Moviemaking 101

My friend and acting teacher Rob recommended that I read the book “A Film Director Prepares”. And I’m glad I did. It tells you the really basic stuff that you think you know, but not quite, and it’s been really useful.
Perhaps you already know this, smart readers, but through this process I have…

Wonderful Town

If you are in New York right now and you love the movies, run, don’t walk, to Grand Central Station and check out the exhibition “Celluloid Skyline” in Vanderbilt Hall. It is a wonderful exploration of New York in the movies, with very serious information, wonderful stills, amazing establishing shots…

Close Relations: The Shoot Part I

Art is so hard, director sips Red Bull. Director doesn’t sleep for three nights in a row. Not so…

Review of A Movie I Haven’t Seen 2

There is a movie out there about a girl who decides to blow herself up in NY city. This movie I will not see. From the reviews it doesn’t sound like a masterpiece. But even if they were great reviews, I’d be suspicious.
This for me is a no-brainer: suicide bombers are…

Movie Piracy

So the 3rd installment of Pirates of the Caribbean raked in more than 400 million bucks worldwide. This is not because it is a good film. It is because it opened on 10,000 screens in 104 countries. There are many places in the world where this means this may have been the only real option to watch over…

The Moment of Truth

The time has come to edit the footage I shot last week. My editor is back from Buenos Aires where I hope he fed himself with great beef and ample quantities of wine, cause he’s going to need it.
David Mamet mentions in his book Bambi Vs Godzilla that it is said that you make a movie three…

Close Relations, The Shoot Part II

As you can imagine, yours truly was so exhausted after three nights of filming that I could barely…

Two movies

I rented Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia, a truly bad movie. Apparently, 3 days of shooting my own masterpiece were not enough to discourage me from criticizing somebody else’s work. I didn’t have millions of dollars, like Mr. De Palma did, nor stars, nor Vilmos Szigmond. So I feel entitled to crap all…

Lars Von Trying

I have been an intermittent fan of enfant terrible Lars Von Trier since Breaking the Waves, still his best movie. I also liked his weepie Dancer in the Dark. I wasn’t thrilled with Dogville, although, as in every one of his movies, it had moments of raw, powerful beauty. The other two parts of the…

Bambi Vs Godzilla

I enjoyed reading David Mamet’s ornery pearls of wisdom about the movie business.
He describes the idiocy of focus groups and audience research in the most coherent terms.
What I’ve always thought, that whoever invented focus groups reserves his or her own circle in Hell and that this circle…

My Name in Lights

Darlings:
I’m in a high state of excitement, because by this time next week, I will be on my second day of shooting my modest little film. That is to say, if everything goes as planned. So far, it’s been a blast. It’s fun to feel excitement and fear and, at the same time, feel strangely calm as…

Countdown to the Shoot

We’re less than 24 hours away. In one word: 
AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!
Having said this, as I told my friend and fabulous production designer Marta, I’m so calm, I’m worried. This atypical (in me) lack of worry troubles me. But it sure feels nice. Either I am in some kind of…

Three Days to the Shoot…

…and I’m having the weirdest dreams. I love it!

Yesterday I dreamed I was chewing gum and it got stuck to one of my fillings and I tried to pull it out and I pulled gobs and gobs of chewing gum that felt like concrete and I yanked my molar out and out came…