Facets' Daily Find

Thanks to the wonders of the ol' internets, film lovers unable to trek out to Park City can enjoy highlights from the 2010 Sundance Film Festival from the comfort of home.

The official Sundance Youtube channel has a wealth of clips, shorts, round table discussion, interviews and more. We're mining the treasures, so keep your eyes glued to Facets Features for picks of the litter. An early favorite is The S from Hell, directed by Rodney Ascher.

"A documentary-cum-horror film about the scariest corporate symbol in history, the 1964 Screen Gems logo, aka The S From Hell. Built around interviews with survivors still traumatized from viewing the logo after shows like Bewitched or The Monkees, the film brings their stories to life with animation, found footage, and reenactments."

Facets' Daily Find

Wow. Just...wow.

Facets' Daily Find

Joshua Allen Harris' inflatable street art is blowing our minds!

Facets' Daily Find

We're mad Doctor Who freaks here at Facets Features. Our week just isn't complete without the TARDIS or a Dalek or two popping up somewhere. So, you can imagine our interstellar joy after stumbling upon the show's opening theme as it appeared in the series' debut in 1963. Everything about it--from Ron Grainer and Delia Derbyshire's electronic score to the wavey visuals--defined the series from the outset--smart, spacey, trippy, a bit cheesy, but absolutely compelling.

Monday Morning Quarterbackin'

Over the weekend, several savvy Facets employees spent their time watching movies. Feel free to agree or disagree with these off-the-top-of-their-heads comments. Or, thank them for bringing a movie to your attention. Bets are on for who inspires the most comments!

Michelle, Facets Gal Friday thought the 1941 classic Hellzapoppin’ at the Bank of America Cinema was “a lot of fun and a big mess”—but in a good way. She insightfully drew parallels to Monty Python because of the absurdist humor and wondered if this movie could have been an inspiration on them.

Jenny of Customer Service watched Super High Me on DVD, which is a take-off on Super Size Me, except the content is about marijuana. Though a “funny, little movie” by comic Doug Benson, a former Stoner of the Year, it did bring up some good points about the hotly contested debate on medical marijuana use.

Chris in Accounting attended the MCA’s series on Italian movies (curated by a former Facets employee). He took in the original 1978 Italian version of Inglorious Bastards by Enzo Castellari and The Passenger by Antonioni. After noting the crazy 70s’ haircuts in Bastards, his final word on the film was “Cool.”

After watching Paul Schrader’s edgy Autofocus on DVD, Lauren in Development declared, “I never knew Greg Kinnear could be creepier than Willem Dafoe, but he was.” If you’ve seen the movie, you get it.

Harmony Korine’s Julien Donkey-Boy inspired a three-way discussion between Chris in Rentals and Matt and Aaron from Shipping. Chris disliked the film, admitting that director Korine annoys him and that JD-B was too reminiscent of that late 90s indie vibe, while the boys from shipping disagreed. Aaron liked the film’s distorted video effects; Matt found Herzog “hilarious.”

Eric from Operations re-viewed Quantum of Solace, the oddly named Bond film from last year. Eric found QoS better than Casino Royale because of its superior narrative and “high-quality set pieces,” which is the raison d’etre for all Bond films. “Why the mixed reviews,” ponders Eric.

Phil from Marketing spent Friday evening in awe of Kubrick's Spartacus, only to wake up Saturday morning to learn of the death of actress Jean Simmons, who starred in the film alongside Kurt Douglas, Peter Ustinov, Larry Olivier (we call him Larry here) and Tony Curtis. He spent the rest of the day "weirded out" by the coincidence, but still amazed by the film's incredible action sequences and Ustinov's Oscar-winning performance.

Facets' Daily Find

After weeks celebrating European animation and David Lynch, we're taking it easy thematically for a spell. Translation? Anything goes! So, to loosely paraphrase a python, it's now time for something completely different, like Chris Marker and Mario Ruspoli's Three Cheers for the Whale (1972). Or at least a brief clip from it. Hopefully, this tease spurns you cinematic explorers on expeditions for the original short, additional Marker films, and other great whaling flicks (Huston's Moby Dick (1956), I'm looking at you).

Facets' Daily Find

Facets Features' celebration of David Lynch (on the week of his birthday, at that) concludes with a memorable scene from the Twin Peaks pilot that perfectly captures the series' deft mix of over-the-top melodrama and genuinely ripping emotion. Angelo Badalamenti's score elevates both here, as well, while adding just a touch of signature creepiness.

Facets' Daily Find

Let's head even further back into David Lynch's career for his second short, The Alphabet (1968). This is Sesame Street on drugs, kids. Good drugs.

Facets' Daily Find

Let's jump back to Lynch's beginnings with The Amputee(1974), an early short starring frequent collaborator Catherine Coulson (and the director himself as the nurse).

Facets' Daily Find

This shot from Lynch's mindbender, Inland Empire (2006), was one of the most frightening moments in cinema that year.

It still freaks me a bit, in all honesty.

Facets' Daily Find

Dennis Hopper schools Kyle MacLachlan on the fine art of beer appreciation in Blue Velvet (1986).

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Inside the Outrage

A new documentary goes rogue to explore hate, hypocrisy and homosexuality.


Like Michael Moore without the blatant agit prop-ing, the people behind Outrage are on a clear mission: to decry politicians who vote against gay rights, while secretly embarking on same-sex trysts. Academy Award nominated filmmaker Kirby Dick (This Film is Not Yet Rated) skillfully uses a mix of on-screen text, news footage, and interviews with prominent members of the gay community (including Congressman Barney Frank, former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey, and activist Larry Kramer) to illuminate the not-so-secret lives of supposedly conservative public figures. The media also comes under scrutiny, thanks in part to radio personality Michelangelo Signorile, whose 1980's gossip column sought to crack open the media's double-standard coverage of celebrities' sex lives.

The film primarily focuses on Larry Craig, an Idaho senator and outspoken gay-rights opponent, who in 2007 pled guilty to soliciting sex from a police officer in a public bathroom. In the film's latter half, particular attention is paid to Charlie Crist, governor of Florida and possible Republican candidate for the 2012 Presidential election. Several interview subjects claim that Crist has led a secret gay life while loudly opposing same sex marriage and adoption, and that his own 2008 marriage was a strategic move to deflect attention from rumors about his sexual orientation.

Dick leaves no stone unturned, juxtaposing right-wing voting records, with recorded phone calls, revealing photographs and testimonies from alleged former lovers who were paid for their silence, run out of town, or told the filmmakers, "ask me about this again in ten years." However, the gay community is also called to action. In one of the most affecting moments of the film, the late Harvey Milk claims in a video clip that every gay individual must come out of the closet for equality to fully take effect. In less than 90 minutes, Outrage effectively illustrates Milk's words of wisdom: with so many secrets and lies in the government and media, how can anyone--gay or straight--be truly free?

Outrage will be released on DVD Tuesday, January 19.


-Lauren Whalen

*Find more of Lauren's writings on film, books and other pop culture weirdness at The Unprofessional Critic.

Facets' Daily Find

Poor Jingle Dale...So tormented. So misunderstood.

Facets Feature's week-long ode to Lynch continues with a brief clip from Wild at Heart (1990), featuring one of Crispin Glover's wackiest screen performances.

Facets' Daily Find

This week, Facets Features gets creepy and weird with one of our favorite filmmakers, David Lynch!

First up, a haunting tune sung by the Lady in the Radiator from Lynch's feature-length debut, Eraserhead (1977).

Facets' Daily Find

Facets Features wraps up a wonderful week-long dip into the huge world of eastern European animation with the trailer to Jiri Barta's unfinished animated feature, Golem. This exquisite brief glimpse has us hungry for the completed project!

Facets' Daily Find

Another stunning piece: Schody (Stairs), a 1968 short from Polish animator Stefan Schabenbeck!

Facets' Daily Find

This is absolutely amazing: Soviet Toys, a 1924 animated short by the great filmmaker and cinema theorist Dziga Vertov!

Facets' Daily Find

The Cow (Корова) (1990), Aleksandr Petrov's Oscar-nominated short, is a beautiful work created by painting on glass.

Facets' Daily Find

A man can't quite kick the nic in Passion (1961), an early short by Hungarian animator Jozsef Nepp, produced by Pannónia Filmstúdió--the largest animation studio in Hungary!

Facets' Daily Find

Youtube credits the stop-motion animated short, Cat Concert, as a 1986 Soviet release, but I can find no other corroborating info anywhere else.

Help?

Facets' Daily Find

This week, Facets Features digs into some obscure Eastern European and Soviet animation! First up is a clip from Czech animator and filmmaker Karel Zeman's 1974 feature, A Thousand and One Nights!

Facets' Daily Find

Happy birthday, Elvis!

Facets' Daily Find

Damn you, ABC, for not recognizing the brilliance of Poochinski. How could they abandon this pilot?! Travesty!

Facets' Daily Find

Jan Svankmajer's Meat Love: the perfect short to enjoy over lunch!

Facets' Daily Find

From the PBS series Independent Lens: Off the Charts, a fascinating, at times unsettling, look at the strange underworld of the song poem industry.

I'm heading to eBay to hunt for some song poem 7-inches. Wish me luck!

Keep on Trucker-in'

Facets staff member Susan Doll interviewed director James Mottern about his independent feature Trucker, which showed exclusively at Facets in October. Trucker has turned out to be a favorite among Facets employees, and we are all rooting for it to make a big splash during this awards season. Trucker is released on DVD today, January 5.


Facets: How did you get interested in the subject matter of a female truck driver, or truck driving in general? What drew you in?

Mottern: I grew up in the great State of Virginia and there's a lot of trucking down there—there’s a lot of trucking in most places where people don't have a bunch of money. It's a good job and you can come from very little and not have to wear an apron or a name tag and work for a big corporation like Walmart. You can be free and make decent money and provide for your family. It's also a good living for someone who has a somewhat rambling spirit, which is a lot of people; sometimes they just don't allow themselves the opportunity to listen to that part of themselves. Since I was very little, trucking always intrigued me as a way of being free and I like to be by myself, so driving a truck seemed pretty much perfect. When I moved to California I looked into going to this truck driving school out in Arcadia but got into documentary work, which allowed me to travel like I wanted to. But when Michelle Monaghan agreed to do the part in Trucker, I called that very same trucking school and a really terrific instructor named Phillip Malloy taught her how to drive a big rig. Every time you see Michelle behind the wheel she's really driving. Anyway, I got to live my dream through my actress and she's a hell of a lot better at it than I'd ever be.

Facets: Truckers and their profession amount to a sort-of subculture due to the isolation of the road. Their trucks are akin to their living spaces and truck stops are like their neighborhoods. Almost everything they wear, eat, enjoy during leisure time, or need for their trucks comes from a truck stop. They have their own slang, clothing style, jokes, and even their own set of symbols. How much did you get into that while you were writing the movie? It seems alluded to in the film—Diane’s clothing, for example—but not dwelled on.

Mottern: The trucker lifestyle is one you can never quite get a handle on. There are a lot of truck drivers, and they come from all walks of life; and although they can be perceived as an odd or somewhat enigmatic subculture, they are actually a huge part of the American workforce. As of 2006, there were 3.4 million truck drivers employed in the United States. It's true that many, probably most, come from modest means and they do have a particular lifestyle, language, set of rules, and I did do quite a bit of research on truck driving to try to understand it. But the more I learned the more I realized that in terms of a subculture it was pretty abstract and always in flux. What I did find is that truckers tend to have a nomadic spirit: They don't mind being alone; they're industrious; and they usually possess a certain wisdom that comes from seeing thousands of faces and hundreds of thousands of mile of open road. To me they encapsulate an American ideal that maybe never really existed and is maybe more a myth than anything else; but it resonates still of pioneers and cowboys and long trails and the search for freedom. At least in the way that I understand it.

Facets: How did you get Michelle Monoghan interested in the part? Did you know her? Or, did you just take a shot that she would be interested?

Mottern: You know, since this picture came out, Michelle's been getting rave reviews pretty much across the board. There have been a couple of naysayers who must live in their mothers’ basements and don't get enough sunlight or something, but basically everyone can see what a bang-up job she does in this part. It's a role where at first you kind of think you know what she is doing but then, as she goes through the film, she surprises you in these subtle and not so subtle ways. That was my hope in making this film. That something seemingly familiar wasn't something you necessarily understood at all.

I'm a real film fan, almost a cinephile, although I leave that title to the diehards. But I aspire. In any case, I like women in movies. Sophia Loren in Two Women; Ellen Burtsyn in The Last Picture Show; Gena Rowlands in Faces, and anything else, really. Even Marianne Faithful is strange and terrific in Girl on a Motorcyle. There's a ton of great, eclectic, incredible roles played by women over the years, and it makes my blood boil that there aren't more. I don't understand it. Anyway, I hold up what Michelle did in Trucker to any of those performances and many others. I think time will attest to what she did in this picture. Anyway, the reason I mention all this stuff is that Michelle has always been a great actress in all these films she's been in. Since this movie came out and she's been getting good notices, sometimes people say she's just played "the girl" up until now. That's true in a way. But to me, she made Kiss Kiss Bang Bang what it has become—a cult classic. She captured incredible pathos and humanity in North Country. In Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck did not utilize her prowess, and I have my own opinion on that, but she did a terrific job. Even in The Heartbreak Kid, she is infinitely watchable. Yeah, she's played the girl, I guess, but what a girl! Anyway, my point about Trucker is that I'd seen her in some of these roles (some she did after Trucker or was in process), especially this one incredible shot in North Country. When I saw that shot—along with what I'd seen of her other work—I knew she was my Diane Ford! And being a near-cinephile, I knew she had that magic that those actresses I mentioned possess—in spades. I sent her the script through her manager, and she agreed to do it, and I am lucky—blessed really—that she did. The DVD comes out on January 5, and I hope it means that people who never got to see her in the theater will run out and buy or rent or borrow a copy and see what she did. I still like watching this film after seeing it a couple hundred times in very states of completion.

Facets: Getting an independent film produced and released is a major challenge that most movie-goers understand. But, what about getting the film exhibited? What are the obstacles and challenges of getting your movie to the people who would be interested in seeing it?

Mottern: Okay, Susan, don't get me started on this one. This is a book. Well, you know that producer Marc Gill wrote about how the sky was falling in indie film, and he was right. It's been a slog. It's a nearly insurmountable task to get an independent film completed in the first place, and even more difficult to get it into theaters, and beyond that to get people to come see it. There is so little money around, ad costs are huge, and the places to exhibit are slimmer and slimmer. On top of that, DVD sales are slow, piracy is rampant, and video chains are closing down left, right, and center. But we have a distributor who has been very open about hearing new ideas and working with our producers and talent to get our film out there.

In terms of production of smaller films, any film really, I think that in general, people in the movie business have to realize that the money that has been out there for all these films and for their personal gain simply does not exist anymore. I have an especially sore spot for agents as they are the gatekeepers of all these projects; and I understand that their job is not to make movies but to make deals. Some agents I have dealt with are extremely progressive in the way they see reality, but others refuse to accept that that movie business they came up in no longer exists. I would hope that agents soon will come to terms with the fact that their talent—and the projects they want their talent in—need nurturing and thought and that they don’t just gun for the highest number. Talent needs to account for themselves and to be more involved in this process as well.

In terms of distribution I think that any indie production needs to build into their budget at least some funds for self-distribution. Even larger distributors are looking for other sources of financing or partnerships to distribute films, and I think it falls on the shoulders of the filmmakers to learn the distribution business inside and out; so that even if a distributor picks up their film, they are versed in the logistics of mounting a campaign. A filmmaker may not understand everything in terms of business but is almost universally the best and most ardent supporter of his or her film. There's a great book by author Marshall Fine about Cassavetes that I highly recommend as an inspiration for this type of approach.

Facets: What’s it like to be in the same boat as “independents” that are supported and distributed by the major studios?

Mottern: We made this picture for $1.5 million in 19 days. When I heard I had $1.5 million to make a movie, I pretty much jumped up and down. $1.5 million, I thought? That seemed like a hell of a lot. Turns out I was wrong. But it was just the right amount for this movie. 19 days? Incredible! Turns out 19 days is not that long to shoot a movie. But for this picture, it was perfect!

It's true we're up against studios that have a lot more money to make and distribute a film. And in some ways, I wished our movie got picked up by Sony Classics, Lionsgate, or one of the others that circled around it. But you know what? We didn't, and STILL Michelle got great reviews. And I got to learn things I never would have known!

Our movie is a tough one. Her character is a tough one. She's not easily accessible, or nubile, or victimized, or trashy. There's no easy way into this character, and so we always knew it might not fit exactly what indie distributors or main stream distributors wanted for their models. And, it's a simple story by a first timer with a female lead! There're a lot of strikes against this film in the world in which it exists. But we fought. I fought. Michelle fought. Our producer fought. Michelle's management and publicist fought. Everybody was so committed to this film and to Michelle's performance that I sort of feel like we beat the studios. Where there was no money, there was passion and grace, and to me that means a hell of a lot. You can't eat passion and grace, I realize; I'm not a fool. Mostly. But someday if I'm lucky enough to die in my bed, I don't really think the Ferrari I never owned is going to matter as much as knowing what we achieved with Trucker, the people we met, and the fun we had.

Facets: How would you characterize the reception the film has gotten so far? What’s good about it; what’s bad about it?

Mottern: It makes me real proud that people have reacted so positively to Michelle's performance. Going into this film, that character was everything to me. It was the film, and so when people react to her characterization of Diane Ford, it gives me a great feeling. What I have found interesting is that the people—and there are actually very few—who do not like Michelle's performance are actually people who do not like Diane Ford! I've always said that Trucker is like the magic lasso that Wonder Woman has that makes people tell the truth. There's something about this character that reminds people of women they've known or experiences they've had. Sometimes not so great, you know? There's always a very strong reaction to the film, and especially to Diane Ford; and it makes me know she's struck a nerve with viewers. I've also really enjoyed watching this film with audiences as there are parts in the film that will literally make grown men cry. But not in a sentimental way, which I would find despicable. I tried to tell the truth in this picture the best I could, and Michelle did too. We all did. And that comes out, I think. There are some truths in this picture that kind of get you in the gut. I know I made the film, and saying this might seem pandering, but it is something I have observed. And there's one scene in this picture that still puts my stomach in knots and brings a few tears to my eyes no matter how many times I watch it.

Facets: What’s your next project?

Mottern: I just finished writing this script for Michelle that takes place at the beginning of the twentieth century, and it's about a lot of things. But, one thing it's about is the relationship of white women to black men in America. Every now and then, movies about "racism" come around, and I find that compelling; but I find this specific and definite underlying relationship extremely interesting. And in this script there are some things that I can honestly say have never been seen in film before. I realize I sound like a carnival barker, but it is very exciting to me. And, the fact that Michelle will hopefully be a part of it is a dream come true. I'm not saying she is definitely doing it; but I wrote the damn thing for her, so she better have a really good reason not to! I've also just cast this great script we've been working on called The Fallen about a Boston firefighter who becomes involved in crime. We'll shoot it this spring back East. There's a lot of violence; it's real sexy in parts; it’s got great action; and, we wrote some very funny parts too; But really what it's about is identity and class and what a person has to do to retain his or her freedom in the world we live. Broad, I know, but it's what I like, I guess.

Facets' Daily Find

Ladies and gentlemen, the Wilhelm Scream.

Facets' Daily Find

Klaus Kinski can barely contain his joy over being interviewed by German talk show host Thomas Gottschalk.

Facets' Daily Find

Check out, Ataque de Panico, the short that landed Uruguayan filmmaker Fede Alvarez a cozy deal with Sam Raimi.

Facets' Daily Find

Who needs a burrito when you've got magic pants? From the mad geniuses at Waverly Films.