Interview: Genevieve Bailey of “I Am Eleven”

Posted on September 21, 2014 at 8:09 pm

There’s a reason that so many heroes and heroines of classic literature are eleven years old. It is that last magical moment at the cusp of childhood and adolescence, which is what makes it so fascinating and delightful. Genevieve Bailey remembered the year she was 11 as one of the happiest of her life, and so she decided to make a movie about 11-year-olds around the world, a wide variety of religions, cultures, nationalities, economic and educational levels, but all extraordinarily open, thoughtful, and engaging. At the end of I Am Eleven, she revisits one of the boys, now 14. When she asks him a question, he says, “That’s embarrassing,” and refuses to answer, and we see how precious those last moments of childhood are.

Why is it that the sense of embarrassment accompanies adolescence?

It’s true. I think when you become a teenager, there’s all sorts of things that we all go through; more self centering and feeling like life is more complicated and worrying about looking cool and acting cool. That doesn’t happen too much when you’re 11, it’s just before all of that.

I think people will be surprised to see how philosophical these kids are, how deeply they thought about life.

Yes, that’s definitely been the response, we’ve screened at film festivals are in 20 countries and across cultures we are often surprised particularly by boys like Remi. They say, “Is he really 11? Is the French boy really 11? He is such an old soul and his sense of humanity and community is very strong at a very young age.”

Tell me a little bit about how you found these children.

I decided on landing in these foreign countries where I didn’t speak the language, the easiest way to find children would be to go through schools because of course, that’s where they are Monday to Friday every week. But I did also worry a little bit that don’t teachers might nominate the students with the best grades or they might pick one of the kids who has acting experience and I didn’t need those things. I just needed the child to be 11 and want to be involved.

So I thought rather than going through schools, I wouldn’t take the easy approach. I would actually hit the streets and try to find children in the mall, or in some other random way. So I would go to marketplaces, I would go to families, ask people if they knew anyone who would want to be involved. Each country brought its own challenge and sometimes I found them quite quickly in weird and wonderful ways and sometimes it took a lot longer.

But I’m really glad that took this approach rather than auditioning dozens of children to select someone for the film. In some ways, the children found me in their own weird and wonderful ways when I was out in the city.

I tend to assume as I think most people in the first world do that children around the world are very influenced by Anglo-American culture. Did you find that to be true?

I didn’t find that to be true because I covered such diverse places and I went to 15 countries and the children were speaking in 12 languages. I think that definitely in Western English-speaking world, there are obviously influences. But the thing I really wanted to uncover, some places that I knew very little about like Morocco and Bulgaria and explore these words through the eyes of kids because I think there is a sense of clarity at that age in expressing who they are and their identity.

So yeah, I did see influences but there were a lot of things I did not know until I went to places kind of outside of the usual tourist traps and where backpackers normally go.

I particularly enjoyed the scenes with the children dancing.

Yeah, I love that. That wasn’t a deliberate conscious effort for me to ask the kids to dance. It was something that was happening organically and I love that because I love dancing when I was 11; much like Kimberly, I used to dance in front of my mirrored wardrobe to no end. And that was something that was really nice to see across cultures.

Yeah, the influence of music and dance was seen in each community so I’m really glad that I was able to edit together that sequence that’s taken from around the world and watching the children dance. I particularly like Billy’s dance moves on his bedroom floor.

You seem especially fond of him. Talk to me about him a little bit and about why you chose to include his father, one of the few parents in the film.

From the minute I walked into the Billy’s flat in London, I was completely charmed. And I ccouldn’tturn the camera on quick enough that she was ready to go – he was on the couch, he was asking me all sorts of questions. He wanted to know if I had a theme song yet. Because he had a theme song he wanted for the movie, a 1984 wrestling movie theme song, he thoguht might be appropriate. And I was kind of just bowled away by his idiosyncratic way of speaking and his sense of humor; he was very cheeky but also very honest.

Audiences have really taken to him; he has resonated across the world. Especially young audiences always come out of the cinema saying, “We want to meet Billy!” Billy is autistic and he is very happy to chat specifically about that. And basically I think sometimes we see films and read books or articles about children on a spectrum and they focus on the challenges of what makes it difficult. For most, that’s true. The film does not label him but he is really celebrated by audiences and I think it’s great for children to see that it can be really a positive thing. Billy has his way of engaging audiences and I’m really glad that he is in the film. His family is very loving and they celebrate him. Hiis father was obviously very impressed and proud of how far he had come and that’s why I decided to include that scene where he explains that when Billy was young, he couldn’t talk or he couldn’t hold a pencil.

I think he provided some insight for the people watching the film, into how Billy has developed and that’s the reason why I decided to include that scene. And I also felt that Billy, when he was in that scene, he was very comfortable. I also included the moment of Jamira with her father when it was Father’s Day and a few of those moments with adults because obviously as children, we are very influenced by those who are raising us; our mother, our father or both. But yeah, I was very conscious that for every minute or two that I used my screen time on exploring adult relationships that would be a couple of minutes and had to take away from the children. So that’s why I was very conscious of having a limited presence of adults on screen but there was little bit of it in their obviously to give some background context to certain relationships that I felt were very insightful.

Another one which I thought was very worthwhile was the guy from the orphanage talking about the house they were going to build for the children.

When I first went to the orphanage, obviously there are all different sorts of orphanages around the world; there are ones that are well run and there are others that are not so well run and ones where there is a lack of resources. And when I arrived in India I definitely saw that they were short of certain things but what they weren’t short of love and I felt very happy to know that we could still get involved on a long-term basis in supporting the kids and empowering them and having a focus on making sure they can complete their education and not have any financial hardship in regards to doing that. And because we knew that they were being cared for very well.

Despite their adversity in younger years, they are in a very safe place now.

Most people feel that children of that age are either too young or would be too upset to deal with the world’s various problems but these children seem to deal with them in a very honest way and yet not lose their sense of optimism.

Absolutely. That’s what I found across the board in every place that I went to. This sense of optimism and I think when you are 11, you are excited about dreaming big and you are ambitious and whether or not you are growing up in a privileged environment or a challenging one, you really believe that things are possible when you are 11.

I think sometimes we become teenagers, we lose that a little bit and obviously into adulthood we often lose that and become more cynical or skeptical of pursuing certain dreams. But I love that when they are 11 that they do really believe that dreaming big is a good thing.

Was it difficult to edit all of your footage into feature-length?

It was a challenge but it was a huge learning experience. I am glad that I didn’t fear the risk factor of including so many voices. Sometimes we are used to seeing films with three or four characters and of course, I could have chosen three or four of the English-speaking kids but I really wanted the audience to feel that they have traveled around the world in a hour and a half and seen some places maybe they haven’t seen on screen before. So it was a risk to include so many children in the same but I am glad that I didn’t shy away from the risk.

What did you learn from the 11 year olds?

11-year-olds are courageous and I think that rubbed off on me. I am glad that people have the opportunity to meet all these different voices. I could’ve made the film just in Melbourne with all different children but I really wanted to visit these places for the first time. I had never been out of Australia so the big challenge that I set myself was to go around the world and not leave any city until I had met an original there. So that was a little part of my process.

I think that as a filmmaker, I fell in love with these kids and they are big part of my life. They are like my nieces and nephews. But to be honest, you kind of expect them to be a bit excited about the film as what you are. But as we have traveled with the film and screened it and we visited these kids, I’m really glad that even if some of them laugh at their hairstyles or some of the boys whose voices have now broken say, “Oh, my voice was so squeaky?!” But they are all really proud of themselves and how they are represented and also proud of being part of a really global perspective on the world. So I think that is something that I’m really happy with, with the children that are proud of being part of “I am Eleven.”

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See Great Directors — in TV and Music Videos

Posted on August 28, 2014 at 3:46 pm

Top directors do more than movies. Take a look at these clips from Emmy-nominated television series and these music videos made by some of the most talented directors working in Hollywood, including Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”), David Fincher (“Fight Club”), and Paul Thomas Anderson (“Boogie Nights,” “The Master”). Taylor Swift’s new Shake it Off video was directed by Mark Romanek, who also directed Johnny Cash’s classic “Hurt” and Michael Jackson’s “Scream” as well a films like Robin Williams’ “One Hour Photo” and the haunting “Never Let Me Go.” He said that the ideas were Swift’s, but explained how he added his own thoughts.

We met and she told me that she wanted to make a sort of paean to the awkward ones, the “uncool” kids that are actually cooler than the “cool” kids. She said she wanted to shoot all these styles of dance and then be the individualist dork in the midst of these established genres. And that she somehow wanted her fans involved. I loved that idea, so over the following week or so, we narrowed down our choices for styles of dance. I think she imagined it in more natural settings and I suggested giving it a starker, more minimalist look. And I suggested the idea of incorporating her fans as a climax, for the ending as a kind of surprise.

Did you know that Fincher directed Madonna’s “Vogue?” It is a lot of fun to see directors freed from the structure of narrative arcs, having fun with the visuals and the music.

Interview: Daniel Schechter, Writer/Director of “Life of Crime”

Posted on August 27, 2014 at 3:59 pm

Newcomer Daniel Schechter, who wrote one of my favorite neglected gems, The Big Bad Swim, worked with an all-star cast in “Life of Crime,” which he adapted from The Switch by Elmore Leonard and directed. It is set in 1970’s Detroit and it is the story of a woman played by Jennifer Aniston who is kidnapped for $1 million ransom. But things don’t go well because her husband (Tim Robbins) does not really want her back. The hapless kidnappers are played by Mos Def and John Hawkes and the husband’s tough, calculating mistress is played by Isla Fisher. Schecter talked to me about re-creating the 1970’s, spending a day with Elmore Leonard, and why we love to watch crooks.

What are the challenges of doing a period film with a very limited budget?

I always say it’s the difference between moving into a furnished and unfurnished apartment. You just have to re-create everything 360 and we had a fantastic production designer named Inbal Weinberg who was even more ambitious than I insisted that she be to her amazing credit. And it creates a great illusion really helps the audience go back in time. The money goes on screen but it doesn’t add more days to your production. So it’s a tough give-and-take. I was also thrilled with the wardrobe. We had a really wonderful costume designer named Anna Terrazas to walk us through the process. She just had to pound the pavement and then go to every vintage place she could find in the Tri-State area. She found us some wonderful stuff. We also really wanted the cast to feel involved in their choices and some of them dressed in things they used to wear in the 70s and some of them wanted to dress like their parents. It was a really fun exploration and conversation. I wasn’t alive in the 70’s, I’m only 32, but I think you just see authenticity when you see it. There are even things in the book that were specific references to what they wore and we would try to take our cue from that.

You assembled an extraordinary cast.

It’s really tough because you want to get your big names but we’ve all seen the films that have so many famous people but zero chemistry or who felt inappropriate for the role. So I think there is a angel hanging over my shoulder that I not only got people that I’m felt really appropriate for their parts but have great chemistry. I’ve never worked with a cast of this caliber but after a few minutes you realize they’re all actors and they really want to deliver and I think one of the reason I chose to adopt this book was because it had seven unbelievably great lead parts in this ensemble. Actors love good parts.

What is it about crime stories that is so endlessly appealing?

It’s why we go to the movies. It’s like we want to see some kind of crime that we don’t have to take any responsibility or blame or fault for. But that I think there’s something especially fun about this because the main character isn’t a criminal. So I think the audience sort of feel like they’re inside Jennifer Aniston’s point of view the whole time, experiencing this crime vicariously. And it’s just sort of timeless. I think that’s what’s so fun about being in the 70s, you’re not dealing with any sort of cell phones or Google or Internet. It really makes it a real pure papers story like a 1970s crime movies which I love. It’s a wish fulfillment, and I also think the pleasure of reading Elmore Leonard’s books is not only getting the experience of committing the crime but being reminded of how real people would behave in those situations. We’ve seen so many films with smooth criminals or elaborate heists in glamorous setting that don’t make any sense but I think that he really wanted to thoroughly ground the experience of a crime or heist a bank robbery with reality and real characters that’s where I responded to the material.

“Guardians of the Galaxy” has a surprise hit soundtrack filled with 70’s songs and now your film also has a fabulous selection of music from that era.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this since seeing “Guardians of Galaxy” because they had every penny you could possibly have to spend on licensing music and we no money at all. I could guarantee the cost of any one of their songs was probably the entire budget for our entire soundtrack not including our score. But I think in a great way it allowed me to discover music that I’ve never heard before and to find gems and make really creative choices in music that I love, that sounded familiar to an audience. It raises the production value. It helps an audience sort of go back in time a little bit so we worked really hard to get the best possible music we could. We tried to get songs that you might know, so we had songs like “Don’t Pull Your Love” and “Let Your Love Flow.” I think that has a bit of nostalgic pull on a specific audience. We opened the film with a guy called Dorondo and I love that song and There is a Frankie Miller song called I Can’t Change It that I’d never heard and now I listen to endlessly on my phone. It’s amazing how some songs are a hit and some songs get lost in time. Some things just don’t come at the right moment and they seem just as good to me.

There’s this song called “Show Me a Man” and it plays over this long tracking shot of John Hawkes walking to the restaurant pretending he was inside of it stealing a car. It’s a very offbeat bizarre song that I thought that I thought Quentin Tarantino would’ve liked. And there’s this great juxtaposition with the lyrics. Here’s a song about a noble great cowboyish type played for a guy who is just a criminal stealing a car. We love this guy and we do feel that there’s nobility to him. There are sometimes you don’t even know why you just put those song on top of the picture and yet it justs elevate whatever I had there before. And then there’s moments like during kidnapping we had a literal needle drop where a record plays and I think we had 10 different songs in there at one point. One song I really wanted was Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park” or something that was reedy like that, iconic and memorable but of course that was like a $75,000 thing we had to make different choice but just the idea of getting featured song like that and have it played throughout the house in different perspectives; you don’t get the better opportunity than that to play with music.

You met with Elmore Leonard to talk about the film. What was that like?

I was really lucky. I went up to Detroit to meet with him for a weekend and we had good food and beers and discussed a lot of his projects, many of which he needed to be reminded of because they were old books that he hadn’t looked at, and things that I had read several times recently. And I got to look at every location that was written into the book. Everything that he writes was set in a real place in and around Detroit so it was fun to see the book come alive in front of my eyes.

What is it about his writing that makes it so instantly cinematic?

Somehow he makes exposition entertaining. I’m writing a new script now and it is such a challenge to make exposition not feel so obvious. He finds a really good reason for those people to be discussing the plot and having the audience be thinking, “Oh that’s what I would say and that’s what I would ask.” There are a lot of people who say that he was the greatest dialogue writer alive which I agree with. Not because he is the quippiest or cleverest but because it just felt so alive. It was like he was just possessed by those people as he was writing it. In my adaptation I was sometimes I would just omit a word and then I would read my script and I wouldn’t love the line. I would go back and realize I skipped a comma or one word and it just threw off the whole rhythm the that’s how good he was, that’s how almost perfect his writing was. Well, I think if you look at “Jackie Brown” which is based in a book called Rum Punch, you’d think, “Wow that stays shockingly close to the original novels capturing characters and dialogue!” And I think I took the cue out of their book and did the same thing. I think people are far less impressed with my adaptation when they read the book. The book was as if somebody gave me a great screenplay and as a director I just had to adapt it a little bit.

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Interview: Ira Sachs of “Love is Strange”

Posted on August 24, 2014 at 8:00 am

It’s hard to imagine that there will be a more tender love story on screen this year than John Lithgow and Alfred Molina in “Love is Strange,” from writer/director Ira Sachs. They play a long-time couple who get married after decades together but then end up living separately when they can no longer afford their apartment.

One of my all-time favorite interviews was with Sachs for his film, “Married Life,” so I was doubly thrilled to have a chance to talk to him about this bittersweet new film.

I love opening scene, as the couple wakes up and engages in the kind of shorthand bicker/banter characteristic of a very long-term relationship. How did you capture that?

I would say that the film was inspired by a lot of different couples, including my mother and stepfather who have been together for 43 years. And just being around her, that fundamentally works and that they still love each other and they’re wonderful partners to each other. But it’s real, so it’s imperfect and it has all the momentary challenges of living an intimate life with someone. That is a big inspiration for me. And also John and Alfred and their own years of marriage. I think that’s where they found their deepest resonance in terms of the characters in their own lives.

One thing that I like about the story is that everybody’s nice. There are conflicts, but there’s no bad guy in the movie.

Robert Altman is a very big inspiration for me and also novelists like Henry James, .people who actually try to look with empathy to everyone in their world. I am what you could call a very democratic director. And to me that’s kind of my job which is to be understanding of people and to be attentive to their foibles and their uniqueness. The more that I position myself like that as a director of the more depth the work can have.

John Lithgow plays an artist, a painter, whose work is representational, rather traditional.

My great uncle in Memphis when I was growing up, he had a partner, and they were together for 45 years. His partner was a sculptor who lived to be 99. I was very close to him in the last ten years of his life. I had to grow up to be old enough to be allowed to be that close to someone of that generation. And he was a man who was working on his last sculpture when he was 98 and it was of a young teenage boy with a backpack. His whole life he always did classical, religious narrative pieces. And suddenly at 98 he was working on something very contemporary about youth. That piece remains unfinished. It’s in clay in a glass at a cousin’s house. I was very inspired by that piece. And the sense of man who or of anyone who is living their life to the fullest for as long as possible and with an openness to new things. And I was actually thinking about this said the other day as I was doing a Q&A with John Lithgow who this summer is doing “King Lear.” He’s a passionate reader, he writes children’s books, he paints, I’ve grown to be very inspired by John which is not something I knew when wrote Ben, but it’s what I hoped for and I think we have to create our models sometime. He’s very funny and he’s got humility and confidence and I think those are both very important quality to be an artiste.

Talk to me about Joey, the teenage son of Ben’s teenage relatives. It was such an interesting choice to end the film on him.

To me it’s film very much about the seasons of life and generations and the circular nature of our time on earth. This film is centered on an older couple but you could also call it a coming of age film. And it’s a film about family, however that is defined. To me it is defined both personally and romantically but also communally. And I think that’s something that I hold on to. I wouldn’t be a filmmaker without my communal family. I wouldn’t think of my last two films without finding a new way that is disconnected from the Hollywood system. As an artist I returned to my independent models like John Cassavetes, the guy who was never given the right to make the films he made but grabbed them when he could. In order for my career to be sustained I had to go back in my mind to when I was young. A lot of what happens for filmmakers particularly is they expect the system to work for them and in terms of these kind of films, that’s not how it happens.

How did the financing come together for this?

Twenty five individuals who responded to the script. You know my last film Keep the Lights On was financed by 400 individuals so at this point I’m talking about a little bit of a different model because it’s 25 instead of 400. But it’s still a group of individuals who understood the power of the story. Since we’ve made the film three of the women who were key investors of have gotten married to their long-term partners. All of them were successful business owners, which is why they were able to invest in my film and I think they understood the inherently human quantity of the story.

One of the great powers of the movie that it’s just a relationship that everybody can relate to. Other than one thoughtless but not bigoted comment from a teenager, the fact that the couple is gay is not significant.

For me as a gay person I cannot be defined as that alone. As an artist, I’m trying to understand character in all its complexity so you can’t put one adjective in front of the other. So that is why I hope that I represent people who are fully human. What we’re trying to do, and this is why a film like “Manhattan” and “Hannah and her Sisters” and particularly, “Husbands and Wives” most of all were very inspiring to us because I think what you try to do is get the details right. We’re not all the same but Shakespeare is still relevant for a reason. Humanly we’re all driven often by the same needs.

One of the stand-out scenes in the film is when Lithgow and Marisa Tomei are in the same room while she is trying to work and also to be polite when he wants to chat. You feel her irritation and yet you see both sides. It is heartbreaking but also very funny!

I have the benefit of working with actors I was initially interested in because of their dramatic chops but what I also had were actors train in comedy. I really noticed it when we were working on that scene. Their timing was just so excellent, and it’s kind of brilliant. And those abilities are what give the film its lightness because it talks about things that are very serious and they are dramatic but I think there’s lightness to that these actors bring and then I hope that I bring. I’m lighter than I was the last time I saw you. I mean “Married Life” was a darker film. And it’s a film about what is hidden. And that was something that was very compelling to me until I was forty.

That is a dark film. It’s about adultery and a husband who plans to commit murder. But it ends in a remarkably sunny way.

We’re all generally struggling lovely people. If you get down to it there’s something touching about each of us. I don’t believe in evil, I believe in the creation of evil.

There’s a very tender scene in “Love is Strange” where we get a glimpse of how sweetly this couple support each other.

They loved each other and they believed in each other. There was a Hal Hartley film made in the 90s called “Trust.” I haven’t seen it since then but I remember one of the characters said that love equals respect plus admiration plus trust. And I’ve actually often thought about those three terms as how they intertwine and how they’re also distinct. The respect is different than admiration and trust is yet another thing. And I’m in a marriage that has those things. But marriage is a legal vessel that this film speaks to but it’s actually not the subject of this film. The subject is intimacy.

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Interview: Bo Svenson

Posted on August 19, 2014 at 3:59 pm

Bo Svenson is an actor, writer, director, judo champion, and, as I was lucky enough to find out, an enthralling guy to talk to, turning an interview into a wide-ranging conversation.

Svenson was born in Sweden. His family emigrated to the United States and he joined the U.S Marines when he was 17. Honorably discharged after six years of service, he was in pursuit of a Ph.D. in metaphysics when he was ‘discovered’ by Hollywood. He has starred in over sixty motion pictures, including Delta Force, North Dallas Forty, and Inglourious Basterds, and several hundred hours of U.S. network television, including the Walking Tall TV series.

He has competed in world championships, Olympic trials, and/or international competition, in judo, ice hockey, yachting, and track-and-field. He holds black belts in judo, karate, and aikido, and he is a licensed NASCAR driver. He was honored by the Martial Arts Hall of Fame.

In 1961, when he was a U.S. Marine, he earned his first degree black belt in judo at the cradle of judo, the Kodokan in Tokyo. A year later he heard about a red-haired Jewish American woman from Brooklyn training at the Kodokan (at a time when no women were allowed). She was Rusty Kanokogi, nee Rena Glickman. “She took the name from a neighbor’s dog that she truly loved,” Svenson told me. “After the dog was killed by a car, she wanted the dog’s name to go on, to be embodied, somehow.” After her death in 2009, Svenson got the rights to tell her story. He has written and is about to direct a film about Rusty Kanokogi, called “Don’t Call Me Sir.”

Kayla Harrison It is a remarkable story. In 1959, when she was a single mother, Rusty Kanokogi disguised herself as a man in order to compete in the New York State YMCA Judo Championship. She beat the reigning champion and won the tournament. While on the podium after having received her medal she was asked if she was a girl. She admitted that she was.

They took the medal back.

Rusty Kanokogi vowed to change how women were treated in sports. She got women’s judo accepted as a competitive sport and an Olympic event. Kayla Harrison will portray Rusty. She is the 2012 Olympic gold medalist in judo, the first American, man or woman to be Olympic champion in the event that Rusty created.

“There’s not much difference between martial arts and learning how to type, from my perspective,” Svenson told me. “It’s repetition. Once you get beyond the mechanics of it, it is personalized by who you are, your being. Eventually it’s an issue of the person, the person’s ability, focus, needs. There are people in this world who don’t have a need to conquer someone else. I don’t have a need to beat someone in competition. I enjoyed the competition. I didn’t care if I won or lost. That outlook becomes a problem if you want to stand on top of the podium. I enjoyed the people.”

“A hero is someone who does something at great personal sacrifice for mankind,” he said. “Rusty certainly did. She worked hard for years to get women’s judo to be a competitive sport and an Olympic event. She fought against gender and ethnic bias. She was Jewish and she was a girl and she didn’t feel that either should stand in the way of whatever she was capable of. She set out to right the wrong across the board, and she did.”

Svenson wrote the screenplay. He said that when he was supporting himself as an actor to pay his tuition in the PhD program in metaphysics at USC, one of the most important things he learned was that “art is a word that is derived from the first three letters of the word ‘artificial.’ The greater the art, the less noticeable the artificiality. When it comes to my writing — to everything, really — I am attracted to authenticity, to that which is least contrived.”

He told me that judo is the world’s second most popular sport, with more than 50 million people participating internationally. He resisted the pressure from Hollywood to put a “name” actress in the story to cast someone who was a judo champion like the woman she is portraying. “I abhor deceit of any kind. Kayla Harrison is the most extraordinary young lady. She has been confronted with challenges that would break any other person. She is fabulous and I know she will be fabulous as Rusty in the movie. After all the dumb movies I’ve been in, I’m thrilled to be part of something that has heart, soul, authenticity. It is about something. People who see it will have experienced something. They will be better off than they were before it began. It is a wonderful, wonderful journey to be on.”