The Moveable Fest

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Completing the prescient trifecta of the Premiere July 1998 issue.

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From Premiere, July 1998.

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In reference to this.

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When Mark Webber reconnected with his biological father for the first time in over 30 years, he was thinking, "Man, I wish I was filming this." It wasn't long before he did start rolling the cameras for "Flesh and Blood," the actor/director's latest hybrid of reality and fiction that premieres today at SXSW, and he spoke to us about returning to Philadelphia where he grew up homeless to make the deeply personal film here.

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If the zombies move a little differently in The Girl With All the Gifts, it's because writer/director Colm McCarthy went the extra mile in hiring a choreographer from the English National Opera and an illustrious cast that includes Glenn Close, Paddy Considine and Gemma Arterton. He talks about making a movie about the undead unlike any other, out now, here.

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All Hail ‘Tokyo Idols’

The only thing more obsessive than the 40-year-old fans of the teen pop singers known as idols in Japan? Director Kyoko Miyake, whose "Tokyo Idols," which recently premiered at Sundance, shows an attention to detail that allows the film to be fascinating look at how a generation of emasculated men distract themselves from real relationships by worshipping little girls. She spoke to us at Sundance here.

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“We’d take these aerial shots and [shots of] ourselves flying and ourselves preparing the plane and made a little montage out of it. At night, there was a small projector, so we screened it on the tail of the airplane and whole villages would gather with the moon rising. It was insanely beautiful and it made us feel good because we connected to the people and kids were screaming of joy. But again, [even though we filmed this as well] I took it out of the film because it would've made us look like the good filmmakers and it would've put you as a spectator in a comfort zone, the kind of narrative every NGO and every religious group would do to make their own propaganda. I wanted to keep myself as the narrator, but as kind of a strange figure, so that you're really in the doubt.“ - Austrian-born, French-based filmmaker Hubert Sauper on the difficult decision to include himself in his documentary about South Sudan, “We Come as Friends”

The full interview is here.

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“When Patricia [Clarkson] gave me the script seven years ago when we were doing "Elegy," I was going through a break up with the father of my child. And I didn't know how to drive, and I know for North American people, driving is a tiny thing, but being from Macedonia, you don't have to drive, so for me, it was a way to take the grips of my life again. I really felt connected with this character and I felt very moved by the script. I thought it addressed some things about racism with a light touch, so I thought, "Yeah, sure, let's go." - Isabel Coixet on her latest film “Learning to Drive,” opening today.

Full interview here.

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“Right now, everything that's exciting that going on has to do with women. That's just where it's at. I think guys are really at a complicated, confusing point because the necessity of men seems to be at an all-time low. Guys are trying to figure out what we have to contribute because mostly we don't need big strong muscles anymore. It's just not very necessary in modern life. [That’s why] I wanted Jake [Johnson]'s story to get smaller, and end up with this guy in a hole and Rosemarie [DeWitt]'s story to get more expansive, ending up with her looking at Saturn in the night sky” - Joe Swanberg on how he came up with the structure for his latest “Digging for Fire,” which tracks a married couple that takes divergent paths during the course of a weekend in Los Angeles.

Full interview here.

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Noted: Peter Bogdanovich at the Aero Theatre 8/9/15

During a recent retrospective at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, Peter Bogdanovich revealed that the inspiration for his latest film, the comedy “She’s Funny That Way,” about a philandering theater director (Owen Wilson) who unwittingly discovers his leading lady (Imogen Poots) when he hires an escort and urges her to go into another profession, actually came from a real-life experience he had while making the 1979 drama “Saint Jack”:

“We actually cast some real sex workers in the picture and two of them touched me. They were very sweet and both wanted to go home. So I gave both of them quite a bit of money if they would stop doing what they were doing and they did. One of them went back to Malaysia and the other went back to Thailand. So I thought it’d be funny to have a character who fools around, but he pays them a lot of money to stop being escorts and that’s how we started with that.”

When asked if he ever plans to go back to Singapore, Bogdanovich didn’t waste a moment to say “No.” Why?

“Saint Jack” as a novel was banned in Singapore. We looked for another place to shoot it that would look like Singapore. We went to Manila, we went to Hong Kong, we went to Tokyo. Nothing looked like Singapore, except Singapore. So we went to Singapore and lied and said we were making a different picture. We said we were making a picture called “Jack of Hearts,” which was a combination of “Love is a Many Splendored Thing” and “Pal Joey.” I had a Chinese secretary who dictated a 30-page treatment of this movie that we were supposedly making. When we left, some reporter asked me the question and there were headlines in Singapore the next week, “Bogdanovich Fools Singapore” so I ain’t going back there. They cut people’s hands off when they bring marijuana. I don’t know what they’d do to me.

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“It was ideal for us to have a movie that mostly takes place outside because a lot of what we did with this film was work with the limitations that we had. You have less equipment, and when it’s all in one day, you have less clothing to deal with. Still, what we had to work with were the costumes and the life that Brooklyn has, so we looked for the best frame which had the most interesting stuff in it. I love the colors of our film so much - that's one thing that you can do with little resources is make a look that you really think works. It feels like summer and we fit [the story] into a structure that is simple in a way, but a lot can happen within it.“ - Sarah-Violet Bliss on making the most of a limited budget in the ferociously funny Brooklyn satire “Fort Tilden.”

Full interview here.

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“I know it’s so taboo to talk about female sexuality, and it’s especially taboo to talk about teenage girls wanting to have sex. Society would like to pretend that’s not true, but the truth of the matter is most teenage girls are having sex and all of them are thinking about it. Pretending that’s not true is just sheltering them for sheltering’s sake, which I think is just crazy.

But we’ve had great conversations coming out of this [film]. I think it makes some people uncomfortable, but it’s a really great conversation to have because movies have been made about young boys having sex forever. You can point to movies from “The Graduate” to “American Pie” and boys have been able to feel like they are not alone and they are not freaks for a long, long time, no matter what they do sexually, so I think girls deserve the same.” - Marielle Heller on her remarkable directorial debut, an adaptation of Phoebe Gloeckner’s coming-of-age tale “The Diary of a Teenage Girl.”

Full interview here.

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“I'd seen so many great army films from America and Israel and after my own military service, I thought it would be funny to take some elements from this genre - the epic proportions and the historic vibe - but to do it only in an office and to tell the story of the army secretaries that are not risking their lives — their biggest danger is paper cuts — but they could die of boredom.“ - Tayla Lavie on her wickedly funny war satire “Zero Motivation,” now on Netflix. More from our interview is here.

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“I had a real massive question which was hanging over me about whether or not I actually liked him or not,” said “Listen to Me Marlon” director Stevan Riley of his subject Marlon Brando. How he came to embrace the legendary actor and all his contradictions, as well as making a film that would exclusively be in Brando’s voice, he talks about here.

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Noted: Taylor Kitsch at LACMA for CAN/WEST Conversation 7/30/15

Last night at LACMA, Toronto Film Festival artistic director Cameron Bailey sat down with fellow Canadian Taylor Kitsch to talk about his career. Kitsch shared tales from the sets of “John Carter” and “True Detective,” but spoke about how the role that led to all others - Tim Riggins on “Friday Night Lights” - almost didn’t happen.

I was in Vancouver and I got the script and the script wasn’t that good - Pete [Berg] will tell you that. But they wanted me to play Jason Street, and I didn’t want to play Jason Street. i wanted to play Riggins and we went back and said, “Hey, let us read for Riggins.” And [Berg] was like, “Yeah, let him read for Riggins.” So we went on tape and it was the “Texas Forever” thing. I went and found Texas beer. I went and had a sleeveless [shirt] on and I was this cocky, young twentysomething. Then the next day, they’re like “You’ve got to get to LA for the screen test,” and that was hell on earth, getting into the States. Then I got to the next level and flew down, and we improv-ed, which Pete is just so brilliant at and we were walking down the hallway, and I walk in there and there’s a board of who’s going to play who.

There’s a couple guys for Landry, and then a couple other guys for Tyra, and I’m sitting across from it in this boardroom and this guy is just staring at me, and I’m like, “Hey, man.” He says, “Who you reading for?” “Tim Riggins.” And he’s like, “oh.” Because he was the only guy through the whole process that was in for Riggins, so his process was just a formality. So now he had a guy [in me] who was doing this and that, and Pete came in and grabbed me, and I have all this attention because I hadn’t been around, so we’re walking down the hallway and this is good… we’re walking in to do the “Texas Forever” speech in front of a boardroom full of execs from NBC. There’s a guy there to read with me, but Pete trumps him and sends him out of the room and I love props and activities in a scene I’m working in, so I’m just like, “Can I have a bottle of beer [to hold]?” [Pete says] “No.” And I said, “I’m going to, anyways.” So [Pete] loved that, and we’re walking down the hallway [after] and he goes, “You’re going to be just fine. If you do just what we did in the room, you’re going to be just fine. But fucking get rid of that Canadian accent.” And the rest is history.