Notes from Underdog.

Raymond Chandler's letter to Alfred Hitchcock

2012-01-11T09:04:09-08:00

Great find on Letters of Note (hat tip to @T_FUTURIST on Twitter), of a parting letter writer Raymond Chandler sent to Hitchcock after their collaboration on Strangers on a Train didn't quite work out.

December 6th, 1950

Dear Hitch,

In spite of your wide and generous disregard of my communications on the subject of the script of Strangers on a Train and your failure to make any comment on it, and in spite of not having heard a word from you since I began the writing of the actual screenplay—for all of which I might say I bear no malice, since this sort of procedure seems to be part of the standard Hollywood depravity—in spite of this and in spite of this extremely cumbersome sentence, I feel that I should, just for the record, pass you a few comments on what is termed the final script. I could understand your finding fault with my script in this or that way, thinking that such and such a scene was too long or such and such a mechanism was too awkward. I could understand you changing you mind about the things you specifically wanted, because some of such changes might have been imposed on you from without. What I cannot understand is your permitting a script which after all had some life and vitality to be reduced to such a flabby mass of clichés, a group of faceless characters, and the kind of dialogue every screen writer is taught not to write—the kind that says everything twice and leaves nothing to be implied by the actor or the camera. ...

Read the rest here >>

Screenplay for THE ARTIST, an atypical script read.

2012-01-05T18:16:58-08:00

[Thanks to Rope Of Silicon]

The script for THE ARTIST. Was really curious as to how a modern silent screenplay reads/looks, and naturally it violates the so-called rule to "avoid too much of that 'black stuff,'" i.e., too much description. It is all description, and often in long chunks, too. But he wrote it for himself to direct, and it's very effective at conveying the scenes, the feel, the mood, the actions, all at once.

Reposting: A Beginner's Guide to 'Tintin': Everything You Need to Know About Steven Spielberg's Latest Big-Screen Hero

2012-01-03T21:15:19-08:00

Reposting a piece I wrote for Movies.com giving some background on the boy reporter/hero and inspiration for the new Spielberg film. [I give the film a B+, for "Blistering barnacles," I really enjoyed it, to be precise. There are some really excellent Herge homages at the film's start, and then the spirit of the comics lives throughout. The writers may have tried to cram too much in (3 comics into one story) but changes otherwise seemed good, kept humor but added more.--cgp]

With the big-budget, CGI The Adventures of Tintin film hitting the world in a big way -- directed by one of the most famous of directors and produced by another no stranger to blockbusters -- it's hard to imagine a time back in my childhood when I innocently clutched faded reprints of Hergé's comic books and dreamed of a movie.

The year Raiders of the Lost Ark came out was when I first discovered this series, which shared many elements with Spielberg's crowd-pleasing adventure: A brave, young, globetrotting hero battles nefarious crime syndicates and villains over artifacts and heirlooms—though Tintin, a boy reporter instead of an archeologist, was younger and more innocent (and asexual, though this thought didn't occur to me as much as a lad) than Indiana Jones; and at times Tintin got into trouble more by sticking his nose into other people's business when things struck him suspicious, rather than venturing forth for his own gain. But these beautifully illustrated comic books captivated in much the same way as Raiders, and the stories took Tintin from England, the character’s home base, all over the globe: from South American jungles to Tibet, from fictional countries to, yes, the moon (before anyone really set foot on it).

Hergé

Belgian artist Hergé began Tintin as a serialized newspaper strip, before segueing to comic book form. Quite a few of the best stories were written before, during and right after WWII, so Hergé, an anti-fascist who tried to remain apolitical due to worries about Gestapo censorship—and worse—in his occupied country, certainly knew the territory. In that period Tintin was more an explorer like Indy, rather than a reporter (lest he sniff out something the real-life ruling fascists didn't care for). The earliest Tintins, in the 1930s, also had elements of discomfortingly dated racial portrayals, though now it seems clearer that Hergé's work tended to be a sign of the times without much maliciousness to the caricatures; as a judge recently ruled, Hergé's intent was not racist in Tintin in the Congo even if some of the drawings sure seemed that way. But you can trace his progression as an artist and observer reading through to his later work (the last, Tintin and the Picaros, was published in 1976).

In the 1970s and 80s, Tintin had more of a cult following in America than a widespread audience, even though he'd been popular around much of the rest of the planet for decades.

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[Reposting] Bringing A New Dimension to Movie History: Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo”

2012-01-02T19:17:00-08:00

[Reposting my piece for Fandor]

Part of the Series The Silent Artists

A Dreamland of Magic: Asa Butterfield and Chloe Moretz in Martin Scorsese's "Hugo"

Hugo is clearly a departure for Martin Scorsese, as a 3D feature ostensibly about and for children, free of violence, and rarely very dark. Yet anyone familiar with the director’s work, especially in film preservation and scholarship (itself committed on film through documentaries like A Personal Journey Through American Movies) will know it is also entirely in his wheelhouse, as a valentine to the origins of cinema.

More simply, it is the story of Hugo Cabret, a smart but lonely orphan in a steampunk-ish 1930s Paris, who fends for himself in a railway station’s clock tower. Hugo (played by The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ Asa Butterfield, who oddly looks like a small Maggie Gyllenhaal, with piercing green eyes, elfin nose and moppish hair) strikes an initially adversarial relationship with a toy shopkeeper (Ben Kingsley). He then befriends the man’s bookwormish but forward daughter Isabelle (the appealing Chloe Moretz, here with an English accent; it’s one of those films set in Continental Europe where a compromise is made to make all the characters act British). The two kids move from trying to solve one mystery–reconnecting with the boy’s dead father–to a question of more historical import: what happened to magician and early film pioneer Georges’ Méliès.

As the story unfolds, Hugo becomes more connected to cinema itself. Hugo recalls that his father once told him seeing a film is “like seeing his dreams in the middle of the day,” and sneaks Isabelle into her first movie screening, Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last (that film’s famous clock-hanging sequence is a bit of an on-the-nose set-up for a later scene, but one can forgive such things). They go to a library and discover a book about movie history, which reveals both the answer to a pressing riddle as well as the book’s author (a bearded Michael Stuhlbarg), who personally regales them with tales of the first movies in all their mystery and power, such as how the Lumiere brothers‘ Arrival of a Train sent audiences leaping from their seats, expecting the train to actually hit them.

Read the rest on Fandor >>

The Interview Archives: Bennett Miller

2011-12-02T11:54:17-08:00

Part of a series of my past interviews (on GreenCine) which I'm reposting here as a way to archive them.--cgp

By Craig Phillips

"You want the thing to be embraced."

With Bennett Miller, one gets the hopeful sense that he is just at the beginning of what could, and should, prove to be a long career - and, as with his idols,Stanley Kubrick and Terrence Malick, one that may not prove to be as prolific as it is artistically fruitful. At least as evidenced by his remarkably assured first feature, Capote. (Another he respects: "Jim Jarmusch, because he makes his movies. He knows what he wants to do and he does it. Those are three good ones right there.")

Capote could also end up fruitful come Oscar time - at least for Philip Seymour Hoffman, who plays Capote to mesmerizing affect, humanizing the oft-mimicked writer. Miller's long-time friend, actor Dan Futterman, also deserves an Oscar nod for his incredibly astute, sharply observed screenplay. One hopes Miller won't be overlooked either (my review of the film can be found here). The resulting work, one of measured perceptiveness and compassion, focuses on the writing of the Pulitzer Prize-winning In Cold Blood. Truman Capote's famous book on the brutal Clutter murders that took place in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959, remains his most famous work, but as people will see when they watch the film, the end result may not have been worth it given the psychological toll it took on the author's subsequent life.

With the film's success comes a bit of happy news - that Miller's critically acclaimed feature-length documentary The Cruise will finally be seeing a DVD release later this year (or by January).

I spoke with the filmmaker while he made a brief press tour stop in San Francisco on the heels of Capote's national theatrical release.

What were you up to in the period between The Cruise and Capote?

I was looking for a film to do. That's the main thing. After The Cruise new opportunities arose, and I got an agent who began sending scripts. I read a lot of scripts but the other opportunity that came up was directing TV commercials. So in January of '99 I began directing commercials, a substantial amount of them, dozens upon dozens, actually, while reading and looking for a film. I found another documentary to shoot, which took four-plus months to shoot, and is sitting on my shelves right now, logged and digitized. But really, it was looking for that next film while honing my craft shooting commercials.

What was the subject of the documentary?

I don't want to talk about it too much, but [it's] like The Cruise, and like Capote, actually, in that it's another portrait.

Do you see a connection between The Cruise's subject, Timothy "Speed" Levitch (seen at left), and Truman Capote? As real-life eccentrics, with some similar characteristics...

Yeah there's a lot, in their mannerisms, and in being outsider characters. And also the story of a writer and a subject is similar to the story of a documentarian and subject, with some of the same issues coming up.

I spoke to the makers of American Splendor awhile back, who had also made the so-called "leap" to narrative features. And wondered this for you as well as them - do a lot of people express surprise that someone can come from a documentary background and make a narrative feature, as if they're two alien species?

Yeah, people are surprised. I don't deal with questions about it too well, but it is weird. The honest answer is that the creative process, whether you do it in documentary or feature, or drawings or art or whatever else, when you're in your zone it all feels kind of similar. That's the truth. And I didn't aspire to be a Documentary Filmmaker. I was always focused on doing features, and it just so happened that I came across the idea to do The Cruise. But it didn't feel like a big leap to me [to do Capote]. Well, it was a big leap in that it was a whole new level, but I felt like I was preparing my whole life to do it. I waited until I thought I was ready.

A lot of filmmakers are like that kid in class who's always raising his hand, whether he knows the answer or not, just because he wants to hear his voice. Those are the guys who go into making films. [laughs] You know, "Give me a camera!" But I think I was a little more nervous about the whole venture and in school much more introverted and withdrawn. I don't want to step forward until I feel good about it. SoCapote was a big step and I did it with some confidence that I was ready.

And you collaborated here with your childhood friend, actor and writer Dan Futterman - what was that process like?

We'd never really worked on anything before. And he did a draft, which was great, but then it was about a year and a half before we actually got together and two and a half years before we started shooting. Revisions did come in that time period and we worked together, and even then after the shoot wanted to do some reshoots and, during the edit, work together some more on the script. We made an agreement early on that the relationship would be more like a director and a playwright than it would a director and screenwriter - where a screenwriter's really treated with a certain level of disregard. We would both sort of agree on at least the shooting script. What happens after you finish a shooting script is a whole 'nother story, because improv happens and stuff gets cut, moved around, shifted in editing, things happen on the shoot? But to get it to the point where there was a shooting script, we were going to agree on that, both sign off on it.

That created more work in a way because if he wanted to hold on to something, a big debate, or discussion, would follow, and ultimately the movie is better for it. Because he had the opportunity to defend stuff and I was forced to have a deep clarity about the decisions that were going to affect how the script would change, or what the script really was. Or maybe I'd missed something that he'd intended? So it was healthy. Whether or not I ever make the same arrangement with a screenwriter again, I think I will insist upon that kind of debate. I really learned a lesson about not disregarding anything, forcing a person to defend themselves, like "Why did you do that?" or "Why do you think that needs to stay - because I think that can go?" Maybe there was an answer and maybe there wasn't, but it's a really healthy process.

Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener in Capote

What was the genesis of doing a film about Capote?

It was all Dan. He came across the story, he read about Capote going to Kansas and what happened there. He really just on his own initiative, on spec, decided to write this thing. He told me that he was going to do it and I wished him luck - and then lo and behold, he showed up with a quite excellent first draft. It was his doing.

And it was always focused on the In Cold Blood period of Capote's life?

That's right, although, even though it's just that period, it's definitely informed by his life before and his life to come. The story is there but I think you really get a sense of the whole character, the whole persona, within that year. It's not a biopic in that sense; it's a story of a guy looking for something and finding it - and discovering it's not what he thought it would be. But it is also a portrait; isolated in a few years of his life, you get the big picture of what this character is, what his condition is, what his destiny is. And hopefully, if the movie works for you, it amounts to a lot more than just a biopic, a lot more than just the life of Truman Capote. You see what he went through, and how its indicative of larger issues that affect culture and society.

And being a creative person yourself there were probably things you related to as far as his struggle in the process...

Absolutely. To be perfectly honest, it's not difficult to identify with that drive towards creativity and perfection. But also, how you get done with a thing or nearly done and you seriously want it to be appreciated. And I'm sure you've interviewed other directors and some act very cool. But they're liars. You want the thing to be embraced. You just busted your ass for two and a half years about something you care about, and feel very exposed about it because you put yourself in it, and fucking right you want it to play, you want it to register in people, you want them to embrace it and to take it with them.

I think that was part of what was being withheld from Capote, when he couldn't finish his book and couldn't get it out there, it was like poison to his brain. He went mad, he became sick with a desire to have this thing done.

Working on this film, it was hard and miserable, but we were able to finish it on some kind of reasonable timeline, and keep our composure, maintain some bit of grace about it. But if you told me we are where we are now except we are going to postpone it indefinitely because of something or another, and then interview me three years from now, I'd be pouring J&B scotch into my baby food, I'm sure.

The psychological attachment to Perry Smith that Capote formed - obviously it's so traumatic in the film, you can empathize with how painful that was for him, how attached he'd become.

[warning - some spoilers here:]

Well, he was divided, he was conflicted. On the one hand, he did empathize with Perry Smith deeply. He identified with him and cared about him. At the core, they're very similar people. Capote's this famous socialite writer, but the truth is, he, like Smith, was abandoned as a child by his alcoholic parents, one of whom killed himself. And like Smith, he grew up feeling like an outcast, totally alienated and alone and desperate. He tried to take refuge in creativity, and when he comes across, is like, in a way, like a soul mate.

He's got those feelings - but I think what drove him mad at the end was that Smith's survival was an obstacle to Capote. He needed him to hang so he could have the ending to the book that he wanted. That emotionality at the end is him really looking at being in a room, face to face with what he'd wanted. That's it, this is what you'd been making yourself sick over, this is what you wanted, for these two guys to die, and now you're looking at them, seeing the tragedy of their lives mixed with your own complicit will.

Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote

Did you always imagine Philip Hoffman for this or was there an audition process? After seeing the film, it's hard to imagine anyone else in the role.

Yeah, that's what it was like for us, too. There was no other actor on the list. It was him, and if he said no, that would've been it. At least that it would have been it for me, because we scratched our heads about any other person.

How much did he, and you, base that role on footage of Capote from that era? He was such an oft-imitated and parodied personality and archetype, I'm thinking of how conscious you both must have been to to locate the essence of his character, rather than lapse into yet another fey impersonation...

[Hoffman] looked at everything you could imagine. He looked at everything and owned everything, and played it throughout, prepared for several months. But he was also very conscious of what you just said, that the guy was parodied and a parody of himself, and to really get at the character, to be conscious of the pitfalls of playing a character like that, you can't resort to mimicry. I've got a pretty good ear for that kind of thing, and I don't think Phil is a mimic in this movie at all. I think he's playing him from some gut, core level. It's not bullshit.

People usually see Catherine Keener in these acerbic, bitter comic roles - what made you think of her as [To Kill a Mockingbird author and Capote's lifelong friend] Harper Lee?

The qualities we'd hoped to realize in that character are maturity of spirit, sanity, selflessness, morality - these are not the qualities that are not normally attributable to the kinds of people who go into the profession of acting. [laughs] It's true. But I met Catherine and she actually seemed to really own those qualities. It was a very natural choice to cast her, and thank God we found her.

The period detail of the film, too, is really accurate without being "too much." How did you - someone from my generation, not from that era - get the details right?

Simply, research. Fear of getting it wrong also helps. And a real abhorrence of the artifice that often passes for "period." I just wanted to get it right, and you look at Hollywood movies that do that period, and they just hit you over the head with clichés of that time, impose the period on you. But that's not what it was like. And thankfully there are great photographs and films, too, which served as a valuable reference for us.

And also, you know when something feels like B.S. So we just tried to keep it real.

Did you go back and watch the film version of In Cold Blood?

I haven't seen it since we shot the movie, but I watched it before shooting, for the second time. It's such a different movie, it didn't have that much relevance for us, beautiful though it may be. (Conrad Hall shot it.) But the one relevance it had was production design and costume design. I have that thing on my computer where you can capture still frames from a DVD; I watched the movie through and clicked some frames from the Clutter house scenes [where the murder takes place], because they shot in the actual house, so I got every angle they had, interior and exterior. That's the actual courtroom, that's the actual jury, that's actually what they were wearing... So it was a great resource for research, and I stored all those stills and sent them out to my production designer and costume designer and then was done with it.

Are you and Dan thinking of collaborating again on something?

We talk about it theoretically. He actually has an idea that he just told me about, so who knows. It would be great. We're not beholden to each other but it could be a happy thing.

Is there anything else besides the aforementioned documentary that you're working on next, then?

Nope. My life is about to become about decompressing and then finding the next thing. So, if you know of something let me know! I'm looking.

Hmm... [here the interviewer wished he'd brought along a copy of his screenplay]

It's got to be special though.

It's amazing how many very talented, even veteran filmmakers get so few good projects coming their way.

Well, it doesn't matter who you are, good material is hard to come by. It's the truth.Terrence Malick's made three, now four, movies. Stanley Kubrick made how many in the last twenty-five years of his life? Four.

Thinking back to that metaphorical kid in the classroom raising his hand, "Me me me!" - you look at people who are making bad movies, and then go look on theIMDb, and they've all got eleven things developing. Just... load 'em up!

That's another thing I wonder about - after their first independent film gets acclaim, a lot of so-called "indie" directors will be offered projects by Hollywood studios, for more money, for a bigger film. But creatively they lose something. Do you have any nervousness about that?

Yeah. I'm very aware of it. And now it's a new landscape, but as long as the vision is clear, you know how to deal with things. If the vision is to make money, well, that's one thing. If the vision is to make a good movie, that will change how you see it, and the allure of some of the things that tempt others might lose their power. It just depends on what you're after, how much money you want and how much vanity you've got versus how much integrity. We'll see how I fare at that trial. [laughs] Maybe I'm greedy and vain enough to succumb to that, but you struggle for however many years to get to a place where you can really do something. Then at that point, instead of reaching, it becomes a matter of restraint.

The Interview Archives: Miranda July

2011-11-23T14:00:00-08:00

Part of a series of my past interviews I'm reposting here as a way to archive them.--cgp

The Miranda Act: Miranda July and You and Everyone We Know

By Craig Phillips

"It's much more about peers and finding people living life in a different way."

Artist-actress-filmmaker-writer Miranda July is so hyphenated she's hard to keep up with, and has had to rev herself up even further with the release of Me and You and Everyone We Know. Her debut as a feature director, the film is startling in its assuredness and acuity, and even more startling, won the Camera D'or at Cannes this year, as well as the Special Jury Prize at Sundance, where it also caught the eye of Roger Ebert. The critic called it "delicate, tender, poetic, and yet so daring in some of its scenes that you sit in uncertain suspense." As I wrote in my review after seeing it at the San Francisco International Film Festival, as good as the film looks, it's July's easy way with the actors, who range in age from senior citizen to 6 years old (the astonishing Brandon Ratcliffe), that is the real revelation here.

July's been making film for years, with her short film Getting Stronger Everyday a particular treat, while also wearing the hats of performance artist, writer, musician, collaborator, producer and visual artist. She was long a part of the art and music scene of the Pacific Northwest (although she grew up in the Bay Area and now lives in Los Angeles), but with Me and You and Everyone We Know slowly releasing nationwide (appropriately enough, in July), the hope here is that her multifarious work will find the wider audience it deserves.

She speaks endearingly with a lilt that modestly adds a question mark to the end of many of her sentences, giving off the impression of being reticent to speak too much when not performing or "on," which has the interesting effect of making the interviewer feel like the one doing the confessing. We spoke in San Francisco in May. For anything not covered in this interview, I highly recommend her insightful and amusing blog.

When you were at Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival with other directors, when Me and You and Everyone We Know was selected, did you think, "Oh, yeah, I'm officially a director now" - or has it not quite hit you? People like John Sayleswere there...

And I'm easily - it doesn't take John Sayles to make me feel nervous and alienated. I mean, he's a nice guy but in a group situation it's often harder for me than one on one, or in front of an audience. I was in front of 1,600 people later that night and was somehow fine.

And you can be prominently on screen, on film, and feel fine?

Right, that's the same sort of performance kind of energy.

Miranda July in Me and You and Everyone We Know

As a woman filmmaker do you feel it's still a challenge to break in, get films made, even in the indie world?

You know, it's funny, I did sense when I was pitching the movie and trying to come up with financing that there might have been a little bit of prejudice there. Although you can never really tell why people are passing when they're passing. Probably more likely they were passing because of its lack of stars - I didn't want to put stars in it. But once I was making the movie, it seemed completely normal - I was the director, of course, it's my world. But once I was done, and got to Sundance, and was one of two women out of sixteen movies in competition, I was kind of stunned. And then I looked around me, realized, wait a second, wow, this is just so insidious. And you look at all these different points and ask, "Does it happen here? These people don't seem sexist. Is it here?" It's really kind of everywhere, but in ways people don't like to talk about because they're all struggling to move up. So it definitely seems something's gotta change, but I don't know what or how...

It's weird, because on the surface you'd expect "indie film" to be more progressive on that issue.

Well, indie film is only "indie" until you're done making the movie, and then you're selling it and it's no longer indie film. And all the agents are the same agents, for everyone.

Who were some of your role models - for filmmaking or acting or art - when you were coming of age?

Growing up, my biggest influences probably were friends of mine. I had a best friend who went on to be in a band and we had a fanzine together. We became artists together. I never went to art school. I was just very good at having mentors - I didn't like the idea of authority. It was very much about me and my friends, and for a long time it was girls in bands, even though I was always doing my own movies and performing, that was kind of the world I was in. And then meeting other artists. Harrell Fletcher, who I collaborated with on Learning to Love You More, was a big influence. And different women filmmakers through Big Miss Movieola, the distribution network I started when I was younger. It's much more about peers and finding people who were living life in a different way, a way I could relate to.

You yourself have a blog now, and then in the film itself there's a hilarious running story around computers and instant messaging. I was wondering if you had a particular interest in the way technology affects society?

It's funny because I'm actually pretty non-technologically inclined, and in fact when I started the blog recently I asked my web designer, "What are all these ...'comments'? What are these people...?" And she said, "Uh, Miranda, that's what a blog is - people write back." "Oh!" I had no idea that was part of the deal. [laughs] So I hadn't actually read blogs. I'm just starting to realize what the form is, and that everyone talks about themselves, pretty much. It's hard to do that and already be a bit of a public figure. When does it become too much? I'm trying to figure out a way to do it.

Did somebody ask or suggest that you do a blog?

Well, blogs have become kind of an indie film marketing thing. And it makes sense to me. I like it, as it's been my only creative outlet on this tour. Although, of course, any time I'm not actually alone in a hotel room I find it hard to keep it up.

So you do read those comments people leave for you?

I do, I read them all! But I was wondering, should I be writing back to them? I feel like if I start writing back to them, I could open a can of worms, as I can't write everyone. Maybe I'll just say that, that I do at least read them all. There! That takes care of it.

[ed. note: One of the young cast members posts to her blog, too.]

So I take it you hadn't actually used instant messaging (IM) yourself, then? It seemed fairly accurate in the film.

No. I don't even have it on my computer. In the film, [the IM design] was pretty simple looking, compared to how kids these days would have a funny character as their symbol and it would look more sophisticated. People pointed that out to me but as long as it works for the movie, I don't care because it wasn't that easy. We had to use Linux so it wouldn't be a copyright issue, which kind of limited how stylish it could be.

Did you use internet chat yourself to research?

You'd think I would, wouldn't you? [laughs] But I'm horrible at research. I just write it and hope that it has some relevance to reality.

Did the young actors in the cast, the kids, give you feedback on that subject - "This isn't what you do!"

No, they didn't say anything. Robby's [Brandon Ratcliff] too young to be doing it in reality. I don't think they're supercomputer kids. Miles [Thompson], who plays the older brother, is a total musical genius and really sort of earthy.

Miles Thompson and Brandon Ratcliffe

I read that you said you'd originally pictured Robby's character a little older.

Yeah, we pictured and were hoping for a little nine-year-old who could play a seven-year-old, and then this five-year-old walks in! But he was so much smarter than any of the nine-year-olds and so much better that it just didn't really matter. We found all the kids through a casting agent, who sifted through everyone. For the character of Peter, we'd about given up. We'd looked through all the mixed-race teenage boys and didn't find anyone. Then we got a tape of Miles, he lived in New York and we brought him out.

Was it a challenge to work with child actors? Or a different challenge than with adults?

Easier in some ways, because when it works, it really works. There's nothing false about it. And when it doesn't work, it's really obvious. With a six year old, if he's just bored, he'll literally be doing this [pantomimes slumping, bored, across the table]. And you'll say, "Just sit up, come on, one more take." There's no subtlety, he's not just becoming distracted, he's totally doing something else. But overall, he was amazingly focused. And I could tell him, "Now press your lips together and wrinkle your eyebrows," and how that would look on his face would be so profound. Both his energy and the way his face is.

Were any of the girl characters - or I guess the boy characters, too - based at least in part on your own youth?

All of them in some way were. Or, like, Miles, the older brother is based a little more on my older brother than on me. But the teenage girls, certainly there's elements of my own teenagehood. Not literally, specifically... [laughs] And my brother says he saw a little of me in Robbie, the little boy, too.

And the girl who was obsessed with the toy dowry?

Sylvie, yeah, she was totally based on me, on my old-fashioned-ness. I was living in a kind of "Little House on the Prairie" as a kid, or strived for a 1950s reality in the kind of books I was reading. Like this series of books called "Betsy-Tacy and Tibb" [by Maude Hart Lovelace] that I think my mom read to me. [laughs] There's one called "Betsy Goes Over the Big Hill" - you could follow them from when they were little girls to when they started dating. Only girls would know those books! No research required there - they're just in my consciousness.

Carlie Westerman as "Sylvie"

Children are obviously at the center of this film, and you've said that the genesis for the idea came from the way you longed for the future as a child. What sort of future did you long for and how do you maintain that sense of magic now that you and me (and everyone we know), are all jaded adults?

I actually feel close to the same way as I did as a kid. And in a way that's what guides me, that's what allows me to just decide that things could be fun, that not everything has to be a drag. Or to make things up, or make things that are boring into a game. That's kind of a saving grace, because I'm also completely anxious and compulsive and a workaholic [laughs] so luckily there's that other side.

You also wear a lot of hats - artist, performer, filmmaker, writer - so there'd have to be some sense of play to be like that...

Right. And yet, to want to be a director you also have to be pretty controlling in a way.

Getting back to casting, I was wondering how John Hawkes became involved in the film? I'd just seen him after having a Deadwood marathon so it was fun to see him in a completely different milieu.

Yeah, although his hair, and facial hair, are almost exactly the same because we had to keep that the same for Deadwood! I was kind of bummed about that but that was part of the deal, because he was shooting Deadwood right after. But anyway, he was supposed to come in early on, but something happened and we saw him only after I'd already seen so many other people. But the second I saw him, we were done. I knew he was perfect. And he really loved the role and the script. In fact, he was so faithful to the script that when I'd try to change things while we were shooting, he'd be really skeptical of me. I was like, "But John, I'm the person who wrote the script that you loved! I'm that same person, I could have good ideas now, too." But he remained skeptical.

He was great to also act with. It felt right for me on some level, I believed him in a way that helped me be my character. He was both charming and a little bit frightening to me, a little scary.

A good example of that is the scene where he's in the car with you and his reaction is rejecting you instead of being interested - the way he played that was both disturbing and empathetic.

Yeah, exactly.

John Hawkes

And you also got the great veteran actress Ellen Geer to play a small but pivotal role.

It's funny because that character's name had always been "Ellen." And I'd always had the idea that whoever played that role would be an actual veteran star - I pictured someone like that swim star from the 50s, Esther Williams. I pursued her and actually talked to her son. I had an idea of someone who you would know had really lived an amazing life. I pictured all of that person's real paraphernalia around them. You don't see that much of it in the movie, but of course Ellen Geer has lived an amazing life and history. So it's funny that when she walked in, I cast her not even knowing that, and had sort of given up on that idea. And then we go to her house to get her photographs and there's just this wealth of amazing things there.

So were the photos in the film that were really important to her character really hers?

Unfortunately we couldn't really play that up more, but you have no sense, or at least I didn't, when shooting of how clear things have to be for them to really play on the screen, to be seen clearly. So you didn't see the detail of all the playbills behind her and that sort of thing.

The DP was the gifted Chuy Chavez, who also shot Chuck and Buck. How did you hook up with him for this project and what was that collaboration like?

I connected with him through [Chuck and Buck director] Miguel Arteta, who was an advisor of mine at the [Sundance] Lab and who really recommended him. He was totally great, completely a partner. I could not have done it without him. He took such care with the HD, first of all. He made that look incredible, which is something I would not have had a first idea how to do. And then he emphasized to me that whatever the camera was doing was secondary to what needed to happen with the actors. Which was something a DP with a first time feature director could totally take advantage of, but he was so quick, he was like lightning. He was always waiting for everyone else. So I couldn't have had a better DP for my first experience.

How much of Me and You did you two map out, compose, visually beforehand?

We definitely came up with a palate for all the spaces and characters and stuck to that. And then I promptly forgot about it. Until we got into color correction and then I'd think, "Ooooh, yeah. That's why all those rooms are greenish brown and these are blue," because luckily you're not thinking about that once you've established the look with the production designer. I had too much else to think of.

So was there any storyboarding?

We only storyboarded the "blowjob" scene and the "goldfish" scene, because those were hard in different ways. But other than that we really didn't want a shot list. Sometimes we were forced into it, by everyone else wanting to know what the hell the plan was for the day. And Chuy was like, "You want a shot list?" and then would scrawl out the most rudimentary thing, and everyone would seize upon it and Xerox it.

That goldfish scene you mentioned was pretty surprisingly suspenseful. Was that based on a moment you'd seen in real life?

No, that scene was really more about the conversation between myself and Michael, the older guy. But then when I was writing the script, I'd just written what he sees out the window, including someone walking by with a goldfish. And then later, I thought, "Goldfish? That's so corny. Why would someone walk by with a goldfish? That's like a Disney movie." So I went to take it out but instead made it huge - I couldn't stop making it bigger, more and more part of the movie until it was suddenly so weird that I could no longer take it out. It was like an action sequence!

And you shot Me and You in LA proper?

Yeah, in PT Anderson country, the San Fernando Valley. Which of course is so meaningful for him, but I'd just moved there so I had no idea where I was. [laughs]

What are you doing next? Another feature or...?

I do have another feature that I'm in the early stages of thinking about, but before that really gets underway I want to finish a book of short stories and a performance that I've been working on, and a CD... So I'm going to try to quickly do all that.

Oh, is that all?

[laughs] Yeah, I know, I don't quite know what I'm thinking. But I didn't really plan on this whole promotion thing - I'd basically forgotten about it. But what's the rush, really? I've got, hopefully, my life ahead of me. There's a lot of pressure to make a second movie as quickly as possible, but I figure it'll come.

So you're writing a draft of a script?

Yeah, except I haven't had a second to work on it, so at this point the blog is my only creative life right now. I don't want to talk about specifics yet, because it's so new. But I wrote a grant for it last fall, so I already had to try to sell it. Then I got the grant - so, oddly enough, I'm living off a movie I haven't made yet, instead of this one!

The Interview Archives: Todd Solondz: 2005

2011-11-23T10:03:04-08:00

Part of a series of my past interviews I'm reposting here as a way to archive them.--cgp

Todd Solondz: The Master of Misanthropy Returns

By Craig Phillips

"You don't choose a story, it chooses you."

He's the master of discomfort. Todd Solondz loves displaying all the things Americans don't want to talk about - pedophilia, incest, abortion, rape, basically anything painful and awful. "That America is out there, and it is high time our popular culture faced it, wrote film critic David Thomson in his Biographical Dictionary of Film. "In people like Solondz, Neil LaBute and Terry Zwigoff we have a generation (more or less) that simply won't swallow the white lies anymore. It's up to us, and the system, whether we subvert it by calling it black humor." Once viewed, few forget his films, but even fewer know who he really is - although many presume to. His first widely released film, Welcome to the Dollhouse[Fear, Anxiety & Depression was his first feature], remains the favorite of many of his fans, for its spot-on portrayal of suburban junior high school hell, and, while he tries to never look back to his previous work, he also can't quite let go of some of Dollhouse's characters in his new film, Palindromes.

Palindromes takes what could have been simply a gimmick of a plot device - having a series of actors portray the same character - and turns it into something more revelatory. As with all his films, the film's fated to divide audiences and critics, for its seemingly nihilistic world view and bleak humor, and, of course, for making us all feel wholly uncomfortable. Solondz lives for such moments, and yet he's not the cruel, bitter man you'd expect when meeting - he may certainly be a bit of a mopey misanthrope, but also one who worried I wasn't drinking enough juice and when I wore a particularly pained expression after a response to one of my questions. He cares, he just has a funny way of showing it.

We met up in San Francisco while he was here for the SF International Film Festival.

I remember you once called the directing part of making a film particularly painful. Do you still find directing that painful?

Really, it's the whole production process. And yeah, it's horrible. Some people love it, but I'm not one of them.

In the process, do you feel as if you're a different person as a screenwriter as opposed to as a director?

No, because I write and direct my own material. While I'm writing, I imagine myself as a director at the same time, and how it's playing, and also imagine myself as a producer. Even if I'm not the producer, you have to think that way as a director, always thinking about budget. I had to almost completely revise the first twenty pages of the script forPalindromes, because they were originally set in the Caribbean. So I'm a cheap person, and rewrite to make it affordable, so that I can devise the movie without feeling like I'm making terrible compromises. It forces you to be resourceful. I know I'm gonna get a low budget, so if I come up with something that could be costly, I always have to ask myself: how necessary is this? Is there a cheaper way to get across the same idea without doing damage to the essence of what I have in mind. So as you're writing you're always thinking of this as not simply a writer, but as a director and a producer.

I certainly remember when I went to film school years ago, I devised my scripts in such a way that the first thing I thought about was, What locations can I get for free? Then I would never have more than three actors at a time. So you establish certain rules and there were certain things that you'd avoid because you knew they'd be too costly and time-consuming. And within those limitations, you really are only limited by your imagination and test your resourcefulness in a good way. Look, making movies is all about compromise - there are just different kinds of compromises when you make movies under a million, such as this one, or if you make for a hundred million, such as? other movies. But it's always about compromise.

So as a writer and director, as you're writing each sequence, you're also wondering how/if it's going to work visually as you're writing?

I'm always thinking about how it's playing and how it's cutting. All sorts of things that a filmmaker has to think about if he's doing his job.

You mentioned that you originally pictured the first part of Palindromes being set in the Caribbean - but was the idea of the main character being played by various actors, black, white, so many types, was that there from the beginning as well?

Right. Yeah, and the problem is, I have an idea and think, this could be a fun movie, even a commercial movie, and so could this one - but my hands have a mind of their own. Which is why I say, you don't choose a story, it chooses you. I thought: I don't want to do a story about a young girl. I had already done Welcome to the Dollhouse. Even though she's 13 instead of 11, it was just too close for me to feel comfortable. Until I came up with this idea about multiple performers, which sort of freed me up to pursue this wherever it was going to go. I wouldn't have been able to make this movie, never mind finish writing it, if I thought it was just going to be one young girl.

Did you also picture, when you were writing it, how each actor's type would be for each sequence?

No, I didn't know how that would work out, except that I knew it was going to start with a black girl [playing Aviva] to alert the audience that something was off. And then get that established with a latino and a redhead and so forth, and then I could go and push it further. I would have the big woman, who was my Gulliver so to speak, and then finally,Jennifer Jason Leigh - this woman of a certain age, you look at that face, and it's a life lived. It's as if this character has lived a whole life emotionally, for all the sorrows and pains and so forth. And yet of course, she's still just 13 years old. So certain things I felt I had to aim for, and yet remained open about how it was all to be filled out. And that's where the casting process came in.

Because the Jennifer Jason Leigh part to me seemed very specific to that sequence, whereas it wouldn't have worked earlier.

Right, that I knew was going to be there, a very special case.

Ellen Barkin and Jennifer Jason Leigh in Palindromes

[minor spoiler alert]
There's a segue from Welcome to the Dollhouse characters at the beginning, at the funeral - was that something you'd also imagined from the start?

I really wanted Heather Matarazzo [Dawn from Welcome to the Dollhouse] in the movie, I begged her for both Storytelling and Palindromes, and she refused me. [laughs] She said she didn't want to ever play this character again, and I had to accept that reality. So it was a way of freeing myself and creating a sort of demarcation: "That was then and that kind of movie, and this is now, going off in a very different direction, different characters, different kind of movie." Not to confuse.

So the fact that her character dies at the beginning of the film was your way of officially never going back there again?

Yeah, I can't go back there, I accept that - it's been made clear, though this isn't what I had in mind for Dawn Wiener. I was much more hopeful for this character, I really was, but reality goes a little bit different than what you had in mind.

How was it for Ellen Barkin, who plays the mother, playing off all the different "Avivas"?

One thing she said was that it didn't matter whether she was playing to the Latino or the redhead or Jennifer Jason Leigh - that it was all as if it were one person. There was a kind of quality that I was extracting or highlighting from each of these performers, which was a kind of fragility, vulnerability, an innocence that provided a kind of glue, cohesion, for all of them. So for Ellen it all fell to a piece for her.

Were you ever tempted to hit Barkin up for money [given she's married to Revlon head Ron Perelman]?

[Laughs] Tempted? Hmm... Actually, I was very respectful and that subject never came up.

I was thinking of how, in the current political climate, how hard it must be to raise funds for a potentially controversial independent film...

Well, look, we live in a country that is the driving force of capitalism, and if I were a filmmaker that lived in Europe or Canada, I would have a system set up by the government subsidies to sustain a career like mine. But in this country, there is no such thing as a safety net. Everything is very much bottom line, and you can have no illusions about that. That's what it is, for better or for worse.

There seems to be a bit of a double-standard regarding reactions your films sometimes get, for instance, versus the way people react without blinking an eye to the way TV news or reality shows depict controversial issues.

Yeah, I cannot compete with The Terry Schiavo Show for obscenity and grotesquerie, you can't get more horrific. The ironies abound - this young woman whose looks were so important to her, what would be her greatest nightmare but to be scrutinized around the world, in close-up, looking at her worst! This young woman who had issues, who didn't want to eat, what could be a greater nightmare than having the president of the United States saying "You must eat!" You couldn't have richer material if you're a filmmaker, an artist, what have you. I always thought that Bush getting re-elected was the best material for someone of that stripe, for someone like myself.

If Kubrick were around and he were making the movie of 9/11, he would cast George W Bush as The President. You couldn't do better.

Obviously there are issues in this film that are going to be perceived as controversial by some sides of those issues, but you've said that this isn't really a film about abortion, per se, but...

I should clarify that. Of course it would be disingenuous of me to say abortion isn't important, it's the elephant in the room, really. What I'm saying is the movie is not dogmatic, it's not out to advocate a position, it's not out to tell you you're right, it's good you're "pro-choice" or good you're "pro-life" for that matter. I prefer to characterize my set position in this movie as "anti-anti-choice." If "choice" is something philosophically speaking that one believes even exists. The thing is, if I say I'm "pro-choice" then everyone in the audience will think, "Good, it's cool - he's pro-choice so I can enjoy it." I don't want you to relax, I am provoking, prodding, poking, to get the audience to re-examine the fuller moral dimension of what this means. Also, if I say I'm "pro-choice," no one who is pro-life will see the movie.

I mean look, you go see Vera Drake. Mike Leigh's a masterful filmmaker, it's beautifully played and shot, a great indictment of a patriarchal system, and yet, I wanted to scream - would it be a crime to get paid for a job well done? Why does she have to be sanctified? Because in sanctifying this character, the audience becomes martyred, too, and narcissism seeps in there. There's no questioning or examination of the issue itself. Or inMaria Full of Grace - which is a wonderful work, lovely movie - but there's this one scene, where the pregnant, 17 year old girl sees a sign that says "Women's Health Services" and I thought, "Oh good." [laughs] And what does she do? What is the purpose of the scene? It was simply to tell us that the baby is okay. I just wanted to scream. She stays in America - what's she going to do? She's 17, pregnant, with no friends, no money, doesn't speak English. I mean, what can she do? It plays into the old myths of the American Dream, but it so undercuts so much of the good stuff achieved in that film.

I think you also said that Palindromes is more of a love story...

I always characterize everything I do that way, though. I look at everything in those terms. There are different kinds of love stories - you go see Tom Cruise in a racing movie, it's going to be a love story with a car. But for me it's just a way of accessing, experiencing it - what does it mean to be 13, and to want to be a mom, to have a baby, and to imagine that the baby will supply you with unconditional love that you feel you're not getting elsewhere. This is almost a quest for the sublime. When she's having sex in that montage at the end, she has no interest in sex, it's not about sex. For the second Judah in that scene it may be about sex, and succeeding as a man, but for her it's beyond sex. There's something transcendent in this moment she's going to become a mom. Even if biologically she doesn't become one, she may become a sort of Mama Sunshine character. This need is so defining of her, and there's something beautiful in her adherence to this ideal.

I thought it was to your credit that the Mama Sunshine character - even though there were disturbing things about her and that family, that she was depicted three dimensionally as far as how much she cared about the children.

That's the complicated thing. When she says, "There's nothing I won't do to protect these children!" - regardless of what you think of her religious or political ideology, you can't help but respect the integrity of her mission. There's certainly nothing more virtuous, the highest form of motherhood, really, to take in the abandoned, unwanted, discarded children, and create this sanctuary for them that's almost a kind of paradise. So for all the frivolity and satire that takes place there at the breakfast table, there is a kind of underlying pathos that in a sense any one of these children could have been her [Aviva's] child. That her mother had warned her might be blind or brain damaged or missing a limb, and there they all are. It rubs up against all the levity, this underlying pathos and poignancy. A better example of this dynamic of all that I do, is when the Sunshine singers are singing and dancing, and they take such great pride and joy in this performance, such profound delight, that I'm moved by that - but then you step back and think, "My god, what are they singing?" And it's this convergence of two opposing impulses that creates a kind of friction that is found throughout what I do. For me, that's the dramatic charge, that makes people say, "Should I laugh? Should I not laugh?" Or, "What am I laughing at?"

That scene is a great example of that line you almost cross - they're so earnest, it's sweet what they're doing and yet it's hard not to laugh. And then hard not to feel bad that you're laughing.

As long as you're not laughing at the expense of these characters, everything is fair play. Certainly there could be no obscenity greater than laughing at a disabled child, that would be cruelty, but it's difficult for people to look at these children. Some people feel that, if they didn't have disabilities then it would be okay - so you're saying that it's okay for them to dance and sing provided they have no disabilities? But that just disenfranchises them - why should they not be allowed to sing, to partake in the frivolity and the satire just as any other kids? To me they're just children, I didn't divide into those with and without.

Did you always picture the film ending where and how it ends?

I don't remember how I get anywhere. I'm always amazed I get to the end, that I survive. There are two goals: One is to survive a movie, and the second is you hope you can avoid humiliation. [laughs] And those are the two goals I always set for myself.

Do you have people poke and prod into your own personal childhood just because your films often have childhood themes?

People might. I don't know what they'll find. I don't know who these people are, and why they would even spend so much energy or time investigating my personal life. It is kind of a creepy thought. But I don't flatter myself that I'm that compelling of a character. There are many other people they can get much more juicy material from.

Religion plays a role in this film, obviously - does your own religious upbringing affect your work at all?

I didn't come from a religious family, and now I'm a devout atheist. Although people are constantly asking me about how I wanted to become a rabbi, just because in some interview years ago I was joking that when I was five, I was sent to a Yeshiva and said I wanted to become a rabbi because I wanted a beard. That was the extent of my vocation. My parents quickly took me out of that school. But it's got a life on the internet, there are many things like that out there, truths, untruths, mis- and disinformation, but we all know that this is the internet.

Would people be surprised to know a commercial film that you'd gone into see in a movie theater - do you feel like you have to wear a trenchcoat and glasses to seeMeet the Fockers or something?

No, I go see all sorts of movies all the time, just as I am. In fact, I very seldom go to any sort of premiere or opening or any special screening. I don't like to go to those - I like going the way people normally like going to see movies, I prefer to pay my ten dollars. I have a life like anyone else! [laughs]

I remember Woody Allen once said he doesn't like to revisit, rewatch, his films after he's done with them. Once they're done, they're done. Do you go back and watch your past work?

No. I mean sometimes I might be channel surfing, find one of mine, and say, "Oh, look at that" - but then you keep surfing. You've seen your movies a zillion times. I don't really think about them. You move on. Always moving on.

I was just wondering if your perspective changes over time on any of them looking back?

Not really. As I say, just move on. I'd rather, I don't know, I'm just not interested enough in examining what I did ten years ago and what made me do something. I know what went through my mind. Look, it's true you can reevaluate, but I don't have to see the movie in some sense to make certain connections.

Of your films, I think Storytelling might be the most underrated. Why do you think that film was basically ignored?

I don't know. I'm very proud of the work. It's a mystery to me. I put something out there - but to me the greater mystery is why people like anything I do, that I have any audience at all. I'm grateful for it, and don't take anything for granted. I'm as proud of this movie as anything else I've done. Certain things inevitably will be more popular than other things. People do like to say all sorts of horrible things about me and that's unfortunate. Tell me I'm a vile, loathsome, etc., sort of person. I don't really see myself that way and it is painful to know that people are writing those sorts of things about you. But I know, fortunately, it's counterbalanced by very kind, generous, wonderful things people say. I can't really think about it. It just becomes white noise.

So people make personal assumptions about you based purely on your work?

You know as well as I do, who knows what goes through people's heads. I touch buttons, apparently, I touch nerves that make people say very mean things about me. But it's all part of what it is for me to be a filmmaker.

Archived Interviews Coming Here

2011-11-23T09:56:52-08:00

Just a warning but I'll be posting a bunch of interviews I've done over time, mostly for GreenCine, here as a way to archive them in a central place. Just a way to quickly see samples of some of my past work. As my mom would say, "Keep or toss!" (i.e., read or ignore).

Chuck Wendig's 25 Ways to Plot, Plan and Prep Your Story

2011-11-07T16:47:37-08:00

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2011/09/14/25-ways-to-plot-plan-and-prep-your-story/

Great stuff from writer Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig on Twitter). Good and fun advice on ways you can and should plot your screenplay or novel.

Just one part:

A Series of Sequences

The saying goes that an average screenplay usually offers up eight or nine sequences (a sequence being a series of scenes that add together to form common narrative purpose, like, say, the Attack On The Death Star sequence from Star Wars or the Kevin James Makes Love To All The Animals In Order To Make The Audience Feel Shame sequence from Paul Blart, Zoo Abortion). So, chart the sequences that will go into your screenplay. If you’re writing prose, I don’t know how many sequences a novel should have — more than a film, probably (or alternately, each sequence is granted a greater conglomeration of scenes).

Fandor piece: Out of the Crypt: Nine Hidden Fright Films for Halloween

2011-10-28T11:46:46-07:00

Out of the Crypt: Nine Hidden Fright Films for Halloween >>

By Craig Phillips

Angels and Demons commingle in Jan Svankmajer's "The Ossuary"

Horror film lists annually timed with Halloween often center on the usual horror subgenres and the usual suspects are rounded up — which is fine, my favorite out-and-out scary films are ghost stories like Poltergeist, slashers like Psycho and Halloween, and supernatural creepers like The Thing (the first two). But what about the indefinably creepy? The films that have a haunting air about them but in which the horror elements are present but subtle. These films are often overlooked. Shall we open up that creepy cabinet in the corner?

{creaky sound effect}

The Call of Cthulhu

Loving homage to the chilling, thrilling tales of early horror meister HP Lovecraft, this 2005 silent-film style oddity is as amusing as it is creepy but certainly captures the author’s sense of dread. Andrew Leman and Sean Branney’sadaptation, despite what may seem an affectation of using a faux silent style, is admirably faithful to the story of an investigation into a mysterious cult. Low-budget and shot on digital video yet through trickery and cinematographic skill — and restricting themselves to early film techniques (stop-motion animation, forced perspective, etc) and the spirit and feel of silent expressionism is well-captured. It is full of nightmarish images, of demonic dreams and grotesqueries. At 45 minutes it’s just right — any longer and and Cthulu would have started to push it’s narrative limits into impatience. The music score is also a perfect match at all the right times. an underscore as it were.

READ THE REST ON FANDOR >>

[Feel free to "like" it and comment on it, so it doesn't get too lonely.]