As a publication about film, we find ourselves in the peculiar position of publishing during a moment when theatrical access to movies, and their ongoing future, is as much in question as everything else. During this suspension of normal filmwatching habits, we’ve reached out to contributors, filmmakers and friends, inviting them to find an alternate path to the movies by participating in a writing exercise engaging with any book about or lightly intersecting with film, in whatever way makes sense to them. Today: Brendan Byrne on David Mamet’s Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama. The […]
by Brendan Byrne on May 19, 2020Written and directed by David Mamet, shot by Robert Elswit, and starring Kristen Bell, Ricky Jay and Ed O’Neill. David Mamet’s “Lost Masterpieces of Pornography” w/ Kristen Bell, Ed O’Neill & Ricky Jay from David Mamet
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 4, 2010Movieline has just printed a memo from David Mamet to the writers of the TV show The Unit, which he executive produced. It’s characteristically blunt and reductive, but in a good way. It’s nothing that you writers don’t know, but it is something that you writers (and, um, us producers) sometimes forget. Especially when responding to — or sometimes writing — notes of the “Do we really understand…?” variety. Here are a couple of excerpts, but read the whole thing at the link: SOMEONE HAS TO MAKE THE SCENE DRAMATIC. IT IS NOT THE ACTORS JOB (THE ACTORS JOB IS […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 24, 2010ADRIEN BRODY, RACHEL WEISZ AND MARK RUFFALO IN DIRECTOR RIAN JOHNSON’S THE BROTHERS BLOOM. COURTESY SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT. When his first film was released in 2005, Rian Johnson became an overnight sensation; but, as is so often the case, that “overnight” success took many years of work to achieve. Johnson was born in 1973 in Silver Spring, Maryland, and grew up in Denver, Colorado, and San Clemente, California. He came from a family of film lovers and by the time he was in seventh grade he was making movies, taking his Super 8 camera with him whenever he could. When he […]
by Nick Dawson on May 15, 2009