Karina reviewed Present Company and at SXSW sat down with Frank Ross, the director, and three actors from the movie: Anthony Baker, Sasha Gioppo and Tamara Fana. I helped with the recording, since Karina has professed herself “bad at interviews,” but what you’ll notice is how she gets right to the interesting bits.
SXSW 2008: Frank Ross interview [6:26m]:
Play Now |
Download
SXSW 2008: Frank Ross and cast interview
Present Company
One Minute to Nine is one of those documentaries where the right footage falls in the hands of a really gifted filmmaker who knows intuitively how to treat it, and creates something that will blow you away. It begins as the story of the last five days before a battered wife who killed her husband goes to prison. What it becomes is a Hitcockian thriller that leaves you terminally wondering about justice and how messily it’s dealt out.
I interviewed director Tommy Davis (Mojados: Through the Night - currently in my queue) about when he discovered this movie was going way beyond his original scope and why it’s causing him to “give a lot of bad interviews.”
SXSW 2008: Tommy Davis interview [8:47m]:
Play Now |
Download
SXSW 2008: Tommy Davis interview
(Written transcript after the jump) …Read more
Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Stevie) is one of the best documentary filmmakers alive. (Listen to his interview here.) He may be drawn to an issue to start a project but, unlike Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock, he doesn’t investigate issues. He takes on the much greater challenge of showing us a fully rounded human being for whom the issue is a backdrop, one of many. It’s the difference between meeting the poster-child for an issue–say AIDS in Africa–and being that poster-child’s best friend. For At the Death House Door, the issue is the Death Penalty. But the accomplishment is how Steve James and co-director, Peter Gilbert, make us intimate with the complicated life of Reverend Carroll Pickett.
…Read more
FilmCouch is coming from the exotic Austin, TX. Guess what we talk about.
That’s right.
Movies at SXSW.
To name a few: Yeast, Medicine for Melancholy, One Minute to Nine, Wellness, The Promotion and the unforgettable Andre Williams (Agile, Mobile, Hostile). Note: After we recorded this podcast, Wellness won the SXSW Grand Jury Award.
FilmCouch 61
SXSW news, reviews, interviews and discussions
Mark Webber has been an actor in the independent scene for a long time (Jesus’ Son, Storytelling, Broken Flowers) and he premiered his first feature film as director here at SXSW. Explicit Ills has an incredible cast including Paul Dano, Lou Taylor Pucci and Rosario Dawson getting a run for their money from non-actors like 8 year old Francisco Burgos.
Frankie Shaw also stars in Explicit Ills. In the “green room” at the Alamo Draft House theater, I talk to her and Mark Webber about how the movie is less story, more mosaic of an American city: Philadelphia. And how casting a city in the starring role exposes the real and present ills facing our country.
SXSW 2008: Mark Webber & Frankie Shaw interview [6:00m]:
Play Now |
Download
SXSW 2008: Mark Webber & Frankie Shaw interview
Explicit llls
SXSW news, reviews, interviews and discussions
I have previously only attended the South by Southwest Film Festival as a feature film director (in both 2006 and 2007, with Cocaine Angel and Silver Jew, respectively). This year, however, I have no new film to present. Until I can find my way back into the director’s chair, it looks like I have a new calling in film festival life, that of a film reviewer (Hammer to Nail). Now that I’ve had a chance to settle into the groove of this new festival perspective, I thought it might be interesting to compare and contrast the life of a film director versus that of a film reviewer, specifically with regards to SXSW. Let us break down a day-in-the-life of each and see how they measure up. …Read more
In the early 90’s a small group of kids gravitated to Aaron Rose’s Alleged Gallery in New York City. It wasn’t so much a gallery as hang out spot that used to be a storefront, but to pass time this group–loosely knit through skateboarding and punk music–experimented creatively. They were the dispossessed losers of suburban America and as Mike Mills, whose one of them, says, “If you’re not dispossessed, why make art? Why try to save your life by making something?”
Having fun creating only to look back and realize that creating was your survival, then having to negotiate getting back to that fun spot so you can survive is the path of Beautiful Losers. Aaron Rose’s documentary is a painfully funny coming-of-age story about some of today’s most influential artists and it follows one rule: Don’t take us seriously. …Read more
Natural Causes is a personal movie about that couple who everyone knows shouldn’t be together. Everyone except the couple, that is. Michael Lerman, Alex Cannon and Paul Cannon did what, I think, young filmmakers should do more of–have your idea, get some actors and shoot it before you have time to think about it. That way you learn something fast.
We talk about the creative fertility in breaking up and the invention of the “Awesome Cam.”
SXSW 2008: Lerman, Cannon, Cannon interview [6:48m]:
Play Now |
Download
SXSW 2008: Lerman, Cannon, Cannon interview
SXSW news, reviews, interviews and discussions
Steve Conrad took two actors known for broad comedy, Sean William Scott and John C. Reilly, and cast them in something dark and fresh. The Promotion plays to their funniest qualities, but also allows for some darker moments of real middle-class anxiety and racial tension. I talked to writer/director Steve Conrad about some of his decisions for this unusual comedy and how it all began in a grocery store parking lot.
SXSW 2008: Steve Conrad interview [7:15m]:
Play Now |
Download
SXSW 2008: Steve Conrad interview
The Promotion
SXSW news, reviews, interviews and discussions
What I didn’t expect from Beautiful Losers was how much fun it would be to watch a documentary of the most unpretentious, unmoody and successful artists of my generation. All the artists (Harmony Korine, Mike Mills, Stephen Powers, Thomas Campbell, Margaret Kilgallen, Shepard Fairey, Jo Jackson, Ed Templeton, Geoff McFetridge, Chris Johanson, Barry McGee, Aaron Rose) seem like they’re unconsciously competing to steal the show and win biggest laugh (Harmony wins, in my book). But the best part of Aaron Rose’s movie is how it transcends its genre and becomes a coming of age movie like I’ve not seen in a doc before.
Aaron Rose is the director, but his legendary Alleged Gallery was the incubator for these artists in the early 90’s. I talk to him about being at the center of this scene back then and what it meant for him and his buddies to “grow up.”
SXSW 2008: Aaron Rose interview [7:39m]:
Play Now |
Download
SXSW 2008: Aaron Rose interview
(Written transcript after the jump) …Read more
The Reverend Carroll Pickett (whose interview I’ll post later) either fell in or was called to a ministry wherein he walked 95 death row inmates through their final hours and, ultimately, to the gurney where they were executed by lethal injection. He’s a stoic Texan and fascinating man explored in Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Stevie) and Peter Gilbert’s new documentary, At the Death House Door.
We talk about unwrapping this complicated minister and whether or not they planted a bottle of wine at the family dinner where Rev. Pickett’s children interrogate him about his job.
SXSW 2008 interview: Steve James, Peter Gilbert [9:49m]:
Play Now |
Download
SXSW 2008 interview: Steve James and Peter Gilbert
(Written transcript available after the jump)
…Read more
Friday night, the movie 21 had its big red carpet premier at SXSW 2008. It’s a true story about an MIT student who bamboozles the Vegas blackjack tables until he gets caught. For me, I thought it’d be fun to hang out on the red carpet here in Austin, which is not known for its red carpets (the one I was standing on was about eight feet long), and see what happens. My story is as follows:
8:30 pm - An hour before the premier - The fidgety reporters and photographers around me are yucking it up about lenses and such when I see a group of kids wearing professional make up and hear shutters start to snap. “It’s the guy from Friday Night Lights!” Someone exclaims, then, “… it’s a show on NBC.” I wait for the flash to charge on my $99 point-and-click camera…
Two girls wearing tiaras take a picture of him…
But my attention turns to this guy–who I’m developing a little man-crush on–and I think he’ll step on the carpet, but he’s apparently just checking text messages…
Then these two step in front of my camera (more after the jump)…
…Read more
