Razno

[Jimmy Kowalski]

The Gonzo Vision of Quentin Tarantino

In the darkening light of the Hollywood Hills, Bret Easton Ellis bonds with the pulp filmmaker over their shared love of cinema and his crusade

to continue telling stories that are both forward-thinking and timeless.

 

OCT. 12, 2015

 

“I READ, IN A BOOK about Bette Davis, that anybody who does an interview while drinking alcohol is a damned fool. When I saw that, I thought, ‘Oh my god, she’s right! What have I been doing my whole career?’ ’’ Quentin Tarantino offers me a glass of red wine from a recently opened bottle that’s about half-full when I arrive at his house way up in the Hollywood Hills, overlooking the green-ridged canyons on a hot August evening. ‘‘I hope you’re a damned fool, too!’’

 

 

Seated at a table by the pool behind the large and rambling home he bought in 1996 when he was making ‘‘Jackie Brown,’’ Tarantino is in baggy jeans and a brown hoodie, and because he is the ultimate auteur movie geek — I’ve never met anyone with such an encyclopedic knowledge of film — we are soon talking about our mutual affection for the critic Pauline Kael. A huge influence on Tarantino, Kael championed a kind of high-low trash-art aesthetic that was inclusive of both old-school foreign auteurs (Max Ophüls and Satyajit Ray) and new mavericks (Sam Peckinpah and Brian De Palma), while disdaining the polite, better-behaved American cinema of that era; we agree that she was so much more vital and interesting in the 1970s than in the 1980s. ‘‘The movies just weren’t up to snuff — she was better than the movies,’’ says Tarantino, a believer that the latter decade was among the worst for American film. But, he adds, ‘‘one of the weird things looking back at the ’70s reviews is that you can’t believe how mean she was to magnificent movies. She’s so rough on Don Siegel for making ‘Charley Varrick.’ ’’

 

Now, you might not think “Charley Varrick” is ‘‘magnificent’’ (if you think about it at all) but Tarantino’s adolescent passion moves you closer to wondering: Did I miss something? Tarantino has been too busy working on his new opus, ‘‘The Hateful Eight,’’ to watch many new movies in the last year, but he offers, along with more wine, snapshot opinions about a few of his filmmaker contemporaries. David Fincher? ‘‘Even when I don’t like his movies I walk around thinking about them for a week or so.’’ Wes Anderson? ‘‘ ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ is not really my thing, but I kind of loved it. The fact that I wasn’t a die-hard fan before made me even more happy that I could finally embrace him.’’ Judd Apatow? ‘‘His audience is getting smaller and smaller but I think he’s getting better and better.’’

 

‘‘The Hateful Eight’’ will screen on Christmas Day in a few select cities — in 70 millimeter as a roadshow presentation complete with an intermission — before opening wide in digital theaters in January. Tarantino is obsessed with the creamy grain of 70-millimeter film, so much so that he has arranged for 100 theaters worldwide to be retrofitted with Ultra Panavision lenses so the movie can be displayed as he intended. ‘‘I’ve been very on-edge the last three weeks,’’ he says, looking relaxed as the canyons around us recede into blackness.

 

The film, which stars Bruce Dern, Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth and Kurt Russell, was born of two genres: the parlor-room mystery and the wide-screen, large-scale western. The idea came to him from watching classic TV shows such as ‘‘The Virginian,’’ ‘‘Bonanza’’ and ‘‘The Big Valley,’’ in which, he says, ‘‘There was always, each season, at least one episode where bandits take over the Ponderosa or Shiloh Ranch, and they’d all be played by guest stars. It couldn’t help but lend itself to a situation like ‘Reservoir Dogs’: Trap them all in a room and let me get rid of all the hero characters so there’s no moral center.’’ Which is precisely what happens in ‘‘The Hateful Eight,’’ during a terrible blizzard.

 

We talk about the differences between TV and movies, and how TV relies on a kind of relentless storytelling whose main job is to constantly dispense information, while movies depend much more on mood and atmosphere — TV is a writers’ medium and movies are a directors’ medium. Even in the Golden Age of Television, the notion of TV as art is now considered something of a media-made joke that is finally being publicly deconstructed by critics, journalists and showrunners alike. The best TV shows still have sets that look a little ragged and threadbare because of the reality of TV economics — and to Tarantino this matters. The bigness of his recent movies — ‘‘Inglourious Basterds,’’ ‘‘Django Unchained’’ and now ‘‘The Hateful Eight’’ — feels like a rebuke to the smallness of TV and its increasing relevance to audiences, a fight against watching a series of medium shots and close-ups on your computer, your iPad and your iPhone. The belief in visual spectacle is part of Tarantino’s message in the era of Amazon, Hulu and Netflix.

 

‘‘I think we spent 60-something million on ‘Hateful Eight,’ which is actually more than I wanted to spend but we had weather problems. And,’’ he shrugs, laughing, ‘‘I wanted to make it good.’’ Unlike many filmmakers who get worn down by dwindling resources and drift over to television, Tarantino hasn’t because, well, he doesn’t have to. His last two movies were global blockbusters that were heavily nominated for Academy Awards. His first two movies were small-scale, L.A.-set crime dramas and, to this day, they are among the purest expressions of an ironic Gen-X sensibility that exist in American movie culture. When it opened in 1992, ‘‘Reservoir Dogs’’ was much-talked-about but little seen, yet it paved the way for a new kind of movie, exploding two years later into the malevolent delight of ‘‘Pulp Fiction’’ — at which point the audience was ready for it. In all of Tarantino’s movies, the dialogue is theatrical and profane and the criminal is the guiding moral authority. The humor is pitch-black, the nihilism gleeful. There are endless pop-culture references — and, yes, extreme and nasty violence.

 

As hugely influential as his earlier movies were (there seemed to be thousands of terrible rip-offs throughout the ’90s and into the 2000s), it’s impossible now to imagine an earnest 20-something millennial dreaming up a film as perverse and lurid as ‘‘Pulp Fiction’’ or ‘‘Reservoir Dogs’’ or anything else he’s made. In an era obsessed with ‘‘triggering’’ and ‘‘microaggressions’’ and the policing of language, the Tarantino oeuvre is relentlessly un-PC: His movies are impolite, rude, irresponsible and somewhat cold. And the further Tarantino goes, the larger his audience gets, as seen with his racially explosive comedy-western ‘‘Django Unchained.’’ ‘‘The Hateful Eight,’’ which takes place eight or nine years after the Civil War, also ended up addressing issues of race, even if this wasn’t his original intention: ‘‘It was just this cool, neat, genre scenario.’’

 

Tarantino’s dialogue-driven scenes, rambling and digressive, are often played out in real time, embedded within the strange, leisurely and byzantine plots he constructs, which are nothing like what a screenwriter who was taught by gurus such as Syd Field or Robert McKee might construct; the idea of the well-structured, three-act picture with the ‘‘inciting incident’’ on page 15 seems idiotic and fake in Tarantino’s world.

 

He shattered and then rearranged such rules in ‘‘Inglourious Basterds,’’ a rollicking, harrowing World War II comic pastiche. It’s one of the great films of the past decade: Playful, erudite, funny, talky, suspenseful and madcap, it both loves and laughs at the conventions of genre movies while reimagining and updating them. To my mind, it’s much more sweeping, outrageous and formally inventive than Kathryn Bigelow’s ‘‘The Hurt Locker,’’ the other war movie that came out in the summer of 2009, which is a serious, straightforward, humanist-realist character study that makes earnest liberal audiences feel both guilty and self-congratulatory. It was because of this that ‘‘Inglourious Basterds’’ lost to ‘‘The Hurt Locker’’ at the 2010 Oscars for Best Picture, Director and Original Screenplay. ‘‘It bugged me that Mark Boal won Best Screenplay for that movie,’’ Tarantino now admits. ‘‘The Kathryn Bigelow thing — I got it. Look, it was exciting that a woman had made such a good war film, and it was the first movie about the Iraq War that said something. And it wasn’t like I lost to something dreadful. It’s not like ‘E.T.’ losing to ‘Gandhi.’ ’

 

We touch on this year’s Oscars and the supposed Oscar snubbing of Ava DuVernay’s Martin Luther King movie ‘‘Selma,’’ which caused a kind of national sentimental-narrative outrage, compounded by the events in Ferguson, and which branded the Academy voters as old and out-of-it racists — despite the fact that ‘‘12 Years a Slave’’ had won Best Picture the year before. Tarantino shrugs diplomatically: ‘‘She did a really good job on ‘Selma’ but ‘Selma’ deserved an Emmy.’’ ‘‘Django Unchained,’’ with its depictions of antebellum-era institutionalized racism and Mandingo fights and black self-hatred, is a much more shocking and forward-thinking movie than ‘‘Selma,’’ and audiences turned it into the biggest hit of Tarantino’s career. But it was also attacked for, among other things, being written and directed by a white man.

 

Such controversy is not new to Tarantino. ‘‘If you’ve made money being a critic in black culture in the last 20 years you have to deal with me,’’ he says. ‘‘You must have an opinion of me. You must deal with what I’m saying and deal with the consequences.’’ He pauses, considers. ‘‘If you sift through the criticism,’’ he says, ‘‘you’ll see it’s pretty evenly divided between pros and cons. But when the black critics came out with savage think pieces about ‘Django,’ I couldn’t have cared less. If people don’t like my movies, they don’t like my movies, and if they don’t get it, it doesn’t matter. The bad taste that was left in my mouth had to do with this: It’s been a long time since the subject of a writer’s skin was mentioned as often as mine. You wouldn’t think the color of a writer’s skin should have any effect on the words themselves. In a lot of the more ugly pieces my motives were really brought to bear in the most negative way. It’s like I’m some supervillain coming up with this stuff.’’ But Tarantino is an optimist: ‘‘This is the best time to push buttons,’’ he says a few minutes later. ‘‘This is the best time to get out there because there actually is a genuine platform. Now it’s being talked about.’’

 

An assistant interrupts and reminds Tarantino that it’s after 9 and that the movie he wants to see starts in 20 minutes, so we get into Tarantino’s yellow 2006 Mustang GT. Listening to a selection of his mixtapes, we head down the winding empty canyons, through the flatlands of Hollywood to the New Beverly Cinema, a revival theater that he bought in 2007. Last fall, he became the programming director there, often screening prints from his private collection. He parks in a space out back and we walk around the corner to a darkened and deserted stretch of Beverly Boulevard. Outside the theater there are clusters of hipster kids under the marquee, smoking, looking at their phones, some of them glancing up as Tarantino approaches.

 

Tonight’s double feature is ‘‘Modern Times’’ and an obscure Chaplin movie called ‘‘The Circus.’’ Tarantino bounds through the lobby, down one aisle and then up another to the four seats that have been reserved for him in the fifth row of the house, which holds about 250 and is more than half-full tonight — a surprisingly good turnout for a Monday, he notes, settling into the aisle seat.

 

As someone who hasn’t been to the New Beverly since I haunted it throughout my adolescence and into my 20s, I’m surprised both by how refurbished it is (new seats and a new screen) and isn’t (the men’s bathroom is still the closet it always was and the lobby is so tiny that the line for the concession stand can snake into the theater itself). Tonight there are previews of two Wertmüller and Giancarlo Giannini collaborations from the ’70s, and then ‘‘The Circus,’’ which turns out to be a delight, even though — or maybe because — the print is scratchy and roughed-up and missing frames. The young audience laughs loudly throughout the movie, and there are cheers when it ends.

 

Afterward, Tarantino and I are standing outside, when kids milling about start gathering up the nerve to approach him. After one does, a line forms. Tarantino talks to everyone, his grin never faltering, as fans profess their thanks and gratitude — for his movies, for the theater, for just talking to them. It seems as if he could keep this up all night, but he is hungry and his favorite nearby restaurant will stop serving soon.

 

Before he heads off, I mention how remarkable the communal experience of watching a movie on a screen with a large and willing audience is — and with an actual print — after seeing so much television alone or renting movies online. Tarantino nods, and uses our last few moments together to rally one more time against the digitizing of the moviegoing experience. ‘‘If Buzzy, the kid who pops the popcorn, simply hits play on the menu then we’re just there watching HBO in public,’’ he says. ‘‘And I don’t know about you, but I don’t need to watch HBO with a bunch of strangers.’’

[Sludge Factory]

 

A-List Directors, interviewed by Sam Mendes

Nolan, Spielberg, Fincher, Whedon and more…

 

When Empire asked Sam Mendes to guest-edit our new Spectre issue, we knew something special was in store. But when he asked to conduct some interviews of his own we had no idea he’d put his questions to a bunch of the biggest directors in Hollywood. What follows is a selection of answers from Empire’s November issue, lovingly put together by the Bond director himself. Read on for Mendes’ Q&A-list.

 

HAVE YOU EVER WALKED OFF A SET IN A TEMPER?

 

Steven Spielberg: I’ve never walked off a set before and I can’t imagine why I would.

 

David Fincher: No, but I have cleared a set to speak with an actor, or actors.

 


Ang Lee: I only Hulked out once.


 

Edgar Wright: Almost. Once on Channel 4’s Spaced I was having a tricky time shooting 15 scenes from seven different episodes with a new-that-day crew. When lunch was called I went for a walk and kept on walking. Then I called my producer Nira (Park) from a phone box and said, “I can’t hack it anymore, you should get someone else for Monday.” She talked me down from the ledge and I came back to work. So, I have never really flipped out on set, but I can be an incredible sulk.

 

Alfonso Cuarón: Yes, only to come back feeling very stupid.


 

Joe Wright: I rarely lose my temper and try not to raise my voice, but I’ve left set in a sulk many times. I sulk or even cry rather than lose my temper.


 

Paul Greengrass: Once, when I couldn’t work out how to shoot an eight-handed dialogue scene in the desert
 in the middle of the night. After I’d banged my head against a Humvee for ten minutes trying to work it 
out, I was fine and carried on!


 

Joss Whedon: Nope. I’ve lost my temper, but not impressively. I’ve walked out of a VFX review in
 a quiet, blind rage, but only for a minute or so
 ’til I could see again.


 

Rob Marshall: It’s not even a possibility.


 

Christopher Nolan: I once tried, but nobody
 seemed to notice, so I came back.


 

Steven Soderbergh: No, but I did walk ON
 to a set with a temper once when an actor 
showed up late two days in a row.


 

Sofia Coppola: Ha, no.


 

Susanne Bier: No.


 

Alexander Payne: Fuck no.


 

George Clooney: No. The reason is because
 eventually you have to walk back on, and that
 would be too humiliating.


 

Roger Michell: Not yet.

 

WHAT IS THE MOST COMMON PHRASE YOU USE ON SET?

 

Greengrass: “Fuck the script/lighting/extras etc., let’s shoot!”

 

Lee: To actors, “Can you close the gap between sentences?”

 

Joe Wright: “Beautiful. One more.”


 

Clooney: “What time is lunch?”


 

Cuarón: “Vamonos!” and “Who’s not ready?”

 

Whedon (whiny voice): “Come on, guys, I’m the leader of a whole movie...!” When I want people to fear and respect me. Not wildly effective.

 

Payne: To the actors, “Great, now faster.” To the crew members, “If this were easy, I would have hired a relative.”

 

Michell: “Okay, how long will that take?”

 

Nolan: “Moving on.”


 

Spielberg: “Cut.” “That was brilliant.” “Once more!”

 

Soderbergh: This year? “Let me have the 18 on a stick.”

 

Edgar Wright: “Just one more.” Also I think my regular actors can hear the lilt in the way I say “and cut” that either means, “That was great, moving on,” or, “We’re doing that again.”

 

Bier: “What if...”

 

Coppola: “Okay, great, let’s do it again.”


 

Marshall: “Cut. That was great.” I think it’s always important to give immediate positive reinforcement.

 

Fincher: “Shut the fuck up, please.”

 

MUSIC OR NO MUSIC ON SET?

 

Spielberg: I’ve occasionally played music on set during silent scenes. For the last scenes between David and his mother in A.I., I played Morricone’s Cinema Paradiso.

 

Edgar Wright: Yes, sometimes music to psych people up! On Scott Pilgrim we would blast songs constantly. And on World’s End the actors would have songs in their earwigs, so they could all walk in time to The Doors. I also remember playing a Teenage Fanclub intro from my laptop shooting a close-up of Paddy Considine pining for Rosamund Pike. It’s fun to score the ends of scenes too, give them finality.

 

Whedon: Never even occurred to me. Except during sweeping crane moves — sometimes I hum a bit of some score during playback to see if it’s having the effect I want.


 

Bier: Both. Obviously not at once.


 

Cuarón: Not often but I’ve played specific music for particular scenes, if it helped the actors get into the mood on set. Chaplin used to always have a violinist on set. I’m thinking of having Engelbert Humperdinck singing on set for my next film.

 

Greengrass: None — though I once walked round playing guitar for an hour when I was bored with what I was doing...

 

Marshall: Well, the majority of films I’ve done are musicals — so more often than not I’m calling, “Playback!” as opposed to, “Action!” But the truth is, there’s nothing like having music on the set! It creates mood, rhythm and emotion.

 

Lee: No.


 

Soderbergh: No music.

 

Payne: No music. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

 

Fincher: No music, unless it’s a club scene, in which case we will play music earsplittingly loud so that the actors might speak to the level of the expected ambience.

 

Clooney: No music.


 

Coppola: Yes, I like to play music on set.

 

Joe Wright: Always music and all the time. I have my set rigged with the biggest sound system possible and have a mini jack for my iPod attached to my director’s chair. I find playing music is a very direct way to communicate with actors and the crew, especially those crew members who are on the periphery of the set. I like dancing on set too, it’s a good way to release tension.

 

WHAT ARE YOUR ON-SET RULES FOR THE CREW, IF ANY?

 

Fincher: We are not here to witness, but to participate.

 

Nolan: No phones. No phones. No phones.

 

Michell: Think ahead. Be kind. Skip lunch. Go home early.

 

Bier: No smoking. No small-talk. Always deliver bad news 
with a smile and a joke. Also, no smoking.


 

Marshall: Come to me directly if there’s a problem. That’s what I’m here for.


 

Clooney: If anybody has a good idea, speak up.


 

Lee: I just want it to be quiet and focused.

 

Edgar Wright: I have my own monitor away from video village that is close to the camera. And I don’t like anyone standing behind me talking. So my main request every hour or so is to ask the AD to get the talkers away from me. No chit-chat about the football in my earshot please.

 

Joe Wright: Silence during rehearsals, no shouting and respect for everyone.

 

Greengrass: Speak your mind.

 

Cuarón: Any good crew follows the unwritten rules of filmmaking (not talking while the camera is rolling, staying out of the actors’ eye-line etc.) but every director has different procedures. I like to stage the scene in an empty set, with only Chivo (DP Emmanuel Lubezki) and my AD around, and only bring in the heads of departments when I’m happy with the staging.

 

Payne: No “rules.” What are you, British or something? I guess I’m too nice… No wonder people take advantage of me.

 

Soderbergh: No open-toed shoes.

 

WHAT’S THE MOST TAKES YOU’VE EVER DONE?

 

Spielberg: I did 50 takes on Robert Shaw assembling the Greener Gun on Jaws. The shark wasn’t working, but we all wanted to so I just kept shooting to make the production report look like we were accomplishing something and to keep cast and crew from going crazy from boredom. It was a strategic indulgence.

 

Soderbergh: 48.

 

Fincher: 107.

 

Clooney: 18.

 

Nolan: I never pay attention to the number of takes.

 

Edgar Wright: I don’t think I have ever gone Kubrick crazy. So maybe 20 or so... But it’s usually six or seven takes.

 

Payne: Probably around 26. I’m normally a four-to-
seven kind of guy, but every so often, when the actors,
 the operator, the dolly grip and the assistant cameramen must all work in sync, it might take a while to get right.

 

Marshall: I try not to do more than seven or eight. It can become counterproductive.

 

Cuarón: The long takes process doesn’t allow for that
 many takes. In the past I have shot over 50 takes of
 different shots. Sometimes you end up using take 64, sometimes take four.

 

Michell: Like current Australian batsmen... Very rarely double figures.

 

Lee: For acting, 13. For action, 36.

 

Bier: Twenty-five, I think. Which, if you’re trying to get the best performance, is way, way too much.

 

Joe Wright: Thirty-seven maybe, can’t really remember. I’m usually in the range of 12 to 16 unless it’s a very technically challenging shot.

 

Coppola: I can’t remember, nothing too crazy, because we never have that much time in the schedule.

 

Whedon: On an elaborate shot, 30. On a bit of dialogue, I’ve seldom gone into double digits.

 

Greengrass: I don’t count over ten.

 

HOW MANY CUPS OF COFFEE A DAY?

 

Michell: Green tea or decaff.

 

Spielberg: I never had a cup of coffee in my life, but I have at least a dozen cups of mint tea a day.

 

Joe Wright: Way too many, hence the beta-blockers. I met my last assistant when she was working as a barista so we had an espresso machine in my office — that was dangerous.

 

Cuarón: No coffee. Green tea in the morning, white tea in the afternoon. Far too many.

 

Whedon: Only tea, ’til Age Of Ultron, where I got hooked. Even then, one or two. With tea in-between. Tea I can swill all day.

 

Bier: Two, maybe three. I drink loads of herbal tea, though, ten cups or so. A pretty unexciting habit, I know.

 

Greengrass: More than the most takes I’ve ever done!

 

Fincher: Three tops, or I become too caustic/vengeful.

 

Lee: Two.

 

Clooney: Three.

 

Marshall: One in the morning. One at ‘tea time’. But always iced.

 

Nolan: So many that I was forced to give it up and take up tea after Insomnia.

 

Soderbergh: Never had a cup of coffee in my life. Dr Pepper is my caffeine delivery system of choice.

 

Payne: About three double espressos.

 

Edgar Wright: Way too many. Once I had a potentially heart attack-inducing eight double espressos in one day. I think my assistant secretly swaps my coffees for decaf as she doesn’t want me to die of caffeine overdose.

 

WHAT’S YOUR BEST-EVER DAY ON SET?

 

Clooney: Watching David Strathairn do a three-page monologue in one take on Good Night, And Good Luck.

 

Spielberg: My best day on set is just about every day.

 

Edgar Wright: Any time I think out loud, “I can’t believe this is my job,” and remember I am a very lucky duck. Whether marshalling hundreds of zombies, doing crazy stunts or shooting big music numbers, I just feel fortunate to have made my passion my vocation.

 

Whedon: Couldn’t choose. Any day I got the footage and sent the crew home on time is pretty damn fair. If that day involved people dancing, it’d probably make the short list.

 

Cuarón: When you allow the unexpected to happen and you flow with it.

 

Marshall: The first day working with an actor. Especially one I’ve always admired. And I’ve been lucky to work with so many…

 

Michell: Last day of shoot.

 

Soderbergh: When a difficult scene you’ve been
 dreading turns out to be easy, quick and good.

 

Bier: When a scene you’ve worried about turns 
out amazingly.

 

Joe Wright: Probably the day we shot the long Steadicam shot on the beach for Atonement. We spent the whole day preparing under heavy cloud but at sunset, just as we were ready to shoot, the sun dipped beneath the cloud and everything just came together, a huge team effort. We all, including the 1,000 extras from the local community of Redcar who had brought family and picnics, felt a sincere sense of ownership. I was beatific when I called, “Cut,” that day.

 

Fincher: When the plan goes totally awry, and something amazing happens...

 

Payne: Sorry to sound corny, but even the worst day on
 set is the best day on set and heads-and-shoulders above
 not shooting.

 

Lee: There were many days, but off the top of my head, one day on Brokeback Mountain, shooting the scene where Ennis visits Jack’s parents.

 

Coppola: When Bill Murray is there.

 

Greengrass: Probably Bloody Sunday. We had no money for extras and gambled on months of outreach to persuade the people of Derry to turn out and march for us on one single afternoon. And they did. In their tens of thousands. Seeing them march, their patience and their dignity and their commitment, I knew the movie would have a quality of truth.

 

Nolan: The last.

 

REAL EXPLOSION OR CGI EXPLOSION?

 

Spielberg: Saving Private Ryan boasts 100 per cent practical explosions.

 

Payne: Never done an explosion, but I have had explosive diarrhea, and that was very, very real. Good thing I have my trailer.

 

Edgar Wright: Real. So much more fun to shoot. On Hot Fuzz we even blew up a miniature of the police station and I made sure I was there when they detonated. Too much fun.

 

Whedon: Real is real. Nothing else is real. Unless it’s a safety issue, there’s no contest.

 

Soderbergh: Real, so far.

 

Bier: Real explosion. It’s really fun.

 

Marshall: Real, if possible – with CGI enhancement.

 

Joe Wright: Real explosion with CGI enhancement.

 

Lee: Real, with occasional CGI enhancement to sex it up.

 

Nolan: Real explosion.

 

Clooney: Real.

 

Cuarón: A real explosion is not only much more fun to shoot, it also helps the actors and creates an energy on set and ultimately in the scene.

 

Fincher: Real, contained and easily replicable (fast reset, propane?). On set – but with countless iterations of CG augmentation.

 

Greengrass: Both. Augmented reality.

 

Coppola: I don’t think I’ve ever done any explosions.

 

Michell: Huh?

 

WHAT’S THE MOST USEFUL ADVICE YOU RECEIVED FROM A FELLOW DIRECTOR?

 

Coppola: My dad told me, “Your movie’s never as good
as the dailies and never as bad as the rough cut.”

 

Joe Wright: “Take whatever experience you can doing whatever you can so that when the big opportunity presents itself to you you’re as prepared as you can be.” Sidney Lumet said that but not to me, I read it in his book. Directors don’t often get to talk to other directors.

 

Lee: I dare not say in public.

 

Nolan: “Open the kimono” — Soderbergh telling me not 
to hide my process from the studio.

 

Soderbergh: “Write everything down.”

 

Clooney: “Only shoot what you’ll need.”

 

Whedon: James Cameron told me, “You can hire the 50 best people in the business, people you love and trust and respect. You all look at the monitor — you’re gonna be the only one who sees what’s wrong.”

 

Marshall: It was actually the opposite of what a director once said to me. He said, “Remember, everyone is here to serve you.” And as he walked away, I thought to myself, “It’s exactly the opposite: ‘I’m here to serve everyone.’”

 

Cuarón: I’ve been blessed with a lot of advice from other directors. Among the many: “Manage your energy”; “Story, actors, location”; “Fail on your own terms”; “One for me and one for myself”; “Don’t eat the red ones.”

 

Bier: The best advice I ever got was a result of the worst advice I ever got. When I was at film school, one of my teachers suggested it was a good idea for us directors to integrate ourselves into the crew by, say, rolling up the cables and moving lights etc. So I did – and was finally, and politely, asked by my crew to “do what you do best, and we’ll do the same”. Which was pretty embarrassing. And pretty good advice.

 

Greengrass: Before I made my first film, having previously worked only in documentaries, I went to see Roger Michell, an old university friend, and by then a hugely experienced and brilliant theatre and film director. He gave me a wonderful piece of advice. He said, “Never touch an actor.” By which he meant — don’t guide an actor. Don’t corral an actor. Don’t decide in advance where they should go. On the contrary, always listen to them. Always let them lead you. Always try to clarify their instincts. Because your actors will always be your best guide to the truth.

 

Michell: “If you think you might need a close-up... You need a close-up.”

 

Edgar Wright: John Sayles has this great quote: “Never
do more than two takes of someone getting out of a car.” But the most inspiring one I received personally was from the aforementioned (name drop) Steven Spielberg, who I emailed with on the last week of shooting The World’s End, and he replied with this sentence: “Good luck on your last week. Finish strong.” I went in the next day with a spring in my
step after that.

 

Payne: “Always speak to the actors singly and in a whisper.”

 

Fincher: Scorsese once told me, “The things you do poorly are as much a part of your style as the things you do well...” Which was totally true, and oddly reassuring.

 

WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST BECOME AN ACCOUNTANT?

 

Spielberg: I could never have been an accountant. I got a D in math.

 

Fincher: I’m not good enough with “people” to do that kind of work.

 

Joe Wright: If I could have done anything other than become a director I probably would have, but I couldn’t see any other options. It was all I could do and all I ever wanted to do.

 

Whedon: I am a storyteller. That is the very essence of my being. Also I can’t count.

 

Marshall: Hilarious! Not in my DNA.

 

Soderbergh: Terrible at math.

 

Greengrass: 2 + 2 = 5, right?

 

Whedon: I am a storyteller. That is the very essence of my being. Also I can’t count.

 

Bier: Because I’ve never looked at a tax return without immediately losing consciousness.

 

Coppola: It was inevitable, I guess, growing up on sets. Nothing looks as fun.

 

Michell: Is it too late?

 

Cuarón: The positions were all taken.

 

Lee: Directing a movie is a lot easier for me.

 

Clooney: Because I’m lousy at math.

 

Nolan: There’s enough number crunching in moviemaking to satisfy my accounting ambitions.

 

Edgar Wright: I am not even in spitting distance of being the greatest film director in the world, but I can say with the utmost certainty that I would be the worst accountant of all time.

 

Payne: Piss off.

 

Read the full article in the November issue of Empire, on sale now.

 

 

[đorđe geprat]

valjda je ovo prikladno mesto.

ako neko ima ili zna gde mogu da se nađu ova 3 filma za moju kolekciju.

1 makedonski "kontakt"

2. makavejevov "ljubavni slučaj...." (ovaj mi je značajan jer je sniman u mojoj zgradi)

3. petrovićev "grupni portret s damom"

 

zahvaljujem

[bigvlada]

 

[Ariel]

Nisam znao gde drugde pa ae ovde (a ne znam ni kako da embedujem fejzbuk video)

 

https://www.facebook.com/carlos.alarconcabezas.1/videos/1663592377212023/

 

Molba Žodorovskog za pare preko Indiegogo. Kakva strast. Kakva iskrenost. Kakav osamdesetšestogodišnji car.

[ajfa88]

valjda je ovo prikladno mesto.

ako neko ima ili zna gde mogu da se nađu ova 3 filma za moju kolekciju.

1 makedonski "kontakt"

2. makavejevov "ljubavni slučaj...." (ovaj mi je značajan jer je sniman u mojoj zgradi)

3. petrovićev "grupni portret s damom"

 

zahvaljujem

 

Evo nekih mesta na kojima se mogu kupiti domaci i strani filmovi (DVD).

 

U holu Doma Sindikata.

 

Desk Shop Plato, Cika Ljubina 18-20.

 

Dallas Music Shop, Sremska 2.

 

Delfi knjizara , SKC.

 

Prodavnica na uglu Makenzijeve i Kataniceve.

 

U podzemnom prolazu gde se seku Nusiceva i Decanska, u sporednom hodniku imaju dve prodavnice.

 

Prva na pocetku s leve strane a druga malo dalje (music shop Evergreen)

 

1."Kontakt" je imao da se kupi, mislim da jos ima.

 

2. "Ljubavni slucaj...." je takodje mogao da se nadje ranije, trenutno, ne znam.

 

3. "Grupni portret s damom" , mislim da nije izdat na DVD-u.

Edited November 16, 2015 by ajfa88

[Ravanelli]

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1499165933741265.1073741868.100009436177824&type=3

[Dionysos]

Charlie Sheen confirms he's HIV-positive

[Ravanelli]

Gledo nijedan, bruka

The 30 Most Underappreciated Movies of The New Hollywood Era - See more at: http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2015/the-30-most-underappreciated-movies-of-the-new-hollywood-era/

[ultra plasticni]

Gledo samo 2: night moves i Skitnice

[kobni zelaya]

Gledo nijedan, bruka

The 30 Most Underappreciated Movies of The New Hollywood Era - See more at: http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2015/the-30-most-underappreciated-movies-of-the-new-hollywood-era/

 

Stvarno super lista, možda i najinteresantnija do sada na tom sajtu. Gledao sam samo deset filmova sa liste i za mnoge mogu da potvrdim da su ili odlični (Charley Varrick, The Last Detail, Fat City, Fritz the Cat), ili nedovršeni, ali jako interesantni i originalni (Sisters, Brewster McCloud) ili bar stoje kao znak vremena (Electra Glide in Blue, The Boys in the Band). Odmah sam kupio par filmova s liste.

[zakintos]

Gledao većinu filmova sa liste; The 30 Most Underappreciated Movies of The New Hollywood Era - See more at: http://www.tasteofci...-hollywood-era/

a oni koji se izdvajaju su;

 

Petulia (1968)

Little Murders (1971)
Fat City (1972)
Payday (1972)
Loving (1970)
Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1977)
The Last Detail (1974)

a najslabiji sa te liste je Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)

 

inače dodao bih na listi potcenjene;

Alice's Restaurant (1969)

Joe (1970)

Cockfighter (1974)

California Split (1974)

Shampoo (1975)

The Day of the Locust (1975)

One from the Heart (1982)

i još Mazurskog; Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) Blume in Love (1973) Harry and Tonto (1974) An Unmarried Woman (1978)

[Ajant23]

Na stranu što ti je ceo post šaljiv na način na koji samo ti umeš da se uvučeš u humor duboko između smeha, ali zar se ovako piše link na sajt koji preporučuješ:
 

See more at: [url=/]http://www.tasteofci...-hollywood-era/[/url]

[Ravanelli]

odgledao the boys in the band. kakva vožnja bogo

 

 

 

 

Na stranu što ti je ceo post šaljiv na način na koji samo ti umeš da se uvučeš u humor duboko između smeha, ali zar se ovako piše link na sajt koji preporučuješ:
 

See more at: [url=/]http://www.tasteofci...-hollywood-era/[/url]

ništa te nisam skapirap

[kobni zelaya]

Mislim da nije upućeno tebi, nego zakiju, mada ne mogu da znam tačno, jer taj post nisam čitao.