Hue's Blog

The Coming Revolution in Indie Distribution

"Last November inside a conference room at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, a film consultant named Peter Broderick was doing his best to foment a revolution. Mr. Broderick, who helps filmmakers find their way into the marketplace, was spreading the word on an Internet-era approach to releasing movies that he believes empowers filmmakers without impoverishing them economically or emotionally. Mr. Broderick divides distribution into the Old World and New, infusing his PowerPoint presentation with insurgent rhetoric."

via www.nytimes.com

There is a saying, meant to temper the enthusiasm of film students, which goes "it's not show art, it's show business." But these filmmakers, defying the odds and the numbers to get their films out, highlight the root of all art, which is the irrational compulsion to express.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Don't correct his grammar.

They say "if you meet a talking dog, you don't correct his grammar."  If I am seeing something which is impossible, I tend to hold back the fine-point criticism.

So many people have to risk time, money and reputation to make a movie.  The odds of failure are much higher than the chances of success.  At every step people try to mitigate risk.  Even the most established directors have films they can't get made.  How Wes Anderson collected the infinite list of actor, agent, producer, manager and financier blessings to make an adult-oriented cartoon is beyond me.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is a great film, in part because it exists at all.

Links: Wikipedia | IMDB | Fandango | Netflix

 

Gomorrah

A meditation on violence.

Gomorrah (or Gomorra) is crushing, because it does not need to crush.  From the opening scene in the tanning salon to the last shot of a backhoe carrying bodies aloft, this film is a languid meditation on the power, and powerlessness, of violence.

It is this meditative quality which is so difficult to analyze.  There is a scene in the airport where two principal characters, a corporate criminal and his protege, meet the protege's father.  The father is overwhelmed with pride in his son's success.  The two principal characters leave the father, but the camera doesn't follow.  It lingers on the father as he wrangles his emotions.  It one of many beautiful and a counter-intuitive framing decisions in the film.  One expects that kind of work from a director/cinematographer.  But the director of Gomorrah was Matteo Garrone, and the cinematographer was Marco Onorato.  What could the director have said to the cinematographer to produce this luxurious, non plot-driven camera work?  I couldn't figure it out.  I brought Giles Nuttgens, the cinematographer for Water, Swimfan and my film Saint John of Las Vegas, to see Gomorrah.  He couldn't figure it out, either.

We found our answer buried in the end credits.  The director was listed as the A camera operator.  So the film's look and feel benefited from the collaborative director-cinematographer relationship.  But the instantaneous choice of frame was instinctively the director's.

Links: Wikipedia | IMDB | Netflix | Amazon

A Serious Man

I know what I don't know.

It's been said of Robert Altman that "actors could do whatever they wanted in the sandbox, but it was his sandbox."  In that same vein, I am struggling to describe the sandbox of Joel and Ethan Coen's A Serious Man.  And I am suspicious of my efforts to analyze the components (acting, sound design) because they will be more clever than smart.

Strangely, A Serious Man, a Jewish American story, reminded me of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a colonial Irish story.  So let me defer to a greater mind, writing about the experience of being a minority in a different time.

"Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the human sufferer.  Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the secret cause." - James Joyce

Links: Wikipedia | IMDB | Fandango | Netflix

  

Loves Of A Blonde

We don’t need no stinkin’ master shots.

Basic film coverage involves a master shot and closer detailed shots.  The master shot captures all the action, and all the characters in question.  In confined quarters, the only way for the lens to capture the full range of action is to put the camera in the corner, high and pointing down.  You may not be able to visualize the shot, but you’ve seen it before.  It’s a “nothing” shot – unmotivated by story or feeling, purely expositional.  It lets the air out of the tires, and leaves you flat.

Milos Forman had other ideas for Loves Of A Blonde.  In the classroom scenes, in the dorm room scenes, and amazingly in the dance scene, Forman did not “establish” the space.  In fact, he opened the dance scene by shooting an empty piece of the floor!  Shooting a scene with no master, with no safety net, without any guarantee that the shots will cut together, is a risk.  But on tight schedules, with limited set-ups, it can pay off, and save time on lighting a whole room just to put the camera high up in the corner.  Giles Nuttgens (cinematographer) and I were emboldened by Loves Of A Blonde to shoot several scenes in Saint John of Las Vegas with no master, and it worked.

Links: Wikipedia | IMDB | Netflix | Amazon

The Informant!

If you can’t trust the narrator, who can you trust?

When we hear a disembodied narrator, we take it as the voice of God.  Does anyone doubt Ray Leotta’s constant narration in Goodfellas?  Sissy Spacek, in Badlands, has a distorted perspective, but we trust and believe her.  In The Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey may be lying to Chazz Palminteri, but he is still omniscient and in control.  Even in an extreme case, like Last Year in Marienbad…okay, that’s too extreme.  I will limit myself to films I have a chance of following, narratively.

In Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!, Matt Damon narrates the story, but we doubt him immediately.  At first, his apparent delusion seems tangential to the story.  We believe his facts while we doubt his analysis of those facts.  But eventually we can’t believe him at all.  And only in the end, when he is finally confronted with his delusion, does his narration synch up with reality.

The result is a marvelous audio/visual version of an Eisenstein montage – we hear the narration, we see the events, and we create a story that reconciles the difference between the two.

Links: Wikipedia | IMDB | Fandango | Netflix

Reservoir Dogs

It's about the work.

Writers use movie dialogue to advance the plot, reveal character or dole out information.  Work-specific talk is used sparingly to cement the film's authenticity – like a dab of super-glue.  But Quentin Tarantino doesn’t dab Reservoir Dogs with work talk.  He slathers it.  The opening diatribe about waitresses earning their tips, Steve Buscemi and Harvey Keitel in the bathroom, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn and Lawrence Tierney in the office...the movie is full of guys talking about, and relishing in, their work.

Each one of our professions has its own lexicon, which we learn and practice like a secret code.  We use that language to distinguish ourselves, measure competence, establish hierarchy and build rapport.  We enjoy the opportunity to sound intelligent and competent.  At night, go to any restaurant that caters to a business crowd, and listen to the dinner conversation.  Off the clock, out of the office, uncompensated, what are most people talking about?  Work.

But when we work, we are acting.  None of us were born CPAs or nurses, or in the case of Reservoir Dogs, criminals.  We learn our profession and its language at the same time.  We audition our identities in meetings, in presentations, and in the break room.  We perfect our work persona.  So when Steve Buscemi talks about being a professional, we relate to him as an actor, playing a character, playing an actor.

Links: Wikipedia | IMDB | Netflix | Amazon