Having seen both Barbie and Oppenheimer, I’m glad I didn’t do the Barbenheimer double feature, because Oppenheimer devastated me.
On July 15 and 17, the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) screened Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) in 35 mm film. The feature starred Jennifer Jason Leigh, Phoebe Cates, Brian Backer, and Robert Romanus. The media gallery presented the movie as part of their See It Big: Summer Movies collection.
The museum’s “See It Big” series screened classic movies. Curator of Film Eric Hynes, Associate Curator of Film Edo Choi, and Reverse Shot editors Michael Koresky and Jeff Reichert chose films spanning the ‘70s and ‘80s.
Movies included Jaws (1975, 35mm), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), The Omen (1976), Star Wars (1977), The Rescuers (1977), Blow Out (1981, 35mm), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, 35mm), The Green Ray (Le rayon vert) (1986, 35mm), Beat Street (1984, 35mm), E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Risky Business (1983, 35mm), and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) had a bold storyline.
High schooler Stacy Hamilton wanted to start dating. Her older and more experienced friend, Linda Barrett, gave her advice. At first, Stacy lied about her age and went out with an older man. The two made out at the baseball dugout. After the date, he never called Stacy. Linda suggested that Stacy should date around.
She met two different boys at the mall. Simple man Mark Ratner worked at the movie theatre. His friend, Mike Damone, achieved notoriety as a ticket scalper. Stacy fell in love with Damone, while Ratner battled for her attention. Stacy invited Damone to swim at her house.
The two had sex in the pool house. Quickly, Damone satisfied himself and abandoned Stacy on the couch. The next day, he ignored her at school. Instead, he flirted with other attractive girls. Unfortunately, Stacy had news for him.
Damone laughed with a pretty girl by the bleachers. He held scalped tickets in his hand. To his chagrin, Stacy approached him. He informed her of the tickets’ high price. She demanded to speak to him anyways. By the fence, she told him that she was pregnant.
The pair reluctantly made a plan: Stacy would get an abortion. Damone agreed to pay the $150 fee at the free clinic. He said, “Well, it’s not really free.” Stacy seemed uncomfortable with his snide remark. The two concurred about a specific date.
Later in the film, the date came around. Medium shots showed Stacy waiting at her house. In a close-up shot, Stacy phoned Damone’s house. She heard that he working with his dad on a car in the garage. It disappointed Stacy. Then, she heard her brother pulling out of the driveway.
Her brother dropped her off at the bowling alley. In close-up shots, he watched Stacy run across the street. He followed her to the clinic. The film did not show the procedure itself. Instead, it showed the aftermath.
In a medium shot, Stacy waited on a bed. She wore a green hospital gown. The nurse refused to let her go without a ride home. Stacy lied that her boyfriend waited downstairs in a car. She saw her brother in the parking lot.
She begged him not to tell their parents, to which he agreed. The plotline represented a delicate issue. It showed people how to support others who have gotten abortions. Additionally, it showed the consequences of teen pregnancies.
Ratner still loved Stacy. He heard about Stacy’s involvement with Damone. In the school locker room, he yelled at Damone. The movie had a hilarious side plot.
Surfer and stoner Jeff Spicoli slacked off at school. His strict history teacher, Mr. Hand, despised his attitude. The two argued for the entire school year, with one scene becoming iconic.
Spicoli arrived late to class again. Mr. Hand stopped the lesson and inquired about the matter. Spicoli said that he didn’t know why he showed up late. His teacher repeated the phrase, saying “I like that.” He wrote the words on the chalkboard for everyone to see. On July 22, MoMI’s See It Big: Summer Movies collection will end.
On July 21, the museum will screen Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985) and Body Heat (1981). On July 22, they will show La Bamba (1987). The gallery plans to show the Infinite Beauty: Muslim and Menasa Identity On Screen series.
The collection will showcase iconic Muslim people in the cinema. On July 22 and 23, the exhibition will show Joyland (2022). MoMI has the upcoming New Adventures in Nonfiction collection as well.
It will highlight dynamic, unpredictable, and intelligent nonfiction movies. On July 21, the museum will show Users (2021). The museum has its ongoing Las Premieres series too.
It will show previews of upcoming Latin American and U.S. Latinx films. On July 23, the gallery will screen Narcissus Off Duty (2020). On August 20, MoMI will display Jesús López (2021). The museum has its ongoing Real Rap: Hip-Hop Star Power On Screen series as well.
It showcases hip-hop stars in cinema. It shows how musicians have transformed pop culture and music genres. On July 28 and 29, the gallery will screen New Jack City (1991). Also on July 29, the museum will display Belly (1998).
With the height of the SAG strike everyone is not sure where Hollywood stands, but prior to the strike I got a chance to sit down with the star of BET+ thriller “Deadly Entanglement”, Vanessa Simmons. Vanessa is the child of hip hop legend Joseph Simmons aka Rev Run and is playing the role of Tammy, an r&b singer in the “Deadly Entanglement”
Out of the eleven films that competed in the documentary category at the 27th annual American Black Film Festival, co-directors Luchina Fisher and Oscar Nominee Kate Davis takes the win for their film Locked Out. This Detroit-based documentary sheds light on black women battling redlining to achieve the American Dream of Homeownership.
The Knockturnal had the opportunity to speak with the filmmakers and dive more into the significance of the film and why it’s important to amplify the voices of those fighting evictions, predatory lending, and modern-day redlining in America’s most segregated city. You can check out the exclusive full interview below:
The Knockturnal: Why was it important to tell this story?
Kate Davis: The critical issues around racial barriers to homeownership are not only huge, reflecting an enormous economic gap in America, but they are so often overlooked. We felt we could get a wide audience to care and understand better the fabric of the country if we delved into the stories of Black women in the ‘trenches’ of home ownership challenges.
Luchina Fisher: Owning a home is the cornerstone of building wealth in America, and Black Americans have increasingly been locked out of the housing market. On this 55th anniversary year of the Fair Housing Act, the gap between white and Black homeownership is larger than it was when discrimination was legal. This is not a historical issue. These issues are playing out right now. And it’s important for people to see that through the stories of these brave Black women in Detroit.
The Knockturnal: And what does this win mean to you?
KD: As a white woman, how much I took for granted regarding the prospects of owning one’s own home. I also learned that generational wealth is fundamental and something we all need to fight for in creating a more level playing field for all.
LF: This win at ABFF means that the jury recognizes the importance and urgency of this story. I hope it will continue to lift the film so that it finds audiences and change makers who can really address some of these issues and the gap in homeownership.
The Knockturnal: Did either of you face any difficult challenges while filming this documentary?
KD: One challenge was bringing complex issues to light in a way which evoked humanity. This is not “just” a look at financial inequality, it is a portrait of a broken system that has enormous emotional impacts on families and the whole country.
LF: The biggest challenge for me was taking these complex issues of mortgages and redlining and predatory lending and humanizing them through the lives of these women in Detroit. What we learned during the filming is that Black women are the group in America most likely to be evicted or locked out of housing and that these issues are playing out in all parts of our country.
After a successful win at ABFF, the filmmakers are working on getting the film on a platform for wider distribution. Locked out is currently on the circuit headed to Newark, New Jersey, and Woods Hole, Massachusetts, next.
NEW YORK, NY – There are three people who have been single handedly responsible for capturing the harrowing experience in Mariupol in the early days of its siege in February 2022: Associated Press journalists Mstyslav Chernov and his team, Evgeniy Maloletka and Vasilisa Stepanenko.
Crime comes full circle.
Steven Soderbergh’s new Max series “Full Circle” explores two New York City families of different backgrounds bound together by past transgressions, misdeeds and criminal enterprise.
The Knockturnal spoke to the director about the 70s New York films that informed the series, his collaboration with “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” screenwriter Ed Solomon and what he thinks of his earlier project “Traffic” and the war on drugs in light of his latest work.
We also spoke to CCH Pounder, who plays the matriarch of a Guyanese crime syndicate. Find the video interview below.
Every year there is a list released of the films and TV shows that you’ve watched. I noticed that in 2022 you watched [William] Friedkin’s “Sorcerer” three times, when this would have been filmed and in production. Was that at all on your mind when making this or were there other films you were thinking about?
Yeah, I was thinking about Friedkin’s work of the 70s a lot. I was thinking about Sydney Lumet’s New York movies from the 70s. In terms of of the film making style, I wanted it to be precise, but I also wanted it to be kind of blunt. I don’t know how else to describe it. This was something I was surfing sort of moment to moment. Some scenes required a little bit more of an operatic or baroque approach because we are making a melodrama. I wanted those press and release visually of things where you might have a scene where you are just totally unaware of what I’m doing as a director and other scenes for a specific reason the filmmaking leans forward a little bit.
I knew from the get go that I wanted to employ a very traditional melodramatic score. That was always going to be part of what we were doing. I wanted the score to not be trendy or hip or anything like that. I really wanted a classic Hollywood approach to the score to blend in with this idea of mine that we are making an urban version of “Peyton Place.” It was a difficult thing to describe, but in visual terms I wanted hopefully the texture of “French Connection” or “Sorcerer,” which are gritty.
I want to ask about Ed Solomon. This is someone who is known for writing “party on dudes” with “Bill and Ted.” You’re also someone who has made comedies. You’ve made avant-garde films like “Schizopolis” and the “Ocean’s” movies, commercial movies. What’s it like having those different sensibilities meld and what’s your collaboration like having all those different tastes?
It’s funny. It came about in a very serendipitous way. Ed and I met and started to know each other about twenty years ago. We had mutual friends. We just started meeting up occasionally and just talking. And then I ran into him in Canada when he was shooting his movie called “Levity” many years ago. We started having more serious conversations about filmmaking. My sense was the superficial read on Ed and Ed’s capabilities was not entirely accurate based on the conversations we were having. This was a much more soulful and serious person than his resume might suggest. He’s obviously also very funny. But I’m saying if you looked at his IMDb page at the point where he and I started hanging out — he’s the common jokemeister. That was only part of the picture that is really Ed.
I was working on developing this branching narrative app and writing a demo to shoot to show how this app would work. I was trying to find somebody I thought was going to grok what I was going to do. I wanted it to be fun, but I also wanted it to have some kind of drama. Out of the blue [producer] Casey Silver was involved with this, and out of the blue I said, “Why don’t we get Ed to help us with this to write this demo for this branching narrative?” And he goes, “I love it, let’s do it.” So Ed came on and helped finish the script for this demo, which was bought by HBO and turned into “Mosaic.” And so that was how we really started our collaboration. As we were doing the demo I thought, “Ok, they bought the concept, now we got to write the show. Do you want to write the show?” And he said, “Sure.” And we started working on “Mosaic.”
And often happens when you spend a lot of time standing next to somebody, ideas come about and you start to pitch things. While we were at the tail end of “Mosaic,” we started talking about two things. We started talking about “No Sudden Move,” and Ed started talking to me about what would become “Full Circle,” which is a fusion of a story he read in the newspaper in the early 2000s about an insurance scam criminal ring in Queens, where they were taking out policies on transient people, paying the premiums and then getting rid of them. We did “No Sudden Move” first, but while he was doing that he was writing “Full Circle,” which was originally supposed to include a branching narrative app version. But last spring in London, when I was shooting “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” I said to Ed, “Look, I can’t do both of these at the same time.” “Mosaic” I was able to do because I was repurposing the footage to use in both ways. I was using the same footage from the linear version as I was using for the app. That’s why that wasn’t a problem.
My vision for the app version of “Full Circle” was completely different imagery, complete different approach directorially, different cameras, different everything. So we had the “Full Circle” script, which was 400 pages, which we were shooting in 65 days. Then we have the app version, which was about 170 pages, where there’s no overlap — it’s all new stuff. And I told him I can’t do it. I go, “I can shoot fast, but I cannot shoot that fast.” And we had to throw all that away. There’s a lot of work Ed did. Look, some of that 170 pages leaked its way back into the linear version. It’s not like we just never looked at it again, but still I wasn’t looking forward to that lunch where I was gonna sit down and tell him, “Yeah, all that work you did, I’m throwing it out.” But he understood, and as we got further into it acknowledged we’re having a hard enough time just wrapping our minds around this normal version, forget about the branching narrative app. I guess from the outside it all looks like very structured and inevitable. These things develop, but the reality is there are so many variables and you never know which thing you’re trying to get going is going to be ready when.
The other thing is Ed and I were batting 6 or 7 episodes back and forth for a couple months, feeling pretty good about it, turned it into Max and they greenlit it immediately. Then there was a moment of, “Oh shit.” We thought there would be more back and forth and development process. But we were in a “Oh great, when are you starting? How much is it going to cost ?” So we really had to shift gears and attack it more quickly than I think we anticipated. I think we thought once we turned it in there would be a fairly significant amount of time before it was actually going to shoot. And it turned out they wanted it to go and they wanted it to go immediately.
This series deals with crime and the many people who are involved, all coming from different backgrounds with different levels of privilege. It reminds me of your film “Traffic,” which deals with similar themes. Were you thinking about that film at all? In these last two decades since that film came out have you’ve evolved on your thoughts on those themes? Is this bringing something new to the table?
Well, yes and no. “Traffic” seemed a lot easier in retrospect than “Full Circle” in terms of getting to figuring out what the thing wants to be. It just happens, I think, much quicker in the case of “Traffic,” in terms of these larger things. The sad thing is, these are human issues that are never going away. When we made “Traffic” I knew right then you could make “Traffic” every five years, because this is never going to get solved, and it’s never going to go away. And it still hasn’t been solved, and it still hasn’t gone away.
You have on the one hand this many states with legalized cannabis. But these stores are still operating cash only. They are not allowed to access the banking system. So as a result, when people say this isn’t working the way it’s supposed to work; we’re not getting the benefits we’re supposed to be getting — yeah it’s because they can’t be part of the normal economic system that every other business of its scale is allowed to access, which is the federal banking system, because the government still views this as something illegal. And so it’s dangerous. This is still a cash business. We have a tendency to not be able to get out of our own way, or at least to have an idea and then before that idea actually gets executed it becomes so compromised that you can’t really get a sense of whether it was a good idea or not, because its almost unrecognizable by the time it gets through the legislative process.
To answer your question, none of the major themes in either of those projects is going anywhere anytime soon, and especially in New York. I think there is a version of “Full Circle” you can make every year that can involve two completely different groups of people that are up to things they aren’t supposed to be up to, or are built on foundations that are not acknowledged that are corrupt.
Hubert Davis directed the documentary Black Ice, which will be exclusively released at AMC theaters on July 14th.
I was able to sit down and talk with Ondi Timoner, the director of her very personal documentary “Last Flight Home” about her father accepting his own inevitable demise.
Richard: So, how did you start in the filmmaking industry?
Ondi: So I didn’t, really, consciously decide to become a filmmaker. I just sort of picked up a camera. I was a junior in college and I was curious to ask people questions and I started to realize that holding a camera, they gave me really interesting answers. And so my brother and my roommate and I were driving across the country, from, we went to college at the time at Yale and we were driving to the west coast and then back over a spring break and, I brought a little camera along and we went into, you know, convenience stores along the way to buy a soda or a bag of chips or so. And I would ask people, you know, what they feared the most or what made them happy or what they thought of gays in the military because that was actually a, an issue at the time in the, in 1992 when this was. And, and they, and, and I swear, people just gave such interesting answers and all these conversations started happening and I realized that the camera was sort of a bridge, you know, into people’s hearts and minds. And by my senior year at Yale, I would only take classes with the teacher or professor who would let me make a film instead of write a paper. because I learned so much more that way. And I took this one class called transgressive women in American culture and went into women’s prisons to ask them about their experience.
And when I would drive out with the tapes and, and the camera on the back of the car, I felt like I was freeing some part of them from inside the prison walls. Like I had so many of my own prejudices and preconceived notions sort of dissolved in those rooms. And I realized the power of filmmaking, not only to, you know, really upend anything you think, you know, and give you a much more nuanced, truthful and authentic experience, but also to communicate that, right?
Like these people were trapped inside prison. And we had one portrayal of them on late night television as like these crazy violent women. And I was meeting a whole different type of woman. usually someone who was driving the getaway car, usually involved in a nonviolent crime, you know, a mother, a daughter, someone’s sister. And, and so by driving out with the tapes, it was like alchemy, it was like freeing their souls and their stories, you know, to be outside of an otherwise invisible parallel universe that we fund with our tax paying dollars. So that was it. I mean, that was like 30 years ago and I haven’t looked back since, to be honest and back then there was no career, there was no industry in documentary filmmaking. I in fact applied to NYU and UCLA film schools coming out of Yale and I won the film prize at Yale.
I even won like the first ever prize for film that Yale had ever given out. They had no production facilities back then. All I could do was make my films at a public access station. And, but anyway, I wanted to be a documentary filmmaker and, and so I applied saying that to these film schools and I was rejected by the film schools. I couldn’t get in.
So now when I speak at those film schools, they often ask me, you know, what do you think of film school? And I think I don’t really know because I didn’t go to film school. But I do think that not being in film school allowed me to develop my own original style, you know, which I think you can kind of see in all my films a little bit.
Richard: What made you want to make a documentary like Last Flight Home? That was so obviously very personal to you.
Ondi: That one, you know, was more of an unconscious effort. I mean, sometimes I go and set out to make these films and sometimes these films almost set out for me to make them, you know, and it’s the other way around this one, like, like dig and we live in public, all of them, all three of those, they were just kind of bigger than I was. They were just kind of, they were, it’s almost like the film was meant to be made and I kind of came along and made it.
In this case, my father was dying and I didn’t expect it even though I should because he was 92. But we don’t talk about death and dying in our society very much, you know. And, and so I was just kind of in this denial about it. And when he said I really need to go, I panicked and I just didn’t want to forget another word. He said when we found out that there was medical aid dying in California and that he had the right to die.
I was happy to be able to help him, you know, move on to perhaps a better place, but at least to be free of his body, which he was, had been trapped in, you know, he’d been paralyzed for 40 years. So I was happy that there was a solution to him lying there for years or who knows how long with his terminal illness until it killed him. You know, as soon as he could make that choice, he had such power and agency.
It was like when returned to his sales and he was empowered again to be funny and present and happy because he knew that on this certain day, March 3rd, 2021 he could take his life and that we were gonna support him in that. And so that’s changed the course of my life. But at that moment, I was just a daughter sort of panicking, you know, it was like my favorite person in the world and I just didn’t want to forget anything that he said because I can’t really remember him from
before. I was 10 when he had that accidental stroke that paralyzed him. I, I just, my brain kind of blocks it out. I think. So, I think it was really a very deep urge. I had not to forget him. And I went to a therapist and I asked her, you know, if this was appropriate and I said, my dad’s terminally ill, he’s coming home from the hospital. He’s gonna start a 15 day waiting period in hospice.
And I feel like I need to set up cameras and I thought she’d say that it was terribly inappropriate. But instead she’s like, if you think you should film, you should film. So I called my father and he, to my surprise said, I instinctively know you’re on the right track and then he never let the cameras be turned off the whole time. And he was just, he knew what I was doing more than I knew what I was doing.
But at some point along those lines, you know, I came to realize that this was the most profound and important and greatest learning experience of my life and that it was incumbent upon me to share it. And that if I didn’t share it, I wasn’t honoring the work that I’ve been doing for 30 years, which is, you know, to go out with a camera and learn and then come back and share edit together what I’ve learned and then share it with an audience and that’s what I needed to do with this and getting my sister and her family on board for that was more challenging because nobody expected that we were making a documentary. They all kind of believed me that I was just filming him because that’s what I thought. But I did film it like a documentary because I’m a documentary filmmaker. So luckily I got good sound and, you know, I had four cameras going and when, when I, when I realized Oh my God, this is a film, by then, I had the material, I had 500 hours of footage to share. So I made up, I guess the movie is 100 and 100 and four minutes. So from 500 hours, which is not a crazy ratio. If you look at my other films, some of my films are like thousands of hours of footage down to a feature. So, wow. Yeah.
Richard: Who are some of your greatest inspirations when you’re doing documentary filmmaking?
Ondi: Well, all the great verite filmmakers of the sixties are probably my favorites just because great observational filmmaking, ver filmmaking is the, the most powerful I think form of filmmaking period if it can be done, right? Because what it does is it takes the audience and invites them into the room without any mediation or narration to really observe what’s going on there, you know.
And that’s a hard thing to do, especially these days with the amount of consciousness we have around cameras and social media and, you know, everybody is just constantly thinking, thinking about what they can post, you know, and so it’s not the same as even when I began, people were a lot more innocent about cameras, but now it’s a different story.
But I think to this day, you know, the D A Penny Bakers, the rapper Drew, you know, I won the Robert Andrew Award for excellence and observational filmmaking in November from DOC NYC. And I was literally, I was blown away. I was so honored because, you know, their films, these are the first films I ever saw documentaries I ever saw were, you know, primary, his film Primary.
That was amazing. Or Ricky Leacock films, D A Penny Baker’s films. you know, don’t look back on Bob Dylan. That was a great, great film. And so, you know, my, I think my most powerful films actually have a good deal of verite in them. I mean, Last Flight Home is almost all purely verri few, a few interviews, but basically you’re in the room, you know, and that’s what people say is that they can actually transpose their own families onto our family.
And it’s such a powerful experience to just be invited to be at my father’s bedside and to be part of the Timoner family, you know, and I think dig does that. It takes you into the lives of these two bands, you know, where we live in public, takes you into the bunker into, you know, to be in that place for 30 days with these people who have given up all of their rights just to be where it matters at the turn of the millennium and have subjected themselves to this social experiment and you’re kind of in there, you know, right in there and a lot of my films do that. So, yeah, I’d say those are the most, if I hadn’t seen it, I don’t know if I would have known to do it, you know, I don’t really look at other films to influence my work. I kind of look at the subject of the work. So if I’m making a film about someone, the style of the film will come from that or from that experience, it won’t come from other films that I’m studying.
You know, I have a much more pure relationship with my subject and that’s how I make my films. So, but these, these verite films early on without them, I don’t know where I’d be.
Richard: OK. So I, I know that you’re working on a project about the disruption of finance as according to your Wikipedia page.
Ondi: It should be updated because that film is premiered at South by Southwest in March. It’s called the New Americans. And it’s coming out, I believe in the fall or winter or, or right at New Year’s somewhere around then. And I’m not able to disclose who’s putting it out yet, but it’s playing the festival circuit, it played Mountain Film just recently, Dallas Milwaukee.
Next stop that I’m making with the film is Sidewalk Film Festival in Birmingham, Alabama. Fantastic Festival. I cannot not recommend it high, more, highly fantastic festival. If you can go Richard, you should. And it’s in Birmingham, Alabama. It’s a great regional festival like I have three films. They are playing this year because of the 25th anniversary and they’re huge fans of Dig.
So they’re playing Dig, they’re playing Last Flight Home because that’s where I did the secret screening to test it. when it was a very, very rough cut years ago before the Sundance premiere before the Tell You eye premiere. I did a secret screening for 100 people there under no title with without my name, to see what, whether it was too personal or whether it was appropriate to, to share.
And, and so I’m bringing the final version back and then also the New Americans is playing there and also the Woodstock Film Festival in New York is playing. So those are the, those are the next places it’s playing. But, it’s a crazy film. I mean, it’s all about memes and the internet and if you’ve seen my movie, we live in public, it’s sort of the part two of that. It’s really looking at technology’s impact on our, on our minds, on our society, on our politics, on our finances.
And the way that we’re organizing and it’s, it’s both really positive and really negative. because the internet, like all of the most powerful things is a double edged sword. It’s equally the greatest invention of our lifetime and also what might bring us down. So, or I should say tech virtual technology, including A. I.?
Richard: What do you enjoy most about your work? And what do you enjoy least about it?
Ondi: That’s a good question. I like that. My favorite aspect is how much I learn, from the people and the subjects I delve into. It’s almost like my camera’s a diving bell and it just takes me so deep into whatever the topic is usually way far beneath the headlines to a much more three dimensional, four dimensional eight dimensional truth, you know, almost like a prism.
And I really like to take the audience on that journey and share what I’ve learned with them. But I think my favorite part is making the film. Last week I was in a hospice, the only hospice for the homeless in America. And I’m filming a, I’m making a film there. That’s what it should say on my page. If my wikipedia was updated, feel free to update it, Richard because I know you have special skills.
The movie is called the In Between All Caps. And it’s named after a place called the In between I and in between. And it’s a place where the homeless can go to either recover from surgery where they would normally be infected or unable to continue living on the streets. or they go there to die in, in a dignified manner with a loving face and not alone and in a bed and every major city in America should have one of these.
And I’ve just learned so much from the compassion, the, the care, the treatment, the people, the residents. I filmed a veteran dying last week, you know, in this place. And I was, you know, I was rocked for days by it, but I just learned a lot on a deep level, not the kind of stuff you can get from a book, you know. So, ok, so that’s what I love the most.
Oh, yeah. And what do I not like? What do I not like the most? It’s so hard, it is so hard being a documentary filmmaker. There’s an article right now as we speak about how there’s a, there’s a crisis in the documentary filmmaking world because the things that we film take such a psychological toll and we have to be really, really have the fortitude, mentally or the health, you know, the stability to really handle a lot of what it is that we’re documenting.
It’s very, very intense stuff. So there’s that aspect to it. And I think the articles in the Hollywood reporter, let’s see. Let me tell you the name of the article it is. give me one second it is. Yep. Take your time. The documentary film industry is in crisis, the unspoken traumas of the filmmaking community. I believe it’s in the holiday reporter, if you want to see it. But anyway, there’s that and then there’s just the hours the competition that the competition for, and I mean, I’m not competitive. I’m like off right now to go host a screening of colleagues of mine work that’s coming out on HBOMax’s 24 hour decade of popular music because I think the film is so great. And I host all the nonfiction films that the Directors Guild of America.
And I used to have a talk show that you can see on the internet if you’re interested in documentary film called Byod Bring Your Own doc. in which I interview a different colleague every week for hundreds of episodes from 2011 to 2016. I did this. So I’m, I’m really a person who loves to kind of spread the word about my, my film, my fellow filmmakers work and I love the community that we have.
But I it is really a competitive field now and you know, there’s a lot of fear and competition and competition for awards and it’s all built around awards and it’s, it’s all very exhausting, I guess is the word really what I wanna do is just make my movies if that makes sense. Right. Yeah, the industry is what I don’t like that much but I work my way.
I manage, you know, I’m, I, I’m not complaining. I really, I get to do pretty much whatever I want to do, but that’s just because I just go do it. Usually I just go make my movies. I find funding along the way. Sometimes I take a job but mostly I just go and make my own films. and then I sell them or I get funding along the way. So I’m not one of these people who’s always like looking for a job per se.
That’s just how I’ve always worked. I don’t mind. I mean, please call me and hire me for a job, but I, but I’m not gonna wait for the phone to ring to go make a movie if that makes sense. Right? Like I have a couple of movies going right now and then I have a script about my father and that whole experience that I’m trying to make into a scripted film, you know, because I do those as well. I would recommend Maplethorpe, the director’s cut, on Amazon if you want to see a scripted film of mine, Maplethorpe.
Richard: So where do you think your career is gonna go in the next 5 to 10 years?
Ondi: It’s a great question. I really never think like that. I never got into this thinking, oh, I’m gonna do this one day or I’m gonna win this or, you know, I just was filming and then I looked at this, I had like hundreds of tapes when I was making dig and my then boyfriend said to me, what do you, what do you do? You know, what do you want to do with your career?
And I was like, when you see all those tapes, I just wanna put them on one tape. So my thing is always just like, doing whatever the project is that I’m doing and then it leads to the next thing, just organically, you know, I don’t know. I hope I will make last flight home, the scripted version, which was called a stroke of genius. and I would really, really love to tell that story because the last flight home, you see a little bit of my dad’s career, you don’t really get to go into what it is to start an airline, you know, in the seventies and the great rise and fall that happened there with the stroke and the impact it had on our family and all of that. And, so I’ve written a script over the last eight years. In fact, those are the pages you see on his bed. And, that would be my dream is to make that film. But, in the meantime, I have a film about my sister, and this project she’s doing in Brooklyn and I have this film the in between that I’m gonna make. And, I also have a film about a I, that I’ve been making for a few years that I hope to finish called soulmate. So I have plenty of films to keep me very busy. But what do I expect? I expect more, more, you know, that I’ll make more films and probably hopefully balance it out with living a little bit more too. because I, I mean, doubling up on last flight home and the New Americans at the same time was exhausting. And so I’m due for a little bit of balancing right now, taking things a little bit more. one at a time if I can?
Richard: Ok. And last question, do you have any advice for young upcoming filmmakers like myself?
Ondi: Go do it, go make your film find something that you find interesting that you think others will find important or relevant even years from now and something that you find interesting enough that you want to spend a couple of years focusing on it and with documentary, you can go do it, make sure you have good sound, you can always replace the visuals, but you cannot capture the sound again if it’s live and happening in front of you.
So make sure you have a good microphone and and go, you know, go make a film like if you, if that’s what you wanna do, no one’s gonna just, you know, it’s like it wasn’t like I could show up in Hollywood with the sign and say I want to be a filmmaker and somebody would give me a job, you know, I just went and made movies and that’s how I got to be successful and to be where I’m, I’ve now made 10 features and hundreds of shorts, you know, I just went and made them. Sometimes I needed funding a lot of funding and then I would go and find that. But first before you find it, you’ve got to prove it, you know, so go shoot something and make a sizzle and then you could find funding, you know. But if you sit around and you write, you know, write it again, rewrite and rewrite a proposal on your computer in your bedroom, nobody’s gonna give you the funding. So get out there and do it. Well, that’s good advice and learn to edit and edit what you do so that you know what you need to shoot no better guide than being an editor to know what to do in the field. Because you’ll go, you’ll sit there and you’ll edit and you’ll be like, oh my God, I’m missing this, this, this, this and this and the next time you go out there you’ll actually capture those things.
So learn to edit. I edit a lot of my own films, usually co edit with someone else. just because it’s very, very hard long work, but I love it. The art is a documentary is a lot in the editing room. I usually joke editing is 70%. But shooting is also 70%. So if you want to be a documentary filmmaker, you need to be ready to give 100 and 40% beautiful.
The American summer blockbuster has changed face more times than I can count. Recently, superhero movies have been the meta. Previously, it was westerns, crime thrillers, love stories, spy dramas, and more. Essentially, anything that involved good guy beats bad guy, coupled with a lot of gun violence and action. It’s hard to say which era is the best as each has their own strength, but at the same time, too much of one thing isn’t good. It’s tantamount to declaring one flavor of ice cream superior to the other. It’s almost nonsensical to say something is nostalgic and a breath of fresh air and yet, that is exactly what Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning is. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience seeing this movie and it just may end up being my favorite movie that comes out this year.
Tom Cruise is one of the last remaining movie stars left. In this day and age, no one is truly famous. Or at least, not like it used to be a few decades ago. The age of movie stars donning the silver screen once every year or two has been done away with actors and actresses appearing in the occasional film and television series on your phone. More often than not, the appearance of that star, at least in my circle, is met with a “oh wow, they got him/her/them in this thing?”. But Mr. Cruise hasn’t done that. He hasn’t made a series with Netflix or created a streamer fodder film for another of the myriad of services available. He has stuck true with the medium that made him rich and famous: the big screen. I met Tom on the red carpet of the New York premiere of the film where I asked him: With all the stunts you’ve done, are you afraid of anything? To which he replied, in paraphrasing, “It’s not about the lack of fear in the stunts, it’s about the willingness to push beyond our limits”.
There’s something to be said about that. This may sound like trivial tripe or the wailings of an old man. However, the detail, care, and passion that goes into his movies are unlike the average movie being churned out. These days, the goal is to have a movie ready for release on a streaming service as opposed to really make something great. Who else, aside from James Cameron (another old fashioned filmmaker who has delightfully not changed with the times) and a few others would take years to develop and produce a film that was meant primarily for theaters? The practical effects in this film alone reminded me why I love going to the movies. Recent films, even well received ones such as Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 have left me struggling to stay awake during it’s boring runtime. CGI is an amazing innovation that has made modern movies spectacular, but at the same time, has crippled the beauty of a well-done stunt. For example, the latest in the Fast franchise features a chase scene in Rome that’s not too dissimilar to the one in this film. However, here, that chase scene is done with practical effects as opposed to CGI and it makes the action feel altogether much more gritty, engaging, and entertaining.
With all my gushing out of the way, I must admit it is an uneven movie but in the best way a film could be uneven. While the film may start a little slow with some clichéd events, things pick up in the second act with some tense scenes which are on par with some of the better action movies of the early 2000s and the third act is simply one of the best sequences of action I seen in a while. When it comes to combat and gunplay, there is no competing with the John Wick series. However, when it comes to spectacle, practical effects, and stunts, I think the same acclaim belongs to Mission Impossible. When the motorcycle stunt in the trailer and early footage of the film actually does appear in the film. It takes your breath away. There’s something about seeing a real person literally risk his life driving a motorcycle off a real cliff as opposed to a CGI background that captivates and fills you with dread for everyone involved. I haven’t been that close to the edge of my seat since Top Gun: Maverick.
Things haven’t exactly been so great at the box office since Covid. People are clearly fatigued and tired of superhero movies, which to me is especially evident in the fact that Oppenheimer and Barbie are met with such hyped anticipation. I am very excited for both of those films as well, but I am pleading with you, do not sleep on Mission Impossible. A huge reason why is because of how innovative this film is. With Dolby Atmos, which is a new feature added to movie theaters which allows you to have an almost 3D audio experience. Watching Tom Cruise sprint while dodging bullets while hearing the direction of where they came from is a surreal experience. There’s also Dolby vision which adds a lot of depth and character to each frame, making for a more rich movie going experience and helped tip this experience over the top to being one my favorite movie going experience in years. I have not seen enough praise or anticipation for this movie, but it is certainly something worth a watch. This is the beginning of a great finale to one of cinema‘s best series.
On June 21, Rooftop Films screened No Hard Feelings (2023) at the Lower East Side’s New Design High School. The feature starred Jennifer Lawrence as Maddie. Andrew Barth Feldman played Percy. Gene Stupnitsky directed the sex comedy.
In the film, a down-on-her-luck woman named Maddie lost her childhood home. She answered an advertisement to “date” a wealthy, awkward nineteen-year-old boy named Percy. His parents posted the listing on Craiglist. They hoped to get their son out of his shell before college. Due to the boy’s anxiety, his dates with Maddie didn’t go as planned.
After the special presentation, Ronald Gladden spoke with Feldman. To learn more about the film’s production and Feldman’s character, read the interview transcript below.
Ronald: For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Ronald Gladden. I’m from the Amazon show Jury Duty by Gene Stupnitsky, and I am so excited to be here tonight. We have a hilarious and brilliant screening of No Hard Feelings, but, before we get into that, I do want to introduce our special guest tonight, the star of the film, Andrew Barth Feldman.
Andrew: Hey everybody, thanks for being here. Wow.
Ronald: Welcome.
Andrew: Welcome to you. Thank you for being here, it’s great to see you.
Ronald: You as well. The first question I have for you, Andrew, is: can you describe this film to us in three words?
Andrew: Two – dark, funny.
Ronald: That’s a great answer.
Andrew: Thank you.
Ronald: So the next question is: what made you want to initially do this film?
Andrew: Oh man, I mean the easy answer is obviously like — there was no walk here for me. It wasn’t like I was in movies and was like ‘Hey, guess I’ll do this one’ like Jennifer Lawrence is doing this excellent comedy. But the script, the first time I read it, after my first audition, it’s the funniest script I’ve ever read, not that I’m the arbiter but Jen agrees and this character was really, really, I was riding my wheel after him, I was so connected to him and I wanted to take on the myriad of challenges that came with playing him.
Ronald: Yeah— and by the way, for those of you who haven’t seen it, it is very funny. I will agree the script is great. That leads me to my next question: can you tell me about your character and do you see any similarities between himself and you?
Andrew: Yeah. 100% yes. So firstly he’s this very sort of — [to the audience] you’re going to watch the movie in a second — but he’s this very antisocial, nervous, but very kind, sweet young man, and yes I think we’re very similar. I’m a much more social person, he would never stand up here and talk to you but I think the engine of anxiety drives both of us. But also like, he’s very sheltered from the world, there’s a lot he doesn’t know how to do and I didn’t know how to ride a bike before this movie. Like, for real, I had to learn how to ride a bike for this movie, so that’s the kind of stuff I didn’t know how to do the same way a person doesn’t know about the world he’s venturing into.
Ronald: That’s a great behind-the-scenes fact right there. I didn’t know that coming into this.
Andrew: There you go. I had to go to Central Park with my friends and my friends who are the same age as me had to teach me how to ride a bike.
Ronald: That’s great. So obviously I’m a huge fan of Gene’s, having worked on Jury Duty, but truthfully I never got to meet him though, so what I’m curious [about] though, is what it’s like to work with him.
Andrew: He is an incredible director. He was throwing alternate lines at us constantly. The version of the movie you’re about to see is the funniest version but there are a hundred other versions of different jokes and things he would throw at us on the day. He was so collaborative and wanted to know about how I thought of Percy as a young person as a representative for Gen Z and yeah, he’s one of a kind and so weird, but brilliant.
Ronald: Weird, but brilliant, we love to hear it. So, comedy is obviously a new genre for you. Were you nervous going into this and how did you prepare for this?
Andrew: I think it’s been something I’ve been so hungry to do for so long – I was in the show Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway which, [turns to face the crowd] — oh, a smattering of recognition — people don’t remember how funny it is, it is a very funny show. You take away a lot of sadness and emotion. But yeah, I love shtick, like I love physical comedy, and this movie has so, so much of it, and also Gene’s script is so funny that to deliver these jokes you just kind of have to tell the truth.
Ronald: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That totally makes sense. So my question is: what’s the funniest thing to you that happened on set?
Andrew: Ooh, there’s a shot in the movie where we’re walking with dogs on the beach. The first time we did it, I had these two big dogs, and we were running. As soon as Gene calls “action,” the dogs take off. I fly through the air from the weight of the dogs pulling me forward and land on my face in the sand and I’m so mad it’s not in the movie. It just happened because the dogs were too heavy and then Jen had to take the big dogs and I took the little dogs.
Ronald: That actually leads to my next question. Were there any moments outside of that that were just so good that didn’t make the final cut but you wish they did?
Andrew: Oh yeah, that same day we went to another thing with dogs, we’re washing the dog – that’s in the movie – but Gene, over the mic goes, ‘and now, Andrew, let the dog lick you in the mouth’ and I did, right away, and he was like, ‘I was joking, why would you do that’ and I was like ‘well you better fucking use it in the movie, man’, and he did. I put my life on the line for this movie.
Ronald: Exactly. So, Andrew, is there anything, before we start this movie, that you’d like to say to the audience?
Andrew: Happy summer solstice. I just really hope you get to look at each other and be like, is this really happening, just laugh, that’s the best thing about this movie, we get to laugh together in a theatre, which we haven’t really done in a long time, so I hope you have that experience tonight on this cool rooftop. Thanks so much for being here, everybody, I hope you enjoy the movie.