Earlier this evening, costume designer Pat Field (The Devil Wears Prada, Sex and the City) and the cast of Ugly Betty sat down for a conversation with Horacio Silva from “T: The New York TImes Style Magazine” to usher in the new season of the show, which shoots in the Silvercup Studios in Long Island City and locations around town.
10-12-09: Pat Field and the cast of Ugly Betty agreed that their jobs were “almost 100% fun”
10-12-09: Pat Field grew up in Queens (like Betty) to a mixed Greek family and said that
a multicultural family is in a better position in today’s world
When the French Institute Alliance Française commissioned a performance by husband and wife partners Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson, the two incorrectly assumed that their work needed to have a French subject. That’s how “Comme Toujours Here I Stand” came to be— inspired by the screenplay for the seminal Agnes Varda film from 1962, Cleo from 5 to 7, wherein a singer goes about her life as she awaits the results from a cancer test. The couple chose not to watch the film until late in the process. The resultant performance is a satirical take on the story, with lively costumes, sets, music, and dance numbers. The highly ambitious avant-garde piece uses audio and video to capture the film experience. Knowledge of the film is unnecessary to enjoy this exciting staged work.
“Comme Toujours Here I Stand” is currently at The Kitchen in Chelsea.
Publicity photo from the production
This is what I tweeted last week on my WeekofWonders twitter account:
Romantic in the classical sense, BRIGHT STAR is a perfect film. Perfect. Film.
Did I hear Tony Scott on “At the Movies,” say that “Bright Star is porno for English majors”?
OK. He’s got my number.
Some smart person at distributor Apparition or publicist Donna Daniels picked the charming, historic Tilden Mansion as the setting for television and other interviews with director Jane Campion, producer Jan Chapman, and actors Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, and Paul Schneider. Built in the 1840s, the Victorian mansion now houses the National Arts Club.
Inside the Tilden Mansion on Gramercy Park
There, lovely, gestural Abbie Cornish, who plays Fannie Brawne, said that this poem is one of her favorites:
Ode To A Nightingale
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,—-
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
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“The wall between distributors and filmmakers is coming down,” said panelist Paola Freccero, president of distribution for B Side Entertainment at The State of Distribution– The Current & Future Indie Model. “The days of the big bad distributor taking advantage of the naive filmmaker is over—OK, some distributors are evil,” she admitted, “but others are looking for alignment with filmmakers.”
Concurring, Mark Urman, president and owner of Paladin, said that he and filmmakers “are on the same side of the table now.”
“We agree on everything,” he added.
I was struck by these words yesterday, when moderator and FILMMAKER editor, Scott Macaulay, requested some “good news” from the panelists, on the state of distribution.
A few of years ago, when I was working in film distribution, the dirty little secret was that distributors and filmmakers pretty much hated each other. “I’d like to put all our filmmakers in a room with a wet cat,” one highly placed acquisitions exec confided to me then.
Distributors saw independent directors as outsized in their egos, with blockbuster demands. Filmmakers felt that their work was being used as a tool for distributors to build empires off their backs. There was hostility on both sides. It was war every step of the way.
Now, it looks like economics and technology are turning the relationship into a love fest.
Necessarily, filmmakers are contributing money and financial risk to their releases, as well as an expertise in marketing (particularly online) to their niche. The dialogue is open. There is transparency and partnership. And decisions are made jointly, at least in some companies.
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