“The beautiful thing is, you have to keep occupied right?” So says Filipino writer/director Keith Sicat, speaking from the six-week-long lockdown in Manila.
With three projects primed to go into production at the beginning of the year, Sicat now spends in time between project development, teaching filmmaking, and keeping his creative juices flowing on mini-projects with his young sons. “We started animating his toys, doing stop motion stuff around the house. It was something really fun and it was creative. It didn’t come with the pressure, or the attachment, or the baggage of my professional work.”
Keith Sicat, his sons, and the makings of a new film project.
Sicat was shooting day one on a new documentary with his co-director and spouse, filmmaker Sari Dalena, celebrating the 70th anniversary of a pop culture trend icon unique to in the Philippines – he can’t reveal the title for giving too much away – when the pandemic closed everything down, and Manila was put under strict Don’t Leave Home measures. “It’s very real. We know actors and filmmakers and crew who have passed from the virus.”
For the close-knit Filipino screen community, staying home did not equate to stopping work. Friends set up the Lockdown Cinema Club to help raise funds for the many freelancers that make up the industry. Filmmakers shared short films and screenplays, asking viewers to contribute whatever they could spare. Says Sicat, “I contacted the producers about the last sci-fi film I made Alimuom (Vapours) and asked if we could make it available.” The producers backed the request, and as of April 22, the initiative had raised USD $75,000 (3.8 Million Pesos) for filmmakers in need.
Mirroring many screen communities around the world, Sicat has monitored a flurry of correspondence between industry guilds and government agencies looking at devising a protocol to help production get started – the Film Development Association of the Philippines recently hosted a scheduled one-hour video-conference call that stretched to five. In Sicat’s mind, the idea raises more questions than answers: “Do you take everyone’s temperature every morning? How do we replot scenes (with social distancing)? Do you scale down to just a skeleton crew? How do you sanitize an entire set? Do you put in place shifts for lunch breaks?” Many are eager to get back to work, but there are others, including Sicat himself, who are fearful to resume work too soon.
Sicat continues to teach a weekly production class, moving to Zoom and Skype during the lockdown. Adaptation is the name of the game. “We’ve come up with really fun ways to do it. Let’s say you don’t have any camera equipment – so use your cell phone! Let’s say you don’t have access to Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro – how about you make a still frame film?” Sicat says he’s been inspired to see students, all of them digital natives, go back to basics. There’s a great lesson, he says, in sharing with his students that the battle is won in the preparation. “In terms of getting people to rethink the process, if there’s anything that this pandemic is showing us, is that those who succeed are the ones with the plan. If you have a plan, you might just make it to the other side!”
Sicat knows about having a plan and making it work. He’s been an award-winning independent filmmaker, concepts head, and comic book creator whose films have screened in the Philippines and at international film festivals. He was runner up in the MPA-FDCP Feature Film Pitch Competition in 2019. And Sicat’s giving back with his film Alimuom (Vapours), which is now raising funds for film industry workers in the Philippines. The film is set in a future where farming on Earth is outlawed due to the toxic environment and all agriculture is produced off-world. In Sicat’s film, despite the ban, some scientists and farmers resist.
Featured image: Keith Sicat and his sons making the most of their quarantine in Manila. Courtesy Keith Sicat.
Contrasting the difficult lives of professional jazz musicians with their joyous, airy music, Damien Chazelle’s (Whiplash, La La Land) new Netflix series The Eddy turns on the personal and professional drama surrounding a titular jazz club in Paris’s down-to-earth 19th arrondissement (premiering on Friday, May 8). A legendary jazz pianist, it’s Elliot’s (André Holland) job to run the struggling club’s musical program until he unexpectedly inherits a backstage mess from his business partner, Farid (Tahar Rahim). As Elliot’s troubles with the police and the Paris underworld mount, compounded by the arrival of his nightmare adolescent daughter, Julie (Amandla Stenberg), the show also zeroes in on the plight of the club’s band members, all suffering their own personal woes. Homebound Francophiles expecting shots of the Eiffel Tower and strolls through the Tuileries should look elsewhere—The Eddy’s creative residents battle issues like addiction and loss among Paris’s mid-century apartment blocks, banlieues, and diverse, lightly touristed districts. Here, the city’s beauty is to be found in gorgeous, exuberant jazz which this motley crew nightly sets aside their troubles to perform and which Chazelle and the rest of the series’ directors (Houda Benyamina, Laïla Marrakchi, and Alan Poul) let run for luxurious minutes at a stretch.
L-r: André Holland and Tahar Rahim in ‘The Eddy.’ Photo by Lou Faulon/Netflix.
So while The Eddy won’t take its audience for a spin through touristic Paris, it offers something even better: a home viewing experience of sitting front row in a hip French jazz club. Despite the show’s shooting locations in the outer 19th and 20th arrondissements and outskirt neighborhoods like Bobigny and Montreuil, after discovering an abandoned cinema in the city’s trendy 12th district, production designer Anne Seibel (Midnight in Paris, Paris Can Wait) made an unintended move a touch closer to the city center. Besides letting her directly connect the club’s interior to scenes shot on the street, in the former theater she was able to design a fully acoustic club where the composer Glen Ballard’s sets could be recorded live.
“What was interesting was when there were 120 people there, they said oh, we’ll come back to this jazz club, because it’s really nice here,” the designer remembers. “For me, it was nice, because they didn’t see it was a set!” Sharing a love of jazz with Chazelle and many of the same cultural references from the genre, Seibel set about creating the director’s vision, “something like an old jazz club you’d have in underground New York, with a mix of French La Gare,” a real Parisian club referenced in the show. The result is a hyper-cool, barebones space that puts composer Ballard’s brilliant original work front and center.
At the jazz club on set in ‘The Eddy.’ Courtesy Lou Faulon/Netflix.
Outside the club, The Eddy introduces foreign viewers to areas of Paris historically less trammeled by film crews. Shooting in the cités, or Parisian suburbs known for their affordable housing blocks, the production worked with neighborhood locals to keep an eye on things in terms of safety. “For Americans, they always want to see the Eiffel Tower, they want to see Montmartre, they want to see the riverbank,” Seibel says. “We created the riverbank, yes, but we went on the other side of the nice Louvre area, the more populated side where there is this old warehouse, lots of graffiti, tags, things like that.”
Back in the city center, even for an American transplant and successful musician like Elliot, Paris rents are prohibitive—though he’s the only main character to get Haussmann-style digs, his square meterage in gentrifying Belleville is hardly grand, especially after 16-year-old Julie shows up in need of a bedroom. “The jazz musicians, they always struggle,” and the designer asked a contact from the jazz world “if he could help me by introducing me to the young jazz musicians of Paris, and if I could have some idea of how they live,” Seibel says. Among the show’s couple dozen characters, the only truly august home is that of Farid’s wealthy parents, whose lives are deeply inimical to their club-owning son and Amira (Leïla Bekhti), his long-suffering, pragmatic wife. These two plus their young children Seibel placed in a spacious if rundown house in the suburbs which, like a lot of The Eddy’s interiors, niftily walks the line between bohemian and derelict.
Amandla Stenberg in ‘The Eddy.’ Courtesy Lou Faulon/Netflix.
Thanks to Farid, Elliot’s woes get worse and worse, while the storylines of his sympathetic musicians reveal hard truths about the contemporary lives of Parisian creatives. But the real star here remains the jazz nights at the club, and when tragedy strikes the physical space, it delivers as much of a gut punch as any of the disasters and disappointments confronted by the show’s human characters. “When the music started playing, I felt I didn’t want to go,” Seibel says. Neither will The Eddy’s audience.
Featured image: Live music was recorded in the very club the scenes were set in ‘The Eddy.’ Courtesy Lou Faulon/Netflix.
Right before lockdown and social distancing began in earnest, we had a chance to talk with notable cinematographer Paul Cameron about his return to Westworld, for which he not only shot the pilot but returned to film the just-concluded season’s opening episode and to direct the fourth.
He kept singing the praises of John Grillo, his cinematographer for that fourth installment, “The Mother of Exiles,” replete with action-strewn set pieces, some mid-season character arc payoffs, and scenery from around the globe, as locations from Spain to Singapore were spliced together, along with Los Angeles itself, to make a near-future version of the City of Angels.
Grillo reckons he’s shot more Westworld installments than anyone else, and Cameron trusted his former camera assistant—they had both worked for director Michael Mann back in the day—to the degree that his approach as director was “to kind of allow John to voice his vision of blocking, lighting.”
Which was good, since Grillo, singing the praises of Cameron right back, had himself directed several episodes in the third season of the series Preacher, on which he’d earlier been DP.Grillo somewhat bemusedly calls Preacher his first “case” of directing, as if one wants to be careful whether to fall into it or not, and says “it was nerve-wracking; all the meetings you have to take, all the decisions you have to make. I had a newfound respect for the director’s job.”
As for working with Cameron on Westworld, “we knew the show, and yes, there’s definitely a gigantic shorthand that happens between him and myself.” Part of that occurred in the office where the show’s DPs work, often the current and incoming cinematographer overlapping. In this case, when Cameron and Grillo shared the space, each “basically facing each other, and working on our things,” when it came to the episode they’d be collaborating on, “it was easier to communicate, he would just say a few words and reference something, and I knew exactly what he was talking about, and how we could accomplish it.”
L-r: Evan Rachel Wood is Dolores and Tessa Thompson is Charlotte Hale in ‘Westworld,’ episode 4, “Mother of Exiles.” Photograph by John P. Johnson/HBO
Surprisingly, one of the things Grillo had already accomplished by then was shooting the first full season of the new TNT show Snowpiercer, which was completed at end of 2018. Even though that first season is unspooling now, in this locked-down May, it had already been renewed, and the second season was almost wrapped, just ahead of the virus. “We almost finished it, before we got shut down at the end of March,” he notes.
Grillo lives in Seattle, and it was his northwest locale that further drew him to the project, which he called “perfect for me, about a two-hour drive,” to the production’s Canadian soundstages.
But it wasn’t only the easy commute that drew him to this alternate apocalypse, separate from what he’d shot with Westworld’s robot rebellions. It was the train.
Or rather, it was the world found inside the train. For those unfamiliar with the premise, Snowpiercer is derived from a 70’s-era graphic novel later turned into a science-fiction thriller byAcademy Award-winning director Bong Joon Ho.
It’s like Noah’s Ark on rails. The only surviving humans, after an experimental attempt to reign in climate change spectacularly backfires, are on the train, all 1001 cars of it. A perpetual motion machine, it must always keep going. But so too do the class divisions, emphasized by “Director Bong,” as he’s known in Korea, in his film version. The impoverished “tailies’ live in near-starvation in the last few cars, contrasted with the idle, and wee bit sociopathic, elites in the train’s “first-class” section upfront.
As a producer on the series, Bong oversees an adaptation that has also grafted a police procedural to its survival-themed setup, with Tony-award winning Hamilton alum Daveed Diggs playing a former homicide detective who is provisionally sprung from the tail—as a revolution is brewing—to help find whoever dismembered a corpse that was left all-too-close to the tonier cars.
Both apocalypses, snowbound and robotic,share the presence of actor Ed Harris (who was in the Snowpiercer film), who Grillo describes as “very intense,” and always coming to the set in character, Westworld’s Man in Black included.
L-r: Jimmi Simpson, Ed Harris. Courtesy HBO
Grillo has his own way of coming to the set, after a lot of prep and research on the kinds of moods and visual textures he wants to bring to the filming.
Snowpiecer has a number of different themed cars; jails, schools, third and second classes, and a Cabaret-like cabaret car, for which he referenced a lot of “Art Deco paintings, with the pastel colors, and the lines,” which also influenced how he shot and lit the first-class sequences since “they also always dealt with high society.”
As for more overarching themes, he looked at Goya’s decidedly non-Deco “black paintings,” reflecting not only the artist’s bleak view of humanity as he worked mostly in murals on the walls of his house outside Madrid but because they were “very stark, very textured, with a very limited palette” with a kind of darkness they wanted to bring to Snowpiercer.
Katie McGuinness, Daveed Diggs Photograph by Justina Mintz
In Grillo’s case, however, his “brush” was a Sony VENICE camera, at least in the second season. The first batch of episodes was done with an early RED Epic Dragon, but he’d discovered the VENICE when Cameron brought it in for Westworld, and Grillo found his VFX supervisor on Snowpiercer also wanted the Sony for easier digit-wrangling in post.
The irony of discovering the latter camera on Westworld is that Cameron, and the producers, were adamant about keeping it a “filmed” show, the way he shot the pilot, so the VENICE was used sparingly, mostly to emphasize city exteriors at night.
And for Grillo, some of whose first DP experiences were at the frontier of the current digital age, shooting episodes of Mann’s HBO series Luck on one of the earliest ALEXAs, he’s been surprised to find himself still working in film. “I grew up loading mags, shooting film, andI thought sadly, that’s not going to happen again. And then Westworld came up!” And, he says, he had to “switch his brain back over,” to film, for the show.
He’ll be switching for awhile: Westworld’s been renewed for a fourth season, and there’s the end of Snowpiercer’s second season to finish. We’re all having a challenging time living through a single apocalypse. Just try capturing two of them.
Featured image: Thandie Newton is ‘Maeve’ in Westworld. Photograph by John P. Johnson/HBO
Actress Tamlyn Tomita was one of the four panelists in our first-ever virtual Film School Friday event this past April. Tomita appeared alongside (remotely, of course) Fear the Walking Dead and 9-1-1: Lone Starcinematographer Andrew Strahorn, Watchmen scribe Stacy Osei-Kuffour, and Game of Thrones and Westworld composer Brandon Campbell. The panel discussed, among many topics, the collaborative nature of film and television, what it takes to create a character (whether it’s on the page, on-screen, with the right lighting or in the notes), and how everyone is coping with productions being shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was the pandemic, of course, that was first and foremost on her mind when I spoke to her after.
“My loved ones are all healthy, safe, and staying at home,” Tomita says as we begin our conversation, as every interview has begun over the last two months, with questions about how people are coping during these uniquely bizarre and terrifying times. The previous weekend in New York, it seemed every person not working an essential job was outside, which is now an alarming sight. Tomita discussed a similar phenomenon in California. “Last weekend in Southern California there were 80,000 people on the beaches because it was 90 degrees. It’s the dilemma we’re faced with. It harkens back to the elementary school bomb or earthquake drills; we need to take communal action. I think that’s the kind of thing we all need to exercise now, as politely but efficiently as we can. We have to honor our rights as individual citizens, but also as a community.”
Tomita’s career, which began in 1985 on the set of The Karate Kid Part II—she played star Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio)’s love interest Kumiko—has taken place amidst the backdrop of slow but inexorable changes in the way Hollywood views and portrays actors and crew members with Asian heritage. Her resume includes leading and supporting roles in TV and film, including The Joy Luck Club (released in 1993 and focused on the lives of four Asian women, a film near and dear to her heart), Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle, CBS All Access’s recent, critically acclaimed Star Trek: Picard, and ABC’s The Good Doctor.
Talk of the pandemic and its resultant freezing effect on the entertainment industry led to a discussion of the industry’s changes in representation, especially in the last few years. She’s worked her way up in an industry that used to typecast Asian American actors, but also knows the deep influence Asian cultures and filmmakers have had on the industry, even if your average film lover is unaware.
“The American culture is pretty much a global country, think of Superman or Iron Man,” Tomita says. “Then think of Star Wars, which was inspired by Akira Kurosawa‘s storytelling. It’s the good versus the bad.” Kurosawa’s Rashomon and Seven Samurai, in particular, are huge touchstones for a legion of filmmakers. “These are universal stories. I’ve seen the doors of opportunity open for actors of Asian American and non-white heritage. It seems like the speed of those doors opening has been increasing over the last ten years. We’re getting to see Asian American actors celebrated alongside big stars, like Constance Wu next to Jennifer Lopez, and we’re seeing a lot less of the stereotypical depictions of Asian American characters. Look at Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever; the main character is this cool Valley chick whose story reflects my experience growing up, even though she’s Indian-American. I can only imagine this happens for every immigrant family when the kids are born or grow up in America. The truth of the matter is we fit into all these worlds, we have this wonderful fluidity from being the all-American girl to the all American Asian girl, or the African American or Latina or Native American girl. These are all universal stories.”
The universality of Tomita’s experience will be seen first next week; she’s featured in the Center for Asian American Media’s docu-series Asian Americans, which premieres on May 11 and 12 on PBS platforms in celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM), now officially proclaimed Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. The five-part series will examine what the 2010 U.S. Census identifies as the fastest-growing racial/ethnic group in the United States. The Center for Asian American Media is a partner of the Motion Picture Association.
During PBS’s ASIAN AMERICANS session at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour in Pasadena, CA on Friday, January 10, 2020, narrator Tamlyn Tomita (“The Good Doctor”); comedian and featured participant Hari Kondabolu; producer Renee Tajima- Peña; and producer/director Grace Lee discussed the new docu-series ASIAN AMERICANS. Photo Credit: Rahoul Ghose/PBS
Tomita has seen just how profound the changes in the industry have been first hand, hearing stories from the legendary Pat Morita, of Karate Kid fame. “It’s seeing the collective evolution of attitudes, I’m so happy that, for the most part, Asian American actors today aren’t saddled with the baggage of discrimination Asian Americans felt in the 50s and 60s,” she says. “I got to hear those stories from Pat Morita in Karate Kid, about Asian American actors being cast as the Charlie Chan or the Geisha. For the most part, many actors today are free of that kind of bitterness, and now, as we’re delving deeper into Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we’re going back to those stories. Look at Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood and the character of Anna May Wong (played by Michelle Krusiec), or how Rudolph Valentino was preceded by Sessue Hayakawa, the exotic lover of the 1910s and 1920s. Our history as Asian Americans is rich, and because I’ve been in this business since 1985, I’ve been the recipient of these stories personally, and I can see the progress we’ve made.”
One of Tomita’s recent performances, as the powerful Vulcan spymaster Commodore Oh on Star Trek: Picard, gave her particular joy. “Pun intended; it was out of this world,” she says. “The audaciousness of bringing back the second installment of a beloved franchise, and how respectfully they undertook the storytelling of a beloved character 30 years later, into the twilight of his life, was fantastic. And introducing a new set of characters on the crew, while integrating characters from other installments of the franchise. It was so graceful, the respect for the fan’s knowledge. I’m still flabbergasted I got to be a part of it.”
Tamlyn Tomita as Commodore Oh of the the CBS All Access series STAR TREK: PICARD. Photo Cr: Best Possible Screengrab/CBS 2019 CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Tomita navigated becoming a part of a world with a rabid fan base such as Star Trek by relying on skills honed over a successful, four-decade career. “The pressure of entering the Star Trek universe and all that encompasses; the language, the physical traits, the mannerisms, it’s an awesome task,” she says. “All I can do is whittle away all that pressure by carving out my character and distilling what she wants, how she’s going to proceed in each scene, and really concentrate on that and let everything fall away, including whether I was portraying a Vulcan correctly. And I was directed with a loving hand by the directors, and the tones and attitudes I could strike were done via a collaborative effort of a huge amount of people, all of whom really knew everything about this Star Trek world. It was a joyful privilege to be a part of.”
Tomita thinks of friends she’s worked with over the years, like Ming-Na Wen, whom she starred in The Joy Luck Club with. “I’ve known her since 1993 and she’s wanted to be in the Star Wars franchise from that day!” Tomita says. “She’s a total Star Wars geek, and now she’s in The Mandalorian! It’s such an exciting time to see the stories that are out there. Along with Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever, there’s Alice Wu’s The Half of It, Alex Yang’s Tigertail, and they keep on happening at such an accelerated pace. I think it’s a wondrous, fantastic time to be an actor of Asian American descent because we’re telling the stories with an Asian flavor, but they’re really American stories.”
Tom Cruise loves to do crazy stunts. Despite being one of Hollywood’s biggest stars for four decades now, Cruise has made it his mission (pun intended) to perform a lot of his own stunts, and many of them have been full-tilt bananas. Holding onto the side of a plane as it took off? Check. Free-climbed the tallest building in the world? Check. Piloted his own helicopter during a fantastically insane chase in the last Mission: Impossible movie? Yup. Cruise has been doing this for so long that his collaborator and ace stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood, who last worked with Cruise on Mission: Impossible – Fallout says of him, “You’ve got to know the man to be able to understand him. There’s nothing ego-driven about him at all. He just loves his job and wants to be good at it, so the audience is engaged and stays with the character.”
Which brings us to yesterday’s news about Cruise’s latest death-defying mission to keep the audience engaged—he wants to head into actual, literal outer space to film an action movie. Yes, this will be a cinematic first. Deadlinereports that Cruise is teaming up with Elon Musk’s Space X and the folks at NASA to film an action movie in space. While the details are scarce, Deadline reports that Cruise is in the early stages of planning, but it would be very Tom Cruise to be the first man to film a feature in outer space. There have been plenty of incredible films set in space (we particularly loved last year’s Ad Astra, starring Brad Pitt), and many even that have utilized zero gravity to film scenes, but none that have been actually shot in space.
This wouldn’t be part of the Mission: Impossible franchise, Deadline reports, and so far no studio is attached. But the man who has performed stunts 123 stories up in a skyscraper, done “halo jumps” from 25,000 feet up, and learned how to pilot a helicopter all to make the final action set piece in Fallout feel as real as possible is as safe a bet as any human alive to be able to pull this off.
Cruise was in the midst of filming Mission: Impossible – 7 when the COVID-19 pandemic halted production. For now, we can dream of a future when the pandemic is over, movie theaters are open, and Cruise is in outer space filming his next movie.
“Great stories have great characters, and the key to great characters is empathy,” says writer-director Joe Robert Cole, whose latest film, All Day and a Night, is now streaming on Netflix. “Every film, television show, or story that I work on, I approach from character first and let that lead the way.”
All Day and a Night is a young black man’s coming of age drama, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a crime narrative, a prison story, and a character study about how, when someone grows up in a violent gangland, they will inevitably, as either the criminal or the victim—or sometimes, both—become immersed in said violence, usually ending up behind bars, or worse, dead. What Cole does, as both writer and director, and which has scarcely been done before, is to tell the story from the point of view of Jahkor, the main character, who kicks off the film by murdering multiple people. But as the movie flip-flops between the past, showing Jahkor growing up in Oakland, including severe beatings by his father, and the present—Jahkor incarcerated—we begin to see why Jahkor has become the man he is, and why he’s chosen—or been forced to choose—to do the things he’s done.
L-r: Ashton Sanders is Jahkor Abraham Lincoln and Jeffrey Wright is James Daniel Lincoln: Photo Credit: Netflix / Matt Kennedy
For Cole, getting beneath Jahkor’s rough edges was the only way to effectively tell this story. “For me, trying to step away from my ego and get under the skin of a character allows me to more effectively get to the root of their hopes, dreams, desires, and frailties. Rarely are stories told from the perspective of a character like Jahkor (played by Moonlight‘s Ashton Sanders), and the journey I wanted to take the audience on was this journey of humanizing this character, this man we would often see as unredeemable. And to do that, my approach was to try to peel back the layers, to show that he’s the sum of his parts. Really getting people to walk in his shoes as much as possible.”
Cole, who lived in Oakland as a young man, drew on personal experiences in similar environments when crafting this story. “The film is inspired by things I’ve seen throughout my life and folks I’ve met and spent time with,” he says. “My grandmother used to say that our family didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in our mouths, so that was always a part of who I am. And then the final touchpoint for me, without getting into too much detail, was hearing about someone who had murdered someone who was close to me and finding myself feeling sorry for that person [who had committed the crime], based on the systemic conditions our society casts the poorest among us to live.”
He wrote All Day and a Night in three weeks. “The script goes more backward in time chronologically than the actual movie does,” he says. “So I was inspired by Memento, believe it or not, because of how it told a crime story going backward in time. You know, I had so much to say, it just poured out of me.”
Cole co-wrote Marvel’s game-changing Black Pantherwith director Ryan Coogler and was nominated for an Emmy for his work on American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson. He’s well-regarded for fleshing out characters who have been underrepresented or turned into caricatures in the past. As a kid playing make-believe, he even turned all of his favorite superheroes from white characters to black ones.
All Day And A Night – Ashton Sanders, Shakira Ja’nai Paye – Photo Credit: Netflix / Matt Kennedy
Before Black Panther and his other notable successes, Cole took part in Marvel’s esteemed writer’s program, which he says was “pivotal” in his career. “The way the program worked is this: they’d give you a character, you’d come up with an outline, then they’d greenlight you to the script.” He was honing his skills alongside actual executives, getting notes straight from the top. “I was learning what it takes to get a script to production, and learning wish fulfillment, and understanding how to put action beats in and have them be character moments. All of these kinds of things that help Marvel films be so successful, and as a writer that helps you to grow. I was able to have a wonderful experience and be able to make a living while doing that.”
Working alongside people like his Black Panther co-writer and director Ryan Coogler, who he says is “extremely humble,” has shaped the way he now is as a director, and how he crafts his sets.
“The people I’ve worked with at Marvel are successful, smart, good listeners, and good collaborators. And so you see the effect that has on the people around you, and how they rally to be a part of what those folks are working on. I know how I like to be treated as someone who’s working, so I try to be respectful and appreciate everyone I’m working with.”
To that end, the vibe while filming All Day and a Night was kept light. “This wasn’t a sad set where people were glum,” he says. “It was a dense, 33-day shoot, so people were working. We were rallying around this story. Everyone was pouring their hearts into what we were doing. And that expanded to the city of Oakland. They were extremely helpful and excited about us being there and telling this story. It was tough, but it was a feel-good experience.”
Featured image: All Day And A Night – BTS – Director Joe Robert Cole, Isaiah John, Ashton Sanders – Photo Credit: Netflix / Matt Kennedy
Perhaps the biggest surprise to come from yesterday’s official Star Wars May the 4th holiday was the news that Thor: Ragnarok writer/director Taika Waititi, fresh off winning an Oscar for his Jojo Rabbit script, is officially co-writing and directing a new Star Wars film. Waititi will be co-writing the script with Krysty Wilson-Cairns, who herself is coming off an Oscar nomination for co-writing 1917 with director Sam Mendes. This incredible news came alongside the welcome confirmation of a new, female-centered Star Wars series on Disney+ to be led by Russian Doll creator Leslye Headland. It was truly a magical May the 4th.
This galaxy-shaping news was all been confirmed by Lucasfilm in the midst of their May the 4th celebration, although much of the details are sparse. Waititi was already a part of the Star Wars universe, directing the finale episode in the first season of The Mandalorian, Lucasfilm’s first-ever live-action Star Wars series on Disney. He also voiced a major character in the series, offering his vocal chops for the bounty hunter droid IG-11. Good old IG-11 had a big role to play in protecting everyone’s favorite character, Baby Yoda.
Meanwhile, Headland’s show is already in development, with the talented writer/director/producer set to write, produce and showrun the new series for Disney+. Her Star Wars world will join The Mandalorian and the streaming service’s upcoming two shows, focused on Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor and Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi, respectively. So far, the little we’ve heard about Headland’s story is that it’s going be focused on female characters, will be based in an alternate timeline to the other Disney+ series, and will feature martial arts. That sounds like blue milk from heaven if you ask us.
It’s all good news for Star Wars fans, with the culmination of the 9-film, 40+ year Skywalker Saga officially over. You couldn’t ask for a more talented crop of creators to explore vastly different worlds within the galaxy far, far away than Waititi, Wilson-Cairns, and Headland.
Cinematographer Andrew Strahorn recently took part in our first ever Film School Friday event, in which he joined Stacy Osei-Kuffour, a writer on HBO’s stellar Watchmen, composer Brandon Campbell, whose work includes Game of Thrones, and actress Tamlyn Tomita, who recently starred as Commodore Oh on the critically acclaimed Star Trek: Picard. Strahorn himself had been a very busy man, lensing shows including FOX’s Lethal Weapon and 9-1-1: Lone Star and AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and production halted on TV series and films around the world. Like millions of other people in non-essential jobs, Strahorn suddenly found himself with time on his hands.
“What’s really interesting for me is, as the head of a department, you have a lot of people who work really closely with you,” Strahorn says of the sudden stoppage of work. “When you crew a job, you ultimately determine who the key grip, gaffer, and operators will be. These people become very close to you. On Lone Star, we did up to six months together, and it’s a very demanding show. You become very connected to these people, so it’s tough to see them asking about news from the studio. Lone Star is scheduled for 18 episodes for season two, and this is their livelihood. Everyone’s providing for their own families. This weighs heavily on me as the head of a department. I want these people to be safe. I want them to be okay.”
Strahorn in happier, busier times.
Originally from Australia, Strahorn always knew he wanted to work in the film and TV industry, so naturally, he gravitated towards the first job he could find behind a camera (of sorts)—he became a projectionist in Australia. That led to asking, and receiving, advice from cinematographer Don McAlpine. Eventually, Strahorn was being honored by his home country with an Australian Cinematographers Society award for his work on the film Undead. He eventually relocated to Los Angeles where he was steadily working, shooting everything from a firefighter’s life in Ryan Murphy‘s Lone Star to the survivors of a zombie plague in Fear the Walking Dead.
“For me, I’m a workaholic, so I’ve never had this stretch of time not working,” Strahorn says. “The first week off was great because I needed it, but since then, what’s interesting is the hours we do, you might end up pulling 80 hours a week, you spend a lot of time away from loved ones, so now I’m touching base with my people. I go for a walk every day, I’ve never seen the air clarity as I have now after 15-years in Los Angeles. We’re seeing things way more vivid then we’re used to.”
On the frozen industry front, Strahorn is philosophical about what’s to come. He stresses that the most important thing will be figuring out when it’s safe to slowly return to work, and then, how to work in a way that’s both cautious and efficient. “The industry will be back. What will it entail? I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a slow roll-out,” he says, “Like, okay, what are our bread and butter shows? Let’s roll out two or three of those on our backlot. Let’s see if there are any spikes in the next three weeks, and if not, they could roll out more shows. We all want to get back to work, but safety is a major concern. We need to all be safe in the environment we go back to. There’s going to be a lot learned in the next couple of weeks and hopefully, these growing pains will be beneficial.”
Strahorn at work.
One production that’s slowly getting back to shooting is in Starhorn’s home country—the venerable Aussie soap Neighbors is starting to film again. Strahorn says it could be a good template going forward.
“Their guidelines are very interesting,” he says. “Now scenes are written without characters touching, no intimate scenes, no scenes with characters within six feet of each other. The crew can wear gloves, facemasks, we can do our work, but the questions remain for our actors and costumers and makeup artists—how do they all operate in proximity to each other? We all want to get back to work, but what does it entail?”
Strahorn is curious whether, at least to start out, certain departments within a production will limit their teams. Will craft services become delivery drop-offs? Will studios need to lock in a set number of hours per day, rather than the usual, often verylong workdays?
“There’s a lot of smart people using their time trying to ascertain how this looks, how do we do this?” Strahorn says about the various production studios all over the world, and especially in Hollywood. “I think following Neighbors, and China is opening their film industry, hopefully, there will be communal lessons to be learned, what looks successful and what doesn’t.”
Strahorn is used to working on very large shows, often on location, where lots of people are together. This is especially true for an epic undertaking like AMC’s zombie extravaganza Fear the Walking Dead, the prequel spinoff to their long-running series The Walking Dead. This includes not only the large ensemble cast, but the special effects makeup artists who are necessary to create and maintain all those zombie extras, and the wardrobe people, and the folks doing touch-ups on actors makeup and costumes throughout a shoot, to say nothing of the art and production design departments, the PAs, and Strahorn’s crew of technicians and operators and gaffers and grips. “What will all this look like going forward?” he asks. No one quite knows right now.
Jenna Elfman as June – Fear the Walking Dead. Season 5, Episode 16: Photo Credit: Van Redin/AMC
“I think it’s going to be funny to go back to 12 or 14 hour days,” Strahorn says. “The muscle memory of getting back to that, it’s a heightened state of being. We’re kind in a heightened state right now, but it’s different from when you’re on set. This is frustration as opposed to adrenaline. I think a lot of people are finding out a lot of different ways of how you make the best of life. America is an amazing country, there are no two ways about it, and I feel privileged because I get to do what I want. My own country, which I love so much, I couldn’t have this same career. I think it’s going to be really interesting to make something positive out of this abundance of time. If your family members aren’t sick and you’re not sick, it’s not really asking that much from everyone. I’m in a different position than someone on my crew, financially. I was talking about work to my girlfriend, and she asked me to pause for three seconds and think about how lucky we are not to be sick. Whatever the new normal is, whatever that looks like, what steps we take moving forward will be important for everyone.”
Featured image: Andy Strahorn – Behind the scenes of 9-1-1: Lone Star
Ryan Murphy’s Netflix limited series Hollywood has all the glitz and glamor of 1940s Hollywood but with an alternate spin on history. We chat with production designer Matthew Ferguson about the challenge of getting the period details right and finding the balance between fact and fiction. The show debuted this past May 1 on Netflix.
Murphy and his team envision an alternative history of Hollywood in 1947, with a huge ensemble headed by David Corenswet as a young actor who works as a gigolo before getting his big break. He’s joined by a black screenwriter/prostitute (Jeremy Pope), a studio boss’s bombastic wife (a glorious Patti LuPone), a talented black actress (Lauren Harrier), a half-Filipino director (Darren Criss), and a bi-sexual former actor (Dylan McDermot) who runs a drive-up brothel/gas station staffed by handsome young men. Then there’s a fresh-faced Rock Hudson (played by Jake Picking) and his gay manager (Jim Parsons). The show imagines a world in which these people get to remake Hollywood from the inside out.
What was the brief from Ryan for Hollywood?
Well, when we first met we talked about the overall storyline. It would involve the studio system, a bunch of young filmmakers who would be making the movie of Peg Entwistle [the young actor who killed herself by jumping off the Hollywood sign in the 1930s]. That’s where it started. And I recall reading about Peg Entwistle in a book called Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger. So we went from there and had a couple of production meetings at the beginning with all the department heads and talked about the permanent sets and the color palette. Ryan was very specific about the tone and color that he wanted to see and use in the series.
The cast of Hollywood. Photo by Saeed Adyan/Netflix.
And he has a very distinctive style. Do you find it easier to work with someone who really knows what they want?
Absolutely. It makes it much easier to work with someone like that and then you’re able to move forward and hopefully if you’re on the right page. It makes for a very streamlined process. And I love glamour!
How would you describe the look of the show?
The color palette is that Hollywood sheen, that Golden Age of Hollywood. We use these harvest colors, and golden yellows, butterscotch, tans, and other browns. They were also very popular colors after WWII. These colors were still very common- cadet khaki and Normandy sand, and colors like that. Then we started to bring in the primary colors. And so that’s the tone, we went for those colors and went from there.
What are the challenges of working on a period piece? And this is a bit of an interesting one because it’s a mix of a real and imagined past. What’s your approach to that?
The challenges are certainly getting the period correct in the build that we did. We had quite a few builds on stage – at one point we had three. With the builds, we can control what we bring in, the fixtures, the hardware, and we can keep with the period. But when we would go out on location there were quite a few challenges, because obviously we’re living in 2020, so there were locations that couldn’t work because there were just too many contemporary elements that we couldn’t get past. But in saying that, LA has such a great variety of architecture that we were able to find many great locations that we could use and that were period correct.
A lot of the scenes are set at Ace Pictures, which is a fictional studio. Did you base that on a real studio from the period?
During the Golden Age of Hollywood, there was a monopoly, there were five major studios that controlled Hollywood. MGM, Paramount, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, and RKO. So we based our studio on RKO and Paramount, and I would say more on Paramount. We shot the exteriors at Paramount Studios in the backlot. And the interiors we built. The commissary was based on the commissary at Paramount during that time.
That gives you a bit more freedom as well because you can pick and choose a little bit?
Yes, absolutely. We did a lot of research and the commissaries at Warner Bros., MGM, and Paramount and we landed on Paramount being the best one for our set. It was great. [Studio head] Ace Amberg’s office was loosely based on Jerry Mayer’s office, Louis B. Mayer’s nephew, who ran the studio. So we modeled it after that.
For someone who was already into that period and the history of Hollywood. It must have been hard to stop doing the research?
We did! Yes. We had two fantastic researchers and I had a lot of books on Hollywood and the history of film, so I brought all of those and it was a lot of fun to do the research.
The show has been described by Ryan as ‘a love letter to the Golden Age of Tinseltown’. How did that sentiment inform your work?
It was an uplifting show and you could feel that on the set. There are obviously some dark scenes but I think we definitely have this technicolor bright and warm feeling to the show and I think it just carried with all of us. We just really enjoyed working on it.
You create a lot of sets within sets, like the Hollywood sign and that sort of thing. Was it interesting to work out how they would have created sets during that 1940s period compared to now?
Yes. Absolutely. I worked very closely with my set decorator Melissa Licht and my art director Mark Taylor on all the sets. When we were shooting the scenes with Mira Sorvino, it was great to kind of build the set-piece and then build outside the stage and bring in all the sort of period equipment. Then once our actors and extras came in dressed in costume, it was like we were making a 1940s film. A movie within a movie. It was almost like we’d gone back in time. It was a lot of fun.
Did you have any trouble sourcing that equipment? Was that a challenge?
It was a challenge. Fortunately, in LA there are quite a few vendors and prop houses that cater to the film industry but there were three other shows going on at the same time set in a similar period.
So you had to fight for props?
Yes. We did. And there was one show, in particular, a movie that was made in a very similar period and we had to fight for the pieces. But we made it work. At times it was very challenging.
What would you say the biggest challenge of the project was for you?
I would say the schedule, to be honest. Wanting to be able to deliver beautiful sets on time. We had quite a few builds. Mark, our art director, was so instrumental and creative in laying out the sets on stage so they would fit. At one point you could almost reach your hand out of the Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow and grab a salt and pepper shaker off of Jack and Henrietta’s dining room table. The magic of Hollywood is that you don’t know that! So that was challenging. But we did it. And everyone worked really hard.
And what about a highlight?
Oh god. It’s going to sound corny, but the whole thing. I think to be able to see the sets coming to fruition and having the actors all in there, looking at the monitor and seeing everything come together. It’s very exciting. So that was a highlight. Recreating Schwab’s [the legendary Hollywood drugstore] was a huge challenge and that was a highlight. The real Schwab’s has such a great backstory to it, so to be able to recreate that… and we worked very hard to be able to really recreate it, to a tee. That was a highlight.
Happy Star Wars Day, folks, and May the 4th be with you. Today is the first day in history that you can now stream all 9 films in the Skywalker Saga in one place—Disney+. You may also want to brush up on what makes May the 4th a Star Wars holiday. A quick history lesson: the apocryphal story is that the first reference came on May 4, 1979, the day Margaret Thatcher became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The story goes that the Conservatives, her political party, took out an ad in the London Evening News that read “May the Fourth Be with You, Maggie. Congratulations.” Yet this advertisement, as far as we can tell, has never resurfaced online. If you can find a photo of it, please share it.
Now, let’s take a brief tour of what you can enjoy on this high galactic holiday.
The Complete Skywalker Saga on Disney+
It’s all here now. Every film, from the first movie in George Lucas’s game-changing original Star Wars trilogy, 1977’s A New Hope, through the prequels and right on to J.J. Abrams’ The Rise of Skywalker. At long last, you can watch the entire, epic sweep of cinematic history from start to finish.
Take a First Look at Star Wars Legacy Concept Art
“It all started with two droids rolling through an alien desert, a concept art painting by Ralph McQuarrie that brought George Lucas’s vision for Star Wars into sharp focus,” StarWars.comwrites. Starting today, Disney+ will be showcasing the work of concept artists like McQuarrie. So, if you wanted to check out The Empire Strikes Back, for example, you’ll be seeing incredible pieces like this from McQuarrie and more on Disney+’s page:
So while you practice social distancing and do your part to help our healthcare workers and essential employees stay as safe as possible during these unprecedented times, May the 4th be with you!
Featured image: John Boyega is Finn, Joonas Suotamo is Chewbacca, Daisy Ridley is Rey and Oscar Isaac is Poe Dameron in STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER.
Writer-producer Ryan Murphy and his team envision an outrageously optimistic alternative history of the movie business in 1947 via their new show Hollywood. Debuting May 1 on Netflix, the period melodrama boasts a huge ensemble headed by David Corenswet as a fresh-faced actor who works as a gigolo before getting his big break. Along the way, he meets a black screenwriter/prostitute (Jeremy Pope), the voracious wife of a studio boss (Patti LuPone), a black actress (Lauren Harrier), a half-Filipino director (Darren Criss), a bi-sexual former actor (Dylan McDermot) who runs a drive-up brothel/gas station staffed by dapper young men, a rookie Rock Hudson (played by Jake Picking) and his gay manager (Jim Parsons). Overcoming racism and homophobia, the characters claim victory when their very first movie, about actress Peg Entwistle’s death jump from the Hollywood sign, earns Academy Award recognition.
Like Murphy’s previous love letter to Old Hollywood glamor Feud: Bette and Joan, this seven-episode series presents its stars in period-perfect clothes. But this time around, eye-popping outfits also offer audiences nostalgic respite from pandemic-wracked reality. Costume designer Sarah Evelyn and five-time Emmy winner Lou Eyrich, Ryan’s longtime lieutenant who oversees costumes on all of his projects, drill into the inspirations behind Hollywood‘s sumptuous clothing.
The color combinations in your Hollywood outfits are pretty sensational. How did you develop the palette?
SARAH: The overall palette came from Ryan.
LOU: He was very specific about the colors being harvest-toned, but he also wanted some of the men in pink or corals. In Darren’s case, Sarah would show him boards at the fittings, and Ryan would say, “I love this but let’s bring out more pink for him.” It gets that specific.
What kind of research did you do in order to bring back post-War II fashion?
SARAH: Glamor photographer George Hurrell was one of our references, along with books like Jean Howard’s Hollywood. We looked at catalogs from 1945-47, studied Vogue and Esquire magazines from the period, and hired fashion historian Raissa Bretaña. She accessed some incredible images to help us get the period just right.
LOU: We also watched a ton of movies from the forties. We’d take screengrabs of the films and plaster the walls of our office and fitting rooms with these images, just so we could absorb the looks from that period.
How did you differentiate individual characters through their costumes, starting with Patti LuPone larger-than-life Avis?
SARAH: Patti’s just drama drama drama all the way so we took Old Hollywood icons Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck as inspiration. Her color tones were jewel and rust. We looked at fashion designer Adrian to arrive at Avis’ silhouette. Patty wears a costume really well so she can handle the big shoulders; she can handle the dramatic hat.
Those hats were so over the top. You never see that kind of thing in 2020.
SARAH: In the forties, everybody wore hats. Dressing Avis, I looked at the hats Katherine Hepburn wore in Adam’s Rib, with Spencer Tracy. Holland Taylor’s character [studio casting director Ellen Kincaid] is more refined, so we put her in a feminized fedora kind of thing, while [actress character] Camille [Laura Harrier] wears a cute little beret, which is both very 1940s and also kind of modern. The hats really ran the gamut.
Claire, played by Samara Weaving, dresses in the kind of form-fitting skirts that starlets would have worn in the late forties?
SARAH: Ryan gave us Veronica Lake and young Marilyn Monroe as references for Claire’s character. Samara’s got the perfect body for those silhouettes and she fits the vintage clothes so well, it was a joy to dress her.
Darren Criss portrayed a serial killer in Versace but here, he’s this idealistic young filmmaker Raymond Ansley.
SARAH: Darren’s this All American guy who radiates star power, so he could pull off a white short sleeve shirt and a high-waisted pant. We referenced a picture of James Dean where he’s wearing this black textured polo with black high-waisted pants with a white belt.
LOU: High contrast.
SARAH: Ryan liked that [photo] as our jumping-off point, so we built on that.
Rock Hudson’s boyfriend Archie, played by Jeremy Pope, cuts a colorful figure as the black screenwriter who turns tricks while he’s waiting for his big break.
SARAH: We thought of Archie as our jazz baby.
LOU: Being an African American in the forties, Archie’s not allowed to go where the white people go.
SARAH: But he’s a real artist, so Archie could break the rules and look really good.
LOU: We’d put him in a striped pant with a checked vest and plaid shirt, or a beautiful goldenrod collared shirt, a green-and-grey checked vest, brown and cream striped pants and two-toned spectator shoes.
Jim Parsons’ gay agent Jim Wilson grooms his client, the young Rock Hudson, to play the role of a straight leading man.
SARAH. In our show, Rock’s this fresh-faced farm boy and a little less sophisticated than Jake. We gave him 1940’s pullovers and khakis and 1940s tennis shoe to show that Rock was brand new to Hollywood.
Hollywood portrays famous people including Vivien Leigh, Noel Coward, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Hattie McDaniel. You also dressed Michelle Krusiec as Anna May Wong, who lost the starring role of the Asian-American heroine of The Good Earth to white actress Luise Rainer.
SARAH: Anna May Wong never really got her shot, so in our show, she’s—I don’t want to say washed-up—but she’s been hit hard by life, so the clothes needed to show how she might have lost something of herself in the thirties. Ryan said “Make it timeless but faded” and we figured it out from there, with a purple dressing gown made from beautiful velvet, and her gold dressing gown was satin.
The sheer quantity of period clothes featured the opening scene alone, where you’ve got about 150 extras in spread collar shirts and pleated pants, must have posed a big challenge. How did you find all that vintage stuff?
SARAH: We went to vendors’ markets, storage units, and even had people sending in boxes from Ohio and Florida. There were five other shows set in the same period while we were in production, so there was a definite race to figure out who had the forties stock.
You also made costumes from scratch?
SARAH: Probably 90 percent of Avis’ costumes were made, thanks to Joanne Mills, our tailor, cutter, fitter, everything. She loved pumping out forties dresses and shirts. Joanne would even go home at night and knit things while watching TV because we had trouble finding good knitwear from that period.
Your costumes evoke an era of great elegance that’s also riddled with ugly prejudice. What’s your takeaway from the themes of Hollywood?
LOU: I was thrilled to be part of a story that shines a light on people who had to live their lives having to hide who they really were.
Of course, there’s been a lot of progress since 1947.
SARAH: But things haven’t changed enough. I love the optimism of this show because I think it’s important to keep putting it out there: things have to change. Things should change.
Doctor Grace Augustine is back. Well, okay, not entirely. The great Sigourney Weaver is back for James Cameron’s Avatar 2, despite her character dying in Cameron’s 2009 original Avatar. Weaver was one of the marquee names assembled for the ever-ambitious director’s massive Avatar sequels, we just don’t know in what role. Now, a new image from producer Jon Landau shows Weaver back in the saddle, so to speak, standing alongside Landau and fellow Avatar actor Joel David Moore, who plays Norm Spellman in the film.
We don’t know how, exactly, Weaver fits into the Avatar sequels. The last time we left her, she’d died and been made a part of the Tree of Souls on the distant, verdant planet of Pandora. Weaver’s already confirmed in previous interviews that she’s not reprising her original role, so perhaps she’s now some kind of tree spirit, or Grace’s evil twin, or something else entirely!
Check out the photo here:
From the set of the Avatar sequels: Producer Jon Landau, Sigourney Weaver, and Joel David Moore revisited the Site 26 Shack to shoot scenes for the new films.
Avatar 2 is still slated for a December 17, 2021 release date. Like every other major production that was filming recently, we know that production on the sequels, which was taking place in New Zealand, was suspended in mid-March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, that release date is still probably not set in stone. Cameron and his crew have been working on four sequels, with Avatar 2 and 3 initially set to finish production this spring. Obviously, that production schedule has been shifted.
Whenever Avatar 2 finally does premiere, it’ll be a decade-plus since we last visited with the Na’vi tribe of Pandora. Joining Weaver and Joel David Moore are returning stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Dileep Rao, Stephen Lang, and Matt Gerald. New cast members include Kate Winslet, Edie Falco, Michelle Yeoh, Vin Diesel, Jemaine Clement, and Oona Chaplin.
Featured image: Concept art for James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ sequels. Courtesy 20th Century Fox/Walt Disney Studios
Seven weeks ago, costumer Nickolaus Brown expected he’d be spending this spring in Atlanta outfitting Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds for their Netflix action flick Red Notice. Instead, he’s now hunched over a sewing machine in his Los Angeles home, making masks for hospital workers. On a recent afternoon, Brown explained, “I’ve done eight so far and I’ve got twelve more to go, so it’s going to be twenty by the end of the day.”
Brown, who serves as president of the Motion Picture Costumers Union, teamed up in April with Costume Design Guild president Brigitte Romanov and 250 movie artisans to sew masks for nurses, doctors, senior citizens, grocery workers, homeless people and other pandemic front liners desperate for protection from the COVID-19 virus. Brown got the idea for orchestrating a collective helping hand after he returned to L.A. from Georgia on a nearly-empty flight following the shutdown of Red Notice.“When you have no job, it’s good to have a job,” he says. “Setting up a supply chain, orchestrating the fabric, the trim, the money—it’s a lot, but in a way, what we’re doing now is very much what we do as costumers: we solve problems.”
Brown took a break from toiling on his beloved 1997 Bernina sewing machine to explain how he and his colleagues set up a sheltering-in-place production pipeline that has so far provided 16,000 masks for those in need of high-quality protection.
Organizing the talent
“The first plea for personal protective equipment came from a hospital in Seattle,” Brown recalls. “They had trouble replacing their PPE, so costumers started talking about this on social media and texting me. The collective consciousness was all about ‘We’re not working right now, so how can we help?’ But everybody was kind of doing their own thing and I was like, ‘Okay somebody’s got to organize this.’ So I posted this call to arms on Facebook: ‘Hey if you want to make face masks, let me know and I’ll put you on the list.”
Collecting the material
Next, Brown went to work amassing the raw materials. “In the costuming world, jobs are very compartmentalized,” Brown explains. “I reached out to Amelia McKinney (costumer on, most recently, Ford V. Ferrari), whose job it is to source and purchase fabrics, notions, and bindings. She called around and got Kagan Trim Center to donate elastic.” Brown himself visited Ragfinders of America in downtown L.A. “The guy who runs it, Ruben, buys fabric leftovers from all over the place. I asked if he could donate material for the project.” The veteran “rag finder” responded with 600 yards of fabric. “We blew through that in a week so I went back to the well, called Ruben, and got another 1400 yards.” Brown then called on La Cienega Studio Cleaners, which normally services shows filmed in and around L.A. “It was a huge job,” Brown says, “But they agreed to clean and press everything for free.”
Coordinating the design
“The challenge when we started is that 705 [Motion Pictures Costumers] had one pattern and 892 [Costume Designers Guild] had a different pattern,” Brown says. “That created confusion.” To get all the crafters on the same design page, David Matwijkow [Thor: Ragnarok] came up with a new pattern better suited to all skill levels. Then came Marilyn Madsen, a costume manufacturing foreperson, and Dorothy Bulac Eriksen, a key specialty costumer, who had just finished Star Trek: Picard. “They perfected the pattern and we wrote out step by step instructions,” Brown says. “Then costumer Augusta Avallone [Chuck] made a tutorial video. We released everything on the same day, which almost killed me. But it was amazing.”
Distributing the kits
Brown and his team assembled individual mask kits, which included one yard of woven cotton, a yard of the poly-woven jersey, elastic bands, and the pattern. To maintain a safe social distance, the kits were distributed at a drive-through station at the Costume Designers Guild’s Burbank headquarters. “We’d ask how many kits and just drop them in the car,” Brown says. “Then when the volunteers were done making the masks, they could just drop them off in these little bins at the Guild.”
Making the upgrade
While the initial batch of masks achieved the top-rated “N95” level of filtering efficiency, Brown learned from his sister about an even more effective material.“She sent me this article by an anesthesiologist who wrote about how this fabric that wraps sterilized surgical instruments could be used to make face masks,” Brown recalls. “This material called Halyard has a 97 to 99 percent efficiency rate. I contacted IATSE [International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees] and they reached out to UCLA Health, who manages our health care. Over the next two weeks, I made a lot of prototypes and they settled on a one-size-fits-all design. So now we’re producing masks for UCLA that go to 185 different clinics and hospitals all over Los Angeles.
Savoring the solidarity
The costumers’ ongoing mask initiative has now expanded to include members of the Art Directors Guild, the Theatrical Wardrobe Union, and Local 44, which represents prop masters and other below the line crew members. “We’ve become this huge community of people working together toward the same goal,” Brown says. “But I’m not going to lie: it’s been exhausting. The great thing is that ten years from now when I look back on this [pandemic], it’s the thank you card from a Louisiana hospital or the beautiful letter from a nurse in New York who got one of our masks—that’s what I’ll remember, not the hardships.”
Featured image: CULVER CITY, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 31: An employee from the Tieks by Gavrieli shoe company makes masks to be donated to hospitals amid the coronavirus pandemic on March 31, 2020 in Culver City, California. The Los Angeles-based shoemaker, after learning of a need for masks in hospitals during the battle against COVID-19, has retrained employees to make the masks from sewing machines and launched an online campaign teaching people how to make the masks for donation at home. The cotton masks are intended for use by medical workers in non-coronavirus situations with more than 30,000 masks from the online campaign #SewTogether already on the way to hospitals, according to the company. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
The film community has been pitching in to help the healthcare industry deal with the spread of COVID-19, and now the New York Timesreports a new way in which filmmakers have stepped up; helping New York City find hospital space.
There are few folks who know a given city or area better than location scouts, who have a granular understanding of everything from storefronts to parks, city blocks to the perfect stretch of country road. Not only are location scouts experts at the topography and geography of a given area, but they also know how to potentially access these locations quickly. We’ve interviewed location scouts on huge films, from Elizabeth Banks’reboot of Charlie’s Angelsto The Girl in the Spider Webabout how they do their work, yet now, with productions currently shut down to due to the pandemic, location scouts like New York-based Jennifer Lyne have turned their talents towards helping hospitals find space.
The Times Jane Margolies spoke with Lyne, whose work included the New York-shot HBO series Boardwalk Empire, about working with Greater New York Hospital Association’s task force to find buildings in the city for hospital overflow. Lyne and other location scouts volunteered.
The task force included engineers, architects, and other experts in designing and building healthcare facilities. Although those folks were well seasoned in the longterm planning and execution required to build such facilities, Lyne and her fellow location scouts had skills the task force needed, including the ability to quickly finding workable sites and obtaining the necessary permissions. Speed is crucial when battling a pandemic that moves from person to person, invisibly, and with devastating swiftness.
The Times Margolies writes about one of Lyne’s fellow scouts, Susan Pazos, who was able to upload images of Victory Memorial Hospital, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, as a potential site. She’d already been there for a TV series called FBI. Ultimately, hospitals in New York have been able to absorb more COVID-19 patients than initially expected, and the task force’s findings will be crucial if and when a second wave of the virus hits. Lyne told Margolies it was “the ultimate scout.”
We recommend you read Margolies’ entire piece in the Times, which spotlights a few of the New Yorkers who have used their skills—and acquired new ones—to help in these unprecedented times.
Here’s more of our coverage on how COVID-19 is affecting the entertainment industry, and how the entertainment industry is trying to do their part to help:
Featured image: NEW YORK, NEW YORK – APRIL 28: A medical worker walks while wearing a protective mask during the coronavirus pandemic on April 28, 2020 in New York City. COVID-19 has spread to most countries around the world, claiming over 217,000 lives with over 3.1 million infections reported. (Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images)
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has voted to allow films that did not have a theatrical run this year to be eligible for Oscars until further notice. The Academy is responding to the unprecedented shutdown of movie theaters due to the coronavirus pandemic in order to flatten the curve of the spread, with many huge film release dates moved out 2020 completely. Considering the reality of the current state of the film industry, thinking about the 2021 Academy Awards ceremony required imagining a very bizarre scenario in which, if the old rules applied, there would be a fraction of the usual number of films eligible to compete. Thankfully, and well in advance, the Academy has changed course.
The streaming powerhouse Netflix, along with Amazon, have previously needed to make sure their marquee films had theatrical runs of at least seven days in order to qualify for a potential Oscar. There was a lot of conversation last year around Martin Scorsese’s epic The Irishman and how long it would play in theaters—the film even spurred Netflix to arrange a historic Broadway theater, the Belasco, to show the film.
The Academy changing the rules for this year’s broadcast was likely inevitable. Here’s how they worded their decision on the official Oscars website:
Until further notice, and for the 93rd Awards year only, films that had a previously planned theatrical release but are initially made available on a commercial streaming or VOD service may qualify in the Best Picture, general entry and specialty categories for the 93rd Academy Awards under these provisions: 1) The film must be made available on the secure Academy Screening Room member-only streaming site within 60 days of the film’s streaming or VOD release; 2) The film must meet all other eligibility requirements.
These rules will no longer apply once its safe enough for movie theaters to reopen. The films that are released after this date will need to comply with the Academy’s original theatrical rules. For now, however, while those us without essential jobs are at home and films are going directly to digital, the Academy is doing the right thing by adapting, like the rest of us, to these surreal times.
Featured image: HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 09: In this handout photo provided by A.M.P.A.S. Oscars statuettes are on display backstage during the 92nd Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre on February 09, 2020 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Matt Petit – Handout/A.M.P.A.S. via Getty Images)
If you’re a Star Wars fan who hasn’t yet made the leap to their animated series, last Friday’s episode of Star Wars: The Clone Warsmight be the thing that finally gets you to give it a chance. The episode, “The Phantom Apprentice,” contained—truly—one of the greatest lightsaber duels in Star Wars history. The clash was between Clone Wars heroine Ahsoka Tano and everyone’s favorite horned villain, Maul. The setting was Mandalore (the planet that gives The Mandalorian its title), and the stakes were, well, huge. A behind-the-scenes video, with commentary from executive producer and supervising director Dave Filoni, will give you all the details you need on how this epic battle came to be.
For The Clone Wars fans, the duel between Tano and Maul has been a long time coming and was, therefore, a big deal. Filoni tapped none other than Ray Park, the man who played Maul in both George Lucas’s The Phantom Menace and briefly in Solo: A Star Wars Story. (In the series, Maul is voiced by Sam Witwer.) Utilizing performance capture technology, Park embodied the animated Maul for the climactic battle, but he had stiff competition for best movies from his counterpart. That would be performer Lauren Mary Kim, took on the task of giving Ahsoka those incredible moves. Kim is a veteran stunt performer, having worked on Furious 7, Westworld, Luke Cage, and a ton of video games. (Ahsoka is voiced by Ashley Eckstein in the series.)
Check out the video here:
The final season of The Clone Wars began streaming on Disney+ on February 21, from the aforementioned Dave Filoni (who also directs and produces on Disney+’s wildly popular The Mandalorian). The new episodes in the final season have been building upon the plots in the original series while hurtling towards the events in George Lucas’s film Star Wars: The Revenge of the Sith.
The series stars Matt Lanter as Anakin Skywalker, Ashley Eckstein as Ahsoka Tano, Dee Bradley Baker as Captain Rex and the clone troopers, James Arnold Taylor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Katee Sackhoff as Bo-Katan, and Sam Witwer as Maul.
The next episode of The Clone Wars arrives on May 1, 2020. And on that special Star Wars holiday May the 4th, the Complete Skywalker Saga comes to the streaming service, marking the first time ever you’ll be able to stream all 9 films, from A New Hope to The Rise of Skywalker.
Featured image: Ahsoka Tano and Maul in ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars.’ Courtesy Disney+
Yearning, acceptance, identity, and female friendship and empowerment: They are all integral themes of director Martha Stephens’ coming-of-age tale, To the Stars. The film, which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, is available for digital download now.
Set in 1960s rural Oklahoma, To The Stars features Kara Hayward (Moonrise Kingdom) and Liana Liberato (If I Stay) as Iris and Maggie, respectively, two very different teens who forge a close friendship under the scrutiny of their small farming town. Malin Akerman, Tony Hale, and Jordana Spiro co-star.
The movie’s theatrical run was pulled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a change of schedule that is indicative of the virus’s wide-reaching impact on the entertainment industry. “As far as immediate things, that’s had the most direct impact on me so far,” remarks Stephens of the cancellation. “And then beyond that, I would say just projects are slowing down. I’m not getting emailed back as fast. It’s a weird limbo that feels like that time between Christmas and New Year’s where people aren’t really sure [of] … what’s appropriate right now.”
Director Martha Stephens.
Here, she talks to The Credits about the script, casting and finding the perfect pond. This interview has been condensed and edited.
To the Stars has received some noteworthy accolades. It’s been compared to The Last Picture Show and described as being “so delicate its full impact isn’t fully absorbed until the end.” Does it feel surreal to receive such notices?
It’s a dream. The Last Picture Show’s influence on this movie and to be in the same sentence with a Peter Bogdanovich film is pretty awesome. But it was a collective effort, so while I am pleased that this film that I directed is getting these accolades, I’m also like that’s awesome for Shannon Bradley-Colleary, my writer, she deserves that. And my DP, Andrew Reed, he’s incredible, I’m so glad people are taking notice of his beautiful work.
Kara Hayward is Iris Deerborne in ‘To The Stars.’ Courtesy Samuel Goldwyn Films.
I read this filmholds deep personal meaning for you. Can you elaborate a bit?
Yeah, I grew up in a farming community in Appalachian Kentucky, so I know these people, I know this world. I understand how women are sometimes repressed in these places and I also have a lot of love and empathy as well. People are complicated and try to do their best with what they’ve been taught, but yet still make mistakes. I saw a lot of that in the story. And I also just have a real love for mid-century aesthetics and music and clothes and stuff. I feel like maybe I lived a past life [laughs] during that time. But I’m deeply drawn to it. The 50s and 60s pop music is pretty much all I listen to.
The film marks Shannon’s screenwriting debut. Have you worked with new screenwriters before? And what was your first impression of her screenplay?
This is my first time working with someone else’s script. Shannon has sold quite a few things that just never were made, so actually she’s kind of a veteran in a lot of ways. She’s written a lot of scripts and she’s really, really kind and collaborative and professional, so she was a dream for me to work with because I hadn’t really had this kind of relationship before. I thought when I read her script that it was such a lovely, tender story and it was so earnest, and I felt like there’s a lack of that kind of movie being made these days unless it’s like a faith-based film. So I thought it was really refreshing that there’s this movie that deals with sexuality and stuff, but it also has a tender innocence. It feels in line with Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias and My Girl — I grew up on those movies.
L-r: Kara Hayward is Iris Deerborne and Liana Liberato is Maggie Richmond in ‘To The Stars.’ Courtesy Samuel Goldwyn Films.
You’re experienced in filming with micro-budgets. How did your budget for this film compare?
It was substantially more, but still very much an indie. My previous film, Land Ho!, we made for $300,000. So this was more than that, but still very much like a very small film.
Casting the right actresses to play your leads, Iris and Maggie, I would imagine was paramount to this project. Tell me about this process.
When I read the script, I immediately thought of Kara Hayward. I was familiar with her — Moonrise Kingdom was her breakout role — and her face, it’s like you’re so drawn into her and her inner world. So much of Iris is silent, so you needed someone that with their face could do so much. I think Kara can convey so much without having to say anything. We offered the role to her on the spot, we didn’t ask her to read or anything. And then the search for Maggie was to find someone that would compliment Kara. I talked to quite a few actors for Maggie, and Liana, from her reel alone, I knew she was Maggie. She was Maggie, to me, personified. She just looked like Maggie, acted like Maggie.
There’s a pond that figures centrally to the story, almost like another character. What was it about the setting that made it the perfect location?
Well, we ended up having to shoot the pond scenes three months later than the rest of the film, because we were shooting in March and it was unseasonably cold in Oklahoma. And even though we had these plans to warm and heat the pond and make it comfortable, it just never got warm enough, so we had to push it until June. I was then editing in Arkansas, and so I needed to find a location on that side of Oklahoma, which is on the opposite side where we shot. So we had to scrap the pond we had originally, and on my weekends from editing I was location scouting in eastern Oklahoma for this pond. When we found it, I was like this looks like something from a dream. It feels almost like it was created for the movie.
What do you hope audiences will take away from To the Stars?
I hope that young girls will find it and they’ll see themselves in the characters and it’ll be something that they want to watch repeatedly, at slumber parties and stuff, just like the movies I had. I just hope it catches the hearts of some girls out there.
Are you prepared for just an astonishing amount of juicy behind-the-scenes videos and photos from Avengers: Endgame? The Russo Brothers have prepared an epic meal for you, either way, celebrating the fact that it was a year and two days ago that their historic film came out. Yes, a year ago might as well have been a lifetime ago considering everything that’s happened since, which is what makes this trip down time-traveling, Thanos-fighting memory lane so bittersweet.
To celebrate the anniversary, the Russos flooded the zone with brand new behind-the-scene videos and photos on Twitter. You’ll see everything from Brie Larson’s first day ever as Captain Marvel (greeted by Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, no less) to Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans last days as Iron Man and Captain America, respectively.
So sit back, relax, and take a trip into the deep past (again, one year ago) when it seemed the entire world was talking about a single film:
We’ve got some more Russo family cameo’s here. That’s Joe’s daughter, Lia, Anth’s son, Julian, and our nephew, Augie. Lia loved the memes of her dabbing when this first came out… well, maybe love is a strong word… #AvengersAssemblepic.twitter.com/ggT5LBVE0M
Here we are getting ready to shoot an Asgard scene at the stately cathedral in Durham. We had to wait for the choir rehearsal to finish… #AvengersAssemblepic.twitter.com/klCBJuJAMj
This was a very difficult scene for @karengillan. She had to lay on a platform 6ft in the air with her head tilted up for hours. A very cool and lovely human being. But let’s face it, all the Scots are cool…Here’s a model of the set. #AvengersAssemblepic.twitter.com/pvD2Npd3gX
Nothing can accurately describe the overwhelming sense of awe you get when working with Robert Redford. The first time Joe’s daughter Ava (at 8 years old) met Robert, she ran up to him and said, “You’re that guy from the Sting movie!” #AvengersAssemblepic.twitter.com/RtbdwNoifD
Sharing #Endgame for the first time last year, with each and every one of you, was the most thrilling and rewarding moment in our careers. THANK YOU. We eagerly await the day that we can all be back together in a theater, sharing these experiences once again…#AvengersAssemblepic.twitter.com/c9tu7NzEaH
“I crave some experiences with young people,” Michelle Obama says at the outset of the trailer for Becoming, a new documentary from director Nadia Hallgren that focuses on the former First Lady’s life. “Through the community events, the tour could do a great job of giving me a little taste of it,” she continues. Then we find ourselves with Obama in a room full of young women. One asks her how it feels to finally be back to her “normal life” after it got “interrupted” by her 8-years in the White House. The room erupts into laughter. The young woman corrects her wording, but Obama tells her it’s okay. “You can say it,” the former First Lady says, and you can feel the joy in the room that these young women are experiencing being with someone who is both a role model and so easy to talk to.
Becoming follows Obama as she heads out on a 34-city tour at a moment of profound change, for both the country and herself. Yet there is an immense sense of calm and even, yes, hope, listening to Michelle Obama talk about trying to figure out what her life might look like going forward. Here’s what she had to say about the film:
These days, it can be hard to feel grounded or hopeful—but the connections I’ve made with people across America and around the world remind me that empathy can truly be a lifeline. And its power is on full display in Nadia’s film. https://t.co/9QKmZ66Vtn#IAmBecoming
Check out the first look below. Becoming will be available on Netflix on May 6.
Here’s the official synopsis from Netflix:
Becoming is an intimate look into the life of former First Lady Michelle Obama during a moment of profound change, not only for her personally but for the country she and her husband served over eight impactful years in the White House. The film offers a rare and up-close look at her life, taking viewers behind the scenes as she embarks on a 34-city tour that highlights the power of community to bridge our divides and the spirit of connection that comes when we openly and honestly share our stories.
The details ofdirector Ava DuVernay’s fourth Array Film Fellowship tweet-a-thon are here, and they speak to an epic event. The talented DuVernay, who takes it as her mission to elevate the entertainment industry as well as make her own, must-see films and series, has conjured an A-list cast of film talent to aid her in her online, wide-ranging event. Wonder Woman 1984 director Patty Jenkins, Oscar-winner and all-around legend Guillermo del Toro, and up-and-coming star and Crazy Rich Asians director John M. Chu are a few of the folks who will be taking part. The event will begin this Thursday, April 30, at 9 am PT, and will last for an astonishing 10 hours and include more than 50 directors.
Deadlinebroke the story about DuVernay’s Array Film Fellowship tweet-at-thon, which will offer film fans the chance to ask questions to the huge array (pun intended) of filmmakers about their craft, their upcoming projects, and more. For those at home who just want to follow the action, the fellowship will be using the hashtag #ARRAYNow.
Here’s how DuVernay described the event: “The Array Film Fellowship is our way of conjuring community, creativity, and conversation while we’re all staying at home during these unprecedented times. With the support and enthusiasm of our friends at Twitter, along with dozens of my fellow filmmakers, we hope the event brings solace and solidarity to those who join us.”
DuVernay, whose Netflix series When They See Uswas one of the best series of 2019, will of course also be participating in the event.
Here’s your list of participating filmmakers:
Oscar winners/nominees: Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water), Liz Garbus (Whatever Happened, Miss Simone), Matthew Cherry (Hair Love), Roger Ross Williams (Life, Animated), Yance Ford (Strong Island), Ava DuVernay (13th).
Gamechangers: Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians), Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman), Malcolm D. Lee (Girls Trip), Jill Soloway (Afternoon Delight), Alma Har’el (Honey Boy) George Tillman (The Hate U Give)
Veterans: Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust), Patricia Cardoso (Real Women Have Curves), Michael Schultz (Cooley High), Bill Duke (A Rage in Harlem), Ernest Dickerson (Juice), Mira Nair (Mississippi Masala), Robert Townsend (The Five Heartbeats), Chris Eyre (Smoke Signals).
Featured image: L-r: Ava DuVernay, Jharrel Jerome in ‘When They See Us.’ Photo by Atsushi Nishijima/Netflix
