The Genre Director - CZECH CINEMA, BRAVE POLITICAL SATIRE IN A TIME OF OPPRESSION, A VISIT TO THE KARLOVY VARY FILM FESTIVAL…
June 29, 2010
Between July 5th - 9th I will be a guest of the Karlovy Vary International Festival, one of the oldest festivals in the world. It will be an honor and a pleasure to spend a few days in this beautiful city.
It is named after King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, who founded the city in 1370. It is famous not only for its film festival but also for its hot springs, where I intend to wallow between commitments.
The reason for my invitation: this year the festival’s line up includes a section on Ozploitation ( Australian genre cinema of the 70’s and 80’s) prompted by Mark Hartley’s hugely entertaining rockumentary- NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD.
I’ll be joined by producer Richard Brennan,who will present
his LONG WEEKEND, a notable suspense mystery that has developed a strong fanbase since its release in 1977. I made the original trailer. Here it is:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZw0AskTOww
In addition to hosting screenings of THE MAN FROM HONG KONG, DEAD END DRIVE IN, and TURKEY SHOOT, I plan to see as many new Czech films as possible. Czech films past and present are a gap in my education.
The first Czech movie I ever saw was Jiří Menzel’s CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS ( Ostře sledované vlaky ) at a small Sydney arthouse theater in 1967. Foreign language films were even scarcer in Australia of those days than England. But the Academy Award For Best Foreign Film guaranteed its release down under. It’s a masterpiece of human observation that gets better with repeat viewing.
Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, followed by post-World War Two Soviet imposed repressive government, had bottled up Czech artistic expression, but in the early sixties the cork popped, and the Czech New Wave was born.
These movies were low key, small scale stories told with wry affection about ordinary folk, like the wartime hero of TRAINS, a bumbling railway dispatcher’s apprentice desperate to lose his virginity. Predictably the 1967 US advertising campaign concentrated solely on the sex comedy aspects.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igc0Jp62kEg
But critics did discern the subtext: that the train station was a metaphor for Czechoslovakia itself, a small pleasure loving country, often occupied and tormented by neighborhood bullies and toxic geo-politics, but a country that will bite back when pushed too far.
The Czech New Wave allowed avant-garde directors like Věra Chytilová to expand the boundaries of free form film making. She is considered one of the greatest female Czech filmmakers.
She is best known for Sedmikrásky (Daisies) which follows two young girls, both named Marie, played by Ivana Karbanová and Jitka Cerhová, who engage in bizarre pranks and acts of rebellion against the world in which they live.
Chytilová underscores this rebellion by breaking every formal rule in the film grammar lexicon, and thereby creates a surreal cinematic language of her own.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WVSYwVKmVs
Naturally it was banned by the Czechoslovakian government of the day. Lucky not to suffer the same fate was Valerie and Her Week of Wonders ( Valerie a týden divů) directed by Jaromil Jireš in 1970, perhaps because it was based on a well regarded 1935 novel.
The then 13-year-old Jaroslava Schallerová ( later a popular actress throughout the 70’s) starred as Valerie, who is dealing with the onset of menstruation and the sexual awakening. The town of Slavonice provided the early 19th century settings. In full Gothic style Jaromil Jireš portrays the heroine as living in a disorienting dream, seduced by priests, vampires, men and women alike.
I have not seen it, but this trailer makes me want to.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPyPEraG74c
The most famous Czech film director to make a career in Hollywood is Miloš Forman.
The movie that got the world’s attention was his 1967 The Firemen’s Ball (Hoří, má panenko).
It is set at the annual ball of a small town’s volunteer fire department, and the plot consists of a collection of anecdotes told within that setting. The film uses no actors - the firemen portrayed are the firemen of the small town where it is set. I’ll let this erudite young reviewer give you an evaluation:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO1RRIo-4LE
Forman has always maintained that the film has no “hidden symbols or double meanings”. However, the Czechoslovak head of state as well as the censors of the time viewed it as a political allegory. The national fire department resigned in token protest. The Firemen’s Ball ran for three weeks during the Dubcek era, but after the 1968 Soviet invasion and crackdown, the film was “banned forever”. Now it lives forever as a deadpan comedy, and to quote critic J. Hoberman, “darkened by an unwaveringly clear-eyed view of human stupidity and deception.” Perhaps one of the unique aspects of the Czech New Wave is its sense of the absurd, a reaction to the corrupt, inept, Stalinoid bureaucracy under which Czechs lived. Here is a masterful, painfully funny sequence - the beauty contest auditions:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOcc9M8LB1A
Forman’s subsequent Hollywood career includes ONE FLEW OVER THE COOKOO’S NEST, which won five Academy Awards including one for direction, AMADEUS, which won eight Academy Awards, and THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT, for which he received a Best Director Academy Award Nomination and a Golden Globe win. But I have a particular regard for two of his less successful Hollywood films.
His first, made in 1971, was TAKING OFF. It’s a comedy of inter-generational conflict resulting in parents rediscovering their youth.
Once again Forman’s skills at human observation result in many sequences of deadpan hilarity. I defy you not to want to see the film after watching this clip.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rcfkxr3amA
I have seen HAIR several times, and will continue to revisit it in the company of first timers. I never cared much for the stage musical, but Forman’s vision of Late Sixties America resonates with me, recalling my 3 months of greyhound bus touring through most states of the Union in 1968.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3qHfnJiqK4
In 1997 Miloš Forman received the Crystal Globe award for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. It will be an honor to show a few of my guilty pleasure movies at such a prestigious venue, and catch up with the latest Czech film makers.
Tags: Film Industry, Director, Filmmaker, Hollywood, Oscars
The Independent Filmmaker - Loving Film Festivals
June 29, 2010
I’m particularly excited about film festivals right now. If I’m honest, probably partially because we seem to be cleaning up, but also because I’m just generally having a blast.
So far this year, of the ones I’ve attended, I’ve found Florida, Breckenridge, Cannes and Palm Springs to be incredibly useful. I’ve met really cool people who also happen to work at WME, The NY Times, Huffington Post, Focus Features, Magnolia, Paramount and a ton of great independent producers and festival programmers. All people I am eager to share my work with and hopefully collaborate with at some point in my career. All people I did not know or have access to two months ago.
As everyone has heard a million times, this business is all about relationships. And I don’t mean in that smarmy “here’s my card” sort of a way. (Though absurdly you do still need business cards in this digital age.) What it means is that you could be the most talented filmmaker in the whole wide world, but this sport is a group effort and if you don’t have anyone to show your work to you’re most likely going to be stuck.
So although I may not have anything of interest for some of these people at the moment (but of course I do because I’m not one to let an opportunity pass), I’ve cleared the very important she’s-not-a-freak-I-can-take-her-email-test because I shook a hand, said hello and shared a drink. Or, as in most festival cases, shared a few.
Oh, and we were chosen as Best of the Fest at Palm Springs, Best Drama Short at Breckenridge and Grand Jury Prize for Best Short Film at Florida so that doesn’t hurt either.
Tags: Television, Movie, Actor, Movie, Movie Bloggers
The Standby Painter - Avatars and Shamans: Blue and Emerald Forests
June 28, 2010
Many years ago I went out with some friends to see a double feature: Silverado and something called The Emerald Forest. I had primarily come to see Silverado—critics had touted it as the first great western in a long, mostly western-less period of filmmaking, and I loved westerns. However, by …
Tags: Movie, Actor, Film, Film Blog, Movie Theatre
The Genre Director - FRENCH CINEMA, THE FAMOUS AND THE UNDERVALUED, A JOURNEY DOWN MEMORY LANE…
June 25, 2010
When Le Festival Paris Cinema kindly invited me to present plus Q & A some of my cult movies for their audience on this coming July 3rd, I thought back to my early experience of French movies, and the influence they might have had on me as a film maker. ( Apologies to French readers: this software does not do accents or cedilla.)
At age 9, I saw a 16mm print of Jacques Tati’s MONSIEUR HULOT’S HOLIDAY, projected on a wall of my prep school library, in which Tati, as the gauche and socially inept hero, stumbles through a disaster prone August holiday in Saint Marc-sur-Mer on the Atlantic coast. Though the social satire no doubt escaped us kids, the film was largely wordless and full of sight gags that kept us laughing and still work today.
Here’s a recent trailer:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_92Cm8gl7Ls
Rowan Atkinson’s character, the idiot-curmudgeon Mr. Bean, owes a lot to Tati, perhaps acknowledged in his 2007 MR. BEAN’S HOLIDAY. But Tati goes deeper. And smarter. He keeps Hulot benign, and through him holds up a gently mocking mirror to class conflict, consumerism and bourgeois pretensions. Tati had a singular vision and stuck to it throughout his career. It brought him two Academy Award nominations, winning Best Foreign Film with Mon Oncle. It also brought him bankruptcy when his big budget PLAYTIME failed. But he never gave up, never lost sight of his dream. All Hail, Jacques Tati, Tati had a singular vision and stuck to it throughout his career. It brought him two Academy Award nominations, winning Best Foreign Film with Mon Oncle. It also brought him bankruptcy when his big budget PLAYTIME failed. But he never gave up, never lost sight of his dream. All Hail, Jacques Tati, comedic genius.
The next French film I saw, aged 16, was LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD, screened to the Wellington College film society, who watched in respectful but perplexed silence.
Later I read that a British provincial cinema had run the movie with 2 reels out of order for most of the season, but audiences were none the wiser till a London critic stopped by for a second viewing. Many critics regard MARIENBAD as a work of genius, others agree with its listing in Michael Medved’s book The Fifty Worst Films Of All Time. This recent trailer for the DVD release does its best to chart a path for the audience in advance, but my school film society had no such help.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5km-4o3EAY
Despite being more mystification than mystery, MARIENBAD has influenced many film makers. It certainly left me with a taste for tracking shots and baroque angles.
In 1994, British band Blur made this wry music video homage for their song To The End.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0YvOncfBJU
Perhaps re-screening MARIENBAD on my laptop in an Amsterdam hash bar would provide clarity. Or perhaps not.
I saw my next French movie because it was raining… But it was the title that reeled me in. OF FLESH AND BLOOD. Two time honored movie ingredients for late adolescents. Literal translation of the French title LES GRAND CHEMINS might not have done the trick. I took my seat as a man pursued a woman home and with scarcely a word they started making passionate love.
The woman was Anouk Aimee. She exuded an earthy yet brainy sexiness, and she immediately became my goddess. In her subsequent work I always enjoyed how emotions played across her unique visage.
When I happened by sheer accident to speak to her on the phone of one of her friends in 2005, I think I reverted to 18 year old fanboy. The male lead was Robert Hossein. He projected a raw masculinity that was less present in British leading men of the early sixties. As a director, Hossein is also one of France’s undervalued auteurs, who infused standard genre vehicles like LE VAMPIRE DE DUSSELDORF, and J’AI TUE RASPUTIN, with deep themes and imaginative staging. I would love to find his spaghetti western UNE CORDE, UN COLT.
OF FLESH AND BLOOD, directed by fellow actor Christian Marquand, was described by a derisive reviewer as Dostoyevsky meets Roger Corman . Works for me. This was a dish of Gallic Noir, in vibrant color, and I liked the flavor. French films were a new world for me, clearly more daring than English language films. I was hooked.
My next French experience was AIMEZ-VOUS LES FEMMES? ( US title: A TASTE FOR WOMEN), a dark comedy set in a vegetarian restaurant about a gourmet cannibal sect that eat women in celebration of their beauty. I went in not knowing anything about it and was entranced by the wacky idea, the wit of the subtitles, and the glittering black and white Franscope photography, courtesy of Sacha Vierny, who co-incidentally shot LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD.
The director Jean Leon was also the 1st Assistant director on MARIENBAD. (Strangely, this is the only film he ever directed. A pity, based on this work.) The names of the writers held no significance for me at the time: Gerard Brach and Roman Polanski. With hindsight, I recognize a similar impish sense of humor in Polanski’s THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS, OR EXCUSE ME, BUT YOUR TEETH ARE IN MY NECK. All I can find is a tiny poster and a still. Where is this forgotten gem now?
Soon after, I went hitchhiking through France from Le Havre to Eze-sur-Mer and back. Whenever possible, each night I would find a cheap pension near a cinema. Being a child of World War Two, WEEKEND A ZUYDCOOTE was a must see.
This French perspective on the evacuation of Dunkirk was the first time I experienced Jean Paul Belmondo’s casual rugged charm. Here’s a TV spot.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSbye4kkvbs
And the staging by director Henri Verneuil was spectacular. I have admired many of his films, particularly CENT MILLE DOLLARS AU SOLEIL, GUNS FOR SAN SEBASTIAN, THE BURGLARS (LE CASSE) also starring Belmondo, with whom he did 5 pictures. And THE SICILIAN CLAN with Alain Delon. I would eventually see Delon and Belmondo together in BORSALINO, where, rumor hath it, their respective contracts required they would get equal close up coverage in their scenes together. Verneuil was not a critics darling in France, but his work was always solidly commercial, and easily the equal of many Hollywood directors of the period. Here are 3 trailers that show he was the master of any genre cocktail.
Mafia drama:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rkMQCvFH_0
Belmondo does his own stunts:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QXouAvngBM
Buddy comedy for truckers:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff2Q_CUF-6k
In Grenoble I met up with a friend studying there, Julian Beaumont, ( funny how you can remember 45 years later where and with whom you saw a film that made an impact) and we saw LE GENTLEMAN DE COCODY (IVORY COAST ADVENTURE), starring the great Jean Marais, directed by Christian-Jaque, another undervalued genre director (pictured below).
Despite my one-in-every-five-words comprehension of rapid fire French, ( Ah, by dint of repetition, I guess la bagnole means the beat-up old vehicle) I remember being swept along by the fast paced action comedy. The audience around me clearly loved it.
COCODY became one of the 15 top grossing films of 1965 with over 2 million admissions, yet this poster is all I can find of it. Nothing on UTube. Love to get hold of a subtitled copy. Christian-Jaque made a number of handsomely staged costume dramas, which I subsequently sought out. Here’s an extract from the Italian dubbed version of MADAME SANS-GENE, in which he gives Sophia Loren’s comedic talent and abundant charm(s) full rein.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uffc2CsWg7o
Christian-Jaque also made FANFAN LA TULIPE twice, first in 1952, then in 1964 in 70mm no less, as THE BLACK TULIP with Alain Delon playing twin brothers, for which this is the original trailer.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfOsRu2ZxCY
If there is one thing I share with Christian-Jaque it’s his fondness for viewing genre with a satirist’s eye. I’d love to see his first film L’ASSASSINAT DE PERE NOEL, made with difficulty during the Nazi occupation.
In Nice I saw L’HOMME DE RIO and immediately became a Philippe De Broca fan. His subsequent ROI DE COEUR (KING OF HEARTS) starring Alan Bates, is hard to find, but a brilliant anti-war comedy. 33 years later he showed he had not lost his touch with LE BOSSU, great romantic fun.
THE MAN FROM RIO was stunning in its day. Here’s a 6 minute extract of a masterful chase sequence, in a deserted Brazillian city under construction, with Belmondo once again doing all his own stunts. Today such a scene would be hyped with music, but I found the suspense is all the more riveting with sound effects alone.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRxq136_vXU
The girl being kidnapped at the end of the clip was the enchanting Francoise Dorleac, sister of Catherine Deneuve.
.
They both had become major European stars at the time of Francoise Dorleac’s tragic death in a car accident in 1967. What better way to end my trip down memory lane, (which I hope you have been enjoying on company time) than a joyous song and dance number from the only film the sisters played in together, Jacques Demy’s homage to the great Hollywood musicals - LES DEMIMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXGEjZKDWZE
After Paris, I will be hosting screenings of some of my early work at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, so next I’ll share some recollections about Czech cinema.
Tags: Film, Movie, Movie, Movie Blog, Film Industry
The Hollywood Career Coach - 6/24/10 LA Event: GETTING STUFF DONE: Productivity and Creativity Management For Writers and Other Creative Geniuses.
June 23, 2010
-Simple Techniques for Managing Your “To-Do” list.
-Time Management vs. Creativity Management
-Clearing the Obstacles for Creativity
-Enjoying Your Work And Your Life
Bring Your To-Do List: (Whether Large or Small.)
Arrival time 6:30. We’ll start at 7:00 and go until 8:00. Then hang around to network and schmooze.
NOTE: Admission is Complimentary but RSVP Required:
The Writer’s Junction
1001 Colorado Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90401
310.451.0999
Tags: , Filmmaker, Film Industry, Movie Theatre, Movie
The Standby Painter - Police Line - Please Cross
June 22, 2010
Like many people, in the shadowy depths of my heart I’ve come to harbor a profound distrust and fear of authority. Whether this was caused by witnessing uncalled-for wars, miscarriages of justice, or simply through exposure to the slime inherent in the politics of government, I have to force myself …
Tags: Hollywood, Movie Theatre, Oscars, Television, Director
The Independent Filmmaker - Breckenridge last weekend, Palm Springs this weekend
June 19, 2010
Well readers, last weekend TOUCH won Best Short Drama at the Breckenridge Film Festival and it was a blast. Unfortunately, I had to fly in Saturday morning and fly out Sunday afternoon but the short time I was there was well worth it.
It was a great festival in a lovely little town nestled into the mountains. Sunday morning it even snowed!
The reception to TOUCH was amazing and the other filmmakers I met there were a blast. I was so pleased I made the trip. The programmers chose really interesting films and I was not disappointed by anything I saw. Keep your eyes open for a fantastic feature called NORMAN. I think it’s the best thing I’ve seen this year. Just excellent.
This coming weekend TOUCH screens at Palm Springs so if you’re in the area please come and check it out. Sunday, June 27th, 11:30am in the When Strangers Meet program at The Camelot.
Tags: Filmmaker, Film, Movie, Movie, Hollywood
The Manager - As a Screenwriter Today You Must Diversify to Be Successful in This Economy
June 18, 2010
If you are reading the trades (Daily Variety, The Hollywood Reporter) I am sure you are reading about studios making less and less pictures and spending less and less money on those pictures.
So what can you do?
The only way to survive in this town is to diversify, diversify, diversify. Think of it like stocks — you want to be in as many businesses as possible because, in case something happens in one field, you have others to fall back on.
What this means as a writer is that you should be in as many different fields as possible (while still endeavoring to be great in all of them). Whether this is books, tv — half hour and hour, film, games, comic books, etc., the more fields you are in, the more stocks you have in different arenas that could pay off.
The other great thing about being in as many fields as possible is that it will stretch your creative muscles. You will be forced to be creative in ways that you might have not thought possible.
And that new creativity will flow through to all your other arenas. It will make you a stronger writer in every other field you are in.
Tags: Filmmaker, Film Industry, Movie Blog, , Movie Bloggers
The Standby Painter - Spilling the Truth
June 17, 2010
I have not written an entry for the past two weeks because I cannot bring myself to talk about film just at the moment, not when my focus is on something so much more pressing. For this reason, I will post what I have been writing, even though film is …
Tags: Movie Bloggers, Filmmaker, Oscars, Movie, Filmmaking
The Storyboard Artist - A TEAM storyboards
June 15, 2010
I have yet to see the movie as of this writing. I worked on it for five months when John Singleton was directing. When he left the show do to Fox putting the film through “development hell”, I was done. Joe Carnahan’s filmed version had a mostly new crew, though one storyboard artist was rehired. I worked on a prison escape scene which may be somewhat similar to what appears in the filmed version. Go to http://warrendrummond.com to see the early version. I know the scene with the tank falling out of the plane was similar to something we had done.
Tags: Television, Film Industry, , Film, Movie
