In Celebration of First Features :: John Sayles' "Return of the Secaucus 7"

I accept that some films aren't made for me - they don't speak to me about any kind of world I know or care to know, communicating an experience that maybe isn't completely foreign to me, but is certainly one that I don't need to subject myself to for two hours.

"Return of the Secaucus 7" is one of those movies.

That said, John Sayles was a graduate of Roger Corman's low-budget film production hothouse, and this was his 1978 feature debut (released in 1980). Reported as being shot in 25 days for $40,000, what can be gleaned from this inessential movie for a feature director today?

Like most low budget features from first time directors, this one leans heavily on dialogue and action is rare, which isn't a problem in itself. The biggest issue for me is that the characters all blur into each other. The film, for those who haven't heard about it, is about a group of friends who met through a web of random connections. They bonded during an arrest during a protest rally in New Jersey, and who have since become touchstones throughout each other's lives. They all congregate ten years after that jail cell incident in a small town in New Hampshire, and, well, not much else happens. Except I can't tell these people apart, except for their hairstyle.

Exhibit A ::


Part of the story is that these people are all so close that they present a hive mind, a united front, as elaborated through the introduction of an intimidated new boyfriend to the group (who is, by the way, quickly assimilated). I mean, what happens when you write scenes with people who all agree with each other? Not drama, that's for sure.

The dialogue doesn't sparkle like some of Sayle's later work, falling lifeless and awkward from the mouths of these less-than-stellar actors, although David Strathairn makes an early appearance here, limited as he is by the underdeveloped script.

But what really works here is the way Sayles handles this flaccid material in the edit. While his scenes are shot without dramatic arc or tension, Sayles gets around this by interweaving scenes, intercutting between conversations in a way that gives a sense of scope, a sense of a world that exists outside of the individual. This is especially helpful with scenes that have little or no coverage.

Letting these wordy scenes play out in one continuous shot would be torturous for the audience, and in many cases Sayles had no hinge shot to cut away to that would hide obvious jump cuts if he were to omit sections of dialogue. Cutting out of one of scene into other parallel scenes, however, not only gives Sayles the chance to trim his dialogue, but also to open up the claustrophobic framing into an interconnected network of tiny scenes that spread out like leaves on a pond, creating a larger dramatic canvas for the audience to appreciate. Like Paul Thomas Anderson's "Magnolia," but without the sizzle.

This approach to handling, um... challenging material really hit home with me while watching "Altered States" by Ken Russell. Granted, the only thing these films have in common is the sheer volume and density of dialogue that's delivered in this film. But Russell does a great job of breaking up these slabs of difficult words into manageable chunks, by having the actors moving through the scene space while talking, or alternatively having the actors spread the scene across a number of "sub-scenes" - William Hurt, for example, follows Blair Brown from room to room while arguing the finer points of evolutionary biology and the benefits of isolation tanks - the first 1:34m of this embedded clip::



Each nugget of necessary information is isolated and dramatized in such a way that the audience gets the point before we move forward, and staged in such a way that energy and momentum is maintained throughout these long and detailed speeches.

Sayles, in a limited fashion, uses this strategy to great effect - the pace rarely languishes even though the drama limps and falters throughout. If he'd had a dramatic story arc to play out in this way the film would really have come alive. Perhaps in the end this film just doesn't have anything to say, and in that way is a reflection of it's time - hobbled by a kind of paralyzed nostalgia, like that found in "American Graffiti" or "The Big Chill." I don't think those kinds of films get made anymore, but if they do, they're not for me.

In Celebration of First Features: #6 - Troy Duffy's "The Boondock Saints"

This is another legendary indie film that has been talked to death. We'll skip the production stories here - that's all been abundantly documented elsewhere, most notably in the documentary "Overnight" directed by Tony Montana and Mark Brian Smith (a version of the story Duffy hotly disputes). I'm more interested in (1) how does this stand up as feature directing debut, and (2) what can we learn from the film and its execution?

OK? Here we go...



When I mention that I like this movie, it becomes immediately apparent that this is a movie that polarizes audiences. It's the epitome of a cult classic - people either loathe it and dismiss it out of hand, or they adore it and defend it to the hilt - there doesn't seem to be room for middle ground. My memory of seeing it in 2001 is of a badly made low budget action movie, of which I've seen plenty, but re-watching now I see a bit more than that going on. Granted, my perspective has changed given the number of low budget films I've seen since, but even back when I first saw it I didn't hate "The Boondock Saints."

Perhaps people object to the film's jet-black working-class vigilante morality, which, while celebrated in characters wearing capes and cowls, or in hard-bitten cops and ex-military types, it's despised in movies about regular Joes who happen to be Catholic.

Or not. Who knows...



I absolutely understand that the script is flawed, and flawed in the most male-oriented and sophomoric ways - there are no positive female characters, and the pervading philosophy is that true justice can only be served via the barrel of a gun. In this regard it's a throw-back to the morally reprehensible but nevertheless popular vigilante films of the 70s like "Dirty Harry" and, more appropriately, "Deathwish". There was no place for that in the landscape of independent cinema at the turn of the 21st century, as Tarantino inspired as it was. In a post-9/11 world, living in the aftermath of the vengeful U.S. foreign policy, it all seems so troubling and appropriate now.

But, then again, I'm just speculating...



For my money, as a first feature directed from his own script, Troy Duffy's debut is quite spectacular. Yes, it died at the box office, but "The Boondock Saints" has gone on to serve a loyal niche audience that embraced the movie on DVD. I heard about it while I was in film school, adored as it was by the very sophomores whose morality this movie reflects. And when I watched it I did enjoy Willem Defoe's scenery-chomping performance as the gay, cross-dressing FBI investigator hot on the trail of the celebrated Saints. But it was something about the fanboy adoration of the movie that turned me off. This was a movie that wasn't made for me, and that's just fine as far as I'm concerned.



After seeing it again on the film's 10th anniversary, it's refreshing to step back and see the craft behind the hype. While the script has some huge arc problems and significant plot holes, on a scene-by-scene basis the film is quite successful. The action sequences are inventively low-budget and fun, and it's not until the movie wades into irretrievably bleak moral territory that the fun evaporates and the black-hat world view is exposed.

That's where it all falls apart, really.

But it's in the earlier scenes, when the playful, exuberant tone dominates, where Duffy shines. Even taking into account the transparently "Reservoir Dogs"-esque scene-within-a-scene narrative compression when Dafoe's investigator describes the Saints in action (which does get a bit repetitive, I don't deny), and the excessive cat explosion that echoes Marvin's untimely backseat death in "Pulp Fiction", Duffy infuses his chatty gun-buddy scenes with lots of vigor and more than a little "Man Bites Dog" cynicism and charm. In fact, I'd go as far as to say "Saints" has more in common emotionally with that disturbing French mockumentary than it does with Tarantino's florid genre escapades.



Regardless, Duffy's first feature follows a fairly typical indie film format - a genre film that puts into play certain minority-driven narrative elements that place the film into a narrow demographic. Duffy targets a very specific niche and drills down on the themes and tropes that inspire his audience - guns, drinking, loyalty to your friends, moral outrage - all good right-of-mainstream conservative values in contemporary America. More than that, he frames his fairly standard shoot-em-up within the Irish subculture of South Boston, which crystallizes his audience demographic even more narrowly (the fact that I saw the film in the days leading up to St Patrick's Day was no marketing accident, put it that way).



Troy Duffy himself received so much name recognition from this film that it's a wonder he didn't become the next (or should I say "another") Kevin Smith - an indie director churning out derivative but profitable niche movies for decades. Instead of being able to capitalize on this, however, Duffy disappeared from the scene until his recent lackluster and inessential sequel to "Saints", which, I suspect, is the final nail in the coffin of what could have been an interesting career.

(Note to self: I need to write about something that doesn't involve mobsters and guns next time...)

In Celebration of First Features: #5 - The Wachowski Brothers' "Bound"

I was planning on writing something profound about "Bound", about how this was the film that laid the groundwork for "The Matrix", about how this is where the Wachowski Bros found their voice, about how this is a signature low budget genre film made with an indie aesthetic, but really... it's not that kind of film.

Profound, I mean.

Andy and Larry (now Lana) Wachowski were screenwriters with a background in comic book fiction. They had recently had one of their feature scripts, "Assassins," produced as a Hollywood movie directed by Richard Donner, and their words were butchered on the screen. So part of their motivation to get "Bound" made with funding from Dino De Laurentiis was to protect their writing. Who better to realize their vision than themselves, right?

The other factor in becoming multi-hyphantes was their larger goal to get "The Matrix" into production. Everybody was passing on their sprawling action sci-fi script - their track record was thread-bare and they needed the credibility of a feature under their belt to even get in the door. So there was a lot at stake in this directing debut for the untried brothers.


But the Wachowski's were no fools - they went into their first directing gig with a very specific philosophy :: "We're of the opinion that film is still first and foremost a graphic medium and should be about images more than it should be about talking heads. Talking heads are nice and all, don't get me wrong, but novels do talking heads a lot better than movies do. And I think that movies should take advantage of the fact that they are about images and pictures. I don't think people take advantage of that enough."(1)


"Bound" is a hardboiled mobster heist genre flick - leaning heavily on "Double Indemnity"-esque dialog, mood and theme, while bringing a very measured visual technique that echoes the Hitchcock style found in "Dial M for Murder" and "Psycho," to mention the two more obvious influences. From the outset, the Wachowskis wanted to position this as a niche film, making the protagonists a lesbian affair that leads to the stealing of dirty mob money through a high-stakes and convoluted scheme.

The lesbian sex scene, that the brothers wouldn't consider removing, created to problems casting their leads - name actors turning down the roles at the mere mention of a scene involving girl-on-girl sex. But, determined not to compromise, they ended up with Jennifer Tilly as Violet and Gina Gershon as Corky.

Yikes.



Gershon more than earned her keep, however, by suggesting they cast Joe Pantoliano as Caeser, the mid-level mob captain in a juvenile power struggle with the boss's sociopathic son. And it's Joe who brings this film alive, with a sizzling performance that elevates every scene he's in. His delivery of the off-screen murder of the embezzler is almost worth the price of admission alone - selling a key scene through exposition alone is no mean feat. Caeser's downward spiral into paranoid despair and ultimate spiteful vengeance is just dazzling, and the strongest card this movie plays.



But Tilly in particular has problems selling this torturous hard-boiled verbiage, and the film hangs on her and Gershon's ropey performances. It's difficult, if not impossible, to feel sympathy for Tilly, though Gershon gets by with her rockabilly swagger and fuck-you attitude. Nuanced, however, this is not. The Wachowski's cope with this by turning up the volume on their use of camera - high angles, deep focus and small but dynamic action sequences keep the screen vigorous and busy, while the editing, crisp and deliberate, folds the narrative in on itself and always keeps the tension where it needs to be.



In the end, this is a finely crafted film that is let down by weak central performances. The script, however, is an excellent example of a tight genre flick, aimed at a specific target audience, that was made on a small budget with a quick turnaround (the Wachoskis are quoted as saying the schedule was initially 38 days, the implication being there were reshoots not figured into that schedule). And in terms of their goals, the Wachowski's were 100% effective. They got their greenlight for "The Matrix", and now they have the pull to get their scripts made on their own terms (scripts not directed by them are directed by their close associate James McTeigue).

So there's a lesson in there somewhere. Being focused on your goals, and managing your expectations based on that, can deliver results.

www.alwayswatching.net :: 16 Short Films Turned Feature Films (And the Filmmakers Who Made it Happen)

"...In more rare instances though, a filmmaker is granted the opportunity to stay within their medium, but do so while extensively expanding the concept and scope of their original vision, and in turn, a floodgate of possibilities are opened in terms of what can be achieved in that medium."

Posted by Adam Quigley, ostensibly as an ad for the Blu Ray release of "9," this is a remarkably thorough article with the shorts included. Hat's off to you, sir.

In Celebration of First Features: #4 - Dylan Kidd's "Roger Dodger"

The origin of this movie is legendary - writer/director Dylan Kidd, recently graduated from NYU, was in possession of a script he utterly believed in, but was failing at every turn to find the money from the usual sources to go into production. So while he worked a variety of odd jobs to stay alive, Kidd aggressively sought his leading man as the gateway to getting what he needed.

As the story goes (1) (2), Kidd traveled everywhere with his screenplay, prepared for any opportunity. When Campbell Scott sat at a neighboring table in some Greenwich Village cafe, Kidd seized the moment and pitched Scott the story of "Roger Dodger." Campbell took the screenplay to read, and not only called Kidd three weeks later, but also brought other name talents onto the project to flesh out the cast and facilitate that necessary green light.

The script was written to be filmed on a limited budget - a minimal set of protagonists, a limited number of locations, and a clear, concise through-line. Kidd shot "Roger Dodger" with an appropriately low-budget sensibility. The majority of the camerawork is handheld, allowing for quick setups and flexible blocking on location - when money is tight everyone needs to be nimble. The cinematography also appears to use only available light, which provides a bold, if at times murky look.



The framing of the action is often catastrophically tight - a characteristic of Neil LaBute's debut "In The Company of Men" - which, while mostly serving the story, gives the film an oppressively limited canvas and absence of environment. This, plus the swimming motion of the handheld camera gives the entire film a drunken, unfocused aspect that confounds rather than amplifies comprehension and atmosphere.

But the strength of "Roger Dodger" is most definitely the script. I saw this film when it was first released and I dimly recalled not liking the film, presumably being turned off by the lazy feeling faux verite cinematography that has since become quite the fashion (see: any episode of Ronald D Moore's "Battlestar Galactica", for example). What I missed, however, was how taut the script is - how the action keeps rolling along, how the dialog mostly sizzles, and how the motivations of the characters are all unique and well drawn. The script has a lot of genuine personality and focused energy, and yet at this second watching something is still missing for me.



At first I laid blame at the door of Campbell Scott, who feels miscast in the roll of Roger. He comes across as totally unlikeable - I can't imagine him getting within a million miles of any sentient woman, never mind Isabella Rosselini. But on reflection the lack rests with Dylan Kidd himself, who fails to embellish Scott's performance with the necessary nuance to make his character play as human. Not that Scott's performance is anything less than meticulous, but the end result feels slavishly one-dimensional.

Roger is angry when he should be charming, contemptuous when he should be playful and knowing... Scott's Roger is a bland intellectual brute instead of an artful seducer - a bastard instead of a rogue. And I feel now that this is a fault of interpretation rather than of the written word. At no point did I feel myself rooting for Roger, or indeed for any character in the film. And that's going to distance your audience, which is the last thing you want to do.



And I say all this in an attempt to address how this film was so critically well received, and yet so failed to find an audience at the box office. The movie-going public has proven time and again, in the years since "Roger Dodger" was released, that shakey camerawork or limited budgets don't necessarily turn off an audience - take a look at Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" as an example of a film that could have been received the same way if not for Mickey Rourke's dazzling, warm-hearted star turn.

Intellectually the script for "Roger Dodger" is fantastic, and technically this film is quite an achievement given Dylan Kidd's first-time director status, not to mention the limited resources he had to work with - all things the critics responded to. No, I believe it is that lack of a spark of fun and seduction, that Han Solo ingredient, that turned off movie-goers. Above anything else a film needs to win the audience over, through splendor as in the case of "Avatar," or more reasonably by being evocative and heartfelt. In this case, I fear, Roger's cynicism permeates the movie in a way that no tacked-on, feel-good ending can rescue it from.

In Celebration of First Features: #3 - Neil LaBute's "In The Company of Men"

The selection of these first features is anything but random. As I gear up to produce my first feature I'm looking for two kinds of first feature - (1) those first films by directors who go on to become my role models as working professionals, or at the very least become directors whose work I find fascinating, and (2) the first films whose themes and scenarios resonate or run in parallel with the themes and scenarios in the script I'm developing. Neil LaBute's feature debut, "In The Company of Men," falls into the latter category.

Two executives, Chad (Aaron Eckhart) and Howard (Matt Malloy), both men with axes to grind over relationships with women, plot to get even with all woman-kind for their past injury. They intend to find a vulnerable woman, vigorously romance her like some tag-team wrestling duo, and then dump both dump her at the point it will cause her most anguish. In that way they both believe they'll be settling some scores. Except, of course, it isn't that simple.


Adapting the film script from his own stage play, LaBute shot the whole film over two weeks for around $25,000 (financed largely by an auto-insurance settlement). Watching this as a filmmaker the money goes as far as it can - most shots feel underlit, though properly exposed. Interiors of the office, especially, often feel like they're night interiors when clearly their not supposed to be... not enough ambient fill splashing around the room, too many deep, deep shadows... But for the most part the camera is where it needs to be. Most shots are locked off with the camera on sticks. The only handheld shot that leaps to mind is the close-up of Chad on the bed with the object of their vindictive scheming, Christine (Stacey Edwards) - an unexpected organic touch that invigorates the frame and gives the scene an unspoken vibrancy.

The film does at times feel cramped because of awkward camera framing compounded by lighting that doesn't compensate for a lack of physical depth in the shot. This, married to the stagey feeling of this adapted screenplay, promotes the amateurish feeling in places. But that aside the characters are clearly written, and the performances are pretty solid - though Eckhart's Chad feels so demonic at times that he verges on caricature. The real strength of this film is the economy with which it is staged, and the energy LaBute tries to put into every scene. This is by no means a kinetic film, as is usually the case with low-budget screenplays, but here the interstitial music cues played during every title card and again over the closing credits are so feverish and bombastic that the non-filmed elements perfectly balance the quieter filmed elements. The music highlights the anger and hysteria of Chad and Howard's mission... a quest for delirious power over unsuspecting victims.



For me the key here is the writing - a solid script that inspires inventive and vigorous performance, not to mention an economy of locations and extraneous speaking characters that all go to making a two weeks schedule possible. My biggest disappointment, echoing what I said in #2 of this series, is that this film isn't more cinematic. The focus is so utterly on performance while little energy was spent in making the camera work more expressive. While it's possible that this was a creative decision on the part of LaBute's, I personally feel the film suffers from a restrained camera - the very stillness of the camera draws attention to itself, especially now in the era of handheld digital camcorders. The performances are left trapped in this inert boxes, with nowhere to run to.

A feature film is cinema, regardless of the production budget. It's the feature director's duty to find a vibrant cinematic vocabulary for themselves, in order to counter the point-and-shoot mindset that often creeps in when time is short and money is tight.

In Celebration of First Features: #2 - The Coen Brothers' "Blood Simple"

Choosing this first feature is so obvious it's almost redundant. But watching it again I'm struck by how much I've taken this film for granted... "Blood Simple" is as complete & bold a cinematic vision as any of Joel & Ethan's subsequent films. The opening voiceover is writing as beautiful & specific as ANYTHING the brothers have delivered these fifteen years since (in my opinion better than the voiceover in "The Big Lebowski," or "The Hudsucker Proxy")...

It's as if the Coen Brothers emerged on the independent film scene as a mature visual storytelling force without any fumbling first steps. To revisit this now, embarking on my first feature, is as overwhelming as it is unnerving....

Up until the release of "Blood Simple" the names of Joel and Ethan Coen were known to few outside the context of assistant editing for "The Evil Dead" director Sam Raimi. I lack hard details, but apparently both brothers had an early interest in cinema - as children working for neighbors in order to save money for a Super8 camera that they went on to make a slew of films, not only remakes of favorites but also a host of original titles like "Henry Kissinger - Man on the Go," "Lumberjacks of the North" and "The Banana Film." It was Joel who went to NYU to study film, and it was he who worked in industrial and music video, until joining Sam Raimi's post-production team opened new doors of opportunity to broader horizons.



As Matt Murray puts it in his review, "Blood Simple" is a "near-perfect example of what good planning can get you." Clearly the film is an exercise in clinical execution - nothing about this film feels accidental or haphazard. According to DVD release notes, Sam Raimi advised the brothers to raise $1.2M to shoot the film on their own terms - following Raimi's lead the brothers wrote the script and shot an elaborate trailer to use on their year-long struggle to successfully find investors.

And maybe this pre-production story is not so unusual or unexpected, and it's certainly not why I felt compelled to write about "Blood Simple." What struck me about this film is just how staggeringly CINEMATIC this film is. Without any preamble, Joel and Ethan serve up this measured and methodical genre thriller with a visual vitality that transcends budget, genre and their first-feature status... The pacing of the scene where John Gentz's adulterous bartender discovers the corpse of cuckolded bar-owner Dan Hedaya, and the subsequent drive into the stark, black open country to dispose of the body... or M. Emmet Walsh's climactic confrontation with Frances McDormand... for me bring to mind the storyboarded diligence of Hitchcock's cropdusting sequence from "North by Northwest" and apartment scenes from "Dial M for Murder."



Watching this film with my own feature debut firmly in mind, I'm confronted by how the cinematic flair of the Coen Bros first feature is precisely the kind of filmmaking I got into this business for in the first place. Through careful camera placement and stylish editing, the Coen Bros build a world for the audience as specific and idiosyncratic as any film they've made since. Their's is not a "slice of life" so much as the "slice of cake" Hitchcock always said his own filmmaking was about.

Being reminded of all this has given me another set of creative options... even creative imperatives... for approaching the production of "Single Malt." I can't speak for anyone else, but I catch myself falling into the same mental trap time and again - that digital video isn't cinematic... And I don't even know where that assumption comes from.

It certainly doesn't have to be the case.

In Celebration of First Features: #1 - Ridley Scott's "The Duellists"

As I gear up to produce my first feature film, part of my development process has been revisiting first features by directors great and small. Some are the expected naive folly of neophyte storytellers, same the exuberant dabblings of dedicated fans of the big screen, and some are extraordinary exhibits of genuine talent tested for the first time. One particular example of the latter is Ridley Scott's feature debut, "The Duellists."

The 1977 film "The Duellists" is an adaptation of a Joseph Conrad story, "The Duel," by a young English director whose previous experience had up until that point been episodic television drama and commercials, most notably the idyllic television campaign for Hovis. I saw this film when I was very young - my father being a huge fan of this film for reasons he never fully explained to me.

As a child I had already been seduced by the bubblegum charms of what is now ponderously known as "Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope", and by then my father had introduced me to the magnificence of Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" and "Apocalypse Now" which, truth be told, were somewhat lost on me at that age. But for me, as a formative filmmaker, it was "The Duellists" that struck me as something new and remarkable.

The cinematography is without question the most compelling aspect of Scott's production, with Frank Tidy's work creating a rich canvas upon which Scott paints this period narrative. Scott's use of long takes, using the grandeur of the natural landscape as the epic backdrop for the unfolding human drama, is impeccable. And the attention to detail and texture is both precise and hypnotic - a truly visually arresting spectacle. As Vincent Canby in the New York Times described, Scott's haunting imagery is "a memory of almost indescribable beauty, of landscapes at dawn, of over-crowded, murky interiors, of underlit hallways and brilliantly sunlit gardens." But more than this, what strikes me now is the gentle hand Scott uses with the story, a quality too often missing in contemporary cinema.



Like many in his generation Scott exhibits the influence of Stanley Kubrick's film making style - not only the extraordinary attention to detail, but also the deliberate pacing and the palpable sense of place and time. Here we see a reinterpretation of Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon," embellished as it is for a more commercial audience. But where Kubrick used modernist techniques to create distance between subject and audience, Scott applies a different approach.

What truly brings this film home to me, now as it did when I first saw it, are the moments of naked, unstructured performance - the wild card in this otherwise carefully cultivated film world: The moment at the start of an early duel when D'Hubert (Keith Carradine) interrupts the fight to sneeze, or the awkward naturalism of D'Hubert's proposal of marriage while being distracted by a horse determined to win his attention - all these moments temper the grand epic canvas with a human naturalism that is beguiling and disarming. For a boy brought up on bombastic cinema served up on a bed of hyperbole, to me this small, delicately crafted film was an exhilarating breath of fresh air.



This is not a perfect film, though. The greatest flaw, perhaps, is the unfortunate casting of Keith Carradine in the lead role. A perfectly competent actor as he is, Carradine lacks the weight to balance Keitel's deliciously ludicrous and vain Feraud. Carradine never quite blends with his surroundings This has the unintended side-effect of submerging Keitel's Feraud into the background, making him seem more at home in this world than D'Hubert, and as a consequence he appears more reasonable than he should. It is D'Hubert, rather than Feraud, who seems absurd to the audience, even if only unconsciously.

That said, the film is a remarkable achievement. Everything here serves the story - the images, pacing and score. A Kubrick film for the masses perhaps. Scott would go on to use his affection for Kubrick's meticulous detail, as well as a handling of naturalistic performance, to staggering effect in his next feature "Alien." But it began here, in Scott's marriage of classic cinematic splendor with moments of simple, frail and flawed human reality.