First off, I’ve been remiss this year updating the SIFF Blog. For that I apologize. I have no decent excuse other than to say being unemployed sans day job and trying to balance freelance deadlines, as well as going to plenty of festival movies and interviewing a bunch of filmmakers, my attention as far as the blog has been concerned hasn’t exactly been front and center. Again, not a good an excuse, but an excuse all the same, so please make of it what you will.
As for updating now, the film that struck my fancy and one I feel needs a bit of attention is the weird Woody Allen meets Ed Wood meets “Scooby-Doo” meets Men In Black romantic comedy Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same. Written and directed by Madeleine Olnek (she’s the coauthor of the pretty great book A Practical Handbook for the Actor, which I totally didn’t realize until a few days after seeing her movie), the movie is a sweetly off-center Black and White low budget frolic that’s one part Manhattan, one part Plan 9 from Outer Space and one part it’s own entirely unique schizophrenic self. It got my attention, and while I can’t say it’s remotely perfect that doesn’t mean I didn’t end up enjoying myself any bit less.
The basic setup concerns a trio of lesbian space aliens named Zoinx (Susan Ziegler), Barr (Cynthia Kaplan) and Zylar (Jackie Monahan) sent to Earth to have their hearts broken and thus make them incapable of feeling. Why? Back on their home world conventional science says that inhabitants are feeling to much, love filling them up so completely that their emotions are leaving their bodies and destroying the ozone layer. How to fix it? Go to Earth, get into a relationship and end it as brutally as possible, destroying your capacity to feel and thusly saving the ozone layer.
Here on our planet there is lonely greeting-card store clerk Jane (Lisa Haas), a shy, rather dowdy introvert who is too scared to act on her emotions whenever she catches someone’s eye. She ends up meeting Zoinx and is immediately taken with her forthright cavalier personality, trying to come out of her shell while at the same time figuring out this bizarre bald-headed woman’s impulsively nonplussed extroverted personality.
So it takes a little while to get going, the first 15 or 20 minutes not playing as well as I’d have liked them to. Additionally, an oddball pair of secret government agents staking out the aliens doesn’t go anywhere particularly interesting, and although some of the conversations did get me to giggle (especially one revolving around the gender status of the elder agent’s wife) really all the scenes between the two did was pad this sitcom meets “Saturday Night Live” premise to feature length.
Be all that as it may, I liked this film. I loved the interplay between Haas and Ziegler, while a scene in an apartment complex hallway between Kaplan and Monahan is an absolute knockout in regards to its emotional sincerity. There are some seriously delicious sight gags, one of which involving a rotating desert case that got me to laugh out loud. Most importantly, what the films says about relationships – not gay relationships but all relationships – is absolutely priceless, making the movie something a timeless keepsake that should make it worth revisiting one, five or even ten years down the line.
I sat down with Olnek and Monahan at Seattle’s downtown W Hotel for what was supposed to be brief chat. But was supposed to be a few minutes quickly transformed into three-quarters of an hour, the three of us chatting about everything and anything forgetting about the time altogether. It was a great conversation, and while I’d like to go into all of it in detail as far as this blog is concerned I’m thinking I should keep things relatively brief.
Monahan, a local favorite at some of New York’s most prestigious comedy clubs including The Laugh Factory, The Comedy Store and Caroline’s on Broadway, wasn’t quite sure what to make of her director once she signed on for the film. “She does everything her own way,” says the actress and comedienne. “I didn’t get to read the whole script. [Madeline] just told me the premise of it [and] had me look at shorts that she did.”
“The shorts I loved, and I liked the idea of the movie, but it was odd not being allowed to read a finished script. But if she [hadn’t] done the shorts I don’t think I’d have been as gung ho about it. While we were filming I just had a script filled with my scenes, and the first time I saw the whole movie and knew the whole idea was when I saw it at Sundance.”
“That was my way of disorienting her,” laughs Olnek. “But Woody Allen does that, only allows his cast the parts of the script featuring their character, and a lot of the times the actors plot together to try and get the parts of the script that they don’t have. I thought that was very interesting when I found that out because I think for the comedy part of it the excitement comes from the idea, the freshness of it, and if you have it [the whole story] than some people plot it all out in their heads and the spontaneity of the humor can be lost. It makes the spark die down. I didn’t want that to happen here.”
So where did this idea come from? How does a filmmaker connect the dots between Ed Wood, 1950’s kitsch sci-fi cinema, Woody Allen and lesbian romance?
“Where’s the lesbian Dude, Where’s My Car?, why can’t we for political reasons assert our right to have a good time?” says Olnek with a smile. “Apart from that, I guess I kind of a felt that once you come out and once you own what you want those feelings can be a floodgate of feelings. Some people have described them as being a kid in a candy store period. But once you’re no longer in denial and once you’re owning your identity it feels like the whole world has changed and everything just feels so much bigger.”
“From there in writing [the script] I had this thought that once you’re acknowledging what you’re feeling and you’re aware of it and it can feel so big that this crush is so much bigger than [a single person], that you can see it for yourself. They’re not my feelings, that they’re so large they’re in the environment. They’re permeating the atmosphere.”
“From there, I came up with the idea of this planet where it was believed that when the [inhabitants] felt too much their feelings would rise up out of their body and effect the ozone layer so they would have to be sent to Earth and have their hearts broken. And all the overly emotional people just happened to be lesbians.”
“Since I’ve been young I’ve liked surprises,” adds Monahan, “and this movie offered plenty of opportunity to be surprised. It was a challenge but it was also really exciting, and while I was tempted to try and find out what was going on and to ask the other actresses [about their scenes] I was able to restrain myself. It’s like Christmas. My mom would tell me to not sneak into the closet to find out what my presents were and I never really did. Because of that, I enjoyed the process of making this film.”
One of the reasons I ended up becoming so enamored with the film was that, even with its faults, even with portions that sat there like a bad “Saturday Night Live” skit searching for a reason to continue, the central romantic metaphors all rang true. In many ways Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same is the antithesis of so many LGBT-themed films. It presents these romances as normal, as everyday, as nothing to get all crazy hot and bothered about. It showcases a world that hopefully, ten years from now, 20 years from now, will be a reality, and the fact that it is about women in love with one another doesn’t even enter into a person’s thought process. I like that the movie lives in a world that just is while also hinting at a world that might be, presenting the search for love as a normal everyday conundrum all of us – male, female and everything in-between – can relate to.
“I think that’s beautifully stated,” beams the director. “I think that’s what gives people hope. When you talk about what people are going to think when watching this movie, what lesbians are going to think, what kids are going to think, by telling a story that’s hopeful affects people in a way that’s positive and I think they take that hope away with them.”
“I hope people are still watching it 30 years from now,” says Monahan matter-of-factly. “I think people will. I think it’s timeless. I just think it’s an enjoyable movie and that people will want to watch it. But I also hope that, as times change, it’s not as relevant as it is now, that it will be seen as a romantic comedy and not a film [about lesbians]. It’s timeless in its humor and with the relationships, and I hope – I think – people will [take note] of that.”
“It’s about the search for love and it’s about how scary that is,” adds Olnek. “The essence of it is something that will last. At one point we thought about putting more topical stuff in, thought about having an alien carrying a newspaper with headlines about gay marriage votes and the like. But in the end the central metaphor is still there and we didn’t need the specifics. We feel it’s an eternal story, the search for love, and we definitely see years from now people will hopefully still be watching it.”
Monday, May 30, 2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
Welcome to SIFF 2011 - an Interview with Artistic Director Carl Spence
With the start of the 37th annual Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) last night with the local premier of the crowd-pleasing The First Grader, I thought it would be fun to again take a moment to sit down with Artistic Director Carl Spence and talk about what audiences can expect from this year’s 25-day event. “It does always seem to come around quickly,” chuckled Spence as we began are chat. “We started working on this year’s festival in earnest in last September, but in reality sometimes it feels like we started yesterday.”
While the size and the scope are as audacious and as massive as ever (257 features, 184 shorts, 74 countries represented), there have been some changes to this year’s festival that might take some filmgoers a bit of getting used to. For many, the biggest change to SIFF will be the introduction of the “Pathways,” ten different categories that programmers hope will help audiences organize their film-going calendar based on their likes, interests and moods. These Pathways are split up into the likes of, “Love Me, Do!”, “Sci-Fi and Beyond,” “Face the Music” and “Spellbinding Stories,” all fairly self-explanatory as far as describing the sorts of features might be residing within.
“We’ve not really changed the programming, per se,” explains Spence, “but we have changed how we’re trying to deliver information. We are focusing on these Pathways as an attempt to potentially diversify our audiences, trying to help people not get overwhelmed by the enormous size of the festival and the enormous amount of choices they have. How can we help the larger audience the programming better? How can we help people discover a film they might not otherwise have chosen? For the Pathways, it is about helping a person choose what type of the film they might want to see at that particular moment.”
“I’m excited about films in each of the Pathways. The ‘Love Me, Do!’ is really interesting because it’s not just about romance, it’s also about love in all forms whether it be father-son relationships or relationships between lifelong friends. My favorite film, probably, Weekend from the U.K., is in [this Pathway]. It just captivated me; made me really believe in the idea of romance again. Not that I’d forgotten completely, but anyone who is married or has been in a long-term relationship it [the film] just reminds how love can be such a great journey.”
One of the areas Carl is particularly proud of is this year’s lineup of LGBT themed motion pictures. Running the gamut of genres and topics, this is one area of the festival the artistic director couldn’t talk more exuberantly about.
“The selections this year are pretty diverse,” he says. “Do You See Colors When You Close Your Eyes? made in Bellingham is an interesting film. There’s Beginners with Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer and written and directed by Mike Mills; it’s a really great film.”
“We also have something interesting from Algeria, A Few Days of Respite, where a professor and his lover pursue a relationship in a place where to do so is a death sentence. There’s also the amazingly titled Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same from the U.S., and I think one people will really find interesting is Man at Bath from [director] Christophe Honoré. It’s a touching poem of love and relationships; it’s very French. And then there is our annual Gay-La film, August, which this year is a World Premier and one I think people will be excited about.”
Carl talking about Beginners leads me to ask about this year’s tribute guests, the aforementioned Ewan McGregor and esteemed extreme sports filmmaker and adventurer Warren Miller whom SIFF is bestowing a Golden Space Needle for Lifetime Achievement. Both have proven themselves in the entertainment world, one with his daring performances and the other by his six-plus decades of showcasing outdoor wintertime excitement in all its Widescreen fury.
“Warren Miller my not be as appreciated by the traditional film industry but he is a true pioneer,” states Spence. “He went were others had never gone. He broke ground, creating the sports-action film before there was even such a genre. He’s a masterful storyteller, a great filmmaker, so I think it makes total sense to look at his career and to honor his work, especially because he has such a strong connection to the Northwest. It was just time.”
“Ewan McGregor is just someone I’ve and others have admired for many, many years. Trainspotting was a huge hit here at [SIFF] and won the Golden Space Needle audience award for Best Film, was the first award Danny Boyle ever got. With McGregor, he has such an amazing reach, and I think all four films we’re screening showcase that. There’s Beginners, obviously, and there’s Perfect Sense which is sort of a post-apocalyptic love story. As for older selections, we’re showing The Pillow Book, which is arguably one of [director] Peter Greenaway’s best films but also showcases an amazing performance from McGregor; he brought so much to that. And Moulin Rouge!. You kind of have to show Moulin Rouge!. But then, that’s just a sampling of what he’s done and the type of rolls he’s had. We’d show more if we could.”
As in previous years, SIFF strives to showcase the cinematic world at all of its levels. From low budget no-name indies, to unheralded foreign imports, to large-scale Hollywood productions like Kung Fu Panda 2, programmers go out of their way to represent every facet of the filmmaking experience.
“It’s part of what makes us different,” says Spence. “That’s my philosophy. Celebrate film as well as [celebrate] movies, whatever that difference might be. I think there are great films and there are great movies. We’re just looking for interesting films that for whatever reason we love with a passion and feel like tell a good story; that’s the most important part.”
“But we’re also focused on the audience. We’re audience-driven. We have a lot of sponsors but they’re not huge, dollar amount sponsors so we rely on the audience. We depend on the audience to make things happen. If we don’t cater to the audience in some extent then we’re not [going to succeed]. It’s a balance in having films that people might be interested [in], films people are dying to see and films we want people to go see that they might not have discovered or heard about otherwise.”
Programming SIFF is a massive job, and as Artistic Director it is one Carl has been focused on for quite a few years now. Thing is, as exhaustive as it can be, it isn’t a job the cool-headed film lover sees himself relinquishing anytime soon.
“I think I’ll want to keep doing this until I get bored,” responds Spence, “and I’m not close to being bored as of yet. I’ve been doing a lot of interesting things, looking at ways to do things differently so we’re just not doing the same thing over and over and over again every year. I think I have one of the best jobs I could have so as long as I stay in Seattle I don’t see another job that I could have in film I’d love or enjoy doing near as much. No matter what I do I think I want to always stay involved in the arts. I can’t think of anything else that I would want to do.”
- Portions of this artical reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle
Moviefreak.com is proud to present our 6th annual coverage of this 37th edition of the Seattle International Film Festival. Starting today and running all the way until June 13, please check our Blog for reviews, thoughts, interviews and highlights of this year’s events as seen through Sara’s increasingly-bleary eyes. For the best, most complete coverage of one of the most popular and the largest film festivals in the entire world, your number one destination is right here at Moviefreak.com.
While the size and the scope are as audacious and as massive as ever (257 features, 184 shorts, 74 countries represented), there have been some changes to this year’s festival that might take some filmgoers a bit of getting used to. For many, the biggest change to SIFF will be the introduction of the “Pathways,” ten different categories that programmers hope will help audiences organize their film-going calendar based on their likes, interests and moods. These Pathways are split up into the likes of, “Love Me, Do!”, “Sci-Fi and Beyond,” “Face the Music” and “Spellbinding Stories,” all fairly self-explanatory as far as describing the sorts of features might be residing within.
“We’ve not really changed the programming, per se,” explains Spence, “but we have changed how we’re trying to deliver information. We are focusing on these Pathways as an attempt to potentially diversify our audiences, trying to help people not get overwhelmed by the enormous size of the festival and the enormous amount of choices they have. How can we help the larger audience the programming better? How can we help people discover a film they might not otherwise have chosen? For the Pathways, it is about helping a person choose what type of the film they might want to see at that particular moment.”
“I’m excited about films in each of the Pathways. The ‘Love Me, Do!’ is really interesting because it’s not just about romance, it’s also about love in all forms whether it be father-son relationships or relationships between lifelong friends. My favorite film, probably, Weekend from the U.K., is in [this Pathway]. It just captivated me; made me really believe in the idea of romance again. Not that I’d forgotten completely, but anyone who is married or has been in a long-term relationship it [the film] just reminds how love can be such a great journey.”
One of the areas Carl is particularly proud of is this year’s lineup of LGBT themed motion pictures. Running the gamut of genres and topics, this is one area of the festival the artistic director couldn’t talk more exuberantly about.
“The selections this year are pretty diverse,” he says. “Do You See Colors When You Close Your Eyes? made in Bellingham is an interesting film. There’s Beginners with Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer and written and directed by Mike Mills; it’s a really great film.”
“We also have something interesting from Algeria, A Few Days of Respite, where a professor and his lover pursue a relationship in a place where to do so is a death sentence. There’s also the amazingly titled Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same from the U.S., and I think one people will really find interesting is Man at Bath from [director] Christophe Honoré. It’s a touching poem of love and relationships; it’s very French. And then there is our annual Gay-La film, August, which this year is a World Premier and one I think people will be excited about.”
Carl talking about Beginners leads me to ask about this year’s tribute guests, the aforementioned Ewan McGregor and esteemed extreme sports filmmaker and adventurer Warren Miller whom SIFF is bestowing a Golden Space Needle for Lifetime Achievement. Both have proven themselves in the entertainment world, one with his daring performances and the other by his six-plus decades of showcasing outdoor wintertime excitement in all its Widescreen fury.
“Warren Miller my not be as appreciated by the traditional film industry but he is a true pioneer,” states Spence. “He went were others had never gone. He broke ground, creating the sports-action film before there was even such a genre. He’s a masterful storyteller, a great filmmaker, so I think it makes total sense to look at his career and to honor his work, especially because he has such a strong connection to the Northwest. It was just time.”
“Ewan McGregor is just someone I’ve and others have admired for many, many years. Trainspotting was a huge hit here at [SIFF] and won the Golden Space Needle audience award for Best Film, was the first award Danny Boyle ever got. With McGregor, he has such an amazing reach, and I think all four films we’re screening showcase that. There’s Beginners, obviously, and there’s Perfect Sense which is sort of a post-apocalyptic love story. As for older selections, we’re showing The Pillow Book, which is arguably one of [director] Peter Greenaway’s best films but also showcases an amazing performance from McGregor; he brought so much to that. And Moulin Rouge!. You kind of have to show Moulin Rouge!. But then, that’s just a sampling of what he’s done and the type of rolls he’s had. We’d show more if we could.”
As in previous years, SIFF strives to showcase the cinematic world at all of its levels. From low budget no-name indies, to unheralded foreign imports, to large-scale Hollywood productions like Kung Fu Panda 2, programmers go out of their way to represent every facet of the filmmaking experience.
“It’s part of what makes us different,” says Spence. “That’s my philosophy. Celebrate film as well as [celebrate] movies, whatever that difference might be. I think there are great films and there are great movies. We’re just looking for interesting films that for whatever reason we love with a passion and feel like tell a good story; that’s the most important part.”
“But we’re also focused on the audience. We’re audience-driven. We have a lot of sponsors but they’re not huge, dollar amount sponsors so we rely on the audience. We depend on the audience to make things happen. If we don’t cater to the audience in some extent then we’re not [going to succeed]. It’s a balance in having films that people might be interested [in], films people are dying to see and films we want people to go see that they might not have discovered or heard about otherwise.”
Programming SIFF is a massive job, and as Artistic Director it is one Carl has been focused on for quite a few years now. Thing is, as exhaustive as it can be, it isn’t a job the cool-headed film lover sees himself relinquishing anytime soon.
“I think I’ll want to keep doing this until I get bored,” responds Spence, “and I’m not close to being bored as of yet. I’ve been doing a lot of interesting things, looking at ways to do things differently so we’re just not doing the same thing over and over and over again every year. I think I have one of the best jobs I could have so as long as I stay in Seattle I don’t see another job that I could have in film I’d love or enjoy doing near as much. No matter what I do I think I want to always stay involved in the arts. I can’t think of anything else that I would want to do.”
- Portions of this artical reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle
Moviefreak.com is proud to present our 6th annual coverage of this 37th edition of the Seattle International Film Festival. Starting today and running all the way until June 13, please check our Blog for reviews, thoughts, interviews and highlights of this year’s events as seen through Sara’s increasingly-bleary eyes. For the best, most complete coverage of one of the most popular and the largest film festivals in the entire world, your number one destination is right here at Moviefreak.com.
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