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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.

Arts & Entertainment, Film & TV

SIFF 2014: Festival Roundtable (Week Three, or “It’s a Wrap!”)

 

The Golden Space Needle Award, not exactly golden, not exactly a Space Needle, but handsome nonetheless.

Josh: You guys! We made it! It’s a wrap for the fortieth Seattle International Film Festival. We’ve all been returned home safely, but have been forever changed by three weeks of moviegoing.

Let’s begin with the awards. My desperate plea for an invite in our roundup of weekend picks did not fall on deaf ears! So I woke up bright an early on Sunday morning to rendezvous with Chris to attend the annual Golden Space Needle awards where the results of 90,000 torn ballots and hours of jury deliberations were revealed while we enjoyed a delicious buffet from the comforts of the Space Needle’s low altitude observation deck.

For the audience awards, the People of SIFF chose their favorite movies of the festival and Richard Linklater cleaned-up with a Golden Space Needle for best film and best director for Boyhood,  for which Patricia Arquette also won a best actress statue. Dawid Ogrodnik was the audience’s favorite actor for his role in Life Feels Good; Keep On Keepin’ On was the won the documentary prize; and Fool’s Day took the prize for best short film.

Grand jury prizes went to 10,000KM (dir. Carlos Marques-Marcet) for Best New Director; Marmato (Mark Grieco) for Best Documentary, and Red Knot (Scott Cohen) for Best New American Cinema. Panels of youth juries named Dear White People (Justin Simien) the best FutureWave Feature; Belle & Sebastien (Nicolas Vanier) the best Films4Families feature, and awarded the FutureWave Wavemaker Award in Youth Filmmaking to Malone Lumarda for Black Rock Creek. The full list of award winners is online; and while the food and view were great, the nicest part was that a handful of the winners and recipients of special mentions were in the house to accept their awards.

Now that the audiences and juries have spoken, it’s our turn. After a long nap and some time to reflect, what are your top  films from #SIFForty?

Patricia Arquette in Boyhood, which also took Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Actress audience awards.

Josh: For once, I don’t disagree with the wisdom of SIFF crowds! I have to admit that as I heard the runners up for the Best Picture award being read off at the SIFF Awards Brunch Breakfast on Sunday morning, I breathed a sigh of relief when Seattle collectively managed to make Boyhood (one of my favorite films of the festival) this year’s Golden Space Needle awardee over runners-up How to Train Your Dragon 2 and The Fault in Our Stars. Not to snobbishly discount the wild enthusiasm of kids and heartbroken teenagers (or the justifiable local affection for Big In Japan, the fourth runner up), but selecting Linklater’s ambitious and affecting triumph as seems to add a note of more serious but still accessible film credibility to our little city’s giant festival.

In stark contrast to Boyhood‘s loose and sprawling indie epic aesthetic, my other contender for best narrative was Ida.  I would’ve been thrilled just to watch a silent presentation of the beautifully composed still camerawork from this film. That Pawel Pawlikowski fits a story of spirituality, familial and historical revelations, a little romance, and an examination of the multifaceted personal consequences of war into an 80 minute package is an astonishing achievement. My favorite documentary was Ballet 422 the slim documentary about young (ascendant) choreographer Justin Peck’s creation of a new piece for the New York City Ballet. Running just over an hour, it captured almost every facet of a diverse and unfamiliar (to me) workplace with incredible economy: no talking head interviews or explanations, just a lot of watching a range of seasoned professionals doing their jobs. Putting the spotlight on the creators rather than the creation made their collective success all the more engaging. Plus, I just find it fascinating to see how things & people work.

Life Feels Good won a best actor Golden Space Needle Award as well as Tony’s Golden SunBreak.

Tony: It was a relief that SIFF audiences got it this year re: Boyhood. I shuddered at the prospect of Henk Praetorius’s slight Leading Lady following up his equally slight 2013 effort Fanie Fourie’s Lobola to a Best Picture Golden Space Needle.

Whatever the reason, whether fate was on my side or the overall programming was extra-sharp this year, many of this year’s festival entries actively captivated me, so I’m fudging a bit and giving out 5 Golden SunBreak Awards, in order.

  1. Life Feels Good: Don’t judge this Polish drama by its forced, feel-good trailer. This fact-based story takes a tougher and much more satisfying route, with hard-earned emotional epiphanies that literally had me fighting back tears (sometimes unsuccessfully). That it does so with considerable artistry and its own distinct flavor just amplifies its effectiveness for me.
  2. My Last Year with the Nuns: Local boy Matt Smith’s incredibly evocative, hilarious snapshot of mid-60s Seattle was a masterpiece of monologue, seasoned by director Bret Fetzer with just enough visual ingenuity to make it feel like a real movie.
  3. The Babadook: Even with my long-standing genre jones, I’m vividly aware that not every horror movie is effective enough (and well-done enough) to recommend to civilians. This perfectly wrought, psychologically sound, and well-acted chiller is resolutely one of them. Oh, and it scared the shit out of me.
  4. BFE: Shawn Telford’s affecting directorial debut sported one of SIFF 2014’s strongest ensemble casts, and an eerily, hilariously accurate portrait of life in the middle of suburban nowhere.
  5. Bound: Africans versus African Americans: My favorite doc of SIFF 2014 (and the winner of this year’s Lena Sharpe Award, which goes to the female director’s film that receives the most votes in public balloting at the festival) found director Peres Owino approaching an eye-opening issue with a personal stamp that felt absolutely integral. It’s a movie that finds a lot of universality in an ostensibly narrow topic.

I’m really with you on Boyhood, too, Josh. If I had a Top Ten, it’d be there.

 

Lucky Them was among Chris’s favorite narrative features.

Chris: I share your enthusiasm with My Last Year With the Nuns. I loved Matt Smith’s monologue and his sense of storytelling. It was funny and provided a nice history of Capitol Hill that was before our times. I think I’ll give it a Golden SunBreak award too.

My top three are:

  • Regarding Susan Sontag: The best documentary I saw (and I saw plenty). Nancy Kates did a remarkable job of making one of the twentieth century’s greatest public intellectuals seem both human and accessible.
  • Lucky Them: Megan Griffiths’ fourth feature film features Toni Collette, who I always love seeing on screen, and Thomas Haden Church, who always makes me laugh whenever he’s on screen. I don’t think it’s an accurate portrayal of music journalism (or at least it doesn’t resemble my experiences), but it’s a well-crafted film that made it easy to overlook its shortcomings. It’s not a perfect movie, but I don’t think I enjoyed a narrative feature at SIFF as much as I enjoyed Lucky Them.
  • My Last Year With the Nuns: I hope this film spurs a higher profile for Matt Smith because I can’t wait to see his next monologue, whatever it’s about.

Tony: It speaks to the voluminous depth of SIFF programming that the first two of your Top Three were super-high on my must-see list…and I didn’t get a chance to catch either.

Chris: If it makes things any easier, Lucky Them begins a week-long run at the Northwest Film Forum on Friday.

 

Elisabeth Moss in The One I Love, which closed SIFF (in her absence).

Having crowned our own bests of the fest, let’s not forget about what we saw during the final week. First, there’s the matter of the Duplass-a-palooza during the closing weekend:

Tony: Josh, we both caught two Mark Duplass genre flicks with twists, Creep and The One I Love. What’d you think?

Josh: I basically saw then back-to-back on Sunday and really liked them both! Duplass sure seems to relish being a part of these these lean filming operations — both had approximately two-person casts, small crews, and were shot on location in nice places outside of LA. Although they got a lot of scary mileage out of the limitations and quality of found footage with Creep, I definitely preferred the polish of The One I Love.

Tony: Yeah, on the balance, The One I Love rates higher, but I was also impressed with Creep, which gave the hoary found-footage horror format a funny and genuinely surprising shot in the arm.

Josh: The One I Love also worked within the framework of a clever “concept” [not sure how to say much more about the Twilight Fantasy Island Zone couples retreat premise without getting into spoilers — just see it as soon as you can!], but the way that they revealed it and continued to find ways of letting the plot take surprising turns was really well handled. At post-screening Q&A at the Cinerama for closing night, Duplass won over the hometown crowd by recognizing the involvement of a lot of Seattle’s filmmaking community in the making of The One I Love, even providing the office of Film & Music a free motto: “super tech acumen at an affordable price”.

Also, if we’re looking for a tiebreaker between these two, Elisabeth Moss is a terrific actress who elevated the whole project beyond its gimmick with impressive levels of emotional depth. I was a little bit disappointed that she didn’t make it to Seattle with the rest of the crew for the closing gala.

What else did you manage to see in the closing days of the festival? 

Patema, Inverted.

Tony: The last week of SIFF always ends up being my Cram Week, so I saw a lot.  My strongest runners-up for Top Five status were Stefan Haupt’s wonderful period romance/documentary hybrid The Circle (4 of 5 stars); Patema Inverted (4.5/5), an anime just shy of Miyazaki-level greatness in its visual brilliance and emotional pull; the quiet, funny, and just-right love story, Sam and Amira; Boyhood; and Ryan Worsley’s scrappy and smart Funhouse doc, Razing the Bar.

In addition to those we’ve already mentioned, my list of week 3 viewings, with accompanying 1-to-5 star ratings: Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead (3.5/5); Lady Be Good: Instrumental Women in Jazz (3.5/5); Beneath (3.5/5); Helicopter Mom (1.5/5); To Kill a Man (3.5/5); Leading Lady (2/5); Once Upon a Time in Shanghai (2.5/5); A Masque of Madness (3/5);  Finding Fela (3/5);  Gold (3.5/5); B for Boy (3.5/5); To Be Takei (4/5); Rigor Mortis (4/5); Late Phases (3/5).

10,000 km won a best new director jury prize, was one of many SIFF films to feature a Game of Thrones alum.

Josh: I didn’t squeeze quite as many movies in! For the sake of time and space, the other things I saw but haven’t yet mentioned, with star ratings and tweet-length reviews:

  • 10,000km: Introducing the film with a special balance of humility and confidence, the director described his unbroken 20 minute opening shot that starts with a sex scene and ends with a long-distance airline ticket as “kind of boring at the beginning”. From here, the technologically enabled long distance relationship remained compelling enough that there was no need for the audience to accept his invitation to take a siesta during the middle.  (4/5)
  • West: paranoia, justified and otherwise, for a mother and her son in a West Berlin refugee center decades before the fall of the wall. (4/5)
  • Big in Japan: Lynn Shelton says: “Lost in Translation meets Hard Day’s Night meets the Monkees.” A beautifully-shot local charmer that showed a lightly fictionalized version of Tennis Pro  on the rise in Tokyo. (3.6)
  • Boys: shot like a Dutch Abercrombie catalog it’s a SIFF BINGO: small town, foreign, gay, sports, single-parent, coming-of-age movie with culturally-relevant mopeds as a symbol of danger and freedom! Yet the gauzily shot track & field romance of self-discovery remained evocative and not cliche within the PG-13 constraints. (3.7)
  • The Great Museum: displaying all the cogs in the intricate clockwork of maintaining a vast Austrian cultural institution. (3.5)
  • Alex of Venice: Chris Messina’s multi-faceted debut has a great look, laconic pace, and strong performance from Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Plus, Don Johnson as aging actor struggling with Chekhov. (3.5).
  • The Better Angels: If one must make a little messiah Lincoln movie why not in black and white Tree of Life outtakes. (3.2)
  • What is Cinema: Demonstrates that it takes more that great clips, quotes, and interviews to make a decent documentary about film. (2.5)
  • They Came Together: I definitely needed to eat more drugs before watching this rom com parody that had its absurdly funny moments, yet played like an overlong skit from the State. (2.5)

A look behind-the-scenes of the most-watched short film at SIFF 2014 from World Famous on Vimeo.

General Comments about SIFForty — what left room for improvement?

Tony: I still miss the dedicated SIFF App from a couple of years ago that allowed you to cobble together your own schedule in advance. It was a great, forward-thinking service for festgoers. The interface on their regular site seems to be a bit more mobile-friendly at this point, but I’m still a little nostalgic and misty-eyed for that app.

Chris: I’m not even an iPhone user, but it is my understanding that wishing for a return of iSIFF is official SunBreak policy.

Josh: Someday our beloved will return to us as long as we keep the dream alive! But at least they figured out that the mobile website’s calendar by time of day and list the location of the screenings; so hope springs eternal.

I’ve got one entitled gripe: most films had at least five SIFF-related ads per screening, plus two coming attractions trailers. At an individual level, it’s only a few cute minutes, but by the end its hard not to calculate that you’ve seen enough commercials to fill a feature length film or two. Plus, I still don’t understand the humor of “501”.

Tony: There seemed to be an attempt to address this with the slight variation in the ‘Emotional Calibration’ bumpers and the SIFF Flashback spots, but even more variety would help deflect passholder burn-out. 501, by the way, is riffing on the colloquialism for a tax-exempt non-profit, 501(c). Non-profit joke! Non-profit joke!

Josh: Ah. I thought it was something more complicated than that! On a slightly more substantive point, at multiple closing night speeches, Artistic Director Carl Spence voiced some reservations about the wisdom of running a film festival for more than three weeks. Assuming that SIFF decides to keep its “biggest” claim-to-fame, my suggestion would be to use the long duration of SIFF as an asset: I would love it if the festival was able to spread a film’s run more evenly across the festival. Many times, a film played twice in a couple days, allowing little time for buzz to build an audience between screenings. With rights, permissions, guest availabilities, and other commitments, the logistics of scheduling are a headache that I don’t even want to imagine; so this could be a complete pipe dream.

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Quincy Jones at the SIFF Red Carpet for the screening of Keep On Keepin' On.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Quincy Jones at the SIFF Red Carpet for the screening of Keep On Keepin' On.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Director Alan Hicks at the SIFF Red Carpet for the screening of Keep On Keepin' On.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Director Alan Hicks and producer Paula DuPré Pesmen at the SIFF Red Carpet for the screening of Keep On Keepin' On.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Producer Paula DuPré Pesmen at the SIFF Red Carpet for the screening of Keep On Keepin' On.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Director Alan Hicks, illustrator Peter Chan, and producer Paula DuPré Pesmen at the SIFF Red Carpet for the screening of Keep On Keepin' On.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Quincy Jones at the SIFF Red Carpet for the screening of Keep On Keepin' On.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Quincy Jones shaking hands with Chan, Hicks and Kauflin on the SIFF Red Carpet for the screening of Keep On Keepin' On.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

SIFF Managing Director Mary Bacarella, Pesmen, Jones, Hicks, Kauflin, Chan, SIFF Artistic Director Carl Spence on the SIFF Red Carpet for the screening of Keep On Keepin' On.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Film critic Elvis Mitchell and Quincy Jones on the SIFF Red Carpet for the screening of Keep On Keepin' On.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

SIFF artistic director Carl Spence presents SIFF Lifetime Achievement Award to Quincy Jones.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

Quincy Jones receives the SIFF Lifetime Achievement Award.

Photo by Tori Dickson.

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Enough whining — What went well?

Tony: At the risk of sounding like we’re sucking up, we as press interact with SIFF’s PR team more than probably any other festival staff members, and they kept things especially streamlined, efficient, and unfailingly pleasant.

Josh: The whole SIFF team –paid staffers, concessions crews, ticket sellers, and the legions of volunteers alike –maintained consistent composure, great attitudes, and obvious enthusiasm for film throughout. That they were still standing on closing night is a real miracle.

Chris: Content-wise, I thought that the local filmmaking was particularly strong. Maybe it’s because there wasn’t a Lynn Shelton movie to lean on, but a large sampling of the films I caught were from local filmmakers and I enjoyed a large percentage of those, including My Last Year With the Nuns, Lucky Them, Razing the Bar, and Fly Colt Fly. I was initially disappointed that SIFF didn’t get Laggies, for whatever reason, but maybe it was stronger without it?

Josh: I do think that it was a good year for SIFF! I never see as many films as I had hoped to, and tallying my list, I was surprised that I saw just over 30 despite feeling like I’ve done little other than watching movies during the 25-day festival.

Aside from being out of town for Memorial Day weekend, I tried to make it to at least one screening per day, yet when the credits rolled for The One I Love and it was time to head over to MOHAI for the closing gala, the festival wrapped without me feeling terribly exhausted and mostly enriched by having seen a lot of good movies and a few that will probably be my favorites of the year.

Optimistically, I like that this indicates some combination of me knowing how to choose films I’ll like and SIFF doing a great job with programming.

Chris: I also think SIFF did a remarkable job in who their high profile, out-of-town guests were: Richard Linklater, Laura Dern, Mark Duplass, Isaiah Washington, and Chiwetel Ejiofor. By the time they paid tribute to Quincy Jones during the final week, it felt appropriate and long overdue.

My final count was sixteen, but I enjoyed a high percentage of those, only really being disappointed in JIMI: All is By My Side and A Brony Tale. There were a lot of fims that I am kicking myself for missing but I’ll hope to catch them on Netflix or in general release.

Already Feeling SIFFdrawal? Dive back in to the Best of SIFF Programming?

Of course, just when you thought you were done with SIFF, they pull you back in. This weekend, they’re running a Best of SIFF spectacular at SIFF Cinemas at the Uptown to give you another chance to catch: My Last Year with the Nuns (June 12), Red Knot (June 12), Marmato (June 13), Keep On Keepin’ On (June 13), 10,000 KM (June 13), Borgman (June 13), Belle & Sebastien (June 14), I Am Big Bird: the Caroll Spinney Story (June 14), Dior & I (June 14), Life Feels Good (June 14), The 100-year-old man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (June 14), Boyhood (June 15), the Nightengale (June 15), In Order of Disappearance (June 15), and a Best of SIFF Shorts program (June 15). In addition to these special screenings,  How To Train Your Dragon screens in 2D and 3D starting June 12 and Ida opens on June 13.

 

It’s been a great pleasure to attend and cover SIFF with you guys! In total, we must have seen nearly a hundred features during the festival, did our best to make the #SIFForty hashtag a thing, and  probably all added dozens of films to our must-see lists on the basis of these reviews and recommendations. Hope everyone in the home audience had as much fun as we did.

Until next time, revisit the SunBreak’s SIFF coverage on our SIFF 2014 page, plus stay tuned for news updates and micro-reviews on Twitter @theSunBreak. 

Arts & Entertainment, Film & TV

SIFF 2014: Picks for Closing Weekend (June 6-8)

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They Came Together

It has been a long (but rewarding!) three weeks, but even the seemingly never-ending Seattle International Film Festival must eventually come to an end. Before closing up shop on the 40th SIFF and saying a fond farewell to #SIFForty, the little hashtag that could, the biggest North American festival closes its twenty-five day run with a series of parties and special events.

Throughout the festival, SIFF has put together a strong lineup of films from Africa. To celebrate this year’s African Pictures program, Friday’s screening of Finding Fela (Alex Gibney’s documentary of the Afrobeat pioneer) is followed by a party at the Northwest African American Museum.

On Saturday night, David Wain’s They Came Together Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd skewering all of the New York City romantic comedy cliches. Fellow The State alum Michael Showalter co-wrote the screenplay and a dozen other hilarious comedians from NBC lineups past and present co-star. Wain will be in attendance for the Saturday screening, which is followed by a party at the W Hotel. (Encore screening Sunday at 2:00 PM at the Egyptian).

Sunday starts with the Golden Space Needle Awards, in which the people’s choices and jury’s selections are announced and various pieces of glass and prizes are handed out over a brunch with a view. Tickets aren’t available to the general public, but if you have a spare “plus one”, call me?

The festival closes with The One I Love which has Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss (who will be in attendance at the screening) on a therapist-advised weekend getaway that the SIFF guide describes as “a sophisticated blend of romantic drama and science fiction”. If nothing else, SIFF’s track record with closing films is far better than with the opening night selections and the gala is at MOHAI, a genuinely excellent place for a party. At this point, all tickets are on standby, but an encore presentation of the film plays at 9:30 PM at Cinerama.

Amid all of the fancy events, though, there are still a ton of movies to fill your weekend including screenings of previously-recommended Fly Colt Fly: the Legend of the Barefoot Bandit (Sunday June 8th, 11:00 AM, SIFF Cinema Uptown) and much-anticipated midnight kid creeper the Babadook (Friday June 6th, 11:55 PM, The Egyptian; Saturday June 7th, 9:30 PM, SIFF Cinema Uptown).

Late Phases provides a final shot of Midnight Adrenaline

Tony’s Picks:

Life Feels Good  Yeah, on paper it reads like a Polish My Left Foot, but Dawid Ogrodnik’s performance in the lead has received huzzahs by the bushel, and without going into roundtable-length detail, it’s really, really worth seeing. Really.

  • June 06, 2014 Friday 7:00 PM SIFF Cinema Uptown
  • June 07, 2014 Saturday 10:30 AM Harvard Exit
  • June 08, 2014 Sunday  6:15 PM Pacific Place

Black Coal, Thin Ice  This Chinese film noir won a Best Picture Award at the 2014 Berlinale, and it’s reputedly a fresh, gut-level take on that timeless movie sub-genre.

  • June 07, 2014 Saturday 9:00 PM SIFF Cinema Uptown
  • June 08, 2014 Sunday 1:30 PM Pacific Place

Late Phases  Director Adrian Garcia Bogliano’s 2013 horror flick Here Comes the Devil (a 2013 SIFF alumni) mixed technical/visual brilliance with an unhealthy dose of stupid. This time out, Bogliano’s got some good actors (Ethan Embry and Tom Noonan among them), and a fun pulp-cinema gimmick (werewolves vs. retirees in assisted living). If the script’s good, this will be a kick and three-quarters.

  • June 07, 2014 Saturday Midnight Egyptian
  • June 08, 2014 Sunday  9:00 PM SIFF Cinema Uptown

To Be Takei It’s hard to resist a doc about Star Trek institution George Takei, even if you’re don’t own an ‘I grok Spock’ T-shirt. Jennifer Kroot’s feature covers Takei’s childhood in a Japanese internment camp, his attainment of nerd iconography as Lt. Sulu, his admission (and celebration) of his homosexuality, and his ubiquitous presence on the interwebs.

  • June 06, 2014 Friday 7:00 PM Egyptian
  • June 07, 2014 Saturday 4:00 PM SIFF Cinema Uptown
Gold has Maisie Williams running cross country, not across war-torn Westeros.

Josh’s Picks, Game of Thrones Edition
Calvary has Brendan Gleeson and Aidan “Littlefinger” Gillen in a “metaphysical murder mystery” about a priest ministering to his flock despite the prophesy of an untimely demise hanging over his head. It’s set in Ireland; so maybe we’ll get a little break for whatever tortured accent scheming Baelish has been putting on for the last few years while playing the game of thrones.

  • June 7, 2014 Saturday 7:00 PM SIFF Cinema Uptown
  • June 8, 2014 Sunday 11:00 AM Harvard Exit

Gold has Maisie “Arya Stark” Williams as a teenaged star of track and field, being raised by her mother and an overly ambitious P.E. teacher. When her biological father returns to patch things up, the synopsis promises “comedic catastrophe”. Really, though, wouldn’t it be nice to see Maisie Williams on a little vacation from dirty, soggy, depressing Westeros and in a role other than her increasingly dead-inside displaced instrument of pure vengeance?Director Niall Heery scheduled to attend both screenings.

  • June 6, 2014
    Friday 6:00 PM SIFF Cinema Uptown
  • June 7, 2014 Saturday 12:00 PM SIFF Cinema Uptown
Alex of Venice brings Chris Messina to Seattle.

Chris’s Picks: 

Alex of Venice: Actor Chris Messina’s directorial debut sounds intriguing. It’s said to be a character study about a woman putting her life together after her husband leaves her. There are a lot of possibilities, and I’m interested in post-love stories, so I’m intrigued. (Chris Messina scheduled to attend.)

  • June 06, 2014 Friday 7:00 PM Harvard Exit
  • June 07, 2014 Saturday 1:30 PM Harvard Exit

Creep: It wouldn’t quite be a SIFF without at least one movie starring Mark Duplass, would it? There’s actually two, including closing night film The One I Love. This is a horror-comedy from a producer of the Paranormal Activity series where Duplass plays a terminally ill man with some deeper issues who hires a videographer to record his last testament. Sounds interesting! (Mark Duplass and producer/actor Patrick Brice scheduled to attend Saturday screening.)

  • June 07, 2014 Saturday 9:45 PM Egyptian Theater
  • June 08, 2014 Sunday 2:00 PM SIFF Cinema Uptown

Keep track of the SunBreak’s SIFF coverage on our SIFF 2014 page, plus news updates and micro-reviews on Twitter @theSunBreak.

Film & TV

TSB interview: On X/Y, SIFF’s great, unconventional post-love story

X/Y played last weekend at the Seattle International Film Festival. It’s an unusual film in that it’s a character study of four New Yorkers who behave imperfectly in their romantic entanglements, but still seem worthy of empathy. There’s also a great cast that includes Amber Tamblyn, Common, Melonie Diaz, plus wife/husband producer/director team Ryan Piers Williams and America Ferrera.

This is the second film from Williams, whose debut The Dry Land was a fantastic, and timely, movie about Iraq veterans returning home and facing real-life complications from their military service oversees.  With X/Y, the film is more subtle, and works on a more ambiguous level, but both ask their audiences to view their characters with empathy.

While they were in town for SIFF, I had a few minutes to chat with America Ferrera and Ryan Piers Williams about X/Y, how it differs from The Dry Land, and how they didn’t expect the response from audiences that they’ve gotten.

With X/Y, it’s a big departure from your first film, The Dry Land, can you talk about what made you interested in going in this direction for your second film?

Ryan Piers Williams: When I started writing it in 2012, I was really curious about modern relationships and how technology was affecting relationships and how millennials were dealing with relationships. I was in a period of self reflection and trying to understand my own relationships in my life, and trying to understand my friends’ relationships. I just realized that there were a lot of people struggling to make authentic, true connections and lasting relationships. I wanted to tackle trying to paint a portrait of what I saw, which was this struggle of people trying to connect against the backdrop of our hyper-connected culture.

One thing I enjoyed about the film is that everyone’s imperfections are explored in detail, and each character is conflicted with their own moral ambiguities.

RPW: I wanted to paint is as realistic as possible. Every character has good aspects as well as bad aspects. I wanted to paint all of the characters in a gray texture where they do good things in their life and they do bad things in their life. Some of them are in love; some are struggling, just having been out of a relationship. I think that I wanted to paint a more realistic portrait rather than a glamorized portrait you might see in traditional cinema.

America, can I ask you what you liked about this film?

America Ferrera: When I first read the script, I noticed that it was hard to like these characters based on their behavior. I saw there was a challenge in that as an actor, to take a character whose actions written down on paper seem unrelatable and make her seem like a real person and full person who you might be able to relate to despite the fact that you might not like what she’s doing. I think that’s an interesting challenge as an actor. I think I recognized in it a more subtle truth about relationships that they are all hard and that it’s very small moments of us recognizing certain things about ourselves that are keeping us from what we actually want. I think we’re pretty conditioned in our media and society to see things as the right thing or the wrong thing, especially when it comes to relationships. Is it the right person or the wrong person? Is this my ever-after or not, instead of taking on more of a responsibility of what I have to make something successful rather than just expect it to be successful or not.

I think it’s a much more nuanced version of our generation being in love. There are no black and white answers. That’s what I responded to when I was preparing the role and helping Ryan develop the script.

Besides the two of you, there are some other really wonderful actors in the film, like Common, Amber Tamblyn, and Melonie Diaz. How did you get them to appear in your film?

RPW: Melonie Diaz we had known for a while. We worked with her on Lords of Dogtown several years ago, so we’ve always been a fan of her work. When we met with her about playing Jen, she really connected with the character and brought such a great life to her. In the way that she talked about her, I could see that she really knew who this character was. I got excited about her ideas and she wanted to do it.

Amber Tamblyn is a good friend of ours. A lot of the cast were friends, from working with them in the past or having been friends with them. In terms of Common, my producer, Jason Berman, worked with Common on a movie called LUV and sent him the script and he really liked it. It all came out of prior relationships. A lot of the people knew each other as well, so there was a built in chemistry. When I was trying to put the movie together, I knew that we would be shooting it very quickly and I would be asking all of the actors to invest in the characters and bring a lot to their relationships with the other actors. What was cool was that we found a lot of actors who already knew each other and already had relationships with each other. That helped me as a director get over that first big hurdle of creating that bond off-screen.

To answer your question in a short way, a lot of them were friends who we have known for a while and were fortunate enough to have them be a part of the movie. Some of them came out of working with our casting director, Jeanne McCarthy, who is an incredible casting director. She turned me on to Dree Hemingway and I had never seen any of her work. She plays Claudia in the movie. I saw a movie that she did a movie called Starlet that was at SXSW two years ago and she was incredible in it. I got really excited about her and she loved the idea of the character. It came together really organically. It came together really organically. We’re also really fortunate to know a lot of really talented actors to be a part of it.

Common, in particular, I love watch acting, so I was really anticipating him showing up on screen when I found out he was going to be in your movie.

RPW: He’s a very talented actor and is really committed to his art. It was a real pleasure to work with him.

How did the movie evolve from when you first set out to make the film, to the final version being shown now?

RPW: It started out a lot longer. There were a lot more scenes. With The Dry Land, I was very efficient with the script. It was very lean and what you saw was pretty much what we shot. There were a few scenes that were cut, but it was very lean. With this movie, each scene was a lot longer than what you saw on the screen. That didn’t come out of any intelligent design, I just wrote a lot and when we got into the editing room, I realized we didn’t need as much dialogue and trimmed it down. That heart of what I was trying to say and the structure was already on the page. We hardly did any improvisation, it was all scripted. It was more about cutting down what we shot and really shaping it in the edit room. That was the main thing that changed from script to completion.

It was a very compact 82 or 83 minutes, which I thought was the perfect length.

RPW: I wanted it to flow very, not quickly, but I wanted it to have energy while it was moving. Even though there were long dialogue scenes, I never wanted information to repeat. I wanted it to feel like you were passing through these people’s lives. What I wanted to achieve was that each character builds on the next and the next, so that you get a taste of each of these peoples’ lives but also building on a bigger arc that the movie operates on and takes you on a journey.

What is coming up next for the film?

RPW: The next festival we’re going to be at is the Edinburgh Film Festival in Scotland. Then it’ll go to a bunch of festivals this year. We’re starting to get distribution offers, so hopefully it’ll have a release sometime this year or early next year.

Is there anything you want people to take away from this film after watching it?

AF: I think it’s hard to say. What was really interesting was that we spent so much time, no one more than Ryan, living in this world, watching cuts and giving notes. You get so inside of it, you think it’s one thing but once you give it to the audience you realize it’s no longer yours to say what it is. It’s sort of the audience’s role to tell you what you made. That’s what’s so exciting about having an audience. You get to sit an experience them telling you how your work affects them.

At the world premiere at Tribeca, the first scene, which we always thought of as an intense and dramatic scene, got tons of laughs. It was so unexpected.

RPW: It was awesome.

AF: We looked at each other…

RPW: …like if we made a comedy.

AF: It was not what we expected.  I know every audience is different but that was really surprising. You realize that you can make anything with your intentions but it’s really up to the audience to decide what you made. It’s hard to say what they should take away from it. It’s fun to be surprised by what they say.

There was one line in the film that I thought was very funny, and that’s in a scene you’re in, Ryan, and your agent asks you if you want to make a movie seen by only “five hipsters in Williamsburg.”

RPW: Thanks. I hope that’s not what happens to the movie!

What I really loved about The Dry Land, which we talked about in 2010 when you were both here, was that it was such a timely movie. You wanted to raise awareness for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder among Iraq veterans at the time that combat troops were starting to wind down.  Obviously there isn’t such an overt message here, but was there an idea that you wanted to advance with this film, somewhat more subtly?

RPW: That was a very special movie and I had a very specific idea of how I wanted people to experience that film. I wanted to bring awareness. It was very social realism and social realism. This one is completely different. There’s no agenda with this movie. If anything, I would hope that people would, when they watch it, find a way to have compassion for the characters. They all do questionable things and I think it can be a difficult movie to watch, depending on what you believe. It can challenge an audience that way. I hope that they can connect with the characters and have compassion for them and that can carry into their own lives and have more compassion for people going through difficult situations. I know it’s a lot to ask, but if there’s anything I can hope for is that it opens up people’s minds in a different way and think about their own relationships in their life and their relationship to themselves. It’s a different kind of movie.

Film & TV

SIFF interview: Talking with the stars and creators of Time Lapse

Time Lapse is a tightly-wound psychological thriller/sci fi film that played at the Seattle International Film Festival. It involves three friends, Jasper, Callie, and Finn who find a camera that can take photos exactly twenty four hours into the future. The latter two are a couple with the former a roommate and complication to their relationship. Things are further complicated when Jasper tries to use the newly discovered camera to bet on dog races. It’s all fun and games until his bookie gets suspicious.

The film combines the voyeurism of Rear Window with the futurism-as-an-idea of an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” It’s a tense drama and character study built around three excellent actors: Danielle Panabaker, Matt O’Leary, and George Finn. As my friend Rich from Three Imaginary Girls wrote, “Bottom line: Time Lapse is one of my favorite SIFF experiences so far. The sort of thing I turned on too late in the evening and couldn’t stop watching until it was over. Which frankly is my amongst the highest praise I’ll give a film most days.”

When they were in town for two sold out screenings at SIFF, I had a few minutes to ask some questions of writer/director Bradley King, writer/producer B.P. Cooper, and stars Danielle Panabaker and George Finn. I expected to learn a lot from the Time Lapse cast and crew members I spoke to; what I didn’t expect was for the producers and actors to learn from each other during the interview.

This is an unusual film – which I mean in a good way – so can I ask you guys to talk about the genesis of it?

B.P. Cooper: Bradley and I were working on a couple of projects and they were taking too long to get going. Being that this was our first feature film, from scratch, it’s hard to raise millions, millions, and millions of dollars. Bradley kept pressing the point that we needed to do something smaller, more contained, something more manageable that we could execute on our own, without permission from Hollywood.

The genesis of the camera came up and Bradley came up with all of these guidelines of how it could work, keeping it in an apartment complex, and going from one apartment into another.

One thing that I really enjoyed about the film was that it was shot in one location and that apartment complex where you filmed it didn’t seem like it was a limitation, but a strength that you kept it confined to such a small area.

Bradley King: There are a couple of things there. First, I would point to Jonathan Wenstrup, the DP, who did an excellent of lighting, obviously that can change the space, but also change the space over time. Had the lighting not change, or the environment not felt like it was morphing to fit the mood of the scenes, it would have felt more claustrophobic and stale. But he did such a good job of making it flow.

Also, we had the full run of the place. Before we shot, we were able to go in and modify that window, cut that picture window out, and knock down that kitchen wall and put in a movable wall so we could get the camera crew in more positions. We knocked down a hallway so it could connect two apartments together. It was more claustrophobic when we first got there, but because the building was going to be torn down, were able to modify it to suit our needs.

I’d like to ask the two actors, Danielle and George, what drew them in with their characters, Callie and Jasper?

George Finn: For me, when I read the script, I fell in love with the character because I hadn’t played anyone so outgoing before. When I met with Bradley, Coop, and Rick (Montgomery, producer), I was impressed by how well they had everything figured out. They had an entire room full of photos, breaking everything down and explaining how this happens and how that affects the timeline and everything like that. I felt like I just wanted to give a lot of life to this character.

Danielle Panabaker: For me, [Callie] is so fascinating. It’s fun for me, as an actor, to play with all the different levels. She has her ulterior motives, but she’s got to put a face on everyday and try a different tactic to get there. She’s a fascinating character and in each scene, there are so many choices to how I wanted to play each moment.

I’m going to try to tread delicately to not give anything away, but I felt like watching it that the twist with her character was unexpected, but when you reflect on it, all of the clues were there.

DP: Hopefully, as Bradley has said, that there is a second viewing, when you have the information about the character, it makes the second viewing that much more interesting.

In that sense, it reminded me of the book Gone Girl…

DP: I loved that book!

…in the sense that the ending builds to something unexpected, but it’s completely consistent with the story that preceded it.

But I wanted to ask about the idea for the camera…

BK: It came from Cooper. I feel like I can take credit for a lot of things in the movie, but the seed idea for the camera definitely came from Coop, and I should let him explain what his thought process was like.

BPC: There is a Paul Walker movie called Timeline, from maybe 8 years ago. In it, his father is a scientist and creates a time machine and gets in it and goes back in time. They try to rescue him but have no idea where he went and they’re too afraid to get into it. I guess it would send you automatically and you couldn’t control where it sent you. They put a camera in it and pointed it to the sky and took a picture of the sky. Based on the constellations, they were able to determine where on earth, and what time period he was in, and calibrate the machine to send the rescue team to go get him. That’s obviously the big budget version of a time travel movie.

I thought it was interesting that they used that camera, an inanimate object, to do the time travelling, so to speak, or at least give the information. Then I thought, “What if the camera itself could take a picture of the future?” That was the jumping off point.

The apartment complex where this film takes place is so important to the film and it’s like its own character. Can you discuss how you found that spot?

BK: The location was a really big deal. We called it the first miracle of the shoot. It seems easy at first because it’s an apartment complex and there are plenty in California. You have tons of where it’s in a courtyard and the apartments are facing each other. But once the script was done and we started looking for locations, you realize we need to take over the whole complex. We have to be here day and night for weeks, and no one was going to go for that.

Cooper had the idea to start hunting for derelict or condemned apartment complexes. There’s a big list because you have to register them with the city of Los Angeles. We started visiting these locations.

BPC: The list doesn’t give you the owners’ e-mails or phone numbers. They only give you the addresses of where they live.

DP: Or where they think they live.

BK: That’s true. It was a big process and it took about a month, at least. We were driving around LA to the often terrible places because they were these rundown buildings.

BPC: And you broke into that one that we ended up getting.

BK: That’s right! We couldn’t get in and almost didn’t look. It was gated and locked, but my spider-sense was tingling and decided to jump the fence and wander around. Initially it didn’t seem like what we wanted. But we kept coming back to it and thought it was pretty cool. It had a nice rod-iron gate. Luckily the letter we sent got through to the guy and he called us. The fee worked out.

DP: Has it been torn down yet?

BK: I don’t know, it wasn’t a few months ago because some permitting thing got screwed up.

BPC: Yeah, a few of the PAs that we keep in touch with say they’ve been by it and it’s still there.

DP: That’s crazy!

BK: We could do re-shoots.

BPC: Or a sequel.

With the way the film went, that’s not entirely out of the question.

BK: People have talked to us about a sequel, or TV. Because TV is blowing up all over the place, we’ve definitely gotten people nibbling at it. It’s very episodic, a la “Quantum Leap” meets “Morning Edition,” that show where the guy got the newspaper every morning that told him the day’s events. Were we ever to go that route, I don’t think we’d do a hero story, like “Quantum Leap,” but something more consistent with the tone of this thing, which is someone falling from grace or getting in trouble with the machine.

I think we want to try something different before we revisit this idea.

I’d like to talk a little bit about the casting because the acting was great across the board. Not just with singling out Danielle and George because they’re here, but everyone was great. How were you able to get the actors on board?

BPC: It was both traditional and nontraditional ways.

BK: For Danielle, she was in Girls Against Boys, we were at the premiere screening at SXSW. I was totally floored. The movie was good and Danielle was really good in it. She did a Q&A afterwards and I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be awesome to work with her?” We didn’t write the script with her in mind, but about a week and a half in, we were both like, “You know who would be awesome for this?”

BPC: I had been thinking it but didn’t want to say anything because it jinxes things when you imagine someone in that role; it jinxes the project right away and guarantees that you’re not going to get that person. I didn’t want to say anything to Bradley because that would’ve gotten his hopes up because I knew he’d think it was a really good idea.

Literally a few days later, he burst into this office saying, “I HAVE THIS GREAT IDEA!” He does that on occasion, and they’re almost always really good ideas. They’re usually about the story. He says, “DANIELLE PANABAKER AS CALLIE!” and I said I was thinking the same thing but didn’t want to say anything to you.

We looped up with Rick Montgomery, who has been a casting director in Hollywood for over twenty years and worked on a bunch of much bigger films. He read the script and said he wanted to come on board and help, but he also wanted to produce it with you. He has relationships with talent and agents that I just don’t have. We pitched it to him, not to throw him under the bus, but he said, “Danielle? You’re not going to get her.”

DP: I didn’t know that!

BPC: Oh yeah. But he came around a day later and said, “Let me reach out and see what she says.”

BK: The worst she can say is no.

BPC: I’ll let you take it from there, because I don’t know how your agency works, but they probably have like four people read it before they even give it to you.

DP: My understanding is that sometimes agents don’t even forward stuff on. I’m very lucky that mine are amazing and they do send scripts to me. I was at a place, and I’m still there, where I was skeptical of doing another genre piece. This had some scary stuff, but, to me, it’s not a typical genre story, in terms of thrashers and thrillers, like I’ve already done. I took a look at it. When you look at Callie as an actor, it was so exciting to play a character that had so many options. It’s never just what’s on the page.

I went in and met with these guys, and that was it.

BPC: Can I ask them a question?

Of course.

BPC: It’s so interesting to me because we went into it knowing that we don’t have an entire body of work where can show you what we did. We just mostly have words on page. You guys both have bodies of work that is tangible and visceral and you can watch it. As actors, how did you make that leap of faith, where you say you’re going to trust this director knows what he’s doing? Where is that line and when did you decide to trust it?

BK: No one ever asked me for a reel, because I’ve done a zillion short films. No one asked me for anything. I expected the agents…

DP: I think there’s something exciting about working with a newer director. Particularly working with a writer/director, you’re working with someone who is passionate about the project. If you write and direct it, you give a shit. That’s what interesting to me.

Again, you guys were so prepared. It wasn’t like “I’ve got the script and we’re going to go out and do stuff.” You were very prepared so it never felt like you didn’t know what you were doing.

GF: When I read the script, and I try to read anything I can, I was really happy with it. I could tell that there was going to be a twist and that something was going to happen. I didn’t really have any problems with it. I liked it so much and thought, “This is a movie I would like to see.” With Jasper, it didn’t play with any stereotypes. It was a very realistic approach of what would happen if these three people had this encounter. You sent me this pitch packet and everything was really detailed and broken down. There was heart in it and I could tell you both knew what you wanted to do and how you were going to get it done. When I met with you guys, I tried to ask a few questions, and your confidence came through and I really wanted to be a part of it.

But, as you say, it really is a leap of faith.

BK: The pitch packet helped. That’s good to know.

But to circle back to your question. That’s how we found Danielle. For George, he was in LOL and I had seen him in some short films. There was something about his work that kept pulling me back.

BPC: He had this really interesting short on his real where he said something like, “I’m a motherfucking fuck.”

GF: That was my first I made with my brother. It’s called The Harsh Life of Veronica Lambert. That was one scene that was on my reel.

BK: That was with your brother? That was the one that moved me. I expressed a real attitude and fierceness. I think that’s what started drawing us towards George.

Finn, Matt O’Leary’s character, was the hardest. We almost had to push the movie because had we met with a lot of people and none were working out. I had been accused of writing a lot of myself into that character and maybe that’s why I was so tangled up in the decision making. But we met Matt and he was great and it all worked out.

Is there anything you want people to take away from the film, either after it plays here or beyond?

DP: I want people to watch it again after they see it the first time.

BPC: Debate it with however you came with, friends.

BK: We want people to drag their friends.

BPC: Buy a hundred copies of it, mention it on Facebook, Twitter…

BK: I hope people will want to see it again, but in the best sense. You see movies where you think, “I need to see it again but don’t want to, just to understand it.” I hope with this one, it’s clear but they’re curious to see what Danielle does on a second viewing, and see George’s descent all over again.

GF: For me, given the opportunity: don’t fuck with time.