Spike Lee addresses racist LA Clippers Owner Donald Sterling

You know something? When Anderson Cooper interviewed Mr. Sterling the old guy said something like, "I don't talk about people. I talk about ideas." Which makes me think of the axiom that has been a popular meme, characterizing the sort of people who think about one or the other. If this guy can claim as much, it throws the whole idea into question.

Dump Truck Directing - Gordon Willis - Craft Truck - Through The Lens

video blog Talking to a Wall begins

Occasionally I will throw one of these on-line, mostly random spiels about film making. From the perspective of a low-profile director clawing his way along.

What might Jaws: The Indianapolis be like?

Below is a scene from the original Jaws, a speech Robert Shaw edited down from a monologue mostly John Milius contributed. The story of the USS Indianapolis has been dramatized a couple of times, but there has been speculation over the years of whether Universal might dare make another Jaws movie with this as a core story, serving as a prequel to the original. The first concern might be poor taste - an intense movie giving us what we THINK we want, actually showing what the character Quint is talking about in the scene. They do, after all, tell screenwriters "show, don't tell," despite this monologue being an excellent example of telling that has been earned in the context of an otherwise very visual movie. As a moviegoer, I might welcome this prequel flick. (And by the way, no, I would have zero interest in seeing a %100 historical film about the subject as a substitute.) What I expect is that it will all hinge on the casting of a 19 year old actor who evokes Robert Shaw to a shocking extent, modulated for youth and minus minus much of the edge the story will create in his life. He would be the lynch pin, and our involvement would largely be about tracking his arc from a practical joking but team-player and believer patriot all the way to grizzled atheist where I expect he will see a very decent young father or someone else worthy of survival get killed right behind him as he waits for his turn to be lifted from the water. I expect the poster will have multiple versions of the Jaws logo (for which I have an aversion) ascending toward little soldiers floating above. I expect the Jaws theme would be used. I expect that these days digital technology can manipulate shots of real sharks and integrate them. I would also like them to be bold enough to include a shark that looks just like the original Bruce, with jowls where the hinges were kept, and perhaps insinuate that this is the same shark that will sink the Orca years later. That would be a Hollywood wink that a purist might not like, but that is the kind of flick I think would be appreciated by Jaws fans. One temptation I'm on the fence about is whether they should have the Captain receive information that the Russians have made progress into Japan and that it is not necessary to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which has been recently publicized as hidden history by Oliver Stone. They didn't have to use the bomb, but the White House decided it should be a demonstration of strength because now they wanted to keep Russia in line. But even if the movie sticks to the most dramatic structure, with Quint in each scene (he could of course overhead a cable being read), it would be worth doing. The issue of truncating a long ordeal of weeks of survival in the ocean into two hours or less might be a directorial challenge, but also an opportunity. Personally, I would use the old Passion of the Christ structure and punctuate the horror with flashbacks of better times and perhaps what kind of life Quint had up to that point, maybe living in Amity. Then he can try to impart something or motivate a fellow sailor to keep awake or to not be afraid.

Writer-director

Over Easter, I had beer with a few high school friends. It's the kind of thing where you expect to account for the last 20 or 30 years of your life. Even though the broad strokes are already known. Graduated from Film and TV Production at Humber, did a lot of volunteering and being unemployed, and kept writing and making my little movies even while taking on a job as a security guard, which I thought would be temporary. ************** Some helpful and supportive thoughts and ideas were offered. I won't mention one business plan which might easily be used by others. But along with that came the opinion that a person has to decide whether he/she is a writer or a director. I keep remembering what one of my instructors said to me as graduation approached and he asked what I planned to do. He asked, "So you're going to pass yourself off as a writer-director." Since this was someone who might still be able to mess with my grades, I must have said something polite instead of, "Better than passing myself off as writing and directing instructor." He must have failed upward because he became head of the department. I could have also said, "Yes, I'll pass myself off by writing a screenplay and then directing it; that will surely fool people into thinking I am a writer-director." :):):):):);):):):):) What I have been seeing typically for years is that many directors develop their own projects. If they have found an already written screenplay, it is considered a draft and they will want to "work with" the writer or just walk away. It is like the old joke of producers or executives lining up to take their turn pissing on a script. It's not like I have people lining up with excellent scripts for me to direct. But I have participated in readings over the years and given detailed notes on many scripts. It is enough to know that you either click with something or you don't. I may not have time to see every story idea through to completion. I have too much in my inbox anyway. I have directed another writer's work and the process was the process. Once a script is ready, it can basically be locked. Especially after group readings and storyboards have drawn out possible areas of improvement or necessary tweaks. All of my own scripts go through that process. And once I have drawn it out and had to meditate on each beat of the story or of a scene, I can relax as long as everybody else is open to actually looking at my plan rather than just trusting the whims of the day. ________________________________________________________________________________________Being the writer and the director does not mean that I do "everything." I have had a few people offer me scripts to "produce" which they would want to direct, but that is like hiring me to do many of the chores I only reluctantly do for myself or for which I have waited years to delegate. I would be the wrong person to finance a film, given that it is mostly guard income I survive on. But I have had to do just that many times. Even if you get a producer, you have to have that awkward talk about whether you both understand the duties and responsibilities of that post. If suddenly the director has to recover funding that had not been properly locked down while a project is near or in progress, that could be a disaster. If you start revising a script because it has to be done with no resources, you are wearing the producer had and Murphy's Law is not co-writing and co-directing. There are a lot of opportunities or windows to shoot something I have let go by because now I am not as naive and certain of my destined path. But for me it is a matter of keeping an eye on the expected final result. A compromise on one end of the time-line will have its result on the other end. Each crew member is important. Each is a link in the chain. ________________________________________________________________________One logistical snafu and nothing can nor should be shot without the necessary element. I have in the past accommodated people leaving early from a big shoot and I've had to shoot around them to disguise the fact that they were not present. At that point, the best shots for those moments may be lost. Except that I was in the habit of doing storyboards and it helped the re-organization considerably. What may be lost is subtle. A room full of people has a certain energy. At this point I've caught on to how certain shots can't be easily achieved in reality. Even a 360 degree pan of people might not give the smooth other-worldly mood necessary and build viewer confidence in the project. So those elements become part of preparation. Too much emphasis these days is on simply "covering" the content of a scene, and assumes that it is two people talking. I am going to blog about this in more detail. But on the subject of writers handing over their scripts to a director, each project is its own. If I have written a stage play, I am oddly open to someone or several someones directing and re-staging it however they like. Perhaps because of the expectation that plays will be remounted or go on the road indefinitely. A movie is rarely remade. Even if it seems like the Seventies and eighties are being raided constantly for remakes. Also, part of my interest in directing a script is its potential for necessary invention and use of cinema language. So many movies are just master shot, over shoulder of everyone, close-up of everyone, and the scene from top to bottom. Flipping a burger. In those cases it seems like the director's role is merely symbolic or a matter of reviewing whether the actors are sticking to the plan from rehearsal or casting discussions. Jon Favreau has said that often studios would give him storyboards and say "just shoot this." Or he has hired the animator from Samurai Jack and the first style of Clone Wars cartoon to "direct" on paper the movements and framing of a battle in Iron Man 2. To be honest, the proper application of cutting and shooting is the key to my love of movies. MANY articles and interviews I've studied pay lip service to storytelling and visual elements but then run a camera merely recording conversation - as Hitchcock said, "pictures of people talking." Ironically, I am poised to do something that simple perhaps just because I have no production team and nothing to pay them so I will be writing like the wind and confining everything to the simplest location for the sake of. . .well not just savings of money but the Aristotelian unities of time, place and conflict. Then at least I won't be doing my "first feature" when I tackle the larger project I have been developing. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________I would LOVE to have a decent income. I would LOVE to have more of my titles from the past 10 years on imdb. I envy an enemy of mine who was savvy enough to start a film festival and once it was recognized by imdb simply put her own film titles up there - even at least one I know to be some sort of inside joke (a so-called doc that isn't anything more than an interview of her boyfriend). Much of my play and my passion has gone into preparing projects that at least were my own and/ or had an interesting element. I would be doing more for other people, but in my nerves I feel I am out of place in that capacity. If you advise anyone else on directing you are pissing up a rope. Everyone thinks he or she can direct, so this may not be unique. I won't co-write the work of others, so the idea of working on someone else' script to direct is not on the immediate horizon for me. Maybe after I've gotten my stuff out of my system. Most projects I should have done in my twenties or thirties. I know how sane I felt immediately after completing a film shoot in late 2003 and my brain felt more free to write. I got a lot of good work typed up, and some that still needs to be fixed up. I would certainly give certain scripts to another director and let them stage them and even cast them while I am directing one of my other scripts. As long as I'm not expected to pay for the pride of being a writer-john. I haven't given in to the vanity press. For now all I can do is be thankful for the people who have taken an interest in what I am doing and have helped. _______________________________________________________________________________You know, as I recall, the Canadian Film Center had its Feature Film Projects that as a rule only budgeted for an individual to be paid for one of the positions he or she held. This meant that it made great economic sense for the writer to also be the director. I know that if I were merely surrendering a script I would consider my job done. It would be all over but the compromise. So better to have me doing something, actually directing. As a producer I would be a liability because there are producer-minded people who could be going to bat for the project. You need a load bearing member of the team to be the producer. Obviously the cinematographer and first A.D. are essential. People expect a producer to be production manager as well. There are many positions that I have occupied, but the only one where I feel I am actually the best for the job (for the money) is writer-director. Even then, when directing it is to an extend acting if the scope is large. I wouldn't want some pip squeak wandering along and sizing me up and trying to spread dissent in the ranks. George Roy Hill was much like a general. Apparently so was Milius (who is recently featured in a great doc by Chop Shop). But I tend to be more quiet and hope to plan enough in advance that we don't miss anything. It is a cause for concern that I have not climbed up the imaginary ladder of the DGC for be a PA/AD, then a 3rd AD, then a 2ND AD, with payments and minimum numbers of hours on set in between. Unless I get in straight as a director, I might have to forget about union shoots. I can't be playing that game at age 45. I pretty much have to stick to what I am doing. ___________________________________________________Every now and then you will see a directing credit like Vincenzo Natali on Hannibal that you recognize and you can settle in and watch more carefully, but for most shows it just seems arbitrary who comes in to direct. The shows have good image quality, so the shooters know what they are doing, but I think it will only be taken as a grouchy position to evaluate the quality of TV directing or movies at least in an open forum. I need to be doing this more often, though I have no love of logistical tensions and politics. I feel like I am getting back into it and starting over each time. I keep seeing posts (by female directors) saying there are not enough female directors. I can understand someone boosting the stock of something they've got. But the one thing definitely needed is more excellent directors and a better image for directors. There is clearly an impatient view of directors by and large and a perception that they are all doing something by rote that is so standardized that they are redundant. Whether it is me or someone else, we need to see the DIRECTING evaluated as directing and not so much for content and politics. Some films are more fun to watch than others. The writing is often a meandering mess, which might make it closer to life but also makes the proverbial natives restless. Anyone can do it, so why am I merely wasting my time blogging on a Saturday when my time and my ind are my own? I am either hyper-ambitious, or hyper-apathetic.

A Conversation with Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola

Coppola's quote @ 33:45 about "dictatorial" directing and how that means

fighting the tendency of crew to do the rote thing is the best part of this interview

with him and Scorsese. Makes a lot of sense.  It's the difference between

getting a job done and getting THE job done.

Two Van Tuesday

Film-making memory. This falls into, "the hand of Providence protecting me from what I want." It can be the smallest of issues that allows Murphy's Law to enforce itself in the demonic details of life, the o-ring that is frozen just enough to change size and let gas escape when heated at launch time. Friends were making what was then a Calling Card short film and the director asked me to help out for its five day shoot ostensibly as continuity but generally as "an ally on the set" which might be a term picked up from Buskind's book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. I mentioned that all but the Tuesday would be okay, and that an actress we knew was moving and I had agreed to help her on that day and this was understood so Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were the days I agreed to. I also helped in the days leading up if there was input requested, and also ended up helping on a secondary shoot and with a sound recording day weeks after this main week. But despite mentioning the Tuesday prior commitment a couple of times and even during the Monday shoot on location and even being razzed about it as to my reason for helping this woman move, my friend the director was on the phone with me Monday night and seemed rattled that I actually did mean that I was intending to stay on course and help someone load and unload a moving van Tuesday instead of standing-up the actress and doing the more fun option of hanging out and filming and then just resume with the production on the Wednesday. They had my Polaroid camera (this was 1999) and continuity papers, and plenty of advance notice. To this day, there have been many of opportunities I've said no to just because filmmakers don't HEAR or have selective memory about availability and they believe "in for a penny, in for a pound" and that all else doesn't exist once a production starts. In hindsight, I would have let down the girl because she ended up having a few people help her. That Tuesday was spent riding in a van with the other helpers. I have an over-developed sense of commitment. When I checked back in with my director friend, he decided that the person who replaced me can stay with his project for the rest of the week. I learned later, however, that nothing had been shot that day anyway because they spent it traveling in their equipment van to a location and then finding it unsuitable and returning so the producer could find a different house. I missed a day of riding in a van because I was riding in another van. Had I relented on Monday night, and stayed on to (I thought) indulge in my preference of movies over being a mover, I'd likely not have been accused of disloyalty by the actress and no harm would be done; I would be climbing out of the film van and quipping something like, "Well it's a good thing I blew off my other commitment," If I wanted to be a dick. To top it off, the A.D. from the shoot, a young woman who seemed nice enough for much of the first day, who did not know me at all, apparently had a lot to say. When I picked up my Polaroid, I got the sense that a LOT of spin-doctoring had begun. My frequent runs to the washroom were the result of water pills treating cranial hypertension which had caused me to collapse months before and had damaged my optic nerves. I had recovered enough balance that by summer I was pushing myself a bit. I recall a lot of little things, like when the art department guy didn't have impressive enough prop groceries I suggested stuff from the craft services table and helped stuff the bags. I had thought the day had gone well. There was a little edge from her when it came time to take a Polaroid of the cast and crew. It that photo still exists, I am not in it because I am shooting. The A.D. offered to take the photo but when I explained a subtle framing issue to compensate for, she handed it back. Oddly, the photo was intended for our hosts at the location and I don't remember giving it to them. The A.D. ended up riding in the same vehicle as me on the way back into town, and there was a subtle bit of mustard when she remarked generally about how people should be enthusiastic about filmmaking or not involved - not that she would have been talking about me. Her only hint of anything "negative" would be that when she asked me about something math-related about continuity I had nothing because in any other continuity gig I had I didn't have to add up film footage, only monitor each shot and take that was done. I had thought the camera crew took care of that and I only noted exposure and lens info. But even then despite being a little sun stroked by the end of the day I am certain I was purely polite with her and only got wind of her dark side weeks later in post-mortem chats. I had mentioned that I was not strictly a continuity person and was only there to help out as a former classmate and friend of the three key crew, and that was only mentioned so that I was not passing myself off as anything more. Apart from my own projects, I have avoided doing continuity since. I suspect that much of that A.D.'s attitude about me might have resulted from my re-statement Monday night that I was not due to come in Tuesday. She likely fanned the flames of frustration my friend felt at that point. When I see a shot from that first day, I think of it as mostly positive snap-shots and the film itself turned out very well and it should have gotten more exposure. Given what was known at the time, there is a certain inevitability to it but not any predictability. There was no obvious gravity point in that case study. People frequently come onto a project for a day, and I think they actually used a few continuity people that week. I put all of my cards on the table in advance. Undisclosed expectations are generally the root of conflict on this kind of thing. I don't usually change course when I've decided something, and would have no reason to expect that a known open shift would not be filled and would be left open with the expectation that "don't mean" that I am going to honour an agreement to do something menial as a prior commitment. I was a volunteer. Perhaps the only one on the set. I didn't lose them a day or put them over budget. The person who did was chastised but never shut out as a friend. It took me years to let myself off the hook and realize that I was taken for granted. And the undisclosed expectations were not mine. This kind of anecdote I think might be of use in building teams and airing any concerns during the early phase where people are buzzed about a project and just happy people are willing to show up. #GuardedOptimism.