Monthly Archives: June 2014

Music

“98% funky stuff, 2% jazz”: Legendary musician Maceo Parker talks to the SunBreak before returning to Jazz Alley

Maceo Parker just might have pop music’s best resume. As a saxophone player, he’s been intricate parts of bands for James Brown, George Clinton, and Prince and his career spans at least fifty years. It’s not hyperbole to call him pop’s greatest sideman. But he also has been a prolific solo artist, putting out his first album in 1970, and his most recent in 2012.

From Thursday through Sunday, Maceo Parker will be holding things down at Jazz Alley with a series of shows that span the (extended) weekend – six shows over four nights.

I had a few precious minutes to talk with Maceo Parker about his recipe for success, what fans can expect from seeing one of his live shows, and how he came to begin working with James Brown, and what kind of doors that opened for him. Honestly, I wish I could’ve listened to him talk for hours.

What can people expect from seeing one of your shows this weekend at Jazz Alley?

Well, what I have built up to this point is sort of a fan base, where people know who I am. It’s really rewarding being in this position where people can know you’re appearing someplace close by and playing. From day one, I’ve learned that if you have fans, they don’t really care what you do. It’s sort of like they like being in close proximity to you.

But I came up with the formula a long time ago that we do two percent jazz and ninety-eight percent funky stuff. That holds true today. I came up in the James Brown category, so to speak, and that’s what people sort of expect. I also did a little bit of George Clinton, P-Funk All-Stars, still in that funky vein. People who know me, or if they know someone who may not know me but sort of recommend to their friends or family… “We’re going to see this guy who used to play with James Brown at blah blah blah, I think you’ll like it…” Sometimes that happens, too. It’s a mixture of that, and I’ve always liked Ray Charles and put in a little bit of that and some ballads, to break the monotony of everything being funky, funky, funky or everything being fast, fast, fast.

It’s a lot of fun for me to weave in and out of what we do. I was reflecting on last night’s show and thinking “this is a lot of fun,” it’s like being in a studio where you’re at the controls and you bring in this or pull up that, and I do all of that with the band. It’s great. I really enjoy doing what I do. Right there, feeling what the people feel. I can kind of tell when they’re enjoying what we’re doing.

It’s a mixture of my James Brown stuff, my George Clinton stuff, some Ray Charles stuff; I try to feature everyone doing something. 2% jazz and 98% funky stuff.

I have been a fan of your work for a long time, and basically everyone you’ve every played with, like James Brown, George Clinton, Prince, etc. I’d feel remiss if I didn’t ask if you’d talk a little bit about how you came to play with James Brown.

I was sort of introduced to the world through James Brown because he started calling my name on a lot the records during sax solos, like “C’mon Maceo!” or “Hey Maceo!” As people heard the James Brown stuff and heard my name, they must have thought, “This guy’s okay because James Brown likes his style, or something!” or “Who is this Maceo guy?” I think people liked James Brown so they focused in on me because James Brown called my name all the time.

He actually met my brother first. We were college students and I was a year ahead of my brother. We were in a college town in Carolina. I was playing in a group out of state and my brother was playing in town. James Brown was playing in town. James finished first and did not want to leave and he just wanted to relax, so he went to where my brother was playing. My brother played drums and offered him a job right then, but he was a college student and said, “Well, if you ever want to work with me, five years from now, a couple of months, whatever, I’ll remember this handshake and if you ever want a job, you can have a job working with me.” About a year, year and a half later, we decided both of us to get out of school and went to seek a job with James Brown.

We saw him back in Greensboro, NC, where we went to school. My brother approached him at the coliseum. What we decided to drive around the coliseum and wait on the limousine. When we say the limousine, we pulled right in behind it. When he came out, he approached him and said, “Mr. Brown, Mr. Brown, I’m the drummer you met almost two years ago, or whenever it was, and I’m not a student anymore so I’d like to have that job.” “OK, fine.” He was very excited that this drummer he met could start to work with him.

Somewhere in that conversation, my said, “This is my brother, he’s a saxophone player. He’d like to have a job too.” That’s how we were hired by James Brown.

Wow, that is such an amazing story!

One other thing: as soon as my brother told James Brown I wanted a job too, he asked me if I played baritone sax. I went, “uhh…” I can’t answer no, because then if I say no, he turns around and focuses on my brother. You can only answer questions yea or nay. I answered with a long, “uhhh…yes, sir.” He asked me, “Do you own a baritone sax?” I had this smirk-y smile on my face and again said, “uhh… yes sir.” He said, “Tell you what, if you can get a baritone sax, I’ll give you two or three weeks or whatever it takes” and reaches out to shake my hand like he shook my brother’s. That’s the way the whole thing started.

Later on, the guy who was assigned the tenor sax solo became ill and had to be away for a while. That’s when I spoke up and said, “Mr. Brown, this is what I do. I can play a baritone sax, but I think I’m okay at playing the tenor solo stuff.” “Oh you do? I kind of like the way you play.”

…And can I assume that playing with James Brown opened the door to playing with George Clinton and others?

As I was saying, everybody is crazy about James Brown and he sort of put me on his shoulders, so to speak, and put a crown on my head. If you’re really, really into James Brown, you’re really into Maceo, and Fred (Wesley) too. There weren’t too many others then. You may have heard of Pee Wee (Ellis) because he did a lot of scoring and arranging and writing, and that kind of thing. As far as playing, James played organ, Fred played trombone and I played a lot of the saxophone stuff. By being into James Brown, you were automatically into us.

So George had an opportunity for us to come in and do some stuff with him, so we took it. We had a lot of fun, but that was the reason. He wanted some of that “magic,” or whatever people thought, with him. It was the same thing with Bootsie (Collins) or with Prince.

I met Eddie Murphy while I was with George Clinton because he wanted to meet Maceo. He had done something on “Saturday Night Live” with James Brown in a hot tub. He wanted to meet me when I was in town.

Michael Jackson was the same way, when I was in Vegas with Prince, he was there. When he was ready to leave, he turned around and the whole band was there. I had met Chris Tucker and they were together but Chris was in front and when we all got ready to leave, Chris opened the door and looked me dead in the eye. I could see him mouth the words, “Oh there’s Maceo” and when he did, Michael turned around and walked straight back to me and shook my hand. When he finished and I got off the floor from fainting, I guess (laughs), everyone was like, “Did you see that? Michael Jackson came back here and walked straight to Maceo!” I’m floored too, my mouth was wide open; never thought to come down from wherever I was zooming from because of that moment to say, “Somebody take this picture!” It happened like that.

Again, if it’s like if you’re into James Brown, there’s no way you cannot be into me.

I completely agree with that!

I promised your manager I wouldn’t take up too much of your time, so…

I just want to say that I really, really enjoy what I get to do, like any other person who gets to do whatever they’re into. It becomes really, really easy and really enjoyable going through life doing what you love doing. A really long time ago, as a college student, thinking I might end up as an instructor, but decided I really liked to perform and get to travel around the world and just play. Now that I do that, the joy is still there, but I meet a lot of people and see a lot of people, I try to push the word “love” as much as I can. I just say “love, love, love” and hope that all of this crazy stuff in the world diminishes a little bit. There’s a lot of crazy stuff you can’t imagine happens. All I mean is, it’s okay to say “good morning to a stranger,” or it’s okay to help someone you see with $10 here at the gas pump, or slow down and let someone in. Just a little bit of common courtesy is what I try to push through love. It may have something to do with my being born on the fourteenth of February, I don’t know.

That’s my life. I go around the world and bring joy and happiness to people throughout the world.

News

Ticket Giveaway for the Fremont Fair Concert Series!

June gloom be damned – the Fremont Fair is this weekend, June 20-22!

New to the Fremont Fair is the Solstice Concerts, an all ages, outdoor ticketed concert on both Friday and Saturday evenings. So break out the face paint because we’re giving away a pair of tickets for each night.

Built to Spill headlines a rock lineup on Friday (with The Young Evils, TacocaT, and Campfire OK), and Blue Scholars headlines a hip-hop lineup on Saturday (with The Flavr Blue, The Physics, and Cascadia ’10). Both nights, the concerts kick off at 5:30pm and feature 4 bands each night.

Details on the concerts are online here http://fremontfair.com/concertseries.html

To enter, please send an email to before 9am on Friday, June 20th with the subject line “Fremont Fair Friday” OR “Fremont Fair Saturday” OR “Fremont Fair Both.” Please also include your full name and e-mail address. Two lucky winners (1 pair each for Fri. and Sat.) will be drawn at random sometime after Friday morning and notified shortly after. The concerts are all-ages, so anyone can enter.

Tickets can be obtained here for $20 in advance or $25 at the gate. Two-day passes are also available for $35.

Watch the video for Blue Scholars’ “Slick Watts” and Built to Spill’s “Conventional Wisdom” below.

 

Food, Restaurant

Seattle, Here’s Some Meat and Bread

The Seattle food community was quite abuzz last week with the announcement that Vancouver’s Meat & Bread is opening shop in Capitol Hill. Oh, it’s a great place, though given our wealth of sandwich stops in Seattle, I’d gladly trade it for one of many excellent Chinese restaurants in Richmond. Since that’s not likely, the announcement’s got me thinking about some recent meat on bread meals I’ve had around town lately.

Martino’s is one of the aforementioned sandwich stops. The meat is all smoked in-house, with the sandwiches served on Macrina bread. The Santa Maria tri tip sandwich ($10.50) gets the most acclaimed, so I gave it a “tri.” The smoky flavor was impressive, but the meat was a little on the dry side. And while I liked the flavor of the roasted poblano salsa with chimichurri, I wanted a smear of something to make the sandwich more moist. (Or maybe just moister meat?) The side of black beans was great, with flavors popping from house bacon and bbq sauce, plus more poblanos.

Martino’s Santa Maria tri tip sandwich

Next up is perhaps my favorite meat on bread: the hamburger. I recently ate a trio of them, starting at Red Cow, which is one of Ethan Stowell’s newer restaurants. Predictably, there’s a lot of beef at Red Cow. Fortunately, the beef flavor shines through in the burger ($16), which comes with white cheddar, bacon, and sweet onion. There are fries with that, as you’d predict from a place that bills itself as a steak frites joint.

The Red Cow burger, with a cow keeping watch

I’d long craved a chance to try Revel’s kalbi burger, so I pounced on an opportunity while at Quoin, the adjacent bar, which serves just 10 burgers per happy hour ($7). There’s intense flavor from the short rib in the six-ounce patty, with aioli adding fat and flavor. It’s a nice accompaniment a drink, though I must say that I was disappointed with the Korean pancake ($7) and the kimchi ramen ($7, also with only 10 portions per happy hour), both of which have dropped in quality. I hope this was an off-night, and not a sign that things are slipping as Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi’s restaurant empire grows.

The burger at Quoin

For my final burger, I made a first trip to Loulay, Thierry Rautureau’s new downtown restaurant. The dining room is impressive, though I sat solo at the counter to stare instead into the kitchen. The burger ($14) was cooked exactly as requested and was extremely juicy, holding up well on the brioche bun. Aioli and bacon jam provided flavorful lubrication, as did the Gruyère de Comté cheese I added for one dollar. (If you have deep pockets, you can double my burger price and add foie gras for $15.) The fries that came with the burger were fantastic.

Loulay’s burger

If we define bread broadly, then I can include some antojitos I enjoyed at Taqueria la Estacion in Burien. Burien, you ask? I was doing an airport run, and I’d heard good things about this taqueria, which worked in well with some shopping I wanted to do for Mexican groceries. I ordered my favorite tacos ($1.25 each): lengua (tongue) and cabeza (head). But I also wanted to try al pastor (spit-roasted pork, in its most basic definition) and birria (goat), so I got these in mulita ($2.89) and gordita ($3.15) form. The workers there were quite nice, offering me some lamb consommé in addition to the usual basket of chips that comes with two types of salsa. Everything was delicious, and I look forward to exploring more of the menu in the future.

Lots of antojitos at Taqueria la Estacion

Getting even more liberal with the sandwich definition, I recently tried the O.G. (Original Gangster, $9) latke sandwich at the new Napkin Friends food truck while it was parked in Queen Anne. Pre-cooked potato pancakes are the “bread,” which crisp up around the pastrami in a panini press. The sandwich comes with arugula, along with Mama Lil’s peppers, Thousand Island dressing, horseradish cream, and gruyere cheese all providing their respective pizzazz.  My only beef: the O.G. is a little skimpy on the meat. (It’s far from the piled-on-thick pastrami you find at Roxy’s Diner, which has actually had a latke sandwich on its breakfast menu for some time.) As a result, the potato flavor starts to dominate the sandwich, which may be what a latke-lover likes about it.

Napkin Friends’ “Original Gangster”

Actually, I’ve never shown what I’ve eaten at Vancouver’s Meat & Bread. Porchetta sandwich with salsa verede is the constant, with a few other sandwiches a day. Will be interesting to see if they keep the sandwich at $8.

Sandwiches at Meat & Bread in Vancouver
Theatre

Passing Strange Is At Least Two-Thirds Awesome

Don’t think of Passing Strange as a musical. Most people think they hate musicals—probably because most musicals are terrible, or at least not good enough to turn a profit—but when a show has great music that has a vital relationship with its story, musical theatre can be everything one wants in a performance. SideCountry Theatre’s current production of Passing Strange (at ACT through June 29) is undeniably musical theatre and undeniably flawed, but it is one of the better shows you’re going to see in Seattle.

Passing Strange’s 2008 Broadway production (created by the monomial Stew with Heidi Rodewald under the guidance of Annie Dorsen) was nominated for seven Tonys and won for Best Book. This says more about the Tony Awards than the musical, as the book is the weakest part of this show (the Drama Desk gave it Best Musical, Lyrics, and Music).

This story of a black man passing for a black man is a philosophical picaresque that sounds awfully autobiographical despite Stew’s insistence to the contrary. However the language is brilliant. It slips in and out of verse such that the words slide along a spectrum from dialogue to song with pit stops at singer-songwriter interstitial patter and spoken word performance.

His search for authenticity takes the Youth (as the script calls the main character) from the image-obsessed world of middle class black Los Angeles to avant-garde Europe only to get the pretense and narcissism slapped out of him (if tenuously) by life and family. The character and the music are sufficiently appealing that what should be a tiresome tale is charming, entertaining, and sometimes moving.

The end of the story is not satisfying, as it lives in a world of metaphysical ambiguity that suggests an unfinished journey, but the production wipes away these concerns by rocking out. In the words of Fozzie Bear, “Let’s jump up and down and wave our arms, and get off stage.” Only, the performers remain on stage and invite the audience to join their dance party. This is not your typical musical theatre.

Staging this show without Heidi Rodewald and Stew is tricky business and doesn’t entirely work. The Broadway production (which I saw) was heightened by the presence of Stew and Heidi on stage with their band and the knowledge that developing the show had broken up Stew and Heidi’s romantic relationship. This production casts the lead guitar (Kathy Moore—jaw-dropping as both instrumentalist and vocalist; invisible as a character) in the role of Heidi, which may not read for the uninitiated. Other detritus of the development process that lodged in the show and no longer makes sense includes a denouement centering on a NYC pretzel seller that barely worked in the original production.

LeRoy Bell is cast brilliantly as the Narrator (a role created by Stew). This is a musical that really wants to be a rock concert and Bell, a novice actor, occasionally looks like he regrets that it isn’t a rock concert. That fleeting awkwardness serves him and the show well and keeps the production very real.

Most of the time Bell does what he’s been doing for longer than his looks would suggest. He sings and plays catchy singer-songwriter pop songs and tells great stories between numbers. For much of the show he seems like a disinterested storyteller. When he and the Youth face one another directly it has the quality of a reveal.

Marlette Buchanan is Bell’s stylistic foil. In her performance as Mother she is all musical theatre grandeur with pipes and playing that dampen the eyes. Andrew Lee Creech (Buchanan’s fellow cast member from Intiman’s excellent Trouble In Mind) nail’s Youth’s immaturity without completely losing our sympathy.

There isn’t a weak link in the ensemble, but DeSean Halley stands out for his moves and his drumming. His character’s insistence that he has no rhythm is the phoniest moment in the show. Those characters lean more toward the disposable than the self-indulgent.

Shontina Vernon brings no-nonsense swagger to her roles. She’s loud and upfront in her most prominent character, the leader of a Berlin commune, but she finds the softness and humanity in the character too. The lack of chemistry she has with Creech is exacerbated by heavy foreshadowing that this relationship is doomed.

Yesenia Iglesias goes from a slightly overblown late 20th Century black take on Booth Tarkington’s “Seventeen” year old heartthrob to the posturing anger of an anti-capitalist feminist porn-maker. Her key role as the Dutch barista, Marianna, emphasizes the commonality in each of these sweet, seductive characters.

J Reese gets some of the best character bits—and, oddly, all overtly gay characters. He doesn’t go to the scenery-chewing extremes suggested by the cultured and cloistered rebellious reverend’s son, Franklin, or the riot cabaret drag queen, Mr. Venus, but he gets the vulnerable authenticity these heavy masks permit.

Technically the highlight is AJ Epstein’s lighting and Lara Kaminsky’s projections, which support the emotional and physical settings without overwhelming them. The band is also stellar under the direction of Jose Gonzales (Sandbox Radio). Candace Franks’s costumes do the job with a contemporary touch. Tyrone Brown’s direction is hit and miss with some clever choices in the staging and some less effective ones in the physical work and pacing.

Two thirds of this show is awesome and I’m pretty sure the rest is too but I couldn’t make out the words because the sound team was overwhelmed by the monumental challenges of this production. Much as one might wish Passing Strange had been staged at Washington Hall the Bullitt Cabaret does have the proper intimacy and informality for this show. However the big sound in the ¾ thrust is more than the sound team could handle. Just when things got really rocking on opening night the vocals would disappear. One hopes they’ll get that worked out with more practice. Another week and both the technical and artistic teams should be picking up their cues and making for a faster, more smoothly flowing show.

Arts & Entertainment, Film & TV

SIFF 2014: A Cult Cinema Geek’s Take

My cult cinema itch usually gets a healthy scratching from the Seattle International Film Festival, and SIFF 2014 proved to be no exception.

Between SIFF ’14’s Midnight Adrenaline series and the other genre-informed movies that peppered the festival schedule this year, anyone craving something scary, action-filled, or just plain batshit-crazy found something to love.

“If it’s in a word or in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook…”

I couldn’t catch every genre effort that screened at the Fest this year, which meant missing intriguing offerings like Bobcat Goldthwait’s Bigfoot horror flick Willow Creek and the Casanova-meets-Dracula arthouse feature, The Story of My Death, among many others. But nearly everything I saw that fell under the cult movie umbrella offered something worthwhile. Enclosed, please find one B-movie evangelist’s rundown on SIFF ’14’s genre cinema presentations. [WARNING: Some of the trailers linked below include solidly NSFW content. Please proceed accordingly.]

Cult Movie Comfort Food:

If SIFF ’14’s programming is any indication, genre filmmakers are realizing that there’s no shame in doing something that’s formula-informed, as long as it’s done well.  Director Ben Ketai’s Beneath finds several coal miners (and one miner’s lawyer daughter) struggling to keep alive and sane after a cave-in seals them hundreds of feet below. It’s a lean, effective thriller that turns horrific (and bloody) but keeps its focus tight and direct. Best of all, it features the Lawnmower Man himself, character actor Jeff Fahey, in a (pardon the pun) meaty supporting role.

No one holds more respect for the time-honored schlock tradition of the Nazi Zombie Movie than me, so my disappointment with the competent but generic sheen of Tommy Wirkola’s shocker Dead Snow was overpowering when the movie first first hit midnight screens in 2009. Thank God for directors who learn from their mistakes. The Norwegian director’s brand-new follow-up, Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead, bests the original in every way: The action/horror setpieces fly fast and furious, Wirkola’s shambling SS undead possess way more personality, and the jokes connect with giddy precision. Best Nazi Zombie film since 1977’s Shock Waves, gnarled skeletal hands down.

Late Phases, the final movie to screen for SIFF’s 2014 Midnight Adrenaline series, follows a blind Vietnam vet (We Are What We Are‘s Nick Damici, excellent here) dealing with a werewolf infestation in his retirement community. There’s no reinvention of the wheel going on here, and the workmanlike script keeps it from broaching classic status. But Late Phases serves up a character-actor cast engineered to give genre geeks the vapors, director Adrian Garcia Bogliano plays things surprisingly straight, and it’s impossible not to root for a horror movie that eschews CGI lycanthropes for good old-fashioned prosthetics and guys in werewolf suits. Old-fashioned practical special effects also enliven Zombeavers, a retro-shocker that offers quintessential truth in titling and a rip-roaring good time several cuts above your average SyFi channel Nature Gone Amuck B-flick.

A Masque of Madness, meantime, compiled footage from the 50-year-plus career of the mighty Boris Karloff, and if it wasn’t anything earthshaking, it at least put the screen’s most silkily-menacing character actor at front and center for 80 minutes. If that ain’t cult movie comfort food, I don’t know what is.

The Hong Kong Contingent:

I was a little disappointed in SIFF 2014’s Hong Kong movies for the most part, and that’s more likely a reflection on the dearth of cohesion in that country’s recent output than on the efforts of SIFF programmers. Once Upon a Time in Shanghai, the fest’s requisite Hong Kong martial arts period piece, was handsome but uninvolving, and its insistence on kneecapping some excellent Yuen Woo-Ping fight choreography with Bourne Identity-style camera fuckery proved a major distraction. The Midnight After (discussed in one of our previous roundtables) at least showed some inventiveness and had its moments, but likewise disappointed.

Blessedly, there was one strange and satisfying jewel amidst the Hong Kong genre cinema on display. Rigor Mortis, a horror movie about a weary actor residing in a haunted monolith of an apartment building, sharply updates the hopping-vampire movies that proliferated in Hong Kong throughout the ’80’s, with atmosphere to spare, breathtakingly creepy visuals, and a wonderful sense of mundane normalcy living uneasily alongside dark mythic forces (it’s been on a regular run at Pacific Place this week).

Now, THAT’s Italian (-influenced): The wild primary colors, non-sequitur surrealism, balletic violence, and psycho-sexual inferences that fueled Italian horror cinema in the 1970s have wielded a sizable influence on modern filmmakers, and two SIFF presentations laid that influence bare to varying effect.

American director Jason Bognacki’s debut feature Another saw its world premiere at SIFF 2014, and it definitely owes a heavy debt to Italian horror maestros like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci. Bognacki’s definitely got the goods as a visual stylist (he’s cut his teeth on several horror shorts over the last few years), which helps offset an admittedly shaky and sometimes ridiculous script (my interview with Bognacki should be posting soon).

French directors Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani richly re-thought the giallo sub-genre with their debut effort Amer, one of my SIFF 2010 faves (see my archival interview with the directors for some more background on the genre, on account of there’s always room for giallo). The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, the duo’s follow-up, doesn’t quite attain Amer’s dark beauty and resonance, but (in my mind, at least) it cements them as adept and imaginative keepers of the giallo flame. Like the best gialli, the movie explores the pas de deux between sexuality and death almost entirely through exquisitely-crafted visual and aural overload, and if you’re willing to go with it, it’s one visually succulent fever dream. The fine folks at the Grand Illusion evidently agree: They’re bringing Strange Colour back for a run later this year.

The Best Genre Flicks I saw at SIFF 2014:

The above-mentioned Rigor Mortis and The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears definitely clicked with me, instilling some hope that there’s still life in even the most entrenched horror sub-genres. I’ve already covered Alex de la Iglesia’s Witching and Bitching in a previous roundtable, and it still stands out as one of the most exhilarating things I saw all SIFF–pure excess engineered with impeccable virtuosity and reckless creativity. With the considerable distribution muscle of Universal Pictures behind it, cult idolatry and appreciation are (I hope) a given.

I’m not really an anime connoisseur, but Patema Inverted kinda enchanted in its own right. Ever lay in the grass on a summer day as a kid, tilting your head so it almost feels like the sky’s actually an ocean and gravity’s a tenuous safety belt that’s barely keeping you from falling up? This movie captures that sensation. It’s not quite at Miyazaki-level brilliance, but it comes really, really close.

Two of the best genre efforts to grace SIFF 2014, interestingly, both starred Mark Duplass, were feature-film debuts for their respective directors, sported two-person casts, and contain integral twists best left unspilled via spoilers. My colleague Josh and I already lauded Charlie McDowell’s perceptive and haunting The One I Love, which throws a Twilight Zone-style wrench into a relationship dramedy framework, and Creep, Patrick Brice’s extremely enjoyable found-footage horror comedy. I won’t go any further describing either, except to say that the former was one of the best-acted movies to play the festival, and the latter is a playful tweaking of the found-footage template that boasts the five of the most chilling/hilarious closing minutes of any movie I saw all SIFF long. Mad props to Duplass, who gets to explore a lot of different aspects of his persona between the two movies.

Great as all of the above were, though, The Babadook remains, in my mind, the crown jewel of SIFF ’14’s genre presentations. Director Jennifer Kent’s feature debut starts out as a resonant and very affecting drama about a widowed single mom (Essie Davis) dealing with her troubled young son (Noah Wiseman). Then it neatly segues into horror turf as a storybook in the boy’s possession starts bleeding into reality. Solidly acted by both leads, full of surprises, and crap-your-pants scary without leaning on the red stuff, it cobbles together familiar elements with wicked imagination and enough artistry to make it one of those true rarities: A classic horror film likely to captivate civilians and hardcores alike. More please, Ms. Kent. Please.

Film & TV

TSB interview: Chris Messina talks to the SunBreak about his directorial debut, Alex of Venice

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Actor, and now director, Chris Messina is in Seattle for the first time to promote his directorial debut Alex of Venice. We’re talking outside of a coffee shop about a block away as his movie is playing to a packed Harvard Exit Theater during the penultimate day of the Seattle International Film Festival. He’s appeared in dozens of films: Argo, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Julie and Julia, Greenberg, plus he’s seen regularly on television programs “The Newsroom” and “The Mindy Project.” For a character actor, he has a certain cultural ubiquity, recognizable by most people from at least one of his television or film projects, including 2012’s Best Picture. But Alex of Venice is the movie we both want to talk about.

Alex of Venice is a low-budget, character driven film that involves workaholic lawyer Alex (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead in a quietly powerful performance) whose husband George (Messina) abruptly leaves. Her life is being pulled apart by an irresponsible sister, a son who needs to be taken to and from school, and an actor father (Don Johnson) who is appearing in a Chekhov play while his memory is fast deteriorating. It’s a film that most people can find some way to empathize with the characters. It’s not a perfect film, but it’s a gem of a film anchored by some impressive acting performances.

Chris Messina talked with us about the film, convincing Don Johnson to appear in it, and what’s next for him and the future of Alex of Venice.

How did you become involved with Alex of Venice?

I did a movie called 28 Hotel Rooms with Matt Ross, and Electric City produced that film. They knew that I wanted to find something to direct. A few months later, they came to me with the script. It was a different film. It was a collage of all of these different characters in Venice. At the core was a family that was very interesting to me. The writer, Katie Nehra, and her partner, Justin Shilton, we went through the script and took away the collage and centered on the family. We drew up a new outline and they wrote a new draft, which was a lot closer to the film that you saw.

We kind of hit some roadblocks and we hired another writer, Jessica Goldberg, and she kind of cracked the script open for us. It was a long developing process, but we had a great team of people.

What I really enjoyed about this film is that it’s kind of a post-love story, so it’s not a meet-cute love story and it’s something we don’t see a lot in films: the real-life struggles of someone trying to put their life back together.

It really is a slice-of-life film. I find that when the audience goes in knowing what they’re watching, in terms of her life, knowing that she’s trying to put the pieces back together, and nothing huge really happens. I find that audiences enjoy it more going in, rather than expecting something major to happen. For example, her husband leaves her and she becomes a bank robber. That doesn’t happen in this movie. That’s what we set out to make: a character-driven slice-of-life film. It’s very quiet.

Those are the movies that made me want to become an actor: character-driven movies of the seventies that I watched over and over again.

It reminded me a lot of Kramer vs. Kramer in that regard.

That is one that we referenced all the time. (Director and co-writer) Robert Benton watched the film and gave me notes. It’s pretty spectacular that he took the time to do that. We were lucky because our producer because our producer, Jamie Patricof, happens to be friends with Robert Benton and he offered to give the script and one of the cuts to Robert and I said, “sure but I’m nervous about what he’s going to say.” We knew we were copying Kramer vs. Kramer because there are a lot of similarities, but it’s a reversal. I’m the Meryl Streep character and Mary Elizabeth (Winstead) is the Dustin Hoffman character.

Now that you mention Mary Elizabeth, I thought she was phenomenal in the role of Alex. Can you talk about how she became involved with the film?

The script got to the part where a lot of actresses wanted to play the role. I got to read and meet a bunch of terrific people. I had been a fan of Mary’s since “Smashed.” I saw her in that and thought she was amazing. She came in and read and she was fantastic. It was clear right away that she was Alex for me. Not only is she so good, but she has a very easy quality that I think any director would love to work with. She’s a team player who brings all of it everyday. We didn’t have trailers. We would say, “The sun looks good over there, let’s jump in the car.” I needed an Alex who was going to be a leader and show by example: this is the kind of film we’re making and I’m up for some running and gunning. Mary was amazing. The trick with Mary was staying out of her way and not saying too much. She did that performance on her own. I was able to capture.

I enjoyed that performance because there were so many choices she could have made in that character, but she played such a subtly great performance.

She’s like Michael Jordan. The producers and I said that we could move on after a take, but it’s so much fun to watch that we would want to watch her over and over again. She was spectacular. I would work with her again in a second.

Her performance has gotten a lot of nice reviews and I’m happy about that because she’s such a nice person and she’s so good in the movie. There are a lot of performances like this that are very subtle and not a lot of huge fireworks that go off. I was hoping that writers and critics would recognize her for her subtlety. And they are and that’s very, very nice.

Now that the film has played SIFF, what is going to happen next with it?

I think we’re going to go to Europe for another festival; we’re just trying to figure out which one. We have a bunch of distributors that are interested so we want to find which one the right one is. I think it’s a movie that will probably have a small life in the theater but a nice, long life on Netflix and iTunes. I think a lot of these size films that I’ve done as an actor, it is years later that audiences find them on their computers or On Demand. That’s okay, I just want people to see the film because I’m really proud of it and I’m proud of the performances. I think Don Johnson is amazing in the film.

I do too.

I had to pretty much beg him to do the part. I kept going back after him. He’s at a place in his life where he doesn’t need to do anything. He’s not going to make any money and going to work with a first time filmmaker is a risk. I think the part was written beautifully and it’s a chance for him do something different. I tried to tell him that and finally he said yes. He came very prepared and very dedicated. He set the bar very high and he was really great to work with. I’m proud to what he did.

I haven’t seen him in a lot of roles lately, so I think he’s at a point where he doesn’t have to do anything if he doesn’t want to.

No. It’s nice that he can choose with his heart. He’s not choosing with his wallet or with his career in mind, or wondering what it will get him. He was choosing it for the work.

I think he’s mentioned that it was a chance for him to get to do some Chekhov. He did more Chekhov in the film but it didn’t make it into the movie. There were other parts of the play, but it was hard to find where it was going to fit in.

That’s another thing I wanted to ask about. The film was only 86 minutes long, which I prefer. Was it hard to cut it down to fit a shorter running time?

It was. There was so much great stuff that I had to cut. That wasn’t necessarily to make it shorter but to make sure there was a straight through-line for the story. The tricky part is that there are a lot of people. I didn’t want all of those people resolved. It was Alex’s movie but they’re all going through changes. Some of them are changes that are inflicted upon them and some are there that they’ve sought out. But all of those changes are there to affect Alex’s change and her world and the heaviness on her shoulders. I needed all of them, but the balance of all of them… For example, there was a storyline with the sister-character Lily and her married boyfriend. It was great stuff and a great actor that played the role and I loved the scenes it was just another road that the movie went down that it didn’t need to.

The boy had a scene, in the original script, had gone and trashed a pond as rebellion to his mom. He had taken all of his notebooks and ripped them, and threw garbage. In that diner scene, he gets up and goes to the bathroom and leaves the diner and we’re looking for him, but he goes to the pond and trashes it. When we put it in the film, it felt non-realistic and a bit melodramatic. I didn’t buy it. It worked on the page, and that’s something I didn’t understand because I’m so new to filmmaking. It read one way and looking it at, it didn’t. A lot of smart people were giving me advice and nobody picked up on it. It doesn’t work and the story isn’t really about that. It’s not about rebellion.

I also felt like the characters were not really explosive, but more implosive.

Yes, that’s a really good point. It’s not the movie we made.

I think this [Harvard Exit] is a perfect house for the movie. It’s contained and small.

To ask about another acting performance, did you always know you were going to play George?

They gave the script with that in mind. I kept going back and forth. I was nervous to do it because how am I supposed to do both (act and direct)? Is it too much to take on? I tried to get out of it at the last minute but I’m glad that I did it because one day I’d like to direct myself in a larger role. It was one to dip my toe into.

I watched [Ben] Affleck do it in Argo, but their budget was a little bit bigger than ours. He would go to the monitor and watch playback and adjust his performance accordingly. He’s super-smart and a super-talented guy. We didn’t have playback so I got my friend Matt Del Negro, who is a great actor, to come and direct me on screen. He did me a huge favor. If you came to the set on those days, you would think he was the director. I would tell the DP what I wanted and set the shot and go away and prepare as an actor and Matt would direct me.

I think you deserve a lot of credit for playing a character whose flaws are omnipresent throughout much of the film.

I didn’t want anyone to think “this guy is the bad guy” or “she’s the good girl.” I wanted them to be human. George might not be doing it the right way, or he’s doing it the only way he knows, but he wants to change and this is what he does. I tried not to judge him or any of the other characters. As an audience member reading the script, I liked all of the characters and as a director, I loved all of them. I wanted the audience to understand all of them. It’s life. Change is gorgeous but it’s painful.

What are the contrasts between working on a smaller movie like Alex of Venice, and more of a bigger movie? Two that I loved that you were in were Julie and Julia and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, for example. They might not have been enormous but probably were bigger Alex of Venice in terms of budget, etc…

I’ve been lucky to work in a lot of different genres and mediums and budget sizes. They all have their plusses and minuses. They are all very different and very similar. The smaller budgets are faster – 21 days – but we had a lot of control. I made the film I wanted to make. My producers, Jamie Patricof and Lynette Howell, gave me extraordinary notes and they let me make the film I wanted to make. There wasn’t a studio or financiers. For a first time filmmaker, I was very fortunate. I heard stories from friends that were more difficult, everyone wanted to tinker with the film and make cuts. I think with the bigger the budget, the more pressure that is on everyone to deliver a result. I think that’s great and there’s room for everything. For my first film, I didn’t want the pressure that this has to be a gigantic sell and has to be number one at the box office. We’re out to do something else. I like all different types of things. When I’m in a big budget something, I want to do something low budget and when I’m in a low budget, I want to do a big budget. To have the luxury and the luck to go back and forth is really great.

What is coming up next for you?

I’m shooting “Newsroom” for HBO and then around July 29 or 30, I’m going to shoot season three of “The Mindy Project” on Fox. I’ve been developing other films that I would want to direct, going slow. One thing that I did that was incredibly stupid was that I shot an entire season of “The Mindy Project” while I was editing this film in my trailer. It was way too much to take on. Of course, everything suffers because of it. Next time I plan to direct, and I hope to do it many more times, I will clear the slate and make sure I have time for everything to breathe. I’m trying to find what to do next. I have a bunch of ideas and some writers that I’m working with, but it’s all in the early stages. Right now, it’s fun to be touring around with the film. I’ve never been to Seattle and it is gorgeous here and the people are so kind. If it wasn’t for my amazing family back in Los Angeles, I could stay here for a very long time.