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Daily Blog

October 5, 2011

I wrote the attached for Trailers From Hell, but perhaps it may catch a few more readers here.

http://trailersfromhell.com/blog/2011/10/04/from-brians-desk-beware-the-ides-of-march/

August 31, 2011

 I am curious to see if anyone still tunes in here. So I am linking to my Trailers From Hell piece on Cinerama. Please comment here if you read it. Thanks.

http://trailersfromhell.com/blog/2011/08/07/week-206-cinerama-week-with-bts/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=week-206-cinerama-week-with-bts

February 11, 2011

 

EXTERIOR. CHIAPAS JUNGLE - DAY
An episodic film crew makes the final preparations for a complicated shot. Dolly track has been laid to converge on a tree with sprawling roots. The Director looks at his watch. The Guest Star Who Has Seen It All watches nearby with bemused interest.
The Director looks at his watch again, as if willing the minute hand to stop, and if possible go backwards.
Fluff and Buff, the hair and make-up artists, dab sweat from the brow of the Actor, standing at the base of the tree. Given that the temperature is over 100 degrees, this is a noble but futile effort.

DIRECTOR
Don’t worry about the sweat, he’s meant to look scared.
ACTOR
I am scared.

DIRECTOR
Don’t worry. This is totally safe. Nothing is going to go wrong.

The source of the Actor’s anxiety arrives on the set, his partner in the scene, a male with dangling testicles the size of grapefruit.

Sudan, a large African movie lion, is led out of the bushes on a chain by two Trainers. Two other Trainers follow, carrying short poles. As the Trainers tether the lion to a spike embedded beside the far end of the dolly track, Sudan yawns, and licks his lips to cool them.
ACTOR
Has he been fed today?
TRAINER
If we feed him, he won’t work.

GUEST STAR
I’ve brought an apple for him.
Humor is no comfort.

Everything is in place for the take. The Trainers have been positioned out of shot to protect both the Actor and camera crew, should the lion stray from his designated path. The collar round Sudan’s neck is concealed beneath his shaggy mane, and the trailing leash masked by his body. The Actor has practiced limping backwards while swinging a burning firebrand to deter the advancing beast. The dolly grip and operator have rehearsed the camera move that will keep the lion on screen right with his retreating victim on screen left. It’s a travelling geography shot that will add tension when intercut with compatible dolly shots on the faces of the lion and the Actor. The Director wants the audience to see the lion and the Actor in the same shot; not a static shot, which could be achieved by the elements being photographed separately with a locked-off camera, then fused in the lab, with the vertical split disguised by a tree trunk in the close background. This would spare the Actor any proximity to the King of Beasts. No. The Director wants a Movie Shot, not a get-it-done-move-on episodic approach, but a sense that the camera is almost mounted on the flank of the lion as it slowly closes in on its prey. The Trainer warms up the lion…to get him used to the firebrand.

The time for this glorious cinematic moment has arrived. The Director instructs the Actor.
DIRECTOR
So, on action: slowly hobble back,
wave the firebrand, shout at it to
back off…feel free to improv…
ACTOR
Back off, you fucker..?

DIRECTOR
Something like that, but without the
fucker…Here we go, roll camera.
The Prop master lights the firebrand again. The 1ST AD calls for turnover in Spanish.
The crew, a well oiled machine, commence their respective duties. The Chief Trainer calls commands to the lion.
TRAINER
Sudan! Go! Slow Sudan!
Slow! Good Sudan! Good!
The Director hovers beside the camera, which keeps pace with the ambling lion. Sudan is fascinated by the firebrand, and reacts to its movements. The Actor is In The Moment! Everything is working perfectly.

 

At this point the TRANSPORTATION CAPTAIN arrives on set to watch the shot. The 1st AD sees him, and a long simmering feud chooses this moment to erupt.
1st AD (curtly)
No ha puesto el camiones en
donde le dije.
TRANSPORTATION CAPTAIN
Cree que es el jefe? Yo soy
el capitan de transporte!
Los camiones parquean en
donde digo yo!
The Director turns.
DIRECTOR
Guys! Sshh!
They neither see or hear him. They are in a world of rising steam.
1st AD
Stupido!
Whoa! Bad word in Mexico. Serious escalation. The tension-meter on the set spikes. Hungry lion, anxious actor handling fire, two departments inching towards civil war, complex dolly shot, etc. It’s understandable. But the net effect of the expanding angst is to push the Actor into the truth zone. It’s a great performance, swinging from fear to rage and back again. Meanwhile, the other drama continues.
TRANSPORTATION CAPTAIN
Chinga tu madre!
1stAD
Chinga su madre!
Oh, boy! Now we’ve gone to Def Con 4. After soiling each other’s mothers, there is only one stage the conflict can move to…The Slap.
The Transportation Captain slaps the 1st AD’s face, not to inflict physical pain, more of a formal gesture, a challenge.
Some men go red with anger. The 1st AD’s complexion goes pasty white. His eyes blaze. Detonation is imminent. Luckily members of both departments seize the potential combatants and hustle them to separate corners of the jungle.
The Lion sits down at the end of its leash, awaiting reward. The Actor has started to enjoy himself. Lions? Ha, they’re pussies. Bring it on…

The Director calls for take 2. There’s no producer on the set to stop him.
As you have doubtless guessed by now, this is not another of those whimsical screenplay scenes that crawled out of my id, this actually happened. In 1991. The Actor was Canada’s great Chuck Shamata, whom I have cast in two movies since. The Guest Star was former Tarzan Ron Ely. The Lion Trainers were the incomparable Boone Narr and Hubert Wells, and the Director obsessed with getting a tie-in shot was yours truly.
So the purpose of this story is the issue of conflict resolution. Every movie mixes good intentions under pressure with powerful egos. There Will Be Blood, if you do not head these situations off at the pass. I had ample warning that the clash of personalities was gathering momentum, but chose to ignore it. Naturally Murphy’s Law applied, at the most precarious moment. So I have learned over the years to develop an ear for seismic pre-shocks, and use diplomacy, humor, bribery, alcohol, whatever it takes to help the parties see each other’s virtues.
Too often crews work in an atmosphere of politics, blame and fear. No one gives their best under those circumstances. Part of a director’s job is to set the tone in the workplace, encourage communication, and make everybody’s hard work FUN.

Soon it was Ron Ely’s turn to have fun. Sudan had him tree’d, and wanted more than an apple.

July 19, 2010

Paris in July.

 

Heaven on a stick. Actually I am referring to the main course of my first night’s dinner. I was so impressed I had to photograph it. Vegans, please avert your eyes.

 

Wherever I go, arresting images tend to trigger scene concepts. The hanging skewer of shashlick could be the sharp handy weapon the unarmed assassin plans to be served near his victim, and so on.  I know, I’m a sick puppy…

Paris Cinema Festival staged a midnight to dawn Ozploitation section, programmed by Festival director Aude Hesbert, and I was brought in to do the introductions, kicking off with DEAD END DRIVE IN presented in the original Australian patois with French subtitles.

Trivia footnote: When we sold the film to New World Pictures, they wanted to dub Aussie accents and slang into ” American” as had been done to MAD MAX. ( I saw it once. Horrible.)  I believe an “American” version of DEDI was prepared, then abandoned, when we resisted so vociferously. Does it sit forgotten in a vault gathering dust? I have a little masochistic curiosity. For those interested in contrasting advertising approaches,  here first is a rarely seen Australian TV spot for the film’s 1986 release.

Now, here is the New World Pictures trailer for the US release.

The theater was 4 seats short of full, the audience was patient as I mangled their language, they totally got the movie and 80% stayed for the 4 am TURKEY SHOOT. The stamina of French cinephiles is legendary.

Then, on to the Czech Republic and the Karlovy Vary Festival, where a chauffeur driven Audi speeds you to screenings down narrow streets that resemble rows of wedding cakes.

 

 

A selection of Ozploitation classics, programmed by Karel Och, and accompanied by Mark Hartley’s NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD, were playing through the week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Producer and old friend Richard Brennan (LONG WEEKEND)  joined me for introductions and interviews.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On our second night, we were dinner guests of another old friend,  legendary Australian critic and author David Stratton, who was on the Festival Jury. David has been a tireless supporter of the Australian film industry for 40 years. He ran the 1973 Sydney Film Festival where my first film THE STUNTMEN won Best Documentary. Richard Brennan produced over 26 movies, including exec-producing my DEATHCHEATERS. There was much discussion of the current state of Australian film. The quality and success of ANIMAL KINGDOM is certainly encouraging. Which reminds me, I ordered my first ever plate of roast goose, succulent with a guilty residue. No problem eating duck,  Donald notwithstanding. Perhaps it’s Mother Goose that gives me a twinge…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had to leave early to introduce THE MAN FROM HONG KONG, virtually unseen in the Czech Republic, now graced with Czech subtitles. So gratifying  to watch 1000 young Czechs enjoying the action and getting the satire. ( The Australian DVD is the fullest version for those that don’t know the film)

Between  Ozploitation duties, I had time to see a number of movies. Here’s four I particularly enjoyed:

I knew nothing about LA DOPPIA ORA ( The Double Hour)  before the screening started and that’s the best way to see this Italian romantic paranormal thriller. Suffice to say, I had the rare experience of not knowing what was going to happen next from the first 10 minutes to the end. Yet at each new surprise, each Ah-Huh moment, I never felt cheated by the writer. It’s a fantastic script,  directed with style and a very sure hand, that started a bidding war for English language remake rights after the star Ksenyia Rappoport won Best Actress at Venice earlier in the year. It’s a great date movie, but don’t let anyone tell you a thing before it starts. Here’s the unsubtitled Italian trailer, which manages to sell without spoiling the twists.

SOUND OF NOISE is a delightful Swedish comedy about musical terrorists.

 

 

They adore rhythm, and abhor musical instruments. Their ideology is free form drumming using everyday objects.

 

 

Their agenda is to disrupt public areas, a bank, a hospital, etc. and stage brief anarchic concerts before the police arrive. They are pursued by a tone deaf detective, who hates music, to the disappointment of his family of musical prodigies. The climax, when the musical anarchists use the city’s electrical grid as their instrument is hilarious. ( But don’t try this at home!) If the concept sounds very esoteric, it’s not.  SOUND OF NOISE is easy to grasp, charming, whimsical, and frequently laugh out loud funny.

I think it deserves to be Sweden’s contender for this year’s Best Foreign Language Oscar.  Co-directors Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjarne Nilsson have a comedic flair that transcends cultural borders, judging by the response of the Czech audience, and their movie could do well in the US with the right handling. At the Q & A,  Simonsson and Nilsson revealed that their inspiration was a short film they had made 6 years earlier.  So here it is. ” Music For One Apartment And Six Drummers”.

 

Terrorism Comedy would be a pretty sparse sub-genre, you might think, but there was another example screening at the Festival after its highly successful run in British cinemas.

FOUR LIONS is probably the most confronting black comedy I have ever seen.

It depicts a group of home grown Brit Muslim extremists, even less skilled with explosives than The 3 Stooges. Incendiary satirist Chris Morris ( TV’s THE THICK OF IT) walks the razor’s edge with his feature debut, but he keeps it pitch perfect throughout, with an unexpected coda of political criticism that lifts the film to another level. I would have laughed even more if guffaws from the Czech audience, aided by Czech subtitles, did not make the Bradford/Pakistani accents of the gang even harder for me to decipher.  An English subtitled version is being prepared for US release, I hope.  I’ll let this magazine piece from a Brit TV program fill you in on the issues. Personally, I think it’s one of the most important political films of the decade.

Another pitch perfect comedy of a different genre is TUCKER AND DALE VS.  EVIL.  

I’ve done a few horror comedies, so I know how hard it is to achieve the right tone on the short schedules these things are given. So a tip of the hat to first time director  Eli Craig  for grounding the satire in well developed characters, ( Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine have great chemistry as the luckless rednecks) then going on to affectionately trash every Friday The Thirteenth/Serial Killer in the Woods cliche we have known and loved over the last quarter century. But not in predictable ways.  This is a very clever piece of work.

 

 

Undoubtedly Eli Craig is headed for bigger opportunities. Good luck. Here’s the trailer.

So back to Los Angeles just in time for the opening weekend of INCEPTION. Wow! Just shows you, it is possible for a high octane movie to feed the mind as well as the senses.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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:

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:

Forman’s subsequent Hollywood career includes ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’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.

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.

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.