Click here to listen to the interview. When Shirley Clarke made PORTRAIT OF JASON, she was doing more than exercising her creative impulse. The Oscar™-winning director had been all but shut out of Hollywood, and returned to New York to pursue a career as an indie filmmaker rather than deal with being marginalized by the… Read More »
Winning THE CASE AGAINST 8
When I spoke with renowned filmmaker Rob Reiner (A FEW GOOD MEN, THIS IS SPINAL TAP, WHEN HARRY MET SALLY) on June 20. 2014, it was the morning after his film, THE CASE AGAINST 8 had kicked off the 38th annual Frameline Festival in San Francisco. The film, which Reiner co-produced with his wife, Michelle,… Read More »
Wade Gasque and Mark Strano are TIGER ORANGE
Wade Gasque and Mark Strano are partners in the film business and in life. When I spoke to them by phone on June 2, 2015, the first question I had was about the sort of trust they have in each other when working on a film that is so personal to Strano. We went on… Read More »
GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE PRISON OF BELIEF
Alex Gibney has proven himself an able and engaging documentarian, bringing to light with films such as TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE, ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM, and most recently THE ARMSTRONG LIE, the hubris, self-deception, and other foibles of human nature that allow people to commit crimes without ever quite admitting to… Read More »
Brian Sloan has A WTC VIEW
WTC VIEW was the first play from The New York International Fringe Festival to make the leap to the big screen in 2005, but playwright Brian Sloan resisted the temptation to fundamentally change the nature of his play by opening it up beyond the one apartment in which it takes place. The metaphor of a… Read More »
DEAR WHITE PEOPLE says Justin Simien
To say that talking with Justin Simien was a master’s class in film and culture theory is understating it. Simien believes that film is the culmination of everything we do as a culture. This is why he invoked Spike Lee, Paddy Chayefsky, George Orwell, and Moliere in our conversation about DEAR WHITE PEOPLE, his bracing look… Read More »
Jennifer Kroot & Bill Weber Discover What It’s Like TO BE TAKEI
George Takei’s story, as delightfully and sharply recounted in Jennifer Kroot and Bill Weber’s TO BE TAKEI, is one of not just struggling to overcome prejudice and societal expectations, but also to prevail with wicked wit and unswerving optimism. In that sense, Takei’s story is quintessentially American, or at least the ideal of what it… Read More »
THE HOURS
THE HOURS begins with a suicide, a famous one at that. Virginia Woolf with a fierce deliberateness puts a heavy stone in her pocket and walks into a river. We see her head duck silently into the water and then her body floating delicately away, pulled by the current with a gentle urgency. By the… Read More »
LATTER DAYS
Oh no, it’s another film about a religious good boy moving to the big bad city and discovering that he’s gay. I know, it sounds awful in that we’ve seen this a gazillion times sense, but LATTER DAYS is a cut above the rest for its gentle message about finding the strength to see other… Read More »
LOVE! VALOR! COMPASSION
LOVE! VALOR! COMPASSION! is a romantic comedy, full of great one-liners, that, nonetheless is not shy about taking on serious subjects, such as the human heart. Forget space, this is the real final frontier. Nothing else has such an infinite capacity to delight, destroy, and surprise. The story takes place over three holiday weekends during which a… Read More »