Cinephiled

Entertaining movie reviews, interviews and analysis by cinephiles for cinephiles.

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Interview: The Creators of ‘Skin: The History of Nudity in the Movies’ Bare All in New Documentary

From the moment the first motion picture camera was invented, there has been nudity in the movies. Even in the earliest days of this new art form, filmmakers delighted in exploring the human body and audiences were riveted by scenes of nudity on the screen. This comprehensive and fascinating new documentary begins with the silent era and continues through the present day, looking at changes in morality and sensibilities while examining the political, sociological, and artistic changes that shaped this rich history. 

Skin: The History of Nudity in the Movies also delves into the gender bias surrounding nudity in motion pictures. It looks at the surprisingly relaxed attitude towards nudity in pre-code Hollywood, the period of censorship that was designed to “clean up” the industry, and how the powerful MPAA ratings system was formed to help the industry police itself (and avoid outside intervention). The documentary also addresses the impact of the more recent #metoo movement on nude scenes in movies today. I spoke with Danny Wolf, the director of this fascinating doc, and Jim McBride, the co-executive producer who, as “Mr. Skin,” has run a website for the past 21 years that documents nudity in the movies.

Danny Miller: As far as I’m concerned, this is the perfect film for the pandemic — who wouldn’t be interested in this topic? Being a classic movie lover, I really enjoyed the material about the early days of the movies before censorship really took hold. I think this film might cause a wild increase in sales for Cecil B. DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross from 1932 starring Fredric March, Claudette Colbert, and Fredric March. Wow, who knew? I never dreamed there would be that much nudity in a DeMille film from a major studio! 

Danny Wolf (with Eric Roberts)

Danny Wolf: That was the best part about making this film — researching those movies from the twenties and thirties. I hadn’t seen most of them so I had a lot of catching up to do, from the earliest ones up through the infamous Caligula and beyond. I learned so much. I especially hadn’t realized the extent of nudity in the movies in those early days. I love all those pre-Code movies. I still haven’t been able to find the complete version of The Sign of the Cross but that’s on my list!

Jim, I know you’ve been following this topic for many years on your website. Did you have a big hand in the organization of the film into distinct eras? 

Jim McBride

Jim McBride: Yes, in my role as one of the executive producers, I definitely had some input. My website just had its 21stanniversary, I can’t believe I’ve been working in this field for that long, so I do have a pretty good background on the subject. Of course, what I do on my site and what this film is about are really two completely different things. The hardest thing was to narrow it down to a two-hour documentary. We had to decide on the pivotal moments in the history of nudity in the movies. It took a team approach, with me, our other Executive Producer, Paul Fishbein, and our director, Danny. We’re all film buffs and I hope that will come across to everyone who watches this documentary — we really love movies. 

Mariel Hemingway

I think the film is very well organized and the mix of interview subjects is just fantastic. I loved seeing the range of people you talked to, from some who were mostly known for appearing nude in the movies to directors like Peter Bogdanovich, Amy Heckerling, Kevin Smith, and Martha Coolidge and stars like Malcolm McDowell, Pam Grier, Eric Roberts, and Sean Young, among others. To be honest, I was surprised to see some of them, like Mariel Hemingway, who’s such a delight in the film. I didn’t think she’d be that open to talking about this topic. 

Danny Wolf: We were so happy to have her because she was in two important films that are discussed: Personal Best and Star 80, and of course, she had quite a different look in both films. She even talked about the whole issue that was so big at the time about whether she got breast augmentations just to play Dorothy Stratten in Star 80. Mariel and Eric Roberts both talk about that.

Another surprise was hearing from Ken Davitian about his experience in Borat.

We were very happy to have him discussing his crazy scene from that film. Nudity in movies was never limited to just women or to people with a certain body type. 

Malcom McDowell must have been a blast to talk to. I could listen to his stories about moviemaking all day long. 

That was the most fun interview you can ever do. He’s such a great storyteller and you just hang onto every word he says. I interviewed him about Clockwork Orange for another documentary I did but hearing his firsthand stories about Caligula was just great. There could be a whole documentary just on that one film, that’s how much lore there is about it!

Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren in Caligula

Honestly, there should be. I remember seeing that movie as a teenager and it was such a huge deal. Truly awful but you felt that underneath all of that gratuitous sex and nudity lurked a really good movie, especially with that cast. McDowell’s stories about John Gielgud on that set were hilarious but it also had Peter O’Toole and Helen Mirren — just crazy! It was interesting to learn in your film how Bob Guccione was responsible for turning that film into the sex-fest that it became. 

Jim McBride: Yes, and there’s talk that Tinto Brass is helping with a re-edit that will show more of what the film was originally intended to be! I’m sure they’ll be getting rid of many of the lurid scenes that Guccione shot at two and three in the morning!

Mamie Van Doren

It was moving to see the late Sylvia Miles in her last on-camera interview, and I loved hearing from Mamie Van Doren. I always thought she was so comfortable with her sex kitten image, I was surprised to hear her talk about how reluctant she was to do nude scenes in movies. 

Danny Wolf: Yeah, there were obviously certain people we had to cover in the film, and that included the trio of Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and Mamie Van Doren who, in some respects, went on to carry both Marilyn and Jayne’s torches. Marilyn had done a nude scene in Something’s Gotta Give in 1963, the movie that was never completed before her death, and Jayne had appeared nude in Promises! Promises! that same year which was a huge deal. The first mainstream star to appear in the nude in an American film! And then Mamie comes out in Three Nuts in a Search of a Bolt. Those movies just changed everything in terms of having stars willing to appear nude. 

Jim McBride: We talk about the infamous Hays Code that was in full force by the mid-1930s. Before that, there were all these crazy movies with all sorts of nudity but that came crashing to and end when the Hays Code went into effect. That lasted for decades. But these movies with Monroe, Mansfield, and Van Doren finally killed that level of censorship in the 1960s once and for all. And kicked off the modern era of celebrity nudity. 

Linda Blair

It’s also interesting to watch this film through the lens of the #metoo movement and our changing sensibilities. It’s hard not to cringe when hearing from some of the actresses who worked in the 70s and 80s who felt so pressured to do nude scenes even if they weren’t comfortable doing them and hadn’t agreed to. It was poignant hearing from Linda Blair in the documentary and how she was kind of ambushed into doing nudity in her career. 

Danny Wolf: Yes, she definitely felt pressured to do things that she didn’t sign up for. And she was basically told she’d destroy the film if she didn’t do what they asked. There was a lot of stuff like that in the 70s and 80s. We talked to actresses who signed on for scripts in which there was no nudity and then suddenly word would come down on the set that they had to add a certain number of nude scenes. They almost always felt that they had to do it whether they liked it or not. If they refused, they were told that they were holding up production and hurting the distribution of the film. And many felt that if they didn’t agree, that would be the end of their career. 

Awful. Thank God things have changed to a large extent, and probably a big part of that is having more women directors and women in other positions of power. 

Absolutely. 

And, speaking of “celebrity nudity,” now it seems so normal to see nudity on the biggest, most popular TV shows. 

Jim McBride: Yes. Back when I launched my website in 1999, I think there were something like 25 TV shows that had any nudity at all. You know, a few scenes in Sex and the City and other shows of that type. When we looked at that last year, we found 144 television shows across many different platforms including Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. I truly believe we’re in the golden age of nudity! It’s no longer a big deal when you’re watching a show or a movie on these networks. And that includes male nudity, too, which was certainly not the case in the 60s and 70s. I think we’re finally getting rid of that double standard.

Right. I remember the days when you could show women completely naked and still get an R rating but if anyone flashed a penis, God forbid, it was an automatic X rating. 

That’s right. And that again goes back to the fact that in those days, most directors, producers, writers were men. And that has changed as well, thank goodness. Look at a show like Game of Thrones. Lots of female nudity, yes, but a huge amount of male nudity, too.

Well, there’s so much in this film that is food for thought about our changing world. And more people you talk to that we haven’t even discussed like Pam Grier — I would have been happy with two hours of just her talking about her memories of making movies!

Danny Wolf: Me, too, she is fantastic!

Skin: The History of Nudity in the Movies is currently available on demand.

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Interview: Tone Grøttjord-Glenne Explores the Legacy of Child Sexual Abuse in the Powerful ‘All That I Am’

After five years in the foster system, 18-year old Emilie returns to her family home to rebuild a fractured relationship with her mother and her younger half-siblings. Over the next two years, a determined Emilie begins to heal the trauma that haunts her, learns to speak her truth aloud, and takes her first steps towards a self-determined future. Now Emilie must gather the courage to reveal to her half-siblings the reason their father was imprisoned and their sister went away. Told with a commitment to emotional insight and dedication to Emilie’s subjective experience, All That I Am is the story of an extraordinarily courageous young woman on the cusp of adulthood finding the voice that was long denied to her.

This moving Norwegian documentary is essential viewing for anyone with an interest in helping victims of child sexual abuse. I was happy to talk to the film’s talented director, Tone Grøttjord-Glenne, from her home in Norway about this important film. The filmmaker is currently overseeing a digital platform that will allow people to use the film to learn more about this horrible worldwide problem and to help those who work with its victims. The film is currently a part of the online Hot Docs Online Festival.

Danny Miller: I’m especially grateful for this coming out right now during this time when people are quarantining with their families. I worry so much about kids in abusive situations who are stuck at home.

Director Tone Grøttjord-Glenne (Photo by Stine Østby)

Tone Grøttjord-Glenne: Yes, it’s a very serious problem for all the children who are trapped in their house with their abusers. Of course, that’s true even when there’s not a pandemic.

Right. I was very impressed by Emilie. It was so brave of her to put herself out there in that way. How did you decide to feature her as the main subject of this film?

I was doing research with police departments in Norway and the people there who do the interviews with children who have been sexually abused. I spent half a year with them reviewing cases. One day they told me about this girl they talked to several years earlier that they could never forget. It was Emilie and she had just turned 18 so I went to meet with her. I already knew her story — that she had been sexually abused from the age of six to twelve, and that she had finally told a teacher about it and had been moved into foster homes. When I met her, she had only recently been reconnected with her mom and half-siblings.

I assume the person featured in the film had to be over 18.

Definitely. It had to be someone who could really grasp and deal with what it would mean to have her story presented to the public in this way — and we wanted to follow Emilie’s story into the present. When I met her for the first time, I invited her mother to come along. I knew their relationship was still quite fragile at that point and they were just getting to know each other again and I didn’t want Emilie to be in the film without the support of her mom. I saw that there was a really strong mother-daughter story there. And I was constantly impressed by how expressive Emilie was — it was like her emotions were outside of her body, and I thought it was important to follow someone where you could see the effects of the sexual abuse in her daily life without making her talk about it all the time.

I was moved by her mother’s courage in putting herself out there in the film. I can only imagine the guilt she felt about the whole situation. Was she worried about how people might respond to her role in Emilie’s story?

Oh yes, she was quite worried about that. We decided to really take our time with the film as Emilie adjusted to life back at home. We started shooting in January 2016 but we didn’t launch the film until March of this year. That last scene in the film, when Emilie is about to tell her half-siblings what happened, was actually shot in late 2017. We then waited a whole year while the family went to the therapy to try to mend itself. And then the psychologist we were working with had us wait another full year until the family was ready, before we even started editing. We wanted Emilie to be a bit older when the film came out.

Wow, so it sounds like at any point in that process things could have happened that would have caused you to make the decision to not release the film at all.

Yes. We didn’t want to put any extra pressure on the family while they were dealing with so much. But ultimately we all decided that releasing this film could be a great help to the people and organizations who work with this issue every day. We’ve already seen how they’re using it as a tool in their trainings.

The officials working with Emilie that we see in the film seem very skilled and compassionate.

We really didn’t know how deep she’d be going into the system. After we began, she got a call from the welfare administration that felt Emilie was now ready to go back to work and they wanted to talk to her about that since she had been receiving a monthly stipend from the government. Emilie called and asked if we wanted to go with her to film that meeting so we worked it out.

I think that’s a very important scene to have in the film.

When we screened the film for welfare administration offices around Norway, that scene really started a lot of conversations. They saw how they were pressuring Emilie to move faster than perhaps what was best for her so it became a teaching moment. In that first meeting, she wasn’t really ready for a job and she kept trying to tell them that. When they saw the film, they started talking about how they had to listen to their clients more and really make them a part of the process.

It’s tricky, though, because I can also see how they were just trying to motivate her and get her over the hump of her fears about being in the world. I think the whole film could be used well to help train the people who work with this community.

Yes, that is my hope, too, and I’m happy to say that many of these groups came to see the film when it opened in Norway in March. I wrote an article about those screenings that was distributed to all 500 of the child welfare offices across Norway. And now the digital platform we’ve created is being used by many such groups. The platform uses scenes from the film mixed with interviews with experts, texts, reflection questions, and all that. The site will be fully up and running within the next few months. And I’m working with some universities in the U.S. as well.

When you’re making a documentary, you never know exactly how the story is going to go. Were there any big surprises for you during the shoot?

When we began, I had no idea that Emilie would go to civil court against her abuser. That ended up being a great way to give some important background information to Emilie’s story without making her talk a lot about it in the present. It also showed how what happened was causing her to struggle in her everyday life. The scene in which she’s talking to her lawyer at court and then has to see her abuser standing there smoking a cigarette was very intense. We can really feel how scared she is. That scene ended up having so many functions and layers.

This film is different from others that I’ve seen on this topic in that it really shows how child sexual abuse affects the entire family. While I totally empathized with the mother and why she didn’t want her younger children to know what had happened with their dad who had suddenly disappeared from their lives, it’s clear that they really needed to be told the truth, as painful as it was. Seeing the process leading up to that meeting is so helpful.

It’s interesting because Emilie is a very non-confrontational person. I knew she really, really wanted to talk to her mom about some of things that happened and part of me was just waiting for a scene in which she would explode and start yelling about how sad she was that her mother had not been able to meet her in the way that she needed, but that never happened despite how much I was always writing that scene in my head. Emilie is very low key and all of the serious conversations she had with her mom happened in much more subtle ways, not like they would in a fiction film. I remember one day when the mom was telling her how worried she was about the younger siblings knowing the full story because she was afraid they would tell their friends and then there’d be a lot of shame for the family. And then Emilie said, “Well, you know, when you’re not allowed to speak about anything at home, it’s not so strange that you have to speak about it elsewhere.” I think that really had an impact on her mother.

I think it’s precisely because Emilie is not someone who is prone to high emotion and histrionics that every emotion we see her having is that much more effective. I was on the edge of my seat during the tense build-up to that final conversation with her siblings. Do her brother and sister have any relationship with their father now?

They don’t, but at least now if they choose to have a relationship with him later, they can go into that relationship knowing the truth. They were very young when this happened and it was hard for everyone to open that box up again after so many years but it was really important to tell the truth so that they could all move on. Emilie and her mother both knew that the conversation had to take place, no matter how hard it was.

Again, I admire the mother for having the courage to let that happen.

I think she’s a very important character in the film because she represents so many mothers who are in that position. A lot of kids are being sexually abused, and a lot of them have mothers with a similar story. I’m hoping the film will help mothers and daughters have these difficult conversations. In the end, Emilie and her mom are able to have honest discussions about it and I hope that will give courage to other mothers and daughters out there. This is not easy stuff to deal with.

I’m glad that you got to have some screenings in theaters just before the pandemic hit. What were those like?

What surprised me is how many different sectors of people who work with children responded to the film. We had screenings for welfare agencies, police forces, and people who work in the court system. And, as I’ve said, we’re creating a lot of academic material that uses the film for training purposes, including teachers who are often the first people to hear about such abuse. I like that all these sectors can use the film to have a common reference through Emilie’s story, to talk about the best methods to use to help these children.

How is Emilie doing today?

She’s doing well! I think putting an end to all those family secrets changed her so much. She’s a lot more relaxed now and I can see that the film coming out has been very empowering to her.

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In ‘Circus of Books,’ Rachel Mason Chronicles Her Parents’ Surprising Business — Selling Gay Porn

Rachel Mason’s moving documentary tells the story of the iconic bookstore and gay porn shop that served as the epicenter for LGBTQ life in Los Angeles for decades. Unbeknownst to many in the community it served, the store was cultivated and cared for by Mason’s parents, Karen and Barry, a straight conservative Jewish couple. Circus of Books is an intimate portrait of the Masons and their accidental journey to become one of the biggest distributors of hardcore gay porn in the United States, all the while downplaying the family business to their friends, synagogue, and even their own children. While they approached their store primarily as a way to support their family, Circus of Books also provided a much-needed non-judgmental gathering place for L.A.’s LGBTQ community. When the AIDS epidemic hit with a vengeance, Karen and Barry provided aid and comfort to countless people who were suffering, even as the mens’ own families rejected them.

Rachel Mason, director of Circus Of Books

An accomplished artist in her own right, Rachel Mason’s portrait of this lost world (her parents finally retired last year and the bookstore closed for good) is a poignant and entertaining document of an institution that was vital to its community. Mason also wrote and performs the end credit song, “Give You Everything.” The film is now available for screening on Netflix. I so enjoyed talking to Rachel Mason from her shelter-in-place.

Danny Miller: Rachel, it’s great to talk with you, I so enjoyed this beautiful film!

Rachel Mason: Thank you so much, I appreciate that!

I was happy to hear that you had already done the festival circuit with the film and that you got to screen it with appreciative audiences. I so feel for filmmakers who are having their films come out during this miserable pandemic.

Yes, we should have a moment of silence for all the films that are not getting what I got, it’s so sad. We were going to have a theatrical release, but I’m thrilled that people can now see the film on Netflix. I loved our time at all of the festivals, but the gay festivals in particular were such a joy. There was such a communal spirit at those screenings, with everyone getting all the references and laughing and crying at all the right moments!

I imagine this would be such a fun film to see with a big crowd.

For sure. When I saw the film with gay audiences, that’s when felt like I had actually done something for my community. I really feel for all the filmmakers and audiences who aren’t getting that right now, I hope we can figure out new ways to get that community spirit.

The upside, I guess, if you can call it that, is that you’ve got a captive audience yearning for new content.

That’s true. And while I think the film is for everyone, I think one of the best things about it is that it’s bringing people together in the queer community to remind us all of this historical past that is slipping away so quickly — especially the younger generation. I think many young people don’t have a clue about what the older generation went through. I want them and future generations to know what happened and what the role of erotic content was for our community in those years before the Internet.

I had the chance to interview Scotty Bowers when Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood came out. He reminded me how few options there were before the Internet for gay people.  It seems like places like your parents’ store were such a vitally important resource for the community. I’m glad that stories like his and the one you’re telling here are recorded for posterity. 

I completely agree. There’s so much that is disappearing because the older generation is not around. The people who survived the AIDS epidemic are like cherished members of our community. We need to get all these stories down. I hope Circus of Books gives people a sense that they really need to look for these stories before they disappear.

Without this film, the story of your parents and their role in this community would never have been known. Needless to say, I totally fell in love with your parents. In so many ways they reminded me so much of my own Jewish parents. It’s fascinating when you talk in the film about how you and your brothers didn’t quite realize what they were doing and it was only your friends who finally clued you in.

It was really interesting because my parents were so not cool. I had lots of cool friend friends with really cool parents, but my parents were not those people. They were kind of boring. They were straight. My mom was super religious which annoyed the crap out of me and all I wanted to do was rebel against them. And then here come my rebel friends who I find out are going to my family’s store and saying how cool it is. It was such a shock to me. In the end, it was exciting to realize that I had this access to one of the coolest places in the city in terms of how all my friends in the gay underground saw it. I think I appreciated the store so much more from the time I was a teenager on, and it was kind of like God’s will that I made this film because nobody else could have gotten the access. I mean, my mom would certainly not have ever let anyone but me follow her around with a camera, that was the last thing she wanted.

It’s kind of a miracle that the film happened at all considering your mother’s reluctance to be a part of it, and yet I think that tension is also part of why it’s such a compelling film. Would you say that you finally won your mother over in terms of her being happy about being part of the documentary?

Well, I did manage to trot her out at a few of the festival screenings and have her stand there while she got standing ovations. My mom is very much a reluctant hero. First off, she hoped no one would ever see this film and now that people are seeing it, she has had to reckon with the fact that she is looked on as a hero by lots of people and yet she doesn’t feel any sense of heroism because up until the day the store closed, she says she was just doing her job — filing paperwork, sending out invoices, making sure her staff got paid — all the things you do to run a small business and none of it was particularly glamorous or interesting. So, when you finally come up for air after 40 years and people start thanking you for doing this work, there’s a sort of shell shock. Plus, my mother has an innate talent to find fault in almost anything. After she got a five-minute standing ovation at Frameline, she was perplexed that it went on for so long. I was like, “Mom, the one thing you can’t criticize is a standing ovation, there is just nothing bad about that!” (Laughs.)

I’m glad she showed up for those events despite her discomfort. In terms of the heroic element, yes, they were providing this amazing service for an oppressed community without judgment, but as soon as the AIDS crisis hit, that’s when I would start calling your parents real heroes. What they did to help people in that world during that awful time was so touching.

It’s true. That was really important even if they didn’t see it as anything extraordinary. When we look at the history of the Holocaust, there are these people who are called Righteous Gentiles who helped the people who were being persecuted, like the ones who hid Anne Frank and so many others. Those people are often very reluctant to accept any acknowledgement because they simply did what they felt was right. Like, what would you do if your best friend’s daughter was going to get killed? I mean, you would probably think about hiding her in your attic, too, right? It’s a simple thing but it reminds us all that there’s something called humanity here. And the lack of humanity that the gay population saw during the AIDS crisis was just utterly shocking. We look back at that time now, and we’re like, “Wow, really?” Parents didn’t show up for their own dying children and yet they called themselves Christians.

Did you realize what was going on at that time and what your parents were doing to help these people?

I didn’t understand the depth of that pain. My perspective on it as a kid was that I would see these beautiful, funny, amazing gay men who worked at the store who were great people and hilarious. And then, my mom would say, “Oh, well, he’s not here anymore because he died.” This happened again and again but I had this child’s perspective on it that I almost didn’t think twice about until I got older and knew many people who lost so many of their friends. And then when I interviewed my parents for the film and heard these stories, I was just heartbroken. A mother would call my mom and want to know what her son was like. And my mother would think, “Fuck you, lady, he was dying and you refused to fly out here from Idaho  to see him when he needed you so badly.” No amount of anti-gay feelings should override parental love to that extent. I wish I could say those sentiments have disappeared today but we know they’re still out there. We’re all aware that there is a powerful Christian right in this country. I was just reading about that hospital in New York that was set up on in Central Park to help with the pandemic but before anyone could work there or be treated they had to sign something saying they agreed with the group’s anti-gay policies.

Horrible.

I do think that’s where heroism comes in. My mom never ran out onto a battlefield to rescue people while bullets were flying, but she helped people who were being treated so cruelly by their own families and our culture. Sometimes it’s the least likely people who decide to stand up and do something right.

I love that analogy to the Righteous Gentiles during the Holocaust. Have your parents ever been honored by any LGBTQ groups?

Oh, God, no. First of all, they weren’t known. My parents were very, very private people, especially my mother. And very behind the scenes. Also because their work was related to the sex industry —

With its own biases and prejudices, forget about the gay part.

Exactly. So they just had their heads down and hoped no one would ever ask them about what they do. My mom would always try to just get past that question very quickly if anyone asked. “We have a bookstore.” That’s why this film is so shocking to their system.

I admit that when I was watching this film, a lot of my tears came from the scene with your brother when he talks about what it was like for him to come out. That was so moving already, but then seeing your reaction as he’s telling his story was even more so.

Those were very real tears for me. When I heard him talk about the day he came out, and how he had gotten a one-way plane ticket because he didn’t know if he’d be accepted by my parents, I was just so horrified, I never knew he had gone through any of that. I had such a different experience growing up. I love my parents, but I was kind of done with them putting any pressures on me. I was always a rebel, my friends were all gay or from the counterculture — I took a girl to prom and no one even said anything about it. And the truth is I was too caught up in my own selfish teenaged world to notice my little brother and his struggles. And then interviewing him at 37 and hearing him talk about 18-year-old Josh being that closeted and afraid, I just had these extreme feelings of shame. I realized I was out there waving my freak flag while poor little Josh was just trying so hard to be that perfect little kid. I think his is the more common story, most people are not artists and weirdos thumbing their nose at society like I was at a young age. I think that’s what gave me a free pass — I never even bothered to come out to them. Josh carried so much pressure to be the perfect child.

That scene is such a touchstone for the film. Do you think the level of secrecy around your parents’ business had repercussions on your family dynamic?

What’s interesting is that despite her work, my mom had all the classic Jewish family values, like wanting us to marry Jewish, have kids, go to college. My mom had all these hardcore expectations for us to get straight As, and nothing was ever good enough. And later I would think, “Why do we have to do all this?” Was it related to the fact that they ran a gay porn shop? She’s never really let go of those expectations to this day, it’s kind of maddening.

I can relate to those Jewish family values that are often bathed in neuroses.

Yeah, like there’s always this element of fear and survival mixed in — like you could get killed at any moment. You might think that you are part of the culture here but just wait until they start attacking Jews, we’ll be the first to be shoved into the ovens. I think that was also part of their fear of being open about what they were doing with the store.

I love all the interviews in the film. It’s amazing to see people like Larry Flynt and gay porn star Jeff Stryker, but what moved me the most is hearing from the old employees. What amazing characters. It’s so great to get their oral histories down from this lost world.

Totally. My dad talks about how important the employees were to people in the community. Like people would know that Gerald was there from four to six so they would go in then. Gerald had his own customers, and then earlier in the day Ben had his own group of customers, it was almost like fan clubs grew around all the different people who worked there. They knew their customers so well and what kinds of things they liked so they would give them a customized experience, like a niche within the niche.

Your mother gets a lot of attention because she’s such a compelling character, but I was so moved by your father as well.

My dad is a guy who just loves life and he’s thrilled at the attention he’s gotten because of the film, the opposite of my mom who is panic-stricken about it. They’re an interesting pair because he is the most happy-go-lucky person I’ve ever known.

I just wish we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic because I would love to see your parents at the screenings with big crowds.

Oh, on that front my mother couldn’t be happier about the pandemic and that she doesn’t have to do anything related to the film. Before the quarantine started, she joked about heading to Antarctica for a month after the film came out and living in an igloo!

Circus of Books is now available to watch on Netflix.

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Interview: Costume Designer Paul Tazewell Brings History to Life in the Powerful ‘Harriet’

Based on the thrilling and inspirational life of an iconic American freedom fighter, Kasi Lemmons’ riveting Harriet tells the extraordinary tale of Harriet Tubman’s escape from slavery and transformation into one of America’s greatest heroes. Her courage, ingenuity, and tenacity freed hundreds of slaves and changed the course of history. Harriet stars Cynthia Erivo in the title role and features Leslie Odom Jr. and Janelle Monáe.

Paul Tazewell, the great Broadway costume designer, designed the wardrobe for this powerful film. Tazewell, a six-time Tony nominee, won the Tony for Hamilton along with an Emmy for his work on The Wiz! Live. His stunning costumes for Harriet trace Tubman’s path from fugitive slave to tenacious freedom fighter.

Just as with Hamilton, Tazewell’s costumes are anchored in extensive research. It helped that the Civil War era marked the advent of photography with the famed Daguerreotypes giving Tazewell a trove of inspiration. That informed, for instance, the velvet dress worn by Marie Buchanan (Janelle Monáe), who owns the Philadelphia boarding house that figures prominently in the plot—ornate but tasteful, representative of the life that, to a former slave, is only imaginable in the free North. When Harriet, bedraggled and exhausted after her incredible solo run to freedom, arrives at Marie’s tasteful, well-appointed home in Philadelphia, her crisp silk dresses and delicate shawls practically shimmer.

There are Daguerreotypes of Tubman but obviously none of her very dangerous work leading slaves out of bondage. Reflective of her important, terrifying work, Tazewell and his team created different “stages” of the same costume, such as a red petticoat from her slave dress or a green dress she wears after she returns to the South from her freedom in the north escorting “passengers” along the railroad. Her first incredible escape shows in her wardrobe, progressively more ruined, through mud, blood, and bog water, across each leg of Tubman’s journey. Her clothes literally break down as she tears away the figments of her old life.

As Tubman becomes more comfortable with her new role, she embraces her Joan of Arc like persona, not to mention her male alter ego, Moses. Her wardrobe echoes her new confidence—Union blue pants and jacket with brass buttons and cap or even a top hat on occasion become her uniform and indeed she leads a troop of Buffalo Soldiers into battle in a pale blue coat brandishing a trusty rifle. Even one incredibly detailed navy blue gown, stiff with crinoline petticoats and intricate tight ruffles at the bodice, is as much a statement as the rousing speech she gives to her fellow “conductors” on the Underground Railroad. It is a long way from the plain, blue workaday dress she wears on her initial escape, underscoring how far she has come.

I talked to Paul Tazewell about his remarkable work on this film.

Danny Miller: So nice to talk with you, Paul, I’ve admired your work in the theater for years and was thrilled to see your work in this film. Was doing the research for this film different than for some of your other projects?

Paul Tazewell: Well, I definitely felt that it was important to be really grounded in history since Harriet Tubman was a real person and quite an icon. I spent a lot of time at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York and, of course, studies the Daguerreotypes from the period. Lucky for us, this was the first era in American history where people started documenting everyday life so I was able to examine portraits of slaves on the plantations as well as free African Americans and the white people of the era.

I’m thinking of that one famous photo of Harriet Tubman we’ve all seen. Are there many others?

Actually, no, there really aren’t, so that was a challenge. I had to pull together as much research as possible and then make plausible decisions about what Harriet might have worn. But one of the things that I found very inspiring was a newly found photograph of a younger Harriet than we’re used to seeing that’s now at the Smithsonian. It’s a beautiful photograph, there’s a softness to it and an acknowledgment of the fashion of the period that I tried to make sure was a part of her visual story in the film.

She goes through so many personal and physical transitions in the story.

Absolutely. To begin with, if her clothes were not handed down from family members, they were certainly very old. I had to always keep that in mind. And the dress she escapes in had to show an enormous amount of wear and tear to the point where it’s deteriorating off of her body. It’s just not able to hold together after jumping off a bridge, being swept through the rapids, everything she went through. By the time she reaches freedom, it’s pretty much falling off of her.

Janelle Monáe as Marie Buchanan

And then she makes it to Philadelphia and meets Marie Buchanan who looks unlike any Black woman Harriet has ever seen. You can see the wonder in her eyes when she first sees Marie.  

Yes, and Marie becomes a great influence on Harriet including what she wears. As a designer, it was very fun to create the different looks for Harriet when she became a master of disguise in the Underground Railroad. She was trying to stay under the radar of the slave catchers who initially thought she was a man but Harriet adopted many different looks that allowed aspects of her personality to come through, some female, some male like when she dresses like some of the Black sailors of the time.

I love it because you see her clothes reflect her emotional journey and empowerment throughout the film. Was it hard to research the proper color palette to use since the Daguerreotypes are obviously not in color?

We have a lot of knowledge from clothes that have survived and from paintings about what colors and fabrics were available at that time. We knew the fiber content that we needed to work with and we actually used a significant number of genuine period costumes in the film, mostly for secondary characters, including a couple of pieces that we copied for Harriet’s look. Janelle Monáe, who played Marie, wore one dress that was a beautiful silk stripe from the period.

Wow, it’s a miracle that any of those survived.

Yes, it’s pretty remarkable. Of course ,these were dresses that were completely hand-sewn. And when you see the intensity and richness of the colors, that gave us license to use those colors in the costumes we created. Some of the authentic period clothes helped support where I wanted to go emotionally with the different characters.

Paul Tazewell adjusting Leslie Odom Jr.’s costume

With all the hardships these characters were going through, I imagine that the layering of dirt and grime was especially important. I assume that you were the one art directing the filth and the deterioration of the clothing?

Oh yes, that’s my job. We’d start by carefully going through the script and determining how many times we’d see Harriet in a dress on her journey from Point A to Point B and then I would take everything that’s happened to her into consideration and start imagining what the different levels of distress would be.

You must have had to make so many versions of some of those outfits.

Yes, I remember with some we had about eight versions at varying levels of decay, plus at least four more for Cynthia’s stunt double. The reality is that the dress she was wearing during her escape would already be quite distressed the first time we see it, so that was the baseline for all the copies, and then we had to go from there to make the condition of the dress worse and worse.

Fascinating. Before I go, as a classic movie lover, I have to ask you about the project you just completed, Steven Spielberg’s new take on West Side Story.

Oh, it was a really exciting summer. We filmed mostly in New York with a little bit in Patterson, New Jersey. We stuck to the time period of when the original was created, the 1950s, and it was such a delight working with Spielberg. I think it’s going to be a stunning film.

But was it a little nerve-wracking that you all knew that many of us have every frame of the original film memorized?

I hope that we’ve been able to create a parallel version of West Side Story that people will grow to love. The cast is out of this world — they’re all young and so full of life. And we have Rita Moreno in our cast, too, so that’s also a big plus and a connection to the original film. It was a great group all around. There’s no question that the original film is beloved and I hope our film just adds to that experience in the same way seeing a new stage production of West Side Story does, which we’re actually going to be treated to very soon.

Frankly, knowing that Rita Moreno was the only actual Puerto Rican actor in the original cast makes me excited about seeing a more diverse group in the new movie. 

Absolutely, you’re going to see a lot of diversity in our cast.

Well, thanks so much for the chat, I really hope that people are flocking to Harriet because I think it’s a very important film. And good luck with West Side Story.

We can talk more about that next year!

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Interview: Director Mark Landsman on ‘Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer’

Sex! Gossip! Scandal! For over 60 years, the National Enquirer has pumped out salacious, shocking stories, stretching the limits of journalism and blurring the lines between truth and fiction. Mark Landsman’s Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer is the remarkable true story of the most infamous tabloid in U.S. history, a wild, probing look at how one newspaper’s prescient grasp of its readers’ darkest curiosities led it to massive profits and influence. From its coverage of Elvis’s death, Monica Lewinsky, and the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the National Enquirer rattled the foundations of American culture and politics, sometimes using payoffs and blackmail to get its scoops. With rare archival footage and revelations as wild as National Enquirer headlines themselves, Scandalous examines our obsession with the rich, famous, and powerful, and the tabloid that has fed those obsessions for generations of Americans, and changed many aspects of American life, including politics, forever. I sat down with director Mark Landsman to discuss this provocative and wildly entertaining film.

Danny Miller: It’s so fascinating to hear from so many reporters who worked for the National Enquirer. Was it a long process to get them to agree to appear in the film or were they eager to talk to you?

Mark Landsman: “Eager” is not the word I would use, it was very challenging! It all started with the father of a good friend of ours, Malcolm Balfour. We met him for dinner one night and out of the blue he started talking about his career at the Enquirer in the mid-1970s and telling us all these stories about Jackie and Aristotle Onassis and hiring a one-man dirigible to go underneath their boat and other crazy stories like that.

That was during the infamous Generoso Pope days?

Oh yes, that was during the heyday of his ascent. Pope had poached Malcolm from Reuters to come work at the Enquirer, at that time all you would hear in the newsroom were British accents. I just couldn’t believe the stories I was hearing from Malcolm, the spy stuff, the disguises, the enormous bribes. There was so much money flying around those days at the National Enquirer that you were chastised if you weren’t spending lot of money, like you weren’t doing enough to get the story! I was fascinated, and then Malcolm introduced me to some of his former colleagues and we were on our way.

I knew they had tricks for getting stories, but I was surprised to hear how far they went.  

Oh yeah. Back then if you weren’t paying off every single person at a hotel were Liz Taylor was staying, you just weren’t doing your job!

And even more shocking to me was that they were also bribing friends and family members of the celebrities for dirt.

Absolutely. A brother or sister, a disgruntled lover, an ex — many of them would sell people out for large sums of money. Even nurses in hospitals. And, of course many hairdressers, valets, and lots of others, anyone could end up on the National Enquirer’s payroll.

Barbara Sternig in SCANDALOUS: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER, a Magnolia Pictures release.

I have to say that I especially enjoyed hearing from the woman who worked for the paper: powerhouse reporters like Judith Regan, Val Virga, and Barbara Sternig. As much as an Old Boys Club such newsrooms were back then, it almost seemed like the National Enquirer, for all its outrageousness, gave women opportunities that other media sources did not. Do you think that’s true?

I think you’re right on the money with that. What I heard from every woman I interviewed is that Mr. Pope cared about one thing only — he didn’t care about your gender, he only cared about whether you could get the story. He hired Judith Regan in the early 1970s right out of Vassar. She had no experience as a journalist but he got a sense of her gumption and her chutzpah and he hired her on the spot. He flew her to Florida to be interviewed and then immediately sent her off to try and get Mia Farrow to talk about Frank Sinatra!

And yet, as she says in the film, he never ever looked her in the eye! It sounds like Pope had a lot of quirks but, thank goodness, sexually harassing his employees wasn’t one of them.

I never heard about anything like that but, of course it was a very fluid environment. It was the 1970s and there was a lot of alcohol and drugs. After working hours many of them went straight to the local bars and kept on working, it was like the extension of the workplace.

Did you find with the people you spoke to that there was a bit of defensiveness about their decision to work for the National Enquirer in the first place?

Honestly, no. I don’t think I talked to a single person who had any shame about it. Quite the contrary, most of them thought in retrospect that this was one of the most exciting jobs they ever had, and certainly the highest paying with the exception of people like Judith Regan who went on to become one of the most powerful women in publishing or Shelley Ross who ended up producing Good Morning, America. Most of these people were making triple the salary of other journalists at the time. As one guy says in the film, he was making three times what Ben Bradlee was making at the Washington Post.

You do hear some remorse from the reporter involved in the coverage of John Belushi’s death.

They may have some remorse about certain things that happened, but I don’t think they regretted those decisions in the moment. I think these people had all struck intense Faustian bargains to take jobs at the National Enquirer. I mean, look at that John Belushi reporter, Larry Haley. He came from the Chicago Sun-Times, the very building where Mike Royko and other legendary reporters were working. These were bastions of respectability. To move from there to the Enquirer, you had to be striking bargains with yourself.

Steve Coz and David Perel

I admit I had some really mixed feelings as I watched the film. On the one hand, when you show that clip of George Clooney basically blaming Steve Coz for single-handedly causing Princess Diana’s death, we could all see that this wasn’t fair at all. I had empathy for and was fascinated by all of these reporters in the film. At the same time, though, I could see Clooney’s point and was cheering him on since so much of what they were doing was pretty repulsive and, in my view, has damaged our world.

I hear you. It makes me think of the people on Wall Street at the height of the financial crisis. They’re just going about their jobs and doing things that they probably knew were having some deleterious effects on our society, and yet they kept going, somehow rationalizing it all to themselves. I think it’s similar to how people involved with the Enquirer must look at it. You kind of need to widen the lens and look at the larger system that creates such a huge economic incentive for people to hound someone to the point where their drivers get involved in a high-speed chase in a Parisian tunnel. I mean, yes, the fact that Diana’s driver had lots of alcohol in his system didn’t help anything, but would any of that have happened if there wasn’t such a high premium on getting anything about her? I think Clooney’s indictment of Steve Coz wasn’t fair but he was certainly talking about a context that is real and chilling.

Do you think that episode really affected Steve Coz?

Yes, but Steve is a remarkably resilient guy who is credited with bringing a lot of legitimacy to a paper that never dreamed of or cared about such legitimacy. Coz made that happen by driving coverage on O.J. to a relentless level and insisting that they find proof that Simpson had worn those Bruno Magli shoes. Like a very smart editor at the helm of a very powerful engine, he unleashed all of the resources on it and spared no expense. I think they spent about a million dollars on sources for that, something that no other paper could do. I think they had 20 reporters on the O.J. Simpson story and left no stone unturned.

Was it hard when you were working on this film to decide which stories to include? There were so many other ones important to the National Enquirer that you could have mentioned. Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Fawn Hall, John Edwards, and so on.

Yeah, it was hard, we didn’t go into JonBenet at all either. All of them have fascinating aspects to look at in terms of the National Enquirer but we decided to just choose the stories that were seminal turning points for the paper itself because for this film the paper was our character, not the stories or the people in them. What were the stories that changed the paper profoundly and how did that reflect our culture at that time in a significant way?

Got it. Although one story I kept waiting for was Carol Burnett’s successful libel suit against the Enquirer.

I know. That one existed on a card in our editing room for a long time. Maybe it’ll show up one day in some extra features!

Did you ever try to sit down with David Pecker himself? I’m sure you started the film before all his Trump troubles came to light.

Yes, we were working on this before what he was doing with “catch and kill” was exposed in The New Yorker with the Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal scandals. But he had no interest in talking with us.

I’m glad you cover Pecker’s repulsive relationship with Donald Trump, though. That seemed to really change things. As several of the reporters said, until then the Enquirer didn’t really take sides. Do you personally think the National Enquirer played a role in Trump getting elected?

I don’t think there’s any metric to scientifically understand how much that influenced the election but think we’d be very naïve to deny the fact that it certainly had an impact.

Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer is now available on many digital platforms.

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Interview: Lauren Greenfield Shines a Riveting Spotlight on Imelda Marcos in ‘The Kingmaker’

Centered on the indomitable character of Imelda Marcos, The Kingmaker examines, with intimate access, the Marcos family’s improbably return to power in the Philippines. The film explores the disturbing legacy of the Marcos regime and chronicles Imelda’s present-day push to help her son, Bongbong, win the vice presidency. To this end, Imelda confidently rewrites her family’s history of corruption, replacing it with a narrative of a matriarch’s extravagant love for her country. In an age when “fake news” manipulates elections, the Marcos family’s comeback story serves as a dark fairy tale. I sat down with Lauren Greenfield (The Queen of Versailles, Generation Wealth) to talk about this fascinating documentary.

Danny Miller: Watching this fascinating doc, my overriding question was how the fuck did you get such intimate access to Imelda Marcos?  It’s just unbelievable.

Lauren Greenfield: (Laughs.) It was kind of unbelievable. I came in, really, after reading an article about Animal Island, the wild animal park in the Philippines that is one of the legacies of the Marcos regime. I thought that might be the movie with these parallel stories about the survival of the animals, but in this kind of doomed atmosphere. So I went to shoot the animals and on that first trip I also interviewed Imelda. I got access to her through this journalist William Miller who had written about the island and talked to Imelda for his article. He’s the one who introduced me to her and he ended up collaborating with me on the movie. Before that, she had always been a kind of iconic reference in my work on wealth.

And then the Animal Island story just morphed into one about Imelda and her persistent political ambitions?

Yes. To me the Animal Island was kind of the ultimate extravagance and it involved living things and human rights and the idea that this island would be depopulated to bring in the animals from Africa on this kind of Noah’s Ark. I thought Imelda would be one voice among many. But it was while I was there, the Marcoses started to have a political comeback. When I started, the people I was working with said they didn’t think Imelda’s son, Bongbong Marcos, had a chance in hell in the upcoming election. At that time the Marcoses were in a political wilderness. They had some support in their previous strongholds, but Imelda was mostly perceived as a laughable figure.

By then she was already a Congresswoman?

Yes, and I was interested in how she managed to get that far again but I still thought it was more or less a figurehead position out of respect for a former First Lady. I also think that’s party why she agreed to talk to me, she was feeling a bit irrelevant in Philippine politics at that time.

I’m still surprised she agreed to participate, even when it was going to more about Animal Island which, as you know, became a kind of horror show. Did she feel that this film was going to be a flattering portrait?

Well, she believes her story and believes that she helped the Philippine people. We quickly moved past Animal Island in our conversations. She didn’t like the fact that most people just think about the shoes when they think of her. And frankly, after 1986, the world didn’t know much of anything else about her. I was interested in how she was able to return to the Philippines. And while I was there, Bongbong announced that he was running for the vice presidency which everyone laughed at but then he suddenly became a viable candidate. All of that totally shifted my narrative.

Because now you were covering his campaign?

Yes. I had interviewed Bongbong in the beginning and, frankly, he was so much less charismatic than his mother that I didn’t even use any of that footage in my original presentation reel for the Animal Island doc. But as the story evolved, his character became really interesting in relationship to his mother and I became interested in this idea of her as a “kingmaker” —  someone who has a critical impact on political succession without being a viable candidate themselves. That was Imelda.

Imelda Marcos in Manila and Ilocos Norte in a still from KINGMAKER. Photo Credit: Lauren Greenfield.

Yeah, she reminds me of the Angela Lansbury character in The Manchurian Candidate.

She’s a very political animal. She did run for president at one point, and when Marcos was president and was sick, many people think she was really in charge. For me it was an interesting brand of female power. She even says that one of the advantages she had was that people didn’t take women seriously.

It’s hard to think of her and not think of Eva Peron, including how she is constantly passing out money to random strangers.

We had a dinner at the end of filming where an American visitor asked her if she related to Eva Peron. Imelda said she disliked the comparison. “I was not a prostitute!”

Interesting. She should also get her own musical, though.

She already has one! David Byrne did a wonderful musical called Here Lies Love that was about Imelda. But I didn’t get into this as this kind of biopic portrait of Imelda. There had been a really nice film about her 16 years ago by Ramona Diaz. I wanted to show the political story and how strategic it all was.

Did you come away convinced that she really believes the things she says about the Marcos regime? Do you think she could pass a lie detector test about her interpretations of her family’s history?

That’s a really good question. I do think, as I said, that she believes her own story. But I’m not sure that you can call her delusional because I think it’s very consciously crafted to her benefit. It’s something they’ve come up with over time. A lot of times in her interviews she’ll say the same thing over and over again, like she has these stock lines that she wants to repeat. But then she’’ll drop a bomb with her candor from time to time, too. I think her “truth” is a survival mechanism so she doesn’t have to be accountable for all those terrible things that were done during the Marcos regime. In her mind, she’s a good person that’s helping the Philippines and she’s doing it out of this maternal instinct.

She definitely seems to embrace this role as mother of the country.

And I think she’s addicted to the adoration. I honestly don’t think it’s about the shoes or the paintings. Amassing wealth has been a big part of their strategy for power, yes, but I don’t think she’s in it for the “stuff.” I might’ve come to it looking at her from the perspective of wealth and materialism, but I did not end up feeling like this was her driving force.

Imelda Marcos in a still from THE KINGMAKER. Photo Credit: Lauren Greenfield.

How concerned what she about her physical appearance in the film?

She always had her own hair and makeup people on staff. From my work, you may remember that I’m always trying to get into the dressing room, into the bedroom. Imelda would always come out fully coiffed and I was never invited into the bedroom.

She seems like a real pro around a camera crew.

Definitely. She’s always trying to control the story. Remember the moment I left in where she asks her servant to move a statue of a gold sheep so it’s facing the camera? And then when we go outside and she shows me all the dictators that she was close friends with? All of those portraits in glass frames were set up before I arrived. She kind of art directs her world for the cameras.

That was one of the most chilling moments in the film for me. When she accidentally knocks over some of the portraits and glass shatters everywhere, she doesn’t miss a beat, completely ignoring what happened and signaling her servants to clean it up. That conveyed so much.

Yes, like the whole Animal Island thing. She would just repeat over and over that there’s nothing left on the island. And I went to the island and there are as was many animals there now as they were originally and they’re really suffering. She never bothered to visit this creation of hers, even though she’s been back in the Philippines for many years. So it’s like the broken glass — let other people clean up the mess. That’s why I ended with her saying that “the past is the past, in fact, it’s not even there.” And then you see the poor giraffe looking at the camera like, “I’m here! I’m here!”

I always feel like taking your films with me to a therapist’s office because they touch on all my own issues about wealth. On the one had they confirm the biases about people with great wealth, but on the other hand, you always humanize them in such a way that makes me see them in different ways. Part of me really liked the Queen of Versailles woman and part of me couldn’t help but get a kick out of Imelda Marcos!

When I started, I thought this might be a redemption story for her because here she is in the latter years of her life. She could have distanced herself a little bit from her husband. She could have said, well, he cheated on me and he betrayed me and he did certain things that were corrupt. I think the reason she didn’t get convicted in the big lawsuit against her was that people blamed him rather than her.

Yeah, even if she had downplayed what Marcos had done just a little bit and then done some really good things, that would have made a huge difference in her overall image.

Right, but instead it was like this Trumpian thing where she and Bongbong and the whole family were going to lean into it and say those were the best years for the Philippines. Martial law was terrific. We have nothing to say sorry for. That was the real turning point for me in terms of seeing how they were really trying to rewrite history.

And succeeding in many ways.

Yes, absolutely.

You end up including the voices of people who were terribly hurt by the Marcos regime. How do you think Imelda will respond when she sees the finished film?

She’ll probably like the scenes with her. I don’t think she’ll like the scenes of the truth tellers because she likes her reality being the one going forward. But this wasn’t her first rodeo. She’s been in other films, she’s been featured in millions of journalistic articles in the West. There are framed articles all over her home that show her ups and downs and a lot of them are very critical.

There’s no such thing as bad publicity?

Yeah, but I also think Imelda is a narcissist and probably assumes that everything is going to be good.

It’s horrifying to see how Leni Robredo, the woman who won the vice presidency over Bongbong, is now being vilified by the Marcoses and their supporters. If I had to place a bet, I’d say that Bongbong Marcos is going to president of the Philippines in the future, it seems like the train has left the station on that.

Yes, they’ve done this electoral protest where they’ve recounted three provinces, which he selected, and as a result of that, Leni Robredo’s votes went up, but he’s still not accepting it. The Supreme Court, according to Philippine law, should be dismissing the case based on that result but they’re not dismissing it because it’s a Duterte-controlled court. So Bongbong can stay in the public eye, proclaiming he’s a victim as Donald Trump often does. He’ll probably run for president in 2022.

I want you to go back in time and do a documentary where you interview Marie Antoinette and then get the people in the street to talk about how their lives were impacted by her. 

(Laughs.) I would love that! And frankly, Imelda is a kind of Marie Antoinette.

The Kingmaker opens on November 8, 2019, in select cities.

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Interview: Costume Designer Amy Roth Follows in Her Family's Footsteps in ‘Motherless Brooklyn’

Set against the backdrop of 1950s New York, Motherless Brooklyn follows Lionel Essrog (Edward Norton), a lonely private detective living with Tourette Syndrome, as he ventures to solve the murder of his mentor and only friend, Frank Minna (Bruce Willis). Armed only with a few clues and the engine of his obsessive mind, Lionel unravels closely guarded secrets that hold the fate of the whole city in the balance. In a mystery that carries him from gin-soaked jazz clubs in Harlem to the hard-edged slums of Brooklyn, and finally into the gilded halls of New York’s power brokers, Lionel contends with thugs, corruption, and the most dangerous man in the city to honor his friend and save the woman who might be his own salvation. Motherless Brooklyn also stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Alec Baldwin, Cherry Jones, Willem Dafoe, and Bobby Cannavale.

Talented costume designer Amy Roth (The Looming Tower, Indignation), the niece of Oscar-winning costume designer Ann Roth, based many of her stunning creations for this film on unsentimental photographs from the period including the work of Saul Leiter, Dorothea Lange, and Robert Frank. Working closely with writer/director Edward Norton, Roth stayed away from glossy depictions of the 1950s and instead examined the gulfs between New York’s rich and powerful and the very people they displaced. Sometimes she literally worked with scraps of vintage clothing to showcase how voiceless and neglected some of these characters were.

Danny Miller: I so love your work on this film. I imagine that Edward Norton is the kind of director who gets involved in every detail of his film. Do you remember your first meeting with him?

Amy Roth: Edward’s script really spoke to me, and I did a ton of research on my own before we met. I did a “look book” for him and we just hit it off immediately. He looked at it and said, “That’s my movie!” It was a funny interview because he started moving around in his chair and got very excited. We basically decided to work together then and there which is not usually how it happens. Edward started asking me about the color palette. I told him I thought it should be sort of muted to contrast against the very colorful language and all of these spectacular actors.

Do you think Norton’s own experience as an actor colors his role as director?

He has so much respect for actors. He never wanted to be intrusive at the fittings and always wanted to actors to be happy with what they were wearing and to find the character on their own. He certainly had ideas about how some of the characters should look, but then he’d always say, “You should just talk to them and see what they like.”

It always seems like costume designers have more of an intimacy with the actors than almost anyone else on set. Did the actors on this film have a lot of opinions about their wardrobes?

Yes, but they’re all very different. I remember how wonderful Fisher Stevens was on this film, he’s so creative and he started to get very excited with a lot of ideas. “Oh, I love this, can I wear this, too?” He just went through everything and tried on a lot of things. Cherry Jones was the same way. Gugu was more methodical, really looking at herself and questioning. She wanted to make sure she didn’t look like she was above the fray.

Oh, so interesting because I had the impression that her character in the film would wake up in the morning and be very deliberate about everything she puts on and the image that she’s conveying to the world.

Precisely!

Do you use a lot of vintage pieces for a film like this or do you create everything from scratch?

A little bit of both. A lot of the great vintage stuff is disappearing, sadly. You end up building a lot of clothes using some older pieces. But I love to make the clothes. I made all of Gugu’s clothes and most of the suits for the lead actors. Remember that we often needed multiple copies of each outfit because there were stunts involved, so that also affects how many vintage pieces you can use.

I loved that coat that Gugu wore in the film.

Oh my God, that was one of my favorite pieces in the film! I made that for her based on a vintage coat I had seen. I actually found this vintage fabric from the period, it was quintessential 1950s. I had it slightly dyed which scared me to death. They wanted two, and I said too bad because I really wanted the coat and we didn’t have enough material.

We know that Alec Baldwin and Cherry Jones’ characters were based on real people from that time period. Did you study photographs of them to create their costumes?

I did look at those photos a lot and read a lot about Robert Moses because he was so fascinating to me. I understood that this is not a guy who’s very refined. He grew up with money but I saw him as a guy who had his suits made without a lot of thought. He just went to the tailors on Seventh Avenue and didn’t think much about it. His tailor probably chose the fabric and cut of the suits. So I didn’t want to dress Alec in a manner that made him look like he understood the beauty of what he was wearing.

Kind of like Donald Trump who has all these resources and wants expensive things, but has no real understanding of style.

Exactly. With everything monogrammed because he likes seeing his name so much.

Which seems so different from Willem Dafoe’s character who is down on his luck but still understands and appreciates quality.

Yes. With him I knew that he once had money in his life and he would probably hold onto some of the finest things from his past. For him I did find a vintage suit because I thought I’d never be able to create that kind of patina on a suit. So I got him a very beautiful suit from the 1940s. I used a shirt that was threadbare. Nothing was from the 50s, the tie, the hat, the coat.

Yeah, I had a feeling that no matter how poor he was at the moment, he appreciated the finer things much more than Alec Baldwin’s character did.

I remember thinking of those amazing Dorothea Lange photos of people standing in bread lines in the 1930s. You see all these men who are thin and hungry but they are wearing these beautiful, elegant suits.

I also loved the look of Leslie Mann’s character even though she has a small role in the film (as Bruce Willis’s wife). I wanted her to come back later in the story!

I know! Our producer kept saying he wanted to tell her story in the next movie! Leslie came in for just a couple of days. I wanted to ground her in the reality of what this woman would have worn. The only thing I changed was that I put her in lingerie the night her husband died. Edward loved that. We talked about how she probably thought she’d be seeing Bobby Cannavale’s character that night so when she opens the door she thinks it’s Bobby.

Wow, so there’s an example of how a costume choice that you make can influence an actor’s performance and the back story of the character. Her character almost feels like she’s driven in from a different film, possibly one directed by Douglas Sirk! I love the stories of Walter Plunkett torturing actresses on Gone With the Wind by making them wear real corsets and other period garments under their clothes. What’s your take on that?

Oh, I do the whole thing. I have women wear girdles and other things that I could never wear if my life depended on it. But they love it, and it can help the performance because it sort of dictates the way you’re going to stand and sit and walk. And sometimes I’ll veer from that on purpose. We had two white girls in the jazz club scene and I made up this story in my head that they were from Barnard and they’re not wearing their girdles. They’re just going out in their skirts and sweaters and they’re not going to put on a girdle to go listen to jazz.

I wanted to mention that your incredibly talented aunt, Ann Roth, did the costumes for two of my father-in-law Oliver Hailey’s plays on Broadway. Did you grow up learning the trade from her?

Oh, wow, I just left Ann, we’ve been doing some interviews together, I will tell her that! She’s just amazing. She started out in theater at Carnegie-Mellon and was painting scenery at the Pittsburg Opera. But then she met costume designer Irene Sharaff who told her that the boys will never let her get anywhere if she keeps working on scenery and that she should move to costumes! So she started working for Irene, including in the movies, but she’s continued in the theater as well all these years.

Did you start out in the theater, too?  

I haven’t but I would love to do some. I’m actually going on Monday to see the new To Kill a Mockingbird stage production that my aunt did the costumes for. My cousin, her daughter Hannah, and I are almost the same page. So when Ann would do a film on location, she’d always bring us and let us help. She was so generous, she just took me everywhere. I got to see so many things I never would have otherwise.

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Interview: The Creative Team Behind Taika Waititi’s Brilliant ‘Jojo Rabbit’

Writer/director Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok, Hunt for the Wilderpeople) brings his signature style of humor and pathos to his latest film, Jojo Rabbit, a World War II satire that follows a lonely German boy (Roman Griffin Davis as Jojo) whose world view is turned upside down when he discovers his single mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson), is hiding a young Jewish girl named Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) in their attic. Aided only by his idiotic imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi), Jojo is forced to confront his blind nationalism. The film offers a funny yet profoundly moving child’s-eye view of a society gone mad with intolerance. Drawing on his own Jewish heritage and his experiences growing up surrounded by prejudice, New Zealand filmmaker Waititi (whose mother is Jewish and father is Māori) makes a powerful statement against hate with this pitch-black satire of the Nazi culture that gripped the German psyche at the height of World War II.

I admit I am not a big fan of films like Life Is Beautiful that have attempted to bring fantasy or whimsy to stories of World War II, so I was nervous going into this film, and yet I loved every second of it. I thought that Waititi and his team achieved the perfect balance between the fantasy elements of the film and the stark reality of the situation. As one critic said, “It shouldn’t work…but it does!” Based on the book Caging Skies by Christine Leunens, Jojo Rabbit, winner of the People’s Choice Award at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, also stars Sam Rockwell, Stephen Merchant, Alfie Allen, and Rebel Wilson. I sat down with several of the incredibly talented people who helped create the unique look of the film: production designer Ra Vincent, Visual Effects Supervisor Jason Chen, Makeup and Hair Designer Dannelle Satherley, and film editor Tom Eagles.

Danny Miller: The details in the sets were just stunning. Did you recreate this German village from scratch or did you find real settings that you could adapt for the story?

Ra Vincent: We had done so much research about this time period and did our breakdowns of what we needed, but it wasn’t until we found our locations in the Czech Republic that this world we were creating really expanded. The borders during the Nazi occupation were constantly shifting and the Baroque village we found in the Czech Republic had become a German territory during the war. We even found out that there had been Nazi rallies in some of our locations. It was exactly the aesthetic we needed.

Given the history in that part of the world, was it a bit dicey to bring in all of the swastika flags and banners that you needed for the story?

Ra Vincent: Yes, it was. We had some early discussion about swastikas with the studio, they were very nervous about it, but in the end we decided to do what we wanted. We felt we needed the swastikas or the story and the satire would not work at all. The idea was to confront hate and how that regime was formed. We could not remove the importance of that insignia.

Jason Chen: The swastikas had so much weight in that town. I remember when we were shooting in the building that we were using as Gestapo headquarters and had to put up swastika banners. We actually had several local crew members who told us they couldn’t go in there because their family members had been tortured or killed by the Nazis. The weight our locations carried was a good reminder to us about the message we were trying to convey.

Dannelle, speaking of historical sensitivity, you will now always be able to say that you did Hitler’s hair and makeup. What was that like?

Dannelle Satherley: (Laughs.) Well, with Taika’s character, he was an imaginary version of Hitler as seen through Jojo’s eyes, so we were going for something more roughly hewn than you might see elsewhere. Sure, we had to have the touchstones that everyone knows like the moustache and the combover, but he was never intended to be a carbon copy.

Were there times when Taika was directing in full Hitler drag?

Dannelle Satherley: Oh yes, many times! It was definitely something to see.

I’m sure the on-set jokes were writing themselves: “Help! Our director is Hitler!” Tom, I imagine for a film with such serious themes with comedic elements, finding the exact rhythm in the editing was everything. How difficult it was to maintain that balance?

Tom Eagles: It helped that Taika’s script was amazing. There were differences in the details but we were faithful to the feeling of the script, trying to walk that tightrope between black humor and real emotion throughout.

Were there a lot of clues in the script about how everything should look?

Ra Vincent: Absolutely. Taika’s writing is so good and there were many clues about the characters in the script that you could pull from about what type of environment they would be inhabiting. For production design, it pays not to overstate things, you don’t want to detract from the performance. But, for example, knowing how artistic Rosie (Johansson) was, we added all sorts of nuances in the decoration of the house which also played into Jojo’s view of the world through somewhat rose-colored glasses.

I want to see the film again just to more closely examine all of the delicious details of that house!

I was working with a wonderful set decorator, Nora Sopková, who has been working in Prague for a very long time and she knew where to find all the best things. I like to provide as much realism for the actors as possible. If you’re going to put food on the table in front of them you make it really nice to eat, you fill the drawers with clothes of the period in case they open one during a scene, you add all these authentic touches so there’s an opportunity for bits of spontaneous characterization.

I know in many of Taika’s projects there’s a lot of improv. Was that a worry when trying to maintain the right tone in this story?

Tom Eagles: There were very different types of scenes in this film. For a dramatic scene between Scarlett and Thomasin, for example, they would run through it normally, get some direction, and then perhaps try a few new things when they did it again, but it was a very traditional process. They were amazing actors working with an amazing script. But with our comedians it was something else entirely. They’d constantly be stopping and throwing something new in. It did make it a challenge to keep the rhythm right.

I’m guessing that someone like Rebel Wilson went to town on her takes.

Tom Eagles: Oh, trust me we could definitely do a short film of just alternate takes from Rebel, Stephen Merchant, and Taika as Hitler. And you’d be screaming with laughter! Taika always encouraged them. Whether it was even his intention to use those takes or not, he really wanted these comedians to feel free to explore their characters. A lot of great stuff ended up on the cutting room floor because it just didn’t work with the overall film but we did get some gems that we used.

Dannelle, it looked like you were also able to go a bit above and beyond with Rebel’s look, too. Kind of an “Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS” aesthetic?

Dannelle Satherley: Oh, we had so much fun with Rebel and some other people in the supporting cast because we were able to go a little extra with them. I loved working on Rebel’s hair because we were really able to go to extremes with the look. She carried it so well! But some of the other characters were much more tame. I’ve worked so closely with Taiki over the years that I’m very familiar with his aesthetic. I know, with the possible exception of Thor which was kind of its own world, that Taika errs on the side of naturalism, he doesn’t like anything to look too overcooked.

The extensive research you all did for this project must have been so fascinating.

Jason Chen: I think that’s the best part of what we do. We really did a deep dive on the Hitler Youth. And a lot of the ridiculous things you do see the characters doing in the Hilter Youth camps were actually things that happened, like four- and five-year-old boys roughhousing with teenagers, punching and tackling each other, it was insane. They were completely brainwashed about what they were told would make them good soldiers.

I also really liked the color palette of the film which seemed different from so many films we see set during World War II.

Jason Chen: It’s true. Movies set in this time period are usually very dark and dreary, but the reality of the situation was that towards the end of the war a lot of people dressed to the nines as best they could, they didn’t know how much longer they’d be around. So Taika really wanted a bright and vibrant color scheme throughout.

Ra Vincent: And because this was a story from a child’s perspective, that included us injecting some whimsy and childishness into it. We used a few tricks, even things like having more cars in the background than would necessarily have been around during that point in the war.

To be honest, I was kind of surprised when I first saw the poster for the film because it seems so focused on the comedy whereas I see it as more as a very serious movie with some comedy in it.

Jason Chen: I agree with you, actually, and yet I think Taika’s instinct to lead with the comedy makes a lot of sense so I can see why that’s a big part of the ad campaign. Taika believes that humor kind of loosens people up and makes them open to things that they might not have been otherwise. You’ll notice that the film is quite heavy with comedy in the first act and then that eventually transitions in a big way.

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Interview: Feras Fayyad Sheds Light on the Heroes of the War in Syria in His Powerful Doc ‘The Cave’

Oscar nominee Feras Fayyad (Last Men in Aleppo) delivers an unflinching story of the Syrian war with his powerful new documentary, The Cave. For besieged civilians, hope and safety lie underground inside the subterranean hospital known as the Cave, where pediatrician and managing physician Dr. Amani Ballour and her colleagues Samaher and Dr. Alaa have claimed their right to work as equals alongside their male counterparts, doing their jobs in a way that would be unthinkable in the oppressively patriarchal culture that exists above ground. Following the women as they contend with daily bombardments, chronic supply shortages, and the ever-present threat of chemical attacks, The Cavepaints a stirring portrait of courage, resilience, and female solidarity. I was honored to sit down with talented director Feras Fayyad to discuss this powerful film just as rash decisions by the U.S. President were making life exponentially worse for Fayyad’s countrymen were already struggling for their survival.

Danny Miller: This is such a powerful, important film, I hope that it is seen far and wide. Life has obviously been horrendous for Syrians for years and yet much of the world has not been paying that much attention. Now Syria is in the news again for very upsetting reasons having to do with the current U.S. administration. Does it bother you how little most Americans seem to know about what’s going on in your country?

Feras Fayyad: Thank you so much for what you said about the movie and also for this important question. Yes, I think Syria has been an “undercover” story for a very long time. Without the refugee crisis, I sometimes think there would be no coverage whatsoever even if the country burned completely. I do feel as an artist that I have a responsibility to help people see more of what’s going on, to make sure that people learn about the struggle people have over there and the extreme dangers they face every single day. And now the current news is so sad, so scary, so horrible. As a Syrian I keep asking myself how it’s ever going to end and then I wake up and find there is a whole new war happening with the Turkish people coming in. and the Kurds having no choice but to align with Syrian regime and the Russians. There is just endless destruction happening in my country.

And yet your film shows such humanity, such goodness among the Syrians who are so courageously trying to help others amidst such constant turmoil.

It was very important to me to try to bring this story to light, to show all of these extraordinary people who are trying to help their society, change their society, make life possible. The people in this film are working so hard to help their country but they are being systematically hunted down. That’s what I think people here don’t understand, they see all these Syrian refugees and they focus only on what that’s going to mean for other parts of the world, forgetting that these are people who desperately want to stay in their own country. Nobody wants to go leave their home, but in most cases they have no choice, they have to leave or face certain death.

Al Ghouta, Syria – Dr. Amani (center) and Dr Alaa (right) in the operating room. (National Geographic)

Dr. Amani is such an amazing character. With all the incredible stress they were under with their work in the cave, was it difficult to get her to agree to allow you to film there?

When I approached Dr. Amani, her first reaction was that she didn’t believe that anyone outside of Syria would care about this story. I spent a lot of time convincing her how important it is for people to see what they were all doing there. She eventually agreed that it would be helpful for the outside world to understand what is happening, how so many people were being affected, and how Syrians are trying to help their own. She was still surprised, though, when she realized that she was going to be one of the main characters in the film.

Did you always know that you wanted to have most of the footage in the film come from the Cave and not above ground?

We shot a lot of other footage but in the end I felt that focusing on this underground hospital was the most important story to tell. I didn’t want this film to turn into the classic refugee story, I wanted to show how these brave Syrians were fighting what was going on by providing help to these desperate people inside the country, I wanted to show how this woman was trying to change her society.

I imagine you had enough footage to make three documentaries.

Oh, definitely. We followed Dr. Amani around for hundreds and hundreds of hours, she gave us such incredible access to her life and the work they were doing in the Cave. She trusted how I was going to tell this story and never made any demands on us whatsoever.

I’m guessing that the scene where the guy tells Dr. Amani that should be home taking care of her husband and kids was not an isolated incident.  

Not at all, she heard that many, many times. Amani was the first female hospital manager in the entire history of Syria. There has never been a woman leading a hospital at all, much less in such a serious situation where she was managing over a hundred people who were serving about 400,000 people in such a war-torn area. You have to understand that Syria has been an extremely patriarchal society. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to tell Dr. Amani’s story. All of us Syrians grew up in this patriarchy where we were forced to call Assad our father, his picture was everywhere. It was just embedded in the culture that women should be serving men and not more. Things were starting to change in Syria with the democratic revolutions against the system, and the people in the medical profession were always on the front lines of that.

And then in these makeshift hospitals I assume the situations were so dire that the people had no choice but allow women to assume greater responsibility.

Yes, although Amani was really in a unique situation. She was very inspiring so many women and she worked very hard to increase the number of women working in the Cave.

Al Ghouta, Syria – Nurse Samahar, Dr Amani and Dr Alaa working in a subterranean hospital in Syria to save the lives of victims of chemical and conventional weapons in the Syrian Civil War. (National Geographic)

With all of the amazing work the people in the Cave were doing, it was so devastating to see it shut down after the chemical attacks in that part of Syria. Who provides medical care to the people in that region now?

It’s all been taken over by the Syrian regime. Dr. Amani is now living in Turkey and is not able to come and go nor is she allowed to practice medicine. I hope that changes for her but she’s basically living the life of a Syrian refugee along with so many others. She is wanted by the Syrian regime and if she goes back now, they would kill her.

That is so horrible. It must be incredibly dangerous for you and your crew to go back and forth into Syria. How do you deal with that?

I was jailed and tortured by the Syrian regime for 18 months, partly because of my other films. While I was there, I witnessed the torture of many women.

So I assume that now you go in and out of the country very secretly?

Yes, there are different ways that I go in to minimize the risks. Getting our footage out was always very dangerous as well. We used WhatsApp to get a lot of it out and smuggled flash drives. It remains a very dangerous situation for everyone. I never stay in the country for more than three days and I never bring in a phone.

What do you hope that people who see your film understand about Syria?

I hope they will begin to understand the situation in my country and put pressure on the politicians to start finding real solutions. Our country has been destroyed by the current regime and from Russian bombing and now what’s happening with Turkey in the north. The number of people who have been killed in Syria, and who are still being killed, is simply unbelievable. And many more just disappear. What will the future of the country be? Right now it’s mostly about death.

Al Ghouta, Syria – Young boy receives medical treatment in the emergency room. (National Geographic)

Such a nightmare, and it only seems to be getting worse in recent weeks. Do you hold onto a belief in your heart that one day your country will be restored and that many people will be able to return?

That is my wish, of course, but right now I just feel so strongly that I need to make people aware of what’s going that I am willing to risk my life and my team is willing to risk their lives to document what we can. We hope that once people understand what is happening, and understand some of the history of this part of world that they will be inspired to work for a better Syria.

Do you worry that this film will put you even more of the crosshairs of the Syrian regime?

I worry most of all for my family members who are still in Syria: my father and my mother and some of my sisters. I have one sister in Lebanon and one in Sweden but I worry every single day about the people I know who are still in the country because of the current regime. I will continue to do this work to remind people how urgent this situation is and that the Syrian people need help.

National Geographic’s The Cave is currently in select theaters. Click here to see if it’s coming to a city near you.

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Interview: Costume Designer Anna Robbins Returns Us to Sumptuous ‘Downton Abbey’

Like many diehard fans, I was beyond excited when I heard that Julian Fellowes’ popular British TV series Downton Abbey was following its six-season run with a full-length feature film. Taking place between 1912 and 1925, the television series had introduced us to the aristocratic Crawley family and their domestic servants who lived together in an incredibly grand Yorkshire home called Downton Abbey. Throughout the series, the Crawleys and their servants snaked their way through many of the big historical events of the early 20th century. As the film picks up the story in 1927, the Crawleys and their intrepid staff are preparing for one of the most important experiences of their lives: a royal visit from the King and Queen of England. This exciting experience will ultimately unleash scandal, romance, and intrigue that will leave the future of Downton hanging in the balance.

Among the joys in revisiting these beloved characters is seeing the amazing work of costume designer Anna Robbins (Emmy-nominated for her work on the series) which is even more spectacular on the big screen. This is a time just beyond the Gilded Age, entering the modern one, which is reflected in great detail in the costumes from Dowager Countess of Grantham Violet Crawley’s (Maggie Smith) pastel, formal Edwardian garb to the more flapper-friendly styles favored by Lady Mary and Lady Edith (Michelle Dockery and Laura Carmichael). For the latter pair, the silhouettes and color schemes reflect their outlook – Lady Mary in more angular blacks and whites for instance, and a beautiful gold flowing 1920s gown for Lady Edith, a gorgeous use of fabric and pattern and color where you can really see the texture and detail. I loved sitting down for a chat with the talented Anna Robbins about her work on the film, even if I did feel painfully underdressed.

Danny Miller: I so loved being with these characters again. And as far as I’m concerned, your work is one of the most important stars of the film. It was already so gorgeous on the TV series but am I correct in noticing that it all seems ramped up a bit for the movie?

Anna Robbins

Anna Robbins: Oh, yes, it is definitely ratcheted up a notch! We set a high bar for the show, with all the departments really pushing to elevate everything, but I think watching it on television we all thought it could be even bigger. And then along comes the opportunity to make it literally bigger which was so much fun to do.

I know, I just wanted to stare at the threads on the fabric seeing all those beautiful clothes on the big screen.

Yes, which is exactly what made it so challenging since I people would be able to see the threads and the quality of the craftsmanship in such detail. I like to use as many originals as possible and those had to be of a very high quality to withstand that scrutiny.

Wow, how on earth do you find 90-year-old dresses that are in good enough shape to look new?

For women’s wear I’d say it’s about half and half. I use more originals in evening wear because those dresses were often carefully preserved and they weren’t the kind of things to be worn every day so they haven’t worn out. Some pieces do require restoration, of course, and if it can be done to a very high standard, we do it but sometimes the fabric is simply too fragile so I might be able to re-imagine it as something else or take the fabric and rework it somehow. It’s a combination of a lot of things, but yes, I really had to raise the bar for the film and make everything even more sumptuous.

And, of course, this film includes the royal visit, so I’m sure that storyline also ramped things up.

Yes, that definitely upped the ante but it also meant you weren’t going to be exploring the most up-to-the-minute risky trends in women’s wear because there’s a very specific elegance and classicism to how you would dress to meet a royal.

I would imagine that you get to know these characters better than almost anyone. Do you have to think beyond the script to the whole of their personal histories? For example, Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) having been raised in America, do you think that influences her clothes?

Oh yes, where they came from is very important. The wardrobe’s got to say as much about the past as it does about the present day. It’s a very intimate process as well, working with an actor to find that characterization and it becomes a very important tool for them. But I have gotten to know the characters really well which meant I had a shorthand when I went onto the film that allowed me to work at pace right from the beginning without needing to do the huge amount of research that I did when I first came on board.

Shorthand like you could see something and think, “Oh, Lady Mary would never wear that.”

Yes. At this point I can walk into a vintage shop and see a Lady Edith dress across the shop and know it’s going to work.

Lady Edith is someone who really interested me in this film because, as we know, she had a big change at the end of the series. It did seem like her new status was reflected in her clothes.

I think Edith had one of the biggest journeys of anyone throughout the series. I remember in Series 5 her wardrobe was very restrictive and pared back, very autumnal colors during the period when she was estranged from her daughter and just very low emotionally. Then in Series 6 she literally blossoms as a human and finds her identity and she’s suddenly in this literary world so I created this London working woman’s wardrobe which was very different from her estate wardrobe. It still felt like the same person but she was far more adventurous and bold in her choice of prints and color.

You can literally see her self-confidence change over the course of the series and it was amazing to watch how her physical appearance reflected that.

Yes, I loved dressing her. And now in the film it was important that we didn’t lose that sense of style she had found even though now she’s no longer a magazine editor in London, she’s the Marchioness of Hexham and outranks all of them. So we took everything that she’s learned about herself including her self-assuredness and sense of style and moved it up into the position that she’s in now. But still always focusing on the level of craftsmanship in the textiles, it might be embroidery, it might be devoré, it might be printed silk. There’s always some sort of interesting surface to the fabrics that I use for Edith.

Was there at all a touch of rubbing her new status in Mary’s face with her clothes at all? A bit of showing off?

I don’t think so because I don’t think Edith has an ego like that. And she and her husband are very modern in their approach to their high positions. Remember — they arrive at Downton without a nanny. They call themselves “modern folk.”

I guess just the fact that she’s happy now is enough for her to stick it to Mary.

(Laughs.) Yes, exactly. I love dressing the two of them in their scenes together. Even when they weren’t at each other’s throats, there’s always a contrast, I always look to create some kind of dichotomy between them. Their dresses should always work with each other but create a nice contrast. And, of course, as individuals they’re very different.

I know the film takes place in 1927, which is a few years after the series ended, but do you have to think about certain characters like Violet (Maggie Smith) who may hold on to past styles in some way?

Well, Violet is a Victorian/Edwardian lady and that will never change. But the fabric choices may change. Where she once wore a fabric with an Edwardian pattern, that may become more art deco. You’re always looking for different micro trends that affected clothing manufacture, the way they were put together. And her jewelry might go from being more square cuts to show more modernity. I like to find ways to show that sense of modernity without changing her very recognizable silhouette.

Dame Maggie Smith

Did you know that there was a movie coming as the series was ending? Were things saved in a different way than they might have been otherwise?

No, we didn’t know. We hoped, but nothing was certain back then. Luckily, the main jeweler I worked with wasn’t organized enough to disband the collection and use it in other things so it was mostly intact.

Plus, the series was so popular, you could take the whole collection on the road!

Yes, we did work on a touring Downton Exhibition over the years so we’ve always been aware that there’s a life for the costumes after filming whether or not they ended up in a new film. But really getting to create new costumes for these wonderful characters was just a hypothetical dream that has thankfully now come true.

We’re talking so much about the women and my first instinct is to assume that costuming the men isn’t as interesting, but then I see their gorgeous clothes on the big screen and I’m totally fascinated.

Oh God, I love working with the men, I love tailoring. If you get that right, everything just looks so good. And the fabrics are fantastic. I was talking about using original pieces with the women, but it’s very rare that you’ll find any originals that you can use with the men.

Because men back then wore their clothes so much more often and they just wore out?

Yes, exactly, they just haven’t lasted. But the bits we do find are wonderful references for the cut and shape and how the pieces are constructed. I also work to make sure the men’s clothes complement the women’s and that all the scenes work together in composition. But the detailing in the menswear is just wonderful. And if you look closely in the film, the men change as often as the women do. I think Robert changes four times on the day that the Kind and Queen come to Downton. I was even able to design new dress uniforms for the livery staff with the Crawley insignia in the fabric, it was wonderful, those beautiful green tailcoats with silver frogging and lacing with the white breaches and stockings. Just brilliant.

Matthew Goode, Michelle Dockery, Allen Leech

So incredible. And then you leave work and go out into London and see people dressed like I am right now — it must be so depressing!

(Laughs.) I mean, I’m sure it was very hot and uncomfortable at times, so it’s good that we’ve moved forward, but those clothes do look so fabulous and I’m glad I get to spend such a huge proportion of my life with them!

Is designing for the servants more of a case of strict research on what the staffs of big houses would be wearing in 1927?

Well, there is lots of research and looking at what would have been worn but then you design touches for each character. For example, there is always a sort of very subtle floral pattern within the silk for Anna. And it may be more geometric for Baxter, with a more complicated cutting technique since Baxter is a dressmaker.

Is the implication that the servants would be mending their own clothes?

Yes, to some extent, so you’re going to see differences. They’re all designed to the character and to make them identifiable even if there’s a common look.

Lesley Nicol and Sophie McShera

I imagine at the first fittings for the film it must have been heavenly for the actors to slip back into these costumes to get back into character.

It was wonderful seeing them literally step back into their characters’ shoes. And it’s always been a very collaborative process working with them. It’s a joint effort to find the right looks. I lead it, for sure, since I have an overview of how the whole thing has to look and I know what’s going to work together in each scene such as they’ve got to start off in this setting which may be against red and then move into this room which might be green.

Oy, that seems like so much to keep track of. And it’s not like in real life we ever know the colors of every room we’re going to walk into!

Exactly, but I have to create these huge charts that allows me to painstakingly keep track of all those different elements. I work very closely with the director, production designer, the DP, and the actors. I have to think about lighting and how the colors are going to behave on camera.

I remember reading about the making of Gone With the Wind and how Selznick and costume designer Walter Plunkett tortured the actors with real corsets and other undergarments from the period even though they would never be seen. Are you a stickler period detail as well?

I am all about what makes the right silhouette but I might make the garments worn under the costumes more comfortable than the originals might have been. Remember, they didn’t have the luxury of stretch materials! Unless you actually see the underwear, as you do in some scenes in the film, then I absolutely insist on the real thing, of course.

Of course, the 1920s were more kind to women than previous eras in terms of undergarments.

Absolutely. You had underwear then that created a more boyish silhouette which could still be confining for some. But I also find that actors are quite keen to use whatever underwear creates the foundation that makes the clothing look more authentic and therefore more believable. And sometimes the underclothes affect posture and even the way you speak. I think it’s worth noting that while the girls lost the corsets, the gents were still wearing stiff-collared shirts full of starch with starch-fronted shirts. These are very uncomfortable, and you shouldn’t even be able to get a finger down the collar. So, rest assured, I still put the actors through the ringer.

I used to love the original Upstairs, Downstairs before Downton Abbey and I remember the actors talking about how they tended to be treated differently on set depending on what class they were playing. I remember Jean Marsh, who played the parlourmaid Rose, once said to the people on set, “Hey, I created this series, why is everyone treating me like I’m not as good as Lady Marjorie?” Did you ever notice anything like that on your set?

Oh, that’s funny. No, I wouldn’t say so. We were really like one big family and very equal. I think something the downstairs characters might get a bit of envy in terms of all the beautiful fabrics and costumes that the upstairs characters got to wear, but by the same token the upstairs characters had to do fittings week upon week upon week. The downstairs characters had a much easier time of it pre- and post-filming where they could just get into their cars and leave whereas I had to drag Lady Mary to do the fifth fitting that week for a new dress that she was wearing the following week.

I do feel inspired by your magnificent clothes in this film. As God is my witness, I want to start dressing better!

Go for it! The thing is, a bespoke suit can be very comfortable because it’s been made specifically for you. It molds to your body.

Thanks so much for chatting with me. I’m excited about all the Downton Abbey frenzy I’m seeing. This is definitely the movie that we need right now in this country, if you know what I mean.

Oh, trust me, we need it right now in the UK, too!

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Interview: Director Alejandro Landes on Colombia’s Powerful Oscar Submission ‘Monos’

Writer/Director Alejandro Landes’ awe-inspiring third feature is a breathtaking survivalist saga set on a remote mountain in Latin America. The film tracks a young group of soldiers and rebels bearing names like Rambo, Smurf, Bigfoot, Wolf, and Boom-Boom who keep watch over an American hostage, Doctora (Julianne Nicholson) The teenage commandos perform military training exercises by day and indulge in youthful hedonism by night, an unconventional family bound together under a shadowy force known only as the Organization. After an ambush drives the squadron into the jungle, both the mission and the intricate bonds between the group begin to disintegrate. Order descends into chaos and within Monosthe strong begin to prey on the weak in this vivid, cautionary feverdream.

With a rapturous score by Mica Levi (Under the Skin, Jackie), director Alejandro Landes examines the chaos and absurdity of war from the unique perspective of adolescence, recalling Lord of the Flies and Beau Travail in a way that feels wholly original. Landes brings together a diverse young cast of both seasoned professionals (including Hannah Montana’s Moisés Arias) and untrained newcomers and thrusts them into an unforgiving, irrational, and often surreal environment where anything can happen — even peace.

I sat down with Alejandro Landes to discuss this remarkable film, winner of a Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival and recently chosen by Colombia to represent the country in the Best Foreign Language Film at the upcoming Oscars.

Danny Miller: This film is a fucking masterpiece. There’s my blurb: “It’s a fucking masterpiece.”

Alejandro Landes

Alejandro Landes: (Laughs.) Well, that’s a great blurb, I’ll take it! We can throw in a few asterisks on the poster: “It’s a f**king masterpiece!

It’s pure poetry. I love the jaw-dropping beauty mixed with utter horror. I felt fully engaged with all the characters after about 10 minutes. How did you put together such a remarkable ensemble?

We looked at a bunch of kids from different places all over Colombia including urban skating culture and deep in the countryside. Out of the 800 kids we looked at, we chose about 25 and took them to live in a sort of mock basic training camp. In the morning, they did acting and improv exercises, and then in the afternoon they did physical training to learn how to carry a weapon, stand in formation, those types of things. By watching those 25 kids interact, I saw the dynamics that you would see like in a schoolyard — who flirts with who, who fights with who, and so on. I chose the final eight from there because the idea wasn’t just how each of them individually played their role, but what sparks would there be with them as an ensemble. That was key.

And some of them had never acted before?

Right. I mean, listen, there aren’t that many really good professional actors who are 13 or 14 anywhere, let alone in Colombia.

At least you didn’t have to weed out what American directors often call the “Disney kids.”

Oh, but I actually have a Disney kid (Moisés Arias, who starred with Miley Cyrus for four years in Hannah Montana) and he’s fantastic!

Oh, right, he’s excellent! How did he end up in the film?

I just thought it was very interesting because he comes from a Colombian family and had never made a movie there. When I met him, he was really psyched about doing the character even though his team in L.A. was not, they thought this film was just crazy. But he was very enthusiastic and did the basic training with the other kids and really took it to heart. He really bonded with them.

Is it ever tricky to mix professional actors with non-professionals?

I’ve heard from other directors that it’s very hard to mix the two. I can see that professional actors might be frustrated with the lack of discipline in non-actors, and the non-actors may feel intimidated by people with so much experience like Moisés and Julianne Nicholson. But luckily, our cast spent so much time together creating such strong bonds before we ever began shooting that it was never really an issue.

It probably helped that you were all together in such an isolated environment.

Yes, that’s true. But the non-actors were amazing. I’ve very proud of those moments like, for example, when Swede is able to completely hold her own with Julianne Nicholson’s Doctora in their intense scene together. I love how that scene shows the thin line between eroticism and death, between laughter and rage.

That scene was incredible. Did you end up making any script changes based on the group you ended up with?  

That’s a great question. I actually did rewrite the screenplay after seeing them together. For example, when I wanted to have a romantic interest in the film, I wanted to make sure that it was between people who had real chemistry. My co-writer Alexis Dos Santos and I changed around several of the characters to make sure that we weren’t just forcing the page on the characters but letting the kids come through on the page as we got to know them better. We really needed to do that because there are so many characters, this wasn’t a typical narrative, it’s a very fluid point of view.

And speaking of fluidity, I have to admit that I had no idea when I first watched the film that Rambo was a girl! I knew there was some gender fluidity going on, but I was still very surprised afterwards.

I actually love that there are people who experienced the entire film thinking Rambo was a boy — even some of our distributors and marketing people at first. I never wanted to have one of those “big reveals” at the end, it’s not that kind of film. It’s almost like a post-gender situation. Does it change anyone’s deeper impressions of the film? I don’t think so.

I remember the scene when Rambo kisses Wolf and thinking that the homoeroticism of that scene was interesting but then it turns out that’s not the case and it’s more like these kids are free in many ways in that environment.

The bigger idea wasn’t just about gender, it was about denying the audience any type of binary conception of anything. Are you in the past or in the future? Are these people good or bad? Are they communists fighting for the left or are that extreme radicals fighting for the right? Is this character a boy or girl? Is this paradise or some kind of hell? The film doesn’t allow you to label them one thing or the other, including Julianne’s character who starts out very much like a victim but then feels like something very different at the end.

There were so many moments that didn’t go the way I thought they would. Was it always your intention to keep the identity and the political leanings of the Organization vague?

Yes. The thing is, I read so much about all of these different types of organizations and the bottom line is that they’re not so different from each other. I come from a country where you have paramilitary organizations, guerrilla organizations, narco organizations, you have foreign actors, you have state actors, and there are all these different fronts in these battles because it’s been going on for so long.

Plus, when you have kids engaged in such conflicts, is it ever really about ideology?

Absolutely, that’s a very good point. When you see these groups in Colombia that are working with children who were involved in such groups, you see some who fought for Communists and rebels and some who fought for ultra-right-wing groups and some who had fought for both. These kids were not exactly sitting in the trenches debating Karl Marx.

And who knows what they were escaping from in their own lives or if they were there totally against their will.

Right. Which is why I try to show something of the beginning at the end. Remember that 360-degree shot where we see the newly orphaned kids hiding under the table? That scene really hits me, it kind of says it all. What’s going to happen to these kids? Where are they going to go? Are they going to end up in this group? There are so many moments like that. I remember when Doctora is trying to get free by bonding with Swede. She asks here what she wants to do with her life, saying that she could help her, and Swede says, “I want to dance on TV.”

So poignant.

I wanted to come at Julianne’s character, Doctora, through the humanity of her situation. It didn’t matter to me what she was doing in Colombia when she was captured or what the ideology of the group who captured her is.

Did you find the reactions to the film were different in Colombia compared to what you’re seeing here?

The response has been fascinating because there are such delicate fibers when you have a civil war that’s been going on for more than 60 years.

Do the audiences there have more of a vested interest in knowing which side this group is on in the conflict?

It’s interesting because the critics wanted to know, but the audiences were fine with the ambiguity. For me this is not a film about child soldiers. I mean, I think everyone agrees that children should not be part of war, but I was interested in pushing that further. I wanted to examine that period between childhood and adulthood, that borderline that can often be very conflicted even if you’re just a normal kid on the first day of school who is undergoing all these changes. I think this film creates a kind of mirror between those two conflicts: the war that is present in the world and the interior wars these kids are going through. Who am I? Who do I want to be? Adolescence can be a very intense period that is full of trauma.

Definitely. And thank God most of us don’t have AK-47s in her our hands when we’re going through it! Apart from the horror that we see on screen, this is still one of the most visually beautifully films I’ve ever seen. The location is just jaw-droppingly gorgeous but I imagine that it must have been extremely difficult to shoot there.

Oh God, making this movie was a real beast. We were 14,000 feet up in the mountains where there is very little oxygen in the air and the weather can change on a dime so you can’t really follow a strict shooting plan. Just to get to that jungle canyon you need mules and kayaks. It was very tough. I would say that every person was at the limit of what they could do physically. Pretty much everyone had their day on a stretcher or in an ambulance. I had mine, but somehow we managed to keep it together.

You never had one of the kids come up to you and say, “I just can’t do this anymore?”

Never. But we all cried at some point during the filming.

Those emotions were probably beneficial for the scenes you were shooting!

Everyone was really giving it their all. They felt infused with confidence which was amazing to see. Sometimes the kids would come up to me and ask if they could do a scene over again, that they felt that they could do better, even when I liked the take. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more devoted group of people making a film under such difficult conditions.

Monos opens on September 13, 2019, in select theaters.

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The Judges and Top Four Dancers of ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ Prepare for the Season Finale

When I last attended the set of Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance several weeks ago, all ten of this season’s amazing dancers were still in the competition. In my opinion, this has been one of the most talented group of dancers in the show’s 16-season history. And one of the youngest, ranging in age from 18 to 21. Since then, six of the dancers have been eliminated: Stephanie Sosa, Eddie Hoyt, Benjamin Castro, Anna Linstruth, Ezra Sosa, and Madison Jordan. A few of these cuts had me screaming “NOOOOO!” like I was trapped inside an Edvard Munch painting but, alas, that is how the show works — two people have to be eliminated each week until we find out on next week’s season finale who will be crowned America’s Favorite Dancer.

Bailey, Gino, Mariah, and Sophie

There are four dancers still standing: Bailey Munoz, an 18-year-old hip hop dancer and B-boy from Las Vegas; Gino Cosculluela, an 18-year-old contemporary dancer from Miami; Mariah Russell, a 19-year-old contemporary dancer from Nashville; and Sophie Pittman, an 18-year-old contemporary dancer from Collierville, Tennessee. Happily, no one was eliminated during last night’s show, they were just dancing their hearts out in anticipation of next week’s finale. As of now, the final decision is out of the judges’ hands and “America” will decide the winner, with votes cast by text or on the Fox app. All four of the dancers were so spellbinding last night that I’m glad no one was cut because I might have started shouting from my seat and been forcibly ejected from the soundstage! Following the naming of next week’s winner, the Top Ten dancers will reunite for the 2019 So You Think You Can Dance Live Tour, kicking off on October 12 and stopping in 40 cities across the country through December 6. Click here for more info about the tour including dates, cities, and ticket prices.

Despite the agonizing nature of the competition, I have to say that this is the most positive TV show set I’ve ever been on. The support and love that the dancers feel for each other is palpable, as is the good will aimed at the four judges, host Cat Deeley, the talented crew, and the studio audience. It’s also one of the best-produced shows I’ve ever seen (the set design, lighting, camera work, and costumes are beyond compare) and certainly one of the most riveting. It’s astonishing how many extremely difficult numbers these dancers must learn each week and then perform with confidence in front of millions of viewers. I simply don’t know how they do it. Immediately following last night’s broadcast, I talked to three of the judges and all four of the talented dancers still in the running.

With Nigel Lythgoe

Danny Miller: Nigel, I have to admit that before I started watching this show, I knew absolutely nothing about dance, but now I’m all in!

Nigel Lythgoe: It’s crazy how it gets you, isn’t it?

I just think this is exactly the show that America needs right now.

There are no barriers here. No walls.

All of the dancers this season are fantastic, but I still feel devastated when some of my favorites are eliminated. Seeing people like Madison and Benjamin being voted off was especially hard.

Yes, that’s what the show is, I enjoyed that tension for many years with American Idol [which Lythgoe also produced]. At this point, I’ve learned how to step aside a bit, otherwise I’d be heartbroken every week!

I’m continually surprised by how moved I am by these dancers — their powerful work just brings up a lot of emotions in me. I’m stunned by the vulnerability showed each week by these talented young people.

It’s important, isn’t it? I don’t think a lot of people understand how important it is to show your vulnerability.

How do you think this show prepares them for the real world? 

Over a number of weeks, I think it does. As hard as it is for them here, the real world is twice as tough, and as much as a choreographer might love you this week, when you go and audition for the same choreographer next week, he or she may not want you. It’s just a fact of life that you are auditioning for every single job that you go for. Bank managers don’t have to do that, secretaries don’t do have to do that, most people don’t have to go to every single job and say, “Hello, this is my talent. I’m opening up my life for you!” In many ways, it’s a horrible, difficult trade. I’ve advised both of my boys not to go into it, it can be a very ugly business. But if you love it, you cannot stop yourself. That’s why their emotions are on their sleeves.

I have to say I could not be more impressed by this year’s dancers.  

Yes, I honestly don’t think we’ve had a Top Four in past seasons that actually compete at this level on every single dance, every single style. We’ve done Tahitian and Indian and hip hop and ballroom, and they’ve all brought themselves up to a level that is just tremendous.

And the growth of some of them has just been incredible. I think of someone like Gino, for instance, who is obviously a remarkably skilled dancer, but he’s been blowing me away for the past few weeks, I cried tonight during his solo.

He’s releasing his emotions now. As we’ve spoken about, it’s so important to show your vulnerability. And America sees that, too. If it’s just a veneer that they’re putting on, people will see right through that.

With Mary Murphy

Mary, I’ve never seen such a loving environment at a TV show, it’s just remarkable. I’ve been near tears all night long.

Mary Murphy: Awesome. You’re gonna get me going in a second. (Laughs.)

Is it hard to see certain dancers go each season that you think have something really special?

Oh, during the first few years that was very difficult. You break through that eventually and just hope for the best for each of them. We never know how it’s going to end. I thought they were all tremendous dancers this season and I was sad when some of them left, but then the next show comes along and everyone does such a great job and you move on. I think the fans at home love this show so much, they really support these dancers. It’s a hard life but such an enriching one.

Do you think after being here they are in a better position to go out into the dance world?

It’s different, however I do think this show is one of the best preparations. I don’t think there’s anything as hard as So You Think You Can Dance out there, to be honest with you. In the real world, you don’t have to learn so many new things in such a short period of time. And most dance gigs out there are not on live TV in from of millions of people. This show forces dancers to face their fears flat on, look them in the eye and annihilate them, and not listen to that chatter in your head that says there’s no way you can do five or six numbers in one week. They only get five hours to learn those duets, my brain explodes just watching them. I forget sometimes that the dancers have such a short period of time because it looks so good. Some of them have chemistry and it looks so well-rehearsed, it looks like they’ve been dancing together for months and months.

With Dominic “D-Trix” Sandoval

Dominic, you were a contestant in Season 3, a choreographer, and now you’re a judge. What do you think these dancers will gain from this experience?

Dominic “D-Trix” Sandoval: I’m so happy you asked that because I feel like for myself and so many of the dancers who have gone on to become household names in the dance world, this show really birthed our careers. So You Think You Can Dance is the first show that really set off dance in the mainstream media and gave dancers the ability to make an income and support themselves at a time when it was hard to imagine having an actual career as a dancer. This show has done more for the dance world than anything I can think of.

I knew nothing about dancing before this show, to be honest, and now I’m completely riveted by these dancers and the different dance styles, I’ve learned so much.

I mean, has there ever been a time when dancers like the ones we showcase are seen as artists in their own right to this degree? Before this show, the best many dancers could hope for was to be featured behind a star, this kind of attention was unheard of. It’s really cool to know that dancers are finally able to stand at the forefront of their craft.

How do you think the show helps them as they move on in their lives and careers?

You learn so much and you have a chance to work on many different routines with literally the greatest choreographers in the world. People like Mandy Moore and Travis Wall, all of them, it’s such an unbelievable honor. I think this show helps dancers learn what they can actually do, not just in dance but in life.

  Gino and Sophie, I talked to you several weeks ago when you had both just lost your partners and were paired together for the following week. We’ve seen the results of your amazing partnership since then. Was it just like you thought it would be then?

With Gino Cosculluela and Sophie Pittman

Gino Cosculluela: From the second we got into rehearsal, I knew it was going to be an amazing partnership and it hasn’t failed.

Sophie Pittman: I wasn’t sure how the judges were going to respond to us together. I was hoping for this kind of partnership and I’m so grateful.

I couldn’t even believe my eyes when I saw what you were both doing tonight. Are you always in pain the next day?

Oh, yeah.

Gino Cosculluela: For sure, but at this point we know how to get over it. That’s probably the hardest challenge, doing so many things back to back.

Sophie Pittman: Yeah, it’s like dance boot camp.

Do you already know what you’ll be doing next week?

No idea. We get a day off and then we start all over again!

  Mariah and Bailey, I can’t believe what you did tonight, one extraordinary routine after the other. Are you exhausted?

With Mariah Russell and Bailey Munoz

Mariah Russell: It’s definitely challenging but I’m just so grateful to be here and soak up every moment. Doing that many dances in one week gets stressful, but at the same time it gives us more chances to prove ourselves to America and to just have more fun on stage. I’m glad we do that many each week.

Bailey Munoz: Yeah, no pain, no gain, right? This has been a dream for all of us and we’ve worked so hard to get to this point. So we all have to put it on the line every single time we step on that stage.

What’s it like getting that much attention from the public? That has to be way more than you’ve ever experienced, right?

Mariah Russell: Absolutely. I’m definitely not used to it but it’s a great feeling. I’m just so thankful to have such a great support system. It can be a little scary sometimes because it’s like, “Oh my gosh, someone is actually obsessed with me!” But overall it’s a great feeling to know that people love what I do and that I can actually inspire people.

Bailey Munoz: The fact that we can have an impact on people’s lives is just insane. And just being part of the history of the great dancers I’ve seen on this show for most of my life is really incredible.

  Be sure to tune in to the live season finale of  So You Think You Can Dance on Monday, September 16 on Fox.

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Interview: Directors of the Powerful Doc ‘Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice’

Since bursting onto the music scene in 1967, Linda Ronstadt has been an icon for more than half a century. Her extraordinary vocal range created iconic songs across rock, pop, country, folk ballads, American standards, classic Mexican music, and soul. As the most popular female recording artist of the 1970s, Ronstadt filled huge arenas and produced an astounding 11 Platinum albums. Ronstadt was the first artist to top the Pop, Country, and R&B charts at the same time. She won 10 Grammy Awards on 26 nominations and attained a level of stardom the Tucson native never could have imagined.

In Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, Ronstadt guides us through her early years of singing Mexican canciones with her family, her folk days with the Stone Poneys, and her reign as the Queen of Rock throughout the 70s and early 80s. She was a pioneer for women in the male-dominated music industry and a passionate advocate for human rights. Even more attention was heaped upon her when she had a long-term and high-profile romance with California Governor Jerry Brown. In recent years, her incredible voice has been lost to Parkinson’s disease, something she accepts with a dignity and grace that is inspiring, but her music and influence remain as timeless as ever. With incredible performance footage and heartwarming appearances by friends and collaborators such as Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt, and Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice celebrates an artist whose desire to share the music she loved made generations of fans fall in love with her.

It was a thrill for me to sit down with the award-winning directors of this film, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (The Times of Harvey Milk, Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, The Celluloid Closet) and producer James Keach (Walk the Line, Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me, David Crosby: Remember My Name) to discuss this deeply moving and joyously entertaining film.

Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman

Danny Miller: Your previous documentaries are legendary. Did you feel this film was a natural progression from the kinds of things you were doing?

Jeffrey Friedman: I think so. This is ultimately a story about a woman’s empowerment, and that’s thematically not very far from other themes that we’ve taken on.

Did it take a while to earn Linda Ronstadt’s trust before she agreed to do the film?

Oh God, yes. It took about a year to convince her to let us do it!

Yeah, she doesn’t seem like someone who would necessarily be down for a film about herself.

Rob Epstein: Fortunately, she had just seen my film The Times of Harvey Milk and really liked it, so the timing of that was fortuitous. But as Jeffrey said, she was very reluctant and it took a long time to get her to come around. She basically told us that she thought we were deluded and that nobody would want to see the film and if they did, they’d be bored to tears.

Oh, Linda, Linda. That’s totally insane!

Jeffrey Friedman: But after a while, a couple of things conspired helped her to change her mind. The people who were still working with her were rooting for us — her longtime assistant and good friend Janet Stark and her manager John Boylan were encouraging us behind the scenes to keep going. We told Linda that we wanted to use her wonderful book as source material but we wanted to amplify it by having an audience actually experience the music that’s only described in the book. She finally started to allow herself to imagine that.

Did she have any ground rules about what she didn’t want you to put in the film?

Rob Epstein: Linda is a very private person and she didn’t want us to get into her personal relationships which we totally understood.

With the exception of Jerry Brown?

Jeffrey Friedman: Yes, well, that’s in her book and anything she talked about in the book was fair game. Linda and Governor Brown are still friends.

Rob Epstein: We really just wanted to help make her musical journey come alive in the film. But she also said she wouldn’t be interviewed for the film.

Are you saying that all of her voiceovers in the film are taken from other interviews?

We did use dozens of different sources but in the end she finally agreed to sit down for an interview.

Jeffrey Friedman: But that one was only an audio interview, we didn’t film it.

And yet she does appear on camera at the end of the film, and it’s such a beautiful, poignant scene. Was it always the plan that we wouldn’t see her until the end?

Rob Epstein: It was always our intention to somehow bring it to the present tense. We were very frank with her about that, we told her that the audience would want to see her today. We talked about the possibility of having her come into a recording studio and read passages from her book but she thought that was just too artificial. And then all of a sudden, she had this trip planned to Mexico with her family and she invited us. But that happened way at the end.

Jeffrey Friedman: By that time we had interviewed so many people that she was very close to and they were like her spies telling her everything that happened — they all assured her that we were doing a very respectful portrait.

I found the entire film so incredibly moving. I could tell you that I cried at points but it’s more like tears were pouring down my face during every single song. I can’t even fully understand why it affected me so much. Something about the purity of her voice and the purityof her relationship to her music and the way she navigated through her superstardom without ever getting sucked into the negative aspects of that.

Rob Epstein: I think it was surprising to all of us how humble she is and self-deprecating. She never had much interest in being a celebrity and she managed to maintain her authentic personhood throughout all of the different iterations of her fame and career. She certainly never tried to create any persona around “Linda Ronstadt,” she was always just herself, the same person that she is to this day.

Jeffrey Friedman: Yeah, she’s very real, no bullshit. I think that’s part of what makes watching her sing so touching, because it’s really just her and the music coming through her. It was never about showmanship or flash and dazzle, just an authentic artistic expression. I think that’s why audiences have responded to her with such enthusiasm and emotion throughout her career.

James Keach

James Keach: But I’m not sure she was never “sucked into” the fame part, I think she was sucked into it many times. The difference was that she always pushed back. She would get pulled into things like those big arena concerts and then come realize that it wasn’t what she wanted to do. But I would speculate that your emotional reaction to the film might also be because those were better days for a lot of us in many ways. I feel like they were better days in my life, a lot more simple and fun! They were certainly the best days of my life in terms of music. I also tear up now when I hear Linda sing and some of the other performers from back then because it brings back that different part of my life even though so much time has gone by. I find it very touching.

Right. And yet Linda herself was going through a lot of insecurities at the time and trying to figure out what she wanted. I remember going to see her in The Pirates of Penzance on Broadway in the 1980s and wondering how they “let” one of the most famous singers in the country do that. I so admired her determination to branch out in areas that were hardly as lucrative as what she could’ve kept doing for the rest of her life.

Rob Epstein: There was an article I read about her from that time where she was speculating on whether she would ever be happy. The truth is she just wanted to sing. For her it wasn’t about being a huge rock star or the girlfriend of George Lucas or Jerry Brown, she just wanted to be in the living room with her friends singing. But she also knew there were dues she had to pay in order to be Linda Ronstadt.

I love all the interviews in the film. Was it challenging to get all of those amazing, busy people to be in the film?

Jeffrey Friedman: Well, Linda is very loved so it wasn’t that hard to get people to say yes. And James was a great producer along with his partner Michele Farinola, and they just never gave up until we got all the people we wanted.

I was especially glad to see Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton in the film, their collaborations with Linda were pure magic.

Did you consider getting Jerry Brown to appear in the film?

James Keach: I think he would have done it but Linda resisted, she didn’t want him to be interviewed even though they are very close friends today. She was a little nervous about all of the people, to be honest, because she didn’t want people to feel obligated to do it and say nice things about her. She’s so humble she didn’t think anyone would be interested in a film about her life and career.

Jeffrey Friedman: She knows that there are young people who have never heard of her, which is kind of astonishing. That was one of the reasons we wanted to make the film, to make sure that her legacy wasn’t lost. But she’s not someone who lives in the past and just thinks about her own career. She listens to all types of music.

Rob Epstein: Yeah, she was just telling us the other day about some Korean pop group that she wanted us to check out, that’s what she’s interested in right now.

Was it hard to figure out how to navigate through the topic of her Parkinson’s disease?

Jeffrey Friedman: She definitely didn’t want to be seen only through that lens, but on the other hand, she’s been very upfront and open about her current condition.

I think the loss of her voice is one of the great tragedies of our lifetime. I felt the same way when Julie Andrews lost hers. Do you think it’s painful for Linda to listen to her own old songs from when her voice was so powerful?

Rob Epstein: No, I don’t think so, she does listen to herself when she needs to, certainly in the context of putting this film together. She has always been very careful about making sure that the sound was just right. One of her big concerns with the film was that somehow we might include a bad performance but honestly, we never found one in all of our research!

Getting to hear her sing at the end was so exquisite even though she says that wasn’t really singing. How did that come about?

James Keach: That was when we went with her to Mexico. We wanted to go to her grandfather’s hometown and at one point we were having lunch at this little mom and pop place on the way down there. Some of her family members started playing music for everybody. Jackson Browne was there and he started singing and then I could hear Linda humming and she started singing along with the rest of them. I was sitting next to her and I thought, wow, that’s really good and I said, “Linda, I thought you said you couldn’t sing, I think it sounds great!” The next day at lunch she said that when we interviewed her that night she would try it again but nobody else could be in the room in case she screwed up. So she did it, and talk about tears! Everyone was crying and we couldn’t believe she was doing it because she had stopped singing years ago. We all just choked up.

It is so inspiring to see how she is dealing with the challenges of her disease without a shred of self-pity. It’s really made me look at certain things in my own life in new ways.

Rob Epstein: She sees it as just a circumstance of her life and she’s adjusted accordingly. She’s still completely engaged with the world.

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice is currently playing in various cities around the country.

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Interview: The Hulu Documentary 'Jawline' Shines a Revealing Spotlight on Boy Internet Stars

In rural Tennessee, Austyn Tester, a 16-year-old newcomer to the live-broadcast ecosystem, attempts to become the next big Internet crush. Teen girls all over the world tune into online “boy broadcasts” like Tester’s, in a 21st-century version of Tiger Beat, where all your favorite heartthrobs might actually interact with you online for a minute or two — or more for the right price. But Tester’s earnestness sets him apart, peering wide-eyed into his laptop camera and professing unconditional love and support to his female fans for hours on end. What’s he selling? Male validation. In return, he asks for fame and a better life for his family. Will Tester’s open heart give him celebrity status and a chance to escape from his dead-end town, or is this new ecosystem built for failure?

Liza Mandelup’s fascinating documentary Jawline, now showing on Hulu, distills complex concepts about growing up in today’s connected world with its new and fleeting versions of the American Dream with a moving human portrait that questions the values we’ve passed onto our young people. Mandelup approaches this peculiar world with an intimate air of BFF confidentiality and finds that as esoteric as the Internet and its niches feel to some, boy broadcasts represent modern youth’s starvation for love and acceptance and susceptibility to exploitation — a tale, unfortunately, as old as time.

I sat down with director Liza Mandelup, and then separately with Austyn Tester, the earnest subject of the film, and Michael Weist, the young and driven entrepreneur/talent manager who is Tester’s polar opposite.

Danny Miller: Liza, I came to this film knowing next to nothing about this world. At first I was thinking how great it was at leveling the playing field, at giving someone like Austyn who had no resources and was kind of miserable in his small town a real chance to follow his dreams. But by the end of the film I saw it more as a cautionary tale. Do you see it that way at all?

Liza Mandelup: No, I don’t think I would call it a cautionary tale because I think the film gets into a lot of the positive aspects of this phenomenon as well. Like finding a community when you don’t feel that you have one and providing refuge to young girls who are feeling lost or even suicidal. I was very surprised by those aspects of this world.

Yes, I was moved by some of those girls, too, especially in the lower key settings where they got to spend time with Austyn and were so honest with him about their feelings. Unlike some of the other online personalities you see in the film, Austyn seems so sweet and unassuming, a real innocent.

That’s what I loved about him and why I picked him. We were shooting for like a year without a main character. I started by talking to the fangirls. Then I started making contact with some of the boys to see who I might shoot. The boys I spoke to all had around 10 or 20 thousand followers and they all had managers and did these big tours, something I wasn’t that familiar with — it took me a while to understand the system. That’s when I found Michael Weist who was such an interesting character. When I eventually heard of Austyn, he didn’t have a manager and hadn’t even done a tour yet.

And when Austyn finally got a manager (not Michael) and went on tour, that’s when everything started to go downhill for him, right?

After he did his first tour, I followed him back home with my camera and I had these visions that he’d be walking all over town giving high fives to everybody, that girls would be running from different directions to see him, and that he’d be this local celebrity wherever we went. But instead I found him to be very anxious, not wanting to leave his room, and not being that into broadcasting anymore. I felt so bad because he’s had a really difficult life and he was really starting to get the kind of attention that he so craved as a means to get out of his town.

He seemed so real, like he wasn’t faking his sincere attitude at all.

Oh, he clearly wasn’t faking it or else he would have continued faking it! Instead, some things happened to him that really hurt his feelings and he started to lose interest. I purposely chose someone that I thought had very good intentions, not some ruthless, obnoxious person who would do whatever it took to get to the top, so his being a little fragile was a risk I was taking.

When you starting shooting Austyn, did you have it in your head that maybe he’d be super famous by the end of the film? I did!

To be honest, I genuinely thought that he might be because of those qualities you mentioned. Girls just loved him! But there’s something very arbitrary about this world, and I’m not sure he was prepared for it. But I’m so grateful that I met Austyn because he took me to a place that’s way more human than I ever could’ve hoped for. When I started making film, I was worried that the film would lack humanity.

Austyn had none of the veneer or blind ambition that so many of those boys seem to have, including Michael Weist, the manager.

Right. I’m very happy to have Michael’s voice in the film but I also wanted someone who could reflect a very human experience, not just the statistical side of things like how to increase the number of your followers. I kept reminding myself that even though we were telling a story against the backdrop of social media technology, it was still a human story.

Which is why I found Austyn so appealing. Do you think he’ll be able to use the attention he’ll get now that the film is out to reboot his social media presence?

I kind of hope so. As a documentary filmmaker, I’d like to give back to him in some way and I hope the attention that the film gets helps him to figure out how he wants to exist in this world. But to be honest, I don’t know if he wants it anymore, I feel like we may have caught a moment in time. That’s the crazy part about documentaries that exist in a very specific timeframe. When we made this film, Austyn wanted that kind of success more than anything in the world. But in the course of making the film, he changed.

He’s such an interesting case study.

At the end of the film he kind of returns to his previous life. Now he has this opportunity to come back but I’m not sure how that will go. He was so young when we started filming and he’s still trying to figure out who he is, both in his real life as well as online.

After talking to Liza, I went down the hall to talk to young entrepreneur Michael Weist looking like a Hollywood superagent. Austyn was supposed to be in Los Angeles that day as well but had some family issues he had to deal with in Tennessee so he joined Michael and me via speakerphone.

Michael, I admit I had no idea that all these young online personalities even had managers, I learned so much about how it all works.

Michael Weist: Yeah, it’s kind of like a subculture that most people don’t know anything about. I’m glad that the film finally shows that to the world.

Austyn, I think you come across so great in the documentary but it ends on a bit of a questionable note regarding your Internet career. Have you gone back to that at all since the shooting ended?

Austyn Tester: To be honest, I’m not doing it right now, no. I’ve just been really lazy. Since I went on tour with all these famous social media people, I’ve had to come back home and get an actual job. I’m working at a Starbucks now.

Do you both like how you come off in the film? Are there any moments that make you cringe?

Michael Weist: Watching it back is definitely like seeing this time capsule of your life. But ultimately, it shows who I was at that time. I think Austyn can attest to that, too, that’s just who we were then. I don’t think there’s anything I’d really change because all that made me who I am today.

Austyn Tester: When I watch myself in the film, there are moments when I cringe. I was pretty young and I think some of the stuff I do online is pretty bad like the lip-synching! Things have changed a lot on social media since the film was made, so I’d really like to figure that out.

Cool. Michael, I assume you still have your business managing online people?

Michael Weist: Yes, I’ve been able to refine my company a bit more, trim off pieces that needed to be trimmed, and grow in the right areas. The world of social media has changed quite a bit and only people who adapt to it will survive.

What are the qualities you look for in a client?

Michael Weist: Number one, you need to have consistency on all your platforms. You need to be very determined, you can’t half-ass it. You have to be very personable, very outgoing. That’s the formula for success.

Austyn Tester: I know if I jump back in, I’d have to be consistent which I haven’t been at all lately. I get it, though. Why would people follow me if I’m not giving them anything to watch?

It was moving to see all those girls at your public events getting so much joy out of interacting with you. Was that ever overwhelming, dealing with those hordes of girls?

Austyn Tester: I always felt it was friendly, but sometimes it was a bit too much! I was always super nervous before a live show, though, just sweating and hurrying through it. I saw all the screaming girls and would think, “Oh my gosh, what if they don’t like me?”

Were you surprised when you watched the film and learned how much you helped some of those girls who were really struggling in their lives?

Austyn Tester: Yeah, that was amazing to see, I’m so glad I helped people with my social media presence, that’s all I ever wanted to do. I always tried to remain positive and inspire people. It was kind of crazy because I was like 15 or 16 changing these 13-year-old girls’ lives. You suddenly realize, holy cow, you really do have an influence on people. It’s kind of hard for me to believe that happened.

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Rodney Evans' Stunning 'Vision Portraits' Shows How He and Other Artists Deal with Sight Loss

Vision Portraits is a deeply personal documentary by award-winning filmmaker Rodney Evans (Brother to Brother) as he explores how his loss of vision may impact his creative future, and what it means to be a blind or visually impaired creative artist. It’s a celebration of the possibilities of art created by a Manhattan photographer (John Dugdale), a Bronx-based dancer (Kayla Hamilton), a Canadian writer (Ryan Knighton), and the filmmaker himself, each of whom experience varying degrees of visual impairment. Using archival material along with new illuminating interviews and observational footage of the artists at work, Evans has created a tantalizing meditation on blindness and creativity, a sensual work that opens our minds to new possibilities.

I sat down with Rodney Evans to discuss this remarkable documentary, which has been winning awards at film festivals all over the country including the Outstanding Documentary Award from the 2019 Frameline San Francisco LGBTQ Film Festival and a Special Award for Artistic Achievement from Outfest Los Angeles.

Danny Miller: This is such a moving film, it was fascinating to watch you and these three incredible artists at work. Let’s get one big cliché out of the way — what do you think about the idea that when one sense is impaired in some way, the other senses become way more attuned?

Rodney Evans

Rodney Evans: I mean, I do think that’s true to a certain degree. I think my hearing is much more acute due to my visual impairments and I think being visually impaired often leads artists to want to explore their other senses. You see it with all the artists profiled in the film.

Even as I ask that question, though, I worry that it partly stems from my subconscious desire to hear people in your position to say that losing some of your vision was a “gift.” Do you feel that some people watch a film like this needing to find a way to make it all “okay?”

Yes, I do think some people are looking for what I would call “inspiration porn!” I’m very aware of the parameters of that genre and I worked hard to not fall into it.

Kayla Hamilton

I think the way you avoid that is to show multidimensional characters and all shades of gray — let’s celebrate the triumphs but let’s also see some of the devastating episodes that occur when someone loses their vision and has to navigate the New York City subway system via muscle memory. Believe me, there are experiences that people with visual impairments go through that can be very difficult. I think I’m very real about that in the film but I also wanted to show how such experiences can become a catalyst for making art. Look at Kayla Hamilton in the film. She’s a very multidimensional character and a brilliant artist and she wasn’t afraid of taking about how she contemplated taking her own life at one point. But then she went on to use that experience to make a very powerful singular piece of work.

I love her dance piece so much, I’d love to see the whole thing. How did you choose the artists to profile in the film, was it about wanting to represent different art forms and show people with different creative responses to their visual impairment?

Ryan Knighton

I think it was a combination of those things. In the case of Ryan Knighton, I was already friends with him. He wrote this very powerful memoir called Cockeyed that just blew me away. We first met after he adapted it into a screenplay and was looking for a director.  We ended up sharing our work with each other and we stayed in touch. So when I thought of making this film, he was probably the first person I reached out to. And I was very interested in his experience because he has the same condition that I have, retinitis pigmentosa.

What first put the idea in your head of making a documentary about artists dealing with vision loss?

It had been brewing for a long time. Around the end of 2014, I started to think about what I’d do if my vision continued to deteriorate. I had noticed some deterioration between my first and second features and my fears were looming about how I’d continue to make films if things got much worse. I think my M.O. as an artist is to always move towards things that scare the crap out of me, frankly. I didn’t want to keep it hidden so I just decided to address it and try to conquer the fear. I started looking for other artists creating work in that situation, I wanted to know what their artistic practice was like. In addition to Ryan, I had a friend who knew John Dugdale. I had always loved John’s photographs — I thought they were really beautiful.

His photographs are amazing, and he seems like such a fascinating guy.

John Dugdale

He is. And I know it was very painful for him to have to go back through all of those memories of being in St. Vincent’s at the height of the AIDS epidemic. He was there for a year and a half and lost his vision as a result. John had a series of AIDS-related strokes, and as he says in the film, a lot of times when you had AIDS, vision loss was one of the last symptoms. But John lost his vision early on. St. Vincent’s was the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic at that time, so many people were dying all around him. That period obviously had a huge impact on his work.

Did making this film help you feel less fear about your condition as you hoped it would?

Yes, I definitely feel less fear now and I feel less shame. I just feel free and empowered.

Were you actively trying to hide your vision loss before you made this documentary?

I felt very hidden within the film industry and I was even told by certain producers that I should never say that I was visually impaired in a pitch meeting. Better no one should know.

Oy, not exactly a prescription for getting rid of any internal shame you were feeling. That anecdote you tell in the film about needing a cane and your mother getting you a walking cane instead of one for visually impaired people was so poignant. Did you find a lot of similarities to when you came out as gay?

Oh yes, there were many parallels.

Like, “I love and support you, but please don’t make a spectacle of yourself, no one needs to know!”

Exactly. I mean, I do understand where my mother was coming from. Parents want the best for their kids and they don’t want their kids to have to come up against homophobia or ableism of this world. They know that’s going to make their children’s lives harder and they don’t want them to have a hard life. That’s why my parents moved from Jamaica to the U.S. so that I would have better opportunities. So on that level, I understand the protective parental instinct: “Holy shit, you’re black, you’re gay, and now have this disability? Your life is going to be so fucking hard! Why does everyone need to know?” I get it, but it just doesn’t work.

You sound like you have a lot of compassion for your parents.

I understood the culture that they come from which is not LGBT friendly and had different attitudes about people with disabilities. There’s this universal immigrant fantasy that my parents subscribed to. Come to this country, be successful, keep up with the Joneses, build your successful business, put your kids through college, and have them be as successful as possible. And while doing that, they should try to blend in and assimilate as much as they can and never do anything that might prevent them from getting the highest paying job.

It would be great if all parents of kids with any vision loss could see this documentary.

I do hear from parents who are very appreciative. But I mostly hear from low vision adults who are very grateful to see themselves reflected on screen for the first time. Some of them come up after screenings and hug me for a long time. They are so grateful for the authentic representation of what their lives are like. Some people told me they’d been waiting their whole life for this movie, that it fills a hunger they’ve had to feel seen and to feel whole and that their experience is valid and valuable.

I’m sure this film is giving people dealing with vision loss a lot of hope.

When you first receive such a diagnosis, many people think it means that their life is over and that they are doomed to a very sheltered existence with a caretaker. I think the film debunks this stereotype because it shows these fiercely independent artists out in the world making very powerful work. I’m thrilled to be able to turn this experience into something that’s healing and transformative both for me and for audiences.

Vision Portraits is playing in New York and Los Angeles and will be opening in other cities in the coming weeks.

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Interview: Costume Designer Donna Zakowska Brings ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ to Life

I am a huge fan of the award-winning Amazon series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. In addition to great performances by Rachel Brosnahan, Alex Borstein, Tony Shalhoub, Marin Hinkle, and many others, I get completely lost in the colorful world of 1950s New York and Brosnahan’s Midge deciding to forego her life as an upper west side housewife and mother and try her hand at stand-up comedy, something that was quite unusual for a woman during that time period, much less one in Midge’s social sphere. Adding immeasurably to the powerful acting in the series is the exquisite period look of the show, especially Donna Zakowska’s fabulous costume designs. Zakowska, already an Emmy winner for her gorgeous costumes in the John Adams miniseries, has also designed costumes for plays, films, operas, rock concert tours, and even the circus. I spoke to her by phone from the set of the much-anticipated Season 3 of Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel which will premiere in December.

Danny Miller: Hi, Donna! I’m so looking forward to the next season of this show that I’m counting the minutes. I wish I could be there with you on set!

Donna Zakowska and Rachel Brosnahan

Donna Zakowska: We’re actually in the last two weeks of filming but there’s still a lot to do. We’ll be finished in September. Working on the new season has been loads of fun!

I just love the character of Midge and think Rachel Brosnahan has done an incredible job with it. I’m so glad she won an Emmy last year for her performance and am looking for you to snag the Emmy on September 22nd! It’s been fun to see the character of Midge evolve in your designs. Can you talk about how you created her look at the beginning and how you think it’s changed over time?

I did a ton of period research of the period and then combined it with the fact that she is moving into the comedy world. Her transition from a classic upper west side housewife to a successful performer obviously has a big impact on the evolution of her clothes in the series. Whatever she’s wearing, I’m always trying to keep Midge’s indestructible spirit in mind that just forged ahead no matter what was going on in her life. Her style evolution is completely intertwined with her evolution as a character, really.

I love the attention to historical details in her clothes, but would you say her look is a bit heightened from what we might have actually seen on women in her situation back in the day?

Yes, to some extent. But, you know, if you look at the Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar magazines from those years, you will see quite a heightened color sense during that period. I may have pushed it a little bit but a lot of it actually does come from that unique time of the late 1950s and early 60s. Midge’s color palette ultimately became sort of her emotional landscape in her journey as a character.

I find the whole color palette on this series absolutely delicious. It reminds me of my grandfather’s old Kodachrome slides of my family during those years. My family was kind of similar to the Weissmans (Midge Maisel’s maiden name), and I’m always dazzled by the gorgeous colors and fabrics. Whatever happened to color, why are we all so drab today by comparison?

I know, it’s true, I feel the same way! But I think there are a lot of reasons. When you look at the vintage dresses from this period, you can’t help but be shocked how beautiful the fabrics and colors and prints are. Along with how intricate the sewing is. But I think when mass production took over the clothing industry, all of that changed.

I loved seeing last season how Rose Weissman’s (Midge’s mother, played by Marin Hinkle) time in Paris influenced her clothes in such a big way. Is that something that will always play a role in that character’s look from here on out?

Yes, I think it will, actually. She started in a Chanel suit with some Claire McCardell sportwear, and then evolved during her time in Paris based on what was in fashion there. In Season 3, I definitely have her in a much more interesting silhouette, a little avant-garde, a little bit more stylized, because once she went to France, that became a part of her. She was evolving as a character and as a woman and her clothes had to reflect that.

Marin Hinkle, Rachel Brosnahan, Tony Shalhoub

And I would say even more so once she decided to return to her family in New York. For me, it felt like that even though she made that decision, she desperately wanted to retain some of the independence she felt in Paris, including through her wardrobe.

Yes, that’s a good point.

How about Alex Bornstein’s Susie Myerson? She is obviously an extremely different character from Midge and someone with big financial challenges that would impact her wardrobe. How did you design her look?

For Susie I looked into the more androgynous fashion elements that were creeping in during that time. Her look has definitely evolved as well over time but in much more subtle ways and I always had to keep her financial situation in mind. You didn’t want to put her in anything that would have anyone watching think, “Hmm, how could Susie afford that?”

Alex Bornstein and Rachel Brosnahan

Right, as opposed to Midge, who rarely wears the same thing twice and for whom money seems to be no object.

Yes. With Susie, there might be a new jacket every now and then or new bits of color slipping in. It’s actually been a tricky wardrobe to design but also a lot of fun.

As an outsider, my initial assumption would be that it’s more interesting working on the women characters, but then I start obsessing on the clothes and fabrics that the men are wearing, too, and how much they also say about the characters. I like seeing how the looks of Abe (Midge’s father, played by Tony Shalhoub) and Joel (Midge’s ex-husband, played by Michael Zegen) are evolving as well.

Yes, there was certainly a lot less variety in men’s clothing in that era compared to women, but I worked very hard at creating their palettes, like different blue and gray tones, the kind of stripes that might be in Joel’s shirts, and other elements that reflect their characters. Abe, for example, started out very much the college professor, but then he was also affected by his time in France with his beret and scarf and leather jacket.

Tony Shalhoub

And, of course, his amazing romper when he was in the Catskills that immediately became so iconic and talked-about it could have had its own Twitter account!

(Laughs.) Oh, that was very fun! The cool thing about the scenes in the Catskills was that every character had an opportunity to be a little bit off the charts. Which is how it kind of was when the more affluent New Yorkers would head for the hills every summer. But I was shocked to see all the comments Abe’s romper got! I based that look on old photos of exercise guru Jack LaLanne. It just seemed like something Abe would wear in that setting!

You get to design for all these characters who are a bit over the top and then you also have Lenny Bruce (played by Luke Kirby) as a recurring character. I assume for Lenny you rely more on actual images of the actual person?

Yes. With Lenny Bruce there’s really no point in trying to make a fashion statement, you know? He was very specific with what he wore and the key is finding the absolutely correct look — the right tan coat and the dark suits that Lenny always had on when he performed.

When you work on a show for this long, do the main actors get so familiar with their characters that they start having a lot more suggestions for what they should wear?

Yes, I think that’s true. I have a very good dialogue with all of the characters, and of course I work with Rachel an enormous amount. Whenever we put an outfit together, or even choose a pair of earrings or whatever, we both use our shared understanding of exactly who Midge is at this stage in her life. When you design for or play a character, you just really have to instinctually understand who that person is. Rachel and I are almost always on the same page.

You could probably get a psychology degree for all the work you’ve had to do getting inside these characters.

Or maybe a psychiatric one at this point! (Laughs.)

Season 3 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel premieres on Amazon on December 9, 2019.

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‘So You Think You Can Dance’ Is the Inspiring Show We Need Now

I had the opportunity to attend the taping of last night’s So You Think You Can Dance and talk to all of the Top 10 dancers including the two that were eliminated at the end of the episode. The popular Fox TV dance competition, now in its 16th season, is hosted by Cat Deeley and features hundreds of dancers from around the country (and world) vying for 10 spots on the show. Coming from many different dance backgrounds and genres, the contestants perform solo, paired, and group dances for the four judges in a variety of dance styles, including ones with which that they have little or no experience.

(l-r: Mary Murphy, Dominic Sandoval, Cat Deeley, Laurieann Gibson, and Nigel Lythgoe)

The four judges this year include the show’s co-creator Nigel Lythgoe and choreographer Mary Murphy, an enthusiastic fixture of the series, along with newcomers Laurieann Gibson who has choreographed dance numbers for Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, and Alicia Keys, and B-boy dancer/choreographer Dominic “D-Trix” Sandoval, who was a contestant on the third season of the show. To be honest, what I know about the world of dance could fit on an index card, and yet this show has not only made me appreciate many dance forms I didn’t even know existed, it has moved me to tears on many occasions. Being in the studio during a taping only upped the ante on my floodgates, I’m surprised I got through the night in one piece. If you watch the whole show, you can see me in the crowd applauding so furiously that I think I damaged the nerves in my hand!

The show opened with a very powerful group number that featured all 10 of the incredibly talented young dancers. The modern dance piece, choreographed by Emmy-winning choreographer Travis Wall, took on America’s epidemic of gun violence in a way that only dance could do. The 10 dancers shot this number right before the live show began and because of some technical problems, they had to do the entire taxing routine three times in a row. It was so moving that I cried all three times. Take a look:

At such a divisive time in this country filled with so much bullying and needless cruelty, this show consistently gives me hope for a better tomorrow. Seeing these impossibly talented young people perform difficult dance numbers that they learn in a very short period of time with such skill and grace moves me on so many levels. Even though it’s a competition that’s now at the point in the season where two dancers will be eliminated each week, the camaraderie that was clearly evident among all of the dancers in the studio and backstage is very moving and says so much about the positive role of the arts in our lives.

Unlike the opening group number, once the live show begins, there’s no going back for the couples (the dancers are paired but judged individually), they only get one chance to perform their routine, mistakes and all. Sometimes the most interesting part is to see how the dancers recover from a mistake — this can even gain them points with the judges. After each of the live shows, “America” can vote for the different dancers (online or through the Fox Now app) which puts the four dancers with the lowest scores “in danger” the following week. At that point, the judges can “save” the two of the bottom four who they think are the most worthy based on their performances that week, and the other two are eliminated. This is the part I can’t bear because they’re all so freaking talented. Last night was the first time that two dancers from the Top 10 were eliminated and I can’t say I agreed with “America’s” choice. Not the first time that I’ve felt THAT emotion!

After the show ended, I went backstage and waited for the physically and emotionally spent dancers to appear. It’s an unusually young crowd of dancers this year, ranging in age from 18 to 21. First out were Madison Jordan, a 21-year-old contemporary dancer from Minnesota, and Ezra Sosa, an 18-year-old Latin ballroom dancer from Utah whose sister is also among the Top 10. Their dance routine last night, choreographed by Ray Leeper, was excellent as always.

Danny Miller: Madison, I have yet to see you perform where I didn’t burst into tears, you are mesmerizing on that stage. I can’t even imagine how you handle all that pressure each week and perform so flawlessly.

Madison Jordan: Oh, thank you so much! There are definitely a lot of nerves, especially backstage, but as soon as we’re about to go on, we shake it off. We have to, because those kind of nerves will definitely show on stage which is not going to work in a live performance.

Much is made on the show of the diminutive size of Mariah Russell, a 19-year-old contemporary dancer from Nashville, and Bailey Munoz, an 18-year-old B-boy from Las Vegas, but there is nothing small about their insane dancing abilities. I thought that couple gave one of the strongest performances in last week’s show and they were equally skilled this week in their number choreographed by Luther Brown. Bailey’s Filipino family, sitting directly behind me, was going nuts and holding up single cards that spelled out BAILEY.

Mariah, how different is it dancing to this large an audience? Do you find that to be a little overwhelming?

Mariah Russell: It’s incredible, but I’ve been doing dance competitions pretty much my whole life. This is obviously the biggest competition I’ve ever been in but I feel like I have a lot to bring and this level of dance is something I’ve always wanted to do. I’m definitely just putting in all of the work that I can to make sure that I have the best time of my life out there because I don’t know when I’ll have an experience like this again!

Do you guys  follow all the social media that’s out there about you and the show?

Bailey Munoz: Social media can be tough, it can be pretty toxic, but we just have to remain positive. I’m trying to stay away from it right now because I don’t want it to affect how I’m dancing, but I also know that social media can be a great tool for dancers.

How do the dancers with the situation when one of you is “in danger” and the other one isn’t?

Mariah Russell: Ugh, that’s definitely the toughest part of all. But you just have to keep that connection going between you and just think of that. We’re all just hoping to go as far in the competition as we can.

Next up were Anna Linstruth, a 19-year-old hip hop dancer from Las Vegas, and Benjamin Castro, an 18-year-old dancer from Miami. For me, Benjamin is the top male dancer of the season, I can’t even believe what he’s been able to do in some of his dances. Last night the pair performed a routine choreographed by Randi & Hef.

You were both so great in that amazing Travis Wall group number. What was it like having to do it so many times? I was worried for you all having to repeat it again and again!

Benjamin Castro: I mean, for me, I was a little worried, too, because I was really able to tap into the heavy emotional part of it the first few times and then you start to worry that you’re losing the meaning a little bit. But in the end, when you get on that stage you just remember the message you’re trying to send and you get it together.

How much time do you even get to rehearse something that intense?

Anna Linstruth: We probably had like a day, a day in a half. (Laughs.) Yeah, we put that together real quick.

Whoa, how the hell do you do that?

Benjamin Castro: You just put your trust in the choreographer and in the people around you. Travis Wall is a genius, man. And he never had to say anything twice, he’s so smart and he knows how to work with people.

Anna, you were “in danger” this week until the end, that’s got to be an uncomfortable place to be.

Anna Linstruth: Yeah, it was incredibly nerve-wracking. I want to make sure I never get there again, that was tough!

During the show, I was sitting behind the family of Sophie Pittman, an 18-year-old contemporary dancer from Tennessee, and it was moving to watch them watch Sophie’s performance with Eddie Hoyt, a 19-year-old tap dancer from New Hampshire. Their dance was choreographed by Travis Wall.

I was also entranced by the performance of Gino Cosculluela, an 18-year-old contemporary dancer from Miami, and Stephanie Sosa, a 19-year-old Latin ballroom dancer from Utah (and Ezra Sosa’s sister), choreographed by Emma & Sasha.

You’ve been dancing for many years, obviously, but the stakes have to be a thousand times higher in this setting, no? Or do you just put your brain in a different place?

Gino Cosculluela: I think it’s a bit of both. The nerves are definitely higher because the expectations are so much higher, but we’re both strong dancers who have trained all of our lives so I think we know how to deal with that added pressure.

Sophie Pittman: But it is crazy to think that it’s not just the judges and our parents watching now, it’s all of America watching, that can be a little overwhelming to think about. This whole experience is a little surreal. But I love dancing so much. When we had to do that opening number three times, I was just thinking how much I love getting this message out to people. If we have to do it three or more times, I will keep doing it because I think it was a really important message.

Finally, this week’s two eliminated dancers came out. I thought Stephanie Sosa gave a killer performance on the show and gasped when her name was announced.

Stephanie, this is the one part of the show that I can’t stand! You were so great, I hate to see you go. Did you get to go backstage afterwards and lose it a little bit?

Stephanie Sosa: Oh, thank you so much, it’s hard. I did lose it a little bit but I just have to remember this is just part of a bigger picture. I got to dance on national television which was amazing. And I get to go on tour with the cast this fall. I’m just so proud of my brother, I want him to go all the way!

Eddie Hoyt was such a favorite in my house that I had to take a picture with him to show my family members. He was on the show last year, too, where he very movingly (and somewhat accidentally) came out on national television. My favorite part of this season was his emotional final audition, light years away from his performances on last year’s show. “This was quite a different experience this year,” judge Mary Murphy told him through tears following his audition. “Last year we fell in love with you because you were this cute little pumpkin up there tapping his heart out, and this year, you came back and put so much into it and so much emotion. I don’t think I’ve ever cried over a tap routine before!” Nigel Lythgoe concurred. “It was remarkable and such great choices.” The other two judges agreed. Dominic Sandoval said Hoyt’s number was the greatest tap routine he’d ever seen in his life, and Lauriann Gibson added, “I have one thing to say: Greatness needs no explanation.”

Eddie, I was flabbergasted when you were eliminated, you so killed it in tonight’s routine. How do you cope with that?

Eddie Hoyt: It’s really hard when you reach your dream and then have to leave, especially when I feel so incredibly connected to my partner and to the rest of the dancers in the Top 10. But this whole experience has been so incredible I can’t help but see it in a positive light. I’m just so honored to be here.

What’s next for you?

I’ve got some projects in the works and I would love to do more musical theater and my own choreography. I love performing live so that’s definitely what I hope to stick with.

Here’s Eddie’s emotional tap audition that he performed freestyle that had the judges in tears.