Fire-Breathing "Bellflower" -- Director Glodell's Auspicious Sundance Debut

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Interviews

Published on Saturday, 13 August 2011 18:39

Written by Brad Balfour

What is Bellflower, the latest buzz movie of the moment? It's a road movie, a mumblecore/relationship film, even a weird buddy pic with some bitchy girls and that flamethrower.

Or to sum it up, best friends Woodrow (Evan Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson) toil endlessly over Mad Max-inspired devices and vehicles to prepare for the impending apocalypse.

Yeah, right. Until Woodrow meets a girl, falls in love, gets a gang and journeys into shifting patterns of love, hate, betrayal, infidelity and a bit of violence -- basically everyday fantasy life in post-millennial America.

Read more: Fire-Breathing "Bellflower" --...

The Late Great Director Sidney Lumet: A Last Interview

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Interviews

Published on Tuesday, 26 July 2011 20:15

Written by Brad Balfour

On the occasion of the great Philadelphia-born and New York-bred director Sidney Lumet's passing earlier this year, The Film Society of Lincoln Center put together an extraordinary retrospective of 16 signature classics, Prince of The City: Remembering Sidney Lumet, which was held  in the Walter Reade Theater from July 19 - July 25, 2011 in Manhattan.

It culminated in the closing screening of Lumet's powerful last feature, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. A melodramatic thriller stoked with dark humor and darker dread, Before the Devil... first premiered in the U.S. at the 2007 New York Film Festival.

Its director had long been regarded as an internationally respected auteur who had made several benchmark films such as The Pawnbroker, Prince of the City and Network, as well as his two Al Pacino star vehicles, Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon.

Just as Before the Devil was getting all the ballyhoo, Lumet regaled a posse of journos with insights and asides on his latest effort. It was not only for the film's brilliant and unique story structure or its sterling cast (Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, Marisa Tomei and Amy Ryan), but for Lumet's application of HD video cameras.

The film details the tragic tale of two brothers who organize the robbery of their own parents' jewelry store. The job goes horribly wrong, triggering a cascading set of events that sends them, their parents and their friends and lovers careening towards a disastrous climax.

Little did we know at the time that it would be his last press day or his last film. On April 9, 2011 the seemingly indefatigable Lumet died at 86, after a long career as an actor/writer/director who made over 50 films -- many garnering Oscar wins or nominations for their actors.

The son of Yiddish thespians, Lumet began acting at age four, made his Broadway debut at 11 and first film appearance at 15. But it was as a director -- first in early live television and later in movies -- that he found his true calling, drawing on his experience in front of the camera to become the very definition of an "actor's director."

From 12 Angry Men in 1957 to Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Lumet was, in the words of Woody Allen, "the quintessential New York filmmaker," whether telling gritty stories of urban corruption or adapting Broadway stage classics in cinema.

Here now is that last roundtable interview, published for the first time in its entirety.

Q: How well rehearsed were the actors for this film? Did you do a lot of takes for the more challenging scenes? Or was it just straight ahead, one or two takes?

SL: We're very thorough in rehearsal. We do everything. In fact, before the rehearsal ends, we do a run-through from top to bottom -- fights, anything, everything. The scripts are out of their hands. It's a very thorough preparation. I'm a big believer in it.

Q: From start to finish?

SL: Start to finish. Everything is covered every day, because first of all, it's the only time they can do it in sequence. They'll never get it in sequence again.

Second of all, when you're going to ask for this level of intensity, you're not going to get it if they're insecure in any way. If they're tight, the rehearsal just relaxes them completely because they get to know what they're doing. It's that that allows all of the emotion to come jumping out and springing to the fore. Yeah, I find it invaluable.

Q: Why did you think of Marisa Tomei for Gina -- the wife of Phil Hoffman's character?

SL: I fell in love with her in My Cousin Vinny, and it hasn't abated a bit. A superb actress. When I met her after My Cousin Vinny, I couldn't believe it, because I thought she was that.

Every once in a while you see a performance and say well, the director went out and got a nonprofessional, and I thought that was true of Marisa. I thought it was true of Tim Robbins in Bull Durham, and I thought, my God, they went out and got themselves a real cracker. So I loved her work from that and some subsequent work.

Also -- this is very important for a picture like this -- if you know my pictures, I don't do sex scenes. I don't do sex scenes because I don't believe them.

Only one picture I ever believed in [doing it], and there was a reason I believed, but I knew I was going to have to have it in this, that opening scene.

It was very important that both actors be relaxed about it, because if they weren't then it would be like any other sex scene, the ones I don't believe.

And I knew that Marisa just is totally uninhibited. She's not an exhibitionist by any means, but it's just another part of acting for her. And I'm sure that Philip is not used to it because he's not the conventional leading man.

When we were blocking -- this is during rehearsal, after we'd finished three days around the table talking and so on -- then we got up on our feet, we started to stage it just like you would in the theater.

So that's the first scene, the first one we get to, and there's a set laid out on the floor and a bed. Marisa, bless her, she hops onto the bed.

I wrote out the description very carefully, because there are instances of actors saying, "Oh I didn't know I was going to have to get undressed," and by union regulations you cannot make them. I wrote it out in great detail so that they couldn't say they didn't know.

So Marisa hops onto the bed, gets up on her knees and on her elbows and slaps her ass and says, "Let's go, Phil!"

It was so great because it not only put it in its proper place -- which is part of the movie, part of a performance -- but for Philip, that must have been such a release and such a relief that there was nothing competitive or what-have-you.

Q: That took all the stress out of it.

SL: Absolutely. I was thrilled with her. I was thrilled with her.

Q: How do you bring that essence out of an actor?

SL: It varies picture by picture. And another big variable in it is that some actors are in themselves closer to the roles they're playing and some actors are farther away.

Here, the most important thing there was to work on was the intensity, because like all good melodramas the story is completely unbelievable.

The only thing that's going to create a belief is if the intensity of performance is so high that your audience can't deny it, that you're sucked in completely. So for these actors it was a question of getting up onto a high enough pitch in the inner life of the performance.

Q: You worked with Albert Finney [who plays the father] in Murder on the Orient Express 33 years ago. Did you talk about the differences and similarities of working with him back then and working with him now?

SL: Never. I don't even see my old movies, and "old movie" is anything I did last. When this round is over with, and the premieres that I have to go to, and so on, I won't see this again. Next Wednesday is the last time I'm going to see this movie.

Q: You've shot all your movies with multiple cameras. This one seemed to be very much a stationary camera looking into these lives. Was this something very conscious that you wanted to do or something very different from your older movies?

SL: I never think of the camera work as separated from the picture itself. One of the reasons I love high def -- I think in high def -- is because multi-camera has become much simpler.

For me that takes me right back to my origins, that takes me right back to live TV, because there I'd be using as many as six cameras. So it was a terrific pleasure. I love high def anyway; I've worked in nothing else for the last five years.

Q: What was similar or different about making this film?

SL: The multi-camera use. For instance, in two scenes, there's one camera there, there's one camera there, this camera's covering him, this camera's covering him. Look, you can get anything you want to in normal film, I realize that; it's a question of the effort.

Take a scene like where Ethan and Philip are ripping off the dope dealer's place and Philip has just shot that stranger lying there in the bed and he's rifling stuff in the closet, and Ethan is just standing there petrified -- this tension begins between them. "Did you touch anything?" "What?" "Did you touch anything!"

I guess I could have gotten that with individual cameras, first one side, then the other, but two things: it would have taken me all day to build up to that level of intensity, number one; and number two, I still don't think they ever would have been able to seem like they were working out of each other so completely.

Each one of them was in perfect reaction to what the other person was doing because they were doing it together at the same time. All pieces of work, you kind of keep hoping for the good accident and it happened when Philip stuck his head out and he said, "Okay, are we good?"

Now that wasn't in the script. Extraordinary line, extraordinary reaction. And also from a character point of view, because for the first time, the only time in the movie, Philip is the insecure one and Ethan is the secure one. That inversion is so humanizing to those two characters.

A complete accident, and I think it only could have happened if both of them were being recorded at the same time. If that had happened on Philip's side and he'd thrown that in and then two hours later I'd turned around and gotten Ethan's side, I don't think he ever would have gotten to that reaction.

Q: That's a fascinating perspective that only a good director would have. You actually wrote a draft of the film. You didn't take a writing credit?

SL: No. I would have loved one, but those things are decided by the Writer's Guild. I don't know what they use as judgment, but they are very suspicious -- and rightly so -- of directors who put their names on as writers as well.

Because the normal amount that I do on a script, I wouldn't think of asking for a credit for. The writer may have written "the battle happens and the North wins," and then the director, because he'll stage the battle, he'll ask for a writing credit -- and I don't think he should get it.

Q: How hard was it to get this one made?

SL: I don't know. It's a peculiar time in movies now because there's so much private financing in it, and I don't know what Michael [Cerenzie, the producer] had when he sent me the script. I don't know how much money he had lined up, and when the last of it clicked into place.

Q: With a small movie like this, Oscars are a different game now; it's changed a lot. Now you have to campaign for them.

You've had so many Oscar-nominated and award-winning movies. How important are awards to movies like this?

SL: I have no idea. It's like catching lightning in a bottle. I don't think you can ever figure on it. I don't aim anything for it.

The reason it's all so much more a sales job now, and ads and this that and the other -- in the old days when you were working at 20th Century Fox, Darryl Zanuck sent you a note saying, "Vote for this picture." Literally... So your vote was decided for you.

Q: How would they know what you'd voted for?

SL: They knew.

Q: It's amazing that you've made nearly 50 movies in your 83 years. And this movie is so great -- and to come out at this time in your life. Will you continuing making movies after this?

SL: I hope so. With a little luck, with a little help from my friends, yeah.

John Gray, Director of "White Irish Drinkers"

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Interviews

Published on Thursday, 21 July 2011 05:00

Written by CineFemme, Leslie (Hoban) Blake for FilmFestivalTraveler

I'm sitting in the Irish pub, Playwrights Tavern on 46th Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, with John Gray, the writer, director and co-producer of the new film White Irish Drinkers. It's a perfect place to conduct this exclusive interview about his career and the making of the film.

An American writer, director and producer. Gray is also the creator of the CBS television series Ghost Whisperer (starring Jennifer Love Hewitt) and has written and directed many high profile movies for TV, such as the remake of the 1976 telefilm Helter Skelter, Martin and Lewis, The Hunley, The Day Lincoln Was Shot, several Hallmark Hall of Fame features, among others. He recently directed the ABC original series Empire (which starred Santiago Cabrera).

Though the film had a far too short theatrical run, it has had a DVD release and has been offered for special screenings such as being the opening night film at the 2011 Manhattan Film Festival at Symphony Space.

L(H)B: We talked to some of the actors in the film, and now, to be sitting with the creator is quite a coup for us.

You actually paid for this film with your own money. There’s been a lot written about this. What I have read is that it cost $600,000 and you shot it in 17 days and it’s high definition.

JG: Yes, very true. I did the thing you’re never supposed to do, but I was so passionate about making this movie.

I wrote the script 10 years ago and tried all the traditional avenues to finance it, and you can never really make that happen. The script got me some work and people liked it, but I couldn’t get it financed.

L(H)B: So this story has been with you a long time then?

JG: Yeah, it has been with me a long time, and those characters have been living in my head for a very long time.

Over the course of these 10 years, three things happened. One was that I was lucky enough to get a television series on the air that was successful and lasted for five years: The Ghost Whisperer.

L(H)B: A little show called The Ghost Whisperer. I loved that show. You were with Ghost Whisperer all the way through?

JG: Well, pretty much. I was executive producer of the first three seasons, and then I stepped away, became a consultant, and I still wrote and directed episodes.

I stayed very close to it. Those people are my family, and it was very sad when it went away because we all love each other and we had great, great times together.

I'm very grateful to TV. The thing that never varies is that the schedules are tight and the budgets are tight.

And it always seemed to me you have two choices as a director: you can either surrender to that and just kind of do crap -- close-up, close-up, close-up, boom, we're done -- and give into it, or you can choose a path where you're constantly fighting it and trying to challenge yourself.

And I chose that path, and the extent to which I succeeded remains to be seen. I want something [to be] every bit as good as a feature. That's my goal, that's how I want to shoot this. But I always strove to make the work look as good as possible and work with the actors as much as I could.

L(H)B: I was a fan, and I know you'd go into the [antique] shop and you'd see things in the shop. It didn't look random, it looked very specific.

[So] TV really helped you do this movie, all the techniques and whatnot.

JG: But it was time to try and get other things off the ground -- like this movie, for one thing.

And of course, the technology changed. [It] became suddenly thinkable to do a movie digitally for a fraction of the cost.

And then my wife [Melissa Jo Peltier] is a really talented producer in her own right, and also a very good director -- in fact, she directed all the second unit stuff in this movie.

It felt like, how can I expect anyone else to really pony up for this movie if I won’t do it, and I can do it?

So we just made the decision that we’re not going to wait anymore. I’ve got to make this movie. It’s eating me up inside, I’ve got to get it out.

We were lucky enough to get Paul Bernard and Jim Scura, who are good friends, and really very talented producers who have done a lot of low budget movies and are very savvy in the ways things are done. And they were lucky enough to get this incredible cast that just blew me away.

But also I did quite a few movies for television before Ghost Whisperer. I’ve been doing television for a long time; I know how to shoot fast and economically.

L(H)B: Well, you did one of my favorites, the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movie {Martin and Lewis]. I love that movie.

JG: In fact, Sean Hayes [who played Lewis] did a favor for me in this movie, and he did a voice on the telephone -- the college recruiter who’s calling Brian.

L(H)B: I didn’t recognize his voice.

Speaking of voice, you got Stephen [Lang] and Karen [Allen] and certainly the boys and to some extent, Peter [Riegert], who of course is an outsider so he doesn’t necessarily have the same accent.

But these people sounded to my untrained ear for that particular place like they really all came from [Bay Ridge] and they all had the same background. I couldn’t find it on the credits, but who worked with them on dialect?

JG: I have to say that really Nick and Leslie -- neither of whom, I believe, had ever set foot in Brooklyn before we did the movie -- they really sort of got there on their own.

I wanted to be careful with them not to go too far. I didn’t want to make it consciously talk ‛like this‛ here, so I wanted to do a subtle thing.

One of my dearest friends is a man named Tim Monach, who is one of the premier dialog coaches, phenomenal. He works with all the big stars, and I met him because we had done a movie with Natasha Richardson and Donald Sutherland [The Hunley] and that’s how we met, and we stayed friends. He’s a wonderful man.

Karen was very concerned about getting the accent right, it was really important to her. She said to me, "Look. One of the important things about me doing this movie is I really feel like I want a dialog coach."

Of course, we had no money, and how do we do this? So I called Tim I said "Look, I can’t afford you, Tim, but you must know somebody." And he said "Karen Allen? I love Karen, we met. I’ll do it for you. I’ll do it for free."

He was doing Wall Street at the time, and so he would get on the subway in lower Manhattan, come out to Bay Ridge -- two, three in the morning -- and work with Karen. She went to his house to have rehearsal.

Those are the kinds of things that allow this kind of movie to get made, that kind of generous spirit.

L(H)B: In most cases, was this your first choice in each one? Peter [Riegert] said that as far as he knew, he was the only one who was offered the role.

JG: Oh yeah, absolutely. Honestly, I didn’t think we would get people of that stature. But my casting director, Russell Boast, who’s a genius, said "You know what? Let’s just try. All they can do is say no. Let’s try."

L(H)B: The three younger actors, Nick Thurston…

JG: Geoff Wigdor.

L(H)B: And Leslie Murphy were just exceptional. They played the two brothers and one of the brother’s girlfriends, and are obviously going to have big futures ahead of them.

I think they’re really very talented. They also look the parts. Leslie in particular reminds me of several young Irish girls I’ve met along the way.

JG: Yeah, and we were very lucky to get them.

L(H)B: The film is semi-autobiographical?

JG: Sure.

L(H)B: I don’t know how far we can go with that, because it’s a very dark subject matter. It’s two young men growing up in an alcoholic family, father is abusive, mother is codependent.

And yet there’s a way out for one of the young men -- which always reminds me of an old Warner Brothers-type movie, where there are two brothers [Brian and Danny] and one is good and one goes bad kind of thing.

But this is of course updated to the ‘70s in Bay Ridge. You’re actually a Bay Ridge boy?

JG: Yes, born and bred. Raised in Bay Ridge.

L(H)B: You’ll have to tell me how much you want to say about this, but was there alcoholism in your family?

JG: It’s something that certainly was prevalent in the neighborhood. I had a much easier time growing up than Brian did, for sure, but I did see a lot of what happened in the movie happen around me.

One of the things I wanted to try to explore in this film was that people think about neighborhoods sometimes like this -- in terms of what happens to you out on the streets. It’s dangerous; get off the streets at night.

But I wanted to take a look at what happens to some of these kids when they close the door to their apartments at night, and that’s where they’re really not safe.

It was about looking at that and also looking at how commonplace it was. In those days, you didn’t think anything of it. Everyone got hit. It was a courtesy of the neighborhood. Teachers hit you, the nuns hit you. You wouldn’t dare tell your parents that the nun hit you because the question would be, what did you do that she had to hit you?

Obviously, today it’s a completely different world, and better for it. So I was interested in exploring that notion.

I think if there’s anything truly autobiographical about it, it’s the sense of feeling like: what if I have a talent that I don’t know what to do with it? Does it mean I have to leave this neighborhood? Does it mean I have to go out into the world?

And that’s what I wanted to explore, because I certainly felt that growing up. I knew from a very early age I wanted to make movies or tell stories, write.

L(H)B: So in the film Brian is an artist with paint, with watercolors and then oil, but that’s your metaphor for art in general -- and yours was writing.

JG: Right. And this was an environment where the emphasis is on survival. Get a job, get a good job, get your high school diploma.

L(H)B: Get a civil service job. Absolutely, I understand that.

JG: That’s good solid thinking. But if you feel like, "I don’t really fit that particular mold," is there something wrong with me? Am I a misfit, am I going to fail in life because I want to have this pipe dream?

L(H)B: And there’s no support for it from anyone, so you have to keep it secret.

JG: Yeah. Now in my case, you couldn’t keep it secret because I needed people to help me make movies, I couldn’t do it on my own.

And I have to say that my mother was incredibly supportive of me, even though she didn’t really understand it, wasn’t quite sure how I was going to make a living at it. I think she worried, but I think what was clear to her was how much joy it gave me and how important it was to me.

That scene where Margaret gives Brian the paints -- it comes out of my life. Because my mother once got me my first Super 8 film camera, and she had to buy it on a lay-away plan. But she knew how important that was to me and gave it to me, and it was like getting a bar of gold.

I spent hours and hours and hours working on making movies and cutting them. And she was always very supportive.

L(H)B: You dedicated the film to her.

JG: Yeah, she passed away not long after we finished shooting.

L(H)B: Did she get to see any of it at all?

JG: No. She came to the set one day.

L(H)B: How old was she?

JG: She was 85.

L(H)B: Oh, that’s as they say, a good, long life.

JG: She had a good run. Lived in Bay Ridge her whole life.

L(H)B: I’m happy to hear that that wasn’t particularly your life, because it didn’t feel like a happy life. The thing that bothered me was that -- and I’m not going to give away the ending -- it’s not going to be over for Brian, really.

I’m hoping that for Brian’s character that it will find its way to not ruin his life in some way, because this stuff has such a way of proliferating in the next generation.

One of the funny scenes in the bar is when the disco guys come in. Where were the disco guys from?

JG: That was sort of a war that went on in our neighborhood, because in Bay Ridge, [there] was kind of a largely Irish population at that time.

L(H)B: It’s Italian now, I think, right?

JG: Well, it’s kind of Middle Eastern now. There’s still a fair Irish stronghold there, and Scandinavian and Greek. It’s a melting pot for sure.

But at that time, for some reason, a lot of disco started popping up in Bay Ridge.

Bensonhurst was our neighboring neighborhood, and I would say probably there were more Italians in Bensonhurst.

The Italian guys would come down to Bay Ridge and come to the discos, and we were jealous of them because they had money, they had cars, they dressed flashy -- and they were all good-looking guys.

So of course we hated them, and they hated us because we were just street scum. Often there were fights, and bad things went on when the two came together.

So in the scene, I just wanted to do a nod to that, where two disco guys walk into the wrong bar.

L(H)B: It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it was funny. It was a funny bit -- and of course I immediately thought of Saturday Night Fever, and it was the right time period.

I went online and found your beautiful wife -- she’s a stunning woman -- and it says that she is the producer of The Dog Whisperer. And I wanted to know if you have another thing coming out with "whisper" in the title.

JG: No. That was a hilarious thing because not only Dog Whisperer-Ghost Whisperer, at one point we were on at eight o’clock Friday nights against each other.

And also, she’s a brilliant writer and she’s written all of Caesar’s books -- five bestsellers now.

She’s really my secret weapon.

L(H)B: I think it was either in the New York Times article or Denis Hamill -- you’ve gotten a lot of print -- that said that you were a 52 year old director who is making a 25 year old’s film.

And it is a young man’s film. It’s like looking at Cinema Paradiso, where you think it’s an old man’s film but it turns out to be a kid’s film. This definitely had the feel.

It also said -- and this is something that’s quite interesting -- that when the dust clears in the next year or two, everybody’s going to have to make this kind of film, because there can’t be any more billion dollar movies -- there’s no money. At least not right this minute, there’s not.

So it seems to me like you might be riding the crest of the wave, hopefully. Fingers crossed.

JG: First time I’m setting a trend, that’s for sure.

L(H)B: As a person of Irish descent myself, I’ve got a bit of a problem with this "White Irish Drinkers" title. You kind of took it by the horns, as it were, and sort of put it out there -- because you could have called it Brian’s Story or something, and nobody would have known. Have you gotten any flack for it?

JG: Not yet. I expect that we will. A lot of people think "Oh, it’s my life story!" "It must be about my family!" We get a lot of those comments.

But the title is meant to be ironic, and it is how we characterized ourselves in the neighborhood because we resisted drugs. It’s not meant as a slur, and I think if anybody sees the movie, they’ll understand what the title really means and that it’s not another knock against the Irish at all.

L(H)B: The film opened the Craic [pronounced "crack"] Festival. This is the Irish Film Festival in New York, for those who don’t know.

JG: It was a wonderful experience. Terence Mulligan was the mastermind behind this.

We were invited to be in it and then invited to be the opening night film, and it was wonderful. Great to be in a New York festival, and the audiences are just so enthusiastic and passionate.

We had a big opening at the Tribeca Cinemas, and a wonderful party afterwards. It was very gratifying because people really respond to the movie. We’ve had so many screenings at this point at festivals and film clubs, and word of mouth screenings.

L(H)B: All necessary with a small film these days.

JG: Absolutely, you’ve got to do it. And I sit through every one because -- I always learn something, for one thing -- but also working in television, you miss the audience connection. And there’s nothing like sitting there and listening to people laugh, and you hear them sniffling, and feel their reaction.

I can’t get enough of it. Because for many years in TV, of course, it’s just out there on the waves, and you hear by the numbers they like it, but you rarely get a chance to sit with people.

L(H)B: What does "craic" mean?

JG: It is the Gaelic word for fun, for lighthearted fun. I was lucky enough to do a movie in Ireland about nine years ago. It was called The Seventh Stream. It was a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie with Scott Glenn, Saffron Burrows and Fiona Shaw, the great Fiona Shaw.

I was hanging out with the drivers one day and they were talking about another movie they had done, and one guy said "We had great crack on that one."

I thought: my god, there are drugs everywhere. Finally, someone said "No, John, it means fun."

[The film is now is available on DVD and Blu-Ray]