I went over to my friend Lance’s house last night to look at the footage we shot for Streaking For The Shy. I had seen the first day’s footage, but had not seen Day 2 or 3.
I think it’s going to work out. There were some things I was worried about — a nighttime scene, the crash, the post-crash, etc. — but they all turned out great!
I still have a couple more shots to get, but I’d say at this point the movie is headed in a very nice direction.
More to come.
SamuraiFrog tagged me last week with this nice little meme, and now I finally have the time to complete it.
I get to pick 12 movies to program into 6 nights at a theoretical film festival.
First, the rules:
1) Choose 12 Films to be featured. They could be random selections or part of a greater theme. Whatever you want.
2) Explain why you chose the films.
3) Link back to Lazy Eye Theatre so I can have hundreds of links and I can take those links and spread them all out on the bed and then roll around in them.
4) The people selected then have to turn around and select 5 more people.
Okay, here goes!
FIRST NIGHT
A Little Princess (1995)
Time Bandits (1981)
We ease into the first night with films dealing with childhood and the imagination. These are two topics that have always been important to me.
A Little Princess is a wonderful children’s film filled with empathy and magic, directed by the great Alfonso Cuarón.
Time Bandits is a children’s movie aimed at adults. It captures the wonder, the fear, the disappointment, the confusion, everything about being a child. It’s my favorite Terry Gilliam movie.
SECOND NIGHT
Sonatine (1995)
Dazed and Confused (1993)
The movies of the second night have a thread of uncertainty and aimlessness. The characters are a little adrift, but not necessarily in a despairing way.
Takeshi Kitano’s Sonatine pretends to be a violent gangster movie, but morphs into something odd and compelling as its characters are yanked out of their world.
Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused pretends to be a stoner comedy, but explores the casual cruelty of adolescence.
Both of these movies are complicated, deeper and richer than the genres in which they are categorized.
THIRD NIGHT
In A Lonely Place (1950)
Ali: Fear Eats The Soul (1974)
In the third night, we deal with relationships, and the difficulty of maintaining them. It’s all about the problem of making and keeping connections.
Nicholas Ray’s In A Lonely Place features what I feel to be Humphrey Bogart’s best performance. There is a romance that figures prominently between Bogart and Gloria Grahame, but I think the relationship between Bogart and his agent is even more deeply moving.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats The Soul is an extraordinarily empathetic look at what first appears to be an unusual relationship, and the strains and cracks that appear in it over time. It’s filled with truth, sadness and hope.
FOURTH NIGHT
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Touch of Evil (1958)
The fourth night is the darkest of the Splotchy Film Festival. We explore the decay of the human spirit.
There aren’t many darker movies than Alfred Hitchock’s Shadow of a Doubt. That’s all I’ll say about it. See it for yourself.
If you haven’t seen Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, please do so. Mike Vargas might be the hero of this movie, but it’s Hank Quinlan that we feel for.
FIFTH NIGHT
Escape From Alcatraz (1979)
Touch of Evil (1956)
Can we let a little hope into the festival? First we saw the decay of the human spirit, now we see its strength — strength under oppression, monotony, repetition, indifference.
Don Siegel’s Escape From Alcatraz is an incredibly watchable, suspenseful movie, filled with memorable characters. And hey, the prison warden is played by The Prisoner Patrick McGoohan himself. How crazy is that?
Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped is one of those movies that somehow communicates in the medium of film better than 99% of other movies. It’s utterly engrossing, moving and hypnotizing.
SIXTH NIGHT
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Playtime (1967)
We end the festival optimistically. The films on the sixth night are filled with hope and a childish wonder.
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey sees a future for humanity, beyond violence and ignorance.
Jacques Tati looks for humanity, but instead of seeking it in the future, or in outer space, he finds it in the environment around us.
***
So, there it is. I’m not tagging anyone else, but I’d happily read about the programming of any of your own theoretical film festivals.
You know what clichés do?
They stunt creative thought.
They drain conversations of spice.
They are a linguistic hole.
If you catch yourself using a cliché, just leave a comment on this post.
I’ll do the same.
Please help stop lazy communication.
My more immediate TO-DO’s:
My new short movie is called Streaking For The Shy.
The idea was inspired by a post of Bubs (look at my comment there if’n you don’t believe me).
Some selected photos from the making of the movie, courtesy of Tim.
This is from Day 3 of the production, probably our easiest day. We were shooting an early scene of the film, where the character Dave gets picked up.
From Day 2. Filming the post-crash scene. Smoke effects were created by large smoke bombs (they looked like big firecrackers). For some of the shots, we may be adding some CGI fire effects.
Also from Day 2, near dusk. Filming one of the last scenes of the movie. Three of the characters, tired, lonely, holding cardboard. I wanted a high-angle shot, which is why the cameraman is standing on my crappy minivan.
Day 2. I would like you to know that despite the fact there was a director chair on set, I never sat in it, nor did I wear my monocle.
Perhaps to offset the convertible stress I was put through, my shoot of 08/01-08/03 was quite pleasant, weather-wise.
Originally the forecast was for the weekend to be in the 90’s, and at one point Saturday the 2nd was predicted to get up to 95 degrees. However, as we spent the majority of that day outside in the industrial location, we were accompanied by a light breeze and a temperature that never cracked the low 80’s. Sunday was a little bit hotter, but still quite tolerable.
The day after our shoot, as I was driving Tim to the train station on Monday morning, the sky was heaving rain upon us, which would have been a crappy thing to happen on any of the previous days (I wanted sunshine for my movie).
So, I’m just trying to say to the Weather Gods — thanks!
Tapir
Lighthouse
I needed a convertible for my movie. I knew I was going to need one as I was writing my script.
How would I get one? Would I put in an ad in the newspaper? Ask friends, or friends of friends, friends of friends of friends in search of one? Post a tearful request on this blog?
Well, it turns out that you can rent convertibles from your everyday car rental place. In my mind the character in my movie has a vintage convertible (like, say, a ’65 Mustang), but I would be able to easily rent the next best thing — a brand-new Mustang, which is essentially a homage/ripoff to the 1960’s model.
So, I made my rental car reservation waaaaay back in early May, requesting it for the duration of the shoot (08/01 – 08/03), through the Hertz office at 909 N. Michigan.
The Michigan Avenue office opens at 7:00am, and we were scheduled to begin shooting at 9:00am later that day. We were planning on doing some dialogue scenes in the car that first day, so it was important that I get the car as early as possible.
I get to the Michigan Avenue office at 7:05am, wait in line for about ten minutes, and then step up to claim my Mustang. However, my Mustang is not there. In fact, there are no available Mustang convertibles through Hertz in the Chicagoland area. None. Nada. Zilch.
They apologize for the inconvenience. I say, “It’s WORSE than an inconvenience.”
I tell them they better find me a car. They call up some places and tell me one of their competitors has a convertible at O’Hare airport. I give my credit card number to a person on the phone so they will hold it.
So, I now have to drive to O’Hare airport from downtown Chicago, at the height of rush hour. I do manage to get the car (it’s a Chrysler Sebring, not a Ford Mustang) and then have to drive it to the cast and crew’s rendezvous point in the morning, again through rush hour traffic. I had planned on getting there an hour before everyone else, but I ended up rolling in ten minutes late.
It was a very sucky beginning to my moviemaking adventure (don’t worry, it got a lot better).
I realize that my needs probably don’t mesh with the normal needs of someone renting a car. I was particular with the type of the car I wanted. Maybe I expected too much.
Still, fuck Hertz and their inability to service my request that I had conscientiously made months before. If people reading this have a choice between Hertz and Some Other Company, please choose Some Other Company.