Sometime in ’92, I wrote a piece for Empire magazine called “Reanimator,” about how emerging digital technologies will one day be able to bring back actors from the grave and put them in new movies in a highly believable fashion. One computer graphics guy I spoke to for the piece said this could be a reality within 15 or 20 years. And I remember how Army Archerd wrote something in his Variety column not long after that seemed to comment on the piece, and how he faintly pooh-poohed the possibilities.
Well, here we are 14 years later and a Santa Monica-based company called Image Metrics, according to a fairly thrilling article by N.Y. Times reporter Sharon Waxman, has just about gotten there.
The cyber duplications of human faces that Image Metrics has lately been composing “seem to possess something more subtle, more ineffable, something that seems to go beneath the skin,” writes Waxman. “And it’s more than a little bit creepy. And if you look at the video on the Times website that accompanies Waxman’s piece (which includes footage of Waxman herself being turned into Shrek), you’ll probably agree.
Image Metrics chairman Andy Wood says he likes to call the process “soul transference,” the key process being that “we can have one human being drive another human character…we can directly mimic the performance of a human being on a model.”
“You look and you wonder: Is it the eyes? Is it the wrinkles around the eyes? Or is it the tiny movements around the mouth?” Waxman asks. “Something. Whatever it is, it could usher in radical change in the making of entertainment. A tool to reinvigorate the movies. Or the path to a Franken-movie monster.”
At the very least, this technology will probably one day lead to a situation in which producers and studios will have a certain advantage over difficult or problematic actors, although I’m sure attorneys for actors worldwide are going to be scrambling henceforth to make sure their clients’ organic value will not be challenged or diminished in any way.
Refinements and improvements will inevitably kick in over the coming years, but Image Metrics is pretty much able right now to reconstitute any dead actor and recast him/her in a new movie opposite live actors. There are many other applications for Image Metrics technology besides bringing back the dead, but this has always held a special fascination for yours truly. Imagine a 33 year-old Cary Grant (i.e., the one who starred in The Awful Truth) starring opposite Rachel McAdams in a new comedy. Or James Dean back from the dead in a new drama directed by Chris Nolan.
“We could put Marilyn Monroe alongside Jack Nicholson, or Jack Black, or Jack White,” Wood reiterates. “If we want John Wayne to act alongside Angelina Jolie, we can do that.”
“I’ve never set out to diminish the seriousness of what Roman Polanski did, but it comes down to crime and punishment. How much do you have to pay for the crime? What I’ve always set out to prove is, despite what Polanski did, which was awful, he was treated unfairly by the judge. That’s the bottom line.” — Filmmaker Marina Zenovich to Charles Lyons in today’s N.Y. Times about Polanski’s unlawful-sex-with-a-minor case, which she’s been making a documentary about for eons.
Zenovich’s film, “untitled and unfinished” but presumably heading for a debut at next January’s Sundance Film Festival and some kind of commercial exposure in ’07, which marks the 30th anniversary of Polasnki’s unlawful sex with a minor case, takes a closer look at the manner and tactics of the presiding judge in Polasnki’s unlawful sex with a minor case — the late Laurence J. Rittenband.
Zenovich, a very smart, extremely tenacious pro whom I’ve known since the late ’90s, tells Lyons “it is impossible to reach conclusions about Mr. Polanski without drawing Judge Rittenband into the equation.”
I’ve been hearing this for years (most lately from Polanski biographer F.X. Feeney), but judging from Lyons’ carefully phrased article, Zenovich’s conclusion in this reportedly exacting and meticulous doc is that Rittenbrand handled the Polanski case rashly. One could go so far as to describe his judicial behavior in this matter as that of an intemperate, Judge Roy Bean-ish, shoot-from-the-hip asshole.
Zenovich “describes the judge as having lived the kind of vibrant personal life easier to associate with Polanski,” Lyons writes. “‘He was never married, and he loved being kind of a swinging bachelor, juggling a couple of girlfriends at once,’ Zenovich tells him. “What’s most interesting about him is that he tried to come across as so moralistic, but eventually I found out that this was a man who had a 20-year-old girlfriend when he was 54.”
“Even from the unfinished film, it is apparent that Zenovich — who made an earlier documentary, Who Is Bernard Tapie? without the participation of its subject, the French financier and politician — has become intent, like documentary filmmakers before her, on using the form to delve deeper than the written word or television usually allow,” Lyons writes.
Produced by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte and Lila Yacoub and exec produced by Steven Soderbergh, Zenovich’s film “will likely renew the debate over whether Polanski still has a price to pay if he returns to the United States.”
The sum effect of coverage of Marie-Antoinette in Vanity Fair, Vogue and the New Yorker along with the Kitson Boutique window treatments, wild posting and pink Converse sneakers “is penetrating the culture,” Columbia marketing president Valerie Van Galder has told Hollywood Reporter columnist Anne Thompson.
“In just the way that Sofia didn’t treat [the story of Marie Antoinette] as a straight biopic, we’re taking a unique approach,” Van Galder explains. “We’re having fun with the marketing. The movie has captured people’s imagination.”
Surely Van Galder doesn’t mean the movie itself — which I’ve over-campaigned against, I realize — has done the capturing. What she means, I think, is that the idea of Sofia Coppola putting pink converse sneakers into a shot of Marie Antoinette’s closet (or against some other backdrop) has caught on within the culture of female movie journalists, columnists and magazine editors along with, I suppose, some of their male gay counterparts. Kind of a “you go, girl” thing.
Hollywood Bytes columnist Elizabeth Snead has written that “the modern pink footwear creates a funny, girly, rebellious moment in a frothy film about a young girl who just wants to flirt, shop and party in 18th century France. And the sneaks also work with the film’s punky pink ads and the pink-themed court parties, pink champagne, pink wigs, and pink pastries.
“More importantly, the shoes are also a bright pink emblem of Sofia’s creative and independent spirit.”
Snead reports in the same column that “someone asked Coppola about the pink tennis shoes and she explained that it was her brother Roman, her second assistant director on the film, who put them in the shot. Dunst stayed comfortable wearing pink Converse tennis shoes under her royal gowns during filming. You never see them on [her] but there is a funny shot of the tennis shoes that remains in the film.”
Life is hard all over, day after day, but every time I visit a film festival I’m reminded how especially hard it seems for documentary filmmakers. How so many of them go into deep debt to get their films made, and how most find that it takes three or four or five years to finish. And if they don’t manage to win awards at film festivals it’s that much harder to land a DVD distribution deal because awards are regarded as selling points.
There’s the personal satisfaction of making a film you’re happy wth, of course, plus the calling-card benefit that always helps when you’re starting your next film and looking to get the best people and/or cut the best deals. There’s the general heartwarm that comes from hearing positive reactions when your film plays before festival audiences (who tend to be generous) and all that, but for every Werner Herzog, Ken Burns or Michael Moore there are hundreds if not thousands of doc makers who reap almost no reward for their efforts, and who wouldn’t be able to stay in the game without superhuman tenacity.
Case in point: Peggy Sutton, a Manhattan-based script supervisor, and director of SQUONKumentary, a culture-clash doc about a group of Pittsburgh musicians who encounter some rough and tumble as they prepare their musical revue for a Broad- way venue. It’s an engaging, well-made piece — quirky, spirited — and I presume it’s been shown here and there since its completion sometime in late ’05. But I was nursing a feeling yesterday that Sutton might exemplify the thankless plight of the documentary filmmaker a bit more than others.
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I spoke to Sutton last night about what she went through to get it made, but it was a bit noisy and everyone was drinking. I called with more questions this morning, twice, but she didn’t call back. (Probably thought I was trying to hit on her.) She’s probably shown SQUONKumentary at this and that festival, but all I know for sure besides the fact that it played here yesterday morning is what the IMDB says, which is that it showed it at the AFM (American Film Market) in September ’05.
The Bend Film Festival showing happened Friday at 11 a.m. at the Regal Old Mill, in the southern part of town. A more opportune venue would have been the Tower theatre on Wall Street, and a better time would have been in the late afternoon or evening. Obviously the festival wouldn’t be showing SQUONKumentary if they weren’t fans, but they seem to be slightly bigger fans of the some of the other films.
I shouldn’t be saying anything before tonight’s awards ceremony, but I can repeat that the jurors for the Bend Film Festival awards (myself among them) met yesterday and that SQUONKumentary, naturally, was one of the docs we talked overand weighed. I can’t say anything more except the obvious, which is that the competition at any well-regarded festival (and Bend definitely qualifies) is always tough.
And I was thinking as I spoke to Sutton last night…it’s hard to say it just so, especially under constrictions. But I came away from the jury deliberations with a keener appreciation for what filmmakers go through.
The performers — SQUONKers — in Sutton’s film are formally known as the Squonk Opera company, from Pittsburgh.
Sutton got to know them when she was hired to film two performances during Squonk Opera’s seven-week engagement on Broadway in 2000. They want clips to use for TV reviews and for distribution to European theatre producers.
“I was struck by them as people and as artists,” Sutton told a Pittsburgh Tribune writer in November 2005. “Theirs is not a conventional show. There’s no narrative. It doesn’t have a book or an overarching story. They think of themselves as a band first, with six members. There are visual elements and audience participation in their shows.”
Sutton’s performance footage became the core of her documentary film.
“I started editing in January 2005, which shows you how long the evolution was. I’ve been told the average time for a documentary is five years. You’re condensing lives into a three-act struggle.”
Sutton told me last night that it cost about $100,000 (I think); the IMDB says it cost about $150,000. “Are you in debt,” I asked her. “No,” she said. Obviously there’s a story there, but like I said…
SQUONKumentary shot in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Pittsburgh. The idea of beginning work on a project in 2000 and not finishing it for another four or five years sounds like a mind-blower to me. How does filmmaker “keep it up” all those years? I would think you’d get sick of the subject after a couple of years, or certainly by the third year. But four or five? Gimme a break.
Sutton’s income as a script supervisor has given her a relatively comfortable life. She’s worked on mostly indie-level films — Tape, Pollock, Election, Lawn Dogs, Songcatcher, Chasing Amy — as well as Stuart Little 2, Ash Wednesday and Men in Black 2.
Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif costarring again, for the third time! For eight or nine seconds I was entertaining the idea of actually paying to see One Night with the King, the Christian conservative right-wing Biblical costume movie, until….
“At the very beginning, Peter O’Toole shows up for a day’s work as the prophet Samuel, looking as if he wandered in from the set of Troy; later, his old friend from Lawrence of Arabia, Omar Sharif, ambles on as well as Memucan, whispering sage advice to the king. Unfortunately they’re separated by five centuries, and never share a scene. For a movie with the most righteous of intentions, that’s perhaps the most grievous moviemaking sins of all.” — from Stephen Witty‘s review in the Newark Star-Ledger.
Of course, no one likes to talk about the second movie O’Toole and Sharif costarred in. It’s a 1967 World War II film called Night of the Generals, and it has a fairly shitty reputation. The Egyptian-born Sharif had to wear loads of makeup to look like a German (he plays an intelligence officer, Major Grau, looking into murder charges that involve three high-ranking generals, one of who is played by O’Toole. The only DVD mastering of the film, directed by Anatole Litvak, is a Spanish import.
Philip Noyce‘s Catch a Fire (Focus Features, 10.27) is a smart, urgent political drama about how an uneducated average-Joe black guy, Patrick Chamusso (Derek Luke), was goaded — brutalized — into becoming an anti-apartheid terrorist in the early ’80s. But the idea the film came from a white guy, albeit an atypical one — Joe Slovo , the white chief of staff of the African National Congress√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s military wing and later Nelson Mandela‘s housing minister.
It all started when Slovo, according to this 10.15 New York Times story by Kristin Hohenadel, told his daughter Shawn Slovo, a screenwriter, that she should write a script about Chamusso.
√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ö‚ÄúTerrorism is the single biggest real fear in the contemporary world,√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù Robyn Slovo, another of Joe’s daughters and one of the flm’s producers, tells Hohenadel. √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ö‚ÄúWhat√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s interesting is there√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s not enough time spent looking at why a man would do this. Not all terrorists are the same. But this is our attempt to make an audience identify with a terrorist, there√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s no question about it.√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù
Chamusso “does not accept the terrorist label,” writes Hohenadel, adding that his fundamental claim is that he “was pushed to do it.”
For Noyce, Catch a Fire was “ultimately about transcendence,” she writes.
“South Africa’s recent history is a beacon to the rest of the world in terms of the peaceful resolution of bitter interracial conflict, keeping the infrastructure of the country intact, preserving the rights of citizens on all sides,” he says. “The movie really is about the South African miracle. The moral consequences of that struggle to all the participants, and then how in this society they’ve managed to move beyond that struggle. They live with it, they don’t deny it but they live together.”
“It may be tempting to greet Marie Antoinette with a Jacobin snarl or a self- righteous sneer, since it is after all the story of the silly teenager who embodied a corrupt, absolutist state in its terminal decadence,” A.O. Scott wrote yesterday. on the occasion of Sofia Coppola‘s film being shown at the N.Y. Film Festival. “But where’s the fun in such indignation? And, more seriously, where is the justice? To say that this movie is historically irresponsible or politically suspect is both to state the obvious and to miss the point.”
But it’s not that Coppola’s film, which has visual splendor and a fine tonal consistency all through, is historically irresponsible — it’s the fact that it exudes vapid self-portraiture at every turn. Once you get past the well-honed profession- alism that went into the making of the damn thing, the selective nature of Coppola’s screenplay — she obviously relates to the trapped-rich-girl experience and little else — renders something not so much “boring” as rigorously drained.
And yet here are Scott and L.A. Times critic Kenneth Turan (his piece also filed yesterday) defending Coppola’s integrity and basically saying that embracing a vapid approach is okay — deserving of respect — as long as you do it with disci- pline and style. There’s no question that Coppola had a vision when she made this film, and that it was very much her own. I’ve said that from the beginning, but God, what a diminishment of the vision thing.
There’s also no question that a significant factor behind Scott, Turan, Michel Ciment and a lot of other critics cutting Marie-Antoinette a break or going so far as to praise it is a certain sublimated kowtowing to the Coppola legend/tradition/ aura…a veiled showing of respect to a once very powerful king. Without this and other dad-related factors (including the rich-girl-trapped-in-a-royal-court sensibility in the first place), there would never have been a Marie-Antoinette. Is there anyone out there who believes Sofia would have won her 2003 Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Lost in Translation without the Coppola gimme factor plus Bill Murray‘s inspired improvisings?
