All posts by Larry Christopher

Indie Film Director Profile -John Sayles

A recent interview with veteran indie film director John Sayles prompted us to take a closer look at his fascinating career. The interview, by the way, is about his forthcoming film Amigo, about the little known Philippine-American war.

His film debut was Return of the Secaucus Seven (1979), about a group of friends reminiscing about getting arrest at a 1960s protest years ago. This film was a precursor to The Big Chill and a few other movies about characters who might be labeled yuppies waxing nostalgic about their fading youth. While this description may sound uncharitable, it’s actually a quite compelling film. It’s a good example of a character/dialogue driven story done on a low budget.

Sayles has directed a total of 16 films -Amigo will be #17, and we won’t describe each one. However, one of his quirkier ones (for a director who specializes in a type of quirkiness) is Brother From Another Planet (1984). Joe Morton plays the “Brother,” a black man from another planet who wanders around the earth, unable to communicate verbally with people, but still able to interact meaningfully with those whose paths he crosses.

In The Secret of Roan Innish (1994), Sayles explores the rich world of Celtic mythology. The setting is the seaside Irish county of Donegal and the film explores the legend of the Selkie -a creature who is half human and half seal. This theme, incidentally, was explored more recently in a lesser known film called Ondine (2009), although in this case it’s not clear until the end whether the woman who’s suspected of being a selkie really is one, or if she’s a human with another type of secret.

These are just a few highlights in the career of esteemed indie film director John Sayles.

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    Straight Time

    Straight Time (1978) is a lesser known film from another decade that has quite a bit to offer contemporary fans of indie films. The last film I reviewed on this blog was John and Mary, which starred Dustin Hoffman along with Mia Farrow. So, in keeping with the theme of older Dustin Hoffman films, I decided to revisit Straight Time, directed by Ulu Grosbard.

    Straight Time is a sneaky movie -like it’s protagonist, Max Dembo (Hoffman), the movie doesn’t quite play it straight and let you know where it’s headed. In fact, it might be good advice to not even read this review until you’ve seen the movie (if you’ve never seen it before or don’t remember it). While I won’t reveal the ending, it’s hard to give a relevant description without revealing a little more than you should really know before seeing it.

    The film starts out with Dembo being released from prison after serving a sentence for burglary. He is unlucky enough to have the parole officer from hell, Earl Frank, expertly played by M. Emmet Walsh. Frank is an underhanded, racist redneck type who does everything he can to hinder Dembo’s rehabiliation. So at first we think this is what the film is about -a non-violent ex-con trying to go straight, and coming up against social injustice. The fact that Dembo is played by the normally mild-mannered Hoffman makes us all the more likely to see things this way. But that’s not quite what’s really happening here.

    There are clues from the start that Dembo has real problems conforming to authority in any form. His first confrontation with Frank comes when, instead of spending his first night of freedom in a halfway house as he was ordered to, he slips into a hotel. He unsuccessfully tries to reach Frank and tell him this, and the two are immediately at odds. Now we can sympathize with Dembo’s desire to be free of the system, and see that Frank is a stickler for the rules, but we can also see the futility of breaking the rules the first day you get out of prison.

    Things start to look up for Dembo when Frank relents and lets him stay in a hotel (albeit an awful looking one-room fleabag) and he manages to get a job in a factory. Not only that, but he manages to land a date with the young woman who works at the employment agency, Jenny (Theresa Russell).

    When Dembo hooks up with an old friend, Willy Darin (Gary Busey), things go downhill for him. Darin, a drug user, shoots up in Dembo’s hotel room and the next day, Frank discovers evidence of this on a visit. Dembo is thrown back into jail and tested for drug use. Although he’s only there for a night, we see that this experience has taken away any chance of rehabilitation. When Jenny visits him, he looks back at her with dead eyes that tell us that, no matter what else happens, his fate is already sealed.

    The rest of the film is a mainly depressing look at Dembo’s slide back into a life of armed robbery. He meets up with another old friend and fellow thief, Jerry Schue (Harry Dean Stanton, another great character actor), and the two begin a two man crime wave around Los Angeles. We also see more and more evidence of Dembo’s violent nature and inability to change.

    Straight Time is not exactly an uplifting film, as it has a theme that’s akin to Greek tragedy, where a person’s destiny is determined by fate and his inborn character. While we want to root for Dembo and see him as a victim of society (as personified by the undeniably evil Frank), the film forces us to confront the fact of his own culpability in everything that happens.

    Max Dembo is a fascinating character not because he’s a hardcore sociopath, but because he’s an understated one. He almost appears too lazy to look at himself honestly and make the effort to change. We can imagine that, had everything worked out perfectly for him, and had he run into a sympathetic rather than a sadistic parole officer, he might have actually gone straight. However, life seldom works out perfectly. So the film suggests that social ills such as crime are not simply a result of the flawed characters of the criminals or the flaws of society, but a complex mix of the two.

    Straight Time is a vintage 1970s movie with a great cast. For complete details see the IMDb page for the film.

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      Free Documentary Films

      If you’re a lover of documentaries, you may be interested to know of a website called Top Documentary Films, where you can watch all kinds of documentaries for free. This is not a very well known resource -at least I didn’t know about it until I happened to find it when doing research for this site.

      These may not be the best known documentaries around, but there’s a good selection of topics, including science, history and biographies. They’re currently featuring the popular Mythbusters TV series. According to the site’s guidelines, you can watch any films for free, but you’re only allowed to download ones that are public domain, which makes sense. Top Documentary Films also has links to other resources where you can find even more documentaries, so this site is a goldmine for anyone who appreciates this genre!

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        How To Make an Indie Film (and sell it)

        If you’re wondering how to make an indie film, it’s not that hard nowadays. The best strategy is to start practicing making very short films, even if you have to use your smart phone. Then get a decent but not very expensive camcorder and start making ones that are a bit longer. You shouldn’t have trouble finding at least amateur talent, as everybody wants to be a star.

        If you want to learn from experts, you may want to consider going to film school. The Hollywood reporter recently published the 2011 Film School Rankings. At the top of the list is the American Film Institute, followed by the University of Southern California.

        There are now many resources for indie filmmakers, whether you want to do it yourself from scratch, take a weekend workshop or go to a bona fide film school.

        Of course, once you’ve made your indie film you want to have it seen. There are all kinds of guerilla marketing tactics you can use to get publicity for your own film. In the following video, Lloyd Kaufman discusses his book, “Sell Your Own Damn Movie!” in a four part video of a talk he gave at Strand Books in New York City.

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          Greatest Indie Films

          What are the greatest indie films ever made? Probably a silly question, as any list is bound to be arbitrary and subjective. Still, I found a pretty decent one, Empire Magazine’s 50 Greatest Independent Films
          This is worth spending some time looking at -and you’ll be forced to, as each of the 50 films is on its own separate page! There are some great ones there, to be sure, such as Mean Streets, Donnie Darko, Pi, Slacker, The Terminator…yes, they’re calling The Terminator an indie film, and provide some semi-legitimate justification for this…see what I meant by subjective and arbitrary? But, the list is definitely worth checking out, if only to remind yourself of what films are worth seeing again when the current crop of blockbusters, remakes and sequels has you bored enough to forsake films for YouTube videos forever.

          For a more accessible, and much less detailed Best Of list, here’s one compiled by the IMDb, based on customer reviews: Best and Worst Indie Films. The Worst Of in this case are pretty obscure.

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            John and Mary (1969)

            John and Mary is one of those period piece films that is all but forgotten today. I happened to find it on Netflix, and don’t recall ever having seen it before. That’s always fun -at least for me- finding an obscure film that has well known actors that was made decades ago. In this case, the well known actors are Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow, who play an ultra modern (for their time) pair of single people who meet in a New York City bar, spend the night together and contemplate where, if anywhere, it’s all going to go.

            John and Mary is by no means a great film. Looking over reviews from when it came out, it wasn’t especially well received, and for justifiable reasons. The film, directed by Peter Yates, is from a novel, and every so often we hear the characters’ thoughts and it sounds like words taken from a novel. Much of the rest of the time it feels more like a play, as much of it is set in John’s apartment and there’s a lot of back-and-forth and somewhat repetitive interaction as the two new lovers are alternately affectionate and combative with each other. There are also attempts at humor, but the mix of drama and comedy is a little uneven. Even though it only runs about 90 minutes it feels long.

            If you like low key, character driven, and especially dialogue driven films, as I do, John and Mary will appeal to you. Unfortunately, it’s not the greatest example of this type of film. Yet, any student of independent films, anyone who lived through the 60’s or has an interest in that period may want to see it, if only for its historical interest.

            The trailer that accompanied the Netflix version of the film was amusing -the slogan “Not your mother’s love story” must have been repeated a half dozen times, showing how eager they were to shock the public with this tale of contemporary urban amorality. Ultimately, however, the film’s desire to be ultra hip and blase are its undoing, as the characters don’t really have much depth, almost as though the filmmakers knew even then that this was more a commentary on a generation than about real people.

            This video has some scenes from the film:

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              Napa Valley Film Festival

              We can add the Napa Valley Film Festival to the growing number of popular and influential showcases for the latest independent films. We can only see it as a healthy trend that more festivals are getting publicity and the indie film world is getting more decentralized and, well, indie. If there’s anything to complain about with this trend, it’s that the vast majority of these film festivals are in scenic or glamorous locations. This makes perfect sense, of course –why not give people a chance to see some innovative films while they’re vacationing in California wine country or the South of France? But now maybe it’s time for some film festivals to appear in places no one would want to go otherwise, somewhere like…well, we wouldn’t want to insult anyone’s home town, but insert your stereotype middle-of-nowhere location.

              “Celebrating the best new independent films from around the world, along with the food, wine, hospitality and natural beauty of the legendary Napa Valley, the world’s top wine country destination. Inaugural festival Nov 9 – 13, 2011”

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                San Diego Latino Film Festival

                The San Diego Latino Film Festival may not be the best known film festival in the world, but more films from Spanish speaking nations are being made all the time, and many are receiving acclaim. This festival is a good sampling of these films that will hopefully receive some mainstream attention as well.

                San Diego Latino Film Festial Opens 12th Annual Cinema En Tu

                The film series includes: Without Men: In this offbeat comedy, the women of a secluded Latin American village are left to rebuild their society after all of the men are recruited by a bumbling group of guerrillas.

                Publish Date: 07/29/2011 17:25

                http://laprensa-sandiego.org/etc-etc-etc/entertainment/san-diego-latino-film-festial-opens-12th-annual-cinema-en-tu-idioma-film-series-with-a-%E2%80%9Cmini-festival%E2%80%9D/

                To continue on the topic of Latino films, this article gives you some good suggestions for Indie Latino films worth watching:

                VL At The Cine: Summer Indie Latino Films To Check Out | VivirLatino

                All of the films on FUTURESTATES are amazing resources, these are just a few that center Latino and Latino experiences. I got to show special love to Greg Pak who creates marvelous films.

                Publish Date: 07/27/2011 15:50

                http://vivirlatino.com/2011/07/26/vl-at-the-cine-summer-indie-latino-films-to-check-out.php

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                  Toronto Film Festival

                  The Toronto Film Festival has been gaining in popularity in recent years -the lineup for the 2011 festival, which starts next month, has been announced:

                  Toronto International Film Festival Announces Lineup | Palm Beach

                  The Toronto International Film Festival, which has become an important platform for awards-seeking films in recent years, has announced its 2011 lineup. The.

                  Publish Date: 07/27/2011 17:44

                  http://www.pbpulse.com/movies/film-festivals/2011/07/27/toronto-international-film-festival-announces-lineup/

                  …and The Venice Film Festival is also coming up soon:

                  US movies headline Venice Film Festival | Palm Beach Entertainment

                  Roman Polanski, David Cronenberg and 5 American directors, including George Clooney and Abel Ferrara, will compete at this year's Venice Film.

                  Publish Date: 07/28/2011 11:16

                  http://www.pbpulse.com/movies/film-festivals/2011/07/28/us-movies-headline-venice-film-festival/

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                    Distributing Independent Films

                    Distributing independent films can be even more challenging than making them in the first place -or at least, it can raise a whole new set of obstacles. This article discusses possible ways to revive a film that seems to be going nowhere.

                    Film Threat – Going Bionic: Distributing Independent Films

                    Even if your project seems dead, it isn't. It's a zombie, undead and angry, just waiting for the right time to attackā€¦

                    Publish Date: 07/26/2011 0:19

                    http://www.filmthreat.com/features/38824/

                    Continuing with the theme of indie film distribution, in this video, veteran producer Michael Phillips discusses alternative independent film strategies:

                    Michael Phillips on Alternative Independent Film Distribution!

                    www.myfilmis.com for independent film distribution Hear from academy award winner Michael Phillips on independent distribution through a new independent film distributor called MyFilmIs.com www.myfilmis.com Michael Phillips is a veteran film producer…

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