29

May

Around Memorial Day Let’s Remember Female Soldiers

Despite a hidden history of female warriors, which in the U.S. dates to the Civil War if not prior, the image of women soldiers, with rifles in their hands and charging on the enemy, is novel for a lot of people.  Academic and other writings indicate that 100s of women fought beside men during the Civil War, while disguised as men.  For generations women have argued for front-line combat roles, and the career opportunities they bode.  Those posts are vital high-profile promotions and careers.

How do we see women in combat?  It’s usually in the movies or TV:  I could remind you of and discuss combat films that remind us of and respect soldiers’ deeds.  “Bourne On the Fourth of July,” “Saints and Soldiers” and “Jar Head,” which depict the aftermaths of the Vietnam, Second World and First Gulf wars, respectively, remind us of how combat affects soldiers.

But where are the women warriors on-screen?  We’ve seen Jessica Biel in “Home of the Brave.”  She portrays an amputee who survived an engagement in the Middle East.   In “G.I. Jane” Demi Moore portrays an Alpha female who undergoes Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training.  The story shows a test case for integrating women into that program.  On TV one of their title characters in the Lifetime channel hit show Army Wives is Col. Joan Burton, a base commander.

While their on-screen stories are not abundant, there are probably a bevy of reasons: a major one might be the proportion of citizens who serve in the armed forces, or how many of those are women.

In true life, while women are 51 percent of the U.S. population, they are 20 percent of military.  Less than one percent of American citizens are soldiers.  While a lot of people may scratch their heads and raise their eye brows at the thought of women under fire, some women find and make homes and careers there.

There’s a telling line from “G.I. Jane” where the Senator who nominates her later says that polling shows male soldiers won’t know how to deal with a female comrade. “Corpsmen would linger over a fallen female,” when according to triage, they needed to move on to a soldier they could treat.  I regret that YouTube may not have that clip.

Greater chronic, persistent, perplexing crises have made headlines about how the “old boy” military traditions and culture of the early 20th century after service women.  There are news and documentary stories of the hardships: documentarian, Kirby Dick (director of “This Movie is Not Yet Rated,” about America’s movie rating system) is coming out with a film about a cultural epidemic of sexual assaults in the armed forces, “Invisible War,” on June 22.

Last Wednesday, two female U.S. Army reservists filed a lawsuit in order to finally permit women to serve in combat positions.  Their bottom-line is that the ban limits “their current and future earnings, their potential for promotion and advancement, and their future retirement benefits.”

Women want to serve.  But the military culture acts like it is of two minds and mouths.  We haven’t yet seen on-screen or other stories where gender is an incidental element instead of a novel one.  This, especially when those women, who have committed to a career, want to advance.

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19

Mar

American Movie-Goers Miss Out by Letting Foreign Movies Pass Them By

Recently a great friend asked me about “The Artist,” the French- and Belgian-made film from 2011, which earned the lastest Academy Award for Best Picture.  Another friend asked me about “A Separation,” from Iran, also from 2011.

Those conversations reminded me about how much I appreciate other foreign films: “Walk on Water,” from 2004, and “The Holy Land,” from 2001.  Both of them are from Israel.

More and more often North American movies rely on other countries’ moneys for success.  If you read movie critics’ columns often enough you know how often American movies depend on foreign rights and revenues in order to be make films, and in-turn profits.

The Artist Poster on the Tube from Annie Mole

I was reminded about films, like those mentioned above, that beg to be recommended to friends.  After having answered one friend’s question about “The Artist,” which I’ve not yet seen, I recommended those Israeli films.

And, yet foreign films seems to strike Americans as strange or out-of the way; literally foreign.  More so than necessary.

Why do so many American movie-goers flock to American-made titles, while also whining about a decline in their quality, value and ingenuity?

  • A common complaint about foreign movies is having to deal with subtitles.
  • Maybe there’s a snob factor, or an assumption that foreign film fans are a club, and you have to pay dues?

Hey.  When you run out of American films you want to watch why not turn to the best ones from France, Israel, the United Kingdom or elsewhere?

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25

Feb

As America faces down the Oscars, listen to this story: “What Makes a Movie ‘Important?’”

While I’ve been filing several local, evergreen stories for Twin Cities’ KFAI, there’s been a terrible lag in uploading my works to the web.  But I’ve a fun, timely update.

One story, for which I wasn’t paid, but which was fun, parrots the Joker if he were to ask about “important movies”: “Why So Serious?”

As The Joker taunted Gotham City, he could’ve asked about a “better class of” movies!

As America faces down the Oscars, listen to my story: “What Makes a Movie ‘Important?’”

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04

Jun

Behind-the-scenes with “The First Grader’s” director, Justin Chadwick Pt 2

Now, let’s finish the conversation with the man who put “The First Grader” on-screen.

W: According to the Walker Art Center’s program you thought “it was a really challenging movie to do.”

The challenge now is to actually to get the film to play to audiences.  We’ve got distribution across America, which is absolutely wonderful.  Because films like this, that’ve got just as good of production values as bigger movies, just as beautiful stories, that aren’t necessarily the “Thors” and “The Pirates of the Caribbean,” the –

W: The blockbusters -

There has to be a place for smaller films – not smaller in their kind of scope, but in terms of their machine behind them.  Because audiences like to go the cinema, to sit in the dark, and go through these emotional stories, and there has to be a place for it.  That’s gonna be the challenge.  Getting them to the cinema, because we haven’t got posters on every single bus going by, we haven’t got advertisements in the papers.  Audiences need these stories.  There should be a place in the modern cinema.

Justin Chadwick directs his "First Grader" (courtesy National Geographic Films)

W: What has you really jazzed about this story, this film that journalists haven’t asked about?  “This is a really cool thing, but nobody ever asks me about it…”  Do you have something like that that you wanna get out there?

Before we were making the film, I talked to the creative team, and we talked about those hardened critics that want to see a certain kind of film, a feel-good movie, it makes you feel celebratory when you come out, make you laugh, makes you cry.  What we wanted to do, what’s unusual about this story, coming out of Africa, where so many African movies have to do with huge issues: genocide, famine.

W: Corruption.  Violence.

All of that.  This felt like something different; this one was a celebratory film, A film about hope – in the true sense of the word.  It wasn’t sugar-coated.  Because those scenes actually happened.

We don’t want the film to be like spinach; you know this film is really good for you.  We were very, very aware of that.  I think it’s very easy to dismiss the film.  It’s come out of Telluride, the snowball of the film festivals, and the audiences who’ve seen it.  It’s very easy to dismiss it as a little, tiny film, but actually it’s not that at all.  Again, there has to be a place for this in cinema, but it’s getting harder and harder because blockbusters are so all-consuming of the territory, and the cinema space.  It’s hard to get your movie through.

Just like the majority block specific history lessons, making knowledge hard to get through, only now the UK newspapers are covering recent headlines about “found” and damning Mau Mau records.  Throughout April 2011, the “Times of London” ran almost weekly stories on the “discovery” of damning files previously thought to have been long-ago lost or destroyed.  They’ve a paywall just like the “New York Times,” so providing a link would be foolish.

Kimani Maruge whose story goes toe-to-toe with flashy summer movies

W: As “The First Grader” raises the topic of the Mau Mau rebellion, that reminded me of a documentary that Bill Cosby made, “Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed?”  I thought, considering how English folks were barely taught this, and how some modern-day Kenyans and Kikuyu might not know even the basics of the Mau Mau situation, was it lost, was it stolen, or did it stray?  You mentioned you weren’t told much of this when you were in school.

Not at all!  It was the stuff that’d been in the press at the time; the stuff about the Mau Mau going into people’s houses, killing them while they sleep in their beds.  You didn’t hear that 1.2 million Kikyyu had been tortured, had been incarcerated, had been rounded up in concentration camps.  There was many, many camps across Kenya filled with young and old men and women from the Kikuyu, and that story has never really surfaced.

This documentation has come to mind just recently.  There’s not many of the Mau Mau veterans left.  K’mani was 89.  When they talk about compensation or acknowledgment it’s too little too late.  At least the truth will come out now, with the missing files that’ve been discovered.

As an aside I mentioned, to Mr. Chadwick, my having sat near a Kenyan woman, a Kikuyu, at the screening at the Walker Art Center, who had few criticisms about the film, but wished that the tribalism would’ve been less mentioned.

The BBC were very concerned about me going there.  In everyday banter and everyday conversations tribal divisions would come up.  And yes they are trying to move on; I do say that.  Everyday on the radio the DJs would be talking about the differences of the tribes.  I know where she’s coming from.  A lot in the Western press of the tribal differences in Africa are always negatively drawn.

Jane Obinchu says, in the film, we’ve moved away from that.  I had a young cameraman saying “you know, everyone says on the surface that we’re all moving away from it,” but he said “you know it’s still very, very much present, and if you speak to anyone, the younger generation, it’s still very much present.  I would pick it up from what I was hearing on the radio, from the Kenyans I was working with.  And there’s a lot to celebrate about the different tribes.   I heard all the time around me.  It’s a Kenyan story; you can’t shy away from it.  I mean Maruge himself wasn’t a perfect man by any stretch.  It’s been a very one-sided story.

W: I was skeptical about what seemed to be indulgent, cheesy lines at the climax: “Maybe one day a Kenyan will be in the White House.  Yes we Can!”

So 2003, exactly when Kenya announced free education, Obama went as a Senator; I heard this like three weeks before we started shooting. (In reality, Mr. Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, taking office in 2005.)  And also I was hearing on the radio from a guy, who talked to everybody.  And so Obama came here as a Senator; this is why every time I was going somewhere on a bus, somebody said, “Obama sat here;” Michelle and him had been on this Mutatu bus.  This radio DJ who was the voice of the people.

Basically because as a student I saw “Do the Right Thing,” loved that film.  Sam Jackson was in that film; Jackson was hysterical!  He was this voice; it was a brilliant, inspiring film for me.  I saw that in Manchester.  I remembered that.  And there was no real humor in that film (First Grader.)  So I managed to track down the guy; he’s called Churchill.   He was at the African MTV awards.  He brought the house down.  I managed to track him down.  I said, “Listen.  I’d love for you to be part of this film.”  He says, “I know Maruge.  He was on my show!, on my breakfast show.”   He said, “I’ll definitely do it.  Are you gonna say about Obama?”

“I always said he’d be the headmaster of the world; I always said it, from 2003, he was the headmaster of the world.  And he said, “I was the one, right from the beginning, and that’s why he’s in the White House!”  And he said, build me a little studio just outside of where I’ve got my radio show.  Be there, and I’ll give you a half an hour.”  So that’s where that came from, from the true source.  Everywhere I went, once I got Churchill involved, they said “We always knew Obama was gonna be President.  Even way back in 2003, when they came, we knew, we just knew he was gonna be President.”  That’s why I put that in there.

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28

May

Behind-the-Scenes with “The First Grader’s” director, Justin Chadwick Pt. 1

I spoke with Justin Chadwick, director of “The First Grader,” one day after having seen it at Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center – for free!  Always the right price, but particularly so during a toilet bowl economy.  As with many independent film-makers, he is down-to-earth and pretty much a straight shooter.

"The First Grader's" director, Justin Chadwick, with Will Wright (courtesy Wright's Words)

Will Wright: It’s common and typical for Anglo film-makers to make movies about black people, where the anchor of the story isn’t black him or herself.  It’s refreshing to see that there isn’t a heroic, superior Anglo who comes in to “save the school.”  We had “Dangerous Minds,” 15 years ago, and “Freedom Writers.”  How concerned were you, being a man from Manchester, who wasn’t introduced to all the dynamic and violent politics coming in and doing this story?

Justin Chadwick: Well I was very aware from the outset that I am from Manchester England.  And I had not been to Kenya before, and it dealt with a period of history, as well as Kenyan history that hadn’t been told.  There’s very few records remaining of that time.  At the time of making this film, the British press side of things.  They’re represented as being these guerilla army that basically murder people in their beds.  There’s that, but this other side.

So I knew going into Kenya, that, I was from outside.  I had to use that to its advantage, to use it as a way of me being able to go in as a guest in their country.  The first three or four months I was there I basically observed, and listened and let people tell their stories.  I’d go speak to the elders in each village that I’d go it.  And because of that approach, everywhere I went I was open-heartedly received.  I wasn’t like the other movies that’d been there: “Tomb Raider,” “Out of Africa,” even “Constant Gardener,” had shipped everything in to that country.  I was living with the people I was working with, living in the community where the school was.  Even from the very first, I was with Kmani Maruge in his hospice.  I would go in with Kikuyu, which were his tribe.  So they built an openness and between me and the people I was representing and also the people I was working with.

Mr. Chadwick directing "The First Grader"

I didn’t know what it was going to be like in Tudor England, or with the “Other Boleyn Girl,” or I didn’t know what it was going to be like when I did “Bleak House,” in Victorian England.  With this I actually talked directly with the people that this story involves, to try and find the truth.   And I think that’s what stood me in stead for it really.

W: You’re the second film-maker I’ve met recently who’s spoken of having that observational approach, attitude.  Can you tell me how many of your peers use that approach?

Ang Lee, when he did sense and sensibility – I remember reading how he felt like an outsider coming into English, period, costume drama, would use that eye that he had, and that sensibility that he had to try to understand.  He made a film from being like that, in that way.  He made a film that was really true.  And yet you know, he was from a different world, and a different country.  And I remember that was something that was in my mind when I was going into this.

This began for American newsreaders in 2004, when the New York Times’ Marc Lacey wrote a Sunday profile piece.  There he described what “changed when the Kenyan government declared a year ago that primary school education would be free through grade 8. Millions of new pupils showed up at neighborhood campuses, swelling enrollment from 5.9 million students to 7.3 million virtually overnight. Mr. Maruge, with his gray beard and weathered face, was among those in line.”

According to Robyn Dixon’s reporting for the Los Angeles Times, a year later, “As a young man, he was angered over his lack of education. He put those feelings away, but the thirst for education lay dormant most of his life. Now it has burst out, perhaps too late to keep up with the whirl of his belated ambitions: primary school, secondary school, university and a career in veterinary science.”

Oliver Litondo as Kimani Maruge in "The First Grader"

W: How did you design the proportion of Mau Mau flashback scenes to the proportion of the present-day, desire to learn kind of scenes?

To get that kind of balance is tricky in a film.  I wanted to put in that backstory because it was so important to the man that he was when he went to the school to learn to read, he wanted to understand his past, to move on.

I worked with an editor called Carol Littleton; she’d done films like “ET” and “The Big Chill,” and she’s a brilliant editor.  She always talks about the playability of a film; you go into a cinema, and the film has to play.  That you’ve got to sweep your audience with you to the end of the film.

It was something, from the very beginning, that I’m very conscious of, when I’m working on the script: it was, yes, a simple story about a man going back to school and being educated.  But also it had to propel forward with an energy.  So that was something – just the pacing of the film, how we put the flashbacks.  Each time there was a scene, it pushed on to the next.  So there was a momentum to the film; it always had pace to it.

As Mr. Lacey reported in 2004, having access to lessons and a great teacher is splendid.  But then to have that teacher plucked out from under you, like the first rug and hint at stability, was rough and short-sighted.  Mr. Chadwick mentioned an anecdote that Jane Obinchu, Mr. Maruge’s sole headmaster in the film, told him about how her students reacted to her having been away from that school, and aborting her trouble-making.

“Jane Obinchu was the one who told me about the riot at the end of the movie; that was something that wasn’t in the film’s original script, that Ann had written.  Jane said,’Oh did they tell you what had happened?  Let me tell you about what happened when I was thrown out of the school.’  And then she told me about these amazing children.  This stand, as their parents were welcoming the new headmaster for the school, the children closed the gates of the school, stood-up against them with rocks, not plastic rocks and bits like it is in my film. And they refused to open the gates to the school.  There was this big, huge riot.  The parents climbed over the gates of the school.  The police had to be called to break it all up,” Mr. Chadwick said.

He continues, “Yes, it feels extraordinary that kids rise up, against their parents.” That climax wasn’t in the original script.  He mentioned it because, that is something like from a Hollywood film, but it wasn’t.  I know, when people see that in the film, they’ll think gosh that’s a figment of a writer’s imagination.  But it’s absolutely true there.”

Click, if you’re hunger for the second half of this conversation with Justin.

Justin Chadwick harnesses child power

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27

May

“The First Grader” has inspiring, urgent hope for literacy, and Kenyan history

When education hits the hometown headlines, it’s usually due to bullying, disruptive student, or “non-essential,” but vital programs having been gutted.  There are still places where the zeal and hunger for knowledge understanding and growth come through like a natural force.

One new film, “The First Grader,” a drama from director Justin Chadwick (“The Other Boleyn Girl” and “Bleak House”), reminds us of that zeal and the kind of history or community oral memory that keeps it stoked.  This film is the extraordinary story of a man who seized his people’s first opportunity to learn to read right when his First World contemporaries would be reading hospice brochures.

Kimani Maruge (Oliver Litondo) in "The First Grader" (courtesy National Geographic Films)

In 2002 the Kenyan government invited all citizens to attend primary school for free.  This led to surprising and stymieing situation: according to the film, more than 200 children came in throngs to claim the school’s 50 seats.

One man showed up, not with his son in tow, nor his grandson, but himself and his zealous curiosity.  At age 84, Kimani N’gan’ga Maruge, who had served his country as a Mau Mau guerilla, was prepared to sit among children so he could learn to read.  “The First Grader” extols the power and promise of basic education, the essential literacy and people’s zeal for it.  Contrast this with the disappointing portion of American youths who, having taken free public education for granted, squander their opportunities to milk it to their curiosity’s fill.

Mr. Maruge without his classroom clothes (courtesy National Geographic Films)

This is being shown at Landark Theatre’s Edina Theatre for a week from May 27st.

The zealous reminder about the promise of education is powerful.  Mr. Maruge’s (Oliver Litondo) dual narrative, from, first off, his incredible personal history to, secondly, his equally winning pursuit of knowledge and access.  These topics of literacy and access are one half of the story’s message, vital for those, whose elders didn’t raise them within reach of books.  The other historical message, although dwarfed by the main plot, provides a lesson about the prices paid in Kenya’s fight for freedom, to lead itself.

My conversation with Justin Chadwick tells more details and insights about Mr. Maruge’s complex story and how he put it on-screen.

The Mau Mau soldiers, despite British colonial propaganda, zealously opposed Britain’s inhumane, violent tyranny.  This is a barely known slice of African and Kenyan history that is probably, largely omitted from American and British high school history texts.  In many ways, Mr. Maruge’s magnetism is so potent the hardest-to-watch parts of his whole history can nourish viewers. We are introduced to a piece of history – lost, stolen or strayed.

Chadwick’s film tells us that Maruge simply wanted to be able to read a letter, not just any.  But one from the government.  It apologized for the abuses and thanked him for his sacrifice and service to a sovereign Kenya, and told him of reparations.

Feel-good movies are simple yarns for simple people.  “The First Grader” is a mostly family-friendly and crowd-pleasing story.  Usually viewers only need to be open to the high-concept “seize the day” or “power of one” messages in order to appreciate them  These stories are basic tales that reiterate what your parents extolled until they became sick of you rolling your eyes.

It’s remarkable that Justin Chadwick defies this genre’s typical limitations: simplicity, and shallow, flat portrayals & narratives.  It’s a feel-good story that takes us back to “Lean on Me,” from 1989, “The Power of One,” from 1992, or “Dangerous Minds,” from 1995.

Very few films deal with mature, difficult historical topics with candor and without bias, especially with Africa; it’s misunderstood and tainted with Western stereotypes.  Mr. Chadwick defies the Hollywoodian routine of taking a black story and then identifying or conjuring a superior Anglo hero as the lead, even when that clashes with the historical record.  This happened in often: in “Glory,” from 1988, “The Power of One,” “Amistad,” from 1997, and other films.

Thank goodness, as Mr. Chadwick mentioned in our conversation, there’s humor in this movie to staple viewers’ butts to their seats.  Kenyan radio DJ Churchill has bits throughout where he gives a voice to the public’s opinion of Maruge and his situation.

That reminds me of New York-based comedian, Rachel Feinstein, who has a witty and hilarious bit, where she lovingly mocks her mom’s closet desire to take Michelle Pfeiffer’s place in Dangerous Minds:

My mom wants to be, like, one of those white women, in the movies, that saves a black school; like Michelle Pfeiffer, in “Dangerous Minds.”  I think that’s her dream.

Unfortunately YouTube doesn’t have this clip (nor do DailyMotion or Vimeo), but it is elsewhere – it’s well worth a click, and a chuckle, specifically at 00:36.

But “The First Grader” takes a risk: it introduces viewers to a history of British colonists and their arrogant barbarism toward the Natives.  The Mau Mau rebellion is probably a rare topic for American students, outside of high-level college classes.

It’s a portion of Kenyan and British colonial history that has been easily lost, stolen or strayed; that’s also the title of an incisive, but accessible documentary, “Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed,” which Bill Cosby made 40 years ago, in 1968, as a part of his doctoral program.  The film illustrated the slippery slope that can lead to forgotten, rarely comfortable, but undeniably vital slices of history that prove to be too tart for the majority to swallow without flailing.

A meager excerpt, a tease, from “Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed?”

What doesn’t work?  The people who fought against Mr. Maruge being a student had shallow arguments for expelling him from class.  “There isn’t enough room or money?!”  They are simple, hard-working people who can’t understand why an old man would push so hard to be a student.  It’s too bad that their arguments against his being allowed are narrow and shoddy.

“The First Grader” provides two takeaways, one for the feel good audience: no one is too old to be a student.   And another for those who already know this, and have brought someone to the theater; they’ll enjoy the subplot about Mr. Maruge’s backstory, and what it reveals about a vital, but well-hidden topic of African, Kenya, British and ultimately World history.

You’ll find more details, in my interview with the director, Justin Chadwick.  You’ll learn why yet another Anglo man made a movie about Africans, and the unbelievable Hollywoodian climactic riot scene wasn’t yet another one conjured by that Dream Factory.

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11

May

Behind-the-scenes with Sara McIntyre, non-Indian director of “Two Indians Talking,” about doing the right thing

Nathaniel Arcand alongside Sara McIntyre (courtesy Flickr)

I spoke, via Skype, with Canadian film-maker Sara McIntyre about her debut as a feature film director of “Two Indians Talking.”  The 30th Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival showed it twice.

As I wrote in my review, “‘Two Indians Talking’ gives us two young Native men, cousins, on their way to a meeting where they expect to have a bunch of Cree Indians join them, a dozen or maybe dozens.  But their partners don’t show.  So rather than watching a cadre of zealous activists prepare an ambitious protest – a stand – we watch Two Indians Talking about what this means.”

How hard or awkward was it for you to make a film about Natives when you’re an outsider?

You’re right; that was a particularly sensitive issue.  And I had to sort of get my head straight with the idea of me approaching this particular topic…  And I think the thing that gave me confidence is that I was invited.  The script was sent to me by a writer, who I had not met yet, although I certainly knew his name.  Andrew (Genaille) was a friend of a friend at the time.  And he heard that I was looking for feature scripts, and he started e-mailing me things.  And because he comes from the First Nations culture (the Canadian term for Natives or Indians), all of his stories come from that community.  …And this one just grabbed me; it was unlike anything I had read before; unlike anything I had seen before.  It totally drew me in, the story and the characters just caught my attention right away.

So the goofy thing is, he was sending me scripts, knowing that I was looking for something to direct, but it actually took me a couple of days to get up the courage to ask him if I could please direct this.

But the bigger issue was, my approach as a director was never to impose my idea of what the story is or who it’s about so what I did, and I think it’s the thing that allowed trust and doors to open, is that I went in asking to be shown, and I did this with the actors too.  I sat down with each of them and just had them tell me what their own personal experiences were, and how those related to the story.  And tell me what the script meant; I was never telling them was the story was about.  They were telling me what the story was about.

The cousins, Adam and Nathan, chew on the question of doing the right thing, as activists, quite a bit.

How different is the right thing for each cousin?  Since each of these cousins has a different or disparate idea of what the right thing is, to your mind, how different is that for each cousin?

Well that’s an interesting place to look, isn’t it?

(She takes time to consider.)

WW: Have I thrown you a curve ball?

SM: No, I like that you’re asking good questions; this’s fun!

SM: So the bottom-line is that they both decide to take the same action, so they’re in agreement on what the right thing is, but they come to it from very different places.  So the thing that fascinates me about each of their decisions is…  There’s so much complexity; we can’t just say, “oh Adam is doing it for this reason, and Nathan’s doing it for this reason.”

I think that Nathan shows up ready to go; he’s there.  No questions asked.  He’s gonna go through with it.  But when we look a little deeper, the reasons that he thinks he has are actually a little thin.

Like he’s making grand statements about this band or that band, but it turns out that he’s actually inaccurate about some of those statistics.  So he needs to get a little more solid in his thinking.

Adam’s journey – he’s full of theory, full of rhetoric, full of statistics and he’s really cerebral about the whole thing.  And he really needs to connect to the people, and the community, the reason that we do things like this.  And I think a big part of that journey happens in Nathan’s story about the little boy who doesn’t have underwear: where his mom says, “I can feed him or I can clothe him.

(There’s a scene where the cousins clash over whether someone’s mom abused them, or simply did the best she could with what little she had.  It was an allegory about the practical realities of activism vs. idealism.)

I think that’s where the shift starts for him.  He (Adam) really sees his cousin, who he has hasn’t taken very seriously, and he starts to really get him, that there’s something deeper going on here.

 

SM:  Now.  So I’m interested in your take on it.  Obviously you’ve done a lot of thinking about this.  What does it mean that Nathan only goes when he knows it’s gonna be successful?

WW: This is a new experience for me.  (Responding to a subject’s question.)

WW: He’s human.  When you think that you’re facing an overwhelming opposition, unless you figure that you have God or the gods on your side, you’re not gonna take it upon yourself to stand at the roadblock.  I’m not gonna fault Nathan for having chosen kind of an easy way out.  Death, or killing someone is a wonderfully easy topic to consider in drama.  But when you’re on the scene and you have to actually consider facing someone down who’s aiming a weapon at you…

SM: That’s a good point; I hadn’t thought about it that way.  And that’s why the film feels real.  A lot of people have said, “this feels personal;” “this feels real.”  And I think that’s because these guys don’t ever trivialize violence.

Ms. McIntyre spoke with Joseph Planta, for a Canadian podcast “On the Line;” they agreed in finding the educated cousin, Adam, obnoxious.

I have to pin you to a wall here, because, in your conversation with Mr. Planta, you both described Adam as obnoxious and full of himself… (I liked him.)

SM: What’s the question; do I still feel that way?

WW: Some part of him chafed against you.

SM: The first time I read it, the first impression I got was “this guy is irritating!”  He’s sort of pent up, and he’s angry.  He’s so tense that his humor is flat and he just sounds sort of abrasive.

…I imagine he’s the kind of guy whose just felt out of place no matter where he is.  Growing up on the reserve, with the community of people largely like Nathan, who had very strong opinions about things.  He probably really felt out of place.  And he was craving more information…

When Sara spoke again with Mr. Planta, she said that Justin Rain, who portrayed Adam, wasn’t her first choice.

How would the film have been different, for good or for ill, if Justin Rain hadn’t been the one to bring Adam to life?

Justin actually was the first person who caught my attention for this role.

So he showed up at a table reading; just a workshop.

(Ah; the truth)

There are so many different layers to it; sometimes I just tell the abbreviated version.

So he showed up at a script workshop that we did months before the audition process.  And he caught my attention, because he just is this character, on so many levels; I mean he really gets it.  And I discovered that he actually knew about the script maybe a year before I did.  So he was very familiar with it.  Then, what happened is, I was offered the opportunity to work with someone who has a lot of experience, and has a fanbase, and also is a very good actor, and was right for the part.  Completely different kind of energy than Justin.

(She refused to name him.)

His energy was a lot more calm and innocent and wide-eyed and he brings a very youthful, thoughtful – not youthful “naive” – but that wisdom that young people have: just straight forward and honest, and open.  And I could see the story going that way, playing against Nathaniel’s grittiness, and that’d be a really fun dynamic to direct.

So I told Justin, “I’ve been offered ‘this name.’”  And it works for the story too.  For me as a first-time director, having two pretty substantial actors in the film.  It felt like that’d be a pretty wise, strategic decision to make.

And Justin just said to me, “Oh, yeah.  You have to do that!

So Justin stepped out of the way.  And I went through my preparation process with this other actor in mind.  And then, honestly, two weeks before we were supposed to go to camera, the other actor had to pull out for a number of reasons.  And I called Justin.  And I honestly think it turned out for the best.”  So it had been Justin’s from the start.  A better known, more bankable actor had interrupted the process.

What’s your next project?

I haven’t yet found a script that lit me up the way this one did.  So I’m trying to meet with a lot of writers and just form relationships with people who’ve got stories.  I worked with writers for a number of years; I co-produced a script-writing workshop, here in Vancouver that was quite rigorous.   And I learned a lot about writing from that; and I learned a lot about writers.  The biggest thing I learned is that I’m not innately a screenwriter, which I think is a good thing to know.  (chuckles)

So I have a couple of stories, that’ve been very well outlined.  But I want to hand them over to screenwriters who can turn them into scripts.  So my focus is to meet writers, who either have work ready to be optioned, that I can get involved with, or who would like to take my stories and turn them into scripts.

But it feels a lot like chance, a lot like dating…

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738 days ago Short URL Comments

Analysis/Behind-the-Scenes/Film/foreign/independent/Q & A

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29

Apr

“White Irish Drinkers” provides a take on working-class Irish angst that’s smarter than usual

“White Irish Drinkers” is a neighborhood (Brooklyn) drama, from director and Brooklyn native John Gray.  It’s set in 1975 and about an ages-old clash between siblings, the “good” and the “bad,” in an abusive metropolitan working-class family.

Broadly, though, it’s about a tight circle of neighborhood family and friends, and their choices in life.  This circle reminds us of almost any South Boston or Irish Brooklyn movie, where the family shivers for fear their fisty and tipsy dad.

This plays at Minneapolis’ Lagoon Cinema for a week from April 29th.

Danny draws, paints to avoid neighborhood angst (courtesy Screen Media Films)

This talented, above average film-maker, Mr. Gray, uses stock, archetypical characters: the bruising dad who drinks at least half of his working class pay, the meek wife who stays because of her children, and those two children who fill little angel and devil roles: we have the sensitive, not understood artistic type vs. the back alley, incorrigible & petty criminal.  But how the film-maker uses these types, and adds layers, makes the difference.

But this takes a remarkable detour from the work-a-day people from 1993′s “Amongst Friends,” 1997′s “Good Will Hunting” and 2007′s “Gone Baby Gone.”  “White Irish Drinkers” is about choices (short-term and short-sighted one) and goals, and reconciling those.

The characters are drawn with more nuance and concern than usual for this genre: each of them is given more brush strokes and more layers of “realism” than we usually have in a gritty, urban, working-class, just scraping by story.  Dad actively shows weakness and warmth in the middle of the story, at just the moment where we expect the non-thinking hothead to choose a son for either a tongue lashing or a bashing.

One odd-ball Irish Drinker (courtesy Screen Media Films)

Instead after the boys’ dinner time carousing, he’s roused from his nap, and is reminded of a moment when one of them, aged 6 or 7, was at a hospital.  He’s sentimental, and it’s sincere.  The performance harkens to a different one in 1995′s “The Possession of Michael D” on TV.

Brian (Nick Thurston): the artist finds accidental love with a strong, ambitious woman, who isn’t as hard-skinned as she’d convinced herself she is.  Danny (Geoff Wigdor) is not a foregone screw-up.

There’s a vignette about the brothers’ bond that is conveyed by a series of tiny scenes where the boys are camping with a skimpy bed-sheet-like tent.  While Danny is free to beat on Brian, it wasn’t so as children.

Brian has a splendid, surprising and unconventional scene where a friend tells him that a pretty lass is eyeing him, but he’s timid.  So another friend seizes that moment and starts to show him up.  Brian makes the only natural move for him: he walks up to a steamed up window, and draws the woman’s image with his finger – in remarkable detail.  Slowly his artistry draws the drinkers’ attention, including her.  It’s an amazing introverts tactic for stealing the extrovert’s flirting thunder!  Upon finishing it the whole bar, roused from the banal, cheers his play.  You had us at the window steam drawing, even if the patrons’ enthusiasm was overwrought.

This is a witty, amusing story, which respects our intelligence.  A great yarn with refreshing layers and nuance!

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750 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

Analysis/Film/independent

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28

Feb

The Oscars stiffed “Winter’s Bone,” a fantastic young woman’s odyssey

This isn’t a surprise or a shock: the Academy Awards continually support those movies, which the masses want, so that must be why they exist – to praise those movies that satisfied the majority.

The New York Times, and a few other critically and incisively minded newspapers complain, every couple of years, about the lack of smart, personal movies that challenge us, but those clash masses, “Winter’s Bone.”

Jennifer Lawrence (middle) with her movie siblings

Movie-lovers, who wait patiently for those sort of experiences, and largely ignore the common and insipid ones (which most viewers pay for) and which Hollywood in-turn provides, find the situation morose, even maddening.

Even though the United States’ 310-million population is just over 51 percent female, and women have major money power, there are very few films made for or about strong women.  And fewer smart, engrossing stories about them.

“Winter’s Bone” is a superior film to “The King’s Speech,” which was splendid unto itself.  Still this’s the story of a very young woman who’s pushed by circumstances to contend with something well beyond her years.   And she does so, at her physical and mental peril with no social support system.  That beats the story of a middle-aged, spoiled aristocrat, whose father mercilessly bullied him.

At least as expected “Winter’s Bone” was recognized by the Film Independent Spirit awards with best supporting awards for Dale Dickey and John Hawkes’ subtle, menacing portrayals.  These came after Black Swan got the lavish that it needed.

“Winter’s Bone” demands more from the viewers, more of an investment than “The King’s Speech” does.  It’s more complex and subtle, has a more profound and far less understood social context, and has voice that’s at least a little more personal.

810 days ago Short URL Comments

Analysis/criticism/Essay/feminist/Film/independent

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14

Jan

What do “10,000 Black Men Named George” have to do with Martin L King?

There’s a film about a pivotal labor activist, and with a peculiar title, that tells a sad story within its title, “10,000 Black Men Named George.” Thousands of “nameless” African American men worked as porters on the railroads.  The man was Asa Philip Randolph, although his first name is rarely spelled out.

This is Martin Luther King’s weekend.  His birthday is on Jan. 15th, while we await Monday to celebrate his profound legacy.  Next to the most publicized personalities ­of January and Black History Month – Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Thurgood Marshall, Langston Hughes and William E. B. Du Bois –  Mr. Randolph might be the least known.

It’s remarkable that the most palatable icon, Martin L. King, has not yet had a biopic made about him.  In 1992 Spike Lee gave us “Malcolm X.” Ten years later, Julie Dash gave us “The Rosa Parks Story” with Angela Bassett for cable.  And then, also in 2002, Robert Townsend, brought Showtime TV and us A. Philip Randolph (portrayed by André Braugher) and the porters’ story of toiling to improve Sleeping Car Porters’ work lives.  “10,000 Black Men” potently sheds light on a little known portion of American labor relations, at the crossroad of African-American history.

The film’s first scene shows how their work might go, illustrating a common sort of clash with a client: when a porter sees a woman steal and stow Pullman towels into her luggage, he diplomatically reminds her not to do that.  He tells her that the porters are charged for items, that end up missing.  “Stunned,” she insists on telling his boss, the conductor, of this daring, uppity offense.  When the conductor arrives, the porter stands there and take the situation.

While Rev. King deserves our reverence, he’s one of a small cadre of comet-bright icons – out of the 100s and 1,000s who deserve as much recognition. It’s an irony that so many activists in that list, above, had no films made in their names, save for Justice Marshall with CBS’ “Separate But Equal” in 1991.  One worthy question is “why so few the movies have been made about even that set of almost 10?”

Pullman Porter Helping Woman (courtesy Creative Commons)

“10,000 Black Men” is a delight to watch, sneaking history lessons into a great story.  The under-recognized André Braugher’s portrayal of Randolph is key.  Late in the film there are pivotal scenes that highlight loyalty and betrayal.  One climactic scene has a kindly elder porter, zealous about the movement, found out as a Judas, a double-agent.  And then we see the hardship that Mrs. Randolph, an entrepreneur, endures when protests against on her husband force her to shutter her salon.

According to an excerpt of “Marching Together,” from google books, “the porter [union] election results forced the Pullman Company to recognize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters as the porters’ and maids’ legitimate representative.  More than two years passed before contract negotiations were completed,” 12 years to the day after they began their struggle.

In the 1920s and 1930s the porters were paid such meager respect that the patrons and Pullman Company didn’t care what the porters’ mothers had named them.  It was easier to call “them” George, after George Pullman, the company’s founder.  According to Rising from the Rails, a website that honors the porters, “They were hired…because they epitomized Pullman’s vision of safe, reliable, and invisible servants.”

Taking a way-back look at a movie reminds us of films that could be memorable and give us something, if we take the time for them.  While some movies are “always” on cable TV, these aren’t.

855 days ago Short URL Comments

African-American/Analysis/Film/media criticism/national politics

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