indie film on showtime

Around June is still playing on Showtime. Click link below for times. And yes, a real indie film - made for under 500K w/out a distribution deal.

http://www.sho.com/sho/movies/titles/3408214/around-june#/index

domestic violence

Yes, I know this is off topic as the space here is dedicated to filmmaking ramblings, but since that word rambling is indeed part of our lexicon permit me to ramble. What the fu*k! It took the NFL to view a video of a guy punching out his woman to suspend him? Really? Her being knocked out totally and a video of her be dragged out of an elevator wasn't enough?

I should be ENOUGH! It should have been more than enough for the local authorities to put this guy behind bars ASAP. Why do the police treat protestors with more malice than they do with men who punch out their women? To protest is not a crime, last time I check. To assault someone is. Priorities? Can we not get them straight?

Fu^k the NFL!

And to all of you young and inspiring filmmakers - do something!  Write a story about this bullshit. Please.

I feel we're at a tipping point. I hope we are. That is, how people of color are treated by the police. How women are treated. Viewed. Keep the pressure on - social media, films, blogs, essays, etc.

advise to my young filmmakers this weekend:

“A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.” 
― Frank Zappa

Werner Herzog on Creativity, Self-Reliance, Making a Living of What You Love

Werner Herzog on Creativity, Self-Reliance, Making a Living of What You Love, and How to Turn Your Ideas Into Reality

by Maria Popova

“If your project has real substance, ultimately the money will follow you like a common cur in the street with its tail between its legs.”

Werner Herzog is celebrated as one of the most influential and innovative filmmakers of our time, but his ascent to acclaim was far from a straight trajectory from privilege to power. Abandoned by his father at an early age, Herzog survived a WWII bombing that demolished the house next door to his childhood home and was raised by a single mother in near-poverty. He found his calling in filmmaking after reading an encyclopedia entry on the subject as a teenager and took a job as a welder in a steel factory in his late teens to fund his first films. These building blocks of his character — tenacity, self-reliance, imaginative curiosity — shine with blinding brilliance in the richest and most revealing of Herzog’s interviews. Werner Herzog: A Guide for the Perplexed(public library) — not to be confused with E.F. Schumacher’s excellent 1978 philosophy book of the same title — presents the director’s extensive, wide-ranging conversation with writer and filmmaker Paul Cronin. His answers are unfiltered and to-the-point, often poignant but always unsentimental, not rude but refusing to infest the garden of honest human communication with the Victorian-seeded, American-sprouted weed of pointless politeness.

The best advice I can offer to those heading into the world of film is not to wait for the system to finance your projects and for others to decide your fate. If you can’t afford to make a million-dollar film, raise $10,000 and produce it yourself. That’s all you need to make a feature film these days. Beware of useless, bottom-rung secretarial jobs in film-production companies. Instead, so long as you are able-bodied, head out to where the real world is. Roll up your sleeves and work as a bouncer in a sex club or a warden in a lunatic asylum or a machine operator in a slaughterhouse. Drive a taxi for six months and you’ll have enough money to make a film. Walk on foot, learn languages and a craft or trade that has nothing to do with cinema. Filmmaking — like great literature — must have experience of life at its foundation. Read Conrad or Hemingway and you can tell how much real life is in those books. A lot of what you see in my films isn’t invention; it’s very much life itself, my own life. If you have an image in your head, hold on to it because — as remote as it might seem — at some point you might be able to use it in a film. I have always sought to transform my own experiences and fantasies into cinema.

To read full article, click below:

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/08/18/werner-herzog-guide-for-the-perplexed-cronin/

Martin Scorsese’s List Of The 39 Foreign Films You Should See Before You Die

I dig the list, but man, where the hell is The World of Apu by Satyajit? Nights of Cabiria by Fellini? Come on! Without these two it's not a real list. What else is missing?

Link below goes to article and trailers of many films:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/watch-trailers-for-martin-scorseses-list-of-the-39-foreign-films-you-should-see-before-you-die-20140820?utm_campaign=watch-trailers-for-martin-scorseses-list-of-the-39-foreign-films-you-should-see-before-you-die-20140820&utm_medium=social&utm_source=Facebook&utm_content=watch-trailers-for-martin-scorseses-list-of-the-39-foreign-films-you-should-see-before-you-die-20140820

1. Nosferatu (1922) - F.W. Murnau
2. Metropolis (1927)- Fritz Lang
3. Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler (1922) – Fritz Lang
4. Napoleon (1927) – Abel Gance
5. Grand Illusion (1937)– Jean Renoir
6. Rules Of The Game (1939) – Jean Renoir
7. Children Of Paradise (1945) - Marcel Carné
8. Rome, Open City (1945) - Roberto Rossellini
9. Paisà (Paisan) (1946) - Roberto Rossellini 
10. La Terra Trema (1948) – Luchino Visconti 
11. The Bicycle Thief (1948) – Vittorio De Sica
12. Umberto D. (1952) – Vittorio De Sica
13. Beauty & The Beast (1946) – Jean Cocteau
14. Tokyo Story (1953) – Yasujirō Ozu
15. Ikiru (1952) – Akira Kurosawa
16. Seven Samurai (1954) – Akira Kurosawa
17. Ugetsu (1953) – Kenji Mizoguchi
18. Sansho The Bailiff (1954) – Kenji Mizoguchi
19. High and Low (1963) – Akira Kurosawa
20. Big Deal On Madonna Street (1958) – Mario Monicelli
21. Rocco and His Brothers (1960) – Luchino Visconti
22. The 400 Blows (1959) – François Truffaut
23. Shoot the Piano Player (1960) – François Truffaut
24. Breathless (1960) – Jean-Luc Godard
25. Band of Outsiders (1964) – Jean-Luc Godard
26. Il Sorpasso (1962) – Dino Risi
27. L'avventura (1960) – Michelangelo Antonioni
28. Blow Up (1966) – Michelangelo Antonioni
29. Before the Revolution (1964) - Bernardo Bertolucci
30. Le boucher (1970) - Claude Chabrol
31. Weekend - (1967) Jean-Luc Godard 
32. Death by Hanging (1968) - Nagisa Ôshima
33. The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971) - Rainer Werner Fassbinder
34. Ali: Fear Eats The Soul (1974) - Rainer Werner Fassbinder
35. The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) - Rainer Werner Fassbinder
36. Kings of the Road (1976) – Wim Wenders
37. The American Friend (1970) – Wim Wenders
38. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) –Werner Herzog
39. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) –Werner Herzog

amazing young poet I saw last night at Hollywood Bowl

She was great because she wrote about what she FEELS, not what she thinks we feel. So good, so encouraging. To all you young writers out there - write what you feel!

I was there, I felt it. Her words, emotions, thoughts. No bullshit or pretension. Just honesty.

Young Poet Steals John Legend Show With Ferguson Tribute

Click on link to watch her perform her poem:

http://gawker.com/young-poet-steals-john-legend-show-with-ferguson-tribut-1624958770

And here's another set of performers, 3 amazing young women:

https://music.yahoo.com/blogs/live/john-legend-proves-marvin-gaye-s--what-s-going-on--still-relevant-in-hollywood-bowl-set-065243963.html

8 Creative Writing Tips from Kurt Vonnegut

#2 is my favorite and yes, 3# equally important. Who wants to hang out with people they don't like in real life - why the hell would you want to watch someone on the screen for two hours if they're unlikable - in some way.

Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

Start as close to the end as possible.

Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.