Elaine May
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“Don’t Expect to Like ‘Em:” The Making of Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky
Entering to a standing ovation at a Friday-night screening of Mikey and Nicky at New York’s Metrograph on December 6, Elaine May looked out at the full house. “I was told this entire audience is made up of editors,” she said. And then, mock-anticipating their first question, she declared “Steenbeck,” name-checking the flatbed editing table on which her 1976 film was cut. The event was organized by the American Cinema Editors as part of their ongoing Filmcraft series at the Lower East Side Theater, and May was accompanied onstage by two editors; series moderator Phillip Schopper, and Jeffrey Wolf, who […]
by David Schwartz on Dec 14, 2024 -
“Take Control Over the Color and Build That Into the Sets”: DP Frederick Elmes on Hunters
Early on in his career cinematographer Frederick Elmes worked as a camera operator for John Cassavetes and was a director of photography on David Lynch’s debut feature Eraserhead, laying the groundwork for a career that would absorb and expand upon both those influences. Like Cassavetes, Elmes is a filmmaker who knows how to frame and showcase great performances; his multiple collaborations with Ang Lee, Jim Jarmusch and Tim Hunter have yielded career best work from Kevin Kline, Bill Murray, Joan Allen, Matt Dillon and many others. Yet like Lynch, Elmes is also supremely attuned to the visual properties of cinema […]
by Jim Hemphill on Apr 30, 2020 -
Tin Cup, Picnic at Hanging Rock and Mikey and Nicky: Jim Hemphill’s Home Viewing Recommendations
One of the best American comedies of the 1990s hits Blu-ray this week with Warner Archive’s release of Tin Cup, director Ron Shelton’s deliriously romantic and sharply observed meditation on the blurry line between self-sabotage and greatness. Kevin Costner, in the loosest and most engaging performance of his career, plays golfer Roy “Tin Cup” McAvoy, a driving range pro whose self-described inner demons have kept him from achieving his potential while old rival David Simms (Don Johnson) has risen to the top of the profession. When David’s girlfriend Molly Griswold (Rene Russo) comes to Roy for golf lessons and Roy […]
by Jim Hemphill on Apr 17, 2020 -
Seamless Transitions: Remembering Stanley Donen
In 2003, I was at Columbia University getting a masters degree in film and television. A friend who had just graduated called me with a rather unusual offer. Stanley Donen—the prolific and award-winning director of Singin’ in the Rain and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, who died this February at age 94—was looking for a producer. My friend had been talking to him about taking the job, but when Stanley found out he would be graduating in a few months, he asked him to find someone who was still a student. “It’s a student film,” he said. I didn’t get […]
by Ben Odell on Jun 19, 2019 -
Class Rank, Mikey and Nicky and The Blacklist: Jim Hemphill’s Weekend Viewing Recommendations
One of the most charming and intelligently written and directed teen films of recent years, Class Rank, premieres both in limited theatrical release and on multiple digital platforms today, and it’s well worth seeking out in whatever format one chooses to experience it. Olivia Holt and Skyler Gisondo (both terrific) play a pair of teenagers who take on their local school board over a bit of bureaucratic minutiae and in the process navigate both daunting struggles for power in the adult world and the complications of first love. The script by Benjamin August is a delicate treasure that’s hilarious but […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 11, 2018 -
Ruptures and Disturbances
The Killing of America The recent Severin Films Blu-ray/DVD release of the 1981 documentary The Killing of America marks the first time this notorious cult item has ever been commercially distributed in the U.S. in any form — ironic, given that it’s a film about a particularly American issue made by two American filmmakers, but it apparently hit too close to home at the time. So despite being a top 10 box-office hit that year in the country that actually produced it (Japan), the film never saw the light of day in the U.S. other than an extended run at New […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2017 -
“The Only Thing I Ever Really Look at in Movies is the Actors”: Paul Thomas Anderson on Inherent Vice
How do you interview the filmmaker whose work has meant more to you than any others’? Paul Thomas Anderson is, for me, the best and most important director of his generation, the only person I know of who not only invites but actually earns comparison with Martin Scorsese. Like Scorsese, Anderson is a voracious film scholar whose movies both honor traditions and shatter them; also like Scorsese, he’s a committed chronicler of 20th-century American history whose perspective is consistently deeper, broader, and more original than just about anyone else’s. He’s also the best director of actors since Elia Kazan – […]
by Jim Hemphill on Dec 11, 2014
