filmmaking: page 2***** .Talent Development Resources -..home page...site map

.. .. I don't think there's a film out there that doesn't have a political point of view and to pretend as a director that by making something you're not saying anything on a social or political context is absurd.  So consequentially, I think that any time a woman filmmaker chooses to tell a story of a woman or a girl she's quote unquote making a feminist film.  But I certainly didn't go at the story with an agenda. It's a feminist act to even try to make a movie with a girl as the lead. ...

.. .. Clea Duvall [above].. actually came with me to Sundance so this project was the first in a series of things she's been involved in and she ended up because Redford and Kathy Bates were so impressed with her. ... Clea is an extraordinary acting talent. She's also not a Liv Tyler. I mean, her talent lies in her acting not in the fact that, I mean she's not a nymphet.  As a female director I did a lot of fighting about that to keep her on the project. To me her work is the strongest in the film and so of course that's gonna help the movies.  But of course there are others that are gonna disagree, not about her work but in terms of how easy that's gonna make it to sell the movie. Melissa Painter - Alice magazine interview about  writing and directing her 1999 film Wildflowers

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There are no rules in making cinema - there is only good cinema or soulless cinema. ... What is happening to the world lies, at the moment, just outside the realm of common understanding.  The only revenge is to work, to make cinema that illuminates this common understanding, that destabilizes the dull competence of most of what is produced, that infuses life with idiosyncracy, whimsy, brutality, and like life, that captures the rare but fabulous energy that sometimes emerges from the juxtaposition of tragic and comic. Mira Nair**[from lecture delivered at the Netherlands Film Festival on September 29, 2002, reported in Variety]

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Last year, I was the executive producer of Ruby Bridges; the director, producer, writer, composer, associate editor, and the two execs at Disney were all women, black and white. It was not an intentional gathering of women. I stood on the set and thought, This is as good as it gets. My perspective was from my work in television since the 1960s--where on that horizon could we have seen African Americans, let alone women in all these roles? That's what the struggle is about. Marian Rees****from book: Mollie Gregory.  Women Who Run the Show: How a Brilliant  and Creative New Generation of Women Stormed Hollywood

 

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I'm on the executive board of Independent Feature Project and trying to support organizations like that. ... We support young filmmakers and filmmakers of color, and we offer resources for independent filmmakers trying to get their films shot and finished. If I were to have a wish list for our government, it would be to support independent films and to support artists in some way, like other countries do. ... And as artists, we have to stay true to ourselves and to what we're trying to communicate. There's always temptation, you get to a certain level and you want to make money. I guess John Sayles is my hero, because he's able to do both.  Kasi Lemmons*[Variety Jul. 28, 2002]****Independent Feature Project: www.ifp.org***/ photo from book: Great Women of Film

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"I like art best when it's an amateur form, as in the past when doctors were composers, and stock brokers poets. I love that William Carlos Williams wrote his poetry on the back of prescription pads. I like that it's done for love and not for money." ...  Coppola nostalgically remembers his early days at UCLA. "I feel much wiser now, though perhaps that's a negative in that it makes one less likely to plunge into areas as wildly as youth tends to. Also, not being as financially destitute could mean that I have less of the 'what do I have to lose' attitude and that might make a difference," Coppola said. ...  "I would tell (young filmmakers) to avoid big conglomerate Hollywood, where the 'M' stands for money and not movies. ... Weave your work on whatever level you can afford, with stills and little audio recordings first if necessary."    Daily Bruin, June 24, 2002 **Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher

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You get to something universal by being very specific... I think you have to start at home. ... Whenever I set out to make film, my primary motive is to create an emotionally charged, or resonant, experience -- to work with stories from my own life that I feel the need to examine closely, and that I think are shared by many people.  I then try to find a form which will not only make the material accessible, but which will also give the viewer a certain amount of cinematic pleasure. In that I feel somewhat akin to the structural filmmakers, since I do like to play with the frame, the surface, the rhythm, with layering and repetition and text, and the other filmic elements.****Su Friedrich****[from sensesofcinema.com article] Friedrich "has produced and directed thirteen 16mm films... With the exception of Hide and Seek, she is the writer, director, cinematographer, sound recordist and editor of all her films." [from bio on her site: sufriedrich.com]

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For me, nothing's changed from the first day when I was 12 years old and I showed an 8-millimeter movie I made to the Boy Scouts... Whenever I have a movie coming out, I am still the same nervous blob of misshapen Jell-O I was when I first began... and it's a very good thing, because I think all of us do our best work when we're the most frightened. Steven Spielberg   [LA Times, Dec. 28.98] **related book: Steven Spielberg : Interviews

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However [director Rosanna] Arquette insisted her documentary ["Searching for Debra Winger"] was more than a chance for actresses to vent their spleen, which some do to hilarious effect. "It's not about being bitter or a bitch-fest, it's just that more stories need to be told," she said. "There are more and more business people that are coming and taking over and starting to make movies with no idea about the art of film-making," she noted. "When that sets in it's poison and it destroys the state of the art and it's really scary." Arquette said she was optimistic about the development of digital technology, which is allowing more people to make movies at a lower cost. Flush with her new experience behind the camera, she plans to start production on a documentary about musicians, but still has trouble seeing herself as a director. "It's just my experience that I've put on film and I'm not coming here [to Cannes] as some kind of film-maker," she said laughingly.      [Reuters/Variety May 16 2002]

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As artists, all we really have is the process, and if you don't get great joy out of the process, you should be doing something else. You should, first of all, choose your material because you have a very subjective, passionate reason to do it. And then you should be surrounded by the best people possible so that you can have -- it's your life, it's your time, and that process should be worth it.  You can never predict whether somebody will buy it, or whether it's going to be totally successful. But the process is where the great joy and the creativity happens. And in a place like Sundance, you're allowed that.  Glenn Close     [The Charlie Rose Show, April 23, 2002]     website: Sundance Institute

 

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I arrived in Hollywood at the age of 22, in a time different than today's. A time in which the odds against my standing here tonight, 53 years later, would not have fallen in my favor.  Back then, no route had been established for where I was hoping to go. No pathway left in evidence for me to trace. No custom for me to follow.

Yet, here I am this evening at the end of a journey that, in 1949 would have been considered almost impossible -- and in fact might never have been set in motion were there not an untold number of courageous, unselfish choices made by a handful of visionary American filmmakers, directors, writers, and producers, each with a strong sense of citizen responsibility to the times in which they lived.  Each unafraid to permit their art to reflect their views and values -- ethical and moral -- and moreover, acknowledge them as their own. They knew the odds that stood against them and their efforts were overwhelming and likely could have proven too high to overcome. Still those filmmakers persevered, speaking through their art to the best in all of us. And I benefited from their efforts, the industry benefited from their efforts. America benefited from their efforts, and in ways large and small, the world has also benefited from their efforts.  Sidney Poitier - in his acceptance speech for his Honorary Academy Award, Mar. 24 2002   [quotes from Oscar.com]

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Maybe because of all my years in theater, for a long time I didn't really know what to make of the producers of film. I guess I always felt intimidated by them because I thought they were going to fire me or something. Perhaps I saw them as "enemies of the art" for some reason.  As I've matured, I've recognized the passion that most of them feel for film, and I've gotten over my silly stigma. Right now I'm coproducing a movie myself, and loving it.Joan Allen **quote and photo from book: Great Women of Film  by Helena Lumme

 

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***Billy Wilder  [1906-2002] For years after his final film, "Buddy Buddy," starring Lemmon and Matthau, bombed in 1981, Wilder continued to write and contemplate making more movies.  "Things are always cooking in the back of my mind or in the back of a drawer," he said in 1988. "There is never a day I don't write something. It's not tough to make a picture. It's tough to make a deal." He explained the realities of the new Hollywood in the January 2000 Times interview: "It's much harder to direct now. Everything's in the hands of the money people; they dictate what has to be done. When I was making pictures, we went to the front office, told them what we wanted to do, and then we did it."

Even when Wilder was no longer wanted for new films, he and Hollywood continued their love affair.  "I've been here for more than half a century," he said in 1986 when he received the American Film Institute award, "and I've watched Hollywood vacillate between despair and fear. But even if they have 5 million screens... there's one little detail: Who will write it, who will direct it, who will act in it? "Relax, fellow picture-makers. We are not expendable. The bigger they get, the more powerful we get. Theirs is the kingdom; ours is the power and the glory." from memorial article "Irreverence With a Twinkle" by Charles Champlin, LA Times, March 30, 2002 *related book: Cameron Crowe. Conversations With Wilder "Wilder and Crowe don't waste time on theory or generalities, and the result -- as in their film work -- is truth, pure and simple" - Mike Nichols

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David Cronenberg.. complains that young filmmakers -- and the studios that bankroll them -- are interested only in other movies, not life, and that when as a young man he wanted to be Bergman or Fellini, that didn't mean he wanted to make a Bergman or Fellini movie.  [from "Warm and fuzzy isn't Cronenberg" by John Clark, LA Times, Dec 8 2002 - about Cronenberg's newest movie, "Spider."] **David Cronenberg: Collected Screenplays 1 - by David Cronenberg

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.....Michael Ondaatje .. .. The Conversations -- an interview book with film editor Walter Murch, whose credits include "The English Patient," "The Godfather" and "Apocalypse Now" -- is not simply the work of a fan but the sophisticated text of an expert. Michael Ondaatje discusses films in highly technical detail, with references to everything from the use of crickets on the soundtrack of "Apocalypse Now" to the zoom shot that opens Francis Coppola's "The Conversation." Ondaatje's book is unusual for another reason. Rather than talk to a director, to whom writers are traditionally compared as creators and storytellers, Ondaatje chose to speak with a film editor -- someone who often is unknown to the general public and rarely discussed by critics as a major influence.

"The way I see it, if you're going to talk about the war, you don't get the general talking about it. You have to talk to someone like the bomb disposal guy," Ondaatje says with a laugh. "Walter to me is the bomb disposal guy. He's the guy who's one cog of a very large machine. Everything has to go through him at some point."  Ondaatje feels that film editing, not directing, is closest to the writing process; you cut, revise, refine. Irving agrees. He remembers working on the post-production of "Cider House Rules" and being surprised how familiar the experience felt.  "I thought that once the film went to set, that once we started shooting the film, my role was essentially over," he says. "I was not prepared for how the process of editing was like the process of rewriting, which is something I always prided myself on being good at. I loved the whole post-production aspect. I can't tell you how many tweaks were made in that little room."   from article: "The writer who controls the film," CNN.com, November 30, 2002 **The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film - by Michael Ondaatje

 
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Alice Magazine:   The industry tends to tidy up moviegoers into narrow boxes: the white audience, the black audience, the youth audience. Who do you envision as your audience? [for The Girl's Room, directed by Irene Turner] Irene Turner:   Hopefully it's the girls-of-all-ages audience, or as Bust magazine would say "the new girl order." Of course, Hollywood would tell you this doesn't exist, that women want only fluffy romances or that they let their boyfriends pick the movie.  I think girls of all ages are desperate for movies about strong females making tough choices, things that are closer to their own lives than soap operas on the WB.  I'm trying to reclaim the phrase "chick flick." However, I've really had a great response so far from the men who've seen it. They, too, fought their way through college trying to discover who they really were, as opposed to what their parents told them they should be. ...

.. .. I hope it's empowering as well as being entertaining, because the first priority of any film is to entertain, by which I mean to affect you emotionally in some way - laugh, cry, or just give you an adrenaline rush from the latest summer blockbuster "thrill ride" movie.  I am not against [blockbusters] if they would just make better ones with women who have IQ's of more than three.  [from alicemagazine.com interview]   // photo of Turner with her niece  from thegirlsroom.net

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Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg agree "Minority Report",, is darker and more thought-provoking than the FX-laden summer actioner you'd expect from such a made-in-blockbuster-heaven pairing.  "I think we both saw 'Minority Report' as a grand experiment," Spielberg tells The Post. "We sort of walked the edge of that experiment, tried different things and messed with the formula a little bit.  "[Tom's] a guy who, I guess, feels like he has nothing to lose. I feel like I have nothing to lose. We've both achieved so much in our lives and we're so happy about what we've done... so it's fun to experiment."   [nypost.com June 11, 2002] *related article:**Taking Risks

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Making a documentary is like escaping from the coal mines and finding yourself skiing out on the slopes. With documentary, you're free, you're making a journey, you're going someplace you've never been before. ... You get to kick open doors that are risky, and you ask people questions and sit there amazed as they let you into their houses and lives and tell you their most personal stories. It's a very privileged place to be.   Lee Grant    [from a 1999 issue of Metro: metroactive.com]

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The dream factory of that time was much simpler. As media outlets grew, everything became so complicated. It's like that play, with the man-eating plant: 'The Little Shop of Horrors.'  Today, there's not enough product to feed [the monster]. It's hard to make something which has a single vision. ... [As a writer] you do manufacture dreams, but in order to dream, you need to have a springboard which is the facts... It gives it that touch of reality, and I think that's quite important... truth with fiction. Janet Leigh   [LA Times, February 6, 2002]   image from Janet Leigh fan site: home.clara.net/digger/ Her novel The Dream Factory is about life in 1950s Hollywood

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"Griffin Dunne... said it's so essential to have a great sense of humour with
Hollywood - otherwise, you will just die of bitterness. That is 100 per cent true.

Everyone says the worst times are on the first few rungs of the ladder, when the
sharks are really nipping at your heels, as you are scrabbling aboard the boat.

I don't know now. I sometimes think it is worse at my level. You always have to land
on your feet. The higher the stakes, the scarier it is.

You have to have something that is motivating you other than everyone's reaction.
If you are in it because you need the attention, support and positive affirmation,
or simply because you need, then you will get crushed."

  Uma Thurman    [Tatler Magazine, Nov., 2000]
 

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***

"It's lucky to be a woman today, and to make movies. It may be contrary to the Hollywood law, but making a movie is not putting a script onscreen; it's an art. ... You make a film in a fever of artistic passion."   ///    [How does your family react to your films?]  "It's better now that I'm more accepted, but it's hard for my kids to have a mother who talks about sex. But I've always done exactly as I wanted. When I was small, they told me I couldn't do what I wanted, because I was a woman -- and now I see that I can."    French director, author, screenwriter Catherine Breillat [Interview mag. Oct. 2001]

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*********************

While Anders sometimes wonders if her frustration is worth the price of making films,
she has come to realize that, regardless of the roadblocks, she must follow her heart.

Opined Anders, "It's just such an awful, unfortunate thing that I love making movies so much.
It's kind of like my penchant for failed romances [a trademark of all of her films' heroines]. ...
I think my expectations have changed dramatically to the point where I've gotten to this very
pure place of knowing that this seems to be my calling.

"Filmmakers just have to do it regardless of [the obstacles]. Originally I had such an intense
need for approval, and I don't have that anymore. I'm still stuck with me. Ultimately, it's me
and myself. I think that's what's changed."

   Allison Anders     from article: Female Persuasion

Too often when I watch movies these days I feel nothing. I sense nothing in the hearts of the people making the film... It seems to have become an exercise in power and money and fame. That's not the reason to make a movie.  Movies are too important to the audiences to be reduced to that. There are other ways to merchandize toys, theme parks, and fast food - there are other ways to be rich and famous and powerful that don't betray the hopes of an eager crowd sitting in the dark, waiting to be reminded what it is like to laugh and cry and love and hate.  If you're interested in becoming alive through the process of making a movie, then just do it. We so need people to do that. ... If you have a story you need to tell, than please do what you have to do to tell it.  Tom Noonan  - from his article "Why I make movies"  - quotes and photo from his site: tomnoonan.com

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If we could make less violent films, if somehow this [the terrotist attacks] would help us grow up a little bit, that would be good. As a society, if we could focus a little bit more on humanity, that would be good.  I think that people have and should have a different focus on films with this shadow hanging over us. ...  Maybe this situation is going to change that system and we're not going to have so many explosions and guns and all that crap in our movies. Maybe it will soften society a bit.    Australian director Ray Lawrence [photo and quote from Toronto SUN Sept. 15 2001]

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.
 

**book:**Leni Riefenstahl : Five Lives by Ines Walk

From dancer to actress to filmmaker to photographer to diver, she has excelled in each field and is
one of the most important and controversial artists of the 20th century. Her contributions to the art
and technique of filmmaking were vast, most notably in her epochal film "Olympia" (1938). Critically
acclaimed during the 1930's for her work under the Hitler administration and harshly criticized after
the war, Riefenstahl surged on, completing the famous "Tiefland" in 1954. ...

Produced in collaboration with Riefenstahl herself, the book includes her most famous images
as well as many previously unpublished pictures from her private archives. The main body of the
book features photographs (without text) spanning Riefenstahl's entire set of careers, with pictures
of her on stage as a dancer and on the set as an actress and filmmaker, as well as film stills and
her own photographs.          [publisher review]

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"I think you have a moral responsibility as an artist to be deep, and she wasn't deep. Now, is that a crime? I don't know. I could see many of us falling into the same traps as she did under those circumstances."   Jodie Foster - about Leni Riefenstahl  [Premiere, Jan. 2001]

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We all grew up where a lot of stories had a male lead, and we just decided to relate to him. How many female Muppets are there? There's one now, or something. How many of the cartoons we watched were female, and how many of the characters on TV shows?  I think we sort of got used to it, so that now, we don't notice as much as we should the lack of women either in front of the camera, or behind the camera. We have to start caring, as consumers, about it. And just paying a little bit more attention.  Geena Davis [Bravo TV / Inside the Actors Studio, 2001]

\

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*******

website:   50/50  "an outgrowth of the 50/50 Women Filmmaker's Summit
which occurred in April, 2000 hosted by Allison Anders. The mission of the
group is to attain equality for women in film and television, and all media
now known or hereafter devised, worldwide, in perpetuity."
 

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****

"It is my good fortune that I was born and raised in China. I grew up worshipping heroes of my own color... We should never focus on our identity as a liability. We should just hone our skills and work hard... It is a very competitive business regardless of skin color.  If you love it for the right reason, and you live your life in accordance with this love, you will be able to do it."            Joan Chen            [jademagazine.com]

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David Lynch The director who began his career in 1967 with a one-minute animation titled Six Figures has returned to working frame by frame, and that makes him very happy. "Animation is a magical thing to me," he says. "I veered off pretty quickly into live action, but I like animation, and I like Flash." He continues, and there's an almost childlike awe about the way creativity works. Indeed, he's like a reincarnated Surrealist from the 1930s, reverent toward the wonders of the unconscious and eager to divine its darkest secrets. "I think every type of medium gives you different ideas. So when you see the Flash program, it just starts talking to you. So ideas start coming along. It reminds me of early film ó there's something about it that makes your imagination kick in." ............

Lynch was among a group of artists invited last year by Macromedia's Rob Burgess to create animations using Flash that would premiere on the Shockwave site (other invitees included Tim Burton, Matt Stone and Trey Parker).  And that was all it took. The innovative film director was hooked, not only by the easy-to-use software, but by the radical potential of the Internet. ..... "The Internet, the way I see it, provides opportunity for experiments so I can try one little bit of something and that can lead to a whole other world. It could lead to a feature film, but maybe not. It's all about ideas and being able to realize them, and it may be just little fragments, but the Internet is kind of good for little fragments, and these may open up other worlds." from "Wild at Home: David Lynch's Surreal Online TV Station"  By Holly Willis [res.com]

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[What do you love most about animating? Hate? What sends shivers up your spine?]  Love: making pictures and stories evolve over time with nothing in the way but what you cannot imagine. All the pretty colors. The freedom from the budgets for large-scale film productions.

Being able to work at home, alone, and watch things twinkle and dance. Spilling out the brains onto the screen, rather directly. Hate: doing it all by myself all the time. And even with Flash, the tool I use to animate, it still can be very tedious. Being obstructed only by what I cannot imagine! Shivers: giving voice to character, and hearing composer Lem Jay Ignacio's music and sound bring my stilted mute world to life. from "Bad(ass) Brains - An interview with filmmaker Marina Zurkow, creator of the web's freaky, fiesty cerebelle du jour, Braingirl" by Ruth Ozeki - an archive article at Bitch Magazine

 
*software:**Flash 5.0 -- Windows 95 / 98 / NT / 2000 /  Flash 5.0 -- Macintosh

Steel, in reviewing her career a few years ago, recalled that her commitment to helping women in Hollywood was a slow one. "I must tell you, I did feel threatened by other women in those early years," she said.  "I was so busy climbing up this ladder, staying above the water. If there was only room for one woman in a room, I wanted to be her. I'm not proud of it. I certainly don't feel that way now. It was an absolute evolution for me."    [from NY Times obituary]   book: Dawn Steel. memoir They Can Kill You...but They Can't Eat You

Dawn Steel     (1946-1997)

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