Links & Looks, March 16, 2023
Technicolor memories, Sofia Coppola, Ted Hope On First Features, Brian Newman On Changing Lanes
The Chicago Film Society presents their long-awaited Technicolor cavalcade at the Siskel Film Center this weekend; it’s one big, bright highlight all its own.
"When I was in college, loitering with intent alongside the film department and programming movie showings, there were any number of discoveries made several times each immersive week, none soothing, most alarming, revelation after revelation to my yet-unschooled sensibility, and among the most cinematically chaotic and fruitfully loony was Frank Tashlin’s Artists And Models (1956) (35mm), a gaudy, grabby, bold, beautiful explosion of the possibilities of composition and blocking, post-Looney Tunes-style human behavior and the physical expression of neurosis from head to toe in the magic mix of manic and too-fucking-cool that was Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Plus Shirley MacLaine. Plus? Shirley MacLaine. Youth be bespoiled in every way.”
Where the stars are always young, where children must make their own way. The sky is blue and clear
Also this weekend: the Music Box’s Sofia Coppola matinee is Somewhere: T”he screenplay is a mere forty-three pages; the opening shot, which runs four minutes or so, is described this way: “It’s overcast, as a black Ferrari speeds around an empty track in the foggy haze. It does lap after lap, getting nowhere. It slows down and stops. JOHNNY gets out and stands there.” It’s a Monte Hellman moment; it’s a Vincent Gallo moment (as in The Brown Bunny). The movie announces itself as minimalist with that shot. Then it’s almost half an hour before a word is spoken. Coppola’s framings are deliberate but often seem peculiar and found, even aleatory: this is not a handheld movie. There are signposts that can be deciphered, and others that are surely meaningful to Coppola in ways we can’t know, but there’s a sense of accruing weight. Johnny watching his daughter ice skate goes on for minutes and minutes and it’s beautiful. The kid-swan is clumsy with potential, gawky in blue spangles. The aural tousle of Coppola’s pop choices is downplayed in favor of extremely measured sound design, slightly reedy at times, but always calibrated in terms of the rhythm of the many extended takes… It offers satisfactions and contentment: It’s a succession of sensations, of being adrift in a city where the weather seldom changes, where the stars are always young, where children must make their own way. The sky is blue and clear.
TED HOPE ON FIRST FEATURES, as he turns a rash of musings into a barrage of concerns:
It always was REALLY hard to raise $ for 1st features. And yet we got them made. And they made money. And they put more directors & talent into the system to generate more profitable films better aligned to current cultural tendencies than many of the folks previously working. It worked. We did it then. We can do it now too.
Why is the market presumed bad for narrative first time features? So what are some alternative mechanisms for investment in first time features? Do we have to improve the investment model for first time features? Could we just improve the market?
They are not profitable because most of the indies get made for the wrong reasons and the team won't listen to the best advice they find.
In my career (so far), I have gotten to make 30+ films with first-time directors. I got to make these “risky” films for two reasons: I have a good track record of picking talent and my films, particularly the first features, made money. These first films made money for a couple of reasons: I pick talent well, the budgets were low, and the market for them was healthy then. The market for them now is not so good, but it is not the only reason these films aren’t getting made. I think we need to build a better mousetrap that allows for a regular cadence of ambitiously authored low budget first features, particularly those that also have a high concept that is readily embraced at their core.
More here:.
Brian Newman considers the metaphor of “changing lanes”:
Everyone is crowding in line, trying to premiere their films at Sundance/Cannes (mainly) or SXSW/Tribeca, because those give you status and prestige and feed your ego. But the lines there are jammed, and the secret paths to breaking through and feeling special are also clogged and not working. You have your CAA or Cinetic attached (insert any other name here, of course), but they can’t get you a sale either... And then no one gives a flying fuck that you are who you are, and your ego is the only thing that has been fed.
And that’s why/how filmmakers are screwing themselves, by staying invested in the dream for their egos instead of going to where the action is, or could be. [Or] just making a new lane altogether. Ironically, this was exactly the conversation I was having with an accomplished producer…. They pointed out to me that after doing a lot of work to disseminate info about the realities of the state of the field to filmmakers, nothing had changed, because filmmakers didn’t want to know the truth, they just wanted to feed the ego and go for that Sundance (etc.) premiere and the dream of how things used to work.
We need that one gate agent telling you—hey bozos—skip your status and go down the aisle to a new future, and it might even be easier and more rewarding. I’m trying to be that gate agent now. Because if you’re stuck standing in that line, you’ve already lost—someone else already took a limo to a helicopter to a private jet and landed hours before you in the utopia you’re flying coach towards… The plane left, that ship sailed, and you should have probably built a different itinerary altogether.Because under all the cheery faces at my meet and greets, I’d sit down with someone from some different part of the business, and after a drink, we’d always get to that moment where both of us had to admit nothing is really working in this business, and we need some new paths to the future. Which—if you don’t already have access to that private jet—probably means building a crazy ship that looks like something out of Glory at Sea (Benh Zeitlin’s short) more than something fancy and Sundance and Oscar focused. But no one is watching those things anyways. Everything Everywhere All at Once deserved its win and did well for what it is, of course, but does your cousin in middle America know it exists? Nope; mine neither.