All these wonderful things

Young Man Yells at Blog

Begging your forgiveness for the lack of postings this week (more on that soon), but am persuaded to join the "Friday Funnies" crowd and point you to a posting over at our pal Agnes Varnum's blog.

Agnes made some fairly benign observations about the 3-year old hybrid film THE AMERICAN RULING CLASS, based on an extended trailer posted on YouTube.  Mostly, she pondered why "the film didn't make a big splash" after high profile screenings at Tribeca and IDFA, among other festivals.  To this, director John Kirby responded with full defensive gusto and, well, hilarity ensues.

So pour your coffee and settle on down with this for a bit.  Interesting questions about how one should respond to criticism of one's work, the success/failure ratio of presenting unmixed rough cuts at major festivals and the surprising use of racially-loaded epithets.  Not to mention howling at the moon o'er all the "vain fat cats who run (the) independent film scene these days".

So which are you dear reader, vain fat cat or free-thinking, English-speaking, Harper's-reading fighter of techno-fascism?

David Poland on the Trouble with Trouble

It's worth noting a piece written tonight by David Poland on his new Hot Button blog about our writing here on the travails of THINKFilm (as well as Nikki Finke's writing on the financial state of Capitol Films and the Weinstein Co.).  While Nikki gets the brunt of David's ire (no surprise there), he offers a caution for us, as well:

"There are two stories on the web today that may be 100% true… but also concern me deeply. It’s not about pulling back the curtain. That’s the job. But there is a kind of malignancy in the idea that what has always been gossip is now being published by bloggers as “news”… and then, followed up on, even without any real confirmations of anything nefarious, as a way of self-glorifying… even getting down to the “send me your complaints about people who pay you late so I can humiliate them too!” gamesmanship. But who can blame Ms Finke for her gutter urges. They have gotten her so much attention so far!

When AJ Schnack sends out a blog entry as "BREAKING," when it is, in fact, neither breaking or news, you have to wonder. Again… the unnamed sources who are trying to get paid – and there has been quiet talk that Think paid Alex Gibney off almost completely after he ran a threat through Stu Van Airsdale at Defamer –  may be telling the story 100% straight.  Or they may not. 

The reason there are rules in journalism on sourcing is not because some crazy ass sources are not sometimes right… but because once someone is smeared in the press, it is hard to take it back.

Capitol and Think may be going under. They may not. But the feeding frenzy around their troubles tends to make a lot of assumptions… some of which may be true and others which may not be."

I responded to Poland's post on his site, but the gist of it is this:

I think it would be a huge blow if THINKFilm were to bow out of the indie film world and particularly a blow to the potential of nonfiction theatrical distribution (even if the company is not as interested in docs as they were a year and a half ago).  However, no one is served (particularly filmmakers and vendors who have working relationships with THINK) to pretend that a situation is rosy (or benign) if it is becoming malignant. 

There are always rumors and people are always slow in getting paid.  Sometimes it feels like the whole indie film world is one paycheck away from boarding up the windows.  I've had the personal experience of losing tens of thousands of dollars when a distribution company went bankrupt without notice.  It was certainly not pleasant (in fact, it's a burden that continues to this day) but I don't think I've ever mentioned it here.

It's been a rough couple of weeks.  I've written two pieces - this morning's story about THINK and one about the shuttering of Discovery Films - which had not been reported elsewhere.  In both cases, I sought and received confirmation from someone who didn't have a rooting interest in the outcome before printing the stories.  If there are mistakes - or if someone has a different take - I hope you'll contribute to the discussion.

It should be noted that Variety has now gone to press with a new story that backs up my post from Wednesday morning.

Has Anyone Ever Called Kevin Smith a Niche Auteur?

Just asking, cause it kinda rubbed me wrong when I read Leonard Klady's Weekend Report and saw Tyler Perry identified as a "niche auteur".

Now, maybe Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have got me all freaked out over language, but something about that seems, I dunno, marginalizing?  Am I wrong?

Internets Ablaze Over Exceedingly Fake WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE Clip

I love all my blogging brothers and sisters, but occasionally we (and I include myself in this) run with something that seems like breaking news to our heart, while our brains should be yelling, no, no, a thousand times no.

The latest is the somehow exclusive, somehow secret scene from Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers' upcoming adaptation of the WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE.  Even my dear pals Eugene and Dentler jumped into the act - but I give them an out, for reasons I'll explain shortly.

Seems that a publicist for the website Buzznet was contacting people, heralding their exclusive clip, only to later remove the clip -  the mystery over its origins and its removal unsolved.

Witness the resulting firestorm here and here and here and here and here.  In some cases, sites did raise doubts about the authenticity of the clip.  Others speculated that it might be a test scene (which I'll allow is possible).  And some commenters saw the same tip-off that I did which indicates the thing is, at best, a test clip, and at worst, a huge fake-o.

Sundance in the Rear View Mirror

Festival coverage sponsored by IndiePix.

It's nearly midday on Saturday and most, if certainly not all, have departed Park City, even as tonight's award ceremonies loom large. I will have a full recap of the films I saw here on the blog, but if you want a sneak preview, you can check out the two pieces I wrote for indieWIRE - here (where I talk about THE ORDER OF MYTHS and ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL) and here (where I write about the burgeoning Nonfiction New Wave, as well as BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER* and WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN?). More on those films and others here next week.

Meanwhile, if you want to survey the reactions to this year's crop of nonfictions, here are some important links:

GreenCine has review recaps for ANVIL, ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED, U23D, STRANDED, AMERICAN TEEN, TROUBLE THE WATER, I.O.U.S.A., PATTI SMITH DREAM OF LIFE, SECRECY, WHERE IN THE WORLD, ORDER OF MYTHS, and THE ART STAR AND THE SUDANESE TWINS.

The P.O.V. Blog Ponders the New Doc Awards

One of my favorite new doc sites of the past few months is the new(ish) blog over at P.O.V.'s website, an active group blog with a number of contributors. (Sundance seems to be launching their own news-ish bloggish site - DocSource - dedicated to Sundance-supported nonfiction as well, and the IDA is planning on relaunching their site soon with more content and features. It's a veritable doc blog renaissance.)

Last week, Tom Roston used his weekly Friday column to examine our upcoming awards effort. There's a lot of interesting ideas in his piece and you should go read the whole thing, but here's some of the highlights:

"Ah, the doc world never sleeps. There I was, slowly plotting my next blog post about the January 12 deadline for submitting Oscar nomination ballots: I was going to make an 11th hour pitch for Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, the fantastic doc based on writings by U.S. soldiers in Iraq by Richard Robbins. But along comes an exciting announcement: Doc filmmaker and blogger AJ Schnack and online indie film distributor IndiePix are creating a new nonfiction film award ceremony because, as Schnack says on his blog, "there should be awards for nonfiction that [recognize] the breadth of the genre and [include] the crafts of cinematography and editing and producing."

Awesome! It's about time. Documentaries have evolved so much that they ought to be recognized for what they are now — films. Indeed, the Oscar shortlist was a pretty uninspired one to pick from and...

But wait. Schnack and co. announced their shortlist and my little miracle baby, Operation Homecoming...isn't on the list. What the...?!?!"

Chuck Tyron & Pat Aufderheide Weigh In on the New Nonfiction Awards

Earlier this week over at the Chutry Experiment, Chuck Tyron posted a fascinating review of Pat Aufderheide's book Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction. 

He followed this Wednesday with a follow-up that begins with Aufderheide's list of must-see docs at this year's Sundance Film Festival and segued into a discussion of our newly announced nonfiction awards:

"Like a number of other bloggers, I think there is quite a bit to debate here. Is this shortlist significantly different than the Academy’s?  In other words, aren’t omissions inevitable when trying to encapsulate a genre as diverse as documentary?  What gets lost by possibly emphasizing “craft” over “message” (and I realize these categories are not mutually exclusive)?  I do think these are important questions, though many of them can be answered as the awards evolve.  But in general, I appreciate the attempt to recognize that documentary entails a craft of “representing reality” and not merely recording it."

In the comments, Aufderheide (who I have a great deal of respect and admiration for in no small part for her pioneering work on the issue of Fair Use) talks about the necessity of a re-focusing on craft:

"I think it’s really important to establish awards that highlight the craft of documentary. Not only do documentary awards often reflect the perceived importance or impact of the subject, they often also reflect a tendency toward the sentimental, especially evident when the subject is disability, the very poor, animals…The more we can openly discuss craft, the more we can discuss the techniques that create sentimental engagement, activism, high-quality discussion and other responses that show the film made a difference to people."

When Blogs Attract (and Other Documentary Quandries)

There are a couple of pieces I want to point to which, while writing about my new film, have also dealt with the interesting dance that I sometimes must maneuver as it relates to my work here at the blog and my take on the nature of nonfiction circa early October 2007.

Mark Olsen has a great piece in today's LA Times that dives into this headlong.  An excerpt:

"Though the blog began in the summer of 2005 as a direct outgrowth of working on "About a Son," it has since taken on a life of its own. Schnack has become something of an authority figure for the world of documentaries, covering various issues faced by nonfiction filmmakers. In particular, he has written about the recent changes to the Oscar qualifying rules for documentary features, giving close attention to the newly mandated 14-city theatrical rollout for all potential nominees. Unlike many in the documentary community, Schnack has largely been in favor of the rollout, because it promotes theatrical exhibition of documentary films.

Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said that the rollout rules will likely be "streamlined" for next year, in no small part because of the response the academy has gotten from the documentary community, both online and in a series of meetings between AMPAS governors and filmmakers.

One sign of the growing influence of Schnack's blog is that while "About a Son" has played at more than 50 film festivals, the filmmaker has begun to be accredited as a journalist at some festivals where his work has not been shown.

It was while attending the influential Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in North Carolina with "About a Son" this past spring that he really began to understand the way in which his online persona was beginning to bump up against his real work.

"I didn't really know who was reading it," he said of the blog. "I thought my friends and people looking for news about their own film, but when I got to Full Frame so many people came up to me who I'd never met and who are avid readers. People I would consider among the most powerful in our community in terms of being able to greenlight a project or grant money to a project. To find out they're reading was a bit surprising."

There is now a second blog strictly for "Kurt Cobain About a Son." When he started All These Wonderful Things it was without any intention of creating a sounding board for issues within the documentary community. A graduate of the University of Missouri with a degree in broadcast journalism, Schnack's instincts were toward more reported work, and he naturally gravitated toward the issues that affect him as a filmmaker.

"It started as a kind of supplement to working on the film," he said, "and having an access point for people who'd be like, 'Oh, what's this new movie about Kurt Cobain?' And then it just continued to evolve and ends up being this other thing, almost exclusively about issues in nonfiction filmmaking. I don't really consciously think of how it splits up, but I think it's like 40% journalism, 40% advocacy and 20% my personal experiences in this world."

For Schnack, the issue of writing about the race for this year's documentary feature Oscar has already become a tricky one. In previous years he has extensively covered the buildup to the academy's announcement of a pre-nominations shortlist, handicapping the chances of various contenders. This year, he is largely having to beg off for fear of appearing to put his thumb on the scale for "About a Son."

And in a lengthy interview with GreenCine's Francine Taylor, I talked about how difficult it is even for me to draw distinctions between varied work in the nonfiction/documentary realm:

I think that not knowing allows you to go with the flow of the film and it's not as distracting from the audio. Kind of a layered-together thing like two notes of a chord. And less what we think of like a traditional documentary. Would you call this a documentary or a nonfiction film?

I call it a nonfiction film. I actually think that nonfiction is a larger definition that I tend to use generally. When I think of documentary, I think of more of a traditional, journalistic approach of something.

This is more poetic, for example.

There are a lot of films that have nonfiction elements to them, which are maybe in my brain. And actually, I write about nonfiction film - sort of my side gig.

Your blog.

Yeah, yeah. But it's like, and I actually just wrote this, that I don't know if I could explain what the difference is.

Nonfiction just feels like a better description?

Like BILLY THE KID for example. I think I feel comfortable calling it a documentary, but it feels more like a nonfiction film to me. Because I think there are things that [Jennifer Venditti] did that affected how she shot that film and how she made that film.

There's this great movie I just saw, great doc, THE MOSQUITO PROBLEM. To me, that's a classic example of something than is more of a non-fiction film than a documentary. Because it's so composed and structured, and taking advantage of all the skills one can make as a filmmaker.

In the last 10 years, people are taking more interest in, whether you call it documentary or nonfiction film, with cable channels and more theaters willing to distribute - for example, after the success of MARCH OF THE PENGUINS. It's an evolving form.

MARCH OF THE PENGUINS is a great example. That's one I would classify more as nonfiction than as documentary. Here's something that is a scripted piece with narration and they are taking real events as they study them and turning them into this love story, or the story of family, that is constructed from what they've seen.

Which is why these films may be finding more of an audience. I've always loved documentaries, but used to get frustrated when they were nominated for Oscars yet you couldn't see them. It seems like a great time for nonfiction films because they can take on more identity and have more creative freedom.

You look at what Brett Morgen is doing you look at what Jason Kohn did in MANDA BALA. These are people using real film technique and telling real stories. They aren't afraid of using every cinematic skill they have to tell these stories. That to me is the most exciting thing in terms of what is happening in nonfiction. That doesn't mean to say that I'm not blown away by a film like TAXI TO THE DARKSIDE. It has stylistic elements that are really great. But it's a very classic, journalistic breaking down of a story.

THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK, very similar. Those are exciting to me. But I would probably classify them - if I were making these determinations - I probably would say they are more the world of documentary.

I'm Not Slacking. Really.

My apologies for the brief blogging hiatus.  Most of you know that this is the opening week for my film, so I haven't been able to keep up with my writing duties this week.  Will be back at it full force with articles, photos, full box office recaps next week as well as some posts later this week.

The About A Son Soundtrack Challenge

A couple weeks ago, I was talking to Annie Zaleski at the Riverfront Times in St Louis (my hometown arts and culture weekly, since gobbled up in the Village Voice/New Times/Google/NewsCorp/Citibank mergers) and we were having a lovely conversation about the new soundtrack for my upcoming film, KURT COBAIN ABOUT A SON (the soundtrack came out a week ago on Barsuk Records, the movie has its theatrical premiere a week from tomorrow at the IFC Center in NYC).

Towards the end of the interview, Annie - who had seen the film and knew that it contained the music of bands that were important to Kurt rather than his own music - threw down the guantlet, as she explains in this blog post:

In a similar fashion, I asked Schnack what songs would be on the soundtrack to his life. He had this to say:

"My mom and dad ran a summer camp, in Grafton, Illinois. So there would have to be a camp song in there. There’s one we sang all the time when we were done for the night, called ‘I Love the Flowers.’ It might even have Christian overtones, an old traditional folky song. There’s a line in it that ends with, “All these wonderful things,” cause that’s how the song ends."

There was a long pause after that, and Schnack laughed and said he had to call me back with more song ideas. A few hours later, I received a list of the following songs in my inbox -- all representing (ostensibly) the different periods in Schnack's life.

[ed note: You'll note that "I Love the Flowers" contains the lyric that gives this blog its name.]

It was actually lots of fun to do (I could probably have added at least 6 more songs - as exists in About A Son) and so (with inspiration from my pal Ryan), I've decided to challenge a few of my favorite film bloggers to come up with their own lists, the soundtracks to their own lives.

Here are the rules:

1.)  It must reflect music from each part of your life, including childhood, awkward pre-teen years, all the way up to your current existence
2.)  It should be music that is not just your favorite songs, but also things that make sense thematically
3.)  It cannot be your own music
4.)  Challenge at least 2 other bloggers to do the same.

So, I hereby issue the challenge to Matt Dentler, Tom Hall, Eugene Hernandez, Karina Longworth, David Lowery, Anne Thompson, Michael Tully and Agnes Varnum. 

Now, in case you didn't click on the link, here is my list (Annie has YouTube links for selected songs on her blog):

1. Traditional Camp Song, "I LOVE THE FLOWERS" (a.k.a. Boom De-A-Da)

2. Harry Chapin, "CATS IN THE CRADLE"

3. Journey, "OPEN ARMS"

4. Talking Heads, "ROAD TO NOWHERE"

5. Violent Femmes, "GOOD FEELING"

6. Pixies, "MONKEY GONE TO HEAVEN"

7. Superchunk, "THE QUESTION IS HOW FAST"

8. The Lemonheads, "MY DRUG BUDDY"

9. Liz Phair/Muzzle, "FUCK AND RUN"

10. R.E.M., "NIGHTSWIMMING"

11. Jawbreaker, "I LOVE YOU SO MUCH IT'S KILLING US BOTH"

12, Wilco, "NOTHING'SEVERGONNASTANDINMYWAY(AGAIN)"

13. Joni Mitchell, "FREE MAN IN PARIS"

14. Ike and Tina Turner, "RIVER DEEP, MOUNTAIN HIGH"