Advertisement
Tanna Frederick Lives the Hollywood Dream
(Page 3)
MM: Speaking of your collaboration with Jaglom: You guys are expected to show a rough cut of your latest film, Irene in Time, later this week at the Iowa Independent Film Festival, a fest you founded last year. As an artist, is it important for you to give back to your community? As someone who has experienced the festival circuit firsthand, how do you think the Iowa Independent Film Festival stands out?
TF: I cannot stress the value of the festival circuit enough. Nowhere else can you get such an amazing, educated, supportive, enthusiastic, open group of people to watch your film and give you the straight skinny on how they feel about it. I first found out about the glory of film festivals through the Ashland Film Festival when we took a rough cut of Hollywood Dreams up there—it was our first rough cut screening and we held a long three-hour Q&A after and it was completely invaluable to the completion of the film.
Going up to Oregon made me think of my hometown, Mason City, Iowa, and what a fantastic venue it would be for a festival. Last year was our first Festival, and this year will be our second. I think we’re at the beginning of a beautiful run in terms of the Iowa Indie Festival—it has the whole small-town deliciousness to it. I brought out as many L.A. filmmakers and actors and their wonderful films to Iowa as I could. We had the opening night party at my mom and dad’s house and fed everyone corn and burgers, and the L.A. folks were driven around in a navy blue limo the entire time and we saw a calf being birthed and some of the filmmakers (David Proval—not to name any names) even cried when they left good old Ioway.
The most important thing about creating the festival though was the amount of inspiration that came from it. Students and local artists realizing the accessibility of Hollywood—that they don’t need to move out here, that they can make great art right in their own backyards with the immensely advanced yet inexpensive equipment available now… and they did! I guess this year we have a ton of great films submitted locally who attended the festival last year and decided to go out and make their own film. I love that.
MM: And now you and Henry are back together again for Queen of the Lot, a sequel to Hollywood Dreams that will pick up three years later. What’s the status of that project? Did you ever imagine that, just five years into your career, you’d already have created a character that demanded a sequel?
TF: It is pretty unbelievable to me that five years into my career I’d already be doing a sequel for a character I created, but I am so excited to have that opportunity because Margie is such an intense and delightful and somewhat maddening character to play—everything that I look for in a role. And now to layer her successes—she’s become an action film star and had to change her name and is dealing with addictions and her life in Hollywood once the smoke and mirrors have been removed—it’s going to be a good time. We’re filming the first segment of the movie in Iowa at the film festival, I’m going back with Henry and a film crew as Margie Chizek/Maggie Chase… and we’re shooting Mason City’s reaction to her and her fame, how her relationships have changed with friends and family and the guy who would never ask her out in high school. Noah Wyle is attached as my love interest, a tell-all paparazzi journalist typem, and David Proval and Zack Norman still running Margie’s career and now producing the films she’s in, so there is a lot of wonderful lying and manipulating and falling in love… very Lubitsch Trouble In Paradise. We will continue to shoot through the summer and fall.
Digg
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Del.icio.us
Reddit
YahooAdvertisement
COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT 
This story was sponsored by
Latest from the blog:
Doorpost Awards $300,000 to “Undiscovered” Moviemakers
The Doorpost Film Project, a “contest aimed at discovering and developing moviemakers capable of producing films that inspire and influence rather than simply entertain,” just finished round one and is now left with 15 finalists who are described by Nathan Elliott, the Project's director, as “a globally, ethnically and racially diverse group of filmmakers that have one important thing in common: They're enormously talented."
Posted 07.23.08 | News/Commentary | No comments yet...
Other recent posts:
Citizen Kane Tops 99 Remarkable Films of the World
Grassroots Moviemaker: Building a Moviemaking Team
Batman Flies High Over the Box Office
Posts people are talking about:
SITE DELIVERY OPTIONS
