With Mary Bronstein’s Yeastdebuting on DailyMotion tonight, and Joe Swanberg’s Nights and Weekends opening this weekend at the IFC Center, the two SXSW 2008 premieres starring Greta Gerwig will suddenly become available to a non-festival audience simultaneously. When I heard this was going to happen, I dug up some of the press Gerwig has garnered over the past year, most of it pegged to her appearance in the Duplass brothers’ Baghead. I quickly noticed a trend: Gerwig has been covered exhaustively by male writers who a) have a tendency to label her an “ingenue” or an “‘it’ girl“, and b) devote much column space to the question of whether or not Gerwig’s main talent is playing herself.
Certainly, the great success of Hannah Takes the Stairs, the highly improvised project on which the pixie-cute actress collaborated with Swanberg and friends, is that it parts of it seem so lacking in cinematic artifice, they can play as glimpses into lives in progress. But if Hannah seems real enough to reach through the screen and touch, Gerwig’s title character is too exasperating to make that a particularly attractive proposition (or maybe not: almost like a classic femme fatale, it’s hard to deny her appeal even as she’s leaving you for your best friend). So when in Baghead, she plays a pixie-cute actress collaborating with friends on a highly improvised project––who drinks too much, takes little convincing to remove her top, and ultimately ends up with the funny, schlubby nerd––it seems too coincidental to be fiction, and apparently too cute to resist.
Gerwig hasn’t resisted the suggestion that the roles she plays grow out of who she is, but Nights and Yeast add two disparate but fully realized characters to her repertoire. Yeast is, for some, an endurance exercise; for me, it’s a comedy, and on the contrary, it’s the comparatively gentle but fundamentally flawed Nights and Weekends (on which Gerwig is billed as co-writer/director alongside Swanberg, and co-producer alongside Swanberg, Anish Savjani and Dia Sokol) which tries patience. If the latter shows Gerwig pushing a character way beyond adorable, it often feels like an exhausting exercise for all involved. It’s her work as Yeast’s only semi-relatable comic relief that throws up a middle finger at the ingenue concept, literally.
Ry Russo-Young, who many will remember from her role in Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs, was a prize winner at two of the last three SXSWs - she won the jury award for best experimental film for her Psycho deconstruction Marion at the 2006 fest and shared a special jury prize for Orphans at the 2007 edition. Orphans hits DVD next week via David Redmon and Ashley Sabin’s brand new label Carnivalesque Films. She chatted with us this week about Why Does Herr R Run Amok?, what working with the band “The Virgins” on her new film You Won’t Miss Me was like and why concert films aren’t really for her unless Amy Winehouse or The Rolling Stones are in them. …Read more
Hannah Takes the Stairs comes out on DVD today (see bloggy debate over the package’s generic rom-com design at FILMMAKER and Cinematical), which means that my Google Alert for “mumblecore” has been on fire for a number of days. In the grand scheme of things, this is a small release, and most publications reviewing it as a part of a Tuesday new release round-up don’t have much space to give. But IFC’s website (sister to the company that released the film theatrically) gives critic Michael Atkinson 500 words––and though he ultimately gets around to a positive review of this movie, he devotes the first 230 words or so to explaining why mumblecore is shit.
“Is it even a movement?” Atkinson grumbles. “Is anyone outside of the ticket buyers at a handful of smallish American film festivals passionate about these movies, and if not, why are they getting so much press?” Surely, Atkinson knows that the mumble-hate contingent has tread and re-tread this terrirory many times over––after all, Amy Taubin (no fan of Joe Swanberg, but a supporter of other filmmakers who have been lumped into the genre, including Andrew Bujalski and Aaron Katz), declared the “movement” dead a full five months ago.
Why is it still necessary to qualify praise of a specific mumblecore-associated film by defaming the M-word itself, to the point where a critic actually devotes more space of a DVD review to explaining why those other films are bad than he devotes to explaining why this film is good? When will individual films and filmmakers be able to shrug off this baggage––and by writing about it at all, am I part of the problem?
Here’s an excerpt from a comment by Variety writer Peter Debruge, left on a SXSW dispatch by Aaron Hillis on Glenn Kenny’s blog:
Pretty soon, it all reduces to semantics, but the label benefits those it describes in that it connects films that, on an individual basis, would be too small to register on most people’s radar. Would Hannah Takes the Stairs or Quiet City or Mutual Appreciation have warranted a NY Times piece on their own? (Then again, is the NYT even the right forum to discuss such films, which seem to do just fine with the more selective audience of the blogosphere?)
Debruge is here giving us an object lesson in why most applications of The M Word are really, really frustrating: the genre label becomes a polite form of thinly masking the condescending assumption that none of these films can stand on their own without it. Mutual Appreciation is not a film that needs a movement as a prerequisite, especially one which mostly coalesced after its premiere. As resolutely analog as it is, it also hardly fits in with Debruge’s wider argument that “important thing is that digital cameras, home editing software and the internet have enabled a new wave of filmmakers, many of whom have become very close friends, sharing equipment, ideas, cast and crew.”
This statement is not totally false, but at the risk of sounding like a cranky Marxist, it seems like he’s really talking about the means/tools of production. Goliath and Hannah Takes The Stairs might share an actor and certain technical commonalities, but I can’t imagine two films being more different in their sensibilities. By Debruge’s rationale,The Ten Commandments and The Tingler were part of the same “movement,” because both were shot on film cameras, both were released in movie theaters, both were produced by gimmicky showmen, and both productions employed Vincent Price.
Actually, now that I think about it, The Ten Commandments and The Tingler are basically the same movie. Never mind!
Butterknife creator Joe Swanberg returns to SXSW with his fourth feature in as many years, Nights and Weekends. This one is co-written, co-directed and co-stars Greta Gerwig, of Hannah Takes the Stairs and Baghead fame, and it was shot by Matthias Grunsky, the man behind the camera on both of Andrew Bujalski’s features. Check out the trailer above, and Greta’s answers to the 4 Questions We’re Asking Everybody below.
Tell us about your movie. Who did you work with, why did you make it? Give us the reductive, 25-word or less, “It’s like [pop culture reference a] meets [pop culture reference b]!” pitch, then explain what the quick and dirty sell leaves out.
Nights and Weekends is When Harry Meets Sally meets DIE HARD without the cuteness or the explosions. It is a collaboration between Joe Swanberg and myself, with Kent Osborne, Lynn Shelton, Jay Duplass, and Elizabeth Donius in the mix. That synopsis leaves out just about everything.
Do you have a day job/a non-filmmaking occupation that raises money for your filmmaking efforts? Tell us about it.
My non-filmmaking jobs have been tutoring kids for the SATs, being a club kid, catering, babysitting, and looking for change under my couch.
This is the latest installment of a production journal written by Butterknife creator Joe Swanberg. See previous installments here and here, and watch the first episode of Butterknifehere. This entry is, in part, a response to a comment left on the first episode.
The first episode of Butterknife went online last night, and I’m very happy and excited to have it out in the world now. While Hannah Takes the Stairs was showing at the IFC Center this summer, I was over in Greenpoint, Brooklyn sleeping on Ronnie and Mary’s couch and shooting episodes of this show. I’ve always been more comfortable making work than promoting it, so it was nice to have my head buried in a new project while all the hype swirled around “mumblecore” and a bunch of movies that were months or years old.
Add to My Profile | More VideosIncidentally, I just overheard Hollywood Extra refer to the following people as “Sundance virgins:”
Bruce Willis
Sarah Jessica Parker
Matthew Broderick
Tom Hanks
Jodie Foster
Jessica Alba
Robert De Niro
Bono
Joe and Ronnie are our own Sundance virgins who felt a little defiled after falling into this “gifting” session.
In Joe and Ronnie’s latest video dispatch, Joe follows sometime collaborators Greta Gerwig and Mark Duplass around as they do press for their Sundance Spectrum entry, Baghead. Ronnie recuses himself.
Previous Sundance video coverage from Joe and Ronnie:
Your Christmas weekend time suck is here, in the form of indieWIRE’s massive 2007 Critics Poll. There Will Be Blood takes top honors, but as usual, the real fun lies in investigating the individual ballots and spotting the idiosyncrasies. Behold Andrew Bujalski’s single vote for Best Supporting Actor! Marvel at the critic who gave almost equal love to Ken Jacobs and Blades of Glory! But before you do, decide whether you’re thrilled or infuriated to see Southland Tales land ten full places ahead of Atonement (I’m the former. I think.)
Speaking of There Will Be Blood, critics poll participant Filmbrain has posted some “sketches, fragments, and other half-baked ideas” about what he declares is “easily the best film of the year.” His key contention: it’s a love letter to Stanley Kubrick.
Tomorrow is Burbanked’s second blogoversy, and he’s celebrating with a ten day party.
Finally, here’s another time suck, if you need a break from all that critic pollery: Marisa Tomei joins Natalie Portman in the ranks of unwitting screencap porn stars. NSFW, via The WoW Report.
I first saw Margot at the Wedding, Noah Baumbach’s follow-up to The Squid and the Whale, in September at Telluride. I generally disliked it, but I vowed to see it again at the New York Film Festival and, if my opinion had changed, update my original review. If anything, the second viewing solidified many of my initial, negative feelings about the movie, but I did gain deeper respect for the performances, particularly that of Nicole Kidman, who creates a magnificent villain with a vivid backstory, despite the fact that Baumbach gives her very little to work towards. I’ve updated my review to include some thoughts based on a second viewing; you’ll find the old version here, and the new version after the jump.
Francis Ford Coppola accuses Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro and Jack Nicholson of being old, rich, and lazy. While opening up another bottle of wine on his estate and noodling with his first film in ten years.
Hannah Takes the Stairs is playing the London Film Festival. Xan Brooks has a mixed review: “Hannah Takes the Stairs is a film that showcases much of what is good about independent American cinema: its naturalistic, free-form rush comes embroidered with the sort of casual epiphanies that a bigger production would have either ironed out or ignored altogether. But it is also prey to much that is bad.”
Ang Lee has trimmed “7 or 8 minutes” from the version of Lust, Caution set for Chinese release, but the film has yet to pass that country’s censorship board, and the longer the release is delayed, the greater the potential damage from piracy.
A release date and title for the Wolverine spinoff has been set. X-Men Origins: Wolverine, to be directed by Rendition/Tsotsi helmer Gavin Hood, comes out May 1, 2009.
Three new scribes have joined the exclusive New York Film Critics Circle: Melissa Anderson (Time Out New York), Elizabeth Weitzman (NY Daily News) and Steven Snyder (New York Sun).
Mumblecore on a hot plate. Karina gets tired of the spitfire debating over Hannah Takes the Stairsand the rest of the mumblecore movies playing at IFC Center this week. Paul and Kevin review LOL (on DVD this week) and Quiet City for all non-new yorkers.
Stephen Holden’s New York Times review of Quiet City is extremely favorable towards the film, and extremely skeptical of what he calls “the movie genre labeled mumblecore … a filmmaking sensibility, filtered through Jean-Luc Godard and John Cassavetes and distantly related to punk, with the spirit of defiance replaced by resignation to the art of diminished expectations.”
This would seem to stand in sharp contrast to Matt Zoller Seitz’ Hannah Takes the Stairsreview of a week ago, which was lukewarm on the film itself (”snappy but unadventurous,” he called it), but generally enthusiastic about its place within an exciting wave of American independent film. Still, both critics say the party’s over. Seitz blames Hollywood for luring these artists away:
Hannah plays like an incidental swan song, a signpost marking the point when mumblecore became a nostalgic label rather than a present-tense cultural force, and its most acclaimed practitioners moved on to bigger things. Mr. Swanberg’s third movie is a graduation photo in motion: D.I.Y., class of ’07.
Holden, apparently less invested than part-time filmmaker Seitz in championing grassroots filmmaking on principle, blames the movies:
More news from the front lines of The New Talkies coming soon, but here’s a tidbit for the capitalists: Chris Wells, who starred in and co-wrote LOL and who now works at the IFC Center, told me before the 6:05 PM screening of Hannah Takes the Stairs that in the film’s first three shows, it had already made enough money to cover the budget of Joe Swanberg’s first film, Kissing on the Mouth. I caught up with Chris again later in the evening, at which point he told me that not only had the 8:00 PM Hannah show sold out, but Swanberg’s third film had, in its first day of release, grossed more the budgets of his first two features combined. If you know anything about Joe, you know that we’re not talking about millions of dollars here, but I still think it’s impressive evidence that the DIY model doesn’t have to be an economic disaster.
The New Talkies festival is barely underway (as I type this, the first screening of Hannah Takes the Stairs is scheduled to begin in about 2 minutes), and already forces more powerful than you or I are contemplating a mumblecore backlash. I’m still trying to actually write about the movies before heading out to IFC’s Hannah premiere party (which, if Twitter is to be believed, is shaping up to be the event of the season for people like me who rarely leave the house), but while I’m busy with that, here’s a round up of the circulating wariness. I’m sure I’ll have more concrete thoughts on the health of the meme over the course of the next week.
Stu has a long makings-of-the-movement piece over at The Reeler, including the now-obligatory “don’t call it a movement” quote from Andrew Bujalski. “I feel like the things that these films all have in common are the least interesting things about them. It’s the differences that make them interesting. You read the synopses — ‘These are films made cheaply about young white people talking to each other.’ And of course it sounds excruciating. And there are plenty of films that fit that description that are excruciating. The things that make the films good are not that.” Also: Joe Swanberg worries about a post-Pulp Fiction-esque wave of imitators.
Anthony Kaufman says we’re killing Mumblecore by talking about it. “If these films are hyped, they may be doomed. One of the joys of stumbling upon a charming or sophisticated or funny low-budget ‘mumblecore’ film is just that, stumbling upon it, whether given to you on DVD by a friend or the filmmaker himself or walking into one of them unknowingly at a film festival.” Still, he has his own entry into the hype ring: a Mumblecore video primer.
In a semi-positive review of Hannah in the New York Times, Matt Zoller Seitz says we’ve already killed Mumblecore by hyping the filmmakers to the point where they’re now able to get real jobs. “Hannah plays like an incidental swan song, a signpost marking the point when mumblecore became a nostalgic label rather than a present-tense cultural force, and its most acclaimed practitioners moved on to bigger things.” The implication is that, right at the breakthrough moment, right when the masses are maybe starting to care, the filmmakers are moving on to studio work and leaving their audience behind. But Kaufman says Seitz is just thinking of himself: “If Seitz is right, and Hannah already marks the movement’s premature passing into obsolescence, it may only be because he wants it to stay something that he caught at a film festival and is not reviewing for The New York Times.”
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
Here’s an excerpt from a comment by Variety writer Peter Debruge, left on a SXSW dispatch by Aaron Hillis on Glenn Kenny’s 
Your Christmas weekend time suck is here, in the form of indieWIRE’s massive 
Mumblecore on a hot plate. Karina gets tired of the spitfire debating over 
Stephen Holden’s New York Times review
