Oak Street Films

Just a few long-overdue announcements:

• A new short documentary I’ve been working on, If You Had To Lose A Part of You (which is currently in post-production and details regarding which will be published here upon completion), will be screened along with an updated rendition of Ann Law’s Passion Flower Project dance piece at Barking Legs Theater on May 9th. Tickets are $15 and may be purchased at the door or in advance via the Barking Legs Web site. A portion of the proceeds from this event will benefit BREAST CANCER NETWORK of STRENGTH, Chattanooga.
• The previously mentioned bill of If You Had To Lose A Part of You and Ann Law’s new dance piece will again be presented at a conference entitled Cancer Control and Prevention: A Coalition of Community and Science in the Fight Against Cancer on May 15th, 12-1:00PM, at the Millennium Centre, Johnson City, TN.
• Lastly, but certainly not leastly: Passion Flower, the first of my short documentaries, will be screened along with Alejandro Adams’ first feature Around The Bay at the Niles-Essanay Silent Film Museum in Fremont, CA on June 12th at 8:00PM. This event is part of a series of screenings featuring work produced by Bay Area filmmakers–a category to which I will belong beginning very soon–including films by Les Blank (Burden of Dreams) and John Korty (The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman). The full details of this series have not yet been published to the Museum’s Web site as of this writing, so be sure and check in there at a later time for ticket info.

A conversation among filmmakers—on any topic, in any place—has a way suddenly and completely of switching gears whenever something even tangentially related to distribution and/or exhibition is mentioned. This very roundtable discussion is the outgrowth of a heated Twitter debate, for which I am personally, roundly, to blame. I expressed frustration with the fact that my recently completed feature Hell Is Other People might end up sitting idly on a hard drive for nearly a year due to the vagaries of film festival scheduling (for those unfamiliar with how that game is played: the larger festivals tend to take place in the Spring, and tend in addition to reject films which would not premiere under their marquees; if a film is completed around April, let’s say, its producer(s) has/have little choice but to wait until the next year’s submission period). Almost immediately after my lamentation shoved off from my Tweetdeck, the replies came pouring over the prow. And in them a turbulent conflict was already whipping itself up. Amir Motlagh shared my sense of frustration; Reid Gershbein wondered why I should not forgo a festival push entirely and instead look into some model of self- and/or electronic distribution. Soon enough, others spoke up. The debate took on a feverish and explosive—if yet civil—aspect. I backed out, largely, just as the French pulled out of Vietnam, leaving the fighting to other, more bellicose souls. Read more »

[The following was originally posted on Hell Is Other People's standalone Web site.]

Don’t get me wrong; I love Chattanooga. Some deeply primal part of me will always consider it home, even after I’ll have moved on a place sculpted more in the imagination by seismic waves and brush fires than by the shameful “removal” of its native people. I too am being forced Westward, though the coercion is far more subtle and less hateful in this century. I have been made to feel unwelcome here. I am a filmmaker, and making films in Chattanooga is nigh impossible. Read more »

[What follows is a brief reflection (my "Director's Statement") on Hell Is Other People.]

What is it about financial poverty that so often impoverishes the inner lives of those who suffer from it? Does the relationship even operate in this fashion, or does emotional poverty precede–even serve as a primary cause, in some cases–of the pecuniary variety? As often and as deeply as I’ve reflected upon these questions throughout these early, underpaid years of my career as a filmmaker, I can’t say for certain that they were at the fore of my thinking when first I considered the production of a film about a stunted man doing his shady business in parking lots. Read more »

The revised trailer (below, after the jump) was put together in response to the urging of several people in attendance at Hell Is Other People’s first WIP test screening at the First Annual Slamquest Festival. No, this is not a real festival. I’d like to thank my Californian filmmaker friends for their input on how I might improve it; thanks also are due to maybe ten or so of my Twitter following.

Two quick points before the trailer:

• Hell Is Other People wraps, finally, on Tuesday. What a long, slow trip it’s been.
• I will get back to blogging soon. There is much to be blogged.

Read more »

Rhett and Burke Lewis are disarmingly funny and, dare I say it, charming. Their film, Billy Was a Deaf Kid, shares those qualities. The following is a transcription of a chat I had with them earlier this week at Cinequest, where the film premiered (the full audio of this interview, I should mention, is available over at CQCentral). If the tone here seems a bit light and conversational, it’s because the discussion itself was exactly those things. I’ve edited a bit, here and there, but I’ve tried to preserve the easygoing nature of the moment. It’s worth mentioning, however, that when the influence of John Cassavetes is acknowledged, we begin to move beyond the chatty back-and-forth that has preceded. Both brothers admit, oddly, to having seen neither Faces nor Husbands in their entirety, a point which complicates the later discussion of their inclusion of a textual Cassavetes quotation at the end of the film. It’s a small point, perhaps, but it leads to a few particularly revealing moments. I’d like to write a review of this film fairly soon, before it slips too far away from my recollection of it. That said, I won’t at this time put forth any critical pronouncements regarding the film itself, but will simply let the Lewis brothers do the lion’s share of the speaking. See you after the jump. Read more »

Film is an inherently violent medium; it’s a chaotic amalgam of pictures, sounds, and human lives (fictive or no) slapped together in any number of cunning and/or manipulative ways. It slashes the throat of humanity and bleeds its essence upon the carcass of some formerly slain object. Think of its barbaric and/or dehumanizing verbiage: to cut, to shoot, to jump…to expose, to dissolve, to wipe. All of our most hateful and primal urges and compunctions are embedded within our desire to observe the suffering–and even the joys–of others. Our love of film casts the shadows of our darkest natures upon a strip of silver-coated celluloid (or magnetically-charged acetate). America is the historical epicenter of filmmaking as much because of its guns and its genocide as for its more lofty ideals, because those former things are far and away more the impetus for our short-lived cultural primacy than any foolishly impossible political model. Chaos is a mainstream fetish. We’d drink blood if it were inexpensive enough. Yes, even you. And then, tout soudain, Johnny Mad Dog blazes across your cornea like some Olympian iteration of Buñuel’s moonlit razor. You’d be blinded if not for your desperate defiance of your subjugated need to see. Read more »

I’m nearly embarrassed by how much I enjoyed my almost disappointingly brief time at Cinequest 19. I can’t decide whether I simply made good choices as to what I saw or whether the festival’s programmers–Charlie Cockey especially–somehow knew exactly what I wanted to see. I’m guessing that I saw around 13 features (and maybe 15 shorts) over the excruciatingly truncated time I spent in San Jose, and yet there was only one of those 13 that I wish I’d skipped. If the movies at CQ were swinging at my pitches, they’d be batting .923. I was so busy watching films, spending time with old & new friends, and talking shop with other filmmakers that I didn’t get to write quite as much as I’d have liked. Fortunately, the writing is something I can still do here, in my dark Chattanooga lair, even if I can no longer see the films or hang out in the lounge (sob). Read more »

The old producer’s cliché which holds that working with animals and/or children is a bad idea is probably sorely misread by misanthropes and incompetents of all sorts; having hoisted sails and tilled rudders on both of those ships, I understand that standing on either deck requires both a love of the stars and a hatred of maps. Animals, when directed, will simply sniff your hands in the search of food. Use the sniff; don’t hard-headedly demand a lick. Kids are no less defiant than dogs, perhaps because they are smarter (if less wise) than adults. A child is never going to do exactly what you tell her to do, because she has no reverence whatever for rigor. A film starring and centered upon children will sink unless it is helmed by a benevolent and irreverent madman. Ishtar Yasin Gutierrez, writer/director of El Camino, evinces benevolence and irreverence and madness in differing degrees, but fails to synthesize those qualities. The result: a compass’ needle which oscillates disturbingly between the poles of brilliance and penumbra. Read more »

Let’s address the inevitable blue whale in the room right off the bat: if a film whips up a hysterical degree of ignorance and hatred over a three hour span, but does so through a systematically brilliant employment of literally everything which the cinema is capable of doing, does the end nullify any artistry evinced within the means? Absolutely not. I’m not going to waffle, in spite of the current critical vogue for coating this subject in syrup. If critics were as serious as they claim to be about the “debate” as to whether form can be appreciated when it serves an odious ideological purpose, they wouldn’t still be writing about films like The Birth of a Nation (or this one)–nor would I have been able to see it screened in a beautiful old movie palace, in a pristine restored print, with a live pipe-organ performance of the original score. And yet that’s exactly what happened last night. No one’s head exploded. Read more »