Well it has been a weird few weeks. What with Sophie dropping out, even her few close friends at College haven't heard from her. Then we had the fires. Sara Sugarman had her home burnt down, and Frank Pierson was evacuated. For the next couple of days LA was a furnace and the skies were diffuse and the sun and moon bright red. It was an odd experience.
All not so good back in UK. Julia has been looking after the roof replacement. Well the scaffolding firm finally arrived and put up the scaffolding - only for one of the neighbours to go ballistic, as Julia forgot to warn them. Well she was really upset, popped round to say sorry, but still the guy is being awkward. I think its so sad that people in cities become so unforgiving. Poor Julia was so upset. Its moments like this when I feel so impotent and wish I was back in London to help and look after Julia.
To be honest I am finding the 'student mentality' and 'outlook' at the AFI infuriating. Time mangement - its simple courtesy. Three times this last Saturday I was kept waiting around each time for over 30 minutes, its beyond rude.
Sunday, 28 October 2007
Classes, "Old Boy" and the films Cinematographer
Robe Spera - more Meisner work - getting more uncomfortable and more exciting. Extra lesson last Saturday - homework we were all asked to bring in a scene to direct in class. So I used a moment from Alone Together - it was surprisingly uncomfortable to direct in front of your peers - but I soon got into it and it was a great learning experience. Lots came out - my blocking wasn't risky enough for the moment chosen - be more bold! Also when it starts to work I tend to talk too much and can loose the moment and confuse the actors. So good lessons for She Cried Alive.
Rob was also saying that as a Director if you have the balls to tell the truth and open up then you have the balls to be a leader.
If you are having problems on set call the person on it in a loving and truthful way and also ask for their help.
Seduction is composed of three moments:
- Interest
- Availability
- Sharing a deep dark secret
Actions are signs.
The way a character treats the obstacle is character.
Remember its whats underneat that is important as in real life people get shot for the smallest of insults - it's what we make it mean is whats at stake.
We are looking for performaces which are authentic, spontaneous and original
Little things hurt your feelings
Jim McBride - we started looking at Cycle 1 shoots and talking about them in class.
Bill Dill - more lessons from Cycle 1. Think the key moment this time round was: you have to live with the consequences of the films you make. Mat and Valentina shot Apt 209 which was about madness and ended with the the murder of a man. It was cool and hip, beautifully shot - but the murder was unmotivated and murder is a big issue its not cool. So scarry to see such 'entertaining' images - how will this affect an audience and can you live with the consequnces.
Other comments - diagonals violent, horizontals peaceful - you compare the buddhist symbol with the nazi symbol. What medium will most people watch this film in? Then construct the image for that size.
Finally on Friday afternoon watched 'Old Boy'. Afterwards, through Christine No (Producer) acting as an interpreter Jeong-hun Jeong the Cinematographer held a Q&A. his influences on teh film were seven and Amores Peros. The fight sequence in the hallway was shot 17 times over 2 days - they used teh last take, as the Director wanted the actor to look exhausted - afterwards he was annoyed with the Director! The Octopus sequence was shot 5 times as they wanted the Octopus to be alive and the tentacles movimng when he ate it, in the first 4 takes the octopae died too quickly! The Production Designer on the film, Seong-hie Ryu, studied at the AFI. The film went through a bleach by-pass. Christine would translate a statement we would be puzzled and then she would say it was a joke! Fantastic afternoon......funny thing Jeong last year was thinking of applying to the AFI.
Pre-Production - 'She Cried Alive'
Well its been a turbulent week. We were meant to cast over the weekend but the SAG Conservatory Office has been overwhelmed and no phone calls were made - so that stopped that plan.
Next casting was Monday evening 4-7. At 2.30 that afternoon no actors had been called - SAG quickly got into action and we started to see a trickle of people - this fed into Tuesday and Wednesday. Set an additional casting for Thursday as male leads had been sparse. In the end Monika and Karl in the SAG Office did a good job at mustering talent.
Locations has been a pain. We were set to use DWP, then it looked as though it had dropped out only after a lot of angst it was back on again - communication problem there, but now all rectified. Its a great location and exceeds my expectations. Finding a bar and strip club has again been difficult. Cheetahs was on the table then dropped off as did a couple of other places. We are now using a Mexican club in Los Feliz - extraordinary place, sleazy and effective. Needs some set decoration, ie stripper pole but definitely workable and full of character. So La Monde is on the case.
Still looking for two appartments - Steve's and Abby's - so its now Sunday evening, 5 days left and we need a solution.
OK what else. Fanshen has been approaching breast cancer centres and UCLA Medical has been amazingly supportive. Also spoke to a wonderful producer/director called Susan Cohen who was on teh Women in Film course at the AFI and has shot a film on a similar theme. She has introduced me to a source where we can borrow some prosthetics. It looks as though we have a lead on a survivor who is interested in helping us out - would be amazing at it would add the required authenticity to pull teh film off and make it a touching piece which would really have an impact. Keep your fingers crossed.
So casting is now finished and I am so surprised - we will be using Fanshen and John from bootcamp! Its great they have a distinct look which works for the film. It hasn't been easy but it will work well. Met some great actors and some less well developped so its been a useful exercise.
Still some concerns over production design, balancing the budget etc.
Jennifer our makeup artist has also been a star. She is looking in to how we can pull off the revelation using prosthetics and makeup - its not easy but may act as a last resort - I feel that the emotional impact will be a lot less.
Days to go. Oh a funny one, Sophie told me she was 26 - I just found out she is actually 23 - really odd as most women want to say they are younger than they actually are. Nobody has heard from her which is a shame.
Jeff (Cin) hit by bird shit - lucky guy lets hope the luck feeds into the film!
Jeff is a little less lucky when it comes to location scouting as he is generally asked to be the 'actor' of the moment - here he clocks out an Abby moment!
Next casting was Monday evening 4-7. At 2.30 that afternoon no actors had been called - SAG quickly got into action and we started to see a trickle of people - this fed into Tuesday and Wednesday. Set an additional casting for Thursday as male leads had been sparse. In the end Monika and Karl in the SAG Office did a good job at mustering talent.
Locations has been a pain. We were set to use DWP, then it looked as though it had dropped out only after a lot of angst it was back on again - communication problem there, but now all rectified. Its a great location and exceeds my expectations. Finding a bar and strip club has again been difficult. Cheetahs was on the table then dropped off as did a couple of other places. We are now using a Mexican club in Los Feliz - extraordinary place, sleazy and effective. Needs some set decoration, ie stripper pole but definitely workable and full of character. So La Monde is on the case.
Still looking for two appartments - Steve's and Abby's - so its now Sunday evening, 5 days left and we need a solution.
OK what else. Fanshen has been approaching breast cancer centres and UCLA Medical has been amazingly supportive. Also spoke to a wonderful producer/director called Susan Cohen who was on teh Women in Film course at the AFI and has shot a film on a similar theme. She has introduced me to a source where we can borrow some prosthetics. It looks as though we have a lead on a survivor who is interested in helping us out - would be amazing at it would add the required authenticity to pull teh film off and make it a touching piece which would really have an impact. Keep your fingers crossed.
So casting is now finished and I am so surprised - we will be using Fanshen and John from bootcamp! Its great they have a distinct look which works for the film. It hasn't been easy but it will work well. Met some great actors and some less well developped so its been a useful exercise.
Still some concerns over production design, balancing the budget etc.
Jennifer our makeup artist has also been a star. She is looking in to how we can pull off the revelation using prosthetics and makeup - its not easy but may act as a last resort - I feel that the emotional impact will be a lot less.
Days to go. Oh a funny one, Sophie told me she was 26 - I just found out she is actually 23 - really odd as most women want to say they are younger than they actually are. Nobody has heard from her which is a shame.
Jeff (Cin) hit by bird shit - lucky guy lets hope the luck feeds into the film!
Jeff is a little less lucky when it comes to location scouting as he is generally asked to be the 'actor' of the moment - here he clocks out an Abby moment!
Thursday, 25 October 2007
The Kite Runner
Harold Lloyd Seminar - screening of the 'Kite Runner' In attendance were:
Marc Forster - Director
Khaled Hosseini - Writer
Khalid Abdalla - Actor
Homayon Ershadi - Actor
The film was very moving - shot in Kashgar - some extraordinary scenes with the Taliban. Loved it.
Everyone was so surprised during the Q&A when Khalid Abdalla opened his mout - absolute pucker English accent - he played an American in the film!
Marc Forster said the key thing was to work from the heart. Khalid Hosseini was impressed with Marc Forster as he wanted to keep the film truthful and insisted on using the native language of Dara. This attention to detail was important - instead of the usual Hollywood thing of having more attention to where the lightbulb goes rather than the accent.
Had a lovely conversation with Khaled Hosseini after the Q&A - we talked about Kabul and how it has changed since I was there in 1998 with most of the city being rebuilt but unfortunately returning to anarchy once again. Also chatted with Khalid and the extraordinary films he has worked on to date - he was also in United 931 with Paul Greengrass.
In the evnening Jim Hosney showed La Jetee and Vertigo. La Jetee was amazing a film composed of stills except for one shot when a woman is blinking. It was the inspiration for 12 Monkeys along with Vertigo.
Tuesday, 23 October 2007
Nominated for a British Independent Film Award!
Finally able to say what's happened - heard end of last week that "What Does Your Daddy Do?" has been nominated for a British Independent Film Award for best British Short Film! I am so pleased and excited. Congratulations to the whole team.....
......in particular......
......... Andy Freedman for being stupid enough to put his own money into the project and then allowing me to work form his office as we sent the film out...
.......Jon Sidgwick for putting his heart into film and for also tirelessly being at every screening possible be it Venice or Rushes or Raindance he was there......
.........Aidan and Noise for not making it noise but for making it sound amazing....
........Migs for a phenomenal soundtrack which touches......
........Duncan for his generosity, his eyes and his light.....
..........John Wilson for his kindness and support.....
........Haresh for always being there to capture the best sound possible........
.......Katie for putting the production puzzle together....
........Bennet for living in Newham!......
.......VTR and Tom for the supprt and kindness.......
......Maurice for his generous performance......
.....Hutch for the vibes.......
......Helen for her smile.......
......Pete Hotchkiss and his crew for keeping the world informed.....
........Oli for his enthusiasm.......
.......Alistair for his energy.......
......Rufus for that sparkle..........
........Kirsty and Bex for the transfers, copies and the pain.....
.....Chris Calitz for caring......
.........Soren for his help............
........for all the crew without whom it would have never happened......
......and last but not least my wife Julia for living, breathing the film for the last two years, be it handling the post production, making sure we got fed on set, and tirelessly sending our the film to festival after festival. Thank you it worked. I love you.....
........I can't believe this has happened.......
....oh my God, I am now worried I have forgotten someone crucial, sorry if I haven't mentioned you directly, it;s late here in LA.....
......thank you all!!!!!!!! Congratulations each and every one of you. Take care.
Julia went along to the press announcement with Jon Sidgwick.
Press Release:
Nominations and Jury Announced for the
10th Annual British Independent Film Awards
Tuesday 23 October at Haymarket Hotel
Supported by The UK Film Council
Founded by Raindance
The nominations and jury members for the tenth annual British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs) were announced today, Tuesday 23 October at the Haymarket Hotel in London.
In the 10th anniversary year of the BIFAs, the nominations reflect the wealth of both new and established on and off screen talent and also demonstrating a strong multicultural presence.
Elliot Grove, founder of Raindance and the British Independent Film Awards says: “As BIFA reaches its tenth year it is my hope that British filmmakers, whose work these Awards were set up to honour, continue to entertain, astound, delight and inspire and take their rightful place at the forefront of international independent cinema.”
Anton Corbijin’s Control leads with ten nominations, And When Did You Last See Your Father? receives seven nominations, Hallam Foe follows with six, followed by Eastern Promises (five nominations), Notes on a Scandal (four) and Garbage Warrior (three). Other films to receive multiple nominations include Brick Lane, Black Gold, It’s A Free World, Sunshine, Exhibit A and 28 Weeks Later.
First time BIFA actor nominees include Anne Hathaway, Sam Riley, Kierston Wareing, Sophia Myles, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Cillian Murphy, Imogen Poots, Matthew Beard, Bradley Cole, Armin Muehler Stahl and 2004 jury member Cate Blanchett. This year sees repeat nominations for actors Jamie Bell, Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent, Samantha Morton and Toby Kebbell.
The BIFA pre-selection committee viewed more than 150 films, out of which they selected the nominations with a handful of titles dominating most categories.
BIFA Directors, Johanna von Fischer & Tessa Collinson say: “We are delighted to announce the BIFA nominees and jury for 2007 and proud that both represent a wide range of established filmmakers and actors. For the 10th year, the BIFA Nominations throw the spotlight on the UK’s wealth of new emerging talent. We are also thrilled to be honouring two very different and special British acting talents and careers with our special awards: The Richard Harris Award and The Variety UK Award. All these ingredients promise to make our 10th anniversary a celebration of British film and filmmakers to remember.”
BIFA are delighted to announce Ray Winstone as the recipient of The Richard Harris Award for Outstanding contribution by an Actor. Winstone, who is a three time BIFA nominee, won Best Actor for Nil by Mouth at the very first Awards in 1998. Also this year, The Variety UK Award honours Daniel Craig for his contribution to bringing the international spotlight to the British film industry. Craig has also been nominated at BIFA three times and won Best Actor for his role in Some Voices.
BIFA’s new jury is comprised of professionals and talents from across the British film industry including: actresses Hayley Atwell, Archie Panjabi and Kathy Burke, actors Tony Curran, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Mathew Macfadyan, directors Annie Griffin, Menhaj Huda, Neil Marshall and Peter Webber, Musician Nitin Sawhney, LFF Artistic Director Sandra Hebron, producer Mark Herbert, cinematographer Brian Tufano and distributor Will Clarke.
The much anticipated 10th awards ceremony will take place on Wednesday 28 November 2007 at the Roundhouse in London and will be hosted by James Nesbitt.
BEST BRITISH INDEPENDENT FILM
And When Did You Last See Your Father?
Control
Eastern Promises
Hallam Foe
Notes on a Scandal
BEST ACTRESS
Anne Hathaway - Becoming Jane
Tannishtha Chatterjee - Brick Lane
Sophia Myles - Hallam Foe
Kierston Wareing - It's A Free World...
Judi Dench - Notes on a Scandal
BEST ACTOR
Jim Broadbent - And When Did You Last See Your Father?
Sam Riley - Control
Viggo Mortensen - Eastern Promises
Jamie Bell - Hallam Foe
Cilian Murphy - Sunshine
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR/ACTRESS
Colin Firth - And When Did You Last See Your Father?
Samantha Morton - Control
Toby Kebbell - Control
Armin Muehler Stahl - Eastern Promises
Cate Blanchett - Notes on a Scandal
MOST PROMISING NEWCOMER
Imogen Poots - 28 Weeks Later
Matthew Beard - And When Did You Last See Your Father?
Sam Riley - Control
Bradley Cole - Exhibit A
Kierston Wareing - It's A Free World...
BEST SCREENPLAY
David Nicholls - And When Did You Last See Your Father?
Matt Greenhalgh - Control
Steven Knight - Eastern Promises
David Mackenzie & Ed Whitmore - Hallam Foe
Patrick Marber - Notes on a Scandal
BEST DIRECTOR
Anand Tucker - And When Did You Last See Your Father?
Sarah Gavron - Brick Lane
Anton Corbijn - Control
David Cronenberg - Eastern Promises
David Mackenzie - Hallam Foe
BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN PRODUCTION
Black Gold
Control
Exhibit A
Extraordinary Rendition
Garbage Warrior
THE DOUGLAS HICKOX AWARD [BEST DEBUT DIRECTOR]
Marc Francis & Nick Francis - Black Gold
Anton Corbijn - Control
Oliver Hodge - Garbage Warrior
David Schwimmer - Run, Fat Boy, Run
Steve Hudson - True North
BEST DOCUMENTARY
Black Gold
Deep Water
Garbage Warrior
In the Shadow of the Moon
Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten
BEST TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT
Enrique Chediak - Cinematography - 28 Weeks Later
TBC - Editing - And When Did You Last See Your Father?
TBC - Cinematography - Control
TBC - Music - Hallam Foe
Mark Tildesley - Production design - Sunshine
BEST BRITISH SHORT
A Bout de Truffe - The Truffle Hunter
Cherries
Dog Altogether
Girls, The
What Does Your Daddy Do?
BEST FOREIGN INDEPENDENT FEATURE
Black Book
La Vie en Rose
Lives of Others, The
Once
Tell No One
THE RAINDANCE AWARD
Exhibit A
The Inheritance
Tovarisch: I Am Not Dead
SPECIAL AWARDS
THE RICHARD HARRIS AWARD
Ray Winstone
SPECIAL JURY PRIZE
To be announced at the Awards on Wedensday 28 November
THE VARIETY AWARD
Daniel Craig
Proud supporters and patrons of BIFA include Tilda Swinton, Ray Winstone, Mike Figgis, Tom Hollander, Adrian Lester, Ken Loach, Ewan McGregor, Samantha Morton, Bill Nighy, Trudie Styler, Meera Syal and Michael Winterbottom.
For further press information, please contact Elizabeth Benjamin or Keeley Naylor at Emfoundation: elizabeth@emfoundation.com / keeley@emfoundation.com / 020 7247 4171
For further information on BIFA, please go to www.bifa.org.uk
NOTES TO EDITORS
ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA 2007
A film will be eligible for an Award if:
* it is intended for theatrical release, AND has had a public screening to a paying audience either on general release in the UK OR has screened at a British-based film festival between 1 December 2006 and 30 November 2007
* it is not solely funded by studio sources OR has a budget of £8M ($16M) or less
* it has been produced or majority co-produced by a British company OR is in receipt of at least 51% of its budget from a British source or sources OR it qualifies as a British Film under the DCMS guidelines AND includes sufficient creative elements from the UK
* BIFA also consider foreign independent films for the Best Foreign Independent Film category. Foreign films must have a British theatrical release during the eligibility period stated above
* Films that have been entered previously are not eligible. Re-issues of previously released films are not eligible
All films submitted for consideration will be viewed by the Advisory Committee with the help of a nominated screening panel. The Advisory Committee will then decide the nominations by ballot.
All nominated films will be viewed by the Jury. The winners will be decided by a secret ballot see above).
For more information on BIFA rules please go to www.bifa.org.uk
AWARDS AND SPONSORS
Best British Independent Film
Best Director sponsored by The Creative Partnership
Best Actor
Best Actress sponsored by MAC
Best Supporting Actor / Actress sponsored by Tiscali
Most Promising Newcomer (on-screen) sponsored by Diesel
Best Screenplay sponsored by BBC Films
Best Foreign Independent Film
The Douglas Hickox Award (Best Debut Director) sponsored by Pathé
Best British Documentary
Best Technical Achievement sponsored by Skillset
Best Achievement in Production
Best British Short sponsored by Canon
The Raindance Award
The Variety UK Film Achievement Award
The Richard Harris Award (Outstanding Contribution to British Film by an Actor) sponsored by Buena Vista International
The Special Jury Prize sponsored by the UK Film Council
......in particular......
......... Andy Freedman for being stupid enough to put his own money into the project and then allowing me to work form his office as we sent the film out...
.......Jon Sidgwick for putting his heart into film and for also tirelessly being at every screening possible be it Venice or Rushes or Raindance he was there......
.........Aidan and Noise for not making it noise but for making it sound amazing....
........Migs for a phenomenal soundtrack which touches......
........Duncan for his generosity, his eyes and his light.....
..........John Wilson for his kindness and support.....
........Haresh for always being there to capture the best sound possible........
.......Katie for putting the production puzzle together....
........Bennet for living in Newham!......
.......VTR and Tom for the supprt and kindness.......
......Maurice for his generous performance......
.....Hutch for the vibes.......
......Helen for her smile.......
......Pete Hotchkiss and his crew for keeping the world informed.....
........Oli for his enthusiasm.......
.......Alistair for his energy.......
......Rufus for that sparkle..........
........Kirsty and Bex for the transfers, copies and the pain.....
.....Chris Calitz for caring......
.........Soren for his help............
........for all the crew without whom it would have never happened......
......and last but not least my wife Julia for living, breathing the film for the last two years, be it handling the post production, making sure we got fed on set, and tirelessly sending our the film to festival after festival. Thank you it worked. I love you.....
........I can't believe this has happened.......
....oh my God, I am now worried I have forgotten someone crucial, sorry if I haven't mentioned you directly, it;s late here in LA.....
......thank you all!!!!!!!! Congratulations each and every one of you. Take care.
Julia went along to the press announcement with Jon Sidgwick.
Press Release:
Nominations and Jury Announced for the
10th Annual British Independent Film Awards
Tuesday 23 October at Haymarket Hotel
Supported by The UK Film Council
Founded by Raindance
The nominations and jury members for the tenth annual British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs) were announced today, Tuesday 23 October at the Haymarket Hotel in London.
In the 10th anniversary year of the BIFAs, the nominations reflect the wealth of both new and established on and off screen talent and also demonstrating a strong multicultural presence.
Elliot Grove, founder of Raindance and the British Independent Film Awards says: “As BIFA reaches its tenth year it is my hope that British filmmakers, whose work these Awards were set up to honour, continue to entertain, astound, delight and inspire and take their rightful place at the forefront of international independent cinema.”
Anton Corbijin’s Control leads with ten nominations, And When Did You Last See Your Father? receives seven nominations, Hallam Foe follows with six, followed by Eastern Promises (five nominations), Notes on a Scandal (four) and Garbage Warrior (three). Other films to receive multiple nominations include Brick Lane, Black Gold, It’s A Free World, Sunshine, Exhibit A and 28 Weeks Later.
First time BIFA actor nominees include Anne Hathaway, Sam Riley, Kierston Wareing, Sophia Myles, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Cillian Murphy, Imogen Poots, Matthew Beard, Bradley Cole, Armin Muehler Stahl and 2004 jury member Cate Blanchett. This year sees repeat nominations for actors Jamie Bell, Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent, Samantha Morton and Toby Kebbell.
The BIFA pre-selection committee viewed more than 150 films, out of which they selected the nominations with a handful of titles dominating most categories.
BIFA Directors, Johanna von Fischer & Tessa Collinson say: “We are delighted to announce the BIFA nominees and jury for 2007 and proud that both represent a wide range of established filmmakers and actors. For the 10th year, the BIFA Nominations throw the spotlight on the UK’s wealth of new emerging talent. We are also thrilled to be honouring two very different and special British acting talents and careers with our special awards: The Richard Harris Award and The Variety UK Award. All these ingredients promise to make our 10th anniversary a celebration of British film and filmmakers to remember.”
BIFA are delighted to announce Ray Winstone as the recipient of The Richard Harris Award for Outstanding contribution by an Actor. Winstone, who is a three time BIFA nominee, won Best Actor for Nil by Mouth at the very first Awards in 1998. Also this year, The Variety UK Award honours Daniel Craig for his contribution to bringing the international spotlight to the British film industry. Craig has also been nominated at BIFA three times and won Best Actor for his role in Some Voices.
BIFA’s new jury is comprised of professionals and talents from across the British film industry including: actresses Hayley Atwell, Archie Panjabi and Kathy Burke, actors Tony Curran, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Mathew Macfadyan, directors Annie Griffin, Menhaj Huda, Neil Marshall and Peter Webber, Musician Nitin Sawhney, LFF Artistic Director Sandra Hebron, producer Mark Herbert, cinematographer Brian Tufano and distributor Will Clarke.
The much anticipated 10th awards ceremony will take place on Wednesday 28 November 2007 at the Roundhouse in London and will be hosted by James Nesbitt.
BEST BRITISH INDEPENDENT FILM
And When Did You Last See Your Father?
Control
Eastern Promises
Hallam Foe
Notes on a Scandal
BEST ACTRESS
Anne Hathaway - Becoming Jane
Tannishtha Chatterjee - Brick Lane
Sophia Myles - Hallam Foe
Kierston Wareing - It's A Free World...
Judi Dench - Notes on a Scandal
BEST ACTOR
Jim Broadbent - And When Did You Last See Your Father?
Sam Riley - Control
Viggo Mortensen - Eastern Promises
Jamie Bell - Hallam Foe
Cilian Murphy - Sunshine
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR/ACTRESS
Colin Firth - And When Did You Last See Your Father?
Samantha Morton - Control
Toby Kebbell - Control
Armin Muehler Stahl - Eastern Promises
Cate Blanchett - Notes on a Scandal
MOST PROMISING NEWCOMER
Imogen Poots - 28 Weeks Later
Matthew Beard - And When Did You Last See Your Father?
Sam Riley - Control
Bradley Cole - Exhibit A
Kierston Wareing - It's A Free World...
BEST SCREENPLAY
David Nicholls - And When Did You Last See Your Father?
Matt Greenhalgh - Control
Steven Knight - Eastern Promises
David Mackenzie & Ed Whitmore - Hallam Foe
Patrick Marber - Notes on a Scandal
BEST DIRECTOR
Anand Tucker - And When Did You Last See Your Father?
Sarah Gavron - Brick Lane
Anton Corbijn - Control
David Cronenberg - Eastern Promises
David Mackenzie - Hallam Foe
BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN PRODUCTION
Black Gold
Control
Exhibit A
Extraordinary Rendition
Garbage Warrior
THE DOUGLAS HICKOX AWARD [BEST DEBUT DIRECTOR]
Marc Francis & Nick Francis - Black Gold
Anton Corbijn - Control
Oliver Hodge - Garbage Warrior
David Schwimmer - Run, Fat Boy, Run
Steve Hudson - True North
BEST DOCUMENTARY
Black Gold
Deep Water
Garbage Warrior
In the Shadow of the Moon
Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten
BEST TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT
Enrique Chediak - Cinematography - 28 Weeks Later
TBC - Editing - And When Did You Last See Your Father?
TBC - Cinematography - Control
TBC - Music - Hallam Foe
Mark Tildesley - Production design - Sunshine
BEST BRITISH SHORT
A Bout de Truffe - The Truffle Hunter
Cherries
Dog Altogether
Girls, The
What Does Your Daddy Do?
BEST FOREIGN INDEPENDENT FEATURE
Black Book
La Vie en Rose
Lives of Others, The
Once
Tell No One
THE RAINDANCE AWARD
Exhibit A
The Inheritance
Tovarisch: I Am Not Dead
SPECIAL AWARDS
THE RICHARD HARRIS AWARD
Ray Winstone
SPECIAL JURY PRIZE
To be announced at the Awards on Wedensday 28 November
THE VARIETY AWARD
Daniel Craig
Proud supporters and patrons of BIFA include Tilda Swinton, Ray Winstone, Mike Figgis, Tom Hollander, Adrian Lester, Ken Loach, Ewan McGregor, Samantha Morton, Bill Nighy, Trudie Styler, Meera Syal and Michael Winterbottom.
For further press information, please contact Elizabeth Benjamin or Keeley Naylor at Emfoundation: elizabeth@emfoundation.com / keeley@emfoundation.com / 020 7247 4171
For further information on BIFA, please go to www.bifa.org.uk
NOTES TO EDITORS
ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA 2007
A film will be eligible for an Award if:
* it is intended for theatrical release, AND has had a public screening to a paying audience either on general release in the UK OR has screened at a British-based film festival between 1 December 2006 and 30 November 2007
* it is not solely funded by studio sources OR has a budget of £8M ($16M) or less
* it has been produced or majority co-produced by a British company OR is in receipt of at least 51% of its budget from a British source or sources OR it qualifies as a British Film under the DCMS guidelines AND includes sufficient creative elements from the UK
* BIFA also consider foreign independent films for the Best Foreign Independent Film category. Foreign films must have a British theatrical release during the eligibility period stated above
* Films that have been entered previously are not eligible. Re-issues of previously released films are not eligible
All films submitted for consideration will be viewed by the Advisory Committee with the help of a nominated screening panel. The Advisory Committee will then decide the nominations by ballot.
All nominated films will be viewed by the Jury. The winners will be decided by a secret ballot see above).
For more information on BIFA rules please go to www.bifa.org.uk
AWARDS AND SPONSORS
Best British Independent Film
Best Director sponsored by The Creative Partnership
Best Actor
Best Actress sponsored by MAC
Best Supporting Actor / Actress sponsored by Tiscali
Most Promising Newcomer (on-screen) sponsored by Diesel
Best Screenplay sponsored by BBC Films
Best Foreign Independent Film
The Douglas Hickox Award (Best Debut Director) sponsored by Pathé
Best British Documentary
Best Technical Achievement sponsored by Skillset
Best Achievement in Production
Best British Short sponsored by Canon
The Raindance Award
The Variety UK Film Achievement Award
The Richard Harris Award (Outstanding Contribution to British Film by an Actor) sponsored by Buena Vista International
The Special Jury Prize sponsored by the UK Film Council
Backside of Hollywood and a concrete river for a concrete city....
Sunday headed off for a hike up to the Holywood sign - was great to be out and clear my head. Great views across LA from the top. I really love the opportunity to be outside in the countryside - I really seem to find some peace and tranquility. Breakfast in an Englis Tea shop style diner in Hollwoodland.
Back home to avoid the mid-day heat. Then in the afternoon walked down the Hollywood River. Very unnerving at first - this immense swathe of concrete - felt as though you could be mugged at every turn. But soon saw a number of other walkers. The 'river' bottom has grown into a wild nature sanctury as trees and shrubs have grown up and now attract homes for a variety of bird life. At the end of the day its one ugly eyesore!
Back home to avoid the mid-day heat. Then in the afternoon walked down the Hollywood River. Very unnerving at first - this immense swathe of concrete - felt as though you could be mugged at every turn. But soon saw a number of other walkers. The 'river' bottom has grown into a wild nature sanctury as trees and shrubs have grown up and now attract homes for a variety of bird life. At the end of the day its one ugly eyesore!
Monday, 22 October 2007
Class, Will Fyfe and the backside of Hollywood
Diappointing Saturday as the SAG Conservatory did not call any actors for our proposed weekend castings. So had to cancel the arrangement.
It was Jorg's birthday on Saturday - so called him up to wish him many happy returns for the day. Felt sad as I couldn't be there with the whole family to celebrate. Hopefull next year. Also called Mum who had Etta over for the weekend. Was lovely to speak to them both. Mum is excited about her house sale and move - so fingers crossed there.
In afternoon met up with La Monde and introduced her to Fanshen.
Evening supper with Will Fyfe. Great to see him after so long. Good evening tucking into Alaskan Crab and gasing about old times, life in Asia etc. You just can't beat karaoke in Phenom Phen and bumping into the Khymer Rouge on route to Angko Watt!! He is still working for FIMAT in Hong Kong though he commutes back to his wife in Thailand most wekends.
It was Jorg's birthday on Saturday - so called him up to wish him many happy returns for the day. Felt sad as I couldn't be there with the whole family to celebrate. Hopefull next year. Also called Mum who had Etta over for the weekend. Was lovely to speak to them both. Mum is excited about her house sale and move - so fingers crossed there.
In afternoon met up with La Monde and introduced her to Fanshen.
Evening supper with Will Fyfe. Great to see him after so long. Good evening tucking into Alaskan Crab and gasing about old times, life in Asia etc. You just can't beat karaoke in Phenom Phen and bumping into the Khymer Rouge on route to Angko Watt!! He is still working for FIMAT in Hong Kong though he commutes back to his wife in Thailand most wekends.
Narrative Workshop and Location Scouting
We had our first narrative workshop with Frank Pierson.
The first film screened was 'El Coyote'
Screenwriter: Casey Barnhart
Director: Andrew Spieler
Producer: Kip Pastor
Cinematographer: Ricardo Diaz
Editor: Vegard Sorby
Production Designer: Harrison Yurkiw
The story centred on a Mexican 'El Coyote' who lost his soon whilst trying to cross the US-Mexican boarder. Five years later he escorts a bunch of Mexicans which includes one young woman whom he discovers is pregnant. After an ambush by the boarder police, the party is split up. The woman goes into labour and is helped by 'El Coyote' she dies but the baby survives.
The key learning points to come out of screening were:
1 - On the nose dialogue
2 - Over sentimental story - music, dialogue and tone had an expected outcome
Frank was very complimentary on the acting and the overall makeup of the film.
Overall the team set a high benchmark - it was a solid film considering all constraints.
The film was screened that night in narrative workshop. Bill Dill was tough on it:
1 - He felt there was no sense of the sun and teh heat of the desert
2 - Use of 2.35 in his eyes was arbitary and didn't work for the film
The second film screened was 'the Projectionist' - this was the film I worked on.
Screenwriter: Bradford Fullerton
Director: Christina Rubenstein
Producer: La Monde Byrd
Cinematographer: Kevin Cannon
Editor: Nodoka Kato
The story centred on a cinema owner whose simple son was the projectionist and his pride and joy. One day the son befriends a vagrant kid. The owner finally decides to kill the kid but it backfires and results in the death of his son.
Frank was bemused by the story and didn't get it at all. Key points included:
1 - lack of clarity in the story
2 - audience not caring for or intrigued by the characters
3 - Performances mannered
Overall he called it precious and didn't work.
Bill Dill after his strong dissection of 'El Coyote' was very sparing on the Projectionist despite a number of faults and he realised that teh film did not work.
Afternoon rushed off to the DWP to check out locations for our shoot and then on to Brian a friend of La Monde's whose flat we will use for Steve's apartment in the film.
The first film screened was 'El Coyote'
Screenwriter: Casey Barnhart
Director: Andrew Spieler
Producer: Kip Pastor
Cinematographer: Ricardo Diaz
Editor: Vegard Sorby
Production Designer: Harrison Yurkiw
The story centred on a Mexican 'El Coyote' who lost his soon whilst trying to cross the US-Mexican boarder. Five years later he escorts a bunch of Mexicans which includes one young woman whom he discovers is pregnant. After an ambush by the boarder police, the party is split up. The woman goes into labour and is helped by 'El Coyote' she dies but the baby survives.
The key learning points to come out of screening were:
1 - On the nose dialogue
2 - Over sentimental story - music, dialogue and tone had an expected outcome
Frank was very complimentary on the acting and the overall makeup of the film.
Overall the team set a high benchmark - it was a solid film considering all constraints.
The film was screened that night in narrative workshop. Bill Dill was tough on it:
1 - He felt there was no sense of the sun and teh heat of the desert
2 - Use of 2.35 in his eyes was arbitary and didn't work for the film
The second film screened was 'the Projectionist' - this was the film I worked on.
Screenwriter: Bradford Fullerton
Director: Christina Rubenstein
Producer: La Monde Byrd
Cinematographer: Kevin Cannon
Editor: Nodoka Kato
The story centred on a cinema owner whose simple son was the projectionist and his pride and joy. One day the son befriends a vagrant kid. The owner finally decides to kill the kid but it backfires and results in the death of his son.
Frank was bemused by the story and didn't get it at all. Key points included:
1 - lack of clarity in the story
2 - audience not caring for or intrigued by the characters
3 - Performances mannered
Overall he called it precious and didn't work.
Bill Dill after his strong dissection of 'El Coyote' was very sparing on the Projectionist despite a number of faults and he realised that teh film did not work.
Afternoon rushed off to the DWP to check out locations for our shoot and then on to Brian a friend of La Monde's whose flat we will use for Steve's apartment in the film.
Saturday, 20 October 2007
Monica we are thinking of you.
Monica Leed one of the production designers had an accident the other day whilst constructing a set. Unfortunately she slipped on the band saw and cut her finger off - she was wearing protective gloves. So now in hoispital an undergoing surgery - we are all thinking of her and hope she will get better soon.
Jim Hosney
Zach Tobacco sent me the following article re our teacher Jim Hosney who runs the Harold Lloyd Seminars and also teaches us about American Film.
"Reel life was his real love"
He may be unknown to moviegoers, but retiring Crossroads School teacher Jim Hosney has had a profound influence on what they see.
By Shawn Hubler, Times Staff Writer
June 27, 2007
FOR a month now, young Hollywood has been planning a retirement party. The guest list spans the pop culture landscape studio executives, novelists, Academy Award winners, sitcom writers, musicians. One proposal has Martin Scorsese jumping out of a cake.
The honoree will take the bus unless he can hitch a ride with someone. A lively, bespectacled bachelor who lives alone in a rent-controlled apartment, he can't drive. Nor can he afford a limo, though some of the most successful people in show business attribute their very sensibility as artists to him.
"Where do you begin? He shaped the way I think," said Ben Cosgrove, Paramount Pictures' senior vice president of production.
"I would not be the person I am today without him, or make the films I make," said Brett Morgen, the Oscar-nominated co-director of "On the Ropes" and "The Kid Stays in the Picture."
"Single biggest influence of my life," said screenwriter Alex Kurtzman ("Mission: Impossible III," "Transformers").
"I actually have a theory," said actor Zooey Deschanel, "that everything in Hollywood is directly or indirectly influenced by Jim Hosney. And if it's not the case, it should be."
Jim Hosney doesn't work in show business. He's not a critic or an emeritus studio head. In one of the sharper ironies of a field often disparaged as mindless and superficial, the most influential Hollywood player you've probably never heard of is a 63-year-old English teacher. This month, after a career that has spanned nearly four decades, he'll be taking early retirement from Santa Monica's Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences, where he has taught high school film studies and literature for 25 years.
Before Crossroads, he spent a decade at the Westlake School for Girls (now Harvard-Westlake), and, since 1980, he has taught graduate-level film history on the side at the American Film Institute. Over time, he has become a minor cult figure on Los Angeles' show-business-heavy Westside, not only for his singular approach to great books and popular culture, but also for the legions of tastemakers who credit their understanding of L.A.'s signature art form storytelling to him.
Hosney's pop culture proteges number in the hundreds writers, performers, moviemakers, film scholars at USC and UCLA. Jack Black and Maya Rudolph did some of their earliest work for him. So did producers Bryan Burk ("Lost," "Alias"), Jason Blumenthal ("The Pursuit of Happyness"), Danielle Renfrew ("Waitress") and Matthew Greenfield ("Chuck & Buck," "The Good Girl").
"There was not a single course he taught that I did not take," said filmmaker Jonathan Kasdan ("In the Land of Women"). Melissa Clark, novelist and creator of the children's TV show "Braceface," remembers being so inspired in his class that she'd turn papers in late just for the excuse to drive by his apartment. "It was like I had a brain crush," she said.
The costume designer from "Being John Malkovich" is a former student. So is the guitarist for the seminal '90s punk band Jawbreaker. So is the founder and organizer of Cinespia, the Hollywood Forever Cemetery outdoor film fest. Former Hosney students write for Vanity Fair, for this newspaper, for influential blogs such as the L.A.-based TruthDig. That's not counting the AFI graduate students or Crossroads parents who have consulted him on projects, from Dustin Hoffman, who drew from Hosney for his portrayal of a professor in "Stranger Than Fiction," to Michael Mann, who sought Hosney's opinion, among others, in putting together the Oscar montage he directed last year.
"He's one of the most important figures in contemporary film who is largely unknown," said Ron Yerxa, a producer of "Election" and "Little Children" and a longtime friend.
Hosney's self-assessment is less dramatic.
"I'm a teacher," he said with a shrug. "I teach."
He was raised in Los Angeles, the younger son of Syrian immigrants, an apartment manager and a seamstress. As a child, he lived for stories epic novels, double features.
"I wanted life to be like a musical," he remembered, sitting in his office at Crossroads. "I was always disappointed that people didn't burst out singing on the street."
In 1961, he graduated from George Washington High School with a full scholarship to Occidental College, where he eventually entered a doctoral program in Anglo American literature.
"I wanted to teach at the college level," Hosney recalled, "but while I was at graduate school at Oxy, I took a job, like a long-term substitute teacher, at the Westridge School, a girls' school in Pasadena."
Experienced only as a university teaching assistant, Hosney treated the teenage girls as if they were college students. It taught him a lesson.
"Never underestimate your students," he says now. "Those kids were great."
By 1970, he had taken that lesson to Westlake along with another he had learned at Occidental: that the study of literature needn't be limited to books.
At the time, Hosney said, cinema was just beginning to be taken seriously by scholars. At Occidental, his mentor Marsha Kinder, who is now a USC professor of critical studies had showed him "that movies are just as complicated artistically as novels, that they can be treated as works of art."
"He came in with his giant Afro and tie-dyed T-shirt, and he was about as passionate about literature and film as you could expect any human being to be, and still be coherent," recalled Nathan Reynolds, the now-retired headmaster who hired him at Westlake.
Hosney says he and the students learned together.
"I showed movies I'd always wanted to see but had never seen," he remembered. "We saw Vincente Minnelli, 'Some Came Running.' Douglas Sirk stuff I remember teaching a class in film melodrama and showing 'Imitation of Life,' and they were all in tears by the end of the movie. But also Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Robert Bresson."
His courses focused on critical thinking and writing, he said, but grew to incorporate other disciplines.
"You could teach a class where, say, you were looking at American horror films but at the same time also reading Poe, Hawthorne, other American authors who wrote horror. You could show how the two mediums are connected, show the process of adaptation. Show how film is a cultural construct, what it says about American society."
As Hosney spoke, he moved forward. A compact man with cropped, dark hair and rectangular glasses, he is famously animated when he lectures. He leans into his audience, almost as if he is about to climb it; his long hands move as if painting a picture. At his back was a framed poster, in French, for the film "Taxi Driver."
"Why, for example, is 'Psycho' made in 1960?" he asked excitedly. "Why does 'Psycho' make more money than any other of Hitchcock's films?
"Well, it's the Kennedy election. The country is changing. And by now, the public is used to television. Go back and look at 'Psycho.' There are incredible sequences in it, but there are also some very stagy, talky sequences that come right out of television."
And with that, he was off the conventions of TV, the films of the '60s until finally, he circled back to his original question and the answer Truffaut once got from Hitchcock.
"Hitchcock," he said, leaning in, "wanted to see if he could shoot a movie the way he had shot shows on TV." He smiled with such delight, it was almost as if he hadn't been teaching this insight for decades, almost as if you, the listener, had deduced it independently.
Hosney left the Westlake School in 1980. He had hoped to work in film with his friend Yerxa, but the position fell through. He quickly returned to teaching, by night at AFI and by day at Los Angeles High School, where he might have stayed, he added, had the public school credentialing process been simpler. But then he was offered the Crossroads job in 1982.
Crossroads was 10 years old but still scarcely more than a funky start-up, and with little of its current cachet. The students were less likely to be children of celebrities than of psychologists and dentists. The campus was in a warehouse district; a body shop had been cleared to make way for Hosney's classroom.
But what the school lacked in glamour, Hosney made up in intellectual passion. "He was a teacher who inspired us like no other," said Greenfield, now senior vice president of production at Fox Searchlight, who was a freshman when Hosney arrived.
Hosney lined his walls with posters of Freud and the Sex Pistols. He adopted a series of stray dogs with glitzy names (Rona, Madonna, Rocco) and brought them to school. Especially striking, students recall, was the way he found value even in their most off-base answers.
"He'd actually tremble when someone made an astute observation he'd kind of lift his palm in the air with his forefinger extended and cry, 'Yes!' " recalled Blake Schwarzenbach, an ex-punk guitarist who now teaches English at New York's Hunter College.
"He made you feel smart, and, as a result, you got smarter," said Matt Tyrnauer, who is now a filmmaker and a special correspondent for Vanity Fair.
Eagerly, they applied Susan Sontag's concept of fascist art to the work of Steven Spielberg. "We'd watch 'La Chinoise' or 'Week-End' by Godard and then he'd have us read Marx," recalled Tyrnauer. "We were in the ninth grade!"
When a Los Feliz art house screened Sergio Leone's classic "Once Upon a Time in the West," he asked who wanted to see it with him and was swamped with takers; it was the first time many of the sheltered students had been east of the 405.
"I had a mini existential crisis as a 10th-grader," said Charlie Dahlgren, the son of two scientists who says he has spent most of his adult life toiling to write screenplays that live up to what he learned from Hosney. "NYU paled in comparison."
"I remember the first day I came to his class, we were watching 'The 400 Blows,' and Jim saying, 'What does this mean?' " said Kurtzman's screenwriting partner, Roberto Orci, the son of an advertising executive who moved to L.A. from Texas. "And the really smart kids going, 'It's the illusion of freedom, but the character is trapped by the ocean, so the illusion of freedom is actually enslavement.' I mean, we were, like, 16 or 17 years old."
Dustin Hoffman, who had four children in Hosney's classes, said his lectures "were like great performances. It was theater, and you were there to be part of it."
And to do your homework.
"I had this big project in 1987, my senior year, that I was flaking on," Jack Black remembered, half-joking. "And I thought from, like, buttering him up all year I'd have an extension? But he turned out to be kind of a hard-ass. And I think I cried."
Hosney's records indicate that Black ended that year with an overall C+. Black said the blown final was such a source of discomfort that he initially avoided returning The Times' phone calls for this story.
"All roads led to me flunking," he confessed. "But it's a testament to the power of Hosney that I do not hold it against him. I really respect the man."
His most avid students dubbed themselves "Hosneyites," sneaking into his evening AFI classes and competing for the privilege of driving him there after school. (Traumatized by a high school accident in which he wrecked a friend's car, Hosney never earned a license.) Rare, however, is the Crossroads student with a memory of him anywhere but a theater, passenger seat or classroom.
"He was such an enigma," recalled actor Simon Helberg ("Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip"), who as a teen studied Hosney so closely that he can still perfectly impersonate the teacher's big, wheezing laugh and signature exclamation "amaaaaazing!"
"We were always trying to figure him out."
"I don't think they were missing anything," Hosney said, laughing. "I think when you become your job, then that, in a sense, becomes your life."
His brother, he says, lives nearby; he has three nephews and a goddaughter. ("She has a beautiful voice, and I used to give her musicals," he said. "Vincente Minnelli musicals. You know, he was called the Oscar Wilde of Hollywood.")
He teaches a monthly film seminar for Crossroads parents and alumni in his off-hours. For several years he went regularly to the movies with a group of fellow educators. ("We called ourselves the Westside Film Critics Association," Crossroads headmaster Roger Weaver said with a laugh.)
And some students have become friends in adulthood. Hosney moderates a book club for Eve Gerber, a former student who is married to a Brentwood producer. He officiated in a civil capacity at the 2002 marriage of documentary filmmaker Samantha Counter to her former classmate Kurtzman.
With all his contacts, however, he says he has been tempted only once or twice by show business. "I wrote a screenplay once with a friend, and it was disastrous," he said.
"I'm a teacher," he reiterated. The choice has had both rewards and drawbacks. According to court records, Hosney has declared bankruptcy twice in the last decade, most recently this year.
"It's my fault," he replied when questioned about it. "I wish it weren't there, but I'm just a bad person with credit cards clothes, travel, electronic equipment, the opera." His court file shows his debt to be roughly equivalent to a year's tuition at Crossroads.
"It's a real tragedy of our culture that teachers get paid so little," said the 34-year-old Dahlgren, who, with several other Hosneyites, is exploring ways to help their mentor as part of the retirement party they're planning. "Because if this were a meritocracy, this guy would be a jillionaire."
On a recent afternoon, Hosney sat in a darkened theater, long fingers rummaging through his buttered popcorn, waiting to see "28 Weeks Later," the zombie flick. A string of action movie trailers blared from the screen, clip after clip of the human race being threatened with annihilation.
"Do you notice," he whispered, "that in almost all of these, a superhero is needed to save us? There is no idea that people en masse might do anything about it. Isn't that interesting?"
Hosney said he "was never, never interested in Hollywood as a form of business." As art, however, he can discuss it for hours.
He thinks the film "Zodiac" was underrated by critics and that "Fight Club" was a kind of practical joke "in which a studio paid millions of dollars to make a film that attacks everything Hollywood stands for." The Desert Storm movie "Jarhead," he said, "is 'Waiting for Godot' set in the desert." The first of the final episodes of "The Sopranos" the one involving the drunken weekend in the Adirondacks he compares to Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night."
Hosney's former students say they can no longer watch a movie without imagining what he'd say about it. (Let alone make one. Kurtzman and Orci, for instance, swear they were channeling Hosney when they tried a European-style nonlinear narrative with "Mission: Impossible III.")
"He's like a little friend on your shoulder," said Amanda Micheli, who is now 35 and a documentary filmmaker in San Francisco. "It was like he opened up a way of seeing for me."
Now, she and others note, a generation of his students is coming of age throughout the entertainment world with Hosney figuratively on their shoulders.
"You constantly run into Hosneyites," said Paramount's Cosgrove, whose last job was as co-president of Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney's production company, Section Eight, which produced "Syriana," "The Good German" and "Good Night, and Good Luck."
"Brett Morgen was in a meeting across the hall from me last week. I talk all the time to my classmate Jason Blumenthal, who's a producer. My best friend, Brian Rousso, who was in his class, wrote the original screenplay for the movie 'The Reaping.' "
"He just infused every student he had with a great love of filmmakers," Rousso said. "You walked out of that class with such an enormous appreciation of cinema."
So it was on that afternoon as Hosney sat in the theater, the human race battling the zombies, the flickering light on his rectangular eyeglasses telling a tale from a land far away. On one level, it was just a movie. But on another, it was the most abiding of Hollywood stories: the story of the man who loved stories, and whom the storytellers came to love back, a story from the heart of L.A.
"Reel life was his real love"
He may be unknown to moviegoers, but retiring Crossroads School teacher Jim Hosney has had a profound influence on what they see.
By Shawn Hubler, Times Staff Writer
June 27, 2007
FOR a month now, young Hollywood has been planning a retirement party. The guest list spans the pop culture landscape studio executives, novelists, Academy Award winners, sitcom writers, musicians. One proposal has Martin Scorsese jumping out of a cake.
The honoree will take the bus unless he can hitch a ride with someone. A lively, bespectacled bachelor who lives alone in a rent-controlled apartment, he can't drive. Nor can he afford a limo, though some of the most successful people in show business attribute their very sensibility as artists to him.
"Where do you begin? He shaped the way I think," said Ben Cosgrove, Paramount Pictures' senior vice president of production.
"I would not be the person I am today without him, or make the films I make," said Brett Morgen, the Oscar-nominated co-director of "On the Ropes" and "The Kid Stays in the Picture."
"Single biggest influence of my life," said screenwriter Alex Kurtzman ("Mission: Impossible III," "Transformers").
"I actually have a theory," said actor Zooey Deschanel, "that everything in Hollywood is directly or indirectly influenced by Jim Hosney. And if it's not the case, it should be."
Jim Hosney doesn't work in show business. He's not a critic or an emeritus studio head. In one of the sharper ironies of a field often disparaged as mindless and superficial, the most influential Hollywood player you've probably never heard of is a 63-year-old English teacher. This month, after a career that has spanned nearly four decades, he'll be taking early retirement from Santa Monica's Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences, where he has taught high school film studies and literature for 25 years.
Before Crossroads, he spent a decade at the Westlake School for Girls (now Harvard-Westlake), and, since 1980, he has taught graduate-level film history on the side at the American Film Institute. Over time, he has become a minor cult figure on Los Angeles' show-business-heavy Westside, not only for his singular approach to great books and popular culture, but also for the legions of tastemakers who credit their understanding of L.A.'s signature art form storytelling to him.
Hosney's pop culture proteges number in the hundreds writers, performers, moviemakers, film scholars at USC and UCLA. Jack Black and Maya Rudolph did some of their earliest work for him. So did producers Bryan Burk ("Lost," "Alias"), Jason Blumenthal ("The Pursuit of Happyness"), Danielle Renfrew ("Waitress") and Matthew Greenfield ("Chuck & Buck," "The Good Girl").
"There was not a single course he taught that I did not take," said filmmaker Jonathan Kasdan ("In the Land of Women"). Melissa Clark, novelist and creator of the children's TV show "Braceface," remembers being so inspired in his class that she'd turn papers in late just for the excuse to drive by his apartment. "It was like I had a brain crush," she said.
The costume designer from "Being John Malkovich" is a former student. So is the guitarist for the seminal '90s punk band Jawbreaker. So is the founder and organizer of Cinespia, the Hollywood Forever Cemetery outdoor film fest. Former Hosney students write for Vanity Fair, for this newspaper, for influential blogs such as the L.A.-based TruthDig. That's not counting the AFI graduate students or Crossroads parents who have consulted him on projects, from Dustin Hoffman, who drew from Hosney for his portrayal of a professor in "Stranger Than Fiction," to Michael Mann, who sought Hosney's opinion, among others, in putting together the Oscar montage he directed last year.
"He's one of the most important figures in contemporary film who is largely unknown," said Ron Yerxa, a producer of "Election" and "Little Children" and a longtime friend.
Hosney's self-assessment is less dramatic.
"I'm a teacher," he said with a shrug. "I teach."
He was raised in Los Angeles, the younger son of Syrian immigrants, an apartment manager and a seamstress. As a child, he lived for stories epic novels, double features.
"I wanted life to be like a musical," he remembered, sitting in his office at Crossroads. "I was always disappointed that people didn't burst out singing on the street."
In 1961, he graduated from George Washington High School with a full scholarship to Occidental College, where he eventually entered a doctoral program in Anglo American literature.
"I wanted to teach at the college level," Hosney recalled, "but while I was at graduate school at Oxy, I took a job, like a long-term substitute teacher, at the Westridge School, a girls' school in Pasadena."
Experienced only as a university teaching assistant, Hosney treated the teenage girls as if they were college students. It taught him a lesson.
"Never underestimate your students," he says now. "Those kids were great."
By 1970, he had taken that lesson to Westlake along with another he had learned at Occidental: that the study of literature needn't be limited to books.
At the time, Hosney said, cinema was just beginning to be taken seriously by scholars. At Occidental, his mentor Marsha Kinder, who is now a USC professor of critical studies had showed him "that movies are just as complicated artistically as novels, that they can be treated as works of art."
"He came in with his giant Afro and tie-dyed T-shirt, and he was about as passionate about literature and film as you could expect any human being to be, and still be coherent," recalled Nathan Reynolds, the now-retired headmaster who hired him at Westlake.
Hosney says he and the students learned together.
"I showed movies I'd always wanted to see but had never seen," he remembered. "We saw Vincente Minnelli, 'Some Came Running.' Douglas Sirk stuff I remember teaching a class in film melodrama and showing 'Imitation of Life,' and they were all in tears by the end of the movie. But also Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Robert Bresson."
His courses focused on critical thinking and writing, he said, but grew to incorporate other disciplines.
"You could teach a class where, say, you were looking at American horror films but at the same time also reading Poe, Hawthorne, other American authors who wrote horror. You could show how the two mediums are connected, show the process of adaptation. Show how film is a cultural construct, what it says about American society."
As Hosney spoke, he moved forward. A compact man with cropped, dark hair and rectangular glasses, he is famously animated when he lectures. He leans into his audience, almost as if he is about to climb it; his long hands move as if painting a picture. At his back was a framed poster, in French, for the film "Taxi Driver."
"Why, for example, is 'Psycho' made in 1960?" he asked excitedly. "Why does 'Psycho' make more money than any other of Hitchcock's films?
"Well, it's the Kennedy election. The country is changing. And by now, the public is used to television. Go back and look at 'Psycho.' There are incredible sequences in it, but there are also some very stagy, talky sequences that come right out of television."
And with that, he was off the conventions of TV, the films of the '60s until finally, he circled back to his original question and the answer Truffaut once got from Hitchcock.
"Hitchcock," he said, leaning in, "wanted to see if he could shoot a movie the way he had shot shows on TV." He smiled with such delight, it was almost as if he hadn't been teaching this insight for decades, almost as if you, the listener, had deduced it independently.
Hosney left the Westlake School in 1980. He had hoped to work in film with his friend Yerxa, but the position fell through. He quickly returned to teaching, by night at AFI and by day at Los Angeles High School, where he might have stayed, he added, had the public school credentialing process been simpler. But then he was offered the Crossroads job in 1982.
Crossroads was 10 years old but still scarcely more than a funky start-up, and with little of its current cachet. The students were less likely to be children of celebrities than of psychologists and dentists. The campus was in a warehouse district; a body shop had been cleared to make way for Hosney's classroom.
But what the school lacked in glamour, Hosney made up in intellectual passion. "He was a teacher who inspired us like no other," said Greenfield, now senior vice president of production at Fox Searchlight, who was a freshman when Hosney arrived.
Hosney lined his walls with posters of Freud and the Sex Pistols. He adopted a series of stray dogs with glitzy names (Rona, Madonna, Rocco) and brought them to school. Especially striking, students recall, was the way he found value even in their most off-base answers.
"He'd actually tremble when someone made an astute observation he'd kind of lift his palm in the air with his forefinger extended and cry, 'Yes!' " recalled Blake Schwarzenbach, an ex-punk guitarist who now teaches English at New York's Hunter College.
"He made you feel smart, and, as a result, you got smarter," said Matt Tyrnauer, who is now a filmmaker and a special correspondent for Vanity Fair.
Eagerly, they applied Susan Sontag's concept of fascist art to the work of Steven Spielberg. "We'd watch 'La Chinoise' or 'Week-End' by Godard and then he'd have us read Marx," recalled Tyrnauer. "We were in the ninth grade!"
When a Los Feliz art house screened Sergio Leone's classic "Once Upon a Time in the West," he asked who wanted to see it with him and was swamped with takers; it was the first time many of the sheltered students had been east of the 405.
"I had a mini existential crisis as a 10th-grader," said Charlie Dahlgren, the son of two scientists who says he has spent most of his adult life toiling to write screenplays that live up to what he learned from Hosney. "NYU paled in comparison."
"I remember the first day I came to his class, we were watching 'The 400 Blows,' and Jim saying, 'What does this mean?' " said Kurtzman's screenwriting partner, Roberto Orci, the son of an advertising executive who moved to L.A. from Texas. "And the really smart kids going, 'It's the illusion of freedom, but the character is trapped by the ocean, so the illusion of freedom is actually enslavement.' I mean, we were, like, 16 or 17 years old."
Dustin Hoffman, who had four children in Hosney's classes, said his lectures "were like great performances. It was theater, and you were there to be part of it."
And to do your homework.
"I had this big project in 1987, my senior year, that I was flaking on," Jack Black remembered, half-joking. "And I thought from, like, buttering him up all year I'd have an extension? But he turned out to be kind of a hard-ass. And I think I cried."
Hosney's records indicate that Black ended that year with an overall C+. Black said the blown final was such a source of discomfort that he initially avoided returning The Times' phone calls for this story.
"All roads led to me flunking," he confessed. "But it's a testament to the power of Hosney that I do not hold it against him. I really respect the man."
His most avid students dubbed themselves "Hosneyites," sneaking into his evening AFI classes and competing for the privilege of driving him there after school. (Traumatized by a high school accident in which he wrecked a friend's car, Hosney never earned a license.) Rare, however, is the Crossroads student with a memory of him anywhere but a theater, passenger seat or classroom.
"He was such an enigma," recalled actor Simon Helberg ("Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip"), who as a teen studied Hosney so closely that he can still perfectly impersonate the teacher's big, wheezing laugh and signature exclamation "amaaaaazing!"
"We were always trying to figure him out."
"I don't think they were missing anything," Hosney said, laughing. "I think when you become your job, then that, in a sense, becomes your life."
His brother, he says, lives nearby; he has three nephews and a goddaughter. ("She has a beautiful voice, and I used to give her musicals," he said. "Vincente Minnelli musicals. You know, he was called the Oscar Wilde of Hollywood.")
He teaches a monthly film seminar for Crossroads parents and alumni in his off-hours. For several years he went regularly to the movies with a group of fellow educators. ("We called ourselves the Westside Film Critics Association," Crossroads headmaster Roger Weaver said with a laugh.)
And some students have become friends in adulthood. Hosney moderates a book club for Eve Gerber, a former student who is married to a Brentwood producer. He officiated in a civil capacity at the 2002 marriage of documentary filmmaker Samantha Counter to her former classmate Kurtzman.
With all his contacts, however, he says he has been tempted only once or twice by show business. "I wrote a screenplay once with a friend, and it was disastrous," he said.
"I'm a teacher," he reiterated. The choice has had both rewards and drawbacks. According to court records, Hosney has declared bankruptcy twice in the last decade, most recently this year.
"It's my fault," he replied when questioned about it. "I wish it weren't there, but I'm just a bad person with credit cards clothes, travel, electronic equipment, the opera." His court file shows his debt to be roughly equivalent to a year's tuition at Crossroads.
"It's a real tragedy of our culture that teachers get paid so little," said the 34-year-old Dahlgren, who, with several other Hosneyites, is exploring ways to help their mentor as part of the retirement party they're planning. "Because if this were a meritocracy, this guy would be a jillionaire."
On a recent afternoon, Hosney sat in a darkened theater, long fingers rummaging through his buttered popcorn, waiting to see "28 Weeks Later," the zombie flick. A string of action movie trailers blared from the screen, clip after clip of the human race being threatened with annihilation.
"Do you notice," he whispered, "that in almost all of these, a superhero is needed to save us? There is no idea that people en masse might do anything about it. Isn't that interesting?"
Hosney said he "was never, never interested in Hollywood as a form of business." As art, however, he can discuss it for hours.
He thinks the film "Zodiac" was underrated by critics and that "Fight Club" was a kind of practical joke "in which a studio paid millions of dollars to make a film that attacks everything Hollywood stands for." The Desert Storm movie "Jarhead," he said, "is 'Waiting for Godot' set in the desert." The first of the final episodes of "The Sopranos" the one involving the drunken weekend in the Adirondacks he compares to Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night."
Hosney's former students say they can no longer watch a movie without imagining what he'd say about it. (Let alone make one. Kurtzman and Orci, for instance, swear they were channeling Hosney when they tried a European-style nonlinear narrative with "Mission: Impossible III.")
"He's like a little friend on your shoulder," said Amanda Micheli, who is now 35 and a documentary filmmaker in San Francisco. "It was like he opened up a way of seeing for me."
Now, she and others note, a generation of his students is coming of age throughout the entertainment world with Hosney figuratively on their shoulders.
"You constantly run into Hosneyites," said Paramount's Cosgrove, whose last job was as co-president of Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney's production company, Section Eight, which produced "Syriana," "The Good German" and "Good Night, and Good Luck."
"Brett Morgen was in a meeting across the hall from me last week. I talk all the time to my classmate Jason Blumenthal, who's a producer. My best friend, Brian Rousso, who was in his class, wrote the original screenplay for the movie 'The Reaping.' "
"He just infused every student he had with a great love of filmmakers," Rousso said. "You walked out of that class with such an enormous appreciation of cinema."
So it was on that afternoon as Hosney sat in the theater, the human race battling the zombies, the flickering light on his rectangular eyeglasses telling a tale from a land far away. On one level, it was just a movie. But on another, it was the most abiding of Hollywood stories: the story of the man who loved stories, and whom the storytellers came to love back, a story from the heart of L.A.
BAFTA LA, safety and Directing Classes
Really pleased as I have been accepted on to the new comers program at BAFTA LA.
Also received some phenomal news from Julia - can't tell you all until next Tuesday!
Directing course with Rob Spera in afternoon. We looked at a number of great scenes which emplyed the 2+2=5 and camera recording subtext. Then onto more Meisner work - the dams are starting the break.
We are looking to say the comments we are most afraid of - it should not be offensive or fake - but if we truly feel it then say it - this is a scarry concept for most to graps as our protection mechanisms are finely tuned to avoid upsetting the apple cart.
Run a scene in a dine - if a waitress comes up and says 'what that from' you have fuced it up.
Life is a whole series of negotiations.
Q- I don't like you
A - Awesome (defence through humour)
Evening - Jim McBride took a look at our scenes from the previous week which were a bit rough and ready but helped reinforce the 180 degree rule. We then looked at key scenes from the Searchers - the class was completely split over whether it was great film making.
Also received some phenomal news from Julia - can't tell you all until next Tuesday!
Directing course with Rob Spera in afternoon. We looked at a number of great scenes which emplyed the 2+2=5 and camera recording subtext. Then onto more Meisner work - the dams are starting the break.
We are looking to say the comments we are most afraid of - it should not be offensive or fake - but if we truly feel it then say it - this is a scarry concept for most to graps as our protection mechanisms are finely tuned to avoid upsetting the apple cart.
Run a scene in a dine - if a waitress comes up and says 'what that from' you have fuced it up.
Life is a whole series of negotiations.
Q- I don't like you
A - Awesome (defence through humour)
Evening - Jim McBride took a look at our scenes from the previous week which were a bit rough and ready but helped reinforce the 180 degree rule. We then looked at key scenes from the Searchers - the class was completely split over whether it was great film making.
Into the Wild.......Sean Penn
What a treat! Screening of 'Into the Wild' followed by a Q&A with Sean Penn.
Phenomenal film - really moving and great film making. With the heart of the film being that 'happiness is only real when shared'
Sean Penn was very inspiring. A little nervous at first, which was surprising. But relaxed back, sucked on his cigarettes and held the audience in rapture.
In the evening Jim Hosney showed us 12 Monkeys.
The agony of knowledge and the impotence to do nothing about - Cassandra Complex - knowledge but nobody believes it.
After which Jeff and I went out on a location scout - Cheetahs - a go-go bar in Los Feliz. Think we can shoot there.
Friday, 19 October 2007
Long time no blog.....big catch up
Thursday - Rob Spera directing class - he is great punchy and great. More analysis of 2+2=5 and camera filming the subtext. Followed by Meisner work - think it will get extremely interesting in due course as we uncover each others real emotions. back home late - been given the green light to find a new producer.
Thursday night met up late with Kip Pastor who is considering producing 'She Cried Alive' he is very positive about the script but has prior commitments. So still in limbo. Friday Kip gave me an answer. It's a shame as it would have been interesting work with him, but was pleased and impressed he honoured his prior commitments - seems to be a man of his word.
Finally met up with La Monde, who has stepped into the breach and is eager to produce - so all good things come to he who waits. He is very motivated and pro-active so I believe we will be in safe hands.
So with relief went in to Watch the tail end of 'I am Cuba' - extraordinary movie. There was one tracking shot of a funeral and the camera follows at street level, travels upstairs and through a cigar factory and then floats outside over the funeral cortege - it was phenomenal - no cgi, no steady cam all hand held and wires!!
Evening went to Bill Dill's class and he continued to review bootcamp scenes - alas we weren't selected. Interesting comments including: we are more sensitive to the vertical axis rather than the horizontal. With the progression of a scene how is that translated into the visual stroy telling.
Saturday - had breakfast with La Monde, he was late, it was at a little diner next to the DGA. Good conversation.
Then into college to help John Ford & Stephen Paratore - I have agreed to be their 1st AD. Never realised what a mistake this was!! The production was not well prepared primarily from a Cinematography stance. Benji Bakshi was the Cinematographer.
Poped in to see Dave Herman on his set - he is such a great character - bags of fun and energy and very funny.
Ok so whats been happening.
We are shooting in a subway on Tuesday. We will have 4 hours to shoot 4 pages of an 8 page script! So timing is tight. Held a rehearsal of the scene so that the crew involved will hav some comprehension of wht is going to happen. Crew call was 5pm and first location being the sound stage. We wrapped at 11pm out by 12 - one set up under our belt! the shot list had indicated that it was going to be four set ups 3 being cut aways.
Back home late - there was a skunk in the street!
Sunday we were at the Department of Water and Power in downtown. What a great location. Officer Gray our monitor for the day was extremely helpful and the days soot went smoothly though again very slow. Was an interesting dynamic on set. Stephen Paratore the producer spent his time squirreled away doing his 'paper work' and not keen to be amongst the crew. John Ford the Director was very laid back and Benji Bakshi (Cinematography) over stepped the mark and ended up running the show. It was very interesting and frustrating to watch. For example they were doing a simple OTS to cover a scene. So there was on actor in the doorway and another in a room. Well, camera set up in the doorway focus puller blocking on side, operator the other, sound directly behind them leaving no room for the actor. The actress in the room worked her cotton socks off, well it could have been more supportive. Have a look at the photo!
Oh and we didn't take our first shot until 13.30 - crew call was 10.00. It was slow.
Good days shooting in the end and they seemed to get everything they needed. Great views from the window - Disney music hall, County Building etc
There were lots of moans about the producer, so an odd feeling on set. The thing was Stephen was working his but off, he just wasn't strong enough to control Benji especially when made sarcastic comments during the safety meetings.
An evening of homework - watched Magnolia for examples of photographing the subtext and 2+2=5.
Monday on location and the introduction of steady cam - Robert from Las Vegas. This slowed us down even more. Again call time 10.00 first shot 13.45. Disappeared for the afternoon for a prouction meeting with Neil Canton - our script is in good shape, so no third meeting. Came back at 18.00 and they were still shooting teh same scene! They still had one more small scene to do but teh light was dropping fast. Anyway at this point things started to break down as Benji rushed off to get his car and we heade out on to the street. I walked to the next site with the actors, director, ADs etc. It was at a staircase next to a four lane highway at rush hour. So we waited for Benji and the camera, no sign, lights dropping. I finally spotted him as he pulled up on the opposite side of the dual carriage way on a 'no stopping at any time' zone and proceeded to kick out Tal the camera operator and expect him to carry the camera and the equipment across the four lanes of traffic. I went beserk as I was responsible for safety. I still can't understand how anyone could make such a stupid decision especially as safety at the AFI is rammed down our throats. So concerned about shooting in a subway!
Early start. Off to NOHO MTA terminal. Herman the mentor from Film LA finally showed and our four hours was whittled down to 3 and a half hours. I ran around like a blue ass fly ensuring that we didn't get in the way of teh public and acted as safety for the steady cam. It was rushed but we pulled it off.
Moved locations down the street. This section was really unthought out and dissolved into Cinematographer and Director running up and down the street taking shots which the crew were unclear about - those last frantic shots. Had to speak to Benji again for undercutting the safety meeting. It was a challenging shoot.
Thursday night met up late with Kip Pastor who is considering producing 'She Cried Alive' he is very positive about the script but has prior commitments. So still in limbo. Friday Kip gave me an answer. It's a shame as it would have been interesting work with him, but was pleased and impressed he honoured his prior commitments - seems to be a man of his word.
Finally met up with La Monde, who has stepped into the breach and is eager to produce - so all good things come to he who waits. He is very motivated and pro-active so I believe we will be in safe hands.
So with relief went in to Watch the tail end of 'I am Cuba' - extraordinary movie. There was one tracking shot of a funeral and the camera follows at street level, travels upstairs and through a cigar factory and then floats outside over the funeral cortege - it was phenomenal - no cgi, no steady cam all hand held and wires!!
Evening went to Bill Dill's class and he continued to review bootcamp scenes - alas we weren't selected. Interesting comments including: we are more sensitive to the vertical axis rather than the horizontal. With the progression of a scene how is that translated into the visual stroy telling.
Saturday - had breakfast with La Monde, he was late, it was at a little diner next to the DGA. Good conversation.
Then into college to help John Ford & Stephen Paratore - I have agreed to be their 1st AD. Never realised what a mistake this was!! The production was not well prepared primarily from a Cinematography stance. Benji Bakshi was the Cinematographer.
Poped in to see Dave Herman on his set - he is such a great character - bags of fun and energy and very funny.
Ok so whats been happening.
We are shooting in a subway on Tuesday. We will have 4 hours to shoot 4 pages of an 8 page script! So timing is tight. Held a rehearsal of the scene so that the crew involved will hav some comprehension of wht is going to happen. Crew call was 5pm and first location being the sound stage. We wrapped at 11pm out by 12 - one set up under our belt! the shot list had indicated that it was going to be four set ups 3 being cut aways.
Back home late - there was a skunk in the street!
Sunday we were at the Department of Water and Power in downtown. What a great location. Officer Gray our monitor for the day was extremely helpful and the days soot went smoothly though again very slow. Was an interesting dynamic on set. Stephen Paratore the producer spent his time squirreled away doing his 'paper work' and not keen to be amongst the crew. John Ford the Director was very laid back and Benji Bakshi (Cinematography) over stepped the mark and ended up running the show. It was very interesting and frustrating to watch. For example they were doing a simple OTS to cover a scene. So there was on actor in the doorway and another in a room. Well, camera set up in the doorway focus puller blocking on side, operator the other, sound directly behind them leaving no room for the actor. The actress in the room worked her cotton socks off, well it could have been more supportive. Have a look at the photo!
Oh and we didn't take our first shot until 13.30 - crew call was 10.00. It was slow.
Good days shooting in the end and they seemed to get everything they needed. Great views from the window - Disney music hall, County Building etc
There were lots of moans about the producer, so an odd feeling on set. The thing was Stephen was working his but off, he just wasn't strong enough to control Benji especially when made sarcastic comments during the safety meetings.
An evening of homework - watched Magnolia for examples of photographing the subtext and 2+2=5.
Monday on location and the introduction of steady cam - Robert from Las Vegas. This slowed us down even more. Again call time 10.00 first shot 13.45. Disappeared for the afternoon for a prouction meeting with Neil Canton - our script is in good shape, so no third meeting. Came back at 18.00 and they were still shooting teh same scene! They still had one more small scene to do but teh light was dropping fast. Anyway at this point things started to break down as Benji rushed off to get his car and we heade out on to the street. I walked to the next site with the actors, director, ADs etc. It was at a staircase next to a four lane highway at rush hour. So we waited for Benji and the camera, no sign, lights dropping. I finally spotted him as he pulled up on the opposite side of the dual carriage way on a 'no stopping at any time' zone and proceeded to kick out Tal the camera operator and expect him to carry the camera and the equipment across the four lanes of traffic. I went beserk as I was responsible for safety. I still can't understand how anyone could make such a stupid decision especially as safety at the AFI is rammed down our throats. So concerned about shooting in a subway!
Early start. Off to NOHO MTA terminal. Herman the mentor from Film LA finally showed and our four hours was whittled down to 3 and a half hours. I ran around like a blue ass fly ensuring that we didn't get in the way of teh public and acted as safety for the steady cam. It was rushed but we pulled it off.
Moved locations down the street. This section was really unthought out and dissolved into Cinematographer and Director running up and down the street taking shots which the crew were unclear about - those last frantic shots. Had to speak to Benji again for undercutting the safety meeting. It was a challenging shoot.
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