the traveler's resource guide to festivals & films
a FestivalTravelNetwork.com site
part of Insider Media llc.
TiMER
directed by Jac Schaeffer
starring Emmy Caulfield, Michelle Borth, JoBeth Williams, John Patrick Amedori
seen at The Tribeca Film Festival 2009
The first feature from writer/director Jac Schaeffer, TiMER is a charming look into a future of certainties. It’s part sci-fi, part comedy, part buddy film, part romance, and 100% chick flick. That’s no easy trick.
Oona O’Leary (Emmy Caulfield, best known from TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Beverly Hills 90210), pretty, uptight, about-to-be 30 orthodontist, wants guarantees in life and love. In the futuristic world of TiMER (which looks a lot like Los Angeles here and now), the timer, a device surgically implanted on the wrist, offers one. The timer tells one how exactly how long one will wait to meet one’s true love. It’s like dating service eHarmony on steroids.
Oona’s problem is that her timer has not even started ticking – which means that she either will never have a true love or that he has not yet got a timer. One’s true love must have a timer for one’s own to start ticking. (It beeps like a pager when the lucky couple meet.) Opening scenes show her bringing prospective love connections to the timer franchise to have the device implanted – only to learn that each one is not Mr. Right. That is tough for Oona to swallow.
Step-sister Steph, ably played by Borth, has one and it’s counting down – for years to come. Steph makes the most of it by casual sex with guys whose timers are also counting down – but to different dates. It’s one way of dealing with the inevitable. Borth also figures in an amusing subplot at the old-age home where Steph works involving an octogenarian World War Two vet played by John Ingle of Kitchen Aid commercial fame. Her relationship with Oona offers a buddy aspect to the film.
Into Oona’s well-ordered world lands Mikey, supermarket checkout boy (John Patrick Amedori), who also drums in a rock band at the bar Steph tends in her night job. An uncharacteristic (for Oona) romance follows the classic meet cute. Mikey has a timer, but it is revealed as a fake 55 minutes into the pic, a tool to score with chicks still waiting for their soulmates. (“The closer they get to D-Day, the more likely they are to throw you around a little bit.”) He’s also eight years younger than Oona. According to the timer, Oona’s soulmate is Dan the Man (Desmond Harrington), who doesn’t make an appearance until more than halfway through the picture. JoBeth Williams excels as Steph’s and Oona’s mom, providing much of pic’s comedy.
Pic’s moral, if there is one, is revealed by Delphine (Nicki Norris), mistress of Oona’s estranged dad, legendary record producer Rick O’Leary (Muse Watson). “I had it [the timer] removed,” she tells Oona. “Your dad isn’t my one, but I love him. Fuck it.” Or as Mikey says to Oona in a pivotal scene, “Your problem is not that I can’t give you a guarantee. It’s that you can’t give me one.”
Schaeffer skillfully creates a realistic future not too different from the present and very believable. This film benefits from its snappy dialogue. Editing by Peter Samet and lensing by Andrew Kaiser are more than up to the job. Maya Siegel’s music, with a tick-tock theme, is well suited to the production.
TiMER does not have a distributor as yet and is not rated, but it's a compelling flick that can attract intelligent filmgoers. It may, however, fly well over the heads of its potentially large teenage audience.
Every summer is special, but it seems as if the summer of 1969--and yes, I know it’s hard to believe that was 40 years ago — was particularly memorable. Canadian rocker Bryan Adams knew it when he did his huge 1985 hit “Summer of ’69,” in which he recollected memories of learning to play his first guitar and his first summer crush. That tune still gets a lot of play on classic rock stations. But when most of us think of that year, we think of the Miracle Mets, men walking on the moon, maybe the Manson murders — and certainly the most famous rock concert of all-time, Woodstock, the three-day festival held in upstate New York.
Various Artists
Woodstock
Woodstock Two
(Rhino)
Rhino Records has just reissued the long out-of-print triple vinyl albums, Woodstock and Woodstock Two that were originally released on Atlantic Records in the fall of 1970 and the spring of 1971, respectively. They’re now double-CD sets.
The Woodstock Music & Art Fair, also called the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival, was held from August 14 through 17 on Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel. It was supposed to be a traditional for-profit concert, but it became a free event when security could not handle the nearly half-million fans who showed up. Promoter Artie Kornfeld was able to recoup some of his costs by selling the rights for a Woodstock movie to Warner Bros. Pictures.
It should be noted that both the Woodstock soundtrack and its sequel contain just a small portion of the music actually played at Yasgur’s farm. While the biggest rock acts of the day, such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Doors, passed on Woodstock, the Who, Blood, Sweat & Tears, the Jefferson Airplane, the Band, the Grateful Dead, Crosby Stills, Nash & Young and Creedence Clearwater Revival all played full sets.
CCR has always been involved in record company litigation, so it’s not surprising that none of their performances are on these albums. Capitol Records also refused to give up their rights to the recordings of the Band, so none of Robbie Robertson and company’s songs are here either. But a lot of great tunes are.
Neither Richie Havens nor Jimi Hendrix were well-known going into Woodstock, but they were legends after it. Hendrix’s behind-the-neck blistering guitar rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” is, for my money, the most memorable take ever on Francis Scott Key’s tribute to American valor during the War of 1812. It’s tragic that Hendrix would live just barely more than a year after Woodstock.
The Vietnam War was certainly on the minds of everyone at Woodstock, and it’s safe to say that no one who made the trip to Sullivan County that weekend supported it. Folk singer Joan Baez certainly made her feelings known from the stage. A band called Country Joe & The Fish took a page out of the Stan Freberg and Tom Lehrer book of satire with “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag,” which you can be sure was not a favorite of draft boards or President Nixon. Keeping the humor going was the ’50s doo wop revival group, Sha Na Na, formed at Columbia University, who played such anachronistic warhorses as “At The Hop” and “Teen Angel.” Both songs were only about a decade old at the time but seemed as if they were recorded in the Stone Age given the Woodstock atmosphere.
One New York-born band certainly played its part at Woodstock. Mountain, a so-so rock band that would have its lone hit a year later with “Mississippi Queen,” was led by Forest Hills High School alum Leslie Weinstein, known by the showbiz moniker Leslie West. Mountain played a dozen-song set on Woodstock’s second day.
No one epitomized the sunny disposition of “flower power” better than Astoria native Melanie Safka, better known simply as Melanie. Although she only sang three songs, one of them, the melodic “Beautiful People,” captured the egalitarian spirit of the hippie movement better than any other tune from Woodstock.
Sly & The Family Stone/Santana
The Woodstock Experience
(Columbia/Legacy)
Columbia Records’ Legacy division dug deep into the vaults to find the entire sets played by two of the label’s great performers at Woodstock, Santana and Sly & The Family Stone, and put them on two separate CDs that are part of a five-artist series.
At the time, few outside of San Francisco had heard of Santana and namesake lead guitarist Carlos Santana. The band debuted their signature song, “Evil Ways,” to a national audience at the show. The fusion of rock and Latin soul on Santana staples like “Jingo” also was warmly received.
Sly & The Family Stone, whose soulful rock generated such hits as “Dance To The Music,” “Everyday People” and the concert-ready “I Want To Take You Higher,” got a heroes’ welcome from the Woodstock nation. It’s a shame the band didn’t play “Hot Fun In The Summertime,” a feel-good summer song if there ever was one, which was climbing the charts at the time. But what’s here is fun to listen to in any season.
In 2015, when Stephen Colbert launched his version of the Late Show — taking over from David Letterman — one of his first moves was to invite musician Jon Batiste and his group, Stay Human, to provide the nightly musical accompaniment. In 2020, he co-composed the score for the Pixar-animated film “Soul,” for which The New Orleans native received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a Grammy and a BAFTA Award (all shared with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross). He has garnered five Grammys from 20 nominations, including an “Album of the Year” win for “We Are” in 2021. With that under his belt, he left the Late Show in 2022, to develop his “American Symphony.”
That orchestral creation became the basis of director Matthew Heineman’s documentary, “American Symphony.” — released September 2023. This doc records the process of Jon Batiste composing his first symphony while his partner, writer Suleika Jaouad, is battling the return of her cancer. Netflix and Higher Ground Productions are distributing.
Heineman’s inspiration and fascination with American history led him to early success with the documentary “Cartel Land,” which was nominated for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar, a BAFTA Award for Best Documentary, and won three Primetime Emmy Awards.
In 2009, the 40-year-old founded Our Time Projects, Inc., his New York–based production company, which would later release “Our Time,” his first documentary, about what it's like to be young in America. His 2021 film “The First Wave” received the Pare Lorentz Award from the International Documentary Association, was shortlisted for an Oscar, and was nominated for seven Emmy Awards, winning Best Documentary, Best Cinematography, and Best Editing. “Retrograde,” his 2022 film, was nominated for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directing and won an Outstanding Editing Emmy.
This piece is based on the duo’s appearance at a screening in The Museum of Modern Art.
Q: Jon, the film is an incredible look at the intricacies of the creative process. What is life like living inside your mind? You hear all this noise, you're singing, improvising, and then, it just needs a little more than that.
Jon Batiste: Hello. I'm always thinking about things that I don't know that I'm thinking about. My subconscious mind is always going.
Q: The known and unknowns?
Jon Batiste: It's happening and I feel something churning when it really gets going and then it diverges. It's so hard to make some visuals more than not. Something I can't explain, but the subconscious is working and there's things that are happening in the present -- and then both are working. They come together in moments and that's typically where the music comes from.
Q: Matt, what's it like to have an artist like Jon as the subject, the protagonist of the story?
Matthew Heineman: I think we all owe so much to them for opening themselves up during such an unbelievably vulnerable and sensitive time of their lives. I've always tried to approach filmmaking in a very improvisational way. Every film I've ever made is something completely different than when I started. And this film is no exception. It was really fun to apply that ethos of filmmaking to one of the greatest improvisers in history. And to dance with him... in both the macro sense of trying to structure this story and in a micro sense, within each day shooting and within each shot.
Q: There's so many moments of profound insight in the film from you, Jon and the people around you -- through your relationships with them and your creative process. At one point you talk about genuine acceptance and gratitude which requires so much humility and self-awareness. How did this function in your work?
Jon Batiste: The thought of being great is a dangerous idea. When you're creating music in the most pure sense, you become a vessel of something that you don't fully understand and couldn't ever fully grasp. The music is a way to point at it and share it. That's always going to be greater than you. Now, if you get used to functioning in that stream of consciousness, that creative place that all the ideas come from, you can start to think that it's you. That's where self-awareness comes from. Even though I have so many ideas all the time, and I'm always creating. I've always managed to make it happen. I can lose that one day, anybody can, because it's not me. That's an important part of the work. That's how it functions in the work. It's the most crass and direct sensibility of thinking about how it functions is, you ain't great, bad. You’re just a vessel. If I can stay in that space then the world will be great.
Q: Matthew, can you talk about how different it was in making this film from making some of your others. Being an artist yourself, right, and witnessing, filmmaking is really a profound act of witness. Jon's process and Sulaika’s relationship, talk about what it was like to use your craft to show us their journey.
Matthew Heineman: Obviously, if you look at the films I made, this is definitely different yet in many ways it is the same. I approached it with the same fear, I think, that I approach every film. Am I going to fail? How am I going to do this? We have an amazing team, obviously, making this film. But it was an exorbitant film, and we had to really commit to this process. At first, Sulaika didn't want to be part of the film, apprehensive of being seen as the sick wife in this story. It took a lot of trust building with her and with Jon to make them comfortable with my very immersive style of filming. We were shooting 12, 16, 18 hours a day, seven days a week for seven or eight months. We shot 1500 hours of footage. It was a real commitment.
After about a month or so, we'd all go over to each other and were like, "If we're going to do this, let's really truly do this and commit to this. The thing that probably scared me the most was depicting the artistic process, depicting what Jon just described, this sort of magic that he just channels as a vessel as he said. I think that moment after he dedicates the song to Sulaika, we hold on that shot for 92 seconds or however long it was. In most films, it's a strange choice to hold in silence for so long. It was like Jon literally writes the story for us. With all this weight on his shoulders, his love for Sulaika, how he's changed life into art, and art into life. It's all there on his face, his hands, his left and right hand. I just love telling stories without words, telling stories with emotion — and shooting based on emotion.
Q: When you talk about shooting and capturing emotion in the film, there's just so many moments. There's things that you can tell about couples that typify a relationship, where you can see the relationship without having to describe it. These two are just in it. Everybody knows how much you love your wife, which is really good.
Jon Batiste: That's one of the things I noticed. I was like, “Man, that's a good choice. Yes indeed!” I'm always joking around in that situation about the reality of not knowing if she was going to make it. All of the things that were going on outside the hospital and in the hospital room, that element of the relationship is like a force field. I didn't realize what that would look like and how much that's something that insulates us from the harsh realities of life. It's really deep, the certain things in your relationship, value systems, humor, and creativity.
They all become these means of survival. That's really one of the things that we picked up on and one of the things -- from the beginning -- that really brought us together and helped us weather a lot of things. I noticed that really did come across, as Matt and Lauren, as filmmakers and the production team, are finding a way to notice that in the footage and then carry that narrative thread throughout. That was powerful, because it also ties into the way that the themes of the score and the symphony tie in with the many themes within the film. It was very powerful to see that depicted through this truly masterful work by this team.
Q: Matt, it takes 14 minutes before the first few notes of what we will eventually discover is the beginning of "American Symphony." It's just so great, it's really subtle. It really has wonderful touches about the actual concert at Carnegie Hall and what that must have been like. Jon is just getting started and then the power goes out. Only people on the stage realize exactly what is going on. Then Jon literally plays the power back into existence. Jon is literally at the piano and conjures electricity. How did you deal with that situation? What were you doing? You've got folks with cameras all over recording it all.
Matthew Heineman: I saw that Steadicam and I was like, "That's not even sending in the camera to get that shot. I definitely was like, "Wow, this is great." To be honest, it was very confusing. There's confusion with Jon and confusion about what is happening. The lights are on, but electronics are not on. Oh, all the recording devices are off. It had been a pretty long battle with the folks at Carnegie and various other entities to get a steadicam on stage. For me, it was really important to see that experience through Jon's eyes, to hear the creak of the bench, to see the sweat on the brow, to see the crowd from his perspective. That's the man who literally -- I can tell you -- walked into Carnegie Hall, and was up there to date. Thankfully, I won that battle. And if it wasn't for that Steadicam, that whole experience wouldn't have been recorded. The shotgun mic on the Steadicam is the sound source for that moment and it's a beautiful moment. It's so indicative of Jon. He takes a second, breathes it in, and he's like, all right. Well, I'm impressed. It ties the film together in a really beautiful way.
Q: Jon, what was that like for you? Sulaika is out in public, for the first time in almost a year, right? You have gotten really tough news about this. You enter the space in Carnegie Hall, and in a way, the entire hall shifts with you. You're in this resplendent suit. It's reflecting light in all directions. You walk into Carnegie Hall, all eyes are on you. You're doing your thing. Then, power cuts out. There's still this fountain of joy coming from you. You're talking to all these artists about what we want them to bring to the process. How did you make the decision that we're going to go on?
Jon Batiste: The great Joe Salem, the drummer who I played with since we were in high school, he's from Pennsylvania, and wears a cowboy hat. Joe has noticed this theme, it's almost like a tradition from every show that we've played for almost 20 years. Something always goes wrong [laughter]. Something always breaks or somebody's pants split. The bass drum pedal will bust. Something will happen, the mic will shut. There's a real beauty to that. Furthermore, I think there's an actual purpose to that. There's a divine logic, a cadence that's meant to be a part of my work.
Often, I'll create things in these moments within the composition. Nobody on the stage will know what will happen in specific moments. It's designed for us to show up in a moment together. [So, there are blank bars on the page.] It will be even more abstract than blank. It will be creating a scenario. Sometimes that requires me, with this piece that I did, we had to create a notation that's different to standard notation of music in order to get everybody to know it. Okay, this is the scenario. Now that we're in the scenario, let's see. That was one that I didn't initiate. But the beauty of it is now that piece that has improvised composition. The spontaneous composition of the moment will now be in "American Symphony" from henceforth. When we perform it again, this piece is now so. This is the beauty of these things, that happens. Discovery is always greater than adventure [applause].
Q: Your performance is seamless and comforting and yet so profound. It's really obvious that you as the vessel, like you said, developed from clearly a strong faith.
Jon Batiste: The present is all we have. What we see in the present oftentimes doesn't indicate the full range and majesty of the truth, of being, of who we are. Many times people see a person, but they don't tell the good about his color. They see somebody and there's so much in all of us. I have faith in people because there's such a transformative power that people have within them. Beyond that, the creator of all things, the God of the universe, has created this planet and life force. This moment in the celestial expanse of time, I have this measure that keeps changing and expanding. It's un-understandable. It's unfathomable. That in and of itself gives me faith that we can't grasp what is, and we can't know what will be.
What's left? The transformative power that we have within us, the trust and belief in the thing that created this whole existence as we know it... We can measure it to a limited capacity. What we create and make so infectious, is so inevitable, so true and profound, real and moving. It's drawing us in and speaking to something greater than ourselves. It's showing us a way to something else that we can't even articulate. What a beautiful thing to do, share and be in the world. I could go on and on about faith, but I'm just grateful that God put it in me to share a message that will uplift and help people.
Bayona (L) & Vogrincic