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, 2019Whenever directors watch their own films, they always do so with the knowledge that there are moments that occurred during their production — whether that’s in the financing and development or shooting or post — that required incredible ingenuity, skill, planning or just plain luck, but whose difficulty is invisible to most spectators. These are the moments directors are often the most proud of, and that pride comes with the knowledge that no one on the outside could ever properly appreciate what went into them. So, we ask: “What hidden part of your film are you most privately proud of […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 25, 2019Nick Nolte had walked into a bar. Nolte was a constant in a screenwriting partner’s Malibu hinterlands, hair ever elevated, stalking across a parking lot to Coogie’s for the midafternoon breakfast, resplendent in striped Sulka pajamas and happy dudgeon. This time, it was dark and it was Toronto, across from the Sutton Hotel headquarters of the festival. The upstairs of now long-defunct Bistro 990 on this night in the late 1990s is rich with heightened voices but not shouting. I’m standing near Nolte with a cofounder of Indiewire, Mark Rabinowitz. Our eyes literally grow large just as our ears figuratively […]
by Ray Pride on Jun 11, 2018“I was looking at old issues of Filmmaker,” says Leslie Harris — director of the 1993 indie drama Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. “There was Quentin, Robert Rodriguez, Nick Gomez, and then Matty Rich and John Singleton. And Juice was just coming out. It was a real male-dominated arena. My impetus was to see a black woman on screen, someone who wasn’t a wife or a girlfriend. Someone who had her own dreams — a strong, confident black woman’s voice.” That voice was Chantel’s — “precocious as hell, sharp as a tack,” wrote Beth Coleman, who interviewed Harris for […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 8, 2018“There’s an ambition that comes with wanting to work for Harvey Weinstein. Every day that I worked for The Weinstein Company I woke up with fear. You rationalize it as normal, that this is the dream we all want to be a part of; thinking you have to act a certain way, even though it’s an outdated way, an old way of doing business, but still how TWC operated. You begin to feel that hopeless, dreamless Hollywood factory. The culture was just so toxic. Everyone was scared, nervous, anxious, and now we’re confronting not only the sexual violence but the […]
by Taylor Hess on Dec 14, 2017“Billy Wilder once said that there are only two things aging directors can’t avoid…awards and haemorroids [sic]. I’ll stick with just the awards for the moment, please.” So says a recent Facebook post from the brain behind some of the greatest films of the last century, from Monty Python and the Holy Grail to Brazil to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Yes, Terry Gilliam has joined Facebook, as an experiment to promote his latest venture, the short film The Wholly Family, about Italian Pulcinella figurines coming to life inside a small boy’s imagination. (I highly recommend following his status updates). […]
by Ariston Anderson on Dec 19, 2011Funny or Die has made a very funny video with Paul Rudd pitching Harvey Weinstein marketing ideas for Jesse Peretz’s upcoming Our Idiot Brother. Check it out below. Paul Rudd Pitches Harvey Weinstein from Paul Rudd
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 10, 2011In a release today, IFC Films has announced they have acquired the worldwide rights (excluding Canada) to Barry Avrich‘s documentary, Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Project. The release touts the film as a “powerful, uncensored, no-holds-barred account that traces Weinstein’s path from concert promoter on the cold streets of Buffalo to his first trip to the Cannes Film Festival, where he arrived with one pair of pants and closed his first movie deal, to winning an Oscar, and breaking the bank with his first $100 million film. It examines his complex relationships with his brother, his staff, and the Hollywood community […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Sep 16, 2010