“What has happened to our family? We were so promising!”
So ponders one elder member of the artistic clan at the center of Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro –– and so, one imagines, the film’s detractors will be eager to snark about the director and his filmmaking progeny. FFC is oft-mocked for having whored himself out to studios in the 90s, only to squander the generosity of an indie arm with his pretentious “return to personal filmmaking,” 2007’s Youth Without Youth. As for the younger Coppola generation, Roman went from making highly-cinematic music videos to directing the promising mod homage CQ, but has since apparently done little but shoot second until for his dad, sister and Wes Anderson. After winning an Oscar for the beyond-slight Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola made a personal gesture of her own with the masterfully stylish Marie Antoinette — which subsequently dropped her from the favor of much of the critical class.
Marie Antoinette is a useful film to talk about in the same breath as Tetro, not because they’re similar in terms of means of production (they’re not: the former was a studio-funded biopic banked on North American stars that was considered a disappointment when it failed to build on Lost’s box office and awards tally, the latter a self-financed, self-distributed late-career experiment that can substantively please or disappoint only its maker), but because the finished projects nonetheless share a common DNA. Both films are so drunk on the melding of disparate cultural references (for the daughter, corset porn and Gang of Four; for the father, partner dance musicals and Fellini) that they read as dewy confessions from the filmmaker, feature-length love letters to their own aesthetics, the specific things they personally think are beautiful.
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While I very much appreciate the invitation, this is an independent film, self-financed and self released, and I felt that being invited for a non-competition gala screening wasn’t true to the personal and independent nature of this film. More important than Cannes, our team can focus all our time, energy and resources into the U.S. release this June 11th
Above: in a statement published on Mike Jones’ Blog, Francis Ford Coppola explains why he’s not going to bring his next film, Tetro, to the Cannes Film Festival next month. Remember, the one that inspired him to vlog about the brilliance of Vincent Gallo? The phrasing of the statement makes one wonder if Coppola’s indie spirit would have remained as paramount if Tetro had been invted to compete…
Same family, very different headline: FFC’s daughter Sofia has inked a deal to make her fourth film. Somewhere is described in Variety as a “dramedy” in about “a bad-boy actor stumbling through a life of excess at the Chateau Marmont. With an unexpected visit from his 11-year-old daughter, he is forced to reexamine his life.” Stephen Dorff plays the father, Elle Fanning plays the daughter. Sounds potentially unwatchable!
A site for Francis Ford Coppola’s upcoming, Argentina-shot, Vincent Gallo-starring Tetro has launched, complete with a video missive from the director himself. In the clip, Coppola says the film “deals with almost mythic proportions,” calls Gallo “really quite a brilliant man”, and promises more video in the near future. Bated breath, etc.
Video game blogs have a way of reminding me that I’m a big girl. The boys at Joystiq (some of whom are former colleagues and friendly acquaintances of mine) drop terms like “microtransactions” and “exergaming” and suddenly my brain turns off and I have an overwhelming urge to watch Tyra. Funnily enough, I picked up the former term (which still means nothing to me) from reading this story about a perspective game that would ostensibly be tailored to the girly market. Yes, apparently Juno, the little indie choo-choo train that could, the crossover underdog that scraped up $100 million thanks to a cleverly oppressive marketing campaign on pure pluck alone, is in the process of being turned into a video game.
We could speculate for hours as to what this game might actually look like (you get a jug of Sunny Delight every time you get Michael Cera to wear a blueberry condom!), but I thought it would be more fun to think about what it would be like if actual indie films were to have their brands extended into the gamer realm. Bearing in mind that my knowledge of video games pretty much begins and ends with Mario Kart, check out five ideas, for films including Gummo and Mutual Appreciation, after the jump.
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Blue, Bunny Trailer #2
Sometime last week, YouTube removed a trailer for a movie called Blue, Bunny, in response to a request from Vincent Gallo, who apparently complained that the clip violates his copyright on his directorial effort, The Brown Bunny. As you are probably aware, The Brown Bunny is an experimental art film in which Chloe Sevingy famously administers real live oral sex on the fearless director himself. Blue, Bunny is apparently a sunny comedy that takes place on the set of an independent film in which the director/lead actor attempts to convince his blonde starlet that filming her administering real live oral sex on the fearless director is, in fact, necessary.
But aside from the obvious inspiration for its parody, Blue doesn’t look much like Brown at all, nor does it directly reference Vincent Gallo. And perhaps rightly, its makers are somewhat puzzled as to how/why Gallo was able to justify its removal from YouTube. “Frankly, we’re stunned that the trailer tickled Gallo’s radar,” reads a blurb on Blue, Bunny’s website. “Surely a celebrity of his stature doesn’t have the time to scan the internet for every obscure reference to his name.”
It’s also not entirely clear which trailer Gallo demanded YouTube remove. Two are currently available on MySpace. The first barely explicates its narrative connection to The Brown Bunny before the title appears. The second trailer, embedded above, is a little more explicit, but it also directly references the copyright act protecting fair use, indicating that it might have been put together in response to Gallo.
Regardless: not only does Gallo come out of this looking like a trigger-happy ass, but is YouTube so lawsuit-scared that they’re now removing every clip they get a complaint on without bothering to consider actionable validity? You be the judge.
