Ray Liotta, Woody Allen

Ray Liotta said in a recent interview that he doesn't believe the accusation against Woody Allen and would drop everything to work with him:

Guerrasio: Who is the director you would drop everything right now and go work with, that you have never worked with yet?

Liotta: Woody Allen, I would.

Guerrasio: Even despite the allegations against him?

Liotta: I believe what he says. I don't think he did what they accuse him of. He's too — for his particular case I don't buy it.

Refreshing his simply dismissing the "allegations" without any nonsense about separating the art from the artist or not knowing what really happened. Anyone who cares to look into it has an excellent idea what happened, that the accusation was false.

Cinematic folk art

Soon after the US invastion of Iraq, Iraqis were producing DVDs which I guess had some popularity. They combined patriotic music and scenes of resistance to the U.S. occupation of their country. There was an Iraqi filmmaker with a camcorder who started production of a more conventional movie. I was always curious about those. I wanted to see some, some cinematic folk art.

Then there were Thailand and Burma. Thailand's capacity to make sound movies was snuffed out by World War Two. For years, the country's movie production took the form of silent 16mm films with live narration in theaters. Francois Truffaut mentioned this during his discussion of Psycho with Alfred Hitchcock. By the late '60s, spurred by the popularity of Indian musicals, all Thai movies were 35mm with sound and color.

Burma had a couple of major studios that produced only silent movies at least into the 1970s.

And there were reportedly 16mm silent films being made in San Francisco for audiences in Chinatown in the 1950's.

I'd like to see those movies. I've been curious about them for years. I might be disappointed.

I was disappointed by the few Nollywood movies I've seen. I have this fascination with "no budget" movies, but they're usually not that good and you don't really know what they mean by "no budget". I've heard of serious cinematic works made for $50, but some of these "no budget" movies cost tens of thousands of dollars. That sounds like a budget to me.

I did see what I thought were some pretty good movies made by kids on Community Access TV.

One was made during the Anne Rice craze. A silent movie. We see a high school student at his locker. He stands there. He looks around. The looks at his locker again. He looks around again. An intertitle tells us that he's planning to go out that evening.

We see him walking through a cemetery where he's attacked by several girls who are vampires who drag him into the cemetery. The last half of the movie (it was half an hour) shows the girls getting a celebratory tattoo, which made me wonder if they were high school kids or college kids, or maybe high school seniors, since I prefer to believe that children under 18 can't legally get tattoos.

There was another made by a middle school kid. It had little plot. It was done as a school project so there was nothing remotely rebellious about it. Something about a kid who's reunited with a friend at the beginning of the school year. There's a brief food fight. They're required to write essays about why fighting with food is bad. Some kids are confused by other kids who aren't part of any identifiable social group. The movie was an hour long but might have had twenty minutes worth of material, so they padded it with long takes of classroom scenes with pop music playing on the soundtrack.

And there was a movie I've only heard about made by a five-year-old. They used some sort of computer animation. The main character spends much of the movie fighting, then eats and takes a nap.

And there were movies that sound less interesting but I still wouldn't mind seeing.

Like, there was a married couple who Mike Kuchar discussed somewhere. They would go into the financial district in New York. If you go there in the early morning before places open for business, the streets are deserted. I saw this in the financial district in Boston. It's kind of cool.

But this couple would go there and make movies where the woman was walking down the street and a man would run up to her and rip her dress off. I don't know if there was any more to it than that. Kuchar mentioned it because the woman appeared in Sins of the Fleshapoids and she insisted on a scene where the Fleshapoid tears her dress off.

Roseanne: The Green Party really dodged a bullet

It seems like it might have been a good idea for the Green Party to have a big celebrity like Roseanne Barr as their presidential candidate. In 2012, she ran for the Green Party's presidential nomination but she was already known to have a couple of screws loose--she claimed in 1991 to have recovered "memories" if being sexually abused by her parents. She herself dropped that accusation and said it was the biggest mistake of her life.

Jello Biafra who failed to get the Green Party nomination in 2000, told her to use her humor. Biafra claims to somehow be both an anarchist and a Zionist--I didn't know he was in the Green Party, too.

The Greens are more serious-minded than these guys gave them credit for. Ralph Nader easily beat Jello Biafra and Jill Stein defeated Roseanne Barr.

Barr ran that year on the leftist Peace and Freedom Party ticket instead. I don't know if she actually campaigned.

So what's her excuse for suddenly turning right wing? As if the mainstream of the Republican Party (and, for that matter, the DNC) isn't bad enough, she became an ultra-Zionist Trump supporter.

Looking at her anti-BDS speech, she may be a pretty typical neo-con, a Jewish leftist turned violent right-winger in order to better serve Israel.

Woody Allen: The tide has turned

Moses at fourteen.

It turns out that Moses Farrow's timing was pretty good. He finally got his story out. I don't know if this is anything to go by, but, at least in the comments sections on the internet, the tide seems to have turned in Woody Allen's favor. Some even quit saying that Dylan believes what she's saying----they now think she's a conscious liar.

Almost nobody thinks Soon-Yi is Allen's stepdaughter or adopted daughter any more. Dylan going on TV has backfired in that people can distinguish her from Soon-Yi now.

The anti-Woody Allen crowd reminds me of the housewives in the studio audiences of old daytime talk shows. They thought all comic books were published for children and that all movies were made by major studios. And now they think Woody Allen operates a massive Spielberg-like publicity machine. "He's a movie director, ain't he!"

Of course it's hard to tell with any of this. People who post comments on the internet aren't necessarily representative of the general public, and even if they were, Woody Allen has a fairly narrow audience. There's no telling how any of this will affect his movies.

My impression has always been that people go to his movies because he made them, not because of who's in them. I don't think I've heard of half the younger stars who've appeared in his more recent films, so I don't know if the dim bulbs who swear they'll never work with him again matter.

If he starts working with unknowns, at the rate he makes movies, he would quickly build an army of grateful actors who own him their careers. He'd be like a high-brow Roger Corman.

The ethics of zero-budget film

Unpaid actor with plastic gun.

I always wondered about the cast of El Mariachi. It was Robert Rodriguez's $7,500 action film which made it into theatrical distribution. It was filmed on 16mm. Filmstock and processing cost $7,100, so, if it had been done on digital video, it would have cost only $400---probably less. Only one actor in the movie was paid, if I remember correctly.

So when this thing started making money, did Robert Rodriguez go back and pay the cast and crew? I have no idea.

One thing he did, by the way, which I found interesting, is, he didn't have any actor on the set for more than three hours at a time. This way, he didn't even have to feed them.

An article in Variety reports that "no budget" movies are becoming common in Japan and some filmmakers there are questioning the morality of it.

In recent years, increasing numbers of filmmakers have redefined low budget to mean next to nothing. That has widened the gap between major Japanese studio productions, and the independent majority. It may also have led to the disappearance of most mid-budget films...together with many of the companies that once distributed them.

A recent example from the ultra-low category is “One Cut of the Dead,” a zombie comedy scripted and directed by 34-year-old Shinichiro Ueda. The film premiered in April at the Udine Far East Film Festival, Europe’s largest showcase for Asian popular cinema, and finished a close second in the Audience Award vote.

Produced by Tokyo film school Enbu Seminar, of which Koji Ichihashi is president, and financed partly by crowdfunding, “One Cut of the Dead” was made for $23,000 (JPY2.5 million). Its student cast paid to participate in what was essentially a school project.

On social media, Ueda and producer Ichihashi expressed their joy at the Udine success. “That an extremely low-budget film with a cast and crew of no-names should come so close against such distinguished giants of the film world is a story that even (comic magazine) Shonen Jump would reject as impossible!”

But not everyone shared Ueda and Ishihashi’s glee. On May 10 Koji Fukada, whose “Harmonium” won Cannes’ Un Certain Regard jury prize in 2016, took to Facebook to air his dismay. “If you speak as though enduring poverty to make a film is somehow normal and positive, today’s excessively unfair industry will continue that way forever,” he said. “If you have the energy to make a film I’d like you expend it on raising money. Improve, if just a little, the industry system.”

Fukada is also co-founder of Independent Cinema Guild, an organization of film professionals that supports the indie sector with crowdfunding assistance, networking events and other initiatives. His retort to Ueda sparked many comments from filmmakers who shared his discontent with poor on-set conditions, and a dislike for those who profited from them.

...

Production budgets for films released by those leading distributors typically range from $1 million to $5 million, though the top end can be higher, especially for animation. Isao Takahata’s 2013 film “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya” cost an estimated $46 million (JPY5 billion).

That then leaves the indies living on fumes. And, accordingly, they squeeze their production costs as close to zero as possible. While attacking Ueda, Fukada confessed to himself having a “criminal record” of making low-budget films that “take advantage of the cast and crew’s love of cinema.” Chastened, Ueda responded: “I can’t deny that such a small budget made it a bit harder for (the cast and crew) to survive economically.”

Ueda is unlikely to greatly profit from his triumph, save in more festival invitations and offers to make more films. As Fukada noted, Japanese directors usually only get a fee for their labors. No back-end participation. But it’s still better than the position of his cast, who paid for the privilege of starring in a hit.

Read the whole article here. 

There was one comment on the article I found interesting:

Variations on this problem exist everywhere these days it seems. ANYONE can make a movie now. And their mothers, too. Consumer-grade technology — even iPhones — can help create movies worthy (and just as often unworthy) of theatrical distribution and/or discs and streaming. The barriers to entry have effectively been lowered or removed and film school (snicker) and prior employment in a video store (chortle) are no longer the primary prerequisites to get your foot through a door that’s been taken off its hinges. Decades of DVDs and Blu-rays (and laserdiscs) put EVERYTHING you could possibly learn in either institution into the hands of anyone who cared to learn from it via commentaries, interviews, documentaries and more. Even YouTube has tutorials demonstrating how to do pretty much anything. There are no substantial trade secrets in filmmaking anymore, nor in many other industries for that matter. But since filmmaking is one of the less essential skills one could choose for a career, why not let the current market run its course? The studio system won’t die out completely. Audiences will still crave higher production value and established storytelling tropes. Eventually, these no-budget wonders, even in Japan, may tire of working for peanuts and increasingly NOT landing much-coveted “studio” gigs, and focus their careers elsewhere while the next wave of impoverished dreamers takes their chances. The biggest new barrier, I think, is that contemporary audiences only have so much time to binge on the current and vast oceans of filmic detritus to find the few rare gems with promise. The flood might abate in due time as all the wannabes grow tired of working solely for the love of it.

There was a documentary about Jim Wynorski called Popatopolis. He sets out to shoot an R-rated semi-pornographic horror movie in three days. He wanted to do it in two days, but his friends talked him out of it. But they commented on how the American film industry had changed. There used to be A movies and B movies---now there are A movies and Z movies. The middle ones are gone. 

In the '80s there was Rick Schmidt's book Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices which advised paying actors a $100-per-day per diem ($200-a-day in today's money.) Years later, I looked at Craigs List. There were people looking for actors for their zero budget movies. One or two may have offered $100-a-day, but most offered $50 or $20 a day. Then I saw one that didn't offer money but would provide craft services--they would feed you. Then some didn't offer food but would give you a DVD of the finished movie, which I wouldn't offer since I might start editing, realize it was no good and scrap it.

Now they offer actors nothing.

I have no suggestions. Let it all run its course, I guess. We have no power over these people. Think of the Communists. In Communist countries, a movie director made about the same money as a factory worker. They lived in apartments that were identical to everyone else's, and people still fought to work in the movie industry. Why should you get rich making movies? The world is full of people who would do it for free. Why should you be different from any other artist?

Daughter of Woody Allen and Soon-yi Previn defends her father

What Ronan Farrow will look like in forty years after cheek implants, a face lift, eye lift and hair dye.

Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn have two adopted daughters. One daughter, Bechet, 19, has come out in defense of her father from the abuse being heaped on him by the ghastly Farrow clan.

“I never wanted to involve myself in the social media debates involving my father, but there comes a point when I realize that I can either continue pretending that none of this is going on, or stand up for him,” she wrote on Facebook. “He has been nothing but supportive and loving, and now it is my turn to support him.”

She was born well after the accusation was made against her father but she's in a much better position to know whether it's true or not than Ronan Farrow is. Ronan Farrow was four when Mia Farrow falsely accused Allen of molesting Dylan in a single incident. Ronan has no personal knowledge of anything. And at this point, he's staked so much on attacking and smearing his father, he wouldn't admit it if he realized he was wrong. His mother could tell him directly that it was all a lie and he would stick with the story.

Ishmael Reed on Roseanne Barr

I was surprised when Ishmael Reed, writer and poet who taught writing at UC Berkley, wrote in a recent article posted on counterpunch.com, "Once in a while, I ran into a student who tried to get a rise out of me by writing a racist story or making a racist comment. I’d instruct the class that they could write all of the racist stories that they desired as long as they were fresh and original. That would usually end these clumsy efforts."

I don't know why it surprised me. Politically, the University of Oregon a few blocks from me might be the poor man's Berkley, and there are racist students there. There are some who I suspect consider "political correctness" to be phony, so they imagine that casual racism is a sign of sincerity.

Reed mentioned one case:

...I suspect that he, like many White students, who were raised in California towns, some of which were former Sun Down Towns, and like-minded people whom I have encountered Europe, Asia, and Africa, received all of his ideas about race from American film and television. Though ideologues might view Hollywood as “liberal,” the industry has produced a lot of films in which Blacks and Browns are dealt vigilante justice. One of the favorite genres is that of a detective who has to surrender his badge for using excessive force whereupon he’s free to go on a rampage of cracking heads. The much-admired film, “Crash” justifies police brutality and stop-and-frisk sexual molestation. 

...

But I find the hand-wringing from members of the Fourth Estate, the very ones who exhibit stereotypes of Blacks to hundreds of countries, to be hypocritical. Given the segregated media, most of the comments about Roseanne’s outburst were dominated by White pundits and reporters. On one panel, a smug Rich Lowry of The National Review became the judge of what constituted White Supremacy, when the magazine where he works was founded by an Anglo-Irish White supremacist. The few Blacks who were allowed on TV were preaching to what James Baldwin called “The Chorus of Innocents,” who, in his The Fire Next Time, were offered redemption. Mara Gay of The New York Times editorial board preached redemption as a possible deliverance for Ms. Barr and the next morning, Eugene Robinson, one of the token minority members of “Morning Joe,” used the same word.

Of course, Baldwin got tired of redeeming people and ridiculed “The Chorus of Innocents” in his best novel, Tell Me How Long The Train’s Been Gone. He was deemed ungrateful by his former patrons, and Mario Puzo was chosen to do the Times’s hatchet job on the book, maybe because Baldwin’s Italians are more complex than his.

MSNBC, which did a lot of sanctimonious hectoring of Roseanne has a series called “Lockup” in which viewers are invited to gawk at prisoners who are exhibited like animals in a zoo. Maybe that’s where Roseanne Barr got her ideas.

Read the article here:

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/01/the-segregated-media-says-its-all-roseannes-fault/