When I listed my half-dozen favorite films from SXSW last week, unaccountably I left off Tommy Davis’ very fine documentary One Minute to Nine, probably because I watched it on a screener before the festival proper started.
“As the tale unfolds,” I wrote in my review, “it becomes an absorbing reflection on the hideous acts that unfolded behind closed doors.” Weeks after watching it, the main figure in the story, Wendy Maldonado, is still bouncing around my head—not even so much her loving yet resigned personality as much as the memory of what she endured and the havoc it wreaked on her children.
Filmmaker Tommy Davis was born in McAllen, Texas. He previously made Mojados, a multi-award winning documentary about the world of illegal immigration, as well as a passel of short films. We were not able to meet in Austin, but he kindly agreed to answer a few questions via e-mail.
Twitch: In an article you wrote for The Huffington Post, you said you were “on the road for six months looking to film a person’s last few days of freedom before they go to prison for a significant amount of time.” To begin with, why were you so interested in the subject?
Tommy Davis: Finite Amount of Time + Loose Ends To Tie Up = Inherently Dramatic Moment.
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UPDATE on 3/18/08! Clips are now included for most shorts. Also, NSFW!
Wrapping up my SXSW experience, I caught the ‘Round Midnight shorts block. Focused on shock value above all else it seemed, the shorts were a mixed bag (as is usually the case) with a few real gems interspersed here and there. Here’s a quick rundown…
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Yeast is the feel-good movie of the year. No matter how miserable your life may be, you’ll feel better off after seeing Mary Bronstein’s chaotic debut.
That’s because she focuses intensely, nay, claustrophobically, upon three aggressively unlikable women who are driving each other crazy. Rachel (director Bronstein) shares her tiny studio apartment with Brunette. (I failed to write down the character’s name, but she’s played by Amy Judd). The film begins as Rachel screams at Brunette to get up, finally trying to drag her up by the hair. Brunette yells back that she doesn’t want to go, leave me alone, etc., and Rachel continues screaming at her as though the apartment were on fire.
In truth, Rachel and Brunette were evidently planning to go on a camping trip with Blondie (I also failed to write down her character’s name, but she’s played by current indie “It” girl Greta Gerwig). Much more screaming, yelling and ignoring ensues, and then Rachel and Blondie head out for their trip.
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Though I haven’t posted any reviews here for the past few days, I haven’t been slacking. I’ve been busy watching movies and writing for another outlet. The styles between the sites are sufficiently different that my brain has fried a bit whenever I try and switch back to “Twitch” mode. Never fear, however; I hope to catch up soon. In the meantime, with one screening left for me today, here are my favorites out of the 24 I’ve seen so far:
1. Dreams of Sharp Teeth Loving, very funny portrait of a provocative writer.
2. Dance of the Dead Blood-spattered, loose-limbed and hilarious high school zombie flick.
3. The Promotion Subtly penetrating view of American life that’s also quite amusing.
4. Natural Causes Snapshots from one relationship’s rise and fall.
5. Shot in Bombay Panoramic, behind the scenes stories of an Indian crime thriller.
6. Wesley Willis’ Joyrides The offputting, oft-brilliant life of a unique artist/musician.
Austin has a fantastic downtown, and the SXSW venues are very nice—most outstandingly the Alamo Ritz—but all that walking has been killing me. More to come as I recover in the days ahead.
I was able to meet briefly with the writer / director team behind Humboldt County, Danny Jacobs and Darren Grodsky, and discuss their vision for the film. Humboldt managed to pack in audiences for its subsequent showings at SXSW and even took over an additional screen at the Alamo South Lamar.
Collin: I wanted to ask about your cast, specifically Brad Dourif, who a lot of people are familiar with from the legion of direct-to-video genre titles he seems to appear in every year. People forget this guy was an Oscar-nominated actor in the early part of his career. How did you look at each role as you cast it, specifically the role of Jack, (Dourif’s character) because I was just so taken with his performance?
Danny: I think Brad did a fantastic job too. The difficulty with that role in particular was that we needed to find someone who could be believable as a former physics professor and a mountain man, and those are two opposite qualities that are difficult to find in people. That was our challenge when we were going about trying to find someone.
Darren: Despite that reputation that Brad has garnered in genre work, we had been watching a lot of Deadwood during the writing of this and had really fallen in love with that show and had see him just be brilliant in that role.
Danny: Fantastic show.
Collin: Absolutely, and he’s great in it.
Darren: So that put him on our radar. And Danny, I think you were the one who met with him first.
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I had a chance to sit down and speak with Edward Anderson, writer / director of Shuttle and one of its stars, the lovely Cameron Goodman on Sunday morning following the film’s premier.
Collin: Congratulations on the film. I really enjoyed it.
Edward: So you saw it?
Collin: Last night, yeah.
Cameron: I did too – for the first time!
Edward: Well thanks for coming out to see it. We really appreciate it.
Cameron: I’m a little overly-revved about it right now. If you talk to me in a few days I’ll be a lot cooler – a lot more aloof about it.
Collin: This was a writer/director project and I think it really shows because the film has a very full, realized feel to it. What drove you to do this as a first-time filmmaker – what made you think this project would work? It’s very dark and uncompromising in its ideals.
Edward: I think, like a lot of filmmakers, I get a lot of ideas. You filter through them as you go along. If an idea stays with you for a while then maybe you’ll explore it, and if you explore it and it keeps going well then you’ll outline it, and if you outline it you might write it, and if you write it you might do some more drafts. The good ideas stay with you.
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The day after seeing Raw Feed’s latest offering Otis at SXSW, I had the opportunity to sit down with director Tony Krantz and writer Erik Jendresen at the Four Seasons in Austin. I spoke with Erik here.
Tony: A real pleasure to meet you.
Collin: It’s a pleasure to meet you, too. Otis seems, in a way, to a be a response to the torture porn films that have really permeated in the horror genre over the last few years. Was there an attempt within the film to comment on that? The role of that sort of film in society? Was that something conscious within Otis?
Tony: Well, really, we didn’t try to make a movie that commented on other horror films in terms of their quality or any of that kind of stuff. We were making a comment on the over-abundance of torture porn, gore porn movies – we said, “Let’s satirize it.” But really, what this film is about, it’s a political film – it really is a meditation on the war in Iraq.
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I am not a pot smoker.
I do not say this to sound self-righteous or to launch into an anti-marijuana screed, merely to inform you that, even as a non-weed aficionado, I laughed continually throughout Super High Me, along with the rest of the packed Paramount Theater last Friday evening. The film documents stand-up comedian Doug Benson’s decision to get high every day for 30 days, a la Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me. What started as a joke in Benson’s routine turned into reality when filmmaker Michael Blieden (The Comedians of Comedy) caught wind of the idea. Benson and Blieden expanded the gag by also documenting the previous 30 days that long-time pot smoker Benson spent going without weed, so they would have a point of comparison for the effects of smoking marijuana.
Did the rest of the audience laugh more than I did? Most assuredly. Did they laugh even when the doc got a bit repetitive and veered betweens points of view? Most assuredly. Do I still recommend the movie? Most assuredly.
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The day after seeing Raw Feed’s latest offering Otis at SXSW, I had the opportunity to sit down with director Tony Krantz and writer Erik Jendresen at the Four Seasons in Austin. I spoke first with Erik.
Collin: First, congratulations. The film’s just fantastic.
Erik: Thank you!
Collin: Since I have you here first, I’d like to talk a little about your relationship with Tony – I know it’s unique, that you’re a collaborator end-to-end on the film unlike many writers, whose involvement in the process usually ends after they turn in a white draft.
Erik: From the word “go,” the whole idea of Raw Feed was to break the mold and do things differently. First – it’s old-fashioned filmmaking. Our schedule here was 18 days, on Sublime 15 days, there was very little money. It’s all about crafting a script that’s going to elevate the genre, to do something different with the genre, and changing the preconceived notion that “direct to DVD” is shit – it’s not. It’s a medium that’s very viable now. But it all starts on the page.
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Steven Conrad’s The Promotion is an unexpected and very welcome surprise. I didn’t care for The Weather Man, which Conrad wrote, and the synopsis ("two mid-level supermarket employees ... compete ruthlessly for a coveted post at a new store location") sounded too straightforward; even with John C. Reilly, the presence of Seann William Scott appeared to signal a “dumb guy” comedy.
That all goes to show the danger of assumptions. It may be difficult for Dimension Films to market, but The Promotion mines familiar territory with a fresh comedic approach and a sincere desire to convey the trials and tribulations of the middle class. Where the lead character in The Weather Man, played by Nicolas Cage, struck me as far too smug, self-absorbed, and spoiled to be sympathetic, Doug (Seann William Scott) is an everyman, an assistant manager at a Chicago chain supermarket. He loves his girlfriend (Jenna Fischer), tolerates his neighbors—in a riff taken right out of Office Space, the apartment walls are paper-thin and conversations are held through the walls—and wonders if the time is right to buy a house.
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Acknowledged as the birthplace of “mumblecore” (a talky, visually loose form of American indie primarily focused on meandering 20-somethings), it’s only fitting that SXSW should bear witness to the creative evolution of two of the format’s pioneers, writer / director brothers Jay and Mark Duplass. Their latest collaboration Baghead is many things, but it should be said up front a horror film isn’t one of them - despite a considerable amount of pre-release speculation pegging it as such (resisting the urge to stamp “mumblehorror” atop this review is much less difficult for yours truly when keeping that thought at my mind’s forefront). Already acquired by Sony Pictures Classics, Baghead plays with form in humorous and inventive fashion, features strong performances throughout, and yes – even includes a clutch of genuine jump scares.
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A difficult film to discuss at length without careening into spoiler territory, it can at least be said that writer / director Edward Anderson’s suspense / horror hybrid Shuttle packs in more reversals and twists than you can shake a handful of severed fingers at. The film eschews heavy stylization in terms of look and performances resulting in a stripped down, organic ode to the evils of the dark and the folly of misplaced trust. It took a night of reflection for me to realize how deeply Shuttle had jammed its hooks into me – there was no question the film was effective on a purely visceral level, but its deeper, more unsettling themes resonated louder and louder the longer considered.
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I will not pretend to be objective about Harlan Ellison. The man saved my life.
Growing up in the Los Angeles suburb of Van Nuys in the 60s and 70s, I felt like an alien creature: quiet, withdrawn, and, above all, short. Although I was never THE shortest, I was always among the shortest two. Still, dreams and stories and nightmares whirled through my head. My family did not have much money, and we did not have, let us say, a literary tradition, but I read as many books as the public library allowed me to check out each week.
I first encountered Harlan Ellison’s stories in an anthology of science fiction award winners (The Hugo Awards) in 1972. They were like nothing I had ever read: stories that soared away from the earth and penetrated deep into the soul of man, tales that perplexed my young mind and made me want to learn more about the fantastic things described. His stories became entwined with the very idea of creativity, the possibility of birthing blazing universes that had never existed before.
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There’s a kernel of comedic brilliance at the core of The Marconi Bros. which never pops the way it should. The massive industry that has sprung up around weddings is ripe for parody and arguably under-exploited in film, and the notion of two sad-sack brothers from Long Island worming their way into a partnership with the self-proclaimed king of wedding videos brims with promise, but the film ultimately falls prey to a lack of focus and tallies more misses than hits when all is said and done.
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More than a few audiences members were so drawn into A Necessary Death’s (faux) documentary trappings that they up and walked out during its premier at the Alamo Drafthouse during this year’s South by Southwest. While the film maintains a perfect aesthetic veil throughout, an overly melodramatic third act reveals its fictitious underpinnings before things slip too far into the realm of the uncomfortable. That said, informed audiences should still find Death an engrossing experience, anchored by a quintet of strong improvisational performances.
The film manages to raise a number of questions worthy of discussion and debate related to the roles of filmmaker and audience member by presenting an initially bizarre scenario which ends up just this side of reasonable when filtered through the nonstop crush of reality and self-help media foisted on modern viewers.
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