your terrified face. Previously supported by Rooftop’s Filmmakers’ Fund, Sears’ short was […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Feb 22, 2012
