Director Joe Dante Shows Sierra Spirit

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At the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival, held  May 25 through 29th, director Joe Dante (Gremlins, Innerspace) received the first annual Sierra Spirit Award. We interviewed Dante, learning about his past, his films, and his future plans.

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What inspired the director to get started in filmmaking? His love of cinema of course.

“I wrote about movies, I watched movies. I never really thought I would end up making movies – I thought the process would be too hard. I remember seeing Lord of the Flies in New York in 1963. I saw it many times. I went back, and I counted the shots, and I thought, I can’t do that, it’s too hard, I’ll just write about movies,” he laughs.

Dante enjoyed his first job as a trade reviewer, but when friends moved to Los Angeles to work with Roger Corman, they encouraged him to join them.

“They said come out, see what you might like to do. So I did, and I started editing trailers. You really have to cut to the essentials with trailers. Some films were good, some weren’t, but the other trailer editor, Allan Arkush, and I both learned a lot from working on them all.”

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Above and below, Dante receives the Sierra Spirit Award from longtime friend and ensemble actor Robert Picardo, who hilarious played the role of “Cowboy” in Dante’s Innerspace.

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Eventually, Dante and Arkush asked to make their own film. They decided on the title Hollywood Boulevard, and put together a film that followed the iconic formula of many of Corman’s genre pictures at the time. The script riffed on the “three girls” formula popular at the time.

“We made our three girls starlets as opposed to nurses and teachers. But all the films basically it was three girls having adventures and taking their clothes off. Making them starlets, we could use existing action footage from disparate trailers, jungle settings, Bonnie and Clyde type settings, sci fi, we had actions scenes for all of that. We wrote the story around the stock footage we had access too, and basically cast our three girls in each of these types of film. It ended up being a pretty accurate depiction of being a starlet and making movies in the 70s,” he recalls.

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Above, Dante chats after receiving his award with Robert Picardo and festival programmer Paul Sbrizzi.

Although the film had a limited release – “just another movie thrown out into the drive-in world,” Dante says – later it was considered to have a “certain charm. But it’s so politically incorrect it’s embarrassing.”

But without having crafted the film, Dante says he wouldn’t be talking to us today.

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“We went back to editing, but the trailers improved because Roger was distributing some quality films by directors like Fellini and François Truffaut,” Dante relates. “We wanted to make more films ourselves. Two projects came up: Piranha, and Rock n’ Roll High School. I preferred the latter, but Allan wanted that project, so I got Piranha.”

Piranha marked the real start of Dante’s career.

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“It came to me as not very good script, but John Sayles was one of the talented young people on Corman’s short list. He was hired to rewrite it, and added a lot of satire to it and some political angles, both of which pleased me. We made a somewhat unexpected take on what would’ve been a drive-in movie exploitation film otherwise. It kind of got me noticed,” Dante says self-deprecatingly.

Dante has had a recent series, Splatter, produced for Netflix, and he says the film industry itself has changed; he prefers to come up with his own ideas and projects and work on his own funding. “Things are so different today. No one comes to you with a script and says let’s make this movie. They come up with a project, and if you’re interested you become attached to it while they try to raise money for it using your name. You spend more time begging for money than you do filmmaking.”

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Regardless of how the process has changed, Dante lives, breathes, and loves movies, calling the movie-going experience itself a spiritual one.

His filmmaking sensibility is finely honed. “Writing reviews in the late sixties and 70s , I covered such a cross-section of films, even porno films. I had a really good handle on the business, I didn’t even realize I’d put away as much knowledge about the movies as I had, and it really helped me in Hollywood.”

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His magazine writing also contributed to the respect Dante shows to his writers. He’s well known for providing remuneration in the form of a small on-screen part simply to get the writer on-set.

“It started with Piranha. I wanted John Sayles on the set to work things into the script that I’d found when we were scouting locations. I like to have the writer around, and the only way to get them on location is to give them a part.  It’s important to have the writer there to rework or add to a script. If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage,” Dante asserts. “With Piranha, we used a ‘resort’ called Aquarena Springs. There were dancing chickens, and Ralph the Swimming Swine as a part of the attraction. I wanted Sayles to add the location into the script, so I brought him down to our location.”

With many of Dante’s films depicting fantastical elements – such as the miniaturization premise of Innerspace, which screened at the festival as part of the tribute to Dante,  we asked what the director would do now when it comes to such elements.

“It’s difficult to do something like that now,” Dante ruminates. “Everything has been done really, including self-aware movies like Scream, that have highlighted all the cliches. It’s hard to come up with something new and still give the audience the kind of genre film they want to see. There’s a limit to how far you can go off the beaten track,” he notes.

He cites Cabin in the Woods as an example of a film in which “they turned audience expectations on their head, but that’s tricky to pull off, although the audience gets more for their money so to speak. Still, that script sat on the shelf for three years before it was produced.”

One aspect that affects filmmaking today most strongly, Dante believes, is the use of technology, from drone shots to CGI, which the director didn’t have when he crafted Innerspace. Instead, he relied on actors, a witty script, and techniques from well-crafted models to break-away clothing to handle the action. “Today, technology is the tail that’s now wagging the dog,” he says. “It’s the reason we get the movies we do, in order to utilize it.”

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Above, Dante, Festival Director Shira Dubrovner, and actor Robert Picardo.

As to Innerspace, even without today’s technology, the story holds up, the script is bright and fast paced, and the limited effects used still play well without looking dated. “It works,” Dante attests. “The comedy holds up. Originally they wanted it to be a straight spy movie, but I thought it was too silly.  So it became a comedy.”

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A comedy like much of Dante’s work, which has stood the tests of time and technology, reflecting the director’s intelligence and creativity and entertaining generations of film goers.

  • Genie Davis; All Photos: Jack Burke

 

Once in a Buddymoon: Hilarious and Fresh Comedy

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One of our favorite films at the Mammoth Lake Films Festival – and the audience award winner for best narrative – Buddymoon will be coming to theaters and digital media (iTunes, Amazon) July 1st. One of the freshest buddy comedies we’ve seen in years, this sweet tale of friendship and priorities unfolds in the nature of the Oregon woods.

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Above, Simmons with the film’s Audience Award trophy, Borg, and the author.

DiversionsLA had the chance to interview director Alex Simmons and co-star Flula Borg about the film, their friendship, and more.

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According to Simmons, the film came about because Simmons, Borg, and the film’s other lead, David Giuntoli, lived in LA as roommates a number of years back. “We always wanted to make a movie, but it seemed unrealistic. We had our lives and careers that got in the way, and Dave moved to Portland to work on Grimm. But magically, we all had three weeks free two years ago and we thought that if we didn’t make a movie in that time it wouldn’t ever happen.”

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Still, there were obstacles: “We had no script, no other talent, no money  – we just knew instinctively it wouldn’t happen if we waited, so we reverse engineered it. We had two months to prep, including story outlining,” Simmons relates, most of which fell on his shoulders.

Borg says “I was in New Orleans working on Pitch Perfect 2. All I can say is that Alex is the most talented juggler outside of Cirque de Soleil. He juggled all the balls with this film.”

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Juggler or not, other issues cropped up: Giuntoli’s shooting schedule changed, and Borg’s extended. They both suggested the film be postponed, but Simmons says “I was delusional enough to push everyone forward.”

With such a hectic pace, Borg notes “The night before we shot, we would write the scenes because we had so little time, the final script was really still overall an outline.”

“Editing saved us,” Simmons laughs.  “Basically,  we knew we had to shoot in Oregon because that’s where Dave was; we decided we should shoot outdoors, because we didn’t have time for complicated lighting set ups, so that piggy backed into our story about two friends hiking. It was very practical, and our creative limitations were a benefit, not a hindrance, in the end.”

“But we had a lot of boundaries to keep,” Borg adds.

“It was kind of like if had been making lasagna, and I discovered I only had a few veggies and a cheese I never ate before – with those limitations, you hope you might come up with something great anyway,” Simmons asserts.

Borg agrees. “Even if you had no pasta or stove, you still have to cook the lasagna and make it delicious.”

Simmons continues the analogy. “It was like a no-bake lasagna – you have to try a short cut, something new like that, in order to finish what you’re making.”

Shot on a miniscule budget – “Our budget was one lasagna versus 45 million lasagnas for a studio film,” says Borg – on a Canon C 500,  the film was self-funded through savings and credit cards.

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Above, film festival programmer Paul Sbrizzi, Simmons – with the film’s “Honey Buddies” T-shirt, and Borg. 

Although the film shoot was a brisk ten days, Simmons edited the project over a two year period.

“Editing the film myself was a great lesson. You see what you did wrong and what you did right. I literally cried at 4 a.m. up against a deadline, but it’s something you should do once, like running a marathon. People may ask you if you’ve run a marathon and then you can say you have. They usually don’t ask if you ran it twice – once is usually enough,”  Simmons says. “Editing was like that.”

“I should never run a marathon,” Borg adds.

When the editing was complete, the group’s expectations for the project were low.

“We were surprised and felt as if we have won four thousand consecutive jackpots when we were first accepted at Slamdance and then this sassy Mammoth Lakes Film Festival,” Borg laughs.

Simmons started a Facebook and Instagram page to support the film, which has now found distribution through MGM Orion and Gravitas.

“I was especially excited,” Borg reports. “I saw the Orion logo before so many of my favorite films, like Robocop. It’s like we had one nickle to bet in a casino and we won fifteen cheeseburgers and that lasagna, of course.”

While the rewards – and awards – the team are reaping are exciting, the trio’s friendship continues to be a driving force.

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“What I hope shows when you see the movie is that we are all best friends, and the friendship comes through. It’s hard to fake that. There’s an honesty in friendship, it’s not always the easiest thing. There are peaks and valleys.”

And what does the future hold?

“We’ve already shot another film, Johnny Fist,” Simmons explains. “It’s a documentary about Flula making a movie, a western called Johnny Fist, and trying to enter it in Sundance. We shot it between Los Angeles and Park City last year, and are in editing now. It’s more about the journey and the experience of making the film – it’s not a spoiler to say we did not get into Sundance.”

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The Buddymoon team is also pitching other shows, separately and together, and we have little doubt that whatever their next project, it’s going to delight.

Look for Buddymoon July 1st and see if you don’t agree.

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Above, Borg, Simmons, and award presenter, actor Robert Picardo 

  • Genie Davis; All Photos: Jack Burke

 

 

Film Fest Winners at the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival

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Closing day at the Mammoth Lake Film Festival brought more fascinating films and some surprises – plus the fest’s awards ceremony.

Once again, before we get to the films, a shout out to festival programmer Paul Sbrizzi and festival director Shira Dubrovner for putting together a stellar festival that’s deliciously small now, but probably won’t stay that way. We see this fest growing exponentially each year. Our take away:  hey folks, if you’re looking for adventurous and varied cinema, and the type of experience where you can chat with the filmmakers and join in a Q & A comfortably, plan a trip next spring.

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Above, Learning to See director Jake Oelman with festival director Shira Dubrovner.

Today, two documentary features and one doc short took center stage.  Learning to See is an absolutely fascinating and personal story about the life and photography of Robert Oelman, who put aside his psychology career to move to Columbia, learn Spanish, and become a renowned photographer of obscure and often undocumented insect species in the Amazon basin. Stunning photographic images and a sweet and fascinating portrait of  filmmaker Jake Oelman’s father,  this is a vibrant, beautiful documentary that makes bugs, yes bugs, incredibly beautiful.  It also presents a cogent argument for the preserving the ecology of the rain forest.

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Appearing with Learning to See was Open Your Eyes, a touching and unique look at life in Nepal and an elderly couple whose cataracts led them to blindness, but through the efforts of the Seva Foundation, a relatively simple operation resorted their sight.  The short was created through HBO docs by Irene Taylor Brodsky who also directed the fest feature Beware the Slenderman.

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Next up was the narrative feature  Last Summer,  by Italian director Leonardo Guerra Seragnoli. Starring Rinko Kikuchi (star of Kumiko, Treasure Hunter, an indie fest favorite two years ago) as a mother forced to give up custody of her sweet six year old son, this is a moving and elegiac tribute to the resilience of the human heart.

Sonita was the closing fest film, a moving, deeply engrossing doc in which the director, Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami, becomes intimately involved in the life of 18 year old Afghan refugee Sonita Alizadeh, a talented rapper/musician whose mother plans to sell her into an arranged marriage for $9000. Heartfelt, riveting, and with the classic structure of fiction,  this festival favorite is one passionate piece of filmmaking that took Sundance by storm earlier this year.

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The fest concluded with a truly fun party at the Sierra Event Center, along with the fest awards ceremony. The awards themselves are as charming and unique as the festival: carved wooden bears.

Shorts award winners:

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Above right, Adrian Geyer

Narrative short:

Honorable Mention: Tisure, the brilliantly beautiful film shot in a remote locale in Venezuela by director Adrian Geyer. “I’m going back to m country with more inspiration,” Geyer said.  This one was my favorite short.

Winner: A Night in Tokoriki, the witty, fresh tragicomic tale of a love triangle unfolding in a small town Romanian nightclub.

Documentary/Animated short:

Honoable Mention: Night Stalker, a surreal and beautifully animated Claymation piece featuring a different dimension brought on by haunted/poisoned takeout food.

Winner:  The Second Life, a doc in which a Russian woman freezes her 91 year old mother in liquid nitrogen in the hopes of a future unfreezing and second chance at rebuilding her relationship with her mother.

Feature length winners:

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Above right, Jake Oelman with Shira Dubrovner and Kathleen and Paul Rudder.

Audience awards documentary:

Learning to See,  the poignant and exciting look at insects, photography, and a life reborn by Jake Oelman.

Presenting the award, fest sponsors Paul and Kathleen Rudder note that the filmmakers participating in the fest have “put Mammoth on the map along with festival director Shira Dubrovner and programmer Paul Sbrizzi, and we’re thrilled to have you all bringing culture and film to town.”

Audience Award narrative:

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Above, Robert Picardo (Innerspace) awards Alex Simmons (center) and Flula Borg

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Buddymoon, the hilarious buddy comedy set in the Oregon woods.  Director Alex Simmons notes “I can’t think of a better place to screen this movie about hiking in the woods than at the Forest Service theater in the woods here in Mammoth.”  Co-star Flula Borg added “We are prompt, sassy, and dope, and we love the award. We will saw it in half and share it.” This audience-pleaser was our top pick, too.

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Jury Narrative feature:

Honorable mention: Mad, for the film’s “deeply moving performances and beautifully realized drama about mental illness and the struggle to find equilibrium in a family,” as presenter John Kelly described it.

Winner: the lyrical Bodkin Ras, which combines fiction with documentary in a surprising and haunting story of a fugitive in a small Scottish town.

Jury Documentary:

Honorable mention:

Under the Sun, Vitaly Mansky’s look at North Korea through the eyes of a young girl and her family.

Winner: Sonita, the compelling tale of Afghan refugee and rapper Sonita,  and filmmaker Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami’s involvement in her life.

Below the crew that made the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival happen.

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Paul and Kathleen Rudder with Jake Oelman

 

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Alex Simmons, Flula Borg, and author

 

 

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Micah Vassau, Festival Programmer Paul Sbrizzi

There you have it: the final day of the 2nd annual Mammoth Lakes Film Festival. Director interviews and fest summary will be appearing  later this week. If you missed this year’s festival, don’t miss next year’s chance to see snowy mountain peaks, breathe in fresh air, acclimatize to 8000 foot elevation mountain heights, and most of all see great, eclectic filmmaking in a friendly, intimate atmosphere.

  • Genie Davis; All Photos Jack Burke

Cinema Classics New and Old: ML Film Fest Day 3

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Above: Sierra Spirit Award recipient director Joe Dante, festival founder Shira Dubrovner, actor Robert Picardo at Mammoth Lakes Film Festival

Saturday  – our third full day at the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival started with terrifically insightful and fun interviews with Alex Simmons, director of Buddymoon and star/co-writer Flula Borg. That interview, along with a great session with director Joe Dante, awarded the first annual Sierra Spirit Award, will be published separately.

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Onto the films:

First up was Bodkin Ras,  in which an isolated Scottish town becomes a temporary hiding place for a fugitive, Bodkin.  Bodkin is  the only character played by an actor, all other characters are actual inhabitants of the Scottish town. Surprising twists and turns in a beautifully evocative setting make this a must see, directed by Dutch filmmaker and writer Kaweh Modiri. The combination of documentary story telling and narrative fiction was perfectly woven, resulting in a startling conclusion as inevitable as it is shocking.

Next up,  the short film I Would Like to Be Enraptured, Muzzled and on My Back Tattooed, a powerful  Brazilian short about a woman who may prefer to die than keep on living in her highly sexualized yet anonymous world. It made a great lead in to All the Colors of the Night, another film from Brazilian cinema, directed by Pedro Severin. The surreal yet somehow wonderfully novelistic story of a woman who discovers a dead body in her apartment the morning after a party, it’s a poetic tale related by shifting and unreliable narrators, as stunningly shot as it is haunting. There’s a Bunuel-like quality to the film, which will have you considering its realities long after the credits roll.

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Director Alex Simmons, left, and film co-star Flula Borg of Buddymoon, above

Buddymoon is unabashedly my favorite film of the festival, an inspired, loose comedy about friendship, the priorities of modern life, and a hiking trip undertaken by protagonist David and his best friend Flula after David’s fiancée dumps him just before their wedding.  Witty, fresh, and perfectly paced, this is a comedy that well deserves a scheduled mainstream release July 1st. Pitch perfect acting, dialog, and a lovely use of drone cinematography results in a comedy that has depth and never gets tired.

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Above, great give away “Honey Buddy” T-shirt from the film, which was originally titled “Honeybuddies.”

Director Alex Simmons has created documentaries and music videos for bands such as Death Cab and Sigur Ros, but this is his first feature. Simmons and stars Flula Borg and David Giuntoli were once roommates in LA, who had always planned to create a film together.  Giuntoli currently stars in ABC’s Grimm, the shooting schedule for which led to the team’s decision to shoot in the Portland area where the television show is also in production.  Produced on a shoestring budget and equally limited time frame, the economies of craft do not show on the screen.

“We had a crew of six,” Simmons relates. “All of us had so many different jobs. “ Flula Borg adds, “My job was counting everyone’s jobs.”  While shooting was accomplished in just ten days, it took Simmons two years to edit. Watch for this sweet, hilarious film in both theatrical release and on iTunes;  interview with the filmmakers  coming shortly to this site.

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Above: Robert Picardo with Joe Dante

The evening brought a tribute to director Joe Dante, who started his career working in independent cinema as an editor and director for Roger Corman.  Screened was the still-fresh Innerspace, a hybrid comedy-thriller with Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Martin Short, and Robert Picardo. Crossing genres in such a thoroughly entertaining way is rarely done in mainstream cinema today, and this was a refreshing look at a purely fun genre film that was a true experience in clever storytelling.

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Following the film was the presentation of the Spirit Award to Dante, a truly iconic director. A lively discussion with Dante, actor Robert Picardo, who plays The Cowboy in Innerspace, and festival programmer Paul Sbrizzi included references to the extreme differentness of studio production today. “No one just comes up with a script  and asks if you want to make a movie. Now they come with a project, and if you’re interested, they try to raise the money with your name  attached. I prefer coming up with my own ideas and getting funded on my own. You find yourself spending so much time asking for money rather than filmmaking,” Dante says. A full interview with Dante, including his early filmmaking career in the indie world, will be appearing shortly on this site.

Summary:  arguably the strongest day of the fest so far, the ML Film Fest continues to surprise with challenging and exciting international films, a tribute to a true cinema icon, and the presentation of a comedy that is as fresh as it is funny.

It’s not too late to come up from LA or down from San Francisco and see what tomorrow’s Sunday closing has to offer. The relaxed and personal vibe of the festival creates experiences with filmmakers as comfortable as they are exciting. Cinemaphiles: take note.

  • Genie Davis; ALL PHOTOS Jack Burke