I arrived in Sarasota at 3:00am after an 18 hour drive from Brooklyn, and the first thing I heard upon waking was the news that Robert Altman had passed away. I had the ultimate privilege of hosting Mr. Altman and the East Coast Premiere of his film A Prairie Home Companion as the Closing Night Film at the 2006 Sarasota Film Festival. We had a great Q&A after the screening, and he was as open and honest with the audience as he was in seemingly every aspect of his creative life. We also were honored to present Mr. Altman with the festival's 2006 Regal Cinemas Lifetime Achievement Award, and he gave a rousing, politically uncompromising acceptance speech at the dinner, inspiring conversation at the festival and bringing a focus to the impact that art and artists should have on our communities. I was thrilled to have been able to meet him, to be able to host him, and to talk with him a little and share my appreciation for his work. There are not many opportunities in life to tell a great artist how you feel about what they have given to you, but I am luckier than most to have been given the chance to tell Robert Altman how much his films mean to me.

On learning of his death today, I was shocked and saddend, but the more I thought about it, the more I was reminded how lovely and fitting A Prairie Home Companion is as his final film; The movie is the story of the end of an era, of a certain way of life and of making art. I thought of the film's final scene, when Death (played by a warm, tender Virginia Madsen) arrives at a small diner, populated by the film's main characters. Recognizing her instantly, they exchange nervous glances, wondering for whom Death has come calling. As generous as ever, Altman pulls his camera away, out the door of the diner and into the night, never resolving Death's intentions and providing hope that life goes on while always aware that the end is, for all of us, inevitable. I can't think of a more lovely final shot in any Director's career, nor one more haunting; Maybe he knew more than he was letting on. Looking back on his work, from M*A*S*H to Nashville to The Player to A Prairie Home Companion, Altman seemed to be implicitly aware that death is to be expected, the inevitable conclusion to the long, complicated celebration that makes up our lives. When I heard he had died, I could only hope that the end came for him as lovingly as it came in the final shot of his final film; Oh so quiet, bearing a familiar and peaceful face.

During his stay at our festival, Mr. Altman posed for a series of photographs taken by the wonderful Getty Images photographer Carlo Allegri. I thought I would share them here, in memory of one of my favorite filmmakers. Goodbye, Mr. Altman and thank you so much for showing me how to tell it like it is.

(© Carlo Allegri/ Getty Images)

(© Carlo Allegri/ Getty Images)

(© Carlo Allegri/ Getty Images)

(© Carlo Allegri/ Getty Images)

(© Carlo Allegri/ Getty Images)

(© Carlo Allegri/ Getty Images)

The holidays are closing in and I am off to Florida until May; Time to co-locate and continue to work on the Sarasota Film Festival. This will be my third winter in Florida, and I am excited to see my colleagues and focus on the festival. A long drive with all of my belongings tomorrow, driving back up to Athens, GA for Thanksgiving with friends, and I hit the ground running next Monday. In the meantime, I wanted to say thanks to Stu and the good folks at The Reeler for their coverage of last week's indieWIRE event at the Apple Store with Darren Aronofsky. It was a fun evening, Darren was very engaging, and I was happy to be able to have a long, serious talk with an artist I admire about his work. Thanks again to indieWIRE for letting me host, it was a real treat and a true honor.

I'm off to the races, but I hope you enjoy Thanksgiving and I will be back very soon.

Last month, after a screening at The New York Film Festival, James Israel asked me if I might be interested in moderating indieWIRE's upcoming evening with Darren Aronofsky at the Apple Store SoHo here in NYC. I was deeply honored to be asked and accepted the invitation. The event is this Monday, November 13th, 2007 at 7:00pm.

Director DARREN ARONOFSKY on the set of The Fountain (Photo by Takashi Seida)

I first saw Pi in New York City and have always associated the film as one of the quitessential NYC independent film moments in my life, but it was Requiem For A Dream, which I was lucky enough to see at its World Premiere in the Palais in Cannes, that stays with me to this day. Now, having seen The Fountain twice, I am very excited to talk to Mr. Aronofsky all three films and find out more about his process in bringing The Fountain to the screen.

Space Age Love Song: Hugh Jackman as Tommy Creo and Rachel Weisz as Izzi Creo in The Fountain (Photo: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

I hope you can make down to SoHo for the 7:00pm discussion, and again, a huge thanks to indieWIRE for the opportunity. It should be a great evening.

Transcend: Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain (Photo: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

This is a re-print of a post written in November of 2004. It is shocking how little has changed in our country in the two years since, but I hope to see you at the polls today!

You live in a representative republic. Your interests are represented by powerful politicians in offices ranging from the local city or town in which you live all the way to the Presidency of the United States. All you have to do is wait on a line and select the individuals who you believe best represent your idea of America and government. Maybe it is not the best system, but it is our system. You have two more years to work for direct change. Today, you only have one job. Get out and Vote.

Food for thought on another Election Day:

"Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom."-- Friedrich August Hayek

"Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote." --George Jean Nathan

"Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be."--Sydney J. Harris

"A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election." --Bill Vaughan

According to Gothamist, Adrienne Shelly was murdered for complaining about construction noise in her building. More from WCBS, who report:

"(CBS/AP) NEW YORK -- Prosecutors have charged a man with murdering actress Adrienne Shelly, who was found hanging from a shower rod in her West Village office last Wednesday, CBS 2 News has learned. Sources tell CBS 2’s Ti-Hua Chang a construction worker has allegedly confessed to the crime. Police have charged 19-year-old Diego Pillco, of the 300-block of Prospect Avenue in Brooklyn, with second degree murder. Sources tell CBS 2’s Ti-Hua Chang that Pillco, a construction worker, apparently confessed to the crime. Pillco allegedly punched the 5-foot-2 actress after she complained about the noise he was making in the West Village apartment building where her office is located, killing her. He then allegedly admitted to dragging the body up to her office, and positioning her in the shower to make her death look like a suicide."

What a terrible, tragic and utterly stupid action. Unbelievable and so sad. Hopefully, a trial will bring justice to her family and now that the facts are known, healing can begin. May she rest in peace.

I Told You So!

Who thought Borat should go on 867 screens? Winning the weekend on that number of screens at $26.4 million dollars isn't a victory, its leaving millions of dollars on the table. I love people equating the "internet buzz" for Snakes on A Plane with Borat; Reading that comparison everywhere only tells me that people don't know anything about the current state of our culture, the internet or the difference between kitsch and comedy. I also love reading how this limited release earning this much money is a vindication of the strategy to go limited. All it tells me is that someone didn't believe in the film enough, had no idea of the popularity of Sacha Baron Cohen on the heels of Ali G and Talladega Nights, doesn't understand the shades of irony or degrees of internet buzz, and therefore lost the chance to make $50 million on 2000 screens.

Oh, well. They'll get it back this weekend. No more Borat from me for awhile...

I was watching a little late night television this weekend when I passed by the History Channel, which was re-running their documentary KKK: A Secret History. As the film was winding to a close, the story eventually found its way to one of the most troubling pieces of film footage I know, one that continually haunts me to this day.

I was raised on picket lines; Two of my parents were school teachers in Flint, MI (the home of the modern Union movement in many ways) and in the late-1970's and early 1980's, teacher strikes were not at all uncommon. Of course, living in a community that was deeply committed to Union organizing, the safety of the picket was unquestioned; I even had my first kiss on the picket line. It wasn't until I saw Barbara Kopple's stunning Harlan County U.S.A, where a company employee fires a gun on a coal miner's picket line, that I understood the reality of political action like a strike or a picket or protest. That film shook me deeply as a teenager. It's one of those cinematic moments you always remember and was, for me, a deep political awakening that reached its apotheosis in the footage of The Greensboro Massacre.

On November 3rd, 1979, members of the Maoist Communist Worker's Party (CWP) were preparing to stage an anti-KKK rally and march in a poor, African-American neighborhood in Greensboro, NC. The CWP was active in the area and trying to organize local textile workers into a union, and as such, were deeply unpopular among local authority figures for their militant actions in the community. As the CWP were preparing thier 'Death To The Klan' rally, a caravan of Klansmen and members of the American Nazi Party showed up to heckle and disrupt the march. The members of the CWP began attacking the caravan with heavy lumber until, despite having the ability to drive away safely, members of the Klan reached into the trunk of one of the cars and produced fire arms, opened fire on the demonstrators and killed five people. This tragic encounter is like a ghost for me, a signpost for all of the changes this country has undergone in the last twenty-seven years and this year, stumbling upon the memory once again, it is just one more reminder for me to get my ass to a voting booth this Tuesday and pull the lever with extra vigor.

I have seen the infamous footage several times and I always find it terrifying; Two militant groups, one deeply experienced with violence and terror, the other an extension of 1970's radicalism that had more bark than bite (in most cases) and not a single police officer, federal agent or public official within a quarter mile of the confrontation. How could this happen?

Warning: Violent, deeply troubling images contained within...

The more I learn about the tragic violence, the more I understand the context of the clash and the more I see the tragedy as completely preventable. The CWP had disrupted a KKK rally earlier in the summer and had made threatening, violent overtones in the press toward the Klan, a Klan informant for the police department was given a copy of the CWP parade permit, allowing the KKK access to inside information about the staging area, the CWP's plans and the fact that, in order to receive the permit, the CWP members had to agree to march unarmed. While that point seems obvious to me, I discovered that most marches were populated by many people carrying firearms, which was allowed under North Carolina law (the law has since changed as a result of the massacre). Also, one would imagine that if the police knew about the hostilities between the Klan and the CWP, knew that their informant within the KKK had obtained information about the rally and knew of the Klan's plans (and had actually organized the group to disrupt the rally), and had granted a permit to the CWP to march (depite the CWP's virulently anti-police attitude) that the police would show up and defend the rights of the CWP to free speech and at the very least inform the CWP that the Klan was preparing to disrupt the rally. That is, certainly, the responsibility of the police. Instead, law enforcement stayed several blocks away and were not on the scene when the violence broke out. Having several news crews on on hand, clearly capturing what happened that day, juries ultimately acquited all parties in the massacre as acting in self-defense.

In the years following the massacre and the acquittals, outrage and anger remained within Greensboro, culminating in one of the most interesting social projects in recent American history. Taking their lead from South Africa's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the citizens of Greensboro formed their own; The Greensboro Truth And Reconciliation Commission was the first Truth and Reconciliation Commission ever established in the United States. Their final report (available on their website and just released on May 25, 2006) is a fascinating document and I encourage those interested in the history of this terrible event to read it. It provides a clear portrait of not only the context of the tragedy, but of the way in which the community responded to the terrible events of that day. Also, there is an interesting film from 2002 about the event and its deeply unsettling legacy, Greensboro's Child, which aired this weekend on local Greensboro Public Access TV and is available in its entirety on-line. If history is written by the winners, what does the silence and collective ignorance about The Greensboro Massacre mean to us today?

In Memory
Sandy Smith
Dr. James Waller
Bill Sampson
Caesar Cause
Dr. MIchael Nathan

Spoiler Alert!!

Borat Sagdiyev is a television reporter from the small town of Kuzcek (it's near Almaty) in Kazakhstan who has been sent to the United States of America to report on our culture to the people back home. Of course, that is no easy task; The Kazakhstan that Borat shows us is a dreary backwater of a nation, a place where incest, prostitution, poverty, sexism, homophobia and anti-semitism are so rampant that the shining beacon of Democratic enlightenment that is the "US and A" (as Borat calls us) proves to be a baffling maze of luxury and folksy good spirit that requires careful navigation by the curious journalist. Unfortunately for his subjects (and fortunately for us), Borat is a perfectly delicate balance between traveling CBS newsman Charles Kuralt and Adolph Hitler; A careful navigator of the divide between our two cultures? Um, not so much. In his new documentary film Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, the intrepid Kazakh reporter unwittingly uncovers the limitations of courtesy and tolerance in his search for the true heart and soul of America.

Of course, Borat is just a character, the creation of soon-to-be mega-star Sacha Baron Cohen (who plays the titular reporter) and Borat is not a documentary film, but the story of a fictional encounter between a man and a foreign way of life. Well, that’s half-right. Borat is, in fact, a documentary, but a documentary with a unique conceit; Place a fictional character so finely drawn and yet so foreign and ambiguous in real-world situations and you’ll see what truths emerge when your culture’s darkest prejudices, usually hidden under the cover of social courtesy, are opened up for discussion. As a cipher for American xenophobia and global condescension, you will not find a more powerful mirror for our collective soul than Borat, a character who peels back the deceptive layers of America’s dirty little secret; We’re not nearly as good a people as we think we are. As such, Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, directed by Larry Charles, plays as both comedy and deep tragedy which makes it one of the most politically charged and important comic documentaries to hit screens in a long, long time.

I know there will be purists out there questioning my labeling of the film as a documentary, but I think the distinction is true enough. Borat follows the conceits of documentary filmmaking to the letter; Subjects who are in an essentially non-fiction situation, responding to a camera and interviewer who capture what is essentially a non-fiction encounter. One could argue, then, that television shows like Punk’d or Candid Camera are also documentaries; Real people in staged situations they believe are real. The difference here, though, is the presence of the camera, which is known to the subjects, and the fact that there is no reveal; For all intents and purposes, the film’s subjects are interacting with a real foreign journalist in an environment of their own making (a crucial difference), the only difference being that the journalist is, in fact, not what he says he is. How this is different than any other undercover journalism, I'm not so sure.

Sexy Time: Borat Hits The Beach At Cannes

Of course, like many documentaries, there are staged moments that drive the story forward, directorial choices and narration that are not created in the moment but before or after other material has been shot and then used to bring coherence to the film as a whole. How is driving an ice-cream truck with a bear in it and actually scaring passing motorists (which Borat does) any different or more staged than the crime scene re-enactments in Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line or Nathaniel Kahn rollerblading over the grounds over the Salk Institute his father built while playing Neil Young’s Long May You Run in My Architect? These scenes, staged for the films, add meaning and cinematic coherence to the movies in which they appear, but I’m not sure they are any more valid a documentary technique than what goes on in Borat. The only distinction I can come up with is that we as the audience know that Borat himself is a fiction (as is his staged backstory), but I’m not sure that diminishes the powerful reality of what Charles’ film documents. If anything, the fictional protagonist running amok in the real world may be the only way in which the film’s revelations about American life are possible.

As a documentary and comic conceit, the character of Borat is an absolutely perfect tool for exposing the cracks in the façade of American self-congratulation. A foreigner from a country that 99% of America knows very little if anything about, the character gives Cohen the freedom to offer whatever opinions he likes without allowing the people he meets to take too much exception; No one wants to offend the foreign guest, but they just can’t help condescending to him. This is why Borat’s stunts are so effective in the South, where the façade of genteel hospitality is still the order of the day, and so dangerous in places like New York and Los Angeles, where people are used to living with foreign cultures while still preserving their personal space. If any film exposes the transparency of the cultural divide between the red states and the blue states, this is it. Whereas people in New York and L.A. run from Borat or threaten him when he tries to engage them (because the urban landscape is one where such interactions are generally forbidden in public), most of Borat’s Southern interactions take place within the confines of relatively private space: Private homes, small businesses, and a very hospitable Winnebago. As such, and somehow despite the presence of cameras, there is a certain level of comfort among these people that does not exist in the film’s urban locales. This works two ways, allowing the Southern subjects to speak more freely (and allowing the subjects to show themselves to a relatively safe Borat) and appear more generous (if naive) while the urban interactions have higher public stakes and harbor an air of danger that poor, misunderstood Borat might actually get hurt. In Borat, no one is safe from their own pre-conceptions about the rules of public life and everyone ends up guilty.

Mr. Manners: Dinner With Borat

But what are those rules? Funnily enough, Borat exposes intolerance wherever he goes, either by being intolerable and violating American rules of courtesy and enlightenment (as in his hilarious interview with a group of New York City feminists or his dinner party antics in Alabama) or by presenting himself as a cultural bridge between American prejudice and his own (albeit fictional) brand of ignorance. This is the fulcrum on which the movie pivots; When we agree with Borat’s enlightened subjects and take exception to his sexist, anti-semitic remarks, we shake our head and laugh at the character (and Cohen) for presenting us with such an awful stereotype of a foreigner, but when we see our fellow citizens sharing Borat’s prejudices, well, the joke is still funny, but in a completely different way. It is in these interactions that Borat becomes an essential look at American political and cultural attitudes, whether it be the head of a rodeo envying the “Kazakh tradition” of lynching homosexuals (“That’s what we’re trying to get done around here,” he chuckles) or the young, drunk and privileged frat boys from the University of South Carolina bemoaning the “entitlement” of people of color and women while chugging beer and watching pornography in their Winnebago. In these moments, Borat provides the perfect sympathetic mirror for American idiocy to rear its ugly head. Take for example this infamous clip, from Cohen’s Da Ali G Show, where Borat appears at a country and western bar in Arizona and leads the crowd in an anti-semitic sing-along. While this scene doesn’t appear in the film, it perfectly illustrates the power of the foreign cipher as license to showcase the worst in America’s casual attitude toward the ignorant stereotype. The people in the bar and the audience are stuck in an culturally impossible position; Do we boo the foreigner for singing a shitty, hateful song, or do we courteously sing-along in the name of good, clean fun? After all, Borat's not hurting anyone, right? We don't want to be rude, do we?

What separates Borat from the Jackass school of filmmaking is not the audacity and outrageousness of his public stunts which, in my opinion, transcend Steve-O physicality and arrive at something much more meaningful, but the political intent behind the humor. Because of the deeply unsettling political content of the film, Borat walks a razor-thin line between blistering social commentary and dangerously casual prejudice, but Cohen and the film achieve an absolute singularity of intent and vision. The question is, is the movie so smart and so strong that some of us end up laughing in sympathy and not in outrage? Certainly, some will see this film and be baffled as to what to make of it; Twentieth Century Fox’s (in my opinion) mistaken decision to pull back the number of screens for the film’s initial release because of mixed results at test screenings seems to indicate that even those in on the joke aren’t sure what to do with what might become a political hot-potato. That said, most people who see Borat will laugh until they are sick, regardless of their politics, simply because the film and the character are free to make fun of everyone, including Borat himself (those crazy foreigners!). What makes Borat such a loaded comedy is that no matter when you laugh, and you will, it will always be for the wrong reasons. The hope is that maybe, just maybe, the joke sinks in and we all realize that it’s on us because frankly, if we weren’t laughing, we’d probably want to cry.

It's been a while since I have taken time to blog, but that's nothing new; Every once in a while, there are stretches of life that pull me away from the cinema, from my on-line rambling, and replenish me with the engaging energy of real-life. Which is not to say that cinephilia is somehow at a remove from reality, but more that, after taking in 50 films in Toronto and another 30 plus at the New York Film Festival, the time that is usually spent watching 80 films (probably a few months) is condensed to such a point that other obligations, family, planning for The Sarasota Film Festival and social time have been re-stating themselves as priorities in my life. I have taken in a few movies; I finally caught up with Climates yesterday after missing it at the NYFF and it is all everyone says it is and more (best break-up movie ever?), as well as the amazing Memories of Murder on DVD (How did this movie not do more business? It’s tremendous and I recommend it anyone). That said, a lot of the films that are heading into theaters are just not my cup o’tea or I have seen them already. Many times, September’s annual 80-film feast is a blow-off for the entire fall.

So, what’s been up? Well, first and foremost, I’ve been working with my partner in crime to get the The 2007 Sarasota Film Festival Call For Entries up and running. We’ve been sending out some early film invitations, maintained our film tracking, and have done a great deal of planning for the months ahead. Filmmakers, I encourage you to apply to our festival; If you look at last year’s films, so will see that we’ve tried very hard to balance our program to include films and stories of all types, so I hope that we can encourage you to submit and launch your film at our festival. I promise you’ll have a great experience. The festival runs April 13-22, 2007, but submission deadlines are soon, so please drop us a DVD and we’ll take a look.

In addition, we’ve been very fortunate to partner with our friends at The Asolo Theater, a newly restored 17th Century Italian Opera House restored inside The Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, to bring a Monday Night Movies series to the community. The first series has focused on documentary films (we’ve shown Rebecca Dreyfus’ Stolen, Billy Corbin’s terrific Cocaine Cowboys and the scary 1922 classic Häxan so far), and we continue the series with a screening of Michael Apted’s terrific 49 Up this coming Monday, and Luke Meyer and Andrew Neal’s thrilling Darkon on November 13. After a break for the holiday season, the series will continue in January with a look at some masterful American independent films from the 1960’s to the present. It has been a real treat to have this outlet for films that otherwise might not be seen in the community, and I look forward to bringing more films to Sarasota in this beautiful theater.

I will be moving down to Sarasota for the festival season in a few weeks, so I have also been soaking up friends here in Brooklyn, enjoying Park Slope, running the bi-weekly Trivia Game (more on next Wednesday’s game soon), playing some Fantasy Footie (Katie Trainor, you’re mine!) while watching my Liverpool (we’reeee baaaaack!), shedding a tear over my Detroit Tigers while thrilling at the performance of my Michigan Wolverine football team, and making some trips back to the Midwest to see the families. I’m planning to see Borat again tomorrow with friends so that I can do a full write up, and more coming very soon, but its been a long, un-blog worthy couple of weeks. Having just read this post, I’m sure you agree.