Interview: Michelle J. Li, Costume Designer for Shiva Baby
Posted on March 28, 2021 at 8:00 am
Copyright Neon Heart 2020“Shiva Baby” mostly takes place at a reception following a Jewish funeral, which means costume designer Michelle J. Li had to find a way to make a lot of characters dressed in black look distinctive. An except from our interview for the Alliance of Women Film Journalists:
NM: It must be a challenge to do a movie where pretty much everybody is wearing black but you still have to make these characters distinctive and visually interesting.
MJL: Of course, at a shiva, the main color is going to be black. Emma and I spoke about it a lot. We as the consumer, think of black as one color. There are many, many different shades of black. There are warmer blacks, there are cooler blacks, and depending even upon the type of fabric, black absorbs light or reflects light.
When you put black in front of the lens, it becomes such a dark void, and you can lose a lot of definition from the silhouette of the character. I was really conscious about making sure that the texture and the pattern of whatever costume piece I was using really was the defining point that could help bring more interest into making it black, but interesting.
Copyright Netflix 2021I had so much fun talking to the four young stars of A Week Away for The Alliance of Women Film Journalists. Bailee Madison (who also co-produced, at only age 19!), Kevin Quinn, Kat Conner, and Jahbril Cook talked to me about their favorite camp activities, the advice they would give their characters, and what they hope people will take from the film. An excerpt:
Minow: The characters pack a lot of activities into a week! Which was your favorite?
Quinn: There was a day that we were filming a montage of sporting events around the camp. And we did everything from bag toss to pie-eating contest, to tug of war. And I think that was the most fun for me because I actually forgot that the cameras were rolling at one point, which is a good day in any actor’s career. We’re just having fun.
Madison: We were drained that day. I remember when we were finished filming, we were like, “I’m exhausted.” And then I went home and I was FaceTiming my mom and I said, “I’m so tired today. She asked, What did you do?” When I told her, I thought, This just sounds like a really fun day.” And it was. But yeah, we got really into it.
Conner: The scene was cut from the movie but we got to do a zip line, and that is one of my favorite things ever. But we only had one take. But if I could go back, I want to do it again.
Cook: Yeah, that was super fun. There were a lot of things that we didn’t get to do, that showed up in the movie but we didn’t get around to it. One of them in the dive sequence George gets launched off The Blob and I was looking forward to that the whole time. The Blob was just out there on the lake and we could see it every day. But then on the day, unfortunately, they hit me with the bad news. They said, “Doing your hair is too much of an ordeal so you can’t get it wet because we don’t have time to do it again.” And so, I climbed out onto The Blob, and I had to do this shimmy maneuver on the big wooden structure to get the shot and then I had to shimmy back off without getting wet.
Great Characters! New York Magazine’s List of Today’s Best Character Actors
Posted on March 25, 2021 at 10:38 am
I love character actors, and was delighted to see New York Magazine’s great list of today’s best, As the terrific documentaries “That Guy…Who Was in That Thing” and “That Gal…Who Was in That Thing” show, character actors have the tough job of being perfect every take, because the star’s best take is the one they will use, and handling a lot of expositional dialog so that the star can stick to the quips and quotable lines.
NYMag’s list is excellent, with some of my favorites, including Brian Tyree Henry, Beth Grant, Jason Mantzoukas, Rob Morgan, and Fred Melamed. Honestly, every one of the 32 on the list is a favorite of mine, someone whose name in the credits makes me smile in anticipation. Here’s to character actors!
The Movies That Inspired Screenwriters To Write Their Own
Posted on March 23, 2021 at 11:23 am
Copyright 1997 New Line
LA Magazine has an entertaining article about the movies that inspired screenwriters to write their own. Several of them pointed to representation that communicated to them for the first time that it was possible for someone like them to work in show business. Felischa Marye of “13 Reasons Why” said it was the Black romances of the 90s like “Love Jones” and “Love and Basketball.” Some talked about the films that excited them as children, like Dustin Lance Black (“Milk”), who remembered seeing “ET” at age 8.
E.T. was centered on a single-parent home, its middle child, Elliot, in desperate need of connection, hope, friendship, love, and to my young mind’s eye: a father figure. He was my age. Like me, a middle child. And like him, I had no clue where my dad was. I had never connected with anyone in a film the way I did with Elliot that day. Because, unlike the solitary experience of watching TV at home, I wasn’t the only one laughing and gasping. Everyone in the audience was. Often in unison. For those treasured two hours, I knew I wasn’t alone. And for a shy boy who was certain he was too strange for this world, there was no better medicine than to learn that my heart beat in similar fashion to others’.
The Courier is based on the true story of an ordinary businessman named Greville Wynne who was asked by the CIA and MI6 to deliver some materials being leaked to the west by a high-ranking Soviet official.
The movie is pretty close to the real story, with one big exception making the CIA representative be a woman, played by Rachel Brosnahan of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” It is doubly hard to figure out what really happened, first because so much of the story is still classified and second because Wynne wrote two books about his experiences which were, well, inaccurate to the point of fantasy.
