All these wonderful things

The Life of a Documentary Filmmaker/Film Writer

A peek behind the blogging/making curtain.

Driving today, my 4 (almost 5) year old daughter said to me, "Dad, I want you to get a job so that we have money."

My wife/producer says, "Well, actually, Daddy has like 3 or 4 jobs."

To which my daughter says, "Yeah, but I want him to have a job that he goes to every day."

Understanding the difference between freelancing and permanence must be some kind of sign of the coming adolescence (apocalypse). 

David Hudson to Depart GreenCine, Launch The Daily at IFC.com

A huge piece of film blog news comes across the transom just before the Christmas break - David Hudson, who for the past five+ years has been an essential daily stop for film lovers at GreenCine Daily, will depart his current home for a new blog, The Daily, to be launched at IFC.com.

Aaron Hillis, omnipresent film critic, writer and principal at Benten Films, will take the reigns at GreenCine come the new year.

Here is Hudson's farewell announcement at GreenCine and here is Allison Willmore with the welcome wagon at IFC.

2008 IN REVIEW: Emailing with IN A DREAM's Jeremiah Zagar

Part three in our series of conversations with some of the year's top nonfiction filmmakers.  Jeremiah Zagar's IN A DREAM premiered at SXSW this year and went on to win the Emerging Filmmaker award at Full Frame.  This fall, it took two honors - Best Documentary and Best Editing - at the Woodstock Film Festival, and was later named as one of 15 films on the Academy's Documentary Feature shortlist.

In this online conversation, I ask Jeremiah about his work with his collaborators, escaping the cliches of the "film about my folks" and he confesses to beating "the piss out of" a piñata.

ATWT: Of all the genres of nonfiction, the "film about my parents" always seems the most fraught with danger.  You run the risk of thinking that what's interesting or damaging to you may not be so compelling to audiences.  But your father chose to be extraordinarily open for your camera.  Was there a point during his confessionals to you that convinced you that you had a feature length film on your hands or - knowing your parents - did you have a sense from the start?

Jeremiah Zagar: I like to think of this film as a documentary love story that just so happens to be about my parents. In other words, the reason for making it was never personal. I started when I was 19 because my mother asked me to film my father — I think just because she felt we should spend more time together — and I did it because I trust her. I never expected it to amount to anything.

Then about three months into shooting, I took my father down to West Virginia where he would be isolated from his work and from my mother. Here, he began to speak to the camera in a way he never had before. It was extremely intimate and funny and sometimes a bit terrifying. We were supposed to stay for ten days but after five my father couldn't take it anymore and we drove home with thirteen hours of really good tape. I watched the footage over and over for the next three years, picking out my favorite moments and stories. What became clear from the footage to me and my producer Jeremy Yaches was that we could make some beautiful, surreal scenes using 35mm cutaways and that if we had a verité narrative arc maybe we could combine the surreal with the hyper real to create something exciting and hopefully new. So I went back to Philly often and shot my family, waiting for something to happen. And eventually something did.

I said to someone after I saw your film that it was "achingly beautiful".  Thinking about that, I think there's this sense of both personal and artistic longing, which is perhaps resonant to others who try to create art.  But I felt that the work you did with your cinematographers, animators and co-editor was kind of a perfect example of how to use artistic craft to compliment the art of your subject, without overwhelming it.  How did you approach the look and feel of the film in relation to your father's art?

We felt from the very beginning that in order for my father's art to inform the narrative, it had to be tangible. The audience had to feel like they were in it, like they could reach into the screen or that the screen could reach out to them. Director of Photography Erik Messerschmidt and I felt strongly that in order to achieve maximum color and detail, the work had to be filmed on 35mm. At points, we also wanted to be moving on a steadi-cam with a 10mm lens so that the art was, in a sense, surrounding the viewer.

With recreations such as the fish gutting, we applied the same principal of tangibility but in a different way. By filming the fish in 90mm macro close-ups, the imagery could become separated from reality as it might in a dream; or in this case a nightmare.

Later in the process, along with animators Cassidy Gearhart & Yussef Cole, I used that same principal on the etchings. They were so dense and intricate to begin with that we felt for them to have real meaning, we needed to isolate key areas and show those parts drawling-on so that the audience felt like they were witness to the very act of creation.

Working with Keiko Deguchi was a whole other story. She gave the film a depth in a way that I never could have alone. She brought not only editorial doc and feature experience but also life experience that I just didn't have. We worked together wonderfully. She would come over and cut an amazing scene but it would have large black spaces in it and I would spend the nights filling them with slides and archival footage. It felt very organic to work with her and I miss it very much.

Keiko and my consulting editors Ross Kauffman and Sam Pollard taught me so much about editing. It's hard to even express it in words. We cut this film for three years straight, and in the process there was just an immense amout of incredible collaborations. With my parents, with Jeremy, with our composers Kelli Scarr and Nick from the The Books. With our exective producers, Ross, Pamela Tanner Boll and Geralyn White Dreyfous. With my sound designer & mixer Tom Paul. We all had the same goal—and that was to make as beautiful and powerful a film as possible.

2008 IN REVIEW: Emailing with TROUBLE THE WATER's Carl Deal and Tia Lessin

Yesterday, we opened our series of interviews with some of the year's top nonfiction filmmakers with MAN ON WIRE's James Marsh.  Well, if any film rivaled the attention MAN ON WIRE received at festivals this year, it had to be Carl Deal and Tia Lessin's TROUBLE THE WATER, an intimate portrait of the effects of Hurricane Katrina on one New Orleans couple.

TROUBLE won the Grand Jury prize at both the Sundance Film Festival and at Full Frame and this fall's theatrical release via Zeitgeist has been pretty successful.  It's on the Academy's Documentary feature short list and is regarded by most as a favorite to be nominated.

I asked Carl and Tia about their Sundance premiere, their unique theatrical outreach and about the relationship between them as filmmakers and their subjects, Kim and Scott Roberts.

ATWT: We're nearing the one year anniversary of TROUBLE THE WATER's premiere. For all of the folks who are headed to Sundance with a film next month, I'm curious what you were feeling at about this time last year. Were you finished, still finishing? Did you have any expectations for what you thought the response might be?

Carl Deal: Feeling? We were too busy finishing the film to feel anything really except stress and a buzz from too much coffee. Those six weeks leading up to Sundance were pretty intense. Between the online, the color correct and the sound mix, we worked straight through Thanksgiving and Christmas, but the payoff was seeing and hearing the film come alive, day by day. After we shipped the finished film to Park City, we took a couple of days off tocelebrate the New Year with Kimberly and Scott in New Orleans.

Tia Lessin: We were thrilled to be headed to Sundance, but weren’t really sure what to expect. Carl had never been. I had been to the festival ten years earlier with THE BIG ONE and broke my knee skiing, so my lasting Sundance memory was not of screening at the Eccles, but of being carried down the slopes by the ski patrol in a wire basket. We just hoped for a better outcome this time around.

Carl: Nothing could have prepared us for our premiere that Sunday afternoon at the Library. It was the first time that all of us – our crew, Kimberly and Scott, and all our families, watched the film on the big screen with a real audience, and the house that day was packed. The response was overwhelming, emotional, more than we had dared fantasize. The audience seemed to really feel it, and so did we.

Tia, you've directed before, but for much of this decade you've been producing. I'm always struck by how producing and directing overlap in some key ways and yet how important in can be as a director to have a strong, experienced producer working with you. Can you talk about those roles and how they came together in your work here?

Tia: In my mind, a producer is responsible for executing a director’s vision, whether in the production office, in the field or in the edit room. Pulling out all the stops. It’s an intimate, creative collaboration, especially in documentary film, which is so execution dependent. At times the roles of producer and director can be at odds -- as a director, you want additional shooting days, more music, another week in the mix, no green M&Ms. But as a producer, you worry about what those creative decisions are costing, and how to actually get it done within very real budget and time constraints. It’s a challenge to do both jobs at once, but a lot of documentary filmmakers do. For me, producing has become second nature. It’s one of the things I bring to the table, just like some directors who shoot their own work, and others who edit their own work.

Carl and I, as directors, have strong producers in each other. We’re two very stubborn and fairly determined individuals -- neither of us easily takes no for an answer, but are saved (we hope) by the fact that we seldom give no for an answer. And in the end, we never ever let financial constraints dictate creative choices.

One example of how this came into play with TROUBLE THE WATER was when I insisted that we needed a particular Massive Attack song to use under the audio montage of 911 calls, and, even though we knew we couldn’t afford to license it, Carl approached them anyway. They fell in love with the film and offered to score the whole thing. Carl and I have a strong base of trust and the experience of coming through for each other over the years, of making the impossible possible.

There was a big discussion earlier this year when it was revealed that Errol Morris paid some of his interview subjects. My thoughts at the time were that what a lot of commentators didn't understand was that, in a lot of cases, our subjects are put to work during the festival run and theatrical release of the film. They come to screenings, they do interviews, which, granted, can be fun, but it's also a huge time commitment. Your subjects have been with you at a number of your screenings, available to talk to press, etc. Can you talk about what the experience has been like for Kim and Scott?

Chicago Film Crix Nominate 5 for Best Doc

The Chicago Film Critics Association, one of the few of the larger critics groups that actually announces nominees in each of its categories, unveiled its picks today.  Nominees will have to wait two whole days to find out who the group has given its prize to.  The five films nominated are:

AMERICAN TEEN
DEAR ZACHARY: A LETTER TO A SON ABOUT HIS FATHER
I.O.U.S.A.
MAN ON WIRE
STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE

BIGGER, STRONGER Brother/Subject Mike Bell Dies

Sad news (via MCN) - Mike Bell, the brother of BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER* director Christopher Bell and one of the subjects of that documentary, died Sunday in Costa Mesa, CA.  He was 37.  Mike Bell, who is seen in the film struggling with his lack of success in the World Wrestling Federation, had been at a sober living facility and was, according to his brother, celebrating 60 days of sobriety.

From the family's local Poughkeepsie Journal:

"He had decided it was time to clean up his act," Chris Bell said. "He was 60 days clean and sober and that was a first for him. For our family, it was a big accomplishment for him."

Chris said he bought his brother tickets for them to attend an upcoming Metallica concert as a Christmas gift and that Mike was looking forward to it.

"He was excited to get out of the sober living place for a while," Chris said. "Everything that he's done in his life caught up to him. His life is a cautionary tale for any kids out there who turn to drugs and alcohol."

Our condolences.

2008 IN REVIEW: Emailing with MAN ON WIRE Director James Marsh

As 2008 comes to a close and we try to catch up on some titles that we missed earlier (all the better to formulate our list of favorite films of the year), we're connecting via email with some of the filmmakers behind the year's most noted nonfiction releases.

First up is James Marsh, the director of perhaps the year's most acclaimed film, MAN ON WIRE.  Shortlisted for the Oscars, nominated for the Indie Spirit Awards and in the midst of a nearly clean sweep of the year end critics awards, MAN ON WIRE stormed out of Sundance, was picked up by Magnolia and stands just shy of 3 million dollars at the box office.  It has been, no exaggeration, quite a year for Marsh.

I saw James in Copenhagen last month and he told me that he'd recently moved to Europe from New York, where he'd been based for over a decade.  In our email exchange this weekend, we talk, among other topics, about his move, his film's deft handling of 9/11 and the joys of having Sean Connery invite you and your subject for drinks.

ATWT: One of my favorite things about this time of year is looking over the Sundance line-up, because it's this blank slate/vision of the future.  These are films that will become a big part of the conversation in our community over the next year, but right now they are just these titles.  Going into Sundance last year, what were you feeling? 

James Marsh: Relief. Three previous films had been rejected by Sundance and I was pretty sure MAN ON WIRE would suffer the same fate. Also I was dying to see the film with an audience. It's really the only way you know whether a film actually works. This was the first film I made that I actually liked when I finished it - I guess because I was, and still am, thrilled by what Petit did. As you know, going into the festival the film was completely off the radar and it stayed that way during the festival. That was fine with me - I didn't want the burden of hype and I knew going in that most distributors would be too shortsighted to seek out a film that they weren't being told to see by each other and so it proved. I'm always amazed (aren't we all?) by the kind of films that distributors go after at Sundance and the money they spend. They never seem to learn from their mistakes. You watch, they'll do the same this year.

Heath Ledger died during our first screening so quite a few people left to find out more about that but those that stayed seemed really tuned into the film. At festivals, films are subject to quite withering word of mouth commentary and we did get this growing sense that audiences were enjoying the film and talking about it. I heard people talking about it on the bus - almost apologizing for the fact that it was a doc but that it was definitely worth seeing. That was a pretty nice experience. This year, who knows? I do like the sound of two titles in the World Doc section: BIG RIVER MAN and Kim Longinotto's ROUGH AUNTIES. I really admire her work and I wish her films were better known in the US.

After Sundance, the film played nearly every festival, it seems.  What was your year on the fest circuit like and did you have any favorite experiences?

Well, you're probably right. MAN ON WIRE was promiscuous at film festivals but for me, going to a festival should be a little treat that you allow yourself whilst getting on with the new work.  I've been working on a new documentary project and getting ready to shoot a feature so I did allow myself to go to quite a few festivals and I have lots of great memories. Getting a bit drunk and talking into the early hours with Ellen Kuras at Full Frame, the closing night at True/False and the humbling response from the huge audience there. At Edinburgh, Sean Connery was in the audience and got up and asked a question. He then invited us all out for a drink and I have this great image in my head of Philippe Petit showing James Bond magic tricks at the bar.

If there was one festival that I would recommend to anyone involved or interested in documentary filmmaking, it would be True/False. The whole town is alive with passionate debate about documentaries, the films they show are really well chosen and David (Wilson) and Paul (Sturtz) were brilliant hosts.

Here's what I learnt on my travels: documentaries are the most vibrant and subversive genre in American film culture and that has probably been true for the last 5 years.

Manohla, Manohla, Manohla

There's been much rubber necking over the recent LA Times piece by Patrick Goldstein wherein he bemoans the cruelty of NY Times (and former LA Times) film critic Manohla Dargis.  Why the drama?  Apparently Dargis' pan of the Weinstein Co.'s new narrative film THE READER reminded Goldstein of past days when Harvey Weinstein wanted Dargis to stay away from reviewing Miramax titles.

The money quote that's been bouncing around the blogosphere is:

"It's an open secret in indie Hollywood that no one wants Manohla Dargis to review their movie, fearing that the outspoken critic will tear their film limb from limb. It's the ultimate backhanded compliment, since what they really fear is Manohla's persuasiveness -- that she'll write a review whose combination of vitriolic snarkiness and intellectual heft will actually persuade high-brow moviegoers to drop the film from their must-see list."

As Karina Longworth observed in her usual inimitable style, Goldstein appeared to be advocating a two-tiered system, wherein "classy" projects were given a handicap:

"Goldstein says it’s not a problem that the review was negative, but unlike her peers, who “clean the knife before they stick it in,” Dargis’ review betrays a “lack of empathy for the challenge of tackling difficult material.” In other words: people like Harvey Weinstein, who take the noble risk of milking Oscar bait out of an Oprah-approved novel about a sexy Nazi cougar, should be given extra points just for doing something a little bit more ambitious than “dumb summer comedy.” It’s almost as if Goldstein is advocating for a kind of affirmative action for art (or, at least, artsy) films: all pictures may be on a level playing field in Manohla’s eyes, but a certain type of picture should be given special consideration for at least trying to be art, even if it fails."

(Yes, really.  She wrote "milking Oscar bait out of an Oprah-approved novel about a sexy Nazi cougar" and didn't even break a sweat.)

As Karina also noted, Goldstein has previously attacked Dargis (and other critics) with the old "she's an elitist!" bullshit, which is about as useful for discussing the worth of art as is the tired "which candidate would you rather have a beer with" in determining who should be making decisions about war and peace:

"Since today's critics are famously out of touch with the common taste, I decided to recruit (producer Avi Lerner) as my own personal multiplex movie critic. He doesn't use as many five-dollar words as Manohla Dargis and he doesn't have quite as firm a grasp on the auteur theory as Kenny Turan, but he knows what he likes--and why he likes it--which is always a good starting point for any critic."

Faux-populism aside, I'm on record in finding flaws with LA Times coverage of documentaries, so let me take a moment to raise an objection to Goldstein's opening thesis - that no one wants mean Manohla Dargis to review their movie.  NO ONE!

Now maybe this is the case at the dependent indies (your Searchlights, SPCs and Miramax), but for the rest of us?  Not so much.

That doesn't mean that I haven't heard doc filmmakers who were nervous about a forthcoming Dargis review - but ask your average nonfiction filmmaker if they'd rather take their chances on a review from Manohla or one from an unknown stringer consigned to page 26, and I'd wager nearly every single one would take the risk.

Why?  Because Dargis is a great writer and 9 times out of 10, she writes about a film in a way that seems unique.  And because everyone reads what she has to say.

My own personal experience is that I wanted Dargis to review ABOUT A SON.  And she did.

It was not a good review.  Some even remember it as being particularly harsh.  The line that everyone seemed to latch onto was:

"It’s hard to know who the audience might be for the documentary oddity KURT COBAIN ABOUT A SON, but I bet its subject, the guy who’s still being called on to entertain us even after his death, would have hated it."

As IFC's Allison Willmore wrote last week:

"It's only once in a while, as when Dargis came down full-force on AJ Schnack's ABOUT A SON when it received a small release, that it's felt unbalanced."

I remember that as we were opening in NYC, we were waiting for a bunch of theaters to decide whether or not to book the film.  And when the Times review broke, there were those who thought that we were done for (despite quite strong reviews in the Voice and other outlets).  After all, who would the audience be for such a film?

But what happened instead was that a bunch of theaters booked the film the day Dargis' review ran.  The feeling was that if Manohla Dargis had reviewed the film then it must be worthy of discussion.  (We also made more money and had a longer run in New York at the IFC Center - more than a month - than in any other city.)

And Dargis' review - pan though it was - inspired responses from other critics, including a lengthy piece from Sean Nelson in Seattle's The Stranger weekly, that was recently included in the Best Music Writing 2008 collection, who answered directly:

"Why should the subject like the documentary? Did those greedy Bible hucksters like SALESMAN? Did Robert Crumb like CRUMB? Could anything matter less? More importantly: The whole point (I hesitate to use the word "tragedy," though it certainly felt like one) about Cobain, consecrated by his mirthless image on posters down the ages and reinforced dramatically in the film, is that he didn't like anything about himself for very long."

So then, even for our small film, overshadowed as it was by the releases of numerous other films at the same time, a review by one of the nation's better critics started a conversation, which is, I'd hope, what we want our films to do. 

Now, I've got plenty of issues (as do others) with the state of film criticism related to documentaries, and Dargis is no exception.  She's more than once given head scratching praise to films that I consider to be exceptionally by the numbers or even off-the-rails mistaken - and she seems far more supportive of experimentation and form-busting in narrative than she is for nonfiction, which strikes those of us 'round here as mighty old fashioned. 

But when you create art - and if you haven't figured it out by now I do think that nonfiction films are (or at least can be) art - are you really supposed to be seeking the 100% fresh tomato rating?  You want to create discussion, debate, passion.  And sure, occasionally it's great if most (if not quite all) look upon what you've done and pat you on the back and give you laurels and awards and a bevy of praise. 

As Karina rightly noted in a post today about the success of CHE's roadshow this weekend:

"Any film worth a damn is going to inspire conflicting opinions."

In an age when film critics are underpaid, being bought out, termed out and forced out, I say let's raise a glass for the good writers who love movies, whether we agree or disagree with their judgments.  The democratization of film writing has reduced the power that critics once held - which is likely one of the key reasons (along with newspaper cutbacks) for the perilous state of film criticism.  But the ability of so many voices - whether in the NY Times or on our humble blog - to join the conversation encourages us to engage, to expand, confront and continue the conversation for any film that's worth a damn.

WALTZ WITH BASHIR Gets Globe Nomination for Foreign Language Film

There's no Documentary category at the Golden Globe Awards - I suppose that James Marsh and Tia Lessin don't hold the requisite star power - yet one of the top nonfiction films of the year, WALTZ WITH BASHIR, did get a nod in the Foreign Language category.  Ari Folman's acclaimed film, out of the running for the Documentary Oscar, is Isreal's official selection in the Academy race and also hopes to be nominated in the animated feature category.

I feel confident in saying - with no actual proof - that this is the first time a documentary feature has received a Golden Globe nominations.  If I'm wrong, somebody tell me.

BREAKING: Academy to Move 2009 Doc Qualifying Deadline to Sept. 30

On Tuesday night, the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted to extend the eligibility period for Oscar consideration to September 30, one month later than the current deadline of August 31, according to sources in and out of the Academy. 

In the new rules there are, apparently, additional prerequisites related to whether or not a film has a theatrical plan in place.  The official language of the new rules, recommended by the Documentary Branch of the Academy and including this specification for an exhibition plan, has not yet been released.

No word on whether these new rules will change the time frame for the Academy's Shortlist announcement, which has been made in mid-November for the past few years. 

The move allows films to play for the first time at the Toronto International Film Festival without having to screen previously in undercover circumstances in NY and LA.  The move had been strongly lobbied for by Toronto Documentary Programmer Thom Powers (full disclosure - my co-chair in the Cinema Eye Honors) who wrote in August that the previous deadline was punitive.

In a statement late Wednesday, Toronto's Powers welcomed the news:

"The Toronto International Film Festival applauds the Academy of Motion Pictures on its decision to change its rules so that documentaries may fulfill their theatrical qualification by Sept 30 instead of the old deadline of August 31," said TIFF documentary programmer Thom Powers.

"Thanks to this change, we at TIFF feel we can do more to help doc makers launch their films into awards season. At the last Oscars, nineteen of the fiction nominees had played at TIFF. But documentaries have been prevented from using this launching pad to it fullest by the Academy¹s condition that they play in a theater by August 31. That date falls just before TIFF traditionally begins in early September. Now documentaries can take the path of premiering at TIFF and conducting their qualifying run afterwards."  Next year's festival will run Sept 10-19, 2009.

"The Academy deserves credit for changing these rules. The filmmaking community should also be proud of making their voices heard. This summer, 75 prominent documentary filmmakers signed a petition, organized by TIFF, to campaign for changing the August 31 deadline. We hoped that the deadline would get extended even later than Sept 30. But this is a good step forward. Hopefully, the Academy will recognize next year that lengthening the deadline helps everyone. Documentary makers should have as much time to qualify as fiction films."

Even under the new rules, it's unlikely that WALTZ WITH BASHIR would have been eligible.  BASHIR famously premiered at the NY Film Festival this October, giving up its chance at an Oscar in the documentary category.  That film has gone on to tie for Best Documentary at the IDA Awards and was the runner-up amongst both the LA and NY Film Critics.