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Susan Kouguell Speaks with Patrick J. Don Vito, Editor of Green Book

December 22, 2018 / / Comments Off on Susan Kouguell Speaks with Patrick J. Don Vito, Editor of Green Book

By: Susan Kouguell | December 18, 20182

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The awards buzz is swirling—not to mention some early wins for Green Book, which is currently in theaters. I had the pleasure to speak with editor Patrick J. Don Vito about editing Green Book and his collaboration with director Peter Farrelly.

PATRICK J. DON VITO

Patrick J. Don Vito has been working in Feature Film and TV Picture Editorial for over 27 years. He has worked with directors, including Peter Farrelly, Jon Avnet, Jay Roach, Judd Apatow, Donald Petrie, Steve Brill, and Dennis Dugan, among others. Born in Southern California, he graduated from Chapman University in 1991. During school he focused on editing and immediately afterwards went into the profession. His passion for storytelling has taken him through the world of Features, Episodic Television, TV Movies and Documentary, whilst covering many genres throughout his career. As a classically trained pianist he has also had a few compositions included in projects on which he has worked.

ABOUT THE GREEN BOOK

Academy Award ® nominee Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises, The Lord of the Rings trilogy) and Academy Award ® winner Mahershala Ali (Moonlight, Hidden Figures) star in Participant Media and DreamWorks Pictures’ Green Book.  In his foray into powerfully dramatic work as a feature director, Peter Farrelly helms the film inspired by a true friendship that transcended race, class and the 1962 Mason-Dixon line.

When Tony Lip (Mortensen), a bouncer from an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx, is hired to drive Dr. Don Shirley (Ali), a world-class Black pianist, on a concert tour from Manhattan to the Deep South, they must rely on the Green Book to guide them to the few establishments that were then safe for African-Americans. Confronted with racism, danger, as well as unexpected humanity and humor—they are forced to set aside differences to survive and thrive on the journey of a lifetime.

THE INTERVIEW

KOUGUELL: What drew you to the project?

DON VITO: I read the script and thought it was amazing, it was one of the best I read. I do a lot of comedy and it had so many different elements in it, which was the challenge of the movie; it was a hybrid of comedy and drama.

KOUGUELL: You’ve worked with Farrelly before on Movie 43.

DON VITO: Yes, and on a pilot that never aired.

KOUGUELL: Tell me about your collaboration with Farrelly.

DON VITO: Working with him is always collaborative. Peter knows what he wants but he’s careful to let you try what you want, to see if that will be a help.

Farrelly knows story really well.  He wanted to be a novelist before he became a director.

DON VITO: It’s interesting how this movie got made. This movie fell into Farrelly’s lap. He ran into Brian Currie—the character actor, and he said he was working on his first script and told Farrelly the idea, and a couple of months later Farrelly asked what was happening with the script about the bouncer, and then he suggested, why don’t you, Nick Vallelonga (Tony Lip’s son), and me start on it? They had a wealth of story to work from, hours of tapes.

Once Pete got involved, he wanted Viggo attached. He sent a wrote a letter and sent it along with the script to Viggo, and said, ‘This is a departure for me, please read the first 20 pages.’ Viggo liked it, and this started the ball rolling.

KOUGUELL: As an editor do you stick close to the screenplay?

DON VITO:  My first pass, I try to stick to the script but along the way and something comes up we will try alternate cuts. There are always little things that you try to fix along the way that you don’t necessarily know until you sit with the audience. Sometimes it’s about trimming, sometimes clarifying an idea, sometimes it’s too clear and needs some mystery. There are always many ways to solve problems, so you have to figure out which will work the best.

KOUGUELL: Let’s talk about the balance between drama and comedy in Green Book and how you worked with Farrelly to create this balance.

DON VITO: The trick of the whole movie was getting that balance right. There was improvisation on the set, the writers were on the set the entire time, too. The stars also would pitch in ideas, so the script would evolve while they were shooting. In the cutting room, I would first cut everything together and then pull out things that weren’t the right kind of joke or didn’t seem to come naturally out of the scene or if it wasn’t the right tone.

KOUGUELL: What’s your reaction to all the awards and recent nominations the film has received?

DON VITO: It’s very cool, better than the opposite! Better than being ignored. I’ll take it. It’s been fun to go to screenings and having people excited.

KOUGUELL: Your advice for aspiring film editors?

DON VITO:  Keep working. Use your instincts and look for stories that you really connect to. It’s been an amazing ride.

Learn more here about the film here.

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Susan Kouguell Speaks with Filmmaker Sam Green About His Live Documentary “A Thousand Thoughts”

December 17, 2018 / / Comments Off on Susan Kouguell Speaks with Filmmaker Sam Green About His Live Documentary “A Thousand Thoughts”

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Susan Kouguell speaks with filmmaker Sam Green about his new project "A Thousand Thoughts." Green performs a live narration on stage throughout the 85-minute piece alongside the Kronos Quartet.

“I’m endlessly interested in live cinema.”

— Sam Green

In early December of 2018, I spoke with filmmaker Sam Green about his new project A Thousand Thoughts. Green performs a live (poignant and often very funny ‘voiceover’) narration on stage throughout the 85-minute piece alongside the Kronos Quartet, who are also performing live on stage and often alongside images of themselves.

Kronos Quartet violinist David Harrington describes the work as “a live documentary”—a film, a concert and lecture.

A Thousand Thoughts is a unique and powerful experience that is not limited to an audience of music lovers or just fans of the Kronos Quartet; its themes are universal and its presentation, captivating.

Sam Green

ABOUT A THOUSAND THOUGHTS

Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Sam Green (The Weather Underground), in collaboration with Emmy Award®-winning writer and editor Joe Bini (Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Grizzly Man), takes the stage with the legendary classical-music group, Kronos Quartet, to create a “live documentary” that chronologically unfolds the quartet’s groundbreaking, continent-spanning, multi-decade career.

Wildly creative and experimental in form, A Thousand Thoughts is a meditation on music itself-the act of listening closely to music, the experience of feeling music deeply, and the power that music has to change the world.

Green narrates the piece live onstage while the Kronos Quartet performs the score, and a rich blend of archival footage, photos, and interviews with members of the Kronos Quartet—as well as longtime collaborators like Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Terry Riley, Tanya Tagaq, Steve Reich—unspools on screen. After premiering at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, A Thousand Thoughts screened at the National Opera House in Athens, Greece, and is touring nationally. It received the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

Director, Writer, Editor Sam Green is a New York-based documentary filmmaker. He received his master’s degree in Journalism from University of California Berkeley, where he studied documentary with acclaimed filmmaker Marlon Riggs. Green’s most recent live documentaries include The Measure of All Things (2014), The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller (with Yo La Tengo) (2012), and Utopia in Four Movements (2010). With all of these works, Green narrates the film in-person while musicians perform a live soundtrack. Green’s 2004 feature-length film, The Weather Underground, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was nominated for an Academy Award, included in the Whitney Biennial, and has screened widely around the world.

Director, Writer, Editor Joe Bini is best known for his long-time collaboration with Werner Herzog. Their work together is comprised of over 20 films in all, including the narrative films Rescue Dawn and The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and such notable documentaries as Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Grizzly Man, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Into the Abyss, and the 2015 drama, Queen of the Desert. Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, a film that Bini cut and co-wrote, won the Documentary Film Editing Award at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Writing. He won the Prix Vulcain De L’Artiste-Technicien at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival for We Need to Talk About Kevin.

ABOUT THE KRONOS QUARTET

For more than 40 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet—David Harrington (violin), John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Sunny Yang (cello)—has combined a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually reimagine the string quartet experience. In the process, Kronos has become one of the world’s most celebrated and influential ensembles, performing thousands of concerts, releasing more than 60 recordings, collaborating with many of the world’s most intriguing and accomplished composers and performers, and commissioning over 900 works and arrangements for string quartet. Kronos has received over 40 awards, including the Polar Music and Avery Fisher Prizes, two of the most prestigious awards given to musicians.

THE INTERVIEW

The filmmakers had extensive archival material from which to work, as well as the Kronos Quartet themselves and its former members. During the film, filmmaker Chantal Ackerman’s News from Home (the 1977 avant-garde documentary) is referenced, and how this work captured America unraveling during this era; this reference underscored the historical context that coincided with the 40 years of the Kronos Quartet’s existence and how the history of the past four decades are an integral part of the evolution of the Kronos Quartet as musicians, as well as the music they perform and commission.

KOUGUELL: In A Thousand Pieces you discussed the definition of documentary, and what this film is and isn’t. Please expand on this.

GREEN: There are many different types of documentaries and some subjects are permanent and never changing. There are many reasons I thought the live format would work for this project; experiencing it in person is a completely different thing than just including recorded music.

I generally don’t like music documentaries because they’re so formulaic. Like the “Behind the Music” types; they’re predictable and what I don’t like in that is it’s just a little bit of music, and the music fits into it. (Green laughs) And Kronos was not trashing hotel rooms in the 70s.

In a normal documentary, when you have three minutes of music it’s way too long. In the live format there are no rules, so this form is well-suited, and music is at the heart of it. The live experience is unique and in some ways the form reflects it.

KOUGUELL: How many times have you presented A Thousand Pieces?

GREEN: To date, this project has been performed 15 times. We have fine-tuned things; some small changes. Every show is different based on the size of the room, the time of day, is the audience drinking alcohol, and so on. There are a million intangible things that I like a lot.

KOUGUELL: Let’s talk about your collaborations with Joe Bini and Kirsten Johnson, and the collaboration with the Kronos quartet.

GREEN: Cinematographer Kirsten Johnson and I are old friends. I was floored by her documentary Cameraperson—the sensibility behind it, it was so wise and insightful, and I knew I had to have her on this project.

Joe and I met at a Sundance event, and he was so smart and radical, and we became friends. The editing was challenging and complicated. My collaboration with Joe was one of the best I’ve ever had.

Working with Kronos was great, we interviewed them, and showed them the film at the end.

KOUGUELL: In the film, you mentioned that this film was an “unauthorized biography” of the Kronos Quartet. What was the reaction of the project by the Kronos?

GREEN: We had no rules about what we could include or not include in the documentary. There were some small things they didn’t like; the bigger things like when Harrington talked about losing his son, the quartet doesn’t like sitting through that, they rather not be in that, but they recognize that it’s a big element that evokes something deep and complex.

KOUGUELL: Let’s talk about the writing process and script.

GREEN: We started with the music and created scenes from around the music and pieced together a story. Joe and I wrote the story, we pieced it together with words, images and music. It’s a tech-based piece, and it is a script, and I’ve memorized it.

A funny thing: I’ve never been able to write with someone else, but while Joe and I were working, I said I’d work alone with the first section and he gave me a weird look, and suggested we try it together. It totally worked! I asked him, ‘How do you know how to write voice-over?” and Joe laughed and said: “I worked with Werner Herzog for years.”

Find A Thousand Thoughts upcoming events here.

Susan Kouguell Speaks with “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” Editor Anne McCabe

December 2, 2018 / / Comments Off on Susan Kouguell Speaks with “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” Editor Anne McCabe
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Susan Kouguell speaks with Can You Ever Forgive Me? editor Anne McCabe about her collaboration with director Marielle Heller.

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Anne McCabe

About Anne McCabe

Anne McCabe, editor, started in the cutting rooms of Woody Allen, Brian de Palma and Sidney Lumet. She has collaborated with Director Greg Mottola on several projects, including The Daytrippers, Adventureland, and the award-winning pilot for HBO’s Newsroom. She also worked closely with Kenneth Lonergan on the Academy Award-nominated film You Can Count On Me, and Margaret. Her television credits include Nurse Jackie, Damages, Younger, The Purge and this summer’s HBO’s hit drama Succession. Navigating both drama and comedy, she cut Chris Rock’s acclaimed movie Top Five and is currently editing the untitled Tom Hanks and Matthew Rhys Mr. Rogers movie, also directed by Marielle Heller.

About Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Melissa McCarthy stars as Lee Israel, the best-selling celebrity biographer (and cat lover) who made her living in the 1970’s and 80’s profiling the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead, Estée Lauder and journalist Dorothy Kilgallen.  When Lee found herself unable to get published because she had fallen out of step with the marketplace, she turned her art form to deception, abetted by her loyal friend Jack (Richard E. Grant).

Melissa McCarthy in ‘Can You Ever Forgive Me?’

THE INTERVIEW

I spoke with Anne McCabe by phone for our interview; it was certainly fortuitous timing as McCabe was in the editing room working on her next project with director Marielle Heller on the new (untitled) Tom Hanks film about Mr. Rogers.

Kouguell: Tell me about your collaboration process with Marielle Heller.

McCabe: I was drawn to project because it was a different type of story than we usually see. As an editor I’m told, ‘Can you make this woman more likeable? Does she have to do this terrible thing?’ It was wonderful to work with Mari who was unafraid to make Lee Israel super grouchy, correct people’s grammar, and so on. Lee was a difficult person and not a typical character you often see on film.

Mari is drawn to stories we haven’t seen a million times; even the character of Jack is not one we normally see. Often, we see an English character who is more informed, for example, but Jack is shallow and Lee is smarter than he is.

Interview: I, Tonya Editor Tatiana S. Riegel

Kouguell: How long was the editing process?

McCabe: About 8-9 months.

Kouguell: Did you refer directly to the shooting script?

McCabe: Absolutely. Several people spent an enormous amount of time writing this script, and I try to create as close to it as possible. Occasionally on set lines might drop, but very much what was written, is on the screen.

Before we started shooting we talked about the script, and while Mari was shooting we would discuss scenes, and the story beats. We stayed as close to the script as possible in the first cut of the movie. We did spend a lot of time reshaping the film while staying true to the story.

Kouguell: Were you cutting as they were shooting?

McCabe: Yes. I would cut the dailies the next day. Continuity was often a challenge because they were shooting in New York and there was so much changing weather.

Kouguell: You’ve worked across all genres. Tell me what made this experience unique.

McCabe: It was great to work with a lot of women who are clever and confident. I love that Mari is bold and taking chances. I worked with producer Anne Carey before on Adventureland. Mari and I had a great connection. It was great to also work with Jane Curtain and Anna Deveare Smith.

Jane Campion Talks Top of the Lake, The Piano, Writing and Moviemaking

Kouguell: Let’s talk about your reaction to McCarthy’s dramatic performance.

McCabe: Melissa Mccarthy was fabulous – she’s a beautiful woman in real life, she embraced the ‘not-looking-gorgeous’ in this role. The film starts with a close-up and they put makeup on her to make her look worse, it was a brave thing. Even the cat crap under her bed, she dove in. She embraced this grouchy, difficult person. Lee Israel is complicated, and McCarthy has so much warmth that she brought to the character.

Kouguell: Some final thoughts about the film?

McCabe: I love the fact that the film centers on two gay characters but it’s not a central theme. It’s looming, regarding the AIDS in New York City during this time period. That last scene I was most proud of. We worked hard on that. There were a lot of ways to go. The moment Lee really becomes honest and goes through all the different stages of a relationship. They’re uneasy, there’s humor, sadness. Their lives are so lonely, everyone can relate to that feeling of ‘you don’t fit in.’ Lee gets ignored because people often don’t acknowledge women in their fifties, and it’s the same for Jack. And for each of them, finding that friend.

More articles by Susan Kouguell

Susan’s article: Diversity in Film at Producers Guild of America’s Produced By: New York Conference

November 28, 2018 / / Comments Off on Susan’s article: Diversity in Film at Producers Guild of America’s Produced By: New York Conference

Diversity in Film at Producers Guild of America’s Produced By: New York Conference

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At the recent Producers Guild of America’s Produced By: New York conference held at the Time Warner building in Manhattan, producing and collaboration panels emphasized the continued need for diversity, both in hiring and onscreen representation, as well as writing and filmmaking in this current political climate.

Here are some highlights from the Producing Masterclass events.

Emily Blunt, Rob Marshall, Ronny Chieng, John Penotti

Mary Poppins Returns

Director Rob Marshall and star Emily Blunt discussed their upcoming film Mary Poppins Returns (they previously collaborated on Into the Woods). Blunt stated, “It’s a divisive time. Here’s a film that could be a great unifier. This is what the world needs. You can feel the acrimony and the bitterness, and here’s the opportunity for hope to reappear literally from the skies.”

Marshall said he chose to set the film during the Great Depression because of the parallels between that era of economic instability and our present social climate. “It’s a message of hope in a very dark time, which is what I feel we’re in these days.”

They also remarked on their trepidation about remaking the classic 1964 Mary Poppins and Blunt’s concern about playing the role made famous by Julie Andrews, recounting a talk she had with a friend who encouraged her to take the role: “Dude, you’ve got balls of steel.” Blunt added: “It’s the most delicious character I’ve ever played.”

Kevin Wilmott

BlacKkKlansman

Director Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman documents the 1970s police’s infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan and closes with images of the 2017 Charlottesville Virginia riots. Producer Jason Blum remarked, “To me, the message of BlacKkKlansman, which I tell people when they’ve asked me, is very simple: Racism is stupid, and people who are racist are stupid, and people in the KKK are stupid racists, period. That’s what the movie is about.”

The film’s co-screenwriter, Kevin Willmott added, “You would think we wouldn’t have to say that!” Willmott continued, “It’s a really historic time we’re living in. People will look back and say, wow that’s when it happened, that’s when it was either going to go to hell or come back. We tried to…make something humorous that’s not funny. With hate, you have to get as close to the hate as you can and by doing that, you reveal the absurdity. That’s where the humor lies.” Regarding the hatred instigated by KKK Leader David Duke in the film, Willmott said, “That kind of hate has become part of the mainstream and it’s in the White House. It’s bizarre—if we had tried to write this, people would have said you can’t expect us to buy this crap. And yet it’s happened.”

Anne Carey (L) Marielle Heller (R)

Can You Ever Forgive Me? 

The film Can You Ever Forgive Me? chronicles the true story of Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy), the writer and literary forger, and her accomplice and friend Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant). Producer Anne Carey and director Marielle Heller revealed the importance of the two main characters’ final meeting (Spoiler Alert).

Carey: “Hock didn’t really have an ending, it was only about Israel’s ending. One of the beautiful things that Mari (director Heller) did was give them a weighted moment. It was in the book actually—that line in the book, it says, ‘I saw you and I felt like I wanted to fucking trip you.’ That was a line in the book that hadn’t been in the script and Mari read the book and brought that line right back and gave them that scene.”

Heller stated: “I wanted to set it in the context of the AIDS crisis in New York, because the truth of the matter was that wasn’t part of the story so much when I came on board, but it was the truth of what these characters were living in. It was 1991 in New York. He was a gay man. The real Jack Hock died of AIDS, so it was important for me that that wasn’t something we were softening or skating over for the sake of telling an entertaining story.” Heller said at her first meeting with Searchlight: “This is the most important thing to me that we bring in—the reality of the context of who these people are and where they’re living.”

Jason Blum (L) Garbriela Rodriguez (R)

Roma

The timely themes of Alfonso Cuarón’s semi-autobiographical film Roma about life in Mexico City in the early 1970s, were addressed by producer Gabriela Rodriguez and star Yalitza Asparico. Rodriguez said: “Our movie speaks to class diversity and ethnic diversity and strong women characters lead the story.”

Crazy Rich Asians

Often referred to as a cultural phenomenon, Crazy Rich Asians is one of the only major studio films to feature a predominantly Asian cast. Star Ronny Chieng contributed his hilarious insights into the film’s success: “It’s about time we had a movie about rich people. Their stories are under-told. They’re 1% of the population but represent 99% of the power.”

Learn more about the event here.

Susan Kouguell Interviews “Searching for Ingmar Bergman” Director Margarethe von Trotta

November 18, 2018 / / Comments Off on Susan Kouguell Interviews “Searching for Ingmar Bergman” Director Margarethe von Trotta

INTERVIEW: Searching for Ingmar Bergman Director Margarethe von Trotta

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“’Searching for Ingmar Bergman’ was an active but inward process. The film might appear to be an external quest, as it travels from Sweden, to Germany, Spain, and France. But the protagonists, and particularly his sons, his actresses, like Liv Ullmann, Gunnel Lindblom, Julia Dufvenius, and filmmakers of the next generation like Ruben Östlund, Olivier Assayas, and Mia Hansen-Løve, express themselves in such a very moving and intimate way that in those encounters I found what I was looking for—a world of personal experience that resonates with the films.”
                       — Margarethe von Trotta

Director Margarethe von Trotta

About Searching for Ingmar Bergman

Internationally renowned director Margarethe von Trotta examines Ingmar Bergman’s life and work with a circle of his closest collaborators as well as a new generation of filmmakers. This documentary presents key components of his legacy, as it retraces themes that recurred in his life and art and journeys to the places that were central to Bergman’s creative achievements.

About Margarethe von Trotta

Born in Berlin, Margarethe von Trotta is considered one of the leaders of the New German Cinema movement. After studying Germanic and Romance languages in Munich and Paris (where she encountered the Nouvelle Vague and the films of Ingmar Bergman), von Trotta pursued a career in acting, working closely with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff. Starting with her first independent directorial effort, The Second Awakening of Christa Klages (1978), von Trotta’s filmography lists numerous critically-acclaimed titles, including: Marianne & Juliane (1981), which won the Golden Lion in Venice; Rosa Luxemburg (1986) and Love and Fear (1988) both of which were nominated for the Palme d’Or in Cannes; L‘africana (1990), which was nominated for the Golden Lion in Venice; Rosenstrasse (2003), which earned actor Katja Riemann the Coppa Volpi Award in Venice; and Hannah Arendt (2012), which won the German Film Award. Her first feature documentary Searching for Ingmar Bergman (2018) celebrated its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and premiered in the U.S. at the 56th New York Film Festival.

The Interview

I had the great pleasure to speak with Ms. von Trotta at the Quad Cinema in Manhattan, which will be celebrating her work with a retrospective: “Margarethe von Trotta: The Political is Personal” November 2-8.

We began our discussion with talking about the theme of the retrospective—the political is personal—in her narrative films, including the powerful sibling relationship in Marianne & Juliane and how this work, as well as many of her other films, remain relevant and poignant today.

KOUGUELL: For many years I’ve taught your work in my cinema studies and screenwriting classes. The Promise (Das Versprechen) was thought-provoking to my students as a hybrid film, incorporating documentary footage within the fictional love story that was inspired by a compilation of interviews you did with people about their experiences during this time period.

VON TROTTA: There was very strong black and white documentary material for the construction of the Berlin wall, which I put in the beginning of The Promise but I could not find strong material when the wall came down. In the early 60s there were no video cameras, there was only 16mm, film and the camera people had to be very aware of what images they wanted to film; that one scene, that one image gives a whole sense of the time. In 1989, when the Berlin Wall was opened for the first night, people went there with video cameras and filmed, but I couldn’t find one image that gave the sense of the importance of that moment. So, I had to make my own.

KOUGUELL: That was interesting in terms of the idea of memory and imposing one’s own story on that historical moment.

VON TROTTA: And that was much more expensive, too. One thousand extras on the bridge coming from the East to the West; that was the most expensive scene I did.

Liv Ullmann (L) von Trotta (R)

KOUGUELL:  You were approached by the Ingmar Bergman Foundation of Stockholm to direct Searching for Ingmar Bergman.

VON TROTTA: One of the producers who is half-Swedish, was planning for Bergman’s 100th birthday, and she asked me to make the film since I knew Bergman personally during his time in Munich. I said in the beginning, ‘No, I can’t do that; I’m such an admirer of his, I’m so fond of him, he was such a genius, I couldn’t dare do this.’  The Bergman Foundation knew my films and asked me to make it in a very personal way; a research of one filmmaker about another filmmaker. They asked me to mainly speak about his time in Munich because nobody knows so much about this period of his life. That was the most personal side of the film.

KOUGUELL: Tell me about working with your son, Feliz Moeller, on this film.

VON TROTTA: My son is a documentary filmmaker (Forbidden Films (2014), Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suess (2008) two films about the Nazi time about Nazi filmmakers, and Sympathisanten: Unser Deutscher Herbst (2018). He started as an historian and then he became a documentary filmmaker. When I said to him, I have never done a documentary, he said he would help me. That gave me more courage to do the film. He looked for all the documentary material, which I put in the film, and I did the interviews.

I was used to making narrative feature films, and I knew exactly what to do. I wrote my own scripts, I knew the scenes, the actors, how to direct it, and how to do it in advance. But in a documentary, you make it in the editing room. It becomes a film in the editing room. That was totally new for me.

KOUGUELL: So, there wasn’t much pre-planning for this film.

VON TROTTA: No there wasn’t it. When the Bergman Foundation asked me to make a very personal film, I knew immediately I wanted the scene at the seaside where I was sitting where Max Von Sydow was sitting, looking at the black sky. I knew immediately I had to start with this image.

Our conversation shifted to a personal note about my great, great aunt Therese Giehse, the late German actress whom von Trotta knew, and the connection I felt to von Trotta’s narrative films, which often have included the incorporation of actual historical events and weaving in the personal and the political lives of her characters.

VON TROTTA: Giehse was a big figure, and very courageous in her political meanings of her work. And her work with Bertolt Brecht.

KOUGUELL: You, Giehse, and Bergman shared a personal common experience—relocating to a foreign country and not necessarily by choice. Giehse was exiled from Germany during World War II.

VON TROTTA: I was stateless until my first marriage. Bergman felt stateless when he left Sweden accused of tax evasion, he felt so humiliated. Humiliation for him was always a main theme for him in his films. No one pushed him to go away from Sweden, it was his free choice.

KOUGUELL:  In Searching for Ingmar Bergman, there were fascinating revelations when you visited the places of his childhood combined with the analysis of his films, and how he and his work connected with spirituality and faith, and his father who was a priest.

VON TROTTA: Before I made this documentary, I was interested in Bergman’s films as a filmmaker. I wasn’t curious about his life and his women, for me it was just about how he made his films. Then knowing that I was going to make this documentary, I read his autobiography “The Magic Lantern” and there I discovered the main points of his life. I discovered about his nurturing in his childhood.  He wrote so much more about his childhood, his mother, his father, his grandmother, and much less about his wives and his children. I had the feeling he wanted to stay as a child, during his whole life.

Film Director Ingmar Bergman together with wife Kabi Laretei and son Daniel. Picture from the book “Lennart Nilsson – his best pictures”.

KOUGUELL: We see that very poignantly when you interviewed his son.

VON TROTTA: Yes, and he said, exactly that was it. When Bergman’s last wife died, he wrote in his autobiography: ‘Finally I have to go out of my children’s room, out of my playroom.” His wife also helped him stay (as) a child; she did everything for him.

KOUGUELL: Looking back at the journey of making this documentary, did it influence you as a filmmaker?

VON TROTTA: Influence? I don’t know, I’ll have to see in the films I will do. The main things which are influences you don’t even feel it at the time, it comes out when you are doing a film.  I like it when it stays unconscious, that you get influences unconsciously, take them in and they come out without knowing that you have it as a treasure.

Susan Kouguell Interviews Documentary Director of “Monrovia, Indiana” Frederick Wiseman

November 18, 2018 / / Comments Off on Susan Kouguell Interviews Documentary Director of “Monrovia, Indiana” Frederick Wiseman

INTERVIEW: Director of Monrovia, Indiana, Frederick Wiseman

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Recently, I had the honor of interviewing documentary director Frederick Wiseman at Manhattan’s Film Forum the day before his new film Monrovia, Indiana was beginning its run at the same venue.

ABOUT FREDERICK WISEMAN

Since 1967, Frederick Wiseman has directed 42 documentaries—dramatic, narrative films that seek to portray ordinary human experience in a wide variety of contemporary social institutions. His films include TITICUT FOLLIES, HIGH SCHOOL, WELFARE, JUVENILE COURT, BOXING GYM, LA DANSE, BALLET, CENTRAL PARK, BALLET, LA COMEDIE FRANCAISE, BELFAST, MAINE, and EX LIBRIS—The New York Public Library. He has directed a fiction film, THE LAST LETTER (2002). His films are distributed in theatres and broadcast on television in many countries.

Frederick Wiseman received his BA from Williams College in 1951 and his LLB from Yale Law School in 1954. He has received honorary doctorates from Bowdoin College, Princeton University, and Williams College, among others. He is a MacArthur Fellow, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has won numerous awards, including four Emmys. He is also the recipient of the Career Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Film Society (2013), the George Polk Career Award (2006), the American Society of Cinematographers Distinguished Achievement Award (2006) and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from the Venice Film Festival (2014). In 2016, he received an Honorary Award from the Board of Governors of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He was a Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University in 2018.

ABOUT THE DOCUMENTARY MONROVIA, INDIANA

Founded in 1834, Monrovia, Indiana (pop: 1063) is a small farming community that might be passed over en route to larger cities like Indianapolis or Fort Wayne. Yet 46 million Americans live in rural towns like Monrovia, once the backbone of American life. In his 44th film, master documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman trains his legendary camera on the town, exploring its conflicting stereotypes and illustrating how values like community service, duty, spiritual life, and generosity are lived—Christian sermons, a freemason ceremony, industrial agricultural work, a town council ruling on expanded development, and gun-shop talk. All punctuated by cinematographer John Davey’s stunning, big-sky Midwestern landscapes. The importance of rural America as a formative center of American politics and values was demonstrated in the 2016 presidential election; MONROVIA, INDIANA provides a window into a way of life that, although central to this country’s history, is often overlooked by city dwellers.

THE INTERVIEW

We began our discussion with Mr. Wiseman’s choice to explore the town of Monrovia in his new documentary.

WISEMAN: I told a friend of mine who is a law professor in Boston that I wanted to make a film in the Midwest about a small town. She had a friend who taught at the Indiana law school, whose family lived in the same small town for six generations. By chance, a couple of weeks after that I had been invited by the University of Indiana in Bloomington to show some of my films. So, I called the Bloomington law professor to say I was interested, and he said, “Come a day early, and I’ll take you to Monrovia.” He introduced me to his cousin who is the town undertaker in the cemetery, an extremely nice woman, and she offered to help by introducing me around.

I looked around Monrovia for about two hours. This was mid-April and I was planning on shooting in May. In the interim, she contacted the people she thought would be important for me to meet, like the head of the school board, the police and fire department, store owners, the vet. And then I called them, and because she made the introductions and I had the ‘Good Housekeeping seal of Approval’ they were very receptive. I had no problem getting access.

KOUGUELL: How long was the shoot?

WISEMAN: About ten weeks.

KOUGUELL: How long did you prepare for it in terms of meeting people?

WISEMAN:  Only the two hours when I was in Monrovia in April. That’s always the case. I don’t like being around a place doing what’s called research and not being able to shoot. In my view, the shooting of the film is the research.

KOUGUELL: What size is your crew?

WISEMAN:  Me and two others. I direct and do the sound. I work with a cameraman, and the third person assists us both. It’s fun. It’s a nice way to work.

KOUGUELL: Did you need to get releases signed from the participants?

WISEMAN: I ask people’s permission. I usually get tape-recorded consents. They’re just as legal as written consents.

KOUGUELL: Have the participants seen the finished film? Were you there for the screening?

WISEMAN: Yes, they seemed to like it. I was there. There were three screenings in one night; I took over a multi-plex.

KOUGUELL: At the end of the film, and without giving anything away to the readers, there are moving and poignant sequences about the passing of one of Monrovia’s residents. How were you able to get the family to agree to being filmed?

WISEMAN: The undertaker asked them. Her company was in charge of the event, so to speak.

KOUGUELL: Much is often made about categorizing your films. Do you consider them Direct Cinema?  Cinema Verité?

WISEMAN: I don’t like any of those words. I don’t know what Direct Cinema means. Fly on the Wall is obnoxious; I think I’m more conscious than a fly. Observational Cinema is too passive; as if somehow you sit in a corner and let things happen in front of the camera when a movie is made up of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of decisions. I like to call them movies. A simple, old-fashioned word.

KOUGUELL: You said that the themes and POV emerge at the end of the editing process.

WISEMAN: I don’t start a movie with a thesis in mind because I think that would be too limiting. I like the movie, in one sense, to be a report on what I learned as a consequence of making the movie within the context of it being a dramatic narrative. If I start the movie with a specific idea, then it’s like a horse with blinders, you’re not seeing other things.

I don’t know anything about these places before I start. I really learn about it in the editing. I have to review the rushes, decide which sequences I want to use, how I’m going to edit, and order them. That requires a careful analysis, a reading of each sequence. I have to think that I understand what’s going on in each sequence in order to decide whether I want to use it, how I’m going to edit it, and where I’m going to place it.

KOUGUELL: You mentioned that for this film you shot between 100 and 120 hours of footage. Let’s talk about your editing process.

WISEMAN: I like editing. During the shoot, we send back a hard drive to an assistant in Boston. She would categorize it, for example, all the shots in the supermarket, farmers, and then write a one-line description of each shot, and make sure that the sync was okay. Then when I come back from the shooting, I start looking at the material. That takes me 6-8 weeks; this first pass. At the end of that, I put aside about 50 percent of the material, and then I start editing from the other 50 percent of those sequences that I think will make it into the final film. That takes me 6-8 months. Then when the candidate sequences are edited, I do the first assembly in 3-4 days. That’s my first attempt at structure, which is usually about 30-40 minutes longer than the final film. Then, over the next 6-8 weeks, I work on the rhythm of the film, and make sure I have a dramatic narrative that works. I work on the internal rhythm of a sequence, and the transitions between the sequences. When that’s done, I look at all the rushes again to see if there is anything else that will be useful to include.

A good part of editing doesn’t have to do with the physical manipulation of the material, it has to do with what the material says to me. The conversation between me and the rushes.

KOUGUELL: A distinctive aspect of your work is the lack of voice-over narration and interviews, or reflexive (revealing to the viewer some part of the filmmaking process) elements.

WISEMAN: Right, you don’t physically see me but every aspect of the film, you see me because you see the choices I made.

KOUGUELL: What appeals to you with this style of filmmaking?

WISEMAN: The way I make movies is more novelistic than it is journalistic. I make the argument that my films are fiction films because, for example, reducing a sequence from an hour-and-a-half to seven minutes, and it’s never seven consecutive minutes, it’s 20 seconds here, 40 seconds there, and edited like you’re watching it in sequence. It’s fictional in a sense that the camera is looking at the people in a different way than the eye.

To learn more about Wiseman’s work and upcoming events visit Website.

Susan Kouguell Interview: “ReRun” Director Alyssa Rallo Bennett

October 29, 2018 / / Comments Off on Susan Kouguell Interview: “ReRun” Director Alyssa Rallo Bennett

INTERVIEW: ReRun Director Alyssa Rallo Bennett

Susan Kouguell speaks with Tamara Jenkins at the NYFF about her film “Private Life”

October 17, 2018 / / Comments Off on Susan Kouguell speaks with Tamara Jenkins at the NYFF about her film “Private Life”

Tamara Jenkins’ Private Life at the New York Film Festival

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Writer and director Tamara Jenkins re-teamed with producer Anthony Bregman for PRIVATE LIFE about a middle-aged Upper West Side couple navigating the choice to become parents thanks to their IVF egg donor niece.

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image credit: Jojo Whilden

About Private Life

Writer and director Tamara Jenkins (The Savages, Slums of Beverly Hills) re-teamed with producer Anthony Bregman for this film about a middle-aged Upper West Side couple navigating the choice to become parents thanks to their IVF egg donor niece.

At the New York Film Festival press conference, Tamara Jenkins, and actors Kathryn Hahn, Kayli Carter, and Molly Shannon, talked about their experiences making the film.

Jenkins spoke in depth about her writing process, including that she rented an office for the first time to write, and stated, “As Virginia Woolf once wrote, the importance of having a room of one’s own.”

JENKINS: The script took a long time. It usually takes me two years to write an original script. The first draft of Private Life was 200 pages, and then I had to chip away at it. I feel like I have to write something that is almost novelistic and then I have to adapt my own novelistic thing, so it can fit inside a narrative film.

KOUGUELL: Was there any script input from the actors? How much did the project change from being on the page to the screen?

JENKINS: It did not change. I remember speaking with Paul Giamatti and he said, ‘Is this one of those movies where we improvise?’ and I said, (she laughs) ‘‘No, there will be no improvising because I wrote this f-ing thing and I wrote those words.’ Of course, there’s improvised behavior, but not much in the language department.

HAHN: (addressing Jenkins) There was a huge sigh of relief when you said that to us in our first meeting.

JENKINS: Yes, because Kathryn’s an improviser and so is Molly (Shannon).

HAHN: All we had to worry about was doing justice to this beautiful piece of writing. There was so much freedom in that, and relief about just worrying about what was in front of us; that’s all we needed.

CARTER: If anything, I felt I had to get out of my own way with it. There was a day when I was working on a really long chunk of text, and Tamara’s words are so specific, and I wanted it to be right. Tamara and I walked around while they were setting up cameras for about 20 minutes, and I just said that piece of text over and over again to you (Tamara) until there was no inflection at all, until it was in my bone marrow. It was incredible. It was really freeing as an actor to have a piece of writing that was so good where you don’t have to do anything with it to sing.

SHANNON: Tamara’s so creative. I’ve never worked with a writer / director before who’s done this, but when Kathryn and I were standing around talking, and Tamara saw us near a piano, she said, ‘Bring the camera over to them—it was my dream when I was in drama school of how people would make movies.

HAHN: There’s something about this movie that isn’t even about a baby. It’s so much more—it’s an existential movie. Even when I read the script for the first time, I couldn’t even picture a baby. We see that there’s this quest that they’re on together, but it’s really about this marriage. Paul Giamatti said to Tamara, ‘This isn’t about a baby, this is ‘Waiting for Godot.’ It’s so true. As you described it, Tamara, it’s about this couple having a co-midlife crisis. There are all the frozen and amber dreams they had in their 20s and 30s, and all of a sudden they’re looking at them, waking up and they’re in their 40s, and then what do you do?! What happens with this next chapter? As Tamara said, it’s about this marriage.

Jenkins (l) Hahn (r)

Private Life, which premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, opens Oct. 5 in select theaters and on Netflix.

The Favourite at the New York Film Festival

October 17, 2018 / / Comments Off on The Favourite at the New York Film Festival

The Favourite at the New York Film Festival

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Yorgos Lanthimos’ new film, The Favourite, screened for the press the morning of its premiere as the opening night selection at the New York Film Festival. Susan Kouguell took the opportunity to speak with the film’s director and writer.

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Image credit: Yorgos Lanthimos (Emma Stone)

“Humor in general is something I can’t get away from, no matter what the material is.”
–Director Yorgos Lanthimos

Yorgos Lanthimos’ new film The Favourite, screened for the press the morning of its premiere as the opening night selection at the New York Film Festival. In attendance was Lanthimos, along with writer Tony McNamara, costume designer Sandy Powell and actors Emma Stone, Olivia Colman, Nicholas Hoult and Joe Alwyn.

Image credit: Susan Kouguell

Lanthimos’s previous films include Dogtooth (2009), The Lobster (2015) and The Killing of a Sacred Deer(2017).

About The Favourite

Early 18th century.  At the height of the War of the Spanish Succession, England is at war with the French. Nevertheless, duck racing and pineapple eating are thriving.  A frail Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) occupies the throne and her close friend, Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz), governs the country in her stead while tending to Anne’s ill health and mercurial temper. When a new servant, Abigail (Emma Stone), arrives, her charm endears her to Sarah. Sarah takes Abigail under her wing and Abigail sees a chance at return to her aristocratic roots. As the politics of war become quite time consuming for Sarah, Abigail steps into the breach to fill in as the Queen’s companion. Their burgeoning friendship gives her a chance to fulfill her ambitions, and she will not let woman, man, politics or rabbit stand in her way.

Image-credit Yorgos-Lanthimos. (Rachel-Weisz-Olivia-Colman)

The Screenplay

Loosely based on historical events, the film is divided into eight chapters with titles, including  This Mud Stinks, I Do Fear Confusion and Accidents, What an Outfit, and I Dreamt I Stabbed You in the Eye.

I asked McNamara and Lanthimos about their collaboration, and the involvement that the actors had, including any improvisation, and how closely they stayed to the script.

“We were on the same page very fast when we first talked about it; we always knew where we were headed with this tragic comedy and very complicated characters that we were driving towards.”

Lanthimos: “We were around during rehearsals and saw how certain things worked or didn’t work, and changed a couple of things, but other than that, not much changed. The script has a particular tone, so when you think it is right, you just try to go with it. I think it helps the actors as well. Any kind of improvisation was mostly physical, or the way we staged the scenes and maybe we added a couple of lines here and there. It’s all about figuring out how the scene is set up and how you can change it in order to make it work better, because you might have thought something different before, but it doesn’t really work the same way when you’re actually there and going through it.”

The Emotional Center

When asked what the emotional center of the film was, writer Tony McNamara responded: “We didn’t focus on one, but I think the moment when Anne sees the kids playing their instruments and drifts away from Abigail, which leads into the dance—that connects them in a much bigger way, but it also shows a deeper sense of Anne’s tragedy, and how mentally unstable she is at times.”

What Drew Lanthimos to the Material

Lanthimos: “It was a story about three women in a particular point in time that had this type of power and also their characters and personalities, and how that affected a whole country, and the fate of the country of thousands and millions of people.”

Susan Kouguell Speaks with Desiree Akhavan – Writer and Director of “The Miseducation of Cameron Post”

August 11, 2018 / / Comments Off on Susan Kouguell Speaks with Desiree Akhavan – Writer and Director of “The Miseducation of Cameron Post”

Susan Kouguell Speaks with Desiree Akhavan – Writer and Director of The Miseducation of Cameron Post

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Desiree Akhavan disscusses the adaptation and collaborative journey with her co-writer, Cecilia Fruguiele, of The Miseducation of Cameron Post, the Grand Jury Prize-winner of the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.

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In this powerful adaptation of the young adult novel of the same title The Miseducation of Cameron Post,filmmaker Desiree Akhavan brings to life teen characters in search of themselves as they navigate confinement in a gay conversion center in the 1990s.

We talked about the adaptation and collaborative journey with her co-writer Cecilia Fruguiele, who also serves as a producer of the film. The Miseducation of Cameron Post won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival (U.S. Dramatic Competition).

ABOUT DESIREE AKHAVAN (Director / Co-Writer / Executive Producer)

Desiree Akhavan is the writer, director and star of Appropriate Behavior, which premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for Best First Screenplay at the Indie Spirit Awards. She’s also the co-creator and star of the web series The Slope. She lives in London, where she is filming a comedy series for Hulu & Channel 4 that was developed at The Sundance Institute’s Episodic Story Lab. She has a BA from Smith College, an MFA from NYU’s Grad Film Program.

ABOUT “THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST”

Based on the celebrated novel by Emily M. Danforth, The Miseducation of Cameron Post follows Cameron (Chloë Grace Moretz) as she is sent to a gay conversion therapy center after getting caught with another girl in the back seat of a car on prom night. Run by the strict and severe Dr. Lydia Marsh (Jennifer Ehle) and her brother, Reverend Rick (John Gallagher Jr.)—himself an example of how those in the program can be “cured”—the center is built upon repenting for “same sex attraction.” In the face of intolerance and denial, Cameron meets a group of fellow sinners including the amputee stoner, Jane (Sasha Lane), and her friend, the Lakota Two-Spirit, Adam (Forrest Goodluck). Together, this group of teenagers form an unlikely family as they fight to survive.

SUSAN KOUGUELL: The Miseducation of Cameron Post is an adaptation of Emily M. Danforth’s young adult novel by the same title – which is over 400 pages long. Tell me about the adaptation and writing process.

DESIREE AKHAVAN:  I knew from the beginning that I wanted to focus on the last 200 pages of the book; it was the most condensed period of time with the most action. The mediums are so different; as a reader, the first 200 pages are the most interesting, but I didn’t think it would work for a film.

The process of adaptation was much harder than I anticipated. I just thought we would translate the book to the screen, but it ended up being like writing from scratch. What I learned was that it’s not just translating it, it’s reinventing. At first, we wrote a script that was very loyal to the book. And it didn’t work.  We felt we did a very good job of translating it to a screenplay, but it was very boring.

What we learned over the course of the year that we adapted it was that we had to whittle down what the inspiration was that we got from the book; what was the thing that we were hanging on to and what was most important, and how do we translate that onto the screen.  For both of us, it was the tone of the book; it was the comedy and the tragedy. That was such a vague, unspecific thing so we thought, how do we achieve that, getting you to fall in love with the ensemble of characters in that space, and then undercutting the frivolity and joy of the teen comedy but with the horrors when you mess with someone’s mental development and sexual development – what are the consequences?

KOUGUELL: Writing partners have various ways of collaborating. Sometimes writers will work together or write one scene and switch, and so on. How did you and Cecilia Fruguiele collaborate on this film?

AKHAVAN:  We were a perfect duo. She was my best friend when we were both twenty. I was studying abroad in London, and she was also studying abroad there from Italy. For 10 years we were each other’s biggest cheerleaders. I think the reason our collaboration works so well is that she understands structure, and we share the same taste. She likely is smarter and has better taste than I do, and in a perfect world I’d like to have her taste.

We’ve never had disagreements. She’s also quite good at structure, and I’m terrible at structure, but I’m good at dialogue and she doesn’t like writing dialogue that much. English is her second language. Also, she has no ego and I have a lot of ego; it’s crushingly large (laughs). So between the two of us, it comes together in a perfect way.

I love writing scenes of dialogue, but because this was an adaptation we started outlining, and then assigned each other scenes. I prefer her to write a first pass because I hate looking at a blank page. She says, “I have no attachment to it”–and then I rewrite it.

We also co-wrote a television series that will be on Hulu in October.

KOUGUELL: The novel is written in first person. How challenging was that to translate to the script and then to the screen?

AKHAVAN:  It was really tricky. We had to do a lot of rewriting in post. The first cut was an hour longer. Cameron’s high school life was 35-40 pages long. We condensed all of that into the opening montage and the flashbacks of Coley. Before that, it was very front heavy, and everyone watching the cut was saying, “I just want to get to God’s Promise already.” So, a lot of what we saw with her life and girlfriend, we learned in flashback.

We didn’t want to have a voiceover. We felt we had a strong idea of who Cameron was and her silence; she was an introverted character, and it was more about meeting the people around her, and her in relation to her environment.

As a writer, it wasn’t until I made a personal connection to the group therapy vibe, that it started to shine. I had spent some time in my twenties in a rehabilitation center for an eating disorder, and once I made the connection that I was making a movie about rehab, it started to shine, and the comedy came out. I felt really good about putting my own experiences in group therapy rooms and art therapy.

At the end of the day, I wanted to make a film about female desire; a lesbian coming into her own sexually. This is about a girl experiencing pleasure for the first time, and lust and desire–that’s what we see in flashback and through her eyes, and we (the viewer) aren’t sure if it’s her glorifying the memory or if that was the truth of it, but that’s her experience.

Everything I need to know about Cameron, I know from her desire. She doesn’t speak much because she’s trying to suffocate that desire.

KOUGUELL: You mentioned your love of John Hughes’ films.  Let’s talk more about that and how that influenced The Miseducation of Cameron Post.

AKHAVAN: I feel like everyone is talking about this film as an issues film, something so serious, but to me it’s a teen film. I loved The Breakfast Club and I loved Sixteen Candles, and to me, they encapsulated the drama and the angst of being a teenager and feeling like none of the adults in their life knew what they were talking about. You were kind of screwed and miserable, and also having the time of your life because you were old enough to be free enough. The best of times and the worst of times. To me, that was what being a teen was.

The film opened August 3 in theaters.

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