Cinema Studies vs. Cultural Studies?

If I had foreseen as a young man that in my retirement years I would be writing about film, perhaps I would have taken a course or two in film theory. Perhaps. I've also never taken a writing class and continue to collect self-taught painters by curatorial principle. Self-discovery has long been one of my favorite aesthetics; something in me finding it much more fun to make things up as I go along. Unlike many of my colleagues, I approach films as—I suspect—the "average" person approaches films: to be entertained by narratives hopefully well-told, to be bathed in the luminosity of remarkable and unforgettable images, or to be simply stimulated by muscular spectacle or pop-cultural mythmaking. Rather than analyze the formal properties of film, I tend to tease out literary themes, recognize mythopoetic and psychological symbols, or rally behind sociopolitical causes with which I feel comfortably aligned. In my best Harvey Fierstein voice: "Is that so wrong?"

That being said, I have nothing but respect for film commentarians who practice the rigor of formalistic analysis, especially when their observations are couched in accessible language that doesn't require a liter of Evian to go down, and especially if they avoid the elitist terms "flitting" or "frittering" to describe the activities of crafted straw men they can neither abide nor control. As straw men go, however, more often than not I find essays in bona fide "cinema studies" hazardly incestuous, giving birth to aberrations of prolonged inbreeding; essays with elongated foreheads and six toes reserved to be read by—you guessed it—readers with elongated foreheads and six toes. Much academic writing, for me, is akin to visiting a dark carnival with sideshow freaks and geeks. Words are combined in ways that nature never intended, with equally horrifying results, leaving me with the scent of sawdust in my nostrils and my hand aghast over my open mouth. Amazing what you can be exposed to with two bits and a barker's skill.

I am, at heart, a populist, no less so in the medium of film than anywhere else. I remain ambivalent about whether I should be sitting within ticket-buying audiences or sequestering myself in press privilege, posing disdain for the "riffraff" allowed in long after I've secured my seat. In some ways this tension reminds me of Dr. John Beebe's assertion that the medium of film—let alone the practice and craft of film commentary—pertinently expresses the intense relationship between the anima and the persona; a tension I can too easily laminate onto the relationship between the lay public who demand their diversion and so-called informed critics with alleged axes to grind.

Recently, during Girish Shambu's visit for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, we had a particularly animated discussion (speaking of the anima)—one of many—regarding the subsumption of film studies under the large umbrella of transdisciplinary cultural studies. If I understood Girish correctly—and granted that's a pretty big "if"—his hope was to strike a balance between (as he later explained in email) "the wonderful progressive impulses of cultural studies (its politicization of culture, sensitivity to historical context, its teasing out of differential receptions)" and an aesthetic appreciation, or—as Adrian Martin noted in an eloquent lament for Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media & Culture—a "close, material attention to cinema form." Girish's concern that "cultural studies scholars frequently don't think of film aesthetics as being especially important" and his accompanying example that "the new Apichatpong film, the new Madonna album, the Super-Bowl game, and the new iPod commercial are all equal and equivalent cultural phenomena—to be studied and mined and written about" genuinely intrigued me, more perhaps for its precise argument for the privileged (okay, let's say "focused") station Girish would grant cinema studies. If anything, Girish's comment made me self-aware of how I've privileged cultural studies, without even knowing I was doing so and I have to thank him for making me conscious of that. I guess it should come as no surprise that, like anyone else, I devote a lot of time to confirming entrenched beliefs. But honestly it's more about what I find relevant within films and about film. I feel a bit uncomfortable and disloyal not being as convinced as I ought to be but certainly anticipate learning more from Girish and other film scholars as time goes along. As I mentioned, not only am I making this up as I go along but I'm making up my mind as I go along as well.

If a balance can be struck between the transdisciplinary project of cultural studies and the auteurist and stylistic devotions of cinema studies (again, another big if), it would be an admittedly happy medium—at the very least a conciliatory one—though in all honesty it seems more likely that what is general to one must by definitional necessity be narrow to the other. But I can't help but wonder about the folly of false dichotomies and hierarchies being promoted as a debate on this issue. I respect that Adrian Martin feels alienated from David Bordwell's assertion that "film studies" are a cautionary "institutional tale", even as he emphasizes that few film scholars he knows hold institutional positions and "film studies" in and of themselves are being shoved off curriculums by seemingly more inclusive and career-advantageous cultural studies. Still, I can't help but feel there's a good reason for this development and rather than film scholars pointing at all the people who have done them wrong, I'm more interested in why the general public is not attracted to what they have done right? Is it really that the moviegoing public is so stupid or so lacking in taste and discrimination? When Andrew Tracy, for example, lambasts critics for liking a movie he doesn't like or for—in his estimation—wasting time reviewing a movie that doesn't warrant reviewing for a perceived lack of imagination: what's really being said? Is imagination truly monolithic? And if film theorists raise their sticks and cry, "Right on, Andrew!"—what's really been accomplished? Certainly nothing conciliatory. A lot of back slapping behind lines of long-established demarcation.

Thought policing film reaction either by market reviewers or film scholars wastes invaluable time in the purportedly historical project of simply writing from insight instead of self-serving spite, from the fullness of the cornucopia instead of from sour grapes, and from the fecund strength of diversity instead of academic anemia. After reading Andrew Tracy's (admittedly entertaining) rant, it made me appreciate all the more the ambassadorial efforts of Girish Shambu and Adrian Martin to promote film studies on the basis of their inherent integrity and necessity. I suggest mourning with less name calling and finger pointing and with more loving memory of what is truly being lost.

BAGHEAD—The Evening Class Interview with Mark and Jay Duplass

In his Sundance dispatch to The Greencine Daily, Brian Darr queried whether the "nerve-wrackingly fun" Baghead would remain in audience memory 16 years from now? And if, indeed, it had the potential to end up being "the mumblecore film to outlast its moment?"

Baghead's fresh genre mash-up—part comedy, part horror, part relationship flick—completely worked for me, as I imagine it will for others; but, it is in a very real way undeniably tied into this particular moment in the history of independent film, let alone the burgeoning careers of Mark and Jay Duplass, which justifies Brian Darr's prescient query.

Offered the chance to talk to the brothers, I did a little research first and found myself totally smitten with The New York Post video of their arrival at Sundance where they immediately launched into a hunt for free food. Now aware that the way to a mumblecore director's heart is through his stomach, I arrived at our interview at the Prescott Hotel armed with a baggie of homemade empanadas de calabasa (pumpkin turnovers). Their eyes lit up as they gobbled them down right in front of my eyes. We hold these truths to be self-evident….

* * *

Michael Guillén: Since Baghead has already been written up quite a bit, I won't get into its genesis so much as to track what happened with the film once it premiered at Sundance where it was quickly bought up by Sony Pictures. Submarine Entertainment was your agent?

Mark Duplass: Sales agent.

Guillén: So Submarine sold the film for you. Was that something you were anticipating?

Mark Duplass: Selling the movie? Honestly, what we're supposed to say here is, "Man, just the fact that we got into Sundance at all was great"; but, we were anticipating the sale. We really wanted to sell this movie. We weren't able to sell The Puffy Chair at Sundance, it took about a year; but, we felt that—after all the press that was sort of happening about the "mumblecore" movement and things like that—we had a good chance to sell Baghead. So we were pretty hopeful. That being said, the fact that it sold to such a great company so quickly was a huge surprise.

Guillén: I'm not familiar with Submarine. Tell me about them.

Mark Duplass: They're out of New York. It's Josh Braun. Josh Braun actually worked at Cinetic for a while. He's been a lower-key sales agent in the last five-six years; but, in the last few years he's done a lot of partnerships.

Jay Duplass: He's probably sold more than 50% of the movies that have sold at Sundance.

Mark Duplass: He sold four out of the five narrative films and eight out of the eleven docs. He's great. He doesn't take too many movies. He gives you a lot of personal attention and is—plain—just an incredibly sensitive, sweet and intelligent guy.

Guillén: I'm interested in distribution strategies for so-called independent film. Sony has elected a rolling out distribution strategy for Baghead. Can you discuss that?

Mark Duplass: Yeah. When we released The Puffy Chair, Dusty—who's kind of a younger guy in the company—said, "You know what? Why not take Puffy Chair to some smaller cities before you open in New York and L.A. and get creamed, you know?" We all thought that was a really good idea so we released The Puffy Chair in Austin, Portland, and three other cities. It worked out okay. It didn't kill the box office or anything and it was good. It got some word of mouth out there.

Jay Duplass: They were also the types of cities where we felt people were going to connect to the film more, "get it" faster, and it's not such a high pressure market where—if you don't do incredible box office the first week—you're kicked out. The film got some legs, got more reviews, and then when it opened in New York and L.A., it still got creamed but it had a longer life. It also ended up playing about 30 more cities, other small cities, so we realized the film could play in this particular theater in this particular neighborhood. We realized it would get legs and it could play.

Mark Duplass: So for Baghead we decided to do a similar thing—to open in Austin and Portland before we open in New York and L.A.—places where we knew they support our movies and really liked us. Whether that rollout distribution strategy is going to be a success or not, we'll know more in the next three months I guess. But so far, as things are in place, the movie's been very well reviewed, people have responded to it well. It's been reviewed a lot better than we thought it would be because one thing we're always concerned about with this movie—we're always confident about the movie itself—but, the movie pitches so terribly. It's so hard to describe this movie. "Four struggling actors go out into the woods to write a script." It's disobeying a lot of the rules of filmmaking: "Don't make movies about making movies. We don't need anymore of that stuff." But we haven't had any backlash from Puffy Chair fans or anything like that. People tend to like it.

Guillén: In one write-up I read you, Jay, actually said that you don't consider Baghead to be a "mumblecore" film. Do you stand by that?

Jay Duplass: I totally get why we—in general—are lumped into "mumblecore" or are considered the fathers of the movement.

Guillén: I hate that term.

Jay Duplass: I hate it too. Someone in the press had said it was either going to be "mumblecore" or "slackavetis" and we would have rather gone with "slackavetis"; but, we get it. We get why we're considered "mumblecore"; but, this movie in particular … the key element in the move has always been Mark and I having incessant meetings from the writing stage to the directing stage through the machinations of the plot, trying to make sure that all loose ends are tied up, and that we're playing things little by little.

Mark Duplass: In a lot of ways, Baghead is more heavily plotted than most huge summer action blockbuster movies.

Jay Duplass: It's shaggy as hell in the way that it comes across but we plotted it like crazy.

Mark Duplass: For better or worse, it's following and working its way through the rules of the genre. We feel those are distinctions.

Guillén: Absolutely. Baghead has true plot intrigues. I watch movies all the time, hundreds of them, and I have to say that every now and then Baghead had switchbacks that genuinely caught me by surprise.

Mark Duplass: That's so great that you say that because Jay and I as well are such big watchers of movies and we do feel that we get an education for better or for worse by watching film. It makes it much harder to enjoy a movie, particularly an original story line, so I'm glad you felt that way.

Guillén: Another reason why I didn't consider Baghead "mumblecore" was because—if I understand the tenets of "mumblecore" correctly—your characters are a little older than the average "mumblecore" protagonists? They're more in their late 30s than twenty-somethings.

Jay Duplass: Yeah. Michelle (Greta Gerwig) is the only young person in there. Everyone else is in their mid to late thirties.

Mark Duplass: And we liked that in particular for these characters. In The Puffy Chair Josh only had to be 30 to be ready to be put out to pasture because that's when pasture happens in indie rock, y'know? For the actors in Baghead, we really liked the idea that they were just about to hit the glue factory if they didn't do something soon. The age factor cranks up the desperation level that much more, which is what we loved to play with.

Guillén: Being that it was a thirty-somethings cast of characters, and you couldn't cast yourselves for being too young, and both consequently ended up directing, what was your methodology about co-directing? How did you work that out? Did one of you work with certain actors while the other worked with the other actors?

Mark Duplass: That ends up happening a little bit. We never discuss it. Jay holds the camera; I hold the microphone. We set up the scene. Then everybody leaves the set except for me and Jay and the actors so we can have an intimate environment. We run a take without telling the actors anything. There's no blocking, nothing. They get to take it all the way through wherever they want and we run around like a documentary crew trying to catch them, to see what's happening. After that, Jay and I usually take a break. If it went really well, we just follow that through. If it didn't go the way we wanted, then we take a break, he and I talk about it together, and at that point usually we'll split off and one of us will talk to a certain actor about a certain thing and that can be based upon: (a) how long have we been friends with that person and how much trust is there; or, (b) who can communicate with that person better, y'know?

Jay Duplass: But our method is not so much about how we can get them to do what we want them to do; it's more about our going off and having a talk—"What's going on with him? He's in a bad mood."—and it's not like that's a bad thing; it's more like how we can use that? And that's not how we thought it was going to go down. For us it's all about taking where everyone is and what they're fired up about, what's inspiring them, and try to cull that into the most inspiring scene that we can get that day at that time. That's how we see it. We've had a lot of failed experiences trying to jam actors' vibes into a box.

Mark Duplass: The vision in the end becomes whatever is the path of least resistance. The most inspired thing happening ends up becoming our vision. We'll take whatever is coming as long as it's inspired, original, interesting and within the boundaries of the character's arc.

Jay Duplass: And we are relentless about that too. That's the only thing that we're pretty brutal about. Generally, we'll keep fighting until we find that honest thing.

Mark Duplass: We'll reshoot scenes as well. We do that a lot.

Guillén: Did you have any concerns about—I don't want to use the term "self-reflexive" because that implies an irony that was actually absent from the film and whose absence I enjoyed….

Jay Duplass: Thanks! Definite concerns, by the way….

Guillén: And yet, that being said, Baghead's narrative traction follows very closely upon the experiences you have just had on the festival circuit with The Puffy Chair. Did you have concerns about commenting so quickly upon the wake of that experience?

Mark Duplass: Well, we had concerns mostly about just the meta aspects, just the fact that it was a film within a film. We did not want anyone to be thinking about the concepts and the metaphors of what was happening. We wanted people to just be in with these characters, in with these people. That was a concern. That being said, we've always believed in making stories—at least at a younger age or a younger experience level as filmmakers—that we felt we had some authority about, and not making the movie about the young family that tried to cross the Sahara desert but making it about what we really knew about. What we knew about after The Puffy Chair was the lives of these actors and filmmakers trying so desperately to get to where they wanted to go. We felt we had intimate knowledge of that and were in a unique position to make a movie about that. In that way we felt more confident about what we had to say about these people. In particular, they're an annoying breed. The first scene in Baghead at the Q&A was us! That was Jay and I up there. It was painfully obvious to us how cocky and ridiculous you become at a Q&A. It's you telling the audience how amazing you are.

Guillén: Or, inversely, how cocky audiences have become with their pat questions.

Mark Duplass: They want to show you that they know what to ask.

Guillén: As an interviewer, this is something I always agonize over. I usually research by reading every single interview that's ever been done with a subject in hopes that I might avoid repeating the same questions. I challenge myself to find that slightly different bit of information that adds to the discourse.

Jay Duplass: What hasn't been asked.

Mark Duplass: We appreciate that.

Jay Duplass: And we're noticing it.

Mark Duplass: During a press day it's difficult to stay inspired and try to answer questions and give some energy and love to it when it's the same question over and over again.

Guillén: I wonder whether Baghead works because it taps into a gestalt regarding a great fear about filmmaking—independent filmmaking in particular and filmmaking in general—a fear regarding the hopelessness of filmmaking due to the hurdles of financing and the pitfalls of distribution; even if you get the film made, what happens to it? Will it survive? What do you think? Will Baghead have a shelf life? Will it be around 20 years from now? Or is its popularity in that it expresses something essentially topical anchored to a specific time?

Jay Duplass: I never thought of that. For us, the horror elements of this movie and even the comedy—just like the road trip in The Puffy Chair—are just delivery devices for relationship movies. Hopefully, in our minds, what comes through and what stays with you is these people and how they're treating each other, how they resolve their difficulties and what they're going through. Hopefully, that will resonate beyond and be the thing that becomes why people come back to the movie.

Mark Duplass: There's a reason why three quarters of our movies are about relationships. That's what we love. We love the faces of the people. We even found with The Puffy Chair that—as much as that is a movie about people in their mid-20s—its core audience was people 40 and up who saw the movie in the theaters.

Guillén: Because, despite age, and despite maturity, certain themes persist. I'm in my mid-50s but I can still remember and relate to the behavior of the characters in Baghead. I remember when I acted like that. It's not like the film is for a specific age demographic. The honesty of the experience speaks to any age group. Can you talk a little bit about how you came up with the four types of characters in Baghead?

Mark Duplass: They are types. It's funny you should say that because there's a parallel between how Jay and I like to have a really strong plot in a movie but allow the plot to be shaggy and loose within the film. With characters it's nice to work with types and almost start with caricatures. From there we let the characters flesh themselves out loosely into fully developed people. We started Baghead out with basic archetypes. Hottie friend, chubby best friend, Matt and Chad, right there. Then young wanna-be Hollywood startlet and fading, never has-been starlet. So great, we got those archetypes there. Then, once you get these intense personalities that we cast in these roles, and they're friends of ours, people we know and trust, when you get deep into the improvisation they start bringing more personal elements to these roles.

Jay Duplass: We start looking for and pushing those places, looking for weird little details and actually forcing our actors to stop using the script and coming up with something way more specific and tragic or whatever it might be.

Mark Duplass: We're actually served on paper by starting with caricatures and stock types. We don't really set onto the paper how to add another shade to a character. All the shades, all of that comes out through personal things, the character our actors are bringing to the roles and to the set. That's where all that fleshing out comes.

Guillén: Though it doesn't really have the pace of a screwball comedy, Baghead does harbor the typology of the screwball comedy. You don't have to psychologize the characters to create them. The situations reveal them. One of my favorite lines was when Matt and Chad are having a heart to heart and Chad enviously praises Matt's hair. That was just about the point I was thinking, "God, Matt has great hair."

Jay Duplass: [Laughs] That's a line that Steve [Zissis, who plays Chad] came up with at that moment. It occurred to him—"You have Elvis hair, man"—and we were like, "Oh my God! It's great and so true." He was in the moment and he was looking at Ross [Partridge, who plays Matt] and thinking, "Goddamn, dude, you're perfect and it's pissing me off." Those are the kind of moments we live for, what we love to do. When he said that, Mark and I looked at each other and we were like, "Dead on! Perfect!"

Guillén: So to recap your methodology, you have a definite story you're wanting to tell but you film it documentary style in that you let your actors go. You tell them the story you want to tell….

Mark Duplass: We have a full script.

Guillén: But you're not insisting your actors deliver word for word dialogue?

Jay Duplass: No. The only thing we might do before we shoot—we rarely direct before the first take—but, the only thing we reinforce if any actors are confused is that everyone knows what their purpose is in that scene, whether they're flirting in a passive-aggressive way, or trying to get someone to look at them.

Mark Duplass: Simple things like "Woo him. Try to get him to write a movie with you. Get his attention." We give the actors very simple tasks.

Jay Duplass: We let them use their wiles.

Mark Duplass: They don't have to think about it. They know where the movie's headed. They rarely step out of bounds or do something incorrect for the character. They know the story and we've set simple archetype characters for them so they know how to behave. Jay and I are not doing a ton of corralling of the improvisation.

Guillén: You don't direct by micromanagement?

Mark Duplass: No, that's not happening.

Jay Duplass: If anything, sometimes a scene—for whatever reason; the way we've created it—can be a little boring.

Mark Duplass: Sometimes it will be an ill-conceived moment and then Jay and I will say, "Oh, we didn't realize but this scene doesn't work." So we'll switch it up and find something inspiring.

Guillén: The cabin games you had your characters play in trying to write the script, do you two work that way?

Mark Duplass: We don't; but, there's a variation. There's a book called Making A Good Script Great by Linda Seger, which we used in college and film school. She recommends writing scene ideas on note cards. We invented the machinations of passing the note cards around so we could get what we wanted out of the scene. So that scene is based on a truth but we fussed with it a bit.

Guillén: So you're describing Baghead as a relationship story that has horrific elements? In fact, some reviewers have qualified that the horror is that they're even trying to make a movie.

Mark Duplass: Yeah!

Guillén: But honestly, I found Baghead to be effectively scary in certain scenes.

Mark Duplass: It can play like that. It depends on the audience. One of the screenings at Sundance was wild scary.

Jay Duplass: People were screaming.

Mark Duplass: People were running out of the movie theater. And then last night we had a promo screening at USC during the late hours with college students who were more hip to the genre play and it played balls comedy to them. They were laughing their asses off the whole time. Who knows?

Guillén: I know you probably can't answer this; but, are you purposely keeping it vague as to whether or not Michelle's first glimpse of the man with a baghead is real or a dream?

Mark Duplass: We don't really talk about that too much. We have our vision of what the story is and—if we wanted to talk about it—it would be as to what it means to us. But there is some controversy about the nature of Michelle's first dream and what that means. We hope people are comfortable with that in a good way.

Jay Duplass: We're aware of the three or four possibilities of what the story could be; but, we're actually more interested in seeing how other people perceive it and how they reconstruct the story in their minds.

Mark Duplass: Hopefully, the controversy will encourage a second viewing.

Guillén: I realize that most people mistakenly think that The Puffy Chair was your first fillm, when in fact it was your third or your fourth?

Mark Duplass: We had made three short films before The Puffy Chair. We had tried to make—I would say—two and half features before The Puffy Chair. But they just weren't any good so we never showed them.

Guillén: So then you obviously had some kind of insight that made you approach filmmaking differently, resulting in The Puffy Chair, which did work, and from which you developed your creative legs. Can you identify what it was that changed your approach?

Mark Duplass: It was a lucky moment in 2002 when we made our first good short film This Is John. It was our first film that got accepted into Sundance. Literally, Jay and I were coming off the tail end of another one of our failed feature films. We were depressed and sitting on the couch. We didn't know why we were feeling this way but our instinct was, "We just need to pick up a camera and make something." We picked up our shitty little DV camera and we came up with this idea of a guy who's recording the personal greeting of his answering machine and struggling with it.

Jay Duplass: It was something that had actually happened to me a few months previously. I told Mark about it in a private conversation. We always have shared these private conversations about things that happen to us, things that happen to our friends, that are funny and totally tragic in a hilarious way. We never dreamed those experiences would be film worthy. Who would dream that a guy trying to perfect a personal greeting on his answering machine would fail to do so and would start crying and basically have a breakdown? Who would dream that would be film worthy let alone hugely successful as a short film? It was like an accident. We thought, "Let's stop thinking."

Guillén: That's what I'm trying to get at. Did you feel a need to relinquish control? Or to relinquish expectation of outcome?

Mark Duplass: It was not conscious on our part at the time of making This Is John. A lot of it was 20/20. A lot of it was—in that the movie did succeed and people liked it—we looked back to determine what was it that made the film work and how could we get that again? Once we deconstructed the process, we realized, "Oh. We cut out all the crew. We cut out all the bullshit. It was just Jay and me like when we were five and nine years old, together, focusing all of our energy on the acting and the creative, as opposed to, 'How good does this light look? Do we have the catering right?' " Most movies spend 90% of their time on the technical and 10% on their actors, and we came up with this ethic of reversing that number. We made sure that we gave our all to the performance and the story. That was a huge breakthrough for us. That was the moment.

Jay Duplass: Plus the fact that the whole movie cost $3, which was the price of a DV tape at the 7-11. Literally! It's insane.

Mark Duplass: You get caught up in propriety when you go to film school. Not even film school, just reading books. You think that the measure of your movie is about how professional you can be making that film. It takes a while to realize that inspiration comes in all sorts of strange ways and, for us, the downsizing of all the elements of filmmaking was an effort to get back to that pure place of being little kids where making movies was what tricked for us.

Guillén: What I'm hearing is that you got back to some genuine play and honest storytelling? With what I imagine is going to be the success of this film, are you still interested in more genre morphing?

Mark Duplass: I think so. We love genre.

Jay Duplass: For us it's always going to be a relationship movie disguised as a genre movie. I don't know if you can really even say that Baghead is a horror film; but, using genres and plot in general to keep a movie moving forward is a way for us to sneak in relationship issues and all the things we really care about.

Mark Duplass: Not that we're anything like The Big Lebowski, but we loved how that movie is a classic Philip Marlowe story with lots and lots of different ways of doing it. We love that feel of taking a genre and putting new spins on it. Even if Jay and I tried, there's no way we could make a non-relationship movie because the sets are open to interpretation and—when we're there—the interpretation is, "What's going on with these people? How are they behaving with each other?" That's what we love. We always end up focusing on that.

Guillén: Baghead appears to have directly developed out of your festival experience with The Puffy Chair. Do you get a lot of young filmmakers coming to you for advice and help?

Mark Duplass: Yes, yes.

Guillén: Does it feel weird to be such young filmmakers yourselves offering advice to other young filmmakers?

Mark Duplass: I don't feel weird about it. We're actually highly opinionated and pretty cocky when it comes to telling young filmmakers what to do. We're very opinionated about what you should be doing as a young filmmaker. We spell it out pretty straight and are happy to talk to anybody who wants to listen. We've made so many mistakes.

Jay Duplass: Our m.o. is to try to prevent young filmmakers from torturing themselves for the 10 years that we tortured ourselves before we came up with anything worthwhile. Our basic concept is that making movies is really hard, it's a very complex art, so afford yourself the opportunity to fuck up and fix it and try again. Everyone has this misconception that Soderbergh's first movie was Sex, Lies & Videotape, and it wasn't. If you make your first movie and it's great, you got lucky and you got another thing coming. I can guarantee you the second or third movie is going to be a giant failure and you're not going to know what to do with yourself.

Guillén: I was reading somewhere that you guys claim you have no ideas. Is that true? Do you have any ideas about what you want to work on next?

Mark Duplass: I'm not sure when we said that. It had to have been at a different time because we're actually full of too many ideas at the moment. We have quite a few scripts that are prewritten and some of them are movies we're making inside of the studio system, some of them are movies that we'll make outside of the studio system on our own, so this is a good time for us creatively. We've discovered that there's a lot of stuff that is exciting to us. Our confidence level is getting higher in terms of knowing that—once we get on the set—as long as we have a nicely structured story, and if we stay honest with ourselves, we'll probably make a pretty good movie.

Guillén: It's my understanding that at one juncture you were offered a lot more money to make Baghead and you decided against it?

Mark Duplass: There was a studio that offered us a bigger budget to do it. But our reasons for not accepting that are not so simple. We considered it for a while but it wasn't going to be on our terms. It was going to be with some script changes and we would have lost casting control. We would have probably had to put famous people into it who would be playing actors who weren't famous, which would have been totally weird. Try to picture Tom Cruise trying to sneak into a film festival after party. I don't think anyone would buy it. We like the anonymity of these things and Baghead in particular could be done cheaply, the sensibility would be supported by its being done cheaply, all the things were in line to do this cheaply. Not every movie should be done like this and we don't encourage anyone who wants to make a Terrence Mallick movie with an HD camera. Likewise, there are some movies we would like to make that will require bigger budgets and we won't be able to do them on our own dime.

Guillén: Is something like that coming up? Rumor has it you have a deal with Universal?

Mark Duplass: We do have deals with big studios to do big budget films; but, they move slower. They're all in the process of development. Some of them have their casts and we're waiting for a shooting schedule or are waiting for strikes to end, or whatever. Some of them we're still getting notes from the studio heads. Our m.o. for now is to have some faith in the studio system, it hasn't totally let us down yet by any means, and we're going to try to direct a movie within the studio system and see how it goes; but, if that movie takes three or four years to come together, then we'll keep going off and making little Bagheads in the down time. We really believe in staying active, making movies, and not waiting around forever to get your movie made. You can get really depressed doing that.

Guillén: You mentioned that you would like to help younger filmmakers avoid the 10 years of torture that you went through; but, do you honestly feel that torture can be avoided?

Mark Duplass: No. [Laughs.] But I think it can be modified. How painful your failures are can be modified by following some smarter rules. We spent a little too much money on our first films, which creates such a hard and sharp fall that it takes more energy to get yourself back on your feet. Now you can make little cheap digital failures and those are great because with just $5 and a weekend with my friend I can learn something.

Jay Duplass: You're going to have failures; but, what we want people to avoid and what happens a lot, is the common phenomenon of people who get their script together and then spend four to five years raising roughly a half a million, $750,000. They raise that money and they've rewritten the script along the way because maybe they're changing, or maybe different actors will come in and want things to be different, or investors will come in and they'll want things to be different, and they get the movie together; but, it's five years later and they don't care about the movie anymore. They're disconnected. They're done with it. They're not a director anymore because they stopped making films. They're fundraisers. If they do make the movie, it's boring, mediocre, uninspired or just bad, whatever it is, and then they're crushed and they will never recover. It's so tragic to see it happen. Our movies didn't cost nearly that much—the ones that we failed with—but, that's the main thing we want to see people avoid.

Mark Duplass: Our advice is to keep making cheap shorts. They'll be bad probably but then they'll get good and—once you've made a couple of good shorts that have received some festival attention and gotten around—then think about making a feature.

Jay Duplass: You have the opportunity to see your work play with an audience and see how the audience responds to it. You'll know when an audience loves your movie. You can't not know. The way they emote during a screening or how they want more during a Q&A, it's almost like you have to engage in that relationship with an audience and a lot of young filmmakers want to come out, make a feature, and bust it wide open; but, it's a lot more complex than that.

Guillén: That being said about the necessary feedback of audiences, can you tell the difference between—let's say—your American audiences and your European audiences? Do "mumblecore" concerns extend past an American audience?

Mark Duplass: They're more suited to English-speaking audiences.

Jay Duplass: There's a lot of passive-aggression in our movies. People are working each other.

Mark Duplass: And often the dynamics of the English language and the specificity of a word they use with each other makes a big difference. It's not as often translatable. But we haven't sat with that many international audiences, though English-speaking Germans get our movies.

Jay Duplass: I would say our movies on an average play better in Britain than here in the States.

Mark Duplass: Because they're so smart.

Guillén: [Laughs.] Your characters are working each other; but, another aspect I truly admired in Baghead is that there is, nonetheless, real loyalty among the characters and, by story's end, real love.

Mark Duplass: Thanks. That's great. That's something we really couldn't force. That came out in our actors' abilities to enhance their characters. Ross and Steve grew to love each other and what they were doing in that movie is very specific to how the movie went. It could have gone different ways. We would have been fine with other characters falling in love with each other. We would have gone with that too. We go with what they're giving us.

Jay Duplass: That being said, that's how we build our sets. Everyone on our sets is either related to us or a good friend or a good person that we know is going to be open to human behavior.

Cross-published on Twitch.

SFJFF 2008—Michael Hawley's Documentary Dozen

The 28th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival ("SFJFF") takes place throughout the Bay Area from July 24 to August 11, and in terms of the number of films and screenings on offer, it's their largest one yet. Although I'm sure the program contains some fine narrative features, the eclectic selection of documentaries is what really grabbed my attention this year. Here are a dozen that I've had the chance to preview.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil—There once was (and still is) a metal band named Anvil, who in the early eighties had a monster hit called "Metal on Metal." Twenty-plus years, 12 albums and many diminishing returns later, the band finds itself unable and unwilling to say die. Ex-Anvil roadie Sacha Gervasi's film documents the group's recent years, tagging along during a semi-disastrous European tour and the creation of a 13th Anvil album, This is 13. This is also the tempestuous tale of two lifelong friends/bandmates, Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Rob Reiner, both of whom, incidentally, are Jewish and Canadian. Fans of the metal genre should find much to enjoy here—but between the music, the intra-band screaming matches and the tearful revelations of long suffering family, Anvil! had me reaching for the Advil!

At Home in Utopia—The utopia in the title refers to The Coops, a 700-family apartment complex built in the Bronx by Jewish Communists in 1925. Spurred by recently constructed subway lines, this "fortress for the worker against its enemies" was cooperatively owned and run by immigrants who'd had enough of slum living. With its spacious rooms, landscaped gardens and sculpted hammer and sickle motifs decorating the entryways, this "Little Moscow" was considered heaven on earth by its inhabitants. Many of The Coop's residents were instrumental in shaping the American labor movement. Integrating African American families into its social fabric was considered essential. Director Michael Goldman documents all this with some extraordinary archival material, along with articulate interviews with Coops residents present and past (actress Linda Lavin narrates). This bittersweet film made me nostalgic for an era that envisioned communism as a humane way of existence, as yet uncorrupted by the machinations of crackpot despots. Highly recommended.

Bi'lin My Love—Bil'in is one of the many Palestinian villages that have been decimated by Israel's "separation barrier," aka The Apartheid Wall. The ancient olive trees which provided the village's economic lifeblood have been ripped from the ground, and half of its land has been confiscated to build an illegal Israeli settlement. Shai Carmeli Pollack's film records a year's worth of resistance to the barrier by Bi'lin villagers, Israeli sympathizers and international activists. Their defiance, however, aside from raising awareness, turns out to be pretty much for naught, as this dispiriting documentary ultimately reveals. If there's any hope to be found here, it's in the fact that the Israeli government continues to fund films such as this one.

Description of a Struggle—For Bay Area cinephiles, the highlight of the festival will certainly be this ultra-rare screening of Chris Marker's 1960 modernist documentary about Israel. Filmed 12 short years after the country's birth and two years before his revolutionary short film La Jetée, Marker takes a semiological approach to the art of political travelogue. He sees signs everywhere: in the dome of a planetarium and the dome of a synagogue, in a boy pushcart-racing his way down an urban slope and in a camel-crossing sign on a flat desert highway. Remarkable imagery plays up against Marker's own provocative voiceover narration, as he ruminates on the young nation's political and cultural past, present and future. (Curiously, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees don't rate a mention). Description of a Struggle screens only one time during the festival, at 11:30 am on Saturday, August 9 in Berkeley's Roda Theater. The good news is that the festival will be screening a 35mm print. The not-so-good news is that Marker's original French narration has been dubbed in Hebrew (with English and French subtitles), as it was on the screener copy I previewed. Still, highly recommended.

Description of a Memory—On the same program as Description of a Struggle is this engaging contemplation of Marker's film by director Dan Geva. Selecting 13 distinct memories from Struggle (seen in clips with Marker's original voiceover intact), Geva adds his own contemporary images and narration to reflect upon the enormous changes that have occurred in Israel during the past 50 years. The double humps of Marker's camel-crossing sign have morphed into McDonald's golden arches. Marker's nearly deserted beaches of Eilat have evolved/devolved into a Middle Eastern Miami Beach. Geva tracks down several of the people profiled in Struggle, including the enigmatic, long-necked girl seen drawing at her easel. Marker assigned her the weighty chore of symbolizing Israel's future, and Geva finds her now living abroad. Description of a Memory serves as a timely and germane companion piece to Struggle, and together they make for one very compelling afternoon at the movies.

Flipping Out—After three years of mandatory military service, Israeli soldiers are paid a sweet discharge bonus. And each year, an estimated 30,000 of them will take that money and fly to India, where they'll consume massive amounts of drugs. Director Yoav Shamir tries to make sense of the phenomenon, with not particularly insightful results. The few ex-soldiers he interviews seem unfazed by whatever traumatic events, if any, they experienced while in the military (or are too stoned to express it). Instead, the film focuses on the less interesting story of efforts to rescue and return to Israel those few ex-soldiers who indeed "flip out." It's not a bad film—just not on a level with Shamir's stunning debut, 2004's Checkpoint.

It Kinda Scares Me—One of the highlights of Frameline29 was Tomer Heymann's Paper Dolls, which looked at the world of Filipino transvestites working as caregivers to elderly Israelis. As a sidebar to this year's Jewish Film Festival, six other documentaries produced and/or directed by Tomer and/or his brother Barak, are being presented to Bay Area audiences. It Kinda Scares Me was Tomer's 2001 directorial debut and documents his social work with at-risk teenage boys in the seedy Tel Aviv suburb of Azur. Over the course of a year, he channels their anger and marginalization into the creation of a terrific piece of theater. These boys, whose brushes with the law include drugs, theft and assault, get to try interpretive dance on for size, and the most boisterous of the bunch, Yakov, turns out to have a poetic soul ("Her pussy is like a black pistachio … like a burnt puff pastry on Sabbath eve.") The film's emotional climax comes when Tomer reveals to the group that he's gay, and their reaction is not what you'd expect. Absorbing, touching and highly recommended.

Jerusalem is Proud to Present—I suppose that it's progress of some kind when Jews, Muslims and Christians can agree on something, even if that something is hatred of lesbians and gays. Nitzan Gilady's serviceable film documents efforts to stage a Jerusalem World Pride march in the summer of 2006, and the contentious reaction that provokes in all three religious communities. Pride organizers are accused of "moral terrorism" and the "spiritual rape of Jerusalem," and are the recipients of numerous death threats. Residents of the city's ultra-orthodox Mea Sharim neighborhood stage a riot, injuring 45 police in the process. After newly escalating tensions with Lebanon are blamed on the "homosexualization of the Middle East," the march is cancelled and the Pride celebration relegated to the secure confines of an enclosed stadium. Recent gay films such as Antarctica and Japan Japan seem to portray gay life in Israel (or at least in cosmopolitan Tel Aviv) as some sort of LGBT Shangri-La. The events in this film, however, would seem to contradict that image.

Miss Universe 1929: Lisl Goldarbeiter, A Queen in Wien—Each year the Jewish Film Festival presents a Freedom of Expression Award, honoring "the unfettered imagination, which is the cornerstone of a free, just and open society." This year's award goes to Hungarian director Péter Forgács, who has made a career of transforming the forgotten photographs, diaries and home movies of European Jews into a singular form of documentary storytelling. Forgács has made over 30 such films in the past 20 years, and if Miss Universe 1929 is representative of his work, I'm hungry to see more. The film lovingly recounts a tale of two cousins, a young Austrian beauty named Lisl and her adoring Hungarian relative Marci. It was Marci who submitted Lisl's photo to the pageant, which led to her being crowned the first non-American (and only Austrian ever) Miss Universe in 1929 Galveston, Texas. Throughout Lisl's first marriage to a gambling ne'er-do-well and the tumult of WWII, Marci hung in there, eventually marrying his cousin in 1949 when both were 40-years-old. And in a rare happy ending for this kind of story, the marriage lasted almost 50 years until Lisl passed away in 1997. As part of its tribute to Forgács, the festival is also showing a double bill of 1997's The Maelstrom: A Family Chronicle and 1998's The Danube Exodus. Highly recommended.

Stalags: Holocaust and Pornography in Israel—Of all the documentaries in the festival, this one carries the highest profile, having garnered loads of media attention when it screened at the New York Jewish Film Festival this spring. Stalags were immensely popular Israeli pornographic novels from the early sixties, in which Allied POWs recounted tales of sexual torture by buxom Nazi SS babes. They arrived at a time when the world was first learning about concentration camp horrors (via the trial of Adolf Eichmann), and were penned in Hebrew using English sentence structures (to deceive Israeli readers into thinking the books were written abroad). In this loaded and densely packed film, Director Ari Libsker interviews Stalag writers and collectors, and goes about the messy business of deciphering the books' psychological and sociological implications. Interestingly, the entire film was shot in black and white, save for the colorfully lurid book covers, which boast such titles as The Monster of Horror Stalag and I Was Colonel Schultz's Private Bitch. Stalags was produced by Barak Heymann and is showing on a double bill with his brother Tomar's It Kinda Scares Me. For a closer look at the film's reception in New York, The Greencine Daily compiles reviews and write-ups here and here. Highly recommended.

Stefan Braun—This is the story of two gay men: Stefan Braun, a rich, lusty furrier to Israel's wealthy elite, and Eliezer "Latsi" Rath, his "partner" of 39 years who lived in Braun's servant's quarters and was apparently treated as such. Through interviews with family and ex-employees, we're given a rudimentary portrait of Braun and a glimpse of Israeli gay life in the fifties and sixties. But the film's real point of interest is Rath, whom we first see recording an audio cassette love letter to Braun, a ritual he performs daily in Braun's untouched bedroom (Braun died in 1990). It seems the very picture of devout passion, but others suspect a more sinister side to Rath. After Braun sold his fur salon in the late eighties, Rath took over his personal finances, and the once vibrant and impeccably dressed Braun started roaming the streets looking seedy and dejected. When he died leaving his entire estate to Rath, the shocked family sued over the will. (Rath prevailed after a four-year court battle.) Director Itamar Alcalay does an adept job of recounting this uncanny tale. I only wish that Rainer Werner Fassbinder were still alive to give it the gloriously overblown treatment it cries out for.

Tulip Time: The Rise and Fall of the Trio Lescano—Alexandra, Judith and Kitty Leschan were the daughters of a Jewish Dutch operetta singer and a Hungarian circus contortionist. They left Holland in 1935 to seek their fortune in Italy, and within two years became the country's top recording artists—the Andrews Sisters-emulating Trio Lescano. The rising fascist government adored them too, until their songs were deemed subversive (the composers being anti-fascist) and their Jewishness became problematic enough to earn them a brief stint in prison. In post-war Europe their act was met with indifference, forcing them to finish out their career touring South America. Directors Marco De Stefanis and Tonino Boniotti's fascinating film is one of several being shown in a festival sidebar called Italian Jews During Fascism. It screens one time only at the Castro Theater on Wednesday, July 30 at 2 pm. FOR FREE! Highly recommended.

Cross-published on Twitch.

CHRIS & DON: A LOVE STORY—The Evening Class Interview With Don Bachardy

Fairly across the board (other than for the occasional sour grape), Tina Mascara and Guido Santi's affectionate documentary Chris & Don: A Love Story has been favorably received by critics and public alike. Following my first write-up on the film during Frameline 32, Dave Hudson at The Greencine Daily has—of course—compiled an aggregate of the film's critical response, which continues through its ongoing theatrical distribution. [Currently screening at the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco and the Shattuck Theatre in Berkeley.]

I took ill during Frameline 32 when Don Bachardy was in town granting press interviews, so I especially appreciated his taking time to talk with me recently by phone. My thanks to Karen Larsen for arranging same.

* * *

Michael Guillén: First and foremost, I wanted to congratulate you on the success of Chris & Don: A Love Story. It's an engaging love story.

Don Bachardy: Well, I'm glad you like it. It's been a great success down here in Southern California.

Guillén: I'm curious about the texture of your participation. How did you become involved with Tina Mascara and Guido Santi? And how do you feel about the final product?

Bachardy: I was lucky to encounter these two talented filmmakers. It was Guido's idea originally, oh, 10 years ago. He was married to his first wife, Julia Alexander, she's the youngest daughter of a close artist friend of mine, Peter Alexander and I've known her since she was 2 or 3. When they married, Guido got the idea to make the movie. Then he and Julia divorced and I thought, "Oh well, there goes the movie idea." But, to my surprise, Guido came back and said he wanted to go on alone and because I felt sorry for him—he was doing badly—I said, "Okay!" I never really believed anything would come of the film, you know? But I liked Guido and then—when he got involved with Tina—I liked her very much too and I thought, "Well, what can I lose? I'll be spending time with these two nice, intelligent young people. Why not?" I had seen a 40-minute film of Guido's, which I felt was talented, but I think they've done a wonderful job and I'm so pleased that the film is having such a success. It's nice to share it with the two of them because it's their first real success.

Guillén: How did the logistics work out? Did they visit you and rifle through your photos and journals?

Bachardy: Yes, exactly that. They came to the house here to film and I gradually shared with them all kinds of material—photographs, the journals, the little cards that Chris gave me for birthdays and anniversaries with his drawings on them—and they just got deeper into the story. We much enjoyed being together. I think that communicates itself in the film. When filmmakers and subject really like each other, it creates a pleasant aura.

Guillén: Sharing is the exact term. What was it in you that encouraged you to open up to share your love story with them and, by extension, your audience?

Bachardy: I do feel an obligation—since I've had such a lucky life with so much happiness in it—I do feel an obligation to share that with others. Why horde it all and keep it all for myself? Those years with Chris were fantastically satisfying for me and I like sharing my success with others, encouraging them to believe that, yes, they can have a wonderful, happy relationship in their lives maybe.

Guillén: When I was young and in my twenties and had first moved to San Francisco, your relationship with Chris—which was already well-publicized at the time—was an inspirational model for me. It encouraged me to become involved with an older man who helped me get going, enrolling me in college, and providing my first opportunity to work for a law firm. I trusted the intergenerational dynamic of our affection for each other and appreciate the candor with which you expressed it in the documentary. Unfortunately, my partner passed of AIDS so I wasn't able to mature with him as you were able to do with Chris. Notwithstanding, even back in the '70s your relationship with Chris was influencing young people and I am testament to that.

Bachardy: I also feel an obligation to point out that Chris and I had our hurdles too. It wasn't all roses and happy talk. There were periods of dissatisfaction. I wanted to counter the tendency to glorify and sentimentalize our relationship because I feel that—if people realize that it wasn't all roses for Chris and me, that we really had to work at making our relationship last—that's more encouraging. When young people hear that we had our struggles, they too shouldn't be discouraged if they're having struggles in their own relationships.

Guillén: I understand 100%. If anything should be underscored with the recent California Supreme Court decision to allow gay marriage, it's that along with rights come very real responsibilities, not only of individuals to each other within their partnerships but of partnerships to the social fabric as a whole. One of the aspects that most intrigued me about your relationship with Chris was his commitment to furthering your transformation, from being a star-struck fan, to actually introducing you to many movie stars, and then—through the process of transitioning into your own creativity—your eventual portraiture of many of these personalities. Can you speak to that development?

Bachardy: It seems to me so fateful my meeting with Chris. He was really the galvanizing agent in my life. He saw my potential and helped me to see what I could accomplish. I don't think I could have ever have done it without him. He played the role of a positive agent for me. It made everything possible.

Guillén: But you must give yourself credit as well. There's this curious alchemy that occurs within a young person when they—at first—admire others from a distance before they finally "cook" the elements within themselves, mature, and step forward to meet others on equal standing. That, in itself, is maturation; but, as an artist, you took it further. You created significant portraits in a signature style. You've pretty much drawn just about everybody who's been anybody.

Bachardy: I've been so fortunate to meet all the people I've met. It was all through Chris. It was he who allowed me, urged me, and pointed the way to my vocation. Once I discovered it, he was inexhaustible in his efforts to find the kind of acceptance for me that would encourage me and that proved so helpful in securing commissions. As a portrait artist, you're obligated to show pictures of people who are recognizable. I can do a perfectly good likeness of my next-door neighbor but how many people are going to be able to appreciate that as a good likeness? A portrait artist has to find well-known subjects. Chris was so helpful in that pursuit.

Guillén: When I was young and reading articles about you and Chris in gay magazines like The Advocate and Mandate, even then I was keenly aware of the socialization process particular to intergenerational male relationships. It wasn't just about the ambition of my youth; it was about access to experience provided by my older partners; in some respects, the aesthetics of mentorship which continue to influence my interaction with younger people to this day.

Bachardy: Yes. And Chris was just so helpful in so many ways. He was such a wonderful guide and teacher. We always believed that—far from being a disadvantage—the age difference between us was really helpful because it allowed us to play a much greater range of roles with each other.

Guillén: Since Chris's death, you have gone ahead with your career as a portrait artist. I read with some interest your commission to paint the portrait of Angelina Jolie. Is there anyone you want to draw that you haven't drawn?

Bachardy: I've been so lucky. Yes, it's been wonderful to know and to portray someone like Angelina and Brad Pitt—that's still very exciting for me—but, in general I feel that I have done my share in the celebrity-chasing game. It's so much more difficult nowadays too. Most of the people who are really icons to me are figures of the past; people I idolized when I was young. Those were the really magical people and I've had access to so many of them that I feel perfectly satisfied. I feel I've had my celebrity quotient. Angelina and Brad are just icing on the cake. They're both very sweet people and I like them a lot.

Guillén: Speaking of that—along with your relationship with Chris having such influence upon my imagination at a young age—there is another individual who had tremendous influence upon me: author William Goyen.

Bachardy: I knew him! He sat for me once.

Guillén: Yes, I'm aware of that. In fact, during recent research I discovered that your portrait of him is included within the collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin. Can you offer any insight into William Goyen?

Bachardy: I didn't know him all that well. I knew more about him from Chris who'd known him for many years. His widow Doris Roberts is still a friend and, in fact, she's been a generous contributor to the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. Her contributions have been in Bill Goyen's name. What to tell you about Bill? I visited the house they had in the Beechwood Canyon area. In fact, Doris still lives in it. The sitting I did with Bill was at his request. He wanted a portrait of himself for the book jacket of his latest novel. He sat very still for the drawing and—from my point of view—it was one of the very best drawings I did of that period. He praised the drawing, signed and dated it—as I ask all my sitters to do—and I never heard another word about its being put on the book jacket, which made me think that it was probably a little bit too accurate.

Guillén: I anticipate getting to see it when I eventually go to Austin to do field research at the archives.

Bachardy: Do they have it really?

Guillén: Yes, they have a large collection of his papers. I'm writing a monograph on Goyen and—as I was researching what they had there in the Austin collection—they listed your drawing.

Bachardy: I'd forgotten that. I'm glad they have it because it's a very good drawing and I like my very good work to be in distinguished collections.

Guillén: Perhaps if I can find a publisher for my monograph on Goyen, we can gain permission to put it on the cover, as was its original intention?

Bachardy: Oh good! I would very much like that. It would be a nice coda to my experience with knowing him and working with him.

Guillén: Sir, I won't take much more of your time. I just wanted to commend you on the sparkling example you have set the rest of us on how to authentically interact with and love someone.

Bachardy: It was really as much luck as anything. To meet that man at 18—my gosh!—and as young and inexperienced as I was, to have the sense to realize that he was not only like nobody else I'd met but really an extraordinary person. I can't take credit for it. It just seems to me such a happy fate.

Cross-published on Twitch. Introductory portrait of Don Bachardy courtesy of Kevin Scanlon, L.A. Times.

MOVIE POSTER ART—Tom Whalen and Eric Tan

I know, I know, I just did an "In Rotation" piece on /Film; but, there's a good reason why Peter Sciretta's site heads my blogroll. Actually two good reasons this morning. One of my fave raves at Peter's site is his galleries of artists who create movie poster art. Peter's turned me on to Tom Whalen (whose rendition of The Dark Knight graces this entry) and Eric Tan. Check 'em out! They're tasty!

Cross-published on Twitch.

TRAILERS FROM HELL

I'm not a great fan of microcinema; however, I'm not above spending an insomniatic hour or two trolling YouTube or fingerpopping to scopitones at Bedazzled TV, or even occasionally dipping into the Twitch Video Player. I certainly enjoy the Twitch Trailer Park for each year's Toronto International Film Festival.

And speaking of trailer parks, Trailers From Hell—the brainchild of film director Joe Dante, new media entrepreneur Jonas Hudson, graphic artist Charlie Largent and producer Elizabeth Stanley, born out of their mutual love of classic films of all types, but particularly horror and exploitation films—has been rocking my late night world of late.

With an impressive list of "Grindhouse Gurus" to guide the way, Trailers From Hell offers up vintage trailers with contemporary commentary. Where else will you find Eli Roth enthusing over Alfred Hitchcock's trailer for The Birds? Or Jack Hill offering directorial insight into Foxy Brown? Or John Landis adding "scare-ewy" context to the careers of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein? Or Stuart Gordon extolling the carnivalesque geekdom of Nightmare Alley? And that is just a smidgin of the hellish delights offered at the site! Trailers From Hell is a wonderful project expertly administered. Insomnia has never looked so good!

Cross-published on Twitch.

KIYOSHI KUROSAWA BLOGATHON

Otanjohbi omedetohgozaimasu, Kiyoshi Kurosawa!

Yesterday marked Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 53rd birthday celebration and—though I originally intended it to be the start of my Kiyoshi Kurosawa Blogathon—a pile of projects have prevented me from kicking that blogathon off until next Friday, July 25, 2008. Mark your calendars! I'm going to let the blogathon run for a week: Friday July 25, 2008 to Friday, August 1, 2008.

I hope you can come to the party!!