Movie Update, Old Guy Directors, And Me

Looks my movie is a go again.

Got contacted by my producer slash cinematographer slash editor. They are digitizing the footage for editing on their new Macintosh editing system and we begin a'cuttin' digitally next week. The poor guy nearly got killed in a car wreck a day before filming began AND I had a last minute cancellation by an actress I had rearranged my whole shooting schedule around. Luckily I got it all settled out in the nick of fuckin' time. But what a pisser. Another actress who I told this to who worked on the film said everything happens for a reason, so maybe it was for the best in some weird ass sense. Welcome to the film business.

The great Sidney Lumet lamented on Inside The Actor's Studio that digital editing on computer is part of the reason you see so much junk in the cinema today. Uh, well, Sidney, a good edit is a good edit, be it on film or digitally. I can't remember the last time Sid made a groundbreaking film anyway. Or other old timers like Paul Mazursky.

I'd like to ask Paulie what it was like to work with Stanley Kubrick. I saw Shelley Winters at a doctor's office I was working at once, doing medical billing. I would have asked her the same thing about working with Stan The Man on Lolita if she hadn't been looking sickly and walking with a cane at the time.

One thing that pissed me off about Stanley is he didn't make ENOUGH FILMS. He had such a gift and he took so damn long in between movies. Here's the other films Kubrick should have directed in his lifetime:

One Eyed Jacks (a Western he was set to direct but didn't)
Napoleon (planned this one for years, never made it)
Vanity Fair (said he wanted to do this after A Clockwork Orange but felt he couldn't do it justice)
The Aryan Papers (a Holocaust film I believe that was in the planning stages)
The Catcher In The Rye (I can't think of anyone else as perfect to adapt this classic novel)
A.I. (he gave up on this one until he saw Jurassic Park and realized the technology now existed to make it, thought I kinda liked the Spielberg version)

I read Mazursky's book Show Me The Magic and he writes at the end of it that he and his friends hang out most weekdays at a table at Farmer's Market near CBS Studios. I just happened to be there one morning when I was going to attend a taping of The Price Is Right. I figure, hell, I live in So. Cal I might as well try and get on a game show once. Didn't make the cut though. But I did see old Paul when I strolled into Farmer's. We made eye contact for half a sec. Paul also qualifies for Cool Old Guy status as well. You might want to see him bar his thespian chops in Two Days In The Valley, a flawed but fun 1996 dark comedy. When I get my film put together I'm thinking I'll stroll on up to him in Farmer's one morning and hand him a DVD of my film.

I shot my film ON film not digital. I'm somewhat of Luddite in that sense. Digital video hasn't advanced far enough to match the look of film. Though Collateral and Once Upon A Time In Mexico looked fantastic on digital. Maybe not as good as 35mm, but damn close enough.

I sometimes feel directors who shoot their films on digital and not film, they haven't made a movie, they've made a home video. Gah, see Spike Lee's film Bamboozled to see what I mean. Bamboozled was flawed on a screenplay level anyway, so the cheap digital look was insult to injury, despite a cameo by comedy legend Paul Mooney. Bamboozled had a real persecution complex that I didn't care for.

Can't go 35mm? Try for super 16mm at least! Long live film, mama jama!