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Screenplay & Film Consulting By Susan Kouguell

Category: INTERVIEWS WITH WRITERS & FILMMAKERS (page 3 of 4)

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.

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 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.

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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 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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Susan Kouguell Speaks with “NIGHT COMES ON” Writer and Director Jordana Spiro

August 11, 2018 / / Comments Off on Susan Kouguell Speaks with “NIGHT COMES ON” Writer and Director Jordana Spiro

Susan Kouguell Speaks with NIGHT COMES ON Writer and Director Jordana Spiro

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Susan Kouguell speaks with Jordana Spiro on the release day of her film, Night Comes On, discussing the writing process, and the challenges of making an independent film.

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Susan Kouguell speaks with Jordana Spiro on the release day of her film – a day in which the glowing film reviews were pouring in. Our wide-ranging discussion covered the palpable power of sisterhood, the writing process, and the challenges of making an independent film.

JORDANA SPIRO

I had the pleasure of speaking with Jordana Spiro on the release day of her film – a day in which the glowing film reviews were pouring in. Our wide-ranging discussion covered the palpable power of sisterhood, the writing process, and the challenges of making an independent film.

ABOUT ‘NIGHT COMES ON’

Night Comes On follows Angel LaMere (Dominique Fishback) as she is released from juvenile detention on the eve of her 18th birthday. Haunted by her past, Angel embarks on a journey with her 10-year-old sister (Tatum Marilyn Hall) to avenge her mother’s death.

In this powerful directorial debut from actress Jordana Spiro (currently starring in Netflix’s Ozark ) Night Comes On had its world premiere at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival where it won the NEXT Innovator Award. The film is co-written by spoken-word poet Angelica Nwandu, who is the founder of The Shade Room, and features breakthrough performances by Dominique Fishback (HBO’s The Deuce) and newcomer, Tatum Marilyn Hall.

KOUGUELL:  Tell me about your writing collaboration with Angelica Nwandu.

SPIRO: Angelica and I did a lot of brainstorming at first, including developing what makes our characters tick. Sometimes we would attack a scene together, sometimes we would write solo and then build on each other’s writing. Sometimes we would just sit together and watch movies and discuss them.

One of our biggest breakthrough moments was when we were feeling a bit stuck with the writing. At the time, the story took place all in one city and we decided to go on a little road trip. Just that little act of getting moving dislodged our “stuckness” and our ideas started to flow. We thought, maybe that has to happen for the characters, too. Angel is stuck, maybe that will get her unstuck, and because of that, the characters went on a road trip

KOUGUELL: You have an extensive background as an actor; how did this influence/inform your writing and directing of this film?

SPIRO: I had been acting in a lot in mainstream television and a lot of what I was seeing was very heavy on exposition. It doesn’t always ring so truthfully when your character has to explain backstory. One of my interests in writing and writing dialogue was to make sure the actors never have to explain.

KOUGUELL: Let’s talk about the trajectory of the project.

SPIRO: It was a long road, as most independent films are. I had been working on it for a while prior to meeting Angelica, and then we started working together and applied to the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, and from there, I went to the Sundance Directors Lab. Sundance was very supportive. They also invited me to the Producers Lab and through that I was able to apply for a development grant through Sundance and from that they came on as real mentors for the project, not just in grant form, but in support and guidance as well.  From there, in looking for financing, we were very fortunate to apply to the Sundance Catalyst program.  We were able to access a lot of resources from this program, and really wonderful investors.

We shot the film in June-July, did post thought the fall, and then premiered at the Sundance film Festival.

KOUGUELL: Did you stick close to the script or did you incorporate some improvisation?

SPIRO: We did do some improvisation. For the most part, the script we wrote, is the script on the screen.

KOUGUELL: This is your directorial feature debut, but you had made short films, too.

SPIRO: I went to the Columbia MFA program for directing. I made a short film called “SKIN” — we premiered that film at Sundance. That was a beautiful introduction for me to the Sundance world.

The film opened August 3rd in theaters and on digital/VOD.

More articles by Susan Kouguell

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