ROCKAWAY FILM FESTIVAL - OFFICIAL SELECTION!
Poster designed by Valentina Gallup Salerni, spotted near BAM.
Poster designed by Valentina Gallup Salerni, spotted near BAM.
August 19 2023
THEY GOT ME GOIN’ IN ON MY DAY OFF. is having its New York premiere at Rockaway Film Festival on Sunday, August 27th! Pull up to Rockaway Artists Alliance Building T149 at 5pm for Pull Over, a collection of films about “trying to get from one place to the next.” Tickets are $10. This is the first in-person festival any of my films has been accepted to. I’m currently working on a poster with the help of David and Nora to send back to Rockaway (though I’m probably a bit late already).
I’m pretty skeptical of festival submission fees and have only submitted this film to 3 festivals (all of which I’ve had my sights set on for some time), so it’s really motivating to get a welcome response back. It’s interesting how a couple of rejections for my previous films (many from festivals I have little attachment to) have been pretty discouraging for my morale, yet only one acceptance (from a truly well-curated festival that I’ve been curious about since Rhys’ film played there last year) left me tempted to send my film out to every festival known to man and empty my bank account. It’s been a real lesson in not letting rejection perturb you. Granted, I was a lot more careful about which festivals I thought would curate a film of this low budget + scale, so I think I’ll stick to being frugal with the rest of the film’s festival run. Rockaway is also programming a live performance preceding Walt Disney’s FANTASIA and an advance screening of the series finale of HOW TO WITH JOHN WILSON (slotted directly after Pull Over).
I late July, I took a train to Rhode Island and spent 9 days performing in my first lead role in a feature length film. Cory, the director, reached out after searching for talent on Nobudge where he stumbled upon Jinho’s films, a few of which I had acted in. Zach and Shane also ended up landing minor roles so it was especially fun performing with them on camera. It also kind of felt like a test-run for CROSSING, the feature I’ve been writing for 2 years and plan on acting in. We shot for 9 12-hr days without stopping, so it was easily the most extensive performance I’ve done, and since I consider myself filmmaker first and actor second (maybe even third or fourth), I was surprised by how differently I found myself functioning on a film set. It felt totally inverse to my anxiousness, but I was relatively unworried about flubbing lines (*most of the time) and at ease with Cory’s handling of my image. I have definitely been in situations where I was worried about the end result of something I was acting in, but this was thankfully not one of those situations. The parts of me that usually worry on film sets were on autopilot and I got to be fully present during my takes, which is something that is more of a struggle when I’m also directing.
See you in 2024.
Also, I’m writing this on a plane to Prague as I’ll be partaking in a study abroad program this semester. I’ve been looking forward to the 35mm program at FAMU since I was in high school, and with sophomore year being nonstop shorts-making without much room to breathe, the idea of focusing on making just one film throughout all of my courses with smaller class sizes feels like a bit of a relief. The bigger issue is my lifelong FOMO, regarding everyone that’s staying in New York, but having no other option besides tuning out of the NY machine is probably the healthiest scenario.
Besides that, I’ve been interning for Kino Lorber and my friends at Gummy Films when I can. The trailer for Luca’s debut feature WHAT DOESN’T FLOAT just dropped and I’m pretty upset I won’t be able to see it in New York when it opens at the Roxy in September. I’ve also learned a lot from Kino, especially about what my expectations should be as a first time independent filmmaker. One of the bigger things I’ve noticed is how stable the company appears to be, as opposed to brands like Disney and Warner Brothers that are in the news all the time during these strikes. It seems limitless expansion is a recipe for disaster in both business and auteurism.
A special entrance to my BARBIE screening @ Regal Times Square that’s been “under renovation” since quarantine.
Speaking of auteurs…its the summer of Barbenheimer. Movies are back!(?)! I liked Barbie, loved Oppenheimer. Possibly my favorite Nolan? I’ve been a fan of all his newer films since Interstellar. Each have “pushed the medium” and been totally different than the last. All the 70mm IMAX screenings in New York were sold out through the end of August so I caved and saw it in standard IMAX at the AMC in Times Square at a 10:30pm showtime. I would not recommend seeing this right before going to bed. I’m glad we got a cinematic wake up call of the highest quality (and even more glad everyone is seeing it), but I fell asleep with a pit in my stomach and Shane, who I saw it with, confirmed the next morning that he did too. As for Barbie, I’m glad the direction Gerwig took felt really different from her previous films, more focused on making something colorful and still somewhat thoughtful out of a nothing brand….and MAKING LOTS OF MONEY! Good for NB/GG Pictures… there is a better name for a production company in there somewhere.
Hopefully though, it’s the last money-making logo apparatus that everyone unanimously champions for a long time. Looks like people will be going to the movies for a little bit longer before they don’t again… Indiewire came out with an article calling BARBIE and OPPENHEIMER the new EASY RIDER and BONNIE AND CLYDE. If movies with $100+ million budgets are the new movies with $700,000 budgets, we are all seriously screwed. I’d like to think that the SAG and WGA strikes will elongate the timeframe that independent films will dominate public spaces again, and stick around for some time, but I’m going to remain a (somewhat hopeful) skeptic until I’m proven wrong. That being said, when films like TALK TO ME and SKINAMARINK blow up, it becomes clear to me that audiences are very receptive to films with the humor, pace, and shock factor of the more thoughtful (?, if you can even say that) side of Youtube, so I’m hopeful that the next wave of independent American films is going to be directly, if not, partially reflective of that. And hopefully there is room for things outside of horror or “franchise” material. It is just so painfully obvious that what makes this generation unique in relationship to cinema is that everyone has a camera on their phone at all times and can make a movie for nothing if they really wanted to. But how to get yours seen, and in a theater...
The day after getting back from Rhode Island and seeing Oppenheimer, Shane, Zach, Elsie and I went upstate to Maya’s place to write our respective projects. I struggled the first couple of days, as the last year or so’s progress with CROSSING took a 180 degree turn a couple weeks after I finished the first draft. It’s 1000 times over a film I’d much rather watch now, at least in my head, but it’s the kind of foundational change that requires a line-by-line rewrite or starting from scratch. I chose the former option, which puts a lot of pressure on my brain, but has paid off thus far. Before we left we each did read-throughs of our updated projects and it was clear from the 40 pages I revised that this new direction is undoubtedbly something I’m more interested in making. Other than that, I outlined the short I’ll be working on in Prague and tinkered further with WHY’S EVERYBODY ACTING FUNNY? I screened a cut of that for everyone and the response was what I really needed. Only Shane had seen it and the last cut he saw was 13 minutes compared to the now 8 minute runtime. I’ll make a few more changes before the rest of my work to be done is just sound and color. Now that I read that back, I’ve been saying that last sentence over and over for months. But I mean it this time.
Evidence that writing our scripts was (at the very least) discussed at La Finca.
I think that’s everything. Here’s a list of stuff I read/watched/listened to in the last month that resonated with me:
-THE LOST WEEKEND (dir. Billy Wilder @ Film Forum on 35mm)
-PEOPLE SOUP (dir. Alan Arkin, hilarious and possibly the only Oscar nominated short that I like)
-THE MAN WHO LEFT HIS WILL ON FILM (dir. Nagisa Oshima, beginning to feel he is a master of imagery. Nearly every composition of his evokes something greater than what fits in the frame)
-THE GODFATHER PT. 2 (dir. Francis Coppola, 2nd rewatch @ Metrograph on 35mm)
-THE CEREMONY (dir. Nagisa Oshima @ Anthology Film Archives on 35mm)
-IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (dir. Nagisa Oshima @ IFC Center on 35mm, unless its Bergman I usually find sex movies pretty lame. This one might be my favorite)
-BRAZIL (dir. Terry Gilliam, 3rd rewatch. When I was younger this film didn’t make any sense to me, like a dream. This was the first time I processed it completely at face value and that felt like an accomplishment)
-PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE (dir. Tim Burton, 2nd rewatch. As good as ever. We wouldn’t have Spongebob if it wasn’t for Paul Reubens. Coincidentally kind of follows dream logic like BRAZIL, but I never struggled comprehending what was going on here)
-NEON GENESIS EVANGELION + END OF EVA (2nd rewatch, one sitting)
-BOOGIE NIGHTS (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 3rd rewatch on 70mm @ Lincoln Center)
-COMPUTER CHESS (dir. Andrew Bujalski, @ Metrograph on 35mm. Immediately a new favorite. Combines analog elements I love in something like SKINAMARINK with Bujalski’s signature dry, spread out humor. I felt everything this film was trying to do succeeded for me on an emotional and technical level and that nearly every scene was better than the last.)
-OPPENHEIMER (dir. Christopher Nolan, AMC Times Square in IMAX. Was completely sold on it the moment Oppenheimer was naked during his trial, my favorite film of the year so far with BEAU IS AFRAID)
-TALK TO ME (dir. RackaRacka, Village East. I preferred when it leaned in on camp but very unpredictable nonetheless. Little glimpses of the protagonist’s unreliable nature hinted at throughout that I thought really payed off in the grand narrative).
-SCRAPPER (dir. Charlotte Regan, Lola Campbell gives my favorite performance by a kid in years. Worth seeing for that alone!)
-HOW TO WITH JOHN WILSON (s3e1-e3 aka every episode that’s aired)
-FUTURAMA s8e1
-TELEMARKETERS e1
-*Also discovered Yoga Records through the COMPUTER CHESS soundtrack and have quickly fallen in love with a couple of their releases (particularly News’ “Hot Off The Press,” Talve’s “Naked In The Park,” and came back around to Peter Kardas’ “I Saw You.”)
-The American Analog Set’s “Know by Heart”
-Red House Painters’ “Songs For a Blue Guitar” (revisited)
-“Blossom Dearie Sings” (revisited)
-MGNA Crrta’s “New Jersey” (revisited)
-Prefab Sprout’s “Steve McQueen (Acoustic)”
-and (RIP) Sixto Rodriguez’s “Coming From Reality” (revisited).
