Director Alex Stapleton Gets Personal in HBO’s “God Save Texas”
Throughout her career, Emmy-winning documentarian Alex Stapleton has spotlighted such colorful characters as baseball legend Reggie Jackson and movie maverick Roger Corman. She’s examined the role athletes play in the cultural and political conversation in Shut up and Dribble and investigated the struggle for LGBTQ rights in Pride. But the HBO series God Save Texas presented Stapleton an opportunity to document a subject unlike any she had captured before — herself.
“To Kill a Tiger” Director Nisha Pahuja on her Eight-Year Journey to Make her Oscar-Nominated Doc
One of the year’s Oscar Cinderella stories is the best documentary nomination for director Nisha Pahuja’s To Kill a Tiger. It took Pahuja and her small crew eight years to complete their independent film about a father’s fight for justice after three men abducted his 13-year-old daughter and sexually assaulted her in a poor rural village in India.
“It has not quite hit me yet,” says Pahuja of what will be her first-ever trip to the Oscar ceremony on March 10.
Co-Director Moses Bwayo on the Harrowing Journey to Capture the Oscar-Nominated Doc “Bobi Wine: The People’s President”
Imagine for a moment if a music icon like Beyoncé or Dolly Parton ran for United States President. Cool, right? But imagine, during their campaign, they were arrested, brutally beaten, and thrown in jail by the incumbent government while their supporters were detained, shot at, and killed. As Americans, would we simply look the other way? In Uganda, similar events actually took place leading up to the 2021 presidential election as Bobi Wine, a superstar musician,
How Pixar Director Peter Sohn Got Personal in His Oscar-nominated “Elemental”
How do you make fire feel endearing rather than scary? And how do you turn water into a gusher of emotions? Those were key questions faced by director Peter Sohn when he set forth to make Elemental. The Bronx-born animator previously helped anthropomorphize rats, robots, dolphins, and dinosaurs in Ratatouille, Finding Nemo, WALL•E, and The Little Dinosaur. But never before had he tried to put a human face on earth,
“Bob Marley: One Love” Co-writer/Director Reinaldo Marcus Green on Capturing a Legend’s Spirit
Bob Marley’s family has been trying to create and release a narrative that celebrates the beloved Jamaican performer’s life and music for decades. Only recently did the producers, including Rita, Bob’s wife, and her children Ziggy and Cedella Marley, feel like all the pieces had come together to create a story worthy of Bob’s legacy. The perfect blend of talent to bring Bob’s story to the big screen included casting Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lashana Lynch as Bob and Rita Marley and hiring Reinaldo Marcus Green,
“Say It Loud” Director Deborah Riley Draper on Telling the Complex James Brown Story
It doesn’t take much to get filmmaker Deborah Riley Draper going when it comes to the topic of James Brown. Her new documentary James Brown: Say It Loud (airing Feb. 19 and Feb. 20 on A&E) chronicles the music titan’s remarkable journey from his 1933 birth in a South Carolina shack through his early days as a “buck dancer,” his imprisonment at age 16, the 1956 breakthrough hit Please Please Please,
“The Last Repair Shop” Co-Composer & Co-Director Kris Bowers on his Perfectly Tuned Oscar-Nominated Doc
Composer Kris Bowers has emerged as one of Hollywood’s most versatile film scorers with a stunning list of credits, including Ava DuVernay’s Origin, The Color Purple, and the upcoming Bob Marley: One Love. But Bowers is also the Oscar-nominated co-director of this year’s documentary short The Last Repair Shop, which spotlighted a story right in Bowers’s backyard.
“The Peasants” Co-Director/Writer Hugh Welchman on Hand Painting Real Life Hardships Into Animated Magic
Creating any animated feature film is an awesome commitment of time, talent, and resources. But the animated films of the Poland-based husband-and-wife directing team of Hugh Welchman (who is British) and D.K. Welchman (who is Polish) go well beyond the common description of “labor of love.” For their groundbreaking debut in 2017, the Oscar-nominated animated feature Loving Vincent, the team used a hand-painted animation technique to bring the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh to life.
Jake Johnson on his Diabolically Fun Directorial Debut “Self Reliance”
Would you watch a reality show where someone is actively being hunted for a million-dollar prize? Morally, the answer is no. In Jake Johnson’s directorial debut, Self Reliance (streaming on Hulu), he believes the answer is yes. The concept for Johnson’s new film is one he developed years ago after watching a Japanese reality show (Susunu! Denpa Shōnen) where contestants were placed in bizarre situations and filmed.
“And then in the middle of the night,
“True Detective: Night Country” Writer/Director Issa López Delivers a Chilling New Season
Issa López loves to challenge herself. The writer/director, best known for the mystical 2017 feature Tigers Are Not Afraid, believes your comfort zone is the last place to find stories worth telling.
“If you’re not terrified, you’re not doing it right,” López says during a recent Zoom interview. “There are massive fears that you face as a filmmaker. You need to just do it. With the right team, you can go out and do anything.”
Perhaps nothing proves this better than True Detective: Night Country,
“Mean Girls” Directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. Bring the Plastics Into the iPhone Age
The Plastics are back! Co-directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. – the wife and husband team behind Hulu’s Quarter Life Poetry – the remake of Mean Girls (in theaters now) is a hilarious—and very pink—update for the social media age. Twenty years later, the core theme from screenwriter Tina Fey, who wrote the original film, the Broadway play, and this adaptation of the musical, is still very much intact.
“The Book of Clarence” Director Jeymes Samuel Brings Humanity to the Biblical Epic
Hollywood has long recognized the cinematic appeal of Bible stories as both ancient and eternal. Battles between good and evil play out on an epic scale, but The Book of Clarence looks beyond the page to spotlight everyday citizens whose lives were upended by Jesus’ journey. The film’s writer and director, Jeymes Samuel, aimed to widen the lens of the gospels and give some perspective to those just outside Christ’s circle.
Defying Death With “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” Second Unit Director & Stunt Coordinator Wade Eastwood
“The action evolves with the story — I’m not trying to invent action just to invent the next big stunt. It’s got to be emotionally engaging through action and fit the character,” says second unit director and stunt choreographer Wade Eastwood of Mission: Impossible’s brand of character-driven action choreography.
An accomplished fixed-wing and helicopter pilot, Eastwood is also a licensed skydiver, rescue scuba diver, black belt martial artist, master stunt driver,
Best of 2023: Gina Prince-Bythewood, MPA Creator Award Recipient, Tells Her Story
*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year.
An elite force of female soldiers, the Agojie, is all that stands between the African Kingdom of Dahomey and the combined forces of the Oyo Empire and Mahi people. The Oyo and Mahi plan to raid Dahomey villages and sell their captives to European slavers. We open on a Mahi village where raiders heat their machetes over a fire at night.
Best of 2023: “Fair Play” Writer/Director Chloe Domont Makes a Killing on Male Fragility
*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year.
Fair Play, writer/director Chloe Domont‘s feature debut, is somehow both an old-school erotic thriller and a shrewd, scalpel-sharp dissection of how far we have and have not come with gender equality in the workplace and in the headspace of men, even those who consider themselves allies.
The film is largely set at the hedge fund One Crest Capitol,
Best of 2023: Christopher Nolan on Exploding Myths & Exposing Humanity in “Oppenheimer”
*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year.
Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) stares wide-eyed into the pond spread out in front of him; his last conversation with Albert Einstein (Tom Conti) on the potential catalytic effects of the atomic bomb has rendered him speechless. The music swells as the screen fades to black — the final scene of Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated Oppenheimer.
“The Chi” Producer/Directors Deondray Gossfield and Quincy LeNear Gossfield on Shaping Lena Waithe’s Sharp Showtime Series
The Chi directors/producers Deondray Gossfield and Quincy LeNear Gossfield are living proof of the collaborative spirit. They live and work together (they’re married), and when they directed episode 4 in season 5, “On Me,” in Lena Waithe’s coming-of-age Showtime series, the talented creator recognized she’d found two collaborators who could take on a larger role for season 6. That meant both directing and producing.
“We were already fans of the show before we started working on it,
“American Fiction” Writer/Director Cord Jefferson on Cutting to the Heart of the Matter
Writer/director Cord Jefferson’s narrative feature debut, American Fiction, has become one of the most talked about films this awards season, and for good reason. Adapted from Percival Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasure,” the satirical drama won the audience award upon its debut at the Toronto Film Festival, with a number of subsequent fests following suit, and was recently named one of the top ten films of 2023 by the AFI.
“May December” Director Todd Haynes on Playing With Power in His Beguiling New Film
Beyond appreciation from critics and audiences alike for its compelling screenplay and gorgeous cinematography, Far From Heaven and Carol director Todd Haynes’s new release May December is getting awards buzz for the performances by its magnetic three leads. The film stars Haynes muse Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, and Charles Melton as three very complicated, sometimes unlikeable characters that consistently shift the audience’s allegiances. The film is loosely based on the real-life tabloid scandal of 35-year-old teacher Mary Kay Letourneau,
Steven Soderbergh and Co-Director/Editor Jon Kane on Godfrey Reggio’s Ravishing New Film “Once Within a Time”
Filmmaker Godfrey Reggio, whose groundbreaking Koyaanisqatsi (1982) remains influential and much admired, didn’t travel to Boston for the November 3 screening at the Coolidge Corner Theatre of his new film and his first in a decade, Once Within a Time. But executive producer Steven Soderbergh and co-director and editor Jon Kane happily channeled the 83-year-old Reggio’s animated, eccentric spirit in a lively post-film conversation (which this writer moderated) before an enthusiastic crowd that cheered Reggio’s avant-garde fairy tale released in theaters this week from Oscilloscope Laboratories.
