Azazel Jacobs‘ Momma’s Man, which premiered at Sundance in 2008 and was rescued from the ashes of ThinkFilm by Kino for a theatrical release last summer — is finally out on DVD today. The package features a pretty impressive slate of extras, including Momma’s Family, described as a 42 minute “featurette on the clash realities that takes place in Momma’s Azazel Jacobs returns to the set of the film and can’t leave”; Capitalism: Child Labor, a 2006 short by Azazel’s father (and Momma’s co-star) Ken Jacobs; plus deleted scenes and an audio conversation with the Jacobs family.
Kino’s site has buying information; you can also check out my review of Momma’s Man, our interview with Azazel from Sundance, and some further thoughts on his three features.
“What is indie cinema?” asks Richard Vine at The Guardian. He runs though a brief history of Indiewood, notes that the London Film Festival put Azazel Jacobs, Barry Jenkins and Joe Swanberg on a panel promoting a new wave of truly independent filmmaking, and then rhetorically wonders if his initial question is irrelevant:
But is indie a meaningful term anymore, or is it just shorthand for “cool”, “edgy” or “offbeat”? Does it matter if the so-called faux-indie production methods result in decent films such as Juno and Little Miss Sunshine that play at easy-to-access multiplexes alongside the CGI sequels and threequels?
To answer the three questions posed in the above paragraph: Yes, no, yes. What follows is essentially the same argument I’ve made one thousand times over the past three years, but apparently there are still some people who need to hear it.
This review originally appeared in slightly different form during Sundance 2008. For further thoughts on Momma’s Man and the work of Azazel Jacobs, see these notes on his recent BAM retrospective.
When a filmmaker casts his own parents as parents––in a film about an adult and his relationship to his parents upon returning to his childhood home, a film which said filmmaker shoots *in* his childhood home––you’d expect (or maybe fear) that the result would be meta-personal to the point of solipsism. But what’s really surprising about Azazel Jacob’s Momma’s Man, which stars his experimental filmmaker father Ken Jacobs and mother Flo Jacobs and was shot in the Manhattan loft in which the family has lived for decades, is that it feels completely universal. The story of a 30-something husband and father of a newborn who extends a stay at his parents’ ramshackle New York apartment indefinitely, it’s an incredible portrait of the final phase of coming of age, the transition from being parented to parenting.
First telling both his parents and his wife back home that the airline is giving him the runaround about rescheduling a canceled return flight, then tailoring his excuses for each discreet party as he needs to buy time in increments, Mikey (Matt Boren) takes advantage of his parents’ bemused hospitality to take a winter vacation. He spends his days visiting with old friends (including a recent parolee with unexpected musical passions) and trying to make new ones, his nights combing through boxes of old notebooks, love letters and comic books. In a lofted bed just feet from his sleeping parents, Mikey pulls out a guitar and plays a love song he apparently wrote in high school. Overhearing the lyrics, “Fuck fuck fuck you/I hope you die too,” his parents exchange a worried glance; maybe there’s more to this visit than they’ve been led to believe.
With the movie opening in New York tomorrow, Kino has posted a trailer for Azazel Jacobs’ Momma’s Manon YouTube. If you haven’t seen the film, I think this clip is a pretty strong encapsulation of its overall mashup of slapstick and melancholy. Also, the reviews a starting to roll in, and J. Hoberman’s got a must-read take at the Village Voice. “Although my most vivid memories of Aza Jacobs are as the unnamed infant installed in a crib in a Johnson City apartment and called, for what seemed like a very long time, “Mr. Baby,” I’ve known his parents for nearly 40 years,” he writes. “And so, while I cannot evaluate Momma’s Man with an outsider’s clarity, can vouch for the authenticity…”
At age 35, with just three features under his belt, Azazel Jacobs seems like an unlikely candidate for a retrospective, but if such an endeavor pumps up the profile of his first two, lesser-seen films whilst effectively promoting his soon-to-be-released Momma’s Man, I’m not going to argue against it. BAM will devote five nights of programming to Jacobs this week, with all three of his features shown alongside two films selected by the director: the 1980 Clash vehicle Rude Boy, and Aki Kaurismaki’s La Vie de Boheme.
The series opens tonight with a screening of Jacobs’ second film, The GoodTimesKid. A punk rock fantasia shot on 35mm stock infamously stolen from a Hollywood feature, the film stars Jacobs as Rodolfo, a scrappy brooder who kicks his way out of domestic complacency with girlfriend Diaz (played with an irresistible mix of strength and eccentricity by Jacobs’ drop-dead real-life GF, Sara Diaz). In order to join the army, Rodolfo steals the identity of another man named Rodolfo (Gerardo Naranjo), a loner who lives on a liquor-littered little boat. When the first Rodolfo walks out of Diaz’ life on the night she’s throwing a party for his birthday, the second Rodolfo walks right in. Diaz, hungry for the attention and affection that she can’t squeeze out of her Rudolfo, is open to a replacement Rodolfos, at least for a night.
Anthony Kaufman brings news that THINKFilm has given up distribution rights on Azazel Jacobs’ Momma’s Man to Kino International. THINK announced their acquisition of the film in early March, about six weeks after the film was unveiled at Sundance. Just last week, THINK’s Mark Urman told Kaufmann that they planned on going through with the release of both Momma’s and Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, saying that if the company “didn’t think we could get what they deserve, I wouldn’t be proceeding with them. These films are not cash-intensive films. These films will get everything they need.” No word yet on whether or not the troubled company still thinks they can give Marina Zenovich’s doc what it deserves.
Another day, another line-up for a festival that I’ll be attending in June. This time it’s CineVegas, and in addition to some of the familiar fest circuit favorites (Momma’s Man, Gonzo, Goliath), there are some exciting surprises. The Circuit has the full lineup. Here’s a sampling of what I hope to check out over the course of my three or four days in town:
Two films by Abel Ferrara, including Go-Go Tales (screening in the Diamond Discoveries section for films without distribution––thus squashing last fall’s rampant rumors that IFC had picked the film up around the time of the New York Film Festival?) and the US premiere of Ferrara’s doc about the Hotel Chelsea, Chelsea on the Rocks.
Finally, Lillian and Dan: A no-fi indie which I’ve been looking forward to seeing ever since The Cinetrix described it as “like a Sebadoh cassette stuck in a hatchback’s tape deck.” There’s a hypnotic trailer on MySpace.
Sonic Youth: Sleeping Nights Awake: A concert doc, shot on digital video by seven Reno teenagers in the crowd and backstage at the band’s July 4, 2006 show. See a trailer above.
Dark Streets: Starring Bijou Phillips and Gabriel Mann, Variety’s Mike Jones describes it as a “noir musical.” That’s a combination of words to which I can’t say no.
Exciting times! Azazel Jacobs’ Momma’s Man has spread through the festival circuit like a deadpan, unexpectedly emotionally resonant virus (see our interview and review from Sundance) on its way to eventual theatrical release via ThinkFilm. Now, Jacobs’ previous film, The GoodTimesKid, is screening in Brooklyn for free on Monday night, as part of the Brooklyn Independent Cinema series at Barbes.
The GoodTimesKid, which stars Jacobs himself opposite girlfriend Sara Diaz, was famously shot on 35mm stolen from the truck of a big Hollywood production; the film’s tagline works the procurement of the tools of production into the narrative by branding it “a story about stolen love and stolen identities, shot on stolen film.” The fact that this is a DIY production even becomes the subject of the trailer, which consists of a montage of shots of the actors, slating each scene with a hand clap.
I’ve embedded that trailer above; theoretically, there are a number of clips from the film on MySpace, but due to the, um, ideosyncrasies of MySpace video, I haven’t been able to get any of them to load.
New Directors/New Films, The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual Spring retrospective of hits, overlooked gems and conversation starters from the recent festival circuit, opens tomorrow night with Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Frozen River. I won’t be covering the series extensively this year, partially because I was in Austin when the press screenings started and partially because we’ve already covered several of the films on the schedule at previous festivals. For full coverage, I’d recommend Slant Magazine; I imagine we’ll see some stuff from our friends at The House Next Door as well. After the jump, you’ll find a look at some of the films on the schedule that we’ve had previous encounters with.
ThinkFilm has announced their acquisition of Azazel Jacobs’ Momma’s Man, for theatrical release after its New York premiere at New Directors/New Films next month. We reviewed the film (which I love) when it premiered at Sundance, and also interviewed Azazel.
Joan Cusack is playing Isla Fisher’s mom in a romantic comedy about a New York magazine journalist with a lot of credit card debt (ah, romance). Before you ask, “Wait, does that even make mathematical sense?”––yes, it does. If Joan gave birth when she was 14. Eight years before playing a teenager in Sixteen Candles.
Speaking of fuzzy math, I don’t understand these figures at all. Turner Broadcasting (TBS, TNT, etc) has picked up broadcast rights to a number of films that will theoretically be released by New Line and Picturehouse later this year. Variety says, “The coin involved in Turner’s purchase…[comes] in at a high end of about 11% of the eventual domestic box office gross of the four New Line pictures.” How do you calculate eventual gross on films that have not only not opened, but which lie in limbo because their ostensible distributor no longer really exists? According to this story, Warners execs have just started screening films on New Line’s leftovers, and questions like “What pictures will ultimately make it to the slate, and when will they be released?” have yet to be answered. Isn’t the eventual gross of, say, The Women remake heavily dependent on whether or not Warner Brothers gives it the full push as if it were one of its own, or, conversely, dumps it in September when all their “real” fall films are opening at Toronto?
Anthony Kaufman investigates the “little mini-studio” of producer Paul Mezey, the man behind a host of notable recent indies, including Sugar and Momma’s Man. What’s Mezey’s secret? Location. Says the Pennsylvania-based producer, “I would have sunk long ago if I had to raise a family in New York.”
Lady Wakasa informs us that the Film Society of Lincoln Center will be screening a new print of one of Louise Brooks’ early films, Beggars of Life.
This is where we start getting smutty: Tilda Swinton took her 29-year-old boyfriend to the BAFTAs whilst “68-year-old John Byrne, her partner of 18 years, stayed at home in the north of Scotland, looking after the couple’s ten-year-old twins Xavier and Honor.” Why can’t she have a reality show?
Finally, “in honor of Valentine’s Day,” i09 has “started asking random people to tell us about their science fiction sex experiences.” I guess I’ve never had a “science fiction sex experience”, because I have no idea what that means.
When a filmmaker casts his own parents as parents in a film, which he shoots in his childhood home, about an adult and his relationship to his parents upon returning to his childhood home, you’d expect (or maybe fear) that the result would be meta-personal to the point of solipsism. But what’s really surprising about Azazel Jacob’s Momma’s Man, which stars his experimental filmmaker father Ken Jacobs and mother Flo Jacobs and was shot in the Manhattan loft in which the family has lived for decades, is that it feels completely universal. The story of a 30-something husband and father of a newborn who extends a stay at his parents’ ramshackle New York apartment indefinitely, it’s an incredible portrait of the final phase of coming of age, transitioning from being parented to parenting.
First telling both his parents and his wife back home that the airline is giving him the runaround about rescheduling a canceled return flight, then tailoring his excuses for each discreet party as he needs to buy time in increments, Mikey (Matt Boren) takes advantage of his parents’ bemused hospitality to carve out a winter vacation. He spends his days visiting with old friends (including a recent parolee with unexpected musical passions) and trying to make new ones, his nights combing through boxes of old notebooks, love letters and comic books. In a lofted bed just feet from his sleeping parents, Mikey pulls out a guitar and plays a love song he apparently wrote in high school. Overhearing the lyrics, “Fuck fuck fuck you/I hope you die too,” his parents exchange a worried glance; maybe there’s more to this visit than they’ve been led to believe.
Yesterday, I made a list of five films amongst Sundance’s four competition slates that I’m particularly excited to see. Today, here’s a look at another film films that I’m looking forward to, culled from the Spectrum, New Frontier, and Park City at Midnight sidebars. This list was MUCH harder to weed down to five, and as you’ll see, I had to cheat a bit. Here we go…
Excerpt From the Official Synopsis: “Humorous and poignant, Momma’s Man wrestles with universal themes, but its strength lies in its deeply personal details. Writer/director Azazel Jacobs cast his own parents and shot the film in their apartment, where he grew up.”
Why I’m Interested: Jacobs “own parents” are Flo Jacobs and experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs; in the film’s press notes, he says he cast his own family because he “couldn’t picture anyone else in their bed, in their kitchen, or in their place (although Peter Falk and Shelly Duval would be in my movie-movie version of it).” If the notion of the guy who made Star Spangled to Death channeling Columbo isn’t enough for you, I don’t know what would be.
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.
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“What is indie cinema?” asks Richard Vine at The Guardian. He runs though a brief history of Indiewood, notes that the London Film Festival put Azazel Jacobs, Barry Jenkins and Joe Swanberg on a panel promoting a new wave of truly independent filmmaking, and then rhetorically wonders if his initial question is irrelevant:
New Directors/New Films
Anthony Kaufman
