- The Journal of Short Film releases Volume 11 (Spring 2008), The Portland Volume

- Don't forget to catch Date Number One if you are in the DC area on 5/22.

- CALL FOR ENTRIES - BIG BANG FILM FESTIVAL - OCTOBER 1 - 5, 2008.  contact@bigbangfilmfestival.com

- THE FINAL DAY, will be released on legendary director George Romero’s DIARY OF THE DEAD DVD (his new movie). The DVD hit stores shelves on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008.

Ricky Gervais has written and directed a new movie and he is blogging about it. Funny stuff.

Our good friend Bill Coy was the soundman on the indie feature Mind's Eye. Go here to his-and of course everyone else's- work.

Get you coverage from Jeff Wells  who has a relatively good review of the new Indy film. For strolls through the film market of Cannes, visit with Karina Longworth,  and Greencine for everything else. Try as I might I can't get very excited about the fest, even with Sean Penn running the jury. Will wait and see what emerges.

The pic is from  Luc Dardenne's Le Silence de Lorna

I did catch Lumet's/Masterton's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead this w/e.  Excellent!!

One of the main reasons we started this site was to hone our  writing skills (the jury has returned hung on that one) but the real pleasure has been encountering other screenwriters  and their work.  One such fellow is Benjamin Ray,  winner of the Pacific NW Screenwriting Contest for his dramatic feature script "Marcus and Faith," a gritty, love action story. I recently had a chance to get to know Ben and his work through an email exchange. I'll let him tell you about his unique background.

After I graduated from University of Toronto, I realized I made the
greatest mistake of my life. No wonder my friends told me I was lost.
Ever since I could remember, I always had an interest in stand-up
comedy. I tried it, got off to decent start but soon I was  finding it
hard to behave like a LIGHT SWITCH – you know - jump on stage and you have to be ON -happy, happy, happy. Listen, I don't mind being happy, just I'm happy being unhappy, sometimes. It's too exhausting to fake this happiness thing. Well maybe I could fake it real good if I
did drugs which are fashionable in the comedy business.

But I knew if I chose that path I would be dead in the gutter. Screenwriting came to rescue. I caught the screenwriting fever and never looked back. Unlike the previous generation of screenwriters who learned their craft through film school, I'm self-taught and honed in my skills from my days on stage and while juggling three shifts and a family. Consequently, I developed a fusion of controversial pop culture and exciting cinema.

The interview

HIT: Why did you write "Marcus and Faith"?

Ben: I wanted to write a gritty love action story. One that young adults will remember into their retirements and last forever. Something that is very cinematic and unforgettable. Screenwriting is not film-school. It's cinematic angst/passion/stress in motion.

HIT: If they make this script into a movie, why should we watch it?

 Ben: Its visual treat- full of - seedy dialouges/seductive romance/comic mayhem/action and a moral premise that will knock your socks off. A coverage provider from Scriptapalooza told me that my opening scenes grabbed him by the throat and it was very well written. I believe a movie should rarely make the audience work hard. The audience job is to enjoy the adventure and to be submerged into a world that does not
exist in reality. That's the screenwriter's job-- to create life for the audience-they don't want to escape life. They come to the movies to find life.

HIT: Why do you write screenplays?

Ben:  I love visualizing my scenes and then putting them on paper on a technical level. It's too easy to get wordy when writing. But writing a screenplay, that's where you learn to write enconomically. Each sentence has to capture the scene on a visual level. Forget what your English teacher taught you. Screenwriting is new form of writing. It cannot be taught. You have to think like a camera controlled by the director and remember the screen does not lie.

HIT: Have you, or do you, ever experiement with structure beyond the tradtional three-act?

Ben: Actually my first script "Sin so Well" did not have a three act structure. It was more propelled by the art of writing action set-pieces (popular with in the 80s- 90s)  fused with R-rated dialogue and introducing romance with a Hong Kong/John Woo vibe. Most
readers and coverage providers found this too offensive. You should listen to the coverages. One guy from AFI  ripped my script apart. Currently, all my screenplays follow a three-act structure and they're doing better.

HIT: Winning the Pacific NW Competition must have been quiet a thrill. How has it helped in terms of your career? Do agents and producers give your work more time and consideration than screenwriters who have not won contests?

Ben: Yes it was. Producers are requesting the scripts, but afterwards I rarely hear from them. This is the norm and I'm learning to be more creative. The contest made me realize that we have to get established film directors and writers to read our scripts. They can open doors and make us realize that this is a business and to learn the business.
Hollywood is 10% about writing and 90% about the concept.

HIT: How about getting into production? Have you thought about producing/directing a low-budget version of your work?

Ben: Yes. I have converted the feature script Marcus and Faith into a sit-com. I plan to collaborate with a director/friend who has his own equipment and crew. Firstly we will film it like a short  and pitch it as a webisode. Then in the future we will market it to the Studios. Of course this will be piggybacked by our feature script "Marcus and Faith". You know what they say, KEEP WRITING, but above all KEEP MARKETING!

HIT: Finally Ben, the ubiquitous advice question for screenwriters starting out in the game. What can you tell'em?

Ben:  Get as much coverage and developments as you can from reliable and honest film consultants. Rewrite until you have winner. And listen to only 20% of their advice. Stick to your vision. Then tests it in the top five contests in North America. Afterwards, query to Managers and producers. Keep writing and above all keep marketing.

Thanks Ben! For more info on Ben and his work, visit www.hollywoodtoronto.com or email him at brscreenwriter@gmail.com

Over the last 10 weeks, the independent film “industry” has been restructured before our eyes.

Bob Alexander takes a good hard look at the state of the biz. 

1. ThinkFilm, in a financial crises having overpaid for films that it can’t make money on in distribution, sells its catalog to a Canadian investor/speculator.

2. New Line Cinema, respected for its having pioneered “edgy” films into the mass market, is closed by Warner Bros; 450 jobs in NY and LA lost.

3. Picturehouse, run by top indie film distributor Bob Berney, is closed by Warner and titles folded into the studio.

4. Warner Independent, the so-called “independent” arm of Warner managed by a former studio exec, Polly Cohen, is closed and folded into the studio.

5. Cablevision, owner of the IFC channel, successfully bids an estimated $500 million for the Sundance Channel, now controls all cable presentation of independent film.

6. Discovery Networks, after purchasing rights to and then declining to show “Taxi to the Dark Side“, Discovery is rumoured to be closing their independent film activity and may cut back on their support of Silver Docs

As me old friend Ross Myers knows, you had better grease the wheels.

Off-Chance Productions Presents:
ANATOMY OF A SLAP
"When who you are and who you think you are collide at the curtain...who gets slapped?"

When:
MAY 9th through MAY 31ST
Fridays, Saturdays & Sundays @ 8pm

Funny (let's call it funny anyway) but true. How to explain how Vanity Fair went so far with the tweenie-bopper?  Steven Rybicki nails it

I had a great time laughing at the news of Miley Cyrus' spread in Vanity Fair. Annie Liebovitz's portrait hit Drudge and at 7am Monday morning Hannah Montana went from "tweenie-bopper" to "tworn-star."

And that's precisely the point where some of that basic, good, old-fashioned Marxist thinking about the "commodity" is helpful and can explain what the hell happened. This dust-up points to the fact that Miley Cyrus' body is a commodity that is controlled by two different sets of interests and agendas: those of Disney and those of her family.

Talk about a Battle Royale!

 The LO-DEF Screening Event & Wild Diner Films presents:

A writer,
A ninja,
A woman who is working on saving the world,
and a guy who works at a bookstore
searching for love in

DATE NUMBER ONE

http://datenumberone08.blogspot.com/

A movie by new director Sujewa Ekanayake

Thu May 22
8 PM
FREE
The Back Room @ Jackie's
http://moviesatjackies.blogspot.com/
8081 Georgia Ave.
Silver Spring, MD 20910

Event contact: Sujewa Ekanayake, wilddiner@aol.com, 240-354-3394

If the thought of   Valkyrie    just doesn't do it for your (and who knows when it will come out?) then the 5 million Iron Sky just might. Nazis not only fled to South America and Cleveland, they also went to the moon.

And they're coming back!

Check out the trailer. It looks fun.

Nick Cave is...back? He offers up an odd one. Two you must read (or see as the case may be): Charles Bock's Beautiful Children and Tracy Letts' August: Osage County. Yea, Nick Cave is always interesting.

Hollywood, of all industries, is forgiving of it's employees' oft-times dangerous habits. Read this David Carr’s NYT profile of Robert Downey Jr   and revel in the cosmic irony of addiction-marketing synergy

[Downey’s] romance with mood-altering chemicals didn’t end after he got out of prison. By 2003 he was an uninsurable serial relapser famous for being pulled out of hotels or other people’s homes in an addled, disheveled state. As a movie star with a lot of pals, he lived a life beyond consequence until he finally wore out the endless mercies of the entertainment business. After he was fired from his spot on Ally McBeal, the bottom finally came, at a Burger King of all places.

On or around Independence Day in 2003, he stopped at a Burger King on the Pacific Coast Highway and threw all his drugs in the ocean. And while he was sitting there chewing on a burger, he decided he was done. This being America, five years later you can walk into that Burger King, and if you order a Kids Meal you can get your own Robert Downey Jr. action figure, wrapped up in gadget ware. (And what does Tony Stark want when he escapes his kidnappers? A good old American cheeseburger — from Burger King, natch.)

It seems Burger King is poised for a come-back as well.

" You dirty old baboon, you dirty old baboon. For as long as I can remember it seems to me that whenever I'm trying to go to sleep I can hear you saying dirty things. You say the dirstiest things in the whole world, you dirty filthy, horny baboon. There will come a day when you get yours, when all the bananas in the house will disappear and you will be forced to eat salt peter by all the women you have ever wronged."

Here are some choice quotes from English critic/novelist  Adam Mars-Jones'   new novel Pilcrow which James Woods reviews for the LRB.

‘The privilege of my situation, in which boredom lay so close to over-excitement that there was hardly any space between, was that snot qualified as a toy.’

'Hugs, for instance, ‘were emergency measures, not for every day. I wasn’t used to them. I’d hardly experienced them . . . Hugs might just as well have been kept in the medicine cupboard, so as not to lose their effectiveness by over-use.’

'Being suburban was much worse than being working-class, because suburban people had their roots in the working classes, and were denying their own people just as St Peter did to Jesus.’

Maybe it's my burn-out, but the film world seems in a bit of the doldrums. Not much catching my eye at the multiplex, the DVD player, or on the web. Probably need a vacation or a good, long bender.

Here's a couple of things of note. Michael Tully has some great behind-the-scenes pics of the just finished Sarasota Filmfest.

The newly-discovered Marilyn Monroe Sex-tape might be a fake.

Finally, it's happening. Video games, namely Grand Theft Auto IV, looks to outgross the biggest Hollywood $$$-maker of all time. Maybe that's why I am depressed.

Singer-Songwriter Amy Winehouse on the way to her dayjob, a cramped office where she answers the phone for a satellite office of a Japanese caster manufactuer. She buys her lunch from the nice lady who sales loose cigarettes in the lobby, thank you very much.

For those of us over thirty (ahem), love between the ages of 19 to 26 often makes us wince in recognition, regret, maybe a little of both. In Writer/Director Aaron Coffman’s DIY indie feature, Texas Snow, those two emotions pretty much hold true. It’s a love triangle between early twenties Jesse (John Gregory Willard), an aspiring artist (painter I think) who falls for Caroline (Julia Rust) a very photogenic ballerina. The conflict is that Jesse’s roommate, Lee (Ryan Shields) used to date Caroline as well and fell hard when she turned down his marriage proposal. Stolen love is some of the best kind of love but…I’ll leave that for another time.

Suffice it to say, there is a scene where Jesse and Caroline are partying with her old school chum, Libby Bibb, who comes off like a budding lesbian alcoholic (don’t we all have friends like that?) who just laughs insanely throughout her scenes with Jesse and Caroline. But Jesse is young and in love, blind to the signals that Bibb is wheezing through bowls of beer, namely that she nor Caroline nor anyone really is serious at this stage of life; and blind to the hurt he has caused his friend and roommate Lee. If this all sounds trite it need not. Coffman is minimal in dialogue and directed his actors and cinematographer (Keith Hueffmeier) to follow suit, and the result has a certain poetic vibe that avoids many clichés.

Yet, for a triangle to generate empathy and emotion in the viewer there must be some kind of build-up to the climax. Texas Snow has only one pace: Slow. Composer Keegan DeWitt’s (of Quiet City and Dance Party USA fame) score plodded the film down even more. I longed to see some anger, violence, sex (I can see actress Julia Rust on the CW in a Josh Swartz vehicle any day now) or anything that brought the pulse up a notch. The same goes for most of the Mumblecore films, who in avoiding cliché so stridently have become one. Having said that, Coffman has made a competent, well-crafted film. The structural maturity, pacing, depth will come in time with his future efforts.

(reviewed by Jerry Brewington for HIT)

Ever feel like your day job as a caster salesman is interfering with your efforts to become an artist? Like you have not paid your dues, put anything really of value on the line (like your life? freedom? your veins??) Ahh, it happens to us middle-class folks who feel we just have a bit toooo much to lose when it comes down to living or dying for your art.

Well, we can always dress the part if nothing else. Here's bohemian Pete on his way to see of all people, Amy Winehouse. Try as I might, I just can't see him in a day job.