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Screenplay & Film Consulting By Susan Kouguell

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INTERVIEW: Born to Be Documentary Director Tânia Cypriano

October 13, 2019 / / Comments Off on INTERVIEW: Born to Be Documentary Director Tânia Cypriano

By: Susan Kouguell | October 2, 2019

Susan Kouguell speaks with filmmaker Tânia Cypriano during the New York Film Festival where her powerful documentary Born to Be had its world premiere.

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“I’ve always been interested in stories related to health and the body in the context of individuals and communities.”

~ Tânia Cypriano – Director

Tania Cypriano and cinematographer Jeffrey Johnson

I had the pleasure to speak with Tânia Cypriano during the New York Film Festival where her powerful documentary Born to Be had its world premiere.

Born to Be follows the work of Dr. Jess Ting at the groundbreaking Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery in New York City—where, for the first time ever, all transgender and gender non-conforming people have access to quality transition-related health and surgical care. With extraordinary access, this feature-length documentary takes an intimate look at how one doctor’s work impacts the lives of his patients as well as how his journey from renowned plastic surgeon to pioneering gender-affirming surgeon has led to his own transformation.

ABOUT DIRECTOR AND CO-PRODUCER TANIA CYPRIANO

Tânia Cypriano has been working between the United States and her native Brazil for over twenty-five years. Her films and videos have won international awards including Best Documentary at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, New York AIDS Film Festival, Festival do Cinema Brasileiro de Gramado in Brazil, and Fespaco in Burkina Faso. Her first documentary Viva Eu!, which won five international awards, including Best Documentary at Joseph Papp’s Festival Latino in New York, is about the first man diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in Brazil. Her television credits include working on documentaries for PBS, the History Channel, NHK in Japan, GNT in Brazil, and Channel 4 in England. Tânia has also been a grant recipient from the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Soros Documentary Fund, the Jerome Foundation, Experimental Television, and the National Latino Communication Center. She has served in productions for Bill Moyers, Martin Scorsese, and Nelson Pereira dos Santos. She has also co-organized film series with MoMA, Anthology Film Archives, Exit Art, the Museum of Image and Sound in São Paulo, and the Grazer Kunstverein in Austria.

Dr. Ting (center)

KOUGUELL: Let’s talk about the creative collaborative process.

CYPRIANO: After a year of getting the hospital’s permission to film and finding funding, we started production with no sound recordist—just using mics on the cameras and for that matter no crew; it was just our cinematographer Jeffrey Johnson, our producer Michelle Koo Hayashi and myself. Michelle had a lot of creative input with me, and it was her first film. I try to include and be open to everybody’s suggestions and thoughts. I try to include and be open to everybody’s suggestions and thoughts.

With the filming, I went in with Jeff and myself often carrying all the equipment. We had no sound person in the beginning. It was the three of us or just Jeffrey alone because of the size of the rooms. It was very tough to film in such tight spaces. I was lucky to find Jeff and to work with him. It was hard to find camera people who would feel comfortable filming surgeries and exams; a lot of people are not good with seeing blood.

Dr Ting with Jordan

KOUGUELL: How much input did Dr. Ting have on the project?

CYPRIANO:  Dr. Ting had quite a bit of input. He helped me gain access to both the director of the hospital and inside the hospital spaces. Sometimes Dr. Ting would meet a patient and then suggest them to us. Other times we were just there by chance. This happened with Cashmere; we were there by chance, and we were able to film her on her first consultation and follow her journey.

Devin waits for Dr. Ting pre-op

KOUGUELL: Did you work from a written outline or script?

CYPRIANO:  We filmed without a script or outline. The film was shaped in the editing room. After we started editing, we did do some more filming. For example, with Devon’s story, more happened after we were already editing. We had to bring the material to the editing room and then rethink how we were structuring our acts. It totally shifted where the film was going originally. To the very last day, we had to make sure to be as accurate and open to tell this very story.

KOUGUELL: There was a poignant comfort level that you established with the patients and their families and friends.

CYPRIANO: I spent almost three years following the people in the film. I built a very tight relationship with them. I’m part of their life, too. That’s a way I also work. Once I start getting involved with personal stories it’s difficult to separate myself as a person. A lot of the material we have is because of these types of relationships.

It was important to me that everyone felt comfortable; it was important for their bodies to be part of the story. All of the patients felt very comfortable being in front of the camera. I tried to make sure that the surgeries (seen in the film) were treated in a certain manner; what we could see and not see. It was a big decision how and what to show.

For transgender people to get this healthcare is historical. Before, patients would have to be wealthy or travel great distances.

KOUGUELL: Were there any questions or subjects either Dr. Ting or the patients did not want to discuss?

CYPRIANO:  Once I found the right people to be part of a project, I needed to know that we could talk about everything. They were all very open.

It was essential to me that everyone be comfortable sharing their names, their faces, and their bodies. It was important to me to follow people of different ages, ethnicities, gender, and financial backgrounds. There are those who have family support and those who don’t; there are those who have partners and those who hope their transition will bring them to one.

KOUGUELL: Looking back on this experience, what are your final thoughts?

CYPRIANO: I was overwhelmed by how many people in the film wanted to show their faces on camera and be involved in the project. They knew the importance of this film, and how historical this moment is.

Susan’s INTERVIEW: Creators and Cast of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

August 27, 2019 / / Comments Off on Susan’s INTERVIEW: Creators and Cast of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

By: Susan Kouguell | August 22, 201948

Interview with the creators and cast members of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel talking about the writing and the resonant characters brought to the screen.

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Tony Shalhoub, Caroline Aaron, Alex Borstein, Daniel Palladino, Amy Sherman-Palladino, Rachel Brosnahan, Michael Zegen, Kevin Pollak, and Marin Hinkle attend the Making Maisel Marvelous featuring Amazon Prime Original The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel at The Paley Center for Media (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for Amazon Studios and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)

At the opening of the interactive exhibit Making Maisel Marvelous at the Paley Center for Media, I had the opportunity to speak with the creators and cast members of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Our focus was on the writing of the series and the resonant characters brought to the screen. The show recently received 20 Emmy Award nominations, more than any other comedy, including nominations for Outstanding Comedy Series.

About The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

In 1958 New York, Midge Maisel’s life is on track—husband, kids, and elegant dinners in their Upper West Side apartment. But when her life takes a surprise turn, Midge has to quickly decide what else she’s good at—and going from housewife to stand-up comic is a wild choice to everyone but her.

Interview Highlights

Alex Borstein and Rachel Brosnahan (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for Amazon Studios and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel )

Kouguell: What initially attracted you to the material and the role of Midge Maisel?

Rachel Brosnahan :  I knew I wanted to do this project from the bottom of the first page. The first scene of the pilot, at the wedding, Midge is really patting herself on the back. I loved how sure she is. I loved her world. I loved how unburdened she is. She’s funny. She’s smart. She’s flawed. She’s selfish. She believes she’s the center of the universe. We’re watching her grow and getting taken down a peg.

Kouguell: Some of the choices Midge makes are nontraditional for that era, and perhaps some might even consider for now. What’s your take on some of the criticism about Midge’s character regarding her mothering?

Brosnahan: I find some of that criticism valid at times but also frustrating. The kids have two loving parents, four loving grandparents. They have a village, including a nanny who is devoted to them. They have a mother who’s not always around; she’s pursuing her dream and as a result, is asking their father to step up, asking the neighbors to step up, and asking the grandparents to step up and help raise them. The kids aren’t wanting for anything.

I was asked once in an interview if I thought Midge loved her children, and Alex Borstein (Susie) turned around and said, “Well, do I not, not love my children because I’m here doing press and I feel the same.”

I get frustrated when people say that it feels like lazy writing as opposed to attributing it to her character; she’s not a perfect 1950s ideal of a doting mother that we’re used to seeing on television. In a show like this, I appreciate the idea of what a good mother could be—someone who is out to provide for her children, looking to make herself satisfied, and to grow. I don’t know what part of that makes Midge a bad person.

Kouguell: What drew you to the character of Susie Myerson?

Alex Borstein: I was on my way out of the country when Amy (Sherman-Palladino) said, ‘I have this part I want you to audition for.’ So, I read it and I said, ‘Oh damnit it, it’s so great, how do I not do this?’ I like playing characters with a unique voice and Susie’s got that. I like playing people who are dissatisfied and angry, there’s some joy in that for me. Someone who’s battling uphill. And Susie is all of that, a perfect storm of what I want in a character. She is strong yet incredibly vulnerable and that’s hard to find in female characters. Susie’s really fun to play, and I get to wear flat shoes.

The way that Amy envisions things is extremely thorough. She uses as many words as she can in any given sentence. It’s really challenging to memorize it all sometimes, to find a pattern that feels somewhat theatrical yet somewhat believable. Her material is theatrical in a sense, in a good way. It feels like a Katherine Hepburn-Cary Grant relationship between Midge and Susie sometimes. It’s fun to have it feel like a game, but you want to find the truth in it, the reality. That’s always the challenge but that’s what’s fun about this material.

Kouguell: The relationship between Susie and Midge continues to be realistic, unpredictable, and not stereotypical.

Borstein:  Yes!  It’s a love story. A platonic love story. You rarely get to see a good one of those regardless of gender. It’s more interesting in a way because you don’t have this, ‘Will they, won’t they’ type of element that you would have with a Kathrine Hepburn-Cary Grant comedy or Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd—remember Moonlighting? Those kind of shows and films where you’re always teetering on that ‘will they won’t they?’ and this is not what it’s about. It’s: Will Midge trust Susie with her career? Will Susie trust Midge to give up everything at the Gaslight and really move forward and just focus on her? It’s terrifying but that’s what makes it fun for both characters.

Kevin Pollak, Michael Zemen, Carolyn Aaron. (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for Amazon Studios and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel )

Kevin Pollak: (Moishe Maisel) As a proud member of the WGA since 1987, I love Script magazine!  Everything starts on the page and in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel the subject matters and the relationships jump off the page. I’ve never personally played a loud obnoxious Jewish man, which is a weird irony, starting out as a stand-up comedian and then becoming somewhat of a loud obnoxious Jew in my real life. The show continues to raise the bar and then top it.

Kouguell: Joel’s character, Midge’s husband, is not the stereotypical antagonist. He’s empathetic; he’s both sympathetic and unsympathetic.

Michael Zemen: When I read the pilot I thought he was going to be the villain, but as the season progressed, there was a peeling away of layers, and I realized he’s not the villain, he’s a human being who’s made some mistakes. That’s what I love about him; there are so many layers to him. It’s apparent that he’s a good guy, he’s a good father, and he does care for Midge. I don’t feel bad for him; he did this to himself.  At the same time, he was the catalyst for Midge to pursue her stand-up career and without him she wouldn’t have discovered her secret talent.

Carolyn Aaron: I play Shirley Maisel, not the Marvelous one, but the other Mrs. Maisel. Joel’s mother. I have a daughter who watched Gilmore Girls incessantly. When my agent called me about auditioning for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, I said you know my status with my daughter is going to be incredible.

We talked about our respective 20-something daughters growing up watching Gilmore Girls, and how Carolyn Aaron was struck by the unique mother-daughter relationship portrayed in that series, and the humorous yet realistic portrayal of the family relationships in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

Marin Hinkle and Brosnahan. (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for Amazon Studios and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel )

Marin Hinkle and I talked about the choices Rose (Midge’s mother) makes to seek more independence, pursuing her own goals and dreams outside of her marriage, and a voice within her marriage. Hinkle stated: “There are few roles out there for women (air quotes) of a certain age, and one that is so complex like this one.”

The Creators

Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino . (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for Amazon Studios and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel )

Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino serve as showrunners, executive producers, and have directed and penned most of the episodes. The show was inspired by Ms. Sherman-Palladino’s upbringing.

Sherman-Palladino: We have complete creative control. That’s the only way we’ve done things ever. We had complete creative control over Gilmore Girls because they kind of forgot we were there.

We talked about the layered characters in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which each of the actors with whom I interviewed, marveled and admired.

Daniel Palladino: That was the goal, to have multi-dimensional characters who had depth.

Kouguell: What advice can you give to writers trying to break into the business?

(There was a beat and then the three of us chuckled, saying “OYE” in unison, like right out of an episode from Gilmore Girls—for fans of that show, we did not add the infamous phrase: “…with the poodles already” though I whispered it under my breath.)

Palladino: There are a lot of hurdles. Stay true to your core. Even if they (executives) are happy, the audience won’t like it. They’ll sniff it out. The audience has the final say.

Sherman-Palladino: You got to keep remembering why you love the project in the first place. The deeper down the rabbit hole you go, the more people that chime in, the more people who have ideas, good, bad or indifferent, you got to keep remembering why you love the project.

The exclusive New York engagement of Making Maisel Marvelous is free and open to the public and will run at the Paley Center for Media August 10 through September 6.

Season 3 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel will air on Amazon Prime at the end of 2019.

Susan Kouguell Speaks with “The Farewell” Editor Matthew Friedman

August 27, 2019 / / Comments Off on Susan Kouguell Speaks with “The Farewell” Editor Matthew Friedman

Susan Kouguell speaks with Matthew Friedman about his work on The Farewell and his collaboration with Lulu Wang on their third film together, and his editing philosophies.

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“Every frame matters”

— Matthew Friedman

Writer and director Lulu Wang’s The Farewell opened with a limited release on July 12, yielding the best platform opening of the year, and continues to maintain a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Now, in just over a month of its release, this low-budget independent film continues to average at number 7 at the crowded summer box office of big budget studio films.  If numbers are any indicator, audiences have a strong desire for poignant, character-driven stories, and The Farewell is just the proof to build such a case.

About The Farewell

In this funny, uplifting tale based on an actual lie, Chinese-born, U.S.-raised Billi (Awkwafina) reluctantly returns to Changchun to find that, although the whole family knows their beloved matriarch, Nai-Nai (grandma), has been given mere weeks to live, everyone has decided not to tell Nai herself. To assure her happiness, they gather under the joyful guise of an expedited wedding, uniting family members scattered among new homes abroad. As Billi navigates a minefield of family expectations and proprieties, she finds there’s a lot to celebrate: a chance to rediscover the country she left as a child, her grandmother’s wondrous spirit, and the ties that keep on binding even when so much goes unspoken.

Matt Friedman

I had the pleasure to speak with Matthew Friedman about his work on The Farewell and his collaboration with Wang on their third film together, and his editing philosophies.

About Editor Matthew Friedman

Matthew Friedman has edited features around the world and has credits in numerous genres, including Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, the 3D dance movie Step Up Revolution, the comedy What Happens In Vegas, the Netflix original film Step Sisters, and several pilots, including the pilot for the series The Loop. His most recent credits include Posthumous and Life In A Year. He edited the short film Dog Food, which premiered at SXSW and won San Diego Comic-Con’s Best Horror/Suspense Film Award. He has worked with directors and producers, including Betty Thomas, Shawn Levy, Andrew Lazar, Adam Shankman, Karen Rosenfelt, Jenno Topping, and Charles Stone III. Friedman has collaborated with Wang on both of her feature films, as well as her award-winning short film Touch. He is perhaps best known, however, as the voice of the talking bird in Scary Movie 2.

Kouguell: Let’s start with your background in editing.

Friedman:  I went to film school at Northwestern in Chicago. They didn’t have a specialty editing program, but I always enjoyed editing. When I graduated, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I thought maybe direct but having directed a bit in college I didn’t really like it. I found out about an internship with a studio in Atlanta in 1993 and faxed them a top 10 list of why they should hire me. Funny things like: ‘good at math’. I got a call almost immediately after I faxed them.  They offered me an internship in either the art or editorial department. I fell into a great situation working with the editor Emma Hickox—she’s Anne Coates’s daughter who edited Lawrence of Arabia. Emma is magnificent and taught me so much that I didn’t learn in film school. She said, move out to L.A. and I will hire you as an assistant. And I did and she hired me.

Kouguell: Tell me about collaborating with Lulu Wang.

Friedman:  One of the great things about Lulu is that she’s incredibly tenacious and never gives up. On our first project together, she was cutting Posthumous in Berlin with a different editor and not getting the response from the screenings, so they looked for someone to come help them polish it. I went out to Berlin for three months in the summer to recut the film with her.

One of the things that happened early on, that goes to my philosophy, is that every frame on the screen must be placed there consciously to further the story. If it’s not there to support the story it should be cut. The way we worked, for example, is that I went through the first reel, and then we worked together on what I cut. Sometimes when she asked me to put something back in and I would suggest to tighten it up, she would suggest: “OK, split the difference.” This leads to another philosophy when I’m editing, which is to ask: ‘What is this character thinking? What’s in a character’s mind?’ You can’t edit a scene without understanding what characters are thinking in order to cut their performance.

Kouguell: You’ve worked on projects of all genres. What makes this one unique for you?

Friedman: I got my start cutting big, broad studio comedies which was very enjoyable, but I wanted to start working on more risky and more unique, character-driven projects.  So, I stepped away from those and started cutting more independent films. The Farewell is the culmination of that desire and that move. The reception it has received is amazing and humbling, and I couldn’t imagine a better result when I made the decision to work on independent films.

I like cutting in multiple genres. Obviously, The Farewell has a lot of comedy and a lot of crying so the skills I’ve acquired from cutting different genres I am able to work that together.

Kouguell: Did you stick close to the script?

Friedman: It’s a matter of degrees. This is true in virtually every movie. The script is the jumping off point; it’s a road map made before the contributions of the other creative people, including the director, actors, and director of photography, step in.

The intention of the script is followed completely. Lulu understood the story she wanted to tell. All the other creatives brought their flourishes into it. That’s why I like being an editor; I can put my finger in all that everyone’s contributed.

Lulu is such a tenacious person, she is always rewriting through the editing process and she considers what she can improve in post-production, she never stops.

Kouguell: The film’s pacing has a definite rhythm to it. For example, not rushing through quiet moments, seeing characters think and breathe on their own.

Friedman: I was vicious in terms of every frame matters. There are scenes that are cut quite quickly and when you shift to those quiet moments it helps to bolster the emotional effect of the performance. Indeed, there were times I would cut something, and Lulu would say, ‘I would hate losing that’ and we’d discuss what the intention was, and sometimes we’d come to the conclusion that it shouldn’t be there.

Other times I would try to cut something, and she’d say, I want more space for emotion’. Like the groom crying. All those moments are specifically designed. Lulu and I had intense conversations about how long everything would be, to the frame. Nothing was arbitrary. It was important to understand what was going on in the characters’ minds, what they were wrestling with, and give them enough time to move through those emotions, their decisions, and what they were processing.

Final thoughts

Friedman: I went to see The Farewell at a movie theatre with a full audience on a Sunday afternoon. It was the first time I saw it with an audience who paid money to go. Watching their reactions and feeling their reactions was really the reason I got into filmmaking in the beginning. Helping to tell a story like this, bringing them to laughing, to crying and move them finally to hope, is just such a rewarding experience.

There was a random guy behind us who said after the film, ‘I’m going home to call my grandma’. Lulu said in interviews that’s what she wanted, to move audiences to build connections with other people. The critical responses have been the icing on the cake.

To learn more about Lulu Wang visit her website here.

Making the Most of Attending a Script Conference

August 22, 2019 / / Comments Off on Making the Most of Attending a Script Conference

Susan Kouguell shares advice on the value of attending a screenwriting conference, from networking to learning.

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Getty Images – Photo Credit: Caiaimage/Sam Edwards

You’ve probably heard the joke: “What’s the best way to Carnegie Hall? … Practice, practice, practice.” What’s the best way to break into the film business? Network, network, network.

Attending screenwriting conferences, as well as film and pitch festivals is a great way to network with other writers, as well as panelists and speakers, including agents and executives.

Agents and executives who agree to speak on panels know there are hungry writers in attendance looking for representation and getting their projects noticed, and often they are open to meeting new writers in order to find that new talent.

Over the last two decades, I’ve spoken on many screenwriting and film panels for organizations, including the Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild, the Independent Feature Project, New York Women in Film and Television, and more. As a working screenwriter, I understand the excitement and anticipation of speaking to panelists. It can be nerve-wracking, trying to get attention but stay calm and focused.  And professional.

The following anecdote is excerpted from my book The Savvy Screenwriters: How to Sell Your Screenplay (and Yourself) Without Selling Out!

THE BADGE IS ON THE OTHER CHEST

Years ago, two of my short films were shown at the Independent Feature Film Market (IFFM) in New York City. I remember the nerve-wracking wait among the crowd of other screenwriters and filmmakers to meet executives. When I finally got my chance, I asked them if it was okay to pitch my project.  It was all very civilized.

A few years later I found myself on the other side. I was a buyer for Warner Bros. seeking acquisitions and directing talent at the IFFM. I was given the green buyer’s ID badge. I saw it as a badge.  Screenwriters and filmmakers saw it as a target. I soon learned that “green” means “go,” as in attack. Literally.

Filmmakers and screenwriters zeroed in on me—they pointed at my green badge and shouted phrases from their pitches in desperate attempts to snare my attention. I understood their desperation as they fought through a crowd of other filmmakers and screenwriters clamoring for attention from executives and agents—and knowing that this could be their one shot at making contact.

The surge of screenwriters and filmmakers fell into three groups: the underconfident, the misguided, and the overconfident.

THE UNDERCONFIDENT FILMMAKERS/SCREENWRITERS

They would open their pitches with a whole string of apologies seemingly designed to provide me with every excuse I needed not to see their film or read their script. They’d say: “I know that you’re not interested in my film or my script, and you probably don’t have time and it’s not really finished, and I’m not really sure I like it anyhow, but maybe you’ll want to come to my screening or read my script.”  I’d think, no, I’ll go get a cup of coffee instead.

THE MISGUIDED FILMMAKERS/SCREENWRITERS

They would zero in on my green badge and grab their opportunity—launching into a long and involved pitch without asking me if I would like to hear it. They would keep talking and talking despite the fact that I’d made it clear from their first words that theirs was not a project that Warner Bros. would ever consider. It became embarrassing, like being the subject of a case of mistaken identity.

Maybe I was too polite. I should have firmly interrupted them and said, “You’ve got the wrong person. Don’t waste your time or my time pitching to me. You should be pitching to that person over there who can really help you. And, in the future, ask executives if they are interested in hearing a pitch. If they say yes, make it brief and exciting.”

THE OVERCONFIDENT FILMMAKERS/SCREENWRITERS

I walked in the door, anxious to get to a screening on time. The usual surge of screenwriters and filmmakers approached me—pressing flyers on me, inviting me to their screenings, shouting and interrupting each other in their clamor for my attention. Understanding their desperation, I tried to stop for each one on my way to the screening room. One guy certainly made a lasting impression as I was listening to another filmmaker’s pitch. He stepped between us, pushed my hair away from where it accidentally was covering my green ID badge and shouted at me that I should be more accessible. I will always remember him, but not in the way he wanted me to.

I was even followed into the ladies’ room by an eager female filmmaker who kept pitching after I had politely but firmly closed the stall door. I later learned that, by virtue of my gender, I was among the lucky ones. A less-fortunate male buyer told me of an encounter he had at the urinal. As he zipped up his fly, a filmmaker approached him and impulsively asked, “Are you interested in shorts?”

There are definitely right and wrong places and times to pitch.

VITAL TIPS

BEFORE THE EVENT

Create an announcement. Compose a one-sheet or postcard. Do what best fits your budget. Your announcement should contain the following:

  • A great pitch. Describe your project in one or two attention-grabbing sentences.
  • A very brief bio highlighting your most important credits.
  • Your contact information, and website if you have one.
  • You can include an eye-catching graphic, but the content is the most important.

DURING THE EVENT

  • When meeting an executive be brief and polite. Introduce yourself, hand them your business card and announcement, and ask for their business card. After the meeting be sure to write a note to yourself on the back of the card to remind you of your conversation. (Trust me, once the event is over it’s unlikely that you’ll recall exactly what was said to whom.)
  • Don’t stalk the executive.
  • Don’t pitch your project to an executive unless you are asked to.
  • Don’t hand an executive a script unless it is requested. Generally, if the executive is interested you will be asked to send it.

AFTER THE EVENT

Follow up with an “It was nice to meet you” note. If you didn’t have the opportunity to meet the targeted executive, send a letter or email introducing yourself and your project; state that you attended that event and regret not having had the opportunity to meet. You can enclose your project’s announcement with your note.

Enjoy your time at these events.  In my experience, and I’ve been told the same by my Su-City Pictures East clients and students, that by staying in the moment and avoid being frantic, it will enable you to successfully network.

Susan will be presenting the workshop ‘What Film Executives Really Look for in a Script that Sells’ August 24, 2019 at the Writer’s Digest Conference in New York City.


Filmmaker Rodney Evans Discusses His New Documentary Vision Portraits

August 16, 2019 / / Comments Off on Filmmaker Rodney Evans Discusses His New Documentary Vision Portraits

Filmmaker Rodney Evans Discusses His New Documentary Vision Portraits

By: Susan Kouguell | August 6, 2019

Filmmaker Rodney Evans discusses his deeply personal feature-length documentary exploring how his loss of vision may impact his creative future, and what it means to be a blind or visually-impaired creative artist.

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“As a filmmaker with only twenty percent of my visual field remaining, I am forced to work in new, more collaborative ways while also being part of a long tradition of artists seeing in highly idiosyncratic ways.”

— Rodney Evans

I had the pleasure to speak with Rodney Evans following the press screening at the Ford Foundation in Manhattan and Q & A with Evans and dancer Kayla Hamilton. As it turned out, Evans and I are both MacDowell Colony fellows and even occupied the same studio during our respective residencies.

Emerging from the event into the summer heat of midtown, I found it particularly profound from a personal perspective as a writer/filmmaker, reflecting on each of the artists portrayed in the film, who not only redefined their lives with impaired vision, but redefined and discovered new ways to communicate and express themselves through their respective art-making practices with poignant beauty and vulnerability.

ABOUT RODNEY EVANS – DIRECTOR/PRODUCER/EDITOR/SUBJECT

Rodney Evans

Rodney Evans is the writer/director/producer of the feature film Brother To Brother which won the Special Jury Prize in Drama at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and garnered four Independent Spirit Award nominations, including Best First Film, Best First Screenplay, Best Debut Performance for Anthony Mackie and Best Supporting Male Performance for Roger Robinson. Evans has received funding from The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, The Ford Foundation’s JustFilms Program, The Creative Capital Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The NY State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), The Independent Television Service (ITVS) and Black Public Media (BPM). His second narrative feature, The Happy Sad, has played at over 30 international film festivals. Evans has taught at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Princeton and Swarthmore. His documentary short Persistence of Vision screened at BAMcinemaFest and Frameline: The San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival and won the Jury Prize at the Ann Arbor International Film Festival in 2017.

ABOUT VISION PORTRAITS

This deeply personal feature-length documentary explores how Rodney Evans’s loss of vision may impact his creative future, and what it means to be a blind or visually-impaired creative artist. It’s a celebration of the possibilities of art created by a Manhattan photographer (John Dugdale), a Bronx-based dancer (Kayla Hamilton), a Canadian writer (Ryan Knighton) and the filmmaker himself, who each experience varying degrees of visual impairment.

Winner, Outstanding Documentary at the 2019 Frameline International Film Festival, and Official Selection at many festivals, including the 2019 SXSW Film Festival—Documentary Competition, 2019 BFI Flare London LGBTQ Film Festival, 2019 Inside Out Toronto LGBTQ Film Festival, 2019 Outfest Los Angeles Film Festival, 2019 American Black Film Festival, 2019 Sydney Film Festival, BAMcinemaFest, and the 2019 Black Star Film Festival.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT—RODNEY EVANS

Vision Portraits is my personal story of going on a scientific and artistic journey to better understand the ramifications of my deteriorating vision. My aim is to come to a deeper sense of knowledge through illuminating portraits of three artists: a photographer (John Dugdale), a dancer (Kayla Hamilton) and a writer (Ryan Knighton).

The film consists of four chapters which profile each artist and also follows a medical procedure centered on the restoration of my lost vision through the use of cutting-edge technology at the Center for Vision Restoration in Berlin, Germany. The film is told from my perspective as a filmmaker who was diagnosed with a rare genetic eye condition in early 1997 called retinitis pigmentosa resulting in the loss of my peripheral vision and much of my night vision.

Kayla Hamilton

Kayla Hamilton was born with no vision in one eye and has very minimal peripheral and night vision in the other due to glaucoma and iritis. She incorporates her unique perspective on the world and embodies resilience and empowerment in her solo dance piece, Nearly Sighted.

John Dugdale

Photographer slowly loses his vision at thirty-two in St. Vincent’s Hospital at the height of the AIDS epidemic due to CMV retinitis and continues to take photos with the sliver of sight that remains in one eye.

Ryan Knighton at the Moth

Ryan Knighton, a punk-rock teenager, is diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa on his 18th birthday and finds writing as his salvation through the process of going blind.

All of the artists are deeply influenced and motivated by the power of art to heal and transform.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE Q & A

PERSONAL JOURNEYS

Rodney Evans: I wanted the film to specifically focus on the ways each artist was impacted by the loss of their vision and the ways in which their creative process thrives in spite of their blindness.and also follows a medical procedure centered on the restoration of my lost vision through the use of cutting-edge technology at the Center for Vision Restoration in Berlin, Germany. The film is told from my perspective as a filmmaker who was diagnosed with a rare genetic eye condition in early 1997 called retinitis pigmentosa, resulting in the loss of my peripheral vision and much of my night vision.

The film offers a deep dive into the work of each artist and incorporates their art (photography, dance, literature and filmmaking) to provide an immersive way to experience how they “see” the world through these unique perspectives.

CINEMATIC TOOLS

Evans: We utilize rich and evocative sound design and detailed audio description channels specifically created for the visually impaired and blind community so that they have the ability to access the film.

The film includes a mixture of in-depth interviews, vérité footage of each artist’s daily experience, creative process, and exhibition/performance. Sound design, still photography, visual text, macro cinematography and subjective camera positions chronicles the experience of each artist.

There is some use of experimental POV footage to visualize some of the remnants of sight that remain for each character. This involves use of overexposure, roll outs, flares and cropping to mirror the subjective experience of these artists similar to the ways in which films like Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Nostalgia for the Light (Directed by Patricio Guzman) and filmmakers like Stan Brahkage and Leslie Thornton use abstract, subjective viewpoints to immerse the viewer deeper into the emotional experience of their central characters.

WHAT DREW RODNEY EVANS TO THE ARTISTS PORTRAYED IN THE FILM?

Evans: Ryan Knighton and I were already friends and I had already read his memoir Cockeyed, which is incredibly powerful and moving. It’s about his retinitis pigmentosa diagnosis at 18. I learned that it had been adapted into a screenplay that had gotten into the Sundance Lab, and I asked Michelle Satter at Sundance and mentioned that I had the same condition, and she was nice enough to connect us.

John is someone whose photography I knew very well; it’s beautiful, stunning. My brother’s friend dated John for 10 years. I think it was difficult for John to go back through a lot of those memories. He asked to see a film of mine, and I showed him a film about my own coming out to my own Jamaican family, and I think he was moved by how intimate that film was and how vulnerable I was in that film. I think that made him trust his story with me.

With Kayla, I didn’t have the pleasure of knowing her before. I specifically asked a colleague at Swarthmore where I teach if he knew of any women dancers of color, and he said yes. It was fortuitous timing meeting Kayla, we met on a Sunday, and I asked if I could film her rehearsal. Four days later, my DP and I went and shot at the space in the Bronx.

PLEASURE AND CHALLENGES

Kayla Hamilton: I was asking myself: If I lose 100 percent of my sight, how can I consume dance; how can I see it? How do you describe movements to someone who is not a dancer? What are the possibilities? What can that mean for a sighted person and someone who doesn’t see out of their eyesight? Challenging ways we take in movement as vision as the primary source.

Evans: Visual style, for me, one of the great pleasures and challenges was putting the viewer in the subjective position of the different ways we all see differently. When John describes his vision as the aurora borealis, and these flashes of color he gets and that he constantly has his optic nerve firing.

In the film world, because it’s a visually-based medium, if you are visually impaired, there is a stigma. I don’t know a lot of people who are ‘out’ about it, with audio descriptions there are so many ways to execute visuals through language.

One challenge is how do you create a visual language that an audience can experience? The visual language of the film came about the various ways we talked about seeing in different ways, waking up and blinking, things being abstracted and literally light and shapes, and asking how do you move around and navigate space.

VISION PORTRAITS opens in theaters August 9th in Manhattan at the Metrograph and August 23rd in Los Angeles at Laemmle Royal with a national rollout to follow, courtesy of Stimulus Pictures.

To learn more about Rodney Evans, visit his website.

Susan Kouguell Interviews “Mouthpiece” Director Patricia Rozema

June 19, 2019 / / Comments Off on Susan Kouguell Interviews “Mouthpiece” Director Patricia Rozema

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Patricia Rozema and I met for our interview in a Greenwich Village hotel restaurant to talk about her new film Mouthpiece. It had been several decades since we had last seen each other; her film I’ve heard the Mermaids Singing  was just picked up for distribution by Miramax Films where I was working in the story department. There was certainly a lot to catch up on.

When I first saw I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, I was immediately struck by Rozema’s distinct vision, story sensibilities, sense of humor, and her willingness to take chances. I closely followed her career since that time and continue to be inspired by her often rule-breaking work.

We started our interview talking about the expectations and sacrifices of mothers and daughters in relation to Mouthpiece, as well as with our respective daughters whose mothers work in the film industry—well known to have hiring and pay inequities.

There is a scene in Mouthpiece when a clip of Ruth Bader Ginsburg pops up on Cassandra’s laptop with Ginsburg’s words: “Women will not have equality until men are involved in raising the next generation.”  Rozema commented: “That’s how RBG did it with her husband. I think there should never be a choice between developing yourself as a skilled human and having a family; you should be allowed to have both.”

ABOUT MOUTHPIECE

Mouthpiece is a powerful, funny and highly original look into the conflicted psyche of Cassandra Haywood—a fiercely independent millennial woman. Cass is a single writer who lives by her own rules. She’s also a bit of a disaster.  Following the sudden death of her mother, Elaine (Maev Beaty), she finds herself in crisis, unable to think straight with a debate raging inside her head. This movie makes that invisible conflict visible: Cassandra (Amy Nostbakken & Norah Sadava) battles it out while figuring out what to say at her mother’s funeral. What unfolds is a wild careening through grief, anger, sex and self-sabotage in an exploration of the messy lives of women from both generations. Raucous jokes, musical numbers and heartbreaking memories add up to a deeply moving and political portrait of a mother and a daughter as seen through the eyes of one conflicted young woman.

Susan Kouguell interviews filmmaker of Mouthpiece, Patricia Rozema, diving into the adaptation process and taking risks in filmmaking. 

Patricia Rozema

PATRICIA ROZEMA – Director, Screenwriter, Producer After an Honours B.A. in Philosophy and English from Calvin College in Michigan, Patricia Rozema distinguished herself as a writer/director with her internationally celebrated first comedy feature, “I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing” at the Director’s Fortnight in Cannes, where it won the Prix de la Jeunesse. It then opened the Toronto International Film Festival in 1987. Other highlights: writing/directing the contemporary lesbian love story “When Night is Falling,” adapting/directing the politically progressive Miramax Jane Austen feature “Mansfield Park” with Harold Pinter, and co-writing HBO’s “Grey Gardens” starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange (PEN Screenwriter’s award, Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe). She also won an Emmy for writing and directing a Yo-Yo Ma/Bach film “Six Gestures.” In 2015, Rozema adapted and directed the apocalyptic thriller “Into The Forest” with Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood. She has also directed “Anne with an E” and “Mozart in the Jungle” for Netflix/CBC & Amazon. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Rozema with Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava

FROM STAGE TO SCREEN

Rozema was introduced to the stage play Mouthpiece by her now 22-year-old daughter (she also has a 14-year-old daughter) who was working as an intern at Toronto’s Nightwood Theatre. “It was so fresh and strong and tapped into a visceral feeling that I had never seen represented before” says Rozema, who then insisted that Alexandra Hedison and Jodie Foster check it out while they were working in Toronto. Foster and Hedison said, “When we first saw Norah and Amy’s breathtaking performance, we were speechless. Mouthpiecetouches on every part of the female experience from birth to death using dance, music, and wicked humor with just a bathtub for scenery. The result is a new kind of feminist language which ignites pure, intravenous emotion. It’s impossible to describe and truly unforgettable.”

The theatrical production consisted exclusively of Cass, played by Nostbakken and Sadava, wearing white bathing suits, often sitting in a bathtub. The film, on the other hand, is much broader and very visual.

THE INTERVIEW

KOUGUELL: Tell me about the adaptation process and collaborating with Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava, bringing their play to the screen.

ROZEMA:  We did a lot of talking. The thing I brought to it was to add the mother character. The play was one hour.  I have daughters and my mother had died so I thought I had the right to be in it. We just riffed and told stories and wrote them out. Mostly I was at the keyboard, sometimes they were.  They didn’t know the format of screenplays, like Final Draft, so I would write it, then after a session I would polish it up and then share it, It was like a writers room. I loved it. I always wondered if I would enjoy a writer room, but I loved it.

Their senses of humor are so close to mine and their B.S. detector is similar to mine. I also brought to the story was the Christmas section. I  thought what was needed in the film, was a bit more of a narrative drive so, I thought, ‘What was the question that remains unanswered?’

KOUGUELL: The question of: What happened at Christmas?

ROZEMA: Yes, What happened at Christmas. It’s amazing, if you have one tiny hook like that, you can put so much on that’s emotionally and socially relevant.

KOUGUELL: Tell me about the shoot and post-production.

ROZEMA: The shoot was 28 days. We did a lot of screenings during the editing process. I said: Is this a pizza with too many toppings?  The trick is that the film needs to be unified, yet diverse. If it’s too unified it’s boring, if it’s too diverse, it’s a pizza with too many toppings, and it’s a mess. I had test screenings with people who didn’t know me and had nothing to do with the film every couple of weeks during the editing just to see what do they get, what do they not get, are they confused, and so on.

KOUGUELL: You have been working in both feature films and television, including ‘Mozart in the Jungle’—have you found any differences working in these various mediums?

ROZEMA: It’s all just storytelling; filmed fiction. I have a huge appetite for novelty, for newness, I can’t have done it before or seen it before. I’m very open as to length, format, decimation, it’s all just story. I tell my agent: big budget little budget, I don’t care, just give me a story that needs telling, that is new, and let me play.

It’s interesting, Paul Schrader and I have the same background. We both went to Calvin College, we were both Calvinists, that was our world. Schrader was 10 years before me and I heard him speak recently about his film First Reformed and his nomination, and he was saying something about the fact that he never enters into the making of a film, thinking it’s going to be like this other film I saw, it’s always, ‘I wonder if this will work’ or  ‘oh, I’ve never seen this before, I’m going to try this or try this crazy combination.’ I thought, is there something about being a lapsed Calvinist that makes you seek out novelty? I wonder if there is something about our formation.

KOUGUELL: Maybe the strict rules?

ROZEMA: Maybe. They say when you leave that religion, you’re like the colt that escapes the coral, you have no rules.  So, there are the rules of the 3-act structure for example, and I think let’s break some of these rules.

KOUGUELL: It was a powerful and effective decision not to portray the two sides (the bifurcation) of Cassandra as one good and one bad.

ROZEMA: I had so much pressure to do one good and one bad.

KOUGUELL: The overall choreography and particularly the physical battle was very moving.

ROZEMA: That synchronicity was in the play, and done with such natural gestures, and that thrilled me. I was hungry to put that into the film. There’s no trick to that. It’s work. Looking in the mirror. Take after take after take.

The fight scene was just a fight scene that we choreographed but we wanted it to feel harsh.I wanted it to feel like the things I say to myself, what we say to ourselves.

I loved how Catherine Lutes lit it, she did an amazing job; very classical, very eternal. i loved it being an empty church. That was in the play. I loved her throwing herself down eventually. I loved this idea of the fight, the self-defeating metaphor.

KOUGUELL: Do you feel there are more opportunities as a Canadian woman?

ROZEMA: Yes. I sort of self-selected out of the big Hollywood situation;  I felt why would they be interested in me as a woman, a lesbian, with female leads as an inclination, and my work which is a combination of comedy and non-comedy.

KOUGUELL: You have a very unique sensibility

ROZEMA: There’s money for things that are not genre, that aren’t obvious crowd-pleasers, but even more profound than that, if I make a film that no one wants to see, my kids still have health care, and they still have good schools they can go to. That is profound. So, I can make dangerous artistic choices, I can take risks, I can experiment, and not risk starvation. That is  a big difference for me, living there. It’s also very progressive and creative.

Finding collaborators who have just the right politics, sense of humor, worth ethic; that’s a needle in a haystack and I always like to try new things.

Susan’s Interview: “The Short History of the Long Road” Filmmakers Ani Simon-Kennedy and Bettina Kadoorie

June 19, 2019 / / Comments Off on Susan’s Interview: “The Short History of the Long Road” Filmmakers Ani Simon-Kennedy and Bettina Kadoorie

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“As a filmmaker, I believe it is my duty to tell stories with truth and empathy. We are living in a divisive time, and it’s important to shed light on voices that lie in the shadows.”

 — Ani Simon-Kennedy

The Short History of the Long Road had its world premiere screening in the U.S. Narrative competition at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival where it received the Best Screenplay Special Jury mention: ‘To a story of a woman finding her biological family and her logical family on the highway’ for writer and director Ani Simon-Kennedy.

About The Short History of the Long Road

For teenage Nola, home is the open road with her self-reliant father and their trusty van, two nomads against the world. When Nola’s rootless existence is turned upside-down, she realizes that life as an outsider might not be her only choice. In this coming-of-age film, The Short History of the Long Road depicts the fortitude of resilience, especially when following the most devastating of blows, in the most under-resourced of areas.

Ani Simon-Kennedy

ANI SIMON-KENNEDY – Director / Writer / Producer

Raised in Paris and based in New York, Ani Simon-Kennedy is a feature film, documentary and commercial director. Under the banner of Bicephaly Pictures, she collaborates with cinematographer Cailin Yatsko on socially-conscious stories. Her first feature film, Days of Gray, played at top festivals around the world with an original live score by Icelandic band Hjaltalin. The sci-fi silent film was deemed “an assured debut” by the Hollywood Reporter. She has directed award-winning campaigns for Colgate, Smirnoff, Intel, Glamour, The New Yorker and Vice. Her work has received support from the Sundance Institute, the Tribeca Film Institute, IFP, Film Independent, Chanel and AT&T. Her second narrative feature, The Short History of the Long Roadpremiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival.

Bettina Kadoorie

BETTINA KADOORIE – Producer

Growing up in Hong Kong inspired Bettina Kadoorie to tell stories from all over the world. Her first film, Taste, was accepted to The Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011. She then produced and directed the documentary Child of Cambodia in 2012, before moving to New York to attend Columbia University. There, she wrote three features and interned on The Eagle Huntress in 2015. She graduated in 2017 with an MFA in Screenwriting, Directing, and Producing. The Short History of the Long Road marks Bettina’s first time producing a narrative feature. She is an Executive Producer on the upcoming documentary I am Belmaya about Nepal’s first female filmmaker and has directed two shorts currently in post production: Santiaguera, shot in Cartagena in January 2019, and a documentary on Chittagong’s shipbreakers, shot in February 2019.

Sabrina Carpenter as Nola

As I was perusing the Tribeca Film Festival catalogue, seeking projects to cover for this publication, it came as a wonderful surprise to find the name of my former film and screenwriting student, Bettina Kadoorie, listed as one of the producers on this project.  However, it was absolutely no surprise that her dedication to her craft and commitment to filmmaking continues to blossom, and that she is working with an impressive group of young filmmakers.

Bettina and director Ari Simon-Kennedy, and cinematographer Cailin Yatsko met while attending the Prague Film School about seven years ago. (The year after that, in 2012, I taught at the summer program at the Prague Film School.) It was a special conversation not only to reminisce about our respective times at PFS, but to learn how they grew and evolved as filmmakers.

KADOORIE: We wrote and directed many shorts together at the Prague Film School and it was cool to move to New York at the same time.

SIMON-KENNEDY: At the Prague Film school, Cailin and I were the only two in the cinematography track. I wanted to be a DP, and we started shooting everyone’s work and that’s how we came up with the name for our company Bicephaly Pictures. Then I had an awakening that I wanted to be a director, and we’ve had the company for seven years.

COLLABORATION

KADOORIE What was great was that I continue to learn from Ani; she knows what she wants as a director, and she is a strong writer. I was so impressed at how rich and deep the script was. Ani made another feature, Days of Grey, which unfortunately I was not able to work on with them because I was working on another film.

SIMON-KENNEDY: Bettina and I have been friends forever, and she has an amazing writing background, and is always a huge support. We share a lot of writing commiseration, (they both laugh) and her notes were incredible. She has a great eye for detail.

KOUGUELL: It’s interesting that this is a film set in the U.S and takes place on the road, given that you two did not grow up in the United States.

KADOORIE: Nola is a unique character that we could all relate to, despite the fact that we were not raised in the U.S. She was so inspiring and universal to us.

THE WRITING PROCESS

SIMON-KENNEDY: I started writing the script about five years ago, after Days of Gray. That film has no dialogue; it’s very sparse, and I wanted my second feature to be a talky.

Writing is lonely. The way I write is unusual; I map out the story in my head, and then I buy friends dinner and tell them the story, to gauge what’s working and what’s not working. I like that immediate feedback and to see what they’re interested in or confused about. There’s a lot of oral storytelling before I put it on the page.

I also attended the Cine Qua Non Lab that takes place in Mexico for two weeks. It was a really wonderful international place to workshop the screenplay.

Susan Kouguell Interviews We the Animals Director and Screenwriter Jeremiah Zagar and Screenwriting Collaborator Daniel Kitrosser

VAN-DWELLING

Van-dwelling is a growing subculture in the US that is thriving.  The hashtag #vanlife has been used over two million times on the platform since it first appeared in 2011.

SIMON-KENNEDY: I grew up in France with American parents and I feel at home in Paris and I feel at home in New York. I feel at home in both places. I was very drawn to characters who seem one way on the outside but have a backstory that you wouldn’t attribute to them. That’s why van-dwelling appealed to me. The van-dwellers are very connected, they have a very vocal presence online.  Some live in vans out of necessity and others it was a choice, and that was something that fascinated me and made me very attracted to that story.  I travel to make movies and make movies to travel.

KADOORIE: Ani spent two years interviewing van-dwellers of all ages and backgrounds.

SIMON-KENNEDY: The appeal of the van-dwelling lifestyle is undeniably tremendous. There is a freedom that is hard-earned and terrifying at times, but one that is endlessly expansive, too.

In France, every citizen has a right to health care, shelter and education, which is a different approach in the U.S., and having not grown up in the States, I fundamentally didn’t get it, and that was a bit part of the script and fascination I had for a long time that I wanted to get some kind of clarity. How people figure it out.

Susan Kouguell discusses collaboration, the writing process, and bringing The Short History of the Long Road to screen with filmmakers Ani Simon-Kennedy and Bettina Kadoorie.

THE CHARACTERS

KOUGUELL:  The characters were multi-dimensional; many are flawed with gray areas. Their choices may not be sympathetic, but they are empathetic characters—we feel for them—even if it’s frustration and judgment because you’ve examined why they chose the actions they did and their motivations. The audience was truly at the edge of their seats rooting for Nola to survive.

KADOORIE:  It’s interesting to see people react when watching the film, there is an inherent fear for Nola. Sabrina Carpenter (the actress portraying Nola) changed up her look, and she embraced this role of a girl living in a van, exploring it with nuance.

SIMON-KENNEDY: The threat of what could happen to her was very real, Nola escapes because she has her wits about her.

KADOORIE: What’s great about the character of Nola, is that who she is on the screen is who she was on the script. Ani knew this world and populated the world with characters of this world. Ani went so deep into her.

SIMON-KENNEDY: Every person Nola encounters is someone who is trying to survive and who might not have a safety net. Miquel’s character built his own shop, he’s a lone wolf, and Cheryl, (Nola’s mother) who didn’t have the tools to have a kid made a brave choice not wanting to be a mom and not being able to in a material way, and Marcie has her big flaws. They’re all trying to do the best with what they’ve got because there’s no help, there’s nothing to fall back on, you have to be self-reliant.

I loved Agnès Varda’s Vagabond,  but I didn’t want to write a cautionary tale, I wanted Nola to belong on the road; that’s where she feels the most comfortable. So many women I spoke to love it. I wanted to show Nola surviving through her unconventional upbringing and how her father gave her the tools to survive.

PRE-PRODUCTION, PRODUCTION, AND POST-PRODUCTION

KOUGUELL: How many days did you spend on pre-production and shooting?

SIMON-KENNEDY:  It was a 20-day shoot. We did one month in pre-production in New Mexico on the ground there for three months, then we went back for two days for driving shots, shooting the landscape out the window.

KOUGUELL: And the editing process?

SIMON-KENNEDY: Our editor, Ron Dulin, was fantastic. We wanted to find an editor who would be on set with us. I love working that way for the editor to get the sense of the place, and atmosphere, it shapes their perspective. We were all living together in Albuquerque, like college, Ron had an editing suite there which was helpful, and we could apply to the Sundance editing lab because he was on set with us; he was cutting while we were shooting. That was hugely helpful in shaping the film. We wrapped at the end of May and went right to get the full assembly together, went to Utah, did the lab, and edited in July, August, and September.  In October, we started sending out festival applications. And then we finished post—we had a wonderful kind donation from Eggplant Picture & Sound in Toronto, and we did sound and color out there.

IMAGERY

KOUGUELL: Ani, you mentioned that visually, you and your cinematographer Cailin Yatsko were inspired by Justine Kurland’s work, particular her series of photographs depicting life on the road with her young son.

SIMON-KENNEDY: Imagery is a huge part of how we work.  We do a lot of mood boards. I loved Kurland’s work forever. One of the most exciting things is the fact that she lives the lives of her subjects, and she had long periods of time on the road with and without her kid, and incredibly familiar. I had not spent time in New Mexico before. I was completely taken by the landscape. It felt like nowhere else in the States that I had been to. There was such a rich culture and history there.

For filmmakers Ani Simon-Kennedy and Bettina Kadoorie, the filmmaking road certainly looks to be long and bright. To learn more about screenings of The Short History of the Long Road, visit the film’s website and follow them on Facebook.

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Susan’s INTERVIEW: “The Brink” Filmmakers Alison Klayman and Marie Therese Guirgis

March 27, 2019 / / Comments Off on Susan’s INTERVIEW: “The Brink” Filmmakers Alison Klayman and Marie Therese Guirgis

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On a late afternoon in mid-March in New York City, I had the pleasure to sit down with filmmakers Alison Klayman and Marie Therese Guirgis to discuss their powerful and must-see documentary The Brink. Their mutual respect for each other and their passion about their film made for an inspiring interview.h

ABOUT THE BRINK

The Brink follows Steve Bannon through the 2018 mid-term elections in the United States, shedding light on his efforts to mobilize and unify far-right parties in order to win seats in the May 2019 European Parliamentary elections. To maintain his power and influence, the former Goldman Sachs banker and media investor reinvents himself — as he has many times before — this time as the self-appointed leader of a global populist movement. Keen manipulator of the press and gifted self-promoter, Bannon continues to draw headlines and protests wherever he goes, feeding the powerful myth on which his survival relies.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

ALISON KLAYMAN– Director/Producer

Alison Klayman’s directorial debut, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, about the Chinese artist and activist premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival where it was awarded a US Documentary Special Jury Prize for Spirit of Defiance. The film was released theatrically around the globe and shortlisted for the Academy Award. Her other films include The 100 Years Show (theatrical run at Film Forum) about Cuban-American artist Carmen Herrera, the Netflix Original, Take Your Pills (SXSW 2018), and the upcoming short, Flower Punk, about Japanese artist Azuma Makoto. She also executive produced the award-winning documentaries Hooligan Sparrow and On Her Shoulders.

MARIE THERESE GUIRGIS – Producer

Film producer and executive Guirgis has worked in both fiction and documentary film. Recent documentary credits include On Her Shoulders by Alexandria Bombach, and Author: The J.T.Leroy Story by Jeff Feuerzeig. Guirgis produced the fiction films Keep The Lights On by Ira Sachs and The Loneliest Planet by Julia Loktev. Guirgis launched and ran the documentary division of RatPac Entertainment, where she oversaw the development and production of numerous feature documentaries and documentary series. Prior to moving into production, Guirgis worked in arthouse film distribution, releasing films by renowned directors such as Jacques Audiard, Steve James, Paolo Sorrentino, Claire Denis, and Jafar Panahi, among many others.

Alison Klayman and Marie Therese Guirgis

The Brink is an important contribution not only to documentary film, but also to the discussion of the current international political moment and movements. Klayman began filming in October 2017, one month after she first met Bannon in Washington, D.C., and was embedded with him for one year, through the midterm elections.

We began our discussion talking about their collaboration process.

GUIRGIS: In many ways the idea for the film is very personal. I was close to Steve Bannon at one point, and I had strong feelings about the direction he had gone in. I hadn’t been in touch with him when he joined with Trump. It was painful for me. It was personal. One of my motivations was the travel ban; it felt like a personal betrayal.

It was hard for me to trust someone with a subject so personal to me.  As soon as Alison started filming, I knew it had to be her film, her vision, and her experience of Bannon. I trusted Alison; I trusted her as a filmmaker and person, and I knew she would respect the subject matter. Alison had final cut on the film.

We had a lot of logistical and practical hardships; it felt like the act of making the film was like a feminist act of resistance.

KLAYMAN: We had to trust each other a lot.

KOUGUELL: Alison, you were a one-person crew.

GIURGIS: It took Alison guts and courage making the film for a year.

KLAYMAN: Marie Therese came to local shoots, to see Steve fairly regularly when there were bigger asks.

GIURGIS: The film couldn’t have been made if Alison wasn’t alone. Alison had to develop a relationship with Bannon. She needed to learn about him through her own interactions.

KLAYMAN: I hundred percent knew that. Marie Therese deserves credit, she was brave and smart not to pull my strings. From my perspective, to let me, as a director, figure that out; the investigation of the story and who Bannon is. All the places she gave me space were the right things to do.  That was lucky for me.

GUIRGIS:  We did talk about the fact that we wanted the film to be fair, it’s easy to make a film about polemics.

KLAYMAN: We did not want this film to be a tool of persuasion; to make something fair is harder to dismiss. We both entered the film without our own worldview; it’s not about going in to a film to have that confirmation. I wanted something to be revealed to me, but I didn’t have my worldview shook by this, I didn’t think Bannon was offering anything particularly seductive to me.  I went in never underestimating him.

GIURGIS: I was obsessed by the notion of fairness. We are living in a moment of junk media and easy media. The fact is, most people are not one-dimensional: What if they do evil stuff and can be charming? I didn’t want Bannon to say that there was a cheap trick or manipulation in this film. One of the critics said that he hung himself while members of his team said that it is him.

KOUGUELL: Has Bannon seen the film?

GIURGIS: We showed it to him before Sundance. He was quiet about it.

KLAYMAN: It’s not the movie he would make or expected, I feel sure about that.

When Weiwei saw the documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry that I directed about him, his respect and appreciation for the film grew as it was taken in by audiences.

GIURGIS: Bannon knew we didn’t share his beliefs and that the film was going to be critical. Transparency was important to me. He probably expected it to be critical.

KLAYMAN: The least important audience member is Bannon, and that was something that I had to come to realize because he’s such a good manipulator and talks about it; it’s a thing you have to face. I felt that responsibility to ensure I wasn’t his tool. The film wasn’t about making it to piss him off. It’s a distillation of my time with him. I tried to push for balance, looking for the banal moments as much as the bigger (geopolitical) moments. The film is bigger than just him.

KOUGUELL: Indeed. The film offers unprecedented insights into Bannon’s connections to many world leaders, as well as his savvy knowledge and implementation of media manipulation.

KLAYMAN: There was a level of responsibility—I asked myself what is the value of this movie and why does it need to exist?

KOUGUELL: Overall, you had unprecedented access to Bannon and other government and political leaders outside the United States.

KLAYMAN: There were a lot of times I wanted to be in the room that I was denied. I think any documentary is not full access. I think the movie does show privileged moments.

KOUGUELL: Alison, you co-edited the film with Brian Goetz and Marina Katz. Talk about your editing process.

KLAYMAN: I came into the edit with the most intention that I ever had and with my two editors and brilliant assistant editor; it helped us work smart, not just fast but smart. Once the midterm elections happened.  It was impossible for one editor to do.

KOUGUELL: Did you work from an outline?

KLAYMAN: We had lot of transcripts, which were very helpful, and outlines, and a list of themes. I’m about key moments. It became more about notes on the cut and with verité, too. It’s calling out your great moments. We came up with title cards, which was not always the intention, but we could do more with certain cards.

KOUGUELL: You chose a vérité approach to the film.

KLAYMAN: From the other movies I had made, I knew that it’s hard to find the real meat in the story if you’re keeping the subject at arm’s length. I thought it would play to my strengths for vérité filmmaking—being embedded for a year, being observational, not knowing what I would encounter.

When you’re a fly on the wall, making a vérité movie, it’s not your place to interject, but I got outraged a lot. There was a lot of biting my tongue!

The Brink opens March 29.


Susan’s Interview with Academy Award-winning Film Editor Tom Cross on FIRST MAN, WHIPLASH, and more

February 9, 2019 / / Comments Off on Susan’s Interview with Academy Award-winning Film Editor Tom Cross on FIRST MAN, WHIPLASH, and more
INTERVIEW: Academy Award®-Winning Film Editor Tom Cross Discusses First Man

Susan Kouguell Interviews We the Animals Director and Screenwriter Jeremiah Zagar and Screenwriting Collaborator Daniel Kitrosser

December 28, 2018 / / Comments Off on Susan Kouguell Interviews We the Animals Director and Screenwriter Jeremiah Zagar and Screenwriting Collaborator Daniel Kitrosser

By: Susan Kouguell | December 19, 20182

Click to tweet this interview to your friends and followers!

In a lively and insightful conversation I spoke with We the Animals Director and Screenwriter Jeremiah Zagarand his screenwriting collaborator Daniel Kitrosser about their new film, which has garnered numerous awards and nominations. We discussed the adaptation process and bringing the novel We the Animals written by Justin Torres to the screen.

About Jeremiah Zagar and Daniel Kitrosser

Co-Writer and Director Jeremiah Zagar

Born to hippie artists, Jeremiah Zagar (Director/Screenwriter) grew up in South Philly spending most afternoons in a dark movie theater or wandering the aisles of his local TLA video store. Later, on trips home from Emerson College, he started filming his parents, resulting in the documentary, In A Dream, which premiered at the SXSW Film Festival and screened theatrically across the US and in film festivals around the world. It was broadcast on HBO, shortlisted for an Academy Award and received two Emmy nominations, including

Best Documentary.” His next feature-length documentary, Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart, premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival and aired on HBO to much fanfare in 2014. Other notable output includes the pilot episode for Showtime’s 7 Deadly Sins, and commercial work for GE Capital, Pedigree and New Balance. We The Animals based on the best-selling novel was selected for the Sundance Directing & Screenwriting Lab fellowships, and debuted at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.

Daniel Kitrosser

Daniel Kitrosser (Screenwriters) is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, whose plays include The Mumblings, Dead Special Crabs and Tar Baby(Scotman’s First Fringe Award, Amnesty International Citation). For the screen, Dan co-wrote We the Animals(dir. Jeremiah Zagar) and was the script consultant on Night Comes On (dir. Jordana Spiro), both premiering at the Sundance Film Festival 2018. He is currently a TimeWarner 150 Fellow for his television series The Move, about West Philly in the 1980s and is the Artistic Director of Writopia Lab’s Worldwide Plays Festival, a festival of plays by young playwrights from all across the country now in its 8th year.

ABOUT WE THE ANIMALS

SYNOPSIS: Us three. Us brothers. Us kings, inseparable. Three boys tear through their childhood, in the midst of their young parents’ volatile love that makes and unmakes the family many times over. While Manny and Joel grow into versions of their loving and unpredictable father, Ma seeks to shelter her youngest, Jonah, in the cocoon of home. More sensitive and conscious than his older siblings, Jonah increasingly embraces an imagined world all his own.

Based on the celebrated Justin Torres novel, We the Animals is a visceral coming-of-age story propelled by layered performances from its astounding cast – including three talented, young first-time actors – and stunning animated sequences which bring Jonah’s torn inner world to life. Drawing from his documentary background, director Jeremiah Zagar creates an immersive portrait of working-class family life and brotherhood.

MAKING THE FILM

Shot in the summer of 2016 over a 27-day period, the team returned to the location in February 2017 for another six days of shooting for a very specific purpose. “We wanted to see the boys grow up onscreen,” Zagar says. “I wanted their aging to be literal, not acted, and to observe a true passage of time.” (Inserts for the journal were created a few months later, and additional pickups were filmed in December 2017.)

JONAH’S JOURNAL

One of the most unique and most important narrative tools Zagar uses in the film is Jonah’s journal. In a family where complex emotions simply don’t get talked out. Zagar explains: “It’s a device we use to help you understand the private space of this young boy and how he’s processing what he sees. And in this family, in a house that intentionally has no doors – just curtains – there is no privacy. They all live together, they all hear everything. They all feel everything. And even though Jonah desperately wants a private, secret world, the reality of him actually having that is very, very difficult. So, under the bed was our place where he could achieve that private world.”

L to R – Raul Castillo and Evan Rosado

THE ADAPTATION

Their adaptation was, as Zagar states, “a screen translation, not a rewrite of the book. We wanted to remain as true to the book as possible, while making sure it was applicable to the screen.”

There were a few important modifications, the most notable of which was keeping the protagonist at a young age throughout the story, rather than following him until he’s a teenager. The protagonist is also given a name, Jonah, in the film, whereas in the book he is an unnamed narrator, a quiet observer soaking in much more than he can handle. In Torres’s novel, the journal only appears in the last part of the book, when it is discovered by his family. But Zagar and Kitrosser wanted it there to illustrate Jonah’s journey throughout the film. “We wanted to create a device where you understood that Jonah was slowly separating from his family.”

L-to-R-Evan-Rosado-Sheila-Vand-Raul-Castillo

THE INTERVIEW

Kouguell: Tell me about your adaptation process and how you worked together.

Kitrosser: In terms of the adapting process it was a lovely experience. Jeremiah was living in a wonderful apartment, and we would read a chapter from the novel and argue it out, trying to find the cinematic way to tell that story and transfer his lyricism into the screenwriting program Final Draft. Then, I would type it and Jeremiah would make lunch. Over lunch we would discuss the writing and take another stab at it. We would focus on each tile of the mosaic individually and then ask, how do we weave that tapestry together?

Zagar: We got the rights to the novel in 2012. We were rewriting straight through the entire process. We had a greenlit script in three years. Dan was on set during the shoot. There were scenes that had to change once we were on set.

Kouguell: Why was that?

Zagar: It was a low-budget film and there were certain constraints that inhibited the script we wrote. For example, combining two scenes because there wasn’t enough time to shoot both. When it was practical, we had to accommodate.

Kouguell: Let’s talk about your collaboration.

Zagar: Dan is the real writer. And a wonderful playwright. I’m a director, and I understand the visual medium a bit better. We would talk each chapter of the book out, and I would talk about the best way to interpret each scene and Dan would write it. And then Justin would edit it with Dan and we would edit back and forth together. Justin was involved every step of the way. Our objective was to stay true to Justin’s work as best as possible.

Kouguell: What were some of your challenges adapting the book to the screen?

Zagar: The time lapse in the book; Jonah grows much older and condensing that time into one year was a big challenge. The ending had to change dramatically, and we wanted to maintain the intentions of the novel.

Kouguell: How did you develop the voice-over narration and the visual animation?

Kitrosser: It was not in the script come shooting. For me, I had to learn the limits what we could do when shooting; we didn’t have access inside Jonah’s head. We had written in flashes of images in his head, but then watching Jeremiah with the editor and animator, they were able to go deeper by adding the animation.

Zagar: There were text cards in the journal. In the edit, it was supposed to be similar to the style of the Tarnation documentary, but that wasn’t working. We didn’t have access to Jonah’s intimate life, we didn’t want to just use voice-over. The animation was the same thing. We wrote in moments that weren’t coming alive to the mind of the audience, so we had to bring them to life for the audience in the editing process. In the editing process, Justin said the animation was really working, and the voiceover was really working, which was really affirming.

Kitrosser: Jeremiah has a lot of collaborators – his editor, cinematographer; his vision is really clear and it’s wonderful to see how these different marriages come together.

Zagar:  We love to write together. We love working together. The three of us plan to keep working together as long as possible.

Learn more about the film here.

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