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Issue #2011 [Fall 2011]

Joshua Leonard Tells The Lie
by Joshua Leonard
A commercially successful screenwriter friend of mine recently attended a showing of my film, The Lie. Afterwards, as folks were milling about and drinking the booze that I was hoping wouldn’t run out, he approached me and began a wistful ramble that I often hear from well-paid acquaintances. Something like, “It’s so fantastic how you guys keep it real with your work, man.” Or worse yet, “You know what’s great about you guys? You manage to make cool things for no money.”

Borderline Normal
by Dante A. Ciampaglia
At first, it’s a film that feels familiar. Late-twentysomething guys in tank tops and jeans work the grounds of a rural farmhouse while their women, completing their own domestic tasks, look on. A dirty, blissfully oblivious toddler plays in an unkempt yard that leads to a roughshod shed. John Hawkes shows up, languid yet commanding, setting this scene of a 21st-century paradise on the edge of calamity.

Strip off the opening credits and, for the first five minutes, Martha Marcy May Marlene plays like a Winter’s Bone retread. But any sense of been-here, seen-that familiarity is wrenched away as a determined young woman-on-the-edge flees the farmhouse for the mysterious world that lies beyond the surrounding forest. With this, the film becomes a study in unrelenting paranoia, the kind perfected by Roman Polanski in films like Repulsion, as we follow the titular Marcy May née Martha née Marcy May (and sometimes Marlene) during the first two weeks of her life after escaping a violent cult.

Jason Segel Resurrects The Muppets
By Phillip Williams
At the end of 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall, actor-scribe Jason Segel inserted a Dracula puppet musical as both a touching coda to his witty comedy and a good excuse to showcase a longtime passion. Having gotten Jim Henson’s Creature Shop to create the puppets and help stage his mini-tribute, Segel asked if he could meet Kermit and Miss Piggy, only to learn that his old friends had been sold to Disney.

“I just got a little fire in my belly,” Segel recalls. “The Muppets are such a great group of characters. I just couldn’t stand the thought of it going fallow. I went to Disney and pitched the idea of a Muppet movie.”

So began the next chapter in the charmed life of the 31-year-old Los Angeles native—and the resurrection of Henson’s internationally beloved pantheon. “I don’t think anyone saw it coming,” admits Segel.

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Issue #2012 [2012 Complete Guide to Making Movies]

First-Time Tricks of the Trade
by Mark W. Travis
Being a first-time director is like jumping into the deep end of a pool. You may have prepared for this job by directing short films, attending workshops, watching other directors work and reading lots of books. All of that is good, but when you embark on directing your first feature, you’re still jumping into the deep end, where there’s no lifeguard on duty and no one to yank you out if you drop below the water line. But there are some tricks you can learn quickly that will work for you if you are willing to embrace them enthusiastically.

My Golden Rules: Errol Morris
by Errol Morris
Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, Gates of Heaven, The Fog of War), who explored the potential of photography to reveal truth in his book Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography, presents his five golden rules for discovering truth through cinema.

Five Reasons Why Short Films Are Still Essential
by Warren Pereira
I wrote and directed my first short film, Lacking Lewis, in early 2005. The supposed “final” cut, ready later that year, was awful. So I rewrote, re-shot, re-color corrected, re-edited, re-scored and re-sound mixed it more times than I care to admit.
 By 2007, the film was better. It got into some festivals and even won a few awards. I was told that I was ready to make a feature and that any more time spent making short films would be a waste, but over the next four years, I made four more short films with the same meticulous work ethic as my first. The shorts garnered me multiple festival selections and awards, Oscar qualification, critical praise and even distribution. They connected me with amazingly talented artists whom I respect and who have taught me a lot. For anyone who thinks that making a short film is just an easily-ignored pit stop on the road to feature film stardom, I offer the following five reasons to make a short film.

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Issue #2011 [Summer 2011]

Paul Rudd & Jesse Peretz's Idiot Interview
by Paul Rudd & Jesse Peretz
In 2001, Paul Rudd appeared as the unworldly American inheritor of a French mansion in The Château, directed by Grammy Award-winning music video director Jesse Peretz. Since then, Peretz has directed just one other feature—The Ex, starring Amanda Peet and Jason Bateman—while Rudd has perfected the role of the sarcastic-but-sweet man-child in films like Knocked Up, Role Models (which he also wrote) and I Love You, Man, earning himself a reputation as one of the most likable guys in movies. Ten years after their first collaboration, Rudd and Peretz are re-teaming for Our Idiot Brother.

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Issue #2011 [Future of Moviemaking 2011]

My Golden Rules: Chris Weitz
by Chris Weitz
Writer. Director. Producer. Actor. Chris Weitz has done it all. Here, he offers his 21 "golden rules" for life in the Hollywood fast lane.

Social Media All-Stars
By Jeffrey Goodman
The world of independent movies is changing. Thanks to advances in technology—especially inexpensive HD cameras and the increased availability of consumer-friendly digital editing systems—it’s easier to make movies today than it ever has been before. That’s the good news. The bad news is that, since more movies are being made, distributors are paying less for finished movies.

Studios Off the Beaten Path
by Julie Jacobs
They may be off the beaten path, or at least away from the bright lights of Los Angeles and New York, but they’ve been spot on in making cities like Austin, Texas and Albuquerque, New Mexico burgeoning production beds for both big-budget and indie moviemaking.

Best Apps for Moviemakers 2011
By Rebecca Pahle
Ah, how things have changed in just one short year. When we published our first list of 25 must-have apps for moviemakers in last year’s Future of Moviemaking edition, the world of apps was still a relatively new one. Last year’s list included only one app exclusively for the then-brand-new iPad, and today’s newest technological toy du jour, the iPad 2, wasn’t even on the radar.

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Issue #2011 [Spring 2011]

A Film in the Crowd
by Paul Osborne
It’s always been hard to find the money to make a movie. Investors have forever been scarce, but in today’s toxic economic climate, they’re almost nonexistent. Then along came crowdfunding, viewed by many as the great financial hope for independent cinema. Crowdfunding takes a page from the age-old idea of pre-selling a movie, but instead of regional distributors in foreign territories purchasing the rights in advance of principal photography, the moviemaker is pre-selling directly to his or her potential audience. Such pre-sales are then used, in whole or in part, to fund the making of the film.

Wes Craven Screams Anew
By Bryan Reesman
He has unleashed incredibly influential horror films over the last four decades, including The Last House on the Left, A Nightmare On Elm Street and Scream. His movies have resonated with audiences not only because they tap into our primal fears, but also because they often dip into the mainstream zeitgeist and hit upon social issues. His excursions into fright films have inspired many to label him “The Master of Horror.” In recent years Wes Craven has taken some time off from directing, but even though some are calling last fall’s My Soul to Take and the upcoming Scream 4 a “comeback,” in truth he never really went away. But times have certainly changed.

Take 10: Danny McBride
By Jennifer M. Wood
“Somewhere between Porky’s and Goodfellas” is when Danny McBride realized he wanted to be a moviemaker. Though he got his start in more serious-minded fare as a second unit director on fellow University of North Carolina School of the Arts alum David Gordon Green’s George Washington, the writing was on the wall for this would-be wiseass, whose first credited acting role is the character of “Bust-Ass” in Green’s All the Real Girls.

Greg Mottola Enters Alien Territory with Paul
by Aaron Hillis
When Greg Mottola, the New York-based moviemaker behind such naturalistic, character-driven comedies as Superbad, Adventureland and The Daytrippers, was asked by Shaun of the Dead co-creators Simon Pegg and Nick Frost to direct Paul, their “pop culture mash-up” homage to the golden age of sci-fi blockbusters, even Mottola admits he wasn’t the most obvious guy for the job.

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Issue #2011 [Winter 2011]

Roger Deakins Show True Grit
By Bob Fisher
With more than 30 features under his belt, Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC is one of the world’s master cinematographers. While Deakins has collaborated with some of today’s top moviemakers, including Martin Scorsese (Kundun), Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind) and Sam Mendes (Revolutionary Road), he has enjoyed an especially fruitful relationship with Joel and Ethan Coen, with whom he has worked for nearly two decades.

Neville Page, Creature Designer
By Brian Hickey
If you’re the type of person who stays after a film to watch the end credits, you know how many people it takes to make a movie. (Sometimes hundreds.) While James Cameron gets most of the credit for Pandora, the fictional planet on which Avatar takes place, that environment could not have come to life without Neville Page.

Peter Weir Finds His Way Back
By Eric Kohn
Isolation is a recurring them in the cinema of Australian director Peter Weir, both literally and metaphorically. From his classic 1975 mystery Picnic at Hanging Rock to more recent efforts like The Truman Show and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, the director has demonstrated a nuanced fixation on the struggle between men and forces beyond their control—nature and otherwise. In The Way Back, Weir keeps up that tradition with the spare tale of prisoners escaping from a Siberian gulag in the heat of World War II. Weir, who also wrote the screenplay, follows a group of survivors as they wander across a series of barren landscapes and eventually wind up in India.

Take 10: Melissa Leo
By Jennifer M. Wood
One might expect a certain professional trajectory from an actress who landed her first role—that of Linda Warner on the soap “All My Children”—by beating out Julia Roberts for the part. But in the almost three decades since she first appeared on the small screen, Melissa Leo has gone the route of the consummate character actor.

Designing Red Riding Hood
by Catherine Hardwicke
Production designer-turned-director Catherine Hardwicke on the childhood creativity that inspired the world of Red Riding Hood.