by Daniel Dercksen·Comments Off on The Silent Hour – An action thriller featuring a heroic deaf cop
Screenwriter Dan Hall found inspiration for The Silent Hour after coming across an article about NYPD officer, Dan Carione, who as a result of an on-the-job accident required the use of a hearing aid. At the time, NYPD’s policy was that anyone needing hearing equipment to work could not be an officer, and he was terminated from the force. Carione sued the department and won. Today, thanks to Carione’s bravery, hearing aids are allowed for NYPD officers. Carione’s experience resonated with Hall, and he felt it was a solid jumping-off point for a story featuring a hero deaf cop.
“On the surface, The Silent Hour is about a hearing-impaired detective trapped in a semi-abandoned Boston apartment block with a deaf murder witness, attempting to escape a team of killers,” says Hall, but the story delves a bit deeper. The core dynamic between the two lead characters, Frank and Ava, is what truly lies at the heart of this high-stakes caper.
“It’s really about the relationship between these two people, and the journey of discovery that the detective goes on, thanks to the witness, where he learns that despite losing his hearing, he has lost none of his worth as a police officer, or man,” says Hall.
The most compelling aspect of The Silent Hour for Director Brad Anderson was that it centered around deaf characters, which he had never worked with before. He saw this oner as a great opportunity to utilize sound design as a storytelling agent. He adds, “I also like the fact that it’s a very contained story. It takes place over a short period of time. One location, more or less. Those sorts of restrictions sometimes lend themselves to coming up with really creative, cool storytelling choices, and I think we’ve been able to do that in this movie.”
Anderson continues, “How does one tell the story about a man, in this case, a cop who’s losing his hearing, and how does that figure into the storytelling? In this movie, we’re going to find ways to get into the headspace of Joel Kinnaman’s character, Frank – and sort of hear or not hear the world the way he does. As a filmmaker, this was an interesting and new way to explore storytelling – through sound and the lack of sound.”
Anderson truly hopes the classic action components are an initial draw for the audiences. But as much as this is a thrilling story, there is a compelling human emotional factor he is equally keen to underscore for the fans. “The connection between these two characters in the context of an action film is a little unusual. Different in the fact that one’s deaf and one’s losing his hearing, it makes it more unique. In some respects, it’s straight out of an action thriller, and in other respects, it’s a deeply engrossing character piece as well. I think that this combination is what makes The Silent Hour fresh and interesting,” states Anderson.
While in pursuit of a dangerous suspect, Boston Police Detective Frank Shaw (Joel Kinnaman) is badly hurt, sustaining a progressive and permanent hearing loss injury. Sixteen months later, Frank returns to work and is struggling to navigate his new normal. When Doug Slater (Mark Strong), his good friend on the Narcotics Squad requests his assistance interviewing Ava Fremont (Sandra Mae Frank), a deaf murder witness, he’s hesitant, but eventually agrees to the task. Frank’s noble deed unintentionally lands him in the middle of a sinister plot to silence Ava forever, and he instinctively leaps into action. The cards are stacked against them as Mason Lynch (Mekhi Phifer) and his henchmen have them completely surrounded within a soon-to-be condemned residential building. Cut off from the outside world and left to their own devices, these two practical strangers must lean on themselves and each other as they are thrust into a battle for their lives.
From Page To Screen
“It all began with a script that caught my attention years ago” recalls producer Eric Paquette. “That script was titled Submerged by the talented Dan Hall. Fast forward to June 2021 when, out of the blue, Dan sent me another script on spec titled Silence. I was immediately captivated and knew I wanted to produce it. The journey of The Silent Hour had officially begun.”
Writer Dan Hall found inspiration for The Silent Hour after coming across an article about NYPD officer, Dan Carione, who as a result of an on-the-job accident required the use of a hearing aid. At the time, NYPD’s policy was that anyone needing hearing equipment to work could not be an officer, and he was terminated from the force.
With the story in place, the search for directors began. Enter Brad Anderson. Paquette remarks that he was “a filmmaker [he’d] long admired but hadn’t yet found the right project to collaborate on.” Paquette continues: “That changed when he read Silence and I shared my enthusiasm for the material. Dan and Brad worked together to refine the script, leading us to rename it The Silent Hour, elevating our lead from a rookie cop to a seasoned detective.”
With a writer, producer and director invested, the next step was to bring the script to Stuart Ford at AGC. Paquette adds that “Stuart’s passion for the project and expertise in selling foreign rights proved invaluable as we began assembling pieces of the puzzle. With the script in hand, we approached Joel Kinnaman and Mark Strong, both of whom enthusiastically agreed to join our cast.”
Joel Kinnaman was immediately drawn to the contained and tight format of the script, but his interest was sustained by the journey of his character, Frank Shaw. “He’s an extremely confident alpha male, who at the peak of his power suffers an injury where he starts to lose his hearing, and it completely changes his world. It changes his perception of himself and how he operates in the world,” Kinnaman reflects. “It’s a story about survival in the circumstance, but also about Frank’s acceptance of his new reality and understanding that life doesn’t end when one loses their hearing.”
Mekhi Phifer notes that once he started with the script, he could not put it down. “There were aspects that were funny as well as intriguing. I did not know what was going to happen and that kept me going – it was a page-turner!” Phifer gives the fans a fair warning to be prepared for a crazy thrill ride. “They’re not going to know what’s going to happen – who’s going to live, who’s going to die, who’s going to succeed or how it’s going to end. The Silent Hour is not cookie-cutter by any way, shape or form.”
It was incredibly important that the role of Ava be played by an actress with the lived experience of deafness, and Sandra Mae Frank was the perfect fit for the part. Her enthusiasm for the role was palpable. She freely confesses her love of action films, deeming it her all-time favorite genre – but more than that, it was the nature of deaf representation in the script that she found most remarkable. “How Dan wrote my character Ava as a deaf person, it wasn’t really about her deafness. It’s about her relationship with the other character Frank, who is losing his hearing. And it’s interesting to read the script that has a different version of deaf in it, and deaf people, and the culture, and how they were raised. Ava was raised that way, but Frank, he’s losing his hearing, so he doesn’t have that culture. He’s latent deaf which adds an extra element to the script, and it’s really nice,” she affirms.
Hall confides that it was a magical moment to see the final product come to life. Specifically, Hall is excited for audiences to connect with our two heroes. Because this kind of action movie has never centered around deaf characters before, there were opportunities for unique twists and turns at every scene. The premise of a deaf cop being hunted by hearing killers presented a myriad of unusual situations – but what really stood out to him were the simple tasks that became extremely complicated due to the heroes’ hearing impairments.
In particular, Hall notes that “there is an elevator scene where our heroes use the alarm button to call for help, but they can’t hear whether or not anyone has actually answered the call – and by the time someone does answer, our heroes have already hung up.”
For Mark Strong, this scene exemplifies why The Silent Hour’s action-movie premise stands out. In addition to the film’s strong story, he shares that “these characters have to escape when they cannot hear the people who are pursuing them… this gives an added level of threat – and I thought the script was great for that reason.”
Hall continues to say that when the core relationship of the film is between two deaf characters, one of whom struggles to use ASL, communicating critical details to the audience sans dialogue can be challenging. He took this as an opportunity to exercise his creativity – a successful strategy that ultimately resulted in the unique scenarios that he knows make The Silent Hour stand out.
He continues that “the underdog story of a guy who has given up on himself finding the strength to get back up thanks to this brilliant woman who has faced similar hurdles in her life will hopefully stay with people after they leave the theater.”
American Sign Language (ASL) Master, Anselmo DeSousa’s work with actor Joel Kinnaman began months before the cameras started to roll. Producer Paquette praised Kinnaman’s commitment, noting that “Joel committed to three months of ASL training, ensuring authenticity in his portrayal of the role.” In addition to ASL lessons, DeSousa also introduced Kinnaman to deaf culture, helping him fully understand the experience of someone who loses their hearing abilities.
Kinnaman credits DeSousa for helping him quickly adjust to the steep learning curve when it came to his ASL lessons. While the interpreters were a fantastic resource, his lessons started to take hold when waiting in between takes with Sandra Mae Frank when Kinnaman had to rely on sign language to communicate with her.
“Joel picked up ASL quickly, and on set he and Sandra Mae communicated very well without an interpreter,” shares DeSousa. Throughout production, DeSousa admits that at times even he was surprised at how adept Kinnaman became at sign language.
While working with Frank, DeSousa focused more on her character’s lines in ASL to ensure they were accurate and linguistically correct for the film’s context and setting. Oftentimes, you would find them perfecting their ASL dialogue before shooting specific scenes.
DeSousa fondly recalls the incredible efforts by Production to ensure the deaf culture was recognized and respected. With three ASL/English interpreters on hand to work with himself and Frank, there was always full access to communicate with everyone on the cast and crew, creating an amazing and inclusive experience.
For many, The Silent Hour is their first experience where deafness is a central story element. A big takeaway for Kinnaman while working on this film was learning about the deaf community, and it was humbling for him to understand how little he knew before stepping onto this project – and now, he’s grateful for the new knowledge he gained. Kinnaman was able to put his ASL to good use, effectively communicating both on and offset, and he now has a greater appreciation for sign language and its beauty. He confides, “This really was a rewarding experience, more so than I expected – that’s what you want a film to be. You want there to be a lesson learned, something that you bring with you for the rest of your life, and this was more so than many of my experiences.”
Brad Anderson, Director
Two decades after his indie romantic comedy Next Stop Wonderland opened to rave reviews (and won the Grand Prize at the Deauville Film Festival), Brad Anderson continues to demonstrate his versatility as a filmmaker unwilling to be pinned down. His films, spanning genres from sci-fi (Happy Accidents) to paranoid thriller (The Machinist); from horror (Session 9) to action (Transsiberian); from political drama (Beirut) to period gothic (Stonehearst Asylum), have premiered at festivals around the world and been both critically acclaimed as well as box office winners. His thriller The Call with Halle Berry was recently the #1 film on Netflix. His numerous episodic television credits include such shows as The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, Treadstone and Peacemaker, as well as many pilots, including DC’s Titans, and the Netflix smash Clickbait. He recently wrapped Apple’s sci-fi drama Invasion and his latest film is the dark drama Blood, starring Michelle Monaghan. He’s currently developing a thriller based on a Jack London short story, as well as a period romance based on the book The Mapmaker’s Wife.
Dan Hall, Writer
Dan Hall is a UK-based feature writer specializing in genre, with a particular focus on action, thriller and horror. The Silent Hour marks Hall’s feature debut: it is a clear distillation of his voice as a writer and typifies his muscular, propulsive style of writing. Hall has a slew of projects in development with established producers and exciting talent attachments.
Cinema audiences and theatre lovers alike are treated to live theatre in cinemas. NT Live
Meet the screenwriters and filmmakers
Screenwriter Dan Hall found inspiration for The Silent Hour after coming across an article about NYPD officer, Dan Carione, who as a result of an on-the-job accident required the use of a hearing aid. At the time, NYPD’s policy was that anyone needing hearing equipment to work could not be an officer, and he was terminated from the force. Carione sued the department and won. Today, thanks to Carione’s bravery, hearing aids are allowed for NYPD officers. Carione’s experience resonated with Hall, and he felt it was a solid jumping-off point for a story featuring a hero deaf cop. Read more / In cinemas from 11 Oct.
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Elements of state-of-the-art video games, Korean action movies, Japanese anime and classic horror- fantasy inspired the storyline of director Moritz Mohr’s spectacular dystopian action thriller Boy Kills World, “I’m a longtime gamer and I’ve tried to infuse the movie with that kind of craziness and fun,” says Mohr, who channels the hyper-kinetic thrill of classic video games in a visually dazzling, nonstop battle royale, from a script by Tyler Burton Smith. Read more
“Every good animated movie transports you to another world,” says writer-director Christopher Jenkins of 10 Lives, showing what happens when a pampered cat loses his ninth life and ffate steps in to set him on a transformative journey.“The question at the heart of the movie is, how would you live your life if you were given the chance to do it all again? And Beckett’s path is to learn that, when you live and love with all your heart, one life is truly enough.” Read more
Abigail was the brainchild of screenwriter Stephen Shields who first pitched the heist-meets-horror idea to Universal in 2019. “The inspiration for me was just the love of the two genres that I liked watching,” Shields says of this exciting new spin on classic vampire mythology. Read more
“As a storyteller, I am drawn to characters in crisis,” says director Adam Cooper of Sleeping Dogs, a razor-edge thriller about one man’s quest to reclaim his past. “The nature of that crisis can take on many forms– identity, mortality, faith – but at the centre, there’s always someone who is struggling to make sense of their life, someone who goes on a journey from a lost or fragmented state, to one where they can begin to restore themselves, ” says Cooper, who crafted the screenplay with frequent collaborator Bill Collage. Read more
“I was very adamant that Back To Black would be told through Amy Winehouse’s point of view,” says screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh who used Amy’s own words as a springboard into how to write her dialogue for the film. “This was Amy’s POV, so if Amy had said it herself, that’s all I needed to know. Highlighting Amy’s talent and charisma was paramount.” Read more
When Ivan Reitman passed away after the release of Afterlife, leaving an unmatched legacy of comedy and ghostbusting, Jason Reitman stepped into the Ghostbusters franchise. “The last story that I ever got to tell my dad was the story of Frozen Empire, a new adventure for the ghostbusters back in Manhattan,” says Jason, who co-wrote the screenplay of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire with director Gil Kenan. Read more
Filmmaker Alex Garland began writing Civil War in 2020, months after the pandemic had begun, as the possible futures that seemed certain were blown apart and we were launched into a very different reality. The fears that spurred him to write the film at the time have, in the intervening years, only metastasized. “I wrote it out of a mixture of anger and anxiety, and then you go about the long process of making the film,” Garland says. “Whatever sense of frustration I had while originally writing the script, it did not diminish. It grew.” Read more
“As I was looking at the true story and looking at the real people, I felt like there was a responsibility and an obligation to tell their story in a way that honored their life,” says director Jon Gunn of Ordinary Angels, an inspiring tale of faith and everyday miracles. “My vision was to share—with honesty and integrity—the truth and the challenges and the pain of that true story in a way that was optimistic and uplifting.” Read more
When writer/director/producer Dev Patel was imagining the story of Monkey Man, little could he fathom that a tale inspired by childhood stories would become his directorial debut. READ MORE
“I’m really proud of The First Omen because I think we take a lot of big swings when it comes to horror,” says director/co-screenwriter Arkasha Stevenson. “And I do think that a lot of those are particular to the female experience and the female perspective, and the fact that we had a whole film production who was in support of that and ready to take that big jump with me is a really cool feeling.” READ MORE
“Making Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire gave me the confidence that you can let these monsters tell their own story, let them just be characters, says Director / Story Writer Adam Wingard. ‘I wanted to make not just another Monsterverse film, but a thrill ride like you’ve never seen before.” READ MORE
“I wanted to capture what I felt to be the real New York, with its incredible diversity, vivid texture, and incredible soundscapes. And also its relationship to both violence and hope,” says French filmmaker Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire. Furthering his examination of violence inside institutions and among close-knit groups, he turns his unflinching and inquisitive eye on his adopted hometown of New York City in all its ragged glory with Asphalt City. READ MORE / REVIEW
The Kung Fu Panda franchise launches into a new era with Kung Fu Panda 4, the narrative takes a compelling turn, guiding Po on an internal journey of growth and change. READ MORE
With the resounding success of The Gentlemen, filmmaker Guy Ritchie is back in the genre he made his own in films like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. But this time, he extends his range by co-writing and producing the eight part series, while also directing the first two episodes. Watch on Netflix / READ MORE
Throughout history, there have been events so epic that they enter the realm of legend. Someone takes an all-or-nothing risk, and it defines the rest of their life. Epic tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table have exemplified heroism for centuries. That legend inspired elite professional athlete Mikael Lindnord to bestow the king’s name on a battered stray dog whose quiet dignity shook him to the core. Screenwriter Michael Brandt adapted Lindnord’s best-selling book, Arthur: The Dog Who Crossed the Jungle to Find a Home into the inspiring film Arthur And The King. READ MORE
“Nothing is scarier than what the audience imagines themselves,” says director and screenwriter Jeff Wadlow. ‘Imaginary puts that idea to the test. This is a movie about imagination, and one can imagine anything. You can imagine something fantastical that also seems very real. That is incredibly fertile ground for a horror movie because it lets us constantly play with the audience’s understanding of reality — which provides infinite possibilities to scare the hell out of them.” READ MORE /
“Frank Herbert wanted Dune to serve as a cautionary tale about imperialism and the allure of ‘saviors.’ Denis and I wanted to make sure this message rang out clearly in the film,” says screenwriter Jon Spaihts about Dune: Part Two, exploring themes both timeless and timely, from romantic love and maternal love to globalism, loyalty, revenge and catharsis.
The story behind the new South African buddy-comedy Frankie en Felipé is rooted in the shared dream of Bradley Olivier and Solomon Cupido, much like any actor aiming to create their own film. Their ultimate aspiration was to craft their own cinematic narrative and serves as a vehicle for people to connect with the characters through their struggles and dreams. READ MORE / South African Filmmaking
“Of my written work, Miller’s Girlis the first,” says writer-director Jade Halley Bartlett. “It began as a love letter to my dear friend and muse, Julianne, whose extraordinary talents as an actress inspired me to write a character who has become, to this day, a young woman from whom I am still learning.” READ MORE / In cinemas from 23 February
“Madame Web is unlike any other superhero,” says writer-director S.J. Clarkson, bringing to the screen one of Marvel’s most mysterious and inscrutable characters. Clarkson helms a standalone origin story for the character who uses the power of her mind to weave together the fates of everyone around her. “One of the themes of the movie is that you don’t have to be superhuman to have superpowers,” Clarkson continues. “Most superheroes’ powers come from strength and agility. With Madame Web, it’s all psychological.” READ MORE / Now in cinemas
By hewing to the darker, more existential tones of Italian author Carlo Collodi’s fairy tale Pinocchio than any previous adaptation, and pairing it with a style of animation that inherently draws a viewer into a state of wonder, writer-director Guillermo del del Toro has aimed to create a film that’s characteristically jubilant yet wistful, otherworldly but resonant. “One that’s meant for every kind of viewer — adults and children alike.” READ MORE/ Netflix
“When writing Land Of Bad, this bond was between the core characters, stuck in an impossible situation in an unforgiving landscape,” says writer-director William Eubank . ““When I arrived on set in Australia’s Gold Coast, I found that this bond transcended the page in two ways. It was forged between the actors, and is a key value of the country we filmed in. “It was this camaraderie – from researching and penning the screenplay with my co-writer and producer David Frigerio, to the stories we heard from real Delta Force soldiers, and what I experienced on set – that made Land Of Bad an unforgettable experience. READ MORE / In Cinemas
“David Hemingson had written a pilot script that took place in an all-boys prep school, and it was wonderful,” says director Alexander Payne, who called Hemingson and said, ‘I don’t want to make your pilot but would you consider writing a feature script based on a different idea?,” resulting in The Holdovers.Read More / Only in Cinemas
“I wanted to capture the contrast between somebody pouring a cup of coffee in their kitchen and somebody being murdered on the other side of the wall, the co-existence of those two extremes,” says 58-year-old writer-director Jonathan Glazer of The Zone Of Interest, in which the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp. Read More/ Only in cinemas
Writing a globe-trotting espionage thriller while the world was in COVID lockdown allowed screenwriter Jason Fuchs an escape. I hadn’t written an original screenplay in a long time, so Argyllebecame my little passion project,” Fuchs says. “It was cathartic and allowed me to escape my apartment office and traverse the world with Argylle on a Greek island or explore Europe with the characers.”Read More/ Now in Cinemas
“Music and magical realism helped to heighten the world of the story, and allowed us to get inside of Celie’s mind,” says poet, playwright, screenwriter Marcus Gardley of the reimagining of The Color Purple. “For me, the story came alive in a new way when I realized that Celie’s imagination was the heartbeat of the film.” Read More/ Now in cinemas
Screenwriter Kurt Wimmer considers himself a regular moviegoer and he gravitates to things we all feel the same about. “When people take advantage of old people,” he says, “that makes me really angry… around the world people are being defrauded with no recourse for justice.” He decided to solve the injustice in his fantasy world by writing the screenplay for The Beekeeper. “I want a white knight for people who need it, who really need it.” Read More / Now in cinemas /
“I was interested in exploring the complexities of both familial and romantic love, but also the distinct experience of a specific generation of gay people growing up in the 80s,” says British filmmaker Andrew Haigh, who infused his screenplay for All Of Us Strangers with a contemporary and personal touch, placing the story in a world more recognizable to his own. Read More/Read the Screenplay / Now in cinemas
In the sexy romantic comedy Beautiful Disaster, college freshman Abby and bad-boy brawler “Mad Dog” Maddox fell in love after a bet. In Beautiful Wedding they wake up after a crazy night in Vegas as accidental newlyweds. Writer/director Roger Kumble says that while a sequel wasn’t originally planned, a fun end credits sequence set up the characters for another adventure. Read More/ Now incinemas
“It has been remarkable to watch screenwriter John Collee turn this thing into a television story, and he’s taken it to places that I never went, that I wished I’d had more space to explore,” says novelist Trent Dalton regarding the TV adaptation of his brilliant, semi-autobiographical and intensely evocative 2018 debut novel Boy Swallows Universe. Read More / Watch on Netflix.
“Balenciaga is an almost “secret” creator. His work is extraordinarily public, but he maintained absolute privacy about his person. He gave practically no interviews and lived in a highly media-driven, but almost clandestine, environment. That was the first challenge: who was Cristóbal Balenciaga?” says Lourdes Iglesias, creator of the series on Cristóbal Balenciaga, one of the first fiction series of Disney+ Spain. On Disney + / Read More
“Alasdair Gray’s novel is packed with ideas about gender, identity, and even Scottish nationalism, says screenwriter Tony McNamara, who wrote the screenplay of Poor Things. “You’re in this incredibly rich philosophical and political world, all while being tremendously funny.” Read More
With a new screenplay by Tina Fey, the iconic high school comedy Mean Girls returns as a classic tale retold in the era of social media. This new version, she says, uses the strengths of both the original film and the hit Broadway show as a springboard for an extravagant and contemporary movie. Read More
“I see the court as a place where our lives are fictionalized, where a story, a narrative, is put on our life,” says French writer-director Justine Triet about Anatomy of a Fall, which she co-wrote with her partner Arthur Harari, eschewing the traditional courtroom drama to explore familial relationships. Read More
“Like it or not, J. Robert Oppenheimer is the most important person who ever lived. He made the world we live in, for better or for worse. And his story must be seen to be believed,” says writer-director Christopher Nolan, who consciously broke traditional screenwriting rules by skillfully penning the script for Oppenheimer in the first-person, something that had a unique and positive effect on the story. Read More / Read the Screenplay
It sometimes can be challenging when someone has written 300 beautiful pages of prose and then they need to turn it into a screenplay. Taylor Jenkins Reid adapted her own story, One True Loves, working with her husband, Alex. Says Alex J. Reid, “I’ve been fortunate enough to have adapted several books. But usually, I don’t have the benefit of adapting a book with its author — who in this case is also my wife!” Read More
Screenwriter Michael Golamco’s inspiration for Please Stand By came from a NY Times article about young girls with autism. “That girl resonated with me. The article said girls with autism have problems connecting socially, but what sets them apart from boys is that girls really want to connect. ” Read More
Like Spike Lee and his seminal classic Do the Right Thing, screenwriter Lena Waithe was striving to encourage a discourse on race relations in America with Queen & Slim, in a multilayered story that also speaks to love, hate, fear and ultimately the human condition. “I want audiences to determine for themselves whether or not they think Queen and Slim are heroes,” Waithe says. “People will have different takes on it, and that’s what’s great about art. Rather than audiences looking to the artist for the answer, I prefer to let the art speak for itself, allowing the audience to look to themselves for the answer.” Read More
Good Grief marks Daniel Levy’s debut as a feature-film writer and director. “For me, writing is one of the most meaningful ways of exploring and understanding my own feelings,” says Levy. Levy deftly moves beyond his Emmy-winning work as an actor and writer on the hit TV series Schitt’s Creek. Now on Netflix. MORE
Acclaimed Spanish director-writer J.A.Bayona adapted Pablo Vierci’s book Society Of The Snow, to give a voice to the survivors and to those who didn’t make it out alive. The event, which took place 50 years ago last year, is well known around the world and has affected (and continues to affect) generations of people. MORE
“I wanted to explore Killers of the Flower Moon,” says director Martin Scorsese. “To start working with Eric Roth and see what kind of a movie we could make. From 2017 to 2020, while we were shooting “The Irishman,” we went through every aspect of that story. We came at the story from every possible angle, with Tom White as the main character.” MORE
“I was fascinated by their dynamic in the context of Diana’s crazy dream and her desire to do something so dangerous that she just knew in her bones she could do it. What does that do to a relationship? What does that do to the person who loves you more than anybody else in the world?” asks Nyad screenwriter Julia Cox. MORE
Visionary writer-director Terrence Malick masterfully shines the spotlight on humanity with A Hidden Life. It is his first biographical film based on real people whose descendants are still alive. MORE
With Nicholas Winton’s daughter’s blessing, screenwriters Lucinda Coxon and Nick Drake gained access to Winton’s archives and letters, as well as her book about her father, to craft One Life. MORE
“This is an incredibly timely story. Thematically it’s about finding light in times of darkness,” says screenwriter Steven Knight on the decision to adapt All the Light We Cannot Seefor television. “There’s just a very hopeful feeling about it, that hope will triumph over evil in the end.” MORE
When screenwriter Kennedy Martin passed away in 2009, filmmaker Michael Mann revisited his script and its themes and crafted Ferrari, a biographical drama for a new era. MORE
“Who among us has the inner strength and autonomy to live outside the churning new cell phone cycle and the amplified social chatter of our digital consumer society?” Debra Granik questions poignantly, who directed Leave No Trace from a screenplay she crafted with Anne Rosellini. MORE
Andrew Kevin Walker
“I liked the idea of exploring the inner psyche of somebody who kills for a living. And how he qualifies his notion of what he’s doing from what other people might ‘misperceive’ it as.” says director David Fincher of The Killer, who re-unites with screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, with whom he created the indelible serial killer thriller Se7en. MORE
”What started out as a simple research assignment became a two-year odyssey as doors kept opening, allowing me more and more access into this violent world,” says writer-director Ric Roman Waugh, whose film Shot Caller takes us into the hardcore culture of prison gangsters. MORE
Well-experienced in adaptations, award-winning playwright and screenwriter Alice Birch knew how to take Novelist and Poet Megan Hunter Megan’s words and make them cinematic and wrote the screenplay for The End We Start From.MORE
“I think audiences want to see movies that are relevant, authentic, and cinematic – but most of all, fun,” says writer-director Will Gluck of the hilarious comedyAnyone But You. MORE
I’ve always loved an underdog story,” says writer, director, producer, and cinematographer Zack Snyder. Incarnations of his screenplay for Rebel Moon originated 20 years ago. MORE
When Oscar-winning Māori filmmaker Taika Waititi learned about the epic failure and the story of an underdog team whose dreams finally came true, he knew he had to make Next Goal Wins. “You’re always looking for inspiration, but with this one, it was all already there,” he says. MORE
Making his English-language debut, Oslo-born writer-director Kristoffer Borgli follows the rise and fall of one man’s fifteen minutes of fame with Dream Scenario, a mordantly funny and playfully twisted take on the collective consciousness of modern life where just about anyone can suddenly become a strange kind of celebrity. MORE
“Rumaan Alam’s novel drew me in because of its characters, first and foremost. They all seemed authentic and a true product of modern society. There was something about the way they clashed with each other in this near-apocalyptic setting that resonated with me,” says writer-director Sam Esmail of Leave the World Behind. MORE
What inspired action-movie specialist John Woo his return after an absence of 2-decades, is a riveting screenplay for Silent Night, crafted by Robert Archer Lynn, “Even though it had no dialogue, it had great drama and a very, very good story. The script is full of surprises. I enjoyed the script because I like challenges.” MORE
“I wanted to bring to the world a Wonka back when he was young and wide-eyed and full of hope and optimism,” says writer-director Paul King of Wonka. “What I wanted to show is the flowering of a genius in the most extraordinary way you can possibly imagine—a man who discovers who he is, but also finds a family.” MORE
“Writing something so close to home, yet fictional, was an interesting new challenge,” says screenwriter Gabe Gabriel who wrote and stars in Runs in the Family, directed by his father Ian Gabriel. “While based on my own complex, but positive relationship with my father as a young trans man coming into his own in South Africa, the story had to eventually separate itself from us and become its own magical thing in order to really take off.” MORE
“Writing the first draft of May December in 2019 was not very comfortable. Mostly because I was crammed into the coat closet of our old apartment: a 3-by-3 space that we had taken the rod out of and installed a folding tray-table that I used as a desk,” says screenwriter Samy Burch. MORE
Filmmaker Eli Roth’s ode to 80s slasher horror Thanksgiving began in 2006 when he created a fake trailer that would appeal to the grindhouse crowd. 17 years later horror fans were still begging for the best horror movie never made. MORE
Screenwriter David Scarpa’s craft lies in writing material with psychological themes that lend themselves to a sweeping cinematic experience. With Napoleon, he uses real-life characters as a vehicle to illuminate broader themes about the human condition. MORE
Writer-director James Napier Robertson is well-versed in dramatisations of real-life stories. “There’s always a pressure and responsibility when telling a story about a real person. I believe ballet is a bridge between countries and cultures. It’s an international language, a way for people to meet and create and do things without words. It’s about beauty and celebrating something that is bigger than just the basic functions of being human.” MORE
“We knew it was an incredible story, the question was how do we tell it in a way that would be really interesting. That’s when we came up with the perspectives idea and, ultimately, the kind of the bait and switch, where you have two thirds of a movie with these two men only to discover that this woman is actually the hero of the whole story,” says Matt Damon, who co-wrote the screenplay of The Last Duel with Ben Affleck and Nicole Holofcener. MORE
“Knock At The Cabin is a modern-day biblical story,” says writer-director M. Night Shyamalan. “The idea of telling large-scale biblical stories, but in modern times and in modern settings, is resonating with me right now.” MORE
Jimmy Smallhorne says his inspiration for The Miracle Club came from his Mam and all other women who were the best multitaskers. “We all have our jobs to make our little piece better, and I think The Miracle Club is my attempt to make my patch a little better”.MORE
John Lee Hancock, directing and producing The Little Thingsfrom a script he wrote almost 30 years ago, wanted to approach the gritty nature of the job as a means of exploring both the intellectual and psychological sides of solving crimes. MORE
“I was just astounded by this incredible story,” says screenwriter Wells Tower after reading a New York Times article, The Pain Hustlers, “I found it mind-blowing that these people, who for the most part have no medical training, have so much influence over the medications we’re prescribed,” MORE
“I grew up surrounded by women. I think of all the female characters I’ve written and being inspired by these women and their stability to overcome anything. By their ability to fight and by their strength,” says Spanish writer-director Pedro Almodóvar of Parallel Mothers. MORE
“It just tapped into such a shared truth for women of every generation in terms of how they navigate through sexual politics,” says screenwriter Michelle Ashford of Cat Person, who had previously tackled sexual dynamics and politics in the television series Masters Of Sex. MORE
“There is nothing more haunted than a Venetian palazzo, the city just calls for mist and masks, and the creepy crawly, throw-a-body-in-the-river kind of feel, ” says screenwriter Michael Green of A Haunting In Venice, an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel Hallowe’en Party. MORE
“I was very interested in a story about destiny and humanity,” says visionary storyteller Guillermo del Toro, who journeys into the most arrestingly dark, sweeping and realistic world – the cinematic world of film noir with Nightmare Alley, exploring the murky lines between illusion and reality, desperation and control, success, and tragedy. MORE
Crimson Peakis “the darkest of fairytales,” says filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, who brings to the screen a masterful and imaginative Gothic romance. MORE
“How do you make a film where the feeling you’re trying to evoke is ‘not knowing’?” questions writer-director Grant Singer. “Mysteries that are most resonant and lasting are the most hidden. Reptile began with a desire to capture a feeling of being deceived. MORE
“It made sense for John to do some soul-searching in a way we haven’t seen before, ” says screenwriter Josh Stolberg, who co-wrote the screenplay of SAW X with Pete Goldfinger. MORE
Artificial Intelligence (AI), is one of today’s most hotly debated topics and is at the epicenter of The Creator, a science fiction thriller set in the near future. “The Timing of this film is surreal,” says director/co-writer Gareth Edwards. “Even though we’ve been developing this movie for years, it’s opening at a fascinating time when our world is wrestling with a lot of the issues and questions we wanted to address with the film.” MORE / AI FILMS
Almost 20 years ago writer-director Wes Anderson was inspired to adapt Roald Dahl’s story The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. “ The story completely hooked me as a child, but if you take away his words, well, I guess, it’s not a movie I felt compelled to do. It’s a great Dahl story, but if I do it using his words, his descriptions, then maybe I know how to do it.” MORE
When writer-director Celine Song found herself sitting at a bar sandwiched between two men from vastly different parts of her life, it was there, sitting in this convergence of worlds, that Song, a mainstay in New York theater as a playwright, found the inspiration for what would become her filmmaking debut, PAST LIVES. MORE
“After really showcases an authentic romance and all of its beauty and all of its ugliness at the same time,” says writer-director Castille Landon, who directed After Ever Happy and After Everythingof the After franchise. “It feels really real and relevant and I think we’re so exposed to this concept of a fairy tale romance that when you get into the real world, you find that’s not at all how things are.” MORE
“At the heart of our vision for Luma Animation and for Headspace, is the notion that everyone deserves to be the hero of their own story, not forgetting that, ultimately, we rely on the support of friends and collaborators to triumph,” Paul Meyer and Gerhard Painter, who directed this vibrant South African CGI Sci-Fi action-adventure from a screenplay they co-wrote with Daniel Buckland and Ronald Henry. South African Filmmaking / MORE
The inspiration for the high concept horror Talk To Me came from observing neighbourhood kids growing up and marks the debut feature film from Australian twins Danny and Michael Philippou, best known as online global sensations RACKARACKA, with more than 1.5 billion views on YouTube. MORE
by Daniel Dercksen·Comments Off on An Inspiring Weekend Workshop For Writers
Our weekend workshop for writers is taking a break until further notice. Visit THE WRITE JOURNEY
Scroll down for The Benefits Of Workshops For Writers
Encouraging words from Boitumelo Letsebe, who attended The Write Journey workshop. “I have a better understanding of how to shape my story into a masterpiece. Before the workshop, I was drained and depressed but now, I am excited about the writing journey because I have the guide I needed to make it a workable piece of magic.” Says Lourens Erasmus (left) “It gave me a lot of insight into the writing process. Going forward it will certainly help me to structure my story, design the plot, build my characters etc, where in the past I was writing “blind” mostly.” Pictured with Letsebe and Lourens are facilitator Dirk Fourie.
What you will learn in this workshop
You will turn the narrative in your head into action.
You will take an interactive, intimate, and introspective journey into the world of the story.
It will empower you to take ownership of the creative journey, and creative expression.
How to turn ideas into a success story while learning about yourself in the process.
Who is the workshop aimed at
Aspirant writers
Experienced writers who are unsure of what they are writing
Writers who need discipline and motivation
Writers who find the story they are writing dull and lifeless.
Ideal for novelists, screenwriters and playwrights
Anyone who has a story to unleash
Goals and Objectives
How to write Your First Draft
How to develop an idea into a story
To lay the foundation of your story
To define and develop your characters
To structure and plot your story
To understand the process of writing your story
To write the first pages of your screenplay/novel / stageplay
What does the workshop involve?
On Day one you will look at Who are you as a storyteller, what it takes to be a writer, the process of writing a story from start to first pages, what type of story you are writing, who you are writing for, how to make the most of your idea.
On Day Two you will look at how to create and bring characters to life, how to structure & plot your story, outline your story, and how to take ownership of your story
There’s a Q & A after each session
You will then write the first 10 pages of your screenplay/ novel and submit it to your coach for evaluation before you continue writing your first draft.
All you need for the workshop is a notebook, pencil, and your IMAGINATION!
He received his Honours Diploma in Film and Television Production Techniques at the City Varsity Multimedia School in Cape Town. Between 2002 and 2007 he facilitated workshops in screenwriting and directing, through the Writing Studio, at the SABC branches in Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Johannesburg.
In 2007 his short film, In God’s Country, won the highly acclaimed Jury Prize for Best Newcomer at the 65th Annual Apollo Film Festival in Victoria West, South Africa. In the same year, it also received awards for Best Screenplay (as co-writer with Daniel Dercksen), Best Director and Best Film at the Shortz Film Festival in Cape Town.
Dirk’sThe Edit Boothprovides high-quality video editing, transcription, and script reading and analysis services
The Writing Studio’s workshop in Johannesburg on 25 /26 November took aspirant writers Alta Linstrom (from Tshwane) and Dr Dimakatso Maboea from Soweto through the write paces with guidance from facilitator Dirk Fourie.
Our Write Journey weekend workshop in Johannesburg went extremely well, with Dirk Fourie taking Jordyn Lee Bird and Tessa Strydom through the paces of writing their novels. “I absolutely loved the workshop (5 stars),” says Jordyn (left). Says Tessa: “I enjoyed the workshop, I found it to be informative and it has certainly given me a lot to think about as I continue this journey. I would like to continue working with The Writing Studio to get guidance and assistance as I complete my work.”
The Benefits Of Workshops For Writers
Feedback
Criticism can be hard to take, but it’s a major step in the creative process. Genuine constructive criticism can really improve your work. Missed a step during your writing process? The coach will let you know. Another workshopper will help you. Having a fresh pair of eyes can make the end result of your story as close to perfect as possible. Feedback can be difficult to make, but it is a big step in the process for writers in building a career. Sincere, constructive criticism arising from attending a workshop will improve your work as a professional.
Hands-on help and receiving recommendations
The workshop encourages questions and will give you an answer right then and there.
New Ways of Thinking
Nobody shares the same worldview, and their interpretation of something could be drastically different from yours. Fellow workshoppers may offer a startling unique view of your story than what you see it as. Being exposed to new points of view can offer new insight and ideas.
Everyone does not have the same view of the world, and their understanding of something may differ dramatically from yours. Attending a workshop serves just this. You can get a remarkably unique or new perspective altogether from other attendees. Sometimes you can even create something awesome in your career by asking for their thoughts or input on something you might not even know or have heard of. To grow, we must be open to new ideas, new ways of doing things, or new ways of thinking. It is rightly said that you must learn a new way to think before you can master a new way to be!
Opportunities for Networking
Building new relationships and meeting new connections are important to personal growth. A workshop gives you the best opportunity to meet other people who share your interests. It is always a pleasure to meet someone with the same enthusiasm that you do. Attending a workshop is a great way to meet other people in your area with shared interests. You will at least be able to find a friend and somebody who knows your “talk shop,” as it were i.e. to discuss matters concerning your work etc.
Make New Friends
A workshop gives you a chance to meet other people who share your interests and have the same passion and enthusiasm as you do! Finding someone with the same passion as you is always a treat. Workshops are a terrific way to meet other people with shared interests in your area. You’ll be able to find a colleague and someone who understands your “shop talk,” as it were.
Developing New Prowess
Attending a workshop is like gifting yourself a new possibility to learn something new from peers who have better experience and knowledge to share with you a new bee into the world of professionals. Since the publishing and producing environments are very competitive and to survive one must attend as many workshops as possible to stay tuned to it or to stay ahead of the competition.
Motivation to Work
Being part of a workshop is great for providing motivation as it’s a promise someone else will view your work. It helps to fight creative block. When you have an audience, you’re more driven to complete your project. Being part of a workshop is great for providing such motivation as it’s a promise someone else will view or listen to your work.
New Skills
The intimacy of The Writing Studio’s workshop is not crowded and fosters a relaxed one-on-one environment where you can learn something new and hear new ideas that can help you with the crafting of your story. It ties in with the different points of view, to some extent, as others may have more experience with the skill or topic in question.
New Opportunities
It can be difficult to get your work out there without an agent of some kind. Workshops can help you gain exposure by introducing new ways to publish or otherwise showcase your writing. Your fellow attendees may also have opportunities to share with the group, making it especially worthwhile to bond with others.
Having Fun
Most importantly, workshops are meant for growth and enjoyment. Even if you find your work not improving drastically, you may still have a valuable time attending. Most significantly, the workshop is intended for development and enjoyment. Even if you think your craft is not dramatically changing, When you are happy, your productivity, creativity, and innovation improve dramatically. A brighter mood means better content, and isn’t that the goal of a workshop to begin with?
After finishing a workshop, you will feel more confident because you have just listened to an expert expressing his passion for what he loves, along with learning new tips and tricks to help you succeed!
Cinema audiences and theatre lovers are treated to innovative productions that are filmed live, and opera lovers can indulge in the Met Opera’s operas. NT Live /MET Opera
2024 Film Releases – OCTOBER RELEASES
Scroll down for films released from January to September 2024.Click on the title for more information about the film and exclusive features.
JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX stars Joaquin Phoenix once again in his Oscar-winning dual role as Arthur Fleck/Joker, opposite Oscar winner Lady Gaga. The film finds Arthur Fleck institutionalized at Arkham awaiting trial for his crimes as Joker. While struggling with his dual identity, Arthur not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that’s always been inside him. Todd Phillips directed Joker: Folie À Deux from a screenplay by Scott Silver & Phillips, based on characters from DC. Showing in cinemas. Read more / TRAILER
WOMAN OF THE HOUR The stranger-than-fiction story of an aspiring actress in 1970s Los Angeles and a serial killer in the midst of a yearslong murder spree, whose lives intersect when they’re cast on an episode of The Dating Game. Rodney Alcala was a killer in the midst of a killing spree when he brazenly took part and won a date on the popular TV game show “The Dating Game”. Showing in cinemas. Read more / TRAILER
AFTERMATH – On what should have been a peaceful afternoon drive, former Army Ranger Eric Daniels (Dylan Sprouse) finds himself trapped with hundreds of other commuters and a high-profile prisoner (Dichen Lachman) after a group of heavily armed ex-military contractors shut down Boston’s Tobin Bridge. As their leader (Mason Gooding) starts killing hostages, Sprouse must rely on his military training, killer instincts, and some unexpected help to get his little sister – and everyone else – home safely. Showing in cinemas. Read more / TRAILER
EUROPEAN FILM FESTIVAL – (10-20 October) Film lovers can look forward to an entertaining and provocative array of new award-winning European films as the European Film Festival returns for its 11th edition in South Africa from 10-20 October. Eleven of the films will be available in the free programme of online streaming. Read more
THE SILENT HOUR (11 October) – A Boston detective returns to duty after an injury leaves him with permanent hearing loss. Tasked with interpreting for a deaf witness to a brutal gang murder, they find themselves cornered in a soon-to-be-condemned apartment building where the killers try to eliminate her. Read more / TRAILER
MY HERO ACADEMIA: YOU’RE NEXT (11 October) The Japanese animated superhero film is based on an original story featuring the characters of My Hero Academia manga series by Kōhei Horikoshi. In the aftermath of the Paranormal Liberation War, Izuku Midoriya and his classmates of Class 1-A join together to assist the Heroes in tracking down the Jailbreakers that have run rampant in Japan. However, they run into more trouble than they expect when they have to stop a mysterious giant fortress and a man who resembles the former “Symbol of Peace”. TRAILER
HOMECOMING (11 October) Mam Nkomo (Thoko Ntshinga) summons her children home for what could be Tat Nkomo’s (Timmy Kwebulane) last Christmas. Luleka (Zikhona Bali) and Asanda (Talitha Ndima) reluctantly hit the road, greatful for the chance to escape their problems in the big city. Surrounded by family and in the warm embrace of the beautiful hills of their Village, the two sisters are forced to reconnect and re-discover their sisterhood. A carol of hope and joy unfolds as the Nkomo siblings try to create the best Christmas ever for their father. Plans go awry as Silent nights fade into the background. Secrets are revealed. If the Nkomo family can band together and save this Christmas, they can survive anything. TRAILER
WHITE BIRD: A WONDER STORY – (18 October) From the best-selling author of Wonder, the book that sparked a movement to “choose kind,” comes the inspirational next chapter. We follow Julian (Bryce Gheisar), who has struggled to belong ever since he was expelled from his former school for his treatment of Auggie Pullman. To transform his life, Julian’s grandmother (Helen Mirren) finally reveals to Julian her own story of courage — during her youth in Nazi-occupied France, a boy shelters her from mortal danger. They find first love in a stunning, magical world of their own creation, while the boy’s mother (Gillian Anderson) risks everything to keep her safe. TRAILER
SMILE 2 – (18 October) A psychological supernatural horror written and directed by Parker Finn. The sequel to Smile (2022), the film stars Naomi Scott as pop sensation Skye Riley who begins to experience a series of increasingly disturbing and daunting events as she is about to go on a new world tour and is forced to face her dark past to regain control of her life before it spirals out of control. TRAILER
GOODRICH (25 October) After his younger second wife leaves him and enters a 90-day rehab program, Los Angeles art dealer Andy Goodrich seeks out his adult pregnant daughter Grace for help with raising his nine-year-old twins in a comedy written and directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer. The film stars Michael Keaton Douglas and Mila Kunis. TRAILER
VENOM: THE LAST DANCE (25 October) In the superhero film Eddie Brock and the symbiote Venom go on the run when they are hunted by both of their worlds. It’s the sequel to Venom (2018) and Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021), and the fifth film in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, written and directed by Kelly Marcel. Tom Hardy stars as Eddie Brock and Venom alongside Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, Peggy Lu, Alanna Ubach, and Stephen Graham. In the film, Brock and Venom are on the run from both of their worlds. TRAILER
GRACIE & PEDRO: PETS ON THE RESCUE (25 October) An animated buddy comedy that follows a pampered show dog and a street-smart alley cat who embark on a thrilling journey through the bustling streets of Las Vegas, across the scorching desert, and into an abandoned amusement park to find their family after being separated during a cross-country move. It’s directed by Kevin Donovan and Gottfried Roodt from a screenplay by Jaisa C. Bishop, Bruce A. Taylor, and Kelly Peters from a story by Bishop and Taylor. It’s an international co-production between Canada, South Africa and the United States. TRAILER
THE MOTIVE AND THE CUE (26 October) Sam Mendes (The Lehman Trilogy) directs Mark Gatiss as John Gielgud and Johnny Flynn as Richard Burton in the fierce and funny new play The Motive And The Cue . In 1964 Richard Burton, newly married to Elizabeth Taylor, is to play the titlerole in an experimental new Broadway production of Hamlet under John Gielgud’s exacting direction. But as rehearsals progress, two ages of theatre collide and the collaboration between actor and director soon threatens to unravel. Written by Jack Thorne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) and designed by Es Devlin (The Crucible), the Evening Standard award-winning best new play was filmed live during a sold-out run at the National Theatre. Screening on 26, 27, 30 & 31 October. Read more about the NT Live screenings
Cinema audiences and theatre lovers alike are treated to innovative productions filmed live, and opera lovers can indulge in the Met Opera’s operas. NT Live /
FILMS RELEASED IN 2024 (January to September)
(Listed Alphabetically / Click on Titles to Read Features)
by Daniel Dercksen·Comments Off on Heartstopper – Shedding A Positive Light on Teenage Queer Culture
“As a writer, it’s magical to know that something you’ve written has had a profound impact on someone’s life,” says Alice Oseman, the creator and writer of the heartwarming Netflix series Heartstopper. “I’m always so happy to hear that it has helped anyone on their own journey, whether that’s a young person hoping to come out themselves, or a parent who is unsure how to support their child, or anyone else who connected to the scene for whatever reason.”
“The reception to Heartstopper was huge and completely unexpected, and the number of people reading (and now watching!) my stories around the world has increased by a mind-boggling amount. It’s incredible to see how much the community of readers has blossomed,” says Oseman, who wanted to “explore realistic contemporary issues with a hopeful and optimistic lens.”
“I think that is what people like about Heartstopper more than anything. It feels like it could be real, but with the comfort and knowledge that everything is going to be okay in the end, and no matter what someone might be going through, there are always pockets of joy to be found. I think this is particularly comforting to the queer community. We want to see our struggles represented accurately in the media, but we also often want media that makes us feel hopeful, comforted, and happy, and I like to think Heartstopper does both those things.”
“While Heartstopper will always celebrate the joyful and point towards hope, I’m really excited that we are allowing the tone of the show to mature alongside our beloved characters growing up. Mental health, sex, university ambitions, and more: Nick, Charlie, and the Heartstopper teens are getting older, learning more about themselves and each other, and experiencing new desires, new fears, and new joys as they approach adulthood.”
Alice Oseman and the cast at a screening of Heartstopper.
Season 1: Boy meets boy. Boys become friends. Boys fall in love. When gentle Charlie and rugby-loving Nick meet at secondary school, they quickly discover that their unlikely friendship is blossoming into an unexpected romance. Charlie, Nick and their circle of friends must navigate the ever-relatable journey of self-discovery and acceptance, supporting each other as they learn to find their most authentic selves.
Season 2: Nick and Charlie navigate their new relationship; Tara and Darcy face unforeseen challenges and Tao and Elle work out if they can ever be more than just friends. With exams on the horizon, a school trip to Paris and a prom to plan, the gang has a lot to juggle as they journey through the next stages of life, love and friendship. The conclusion of Season 2 follows the spirit of Oseman’s original graphic novels, but also diverges a bit. “In the comics, there are a couple of moments where Charlie thinks he’s going to say ‘I love you’ and then decides not to, but the actual cliff-hanger at the end of Season 2 is not something that is in the comics,” says Oseman.
Season 3: Suitably titled “Love,” picks up with Charlie eager to tell Nick that he loves him and Nick holding on to something important he has to say to Charlie. As the summer holiday ends and the months race on, the friends begin to realize that the school year will come with both its joys and its challenges. As they learn more about each other and their relationships, plan social events and parties, and start thinking about university choices, everyone must learn to lean on those they love when life doesn’t go to plan. Read more
Crafting Season 2
“Writing a sequel or second anything is never easy – I’ve been there many times – but this particular sequel feels more pressured than anything I’ve ever worked on before due to the sheer numbers of people who will be tuning in. I hate disappointing anyone, all I could do was write, to the best of my ability, a story that I love.”
Oseman wanted each season of Heartstopper to “feel like an evolution, to tackle new ideas and themes, and for us to see the characters changing and growing, while also preserving the hopeful heart of Heartstopper. In season two, the characters are all maturing in their romances, their identities, and their outlooks on life and the future. They all feel a little older and wiser, and with that comes a whole host of new experiences and emotions.”
“While season one followed a typical romance story structure, season two takes a deeper look into teen relationships of various stages and sees the characters begin to explore more complex emotional truths about themselves and each other. I hope viewers will be pleasantly surprised by some of the paths that these relationships take as the characters get to know each other and themselves on a much deeper level.”
Heartopper 2 does not only focus on teenagers but also introduces Queer teachers.
“Due to Section 28, which prohibited the “promotion of homosexuality” in UK schools, queer teachers couldn’t be open about their identities, or they’d risk losing their jobs. Section 28 was only repealed in England in 2003 (though an adapted form of it remained in practice in Kent – where the Heartstopper comics are set – until 2010),” says Oseman.
“Seeing queer teachers on screen, with that history in mind, is radical and revolutionary. The concept of queer teens being able to reach out to queer teachers for guidance and advice feels almost utopian even to someone of my age, who was still in school a mere decade ago. But hopefully, teachers like Mr Ajayi and Mr Farouk are becoming more and more commonplace in schools today.”
“One of the great things about the adaptation having more time than a comic book is that in the comics, it’s basically just Nick and Charlie’s relationship that is focused on. You have more time when you do a TV series, so Alice has been able to open up the stories of the other characters here, which is really great, because queerness isn’t just one binary. You don’t have to just be one thing. We see a lot of gay male relationships in media compared to other relationships, so it’s great that we can share those other types as well,” says Joe Locke who plays Charlie Spring.
“One of the really powerful things about Heartstopper is that it is a voice for a lot of people,” says Kit Connor, who plays Nick Nelson. “We’re not claiming to be educational or anything like that. But we do try and teach people that no matter what, it’s okay. It’s okay to not know, and it’s okay to explore and it’s okay to work things out. You’ll get there. It’s going to be the best thing ever when you do.”
Says Nelson: “With Heartstopper, a lot of people were crying by the end, but they were happy crying. Whereas for most queer media you watched before Heartstopper, you were crying because someone had died or something like that. It was just really depressing and overbearing and important, but I think we were in a time — and I think we still are in a time — where there’s a lot on that side and there’s nothing on the other end where you just see queer people being happy, doing mundane things, and just living their life. That’s really what we’re going for.”
“Working on Heartstopper constantly brings me back to my own teenage years, which were not exactly full of queer joy,” says Oseman. “Seeing how Heartstopper has helped so many queer teens is so special and magical but has also helped me see that I’ve got some healing of my own to do.”
“We need all kinds of queer stories: joyful stories, tragic stories, sexy stories, dark stories, silly stories… I could go on. Joyful stories are absolutely needed – queer people need to see that they can find happiness, friendship, love, and peace, despite the struggles they may be facing in their daily lives. But I don’t want that to discredit the need for all kinds of other queer stories! There can be no light without dark.”
“Because queer friendships exist and are actually very common! Often queer people are mostly friends with other queer people, and so this is what happens in Heartstopper. I love hearing stories about people who’ve grown up, realised that they’re queer, and suddenly all their friends start coming out as queer too. Queer people are just drawn to each other! It’s also always a good thing to show a variety of queer experiences because being queer is certainly not the same for everyone. While one TV show could never show every queer experience out there, I think showing multiple helps people to feel that there’s no ‘right’ way to be queer.”
by Daniel Dercksen·Comments Off on 22 Lessons From Stephen King On How To Be A Great Writer
“I can’t lie and say there are no bad writers. Sorry, but there are lots of bad writers,” says renowned author Stephen King. “I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing,” Writers should throw back their shoulders, stick out their chins, and put their writing in charge.
In his memoir, “On Writing,” King shares valuable insights into how to be a better writer (available at a bookstore near you or at www.amazon.com).
Here are 22 great pieces of advice from King’s book on how to be an amazing writer:
Stop watching television. Instead, read as much as possible.
If you’re starting as a writer, your television should be the first thing to go. It’s “poisonous to creativity,” he says. Writers need to look into themselves and turn toward the life of the imagination. To do so, they should read as much as they can. King takes a book with him everywhere he goes, and even reads during meals. “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot,” he says. Read widely, and constantly work to refine and redefine your work as you do so.
Prepare for more failure and criticism than you think you can deal with.
King compares writing fiction to crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub, because in both, “there’s plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.” Not only will you doubt yourself, but other people will doubt you, too. “If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that’s all,” writes King. Oftentimes, you have to continue writing even when you don’t feel like it. “Stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea,” he writes. And when you fail, King suggests that you remain positive. “Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.”
Don’t waste time trying to please people.
According to King, rudeness should be the least of your concerns. “If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered anyway,” he writes. King used to be ashamed of what he wrote, especially after receiving angry letters accusing him of being bigoted, homophobic, murderous, and even psychopathic. By the age of 40, he realized that every decent writer has been accused of being a waste of talent. King has come to terms with it. He writes, “If you disapprove, I can only shrug my shoulders. It’s what I have.” You can’t please all of your readers all the time, so King advises that you stop worrying.
Write primarily for yourself.
You should write because it brings you happiness and fulfillment. As King says, “I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.” Writer Kurt Vonnegut provides a similar insight: “Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about,” he says. “It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.”
Tackle the things that are hardest to write.
“The most important things are the hardest things to say,” writes King. “They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings.” Most great pieces of writing are preceded with hours of thought. In King’s mind, “Writing is refined thinking.” When tackling difficult issues, make sure you dig deeply. King says, “Stories are found things, like fossils in the ground … Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world.” Writers should be like archaeologists, excavating for as much of the story as they can find.
When writing, disconnect from the rest of the world.
Writing should be a fully intimate activity. Put your desk in the corner of the room, and eliminate all possible distractions, from phones to open windows. King advises, “Write with the door closed; rewrite with the door open.” You should maintain total privacy between you and your work. Writing a first draft is “completely raw, the sort of thing I feel free to do with the door shut — it’s the story undressed, standing up in nothing but its socks and undershorts.”
Don’t be pretentious.
“One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you’re maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones,” says King. He compares this mistake to dressing up a household pet in evening clothes — both the pet and the owner are embarrassed, because it’s completely excessive. As iconic businessman David Ogilvy writes in a memo to his employees, “Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.” Furthermore, don’t use symbols unless necessary. “Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity,” writes King.
Avoid adverbs and long paragraphs.
As King emphasizes several times in his memoir, “the adverb is not your friend.” In fact, he believes that “the road to hell is paved with adverbs” and compares them to dandelions that ruin your lawn. Adverbs are worst after “he said” and “she said” — those phrases are best left unadorned. You should also pay attention to your paragraphs, so that they flow with the turns and rhythms of your story. “Paragraphs are almost always as important for how they look as for what they say,” says King.
Don’t get overly caught up in grammar.
According to King, writing is primarily about seduction, not precision. “Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes,” writes King. “The object of fiction isn’t grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.” You should strive to make the reader forget that he or she is reading a story at all.
Master the art of description.
“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s,” writes King. The important part isn’t writing enough, but limiting how much you say. Visualize what you want your reader to experience, and then translate what you see in your mind into words on the page. You need to describe things “in a way that will cause your reader to prickle with recognition,” he says. The key to good description is clarity, both in observation and in writing. Use fresh images and simple vocabulary to avoid exhausting your reader. “In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it ‘got boring,’ the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling,” notes King.
“What you need to remember is that there’s a difference between lecturing about what you know and using it to enrich the story,” writes King. “The latter is good. The former is not.” Make sure you only include details that move your story forward and that persuade your reader to continue reading. If you need to do research, make sure it doesn’t overshadow the story. Research belongs “as far in the background and the back story as you can get it,” says King. You may be entranced by what you’re learning, but your readers are going to care a lot more about your characters and your story.
Tell stories about what people actually do.
“Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do — to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street,” writes King. The people in your stories are what readers care about the most, so make sure you acknowledge all the dimensions your characters may have.
Take risks; don’t play it safe.
First and foremost, stop using the passive voice. It’s the biggest indicator of fear. “I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing,” King says. Writers should throw back their shoulders, stick out their chins, and put their writing in charge. “Try any goddamn thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn’t, toss it,” King says.
Realize that you don’t need drugs to be a good writer.
“The idea that the creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time,” says King. In his eyes, substance-abusing writers are just substance-abusers. “Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit.”
Don’t try to steal someone else’s voice.
As King says, “You can’t aim a book like a cruise missile.” When you try to mimic another writer’s style for any reason other than practice, you’ll produce nothing but “pale imitations.” This is because you can never try to replicate the way someone feels and experiences truth, especially not through a surface-level glance at vocabulary and plot.
Understand that writing is a form of telepathy.
“All the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree, but I believe that writing is the purest distillation,” says King. An important element of writing is transference. Your job isn’t to write words on the page, but rather to transfer the ideas inside your head into the heads of your readers. “Words are just the medium through which the transfer happens,” says King. In his advice on writing, Vonnegut also recommends that writers “use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.”
Take your writing seriously.
“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or despair,” says King. “Come to it any way but lightly.” If you don’t want to take your writing seriously, he suggests that you close the book and do something else. As writer Susan Sontag says, “The story must strike a nerve — in me. My heart should start pounding when I hear the first line in my head. I start trembling at the risk.”
Write every single day.
“Once I start work on a project, I don’t stop, and I don’t slow down unless I absolutely have to,” says King. “If I don’t write every day, the characters begin to stale off in my mind … I begin to lose my hold on the story’s plot and pace.” If you fail to write consistently, the excitement for your idea may begin to fade. When the work starts to feel like work, King describes the moment as “the smooch of death.” His best advice is to just take it “one word at a time.”
Finish your first draft in three months.
King likes to write 10 pages a day. Over a three-month span, that amounts to around 180,000 words. “The first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months, the length of a season,” he says. If you spend too long on your piece, King believes the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel.
When you’re finished writing, take a long step back.
King suggests six weeks of “recuperation time” after you’re done writing, so you can have a clear mind to spot any glaring holes in the plot or character development. He asserts that a writer’s original perception of a character could be just as faulty as the reader’s. King compares the writing and revision process to nature. “When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees,” he writes. “When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.” When you do find your mistakes, he says that “you are forbidden to feel depressed about them or to beat up on yourself. Screw-ups happen to the best of us.”
Have the guts to cut.
When revising, writers often have a difficult time letting go of words they spent so much time writing. But, as King advises, “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” Although revision is one of the most difficult parts of writing, you need to leave out the boring parts in order to move the story along. In his advice on writing, Vonnegut suggests, “If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.”
Stay married, be healthy, and live a good life.
King attributes his success to two things: his physical health and his marriage. “The combination of a healthy body and a stable relationship with a self-reliant woman who takes zero shit from me or anyone else has made the continuity of my working life possible,” he writes. It’s important to have a strong balance in your life, so writing doesn’t consume all of it. In writer and painter Henry Miller’s 11 commandments of writing, he advises, “Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.”
HENRY MILLER’S COMMANDMENTS
Work on one thing at a time until finished.
Start no more new books, add no more new material to ‘Black Spring.’
Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
When you can’t create you can work.
Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.
by Daniel Dercksen·Comments Off on Woman of the Hour – Truth is stranger than fiction
“Serial killer movies — like war movies — frequently romanticize the very thing they’re claiming to critique. And that’s a trap I worked hard to avoid,” says screenwriter Ian McDonald of Woman of the Hour. “I wanted to treat the people who were killed with dignity. To acknowledge their fundamental role within the case, while also suggesting that they had larger, more dynamic lives outside the story, and not limiting them to mere ‘victims.’”
In the 1970s, Rodney Alcala embarked on a killing spree, luring women under the guise of being a photographer in search of models. Despite being a registered sex offender who had recently been released from prison, he notoriously appeared on The Dating Game, a show that weekly featured three hidden bachelors answering humorous questions from a female contestant who would then choose one for an all-expenses-paid date.
Anna Kendrick makes her directorial debut with Woman of the Hour, a taut thriller based on the true story of a woman who reluctantly makes an appearance on the popular 1970s show The Dating Game, and chooses a bachelor who turns out to be a prolific serial killer.
Told through the vantage points of the victims and survivors, Woman of the Hour serves as a keen reminder of the all too real dangers that women face, and the countermeasures they almost intuitively understand how to deploy, in their interactions with dangerous men.
Frankly, it’s the type of story only a woman could tell. And with her trademark wit and humor on full display — both in front of and behind the camera — Kendrick presents a shrewdly observed, shockingly funny, and unnerving film in her first turn as director. Here she discusses her personal investment in telling this story, how she came to direct it, and what types of stories she’s attracted to as a director.
Anna Kendrick directs Woman of the Hour from a screenplay crafted by Ian McDonald.
The stranger-than-fiction story of an aspiring actress in 1970s Los Angeles and a serial killer in the midst of a yearslong murder spree, whose lives intersect when they’re cast on an episode of The Dating Game. Rodney Alcala was a killer in the midst of a killing spree when he brazenly took part and won a date on the popular TV game show “The Dating Game”.
In conversation with Anna Kendrick, director, executive producer, and star of Woman of the Hour
“As a director, Anna is passionate and meticulous. She’s able to go deep into how characters feel and behave while also keeping the larger narrative in mind. She also just had a very clear, uncompromising vision for how she wanted the film to look and feel, which was inspiring. I can’t say enough good things…Weirdly, we both grew up in Maine about 15 minutes from each other. We were also apparently in a Christmas pageant together when we were kids, and her dad worked as a substitute teacher at my high school. So there’s a way in which it feels like this was meant to be.” — Ian McDonald, Screenwriter
When did you first get involved with Woman of the Hour and how did you come to eventually take the helm as director?
Initially, I was attached as an actor and producer. I actually remember telling a friend, “it’ll be nice because it’s a great movie and a great part, but I’m not in every scene so it won’t be too big of a workload.” Little did I know what would happen in the end. I think we were about two years into development when I became aware that I was much more invested in the movie. Usually, I’m a bit laser-focused on my character, but in this case, I found myself asking everybody how they were feeling about every aspect of the movie, from the producers to the writer. Then we suddenly found ourselves with a start date and no director.
So we started talking about who we could go out to, who seemed like they’d be an interesting fit, and I think for the first 48 hours of this conversation, I had this thought bubbling up that I was resisting so hard. To even have that thought in my brain felt like pushing myself off a cliff.
I think I first said it out loud to a director friend who I initially got in touch with to see if he wanted to direct the movie. He read the script and he said, “It’s a great script, and there’s part of me that would love to do it. But I think you want to do it and I think you should, and I think you’re ready. Frankly, what’s taken you so long?” And that was really important and validating. I ended up formally pitching myself to direct a couple days later.
Was the desire to direct something that you’d nurtured for a while? After having produced several films, at what point did you start entertaining the idea? Or was it a matter of just waiting for the right opportunity to come along?
I think for a long time, in my conscious mind, I was very much holding onto the belief that being a director just takes too much out of you. Subconsciously, I think I was sort of protecting myself because it feels really vulnerable to want to do something and say it out loud or even acknowledge it to yourself. So it was something that was under the surface for a long time, but maybe I just didn’t feel brave enough to admit it until this movie came along. And frankly I think the expedited timeline of this project was the reason why I was able to push myself off that cliff. I think I would’ve chickened out if I’d had more time.
The subject matter of the movie isn’t one that we’d naturally expect you to want to direct your first time out. It’s pretty dark!
Funny enough, I asked another director friend to read the script, and he said something along the lines of, “I’m so happy you’re going to direct, but I have to confess I’m surprised that this is what you’re drawn to…I can see there’s a lot of really interesting themes around being a woman in the world and the challenges that come with that.” He also specifically referenced the violence of the opening scene.
So I really had to sit with that and give it some thought. I ended up saying that I can understand why a movie that opens with an act of violence doesn’t really seem like it’s in my wheelhouse, but I feel like I’ve been through experiences where I can relate to being with another person and suddenly discovering you’re with someone deeply unsafe. And how earth-shattering it is to have that feeling of annihilation suddenly appear in a room that previously felt very safe and warm.
Those scenes where there’s either violence or the threat of violence don’t feel foreign to me. In fact, I had to fight for that opening scene. Some people wanted a very different opening. But I felt so attached to that scene despite most people knowing me as a comedy gal. So I understand why it would seem surprising, but for me, I felt very connected to the material.
What was your approach toward portraying the violence? Despite the inherent brutality of some of the scenes, none of the violence toward the women in the film felt gratuitous or salacious.
In general, my approach was that things that are beautiful should be beautiful, and the things that are awful should be awful. Yet the violence in the movie is rarely literal or explicit. I wanted to be removed from the violence without sanitizing it. Violence is uncomfortable. It shouldn’t be easy to watch. But sometimes the suggestion of it has more impact.
I’m not especially interested in violence, but I’m interested in the ways people try to survive dangerous individuals and dangerous systems. And there was something about Ian McDonald’s writing that felt so emotionally resonant. The scenes with violence don’t feel like they are really about the act itself. To me, they’re about the risk of annihilation we expose ourselves to through intimacy. They feel like scenes about shame. Whose shame is this? Do I have to take it on for you so that you don’t hurt me? And how badly might you hurt me if I don’t?
Have you always been attracted to these kinds of true crime stories?
I think that it’s such a compelling genre because we all are drawn to these terrible stories because our brains believe that it will keep us safe if we know everything about dangerous people and the people they prey upon. It feels like this built-in primordial instinct to keep ourselves safe. I just don’t know how else to explain why so many people, including myself, would want to immerse ourselves in stories like this. Maybe it indulges the fantasy that you could get a perpetrator to see that what they’ve done is wrong. But that’s just not how these people are wired.
You mentioned tapping a few of your director friends for guidance. Who did you lean on for advice?
There were a million people that I leaned on or wanted advice from. But coincidentally my friends, Jake Johnson and Brittany Snow had both just directed their first features right before I started Woman of the Hour. I was texting with Brittany the weekend before we started filming. I was so nervous, my confidence was at such a low point, and she said, “You’ll be fine. You’re freaking out right now, but you’ll get on set and you’ll know what to do.” She was right. It was like stage fright where you think, I can’t go out there. I can’t go out there. Then you hear the first chords of a song and you go, Well, I guess I’ll have to and you muster all your courage. And Jake was always around three months ahead of whatever I was doing, so I was able to call him at each new phase and ask about what to expect and what challenges he faced that he didn’t anticipate.
The original screenplay for Woman of the Hour made the Black List back in 2017 [then titled Rodney & Sheryl]. What was it like working with writer Ian McDonald?
Ian’s the absolute best. He’s an angel and is so brilliant at what he does. One of the things we worked on changing together was the ending. I had read this piece about one of Rodney Alcala’s victims — a girl who had survived and how she managed to do that. It became the most interesting part of the story to me.
A funny story: I remember going back and forth with Ian working on a draft, and after a while saying to him, “I have a note for you that I feel really weird saying, and it makes me like you so much as a person, but the note is: you keep giving the women too much agency.” [Laughs.] He was like, “I’m sorry! I guess?”
I completely understood why he’d want to give that to a female character. There were moments when these women were interacting with their boyfriend, or the game show host, or the killer and they’d say something to the effect of, “You’re making me uncomfortable right now.” But I needed to tell him that it would be unrealistic or unsafe for her to say that. And he got it. He understood why we needed to pare those moments back.
The actual episode of The Dating Game with Cheryl Bradshaw and Rodney Alcala doesn’t exist in its entirety anymore. Only snippets of it live online. What was it like shaping that narrative and filming those scenes? [Editorial Note: The real woman on whom the character is based is named “Cheryl.”]
Filming those sequences of The Dating Game was thrilling because Ian used the opportunity to almost write the fantasy version of what we all wish we could have said in a pivotal moment, but usually only say to ourselves in the shower a week later. I also got to talk as fast as I wanted without being told by someone to slow down. Maybe I should have given myself that note, but I was having too much fun.
We know that the real Rodney Alcala and Cheryl Bradshaw had a conversation after the show that made her decide to forgo the prize date that she won. We don’t know what went on in that conversation, so in the film we’re imagining what happened. Danny Zovatto’s performance took my breath away. It was only day two of filming and I couldn’t believe how dialed in he was. There were takes when I was watching him and telling myself, “Anna, don’t move, don’t even blink. Something incredible is happening and if you do anything that changes his performance at all, I’ll never forgive you.”
But I think the story itself is so compelling because of the idea that this dangerous and violent man went on a show like The Dating Game, where the goal is to choose a good guy, and won. It’s just comically perverse. I thought Ian took the conceit of “Scary Guy Behind a Wall” and extended that metaphor so beautifully and in that sense, The Dating Game itself really guides the movie thematically. We use the framework of the show as a way to explore the kind of existential terror of being seen, of who we let in, of what it means to be vulnerable. It taps into this question about who we trust.
What was it like playing Sheryl?
Sheryl is the most fictionalized piece of the movie. There’s very little public information about the real person, so our Sheryl’s life before The Dating Game is basically an imagined version of a woman in the 1970s. And her story became central in teasing out the thematic elements of the pervasive gender issues that were rooted in that era and persist today.
What I found really enjoyable about playing Sheryl was finding the constant balance in how she needs to move through the world to keep herself safe — sometimes in very literal life-or-death ways — but also just trying to stay in people’s good graces every day, whether that’s with a casting director, or a neighbor, or a game show host. I had a really good time playing with that dichotomy of who she had to be and in all of those moments, showing the audience how frustrated she is, how formidable she is underneath every little concession and every appeasing statement she makes.
So in that sense, I loved getting to play out this fantasy of her breaking free and getting a little bit of power back during the taping of the show. There was a point where I was worried that some of the stuff she does on the game show would end up feeling pedantic or petty. Then I realized, if I just play it as though none of the questions I’m asking really matter, and I don’t really care that this guy doesn’t know the difference between astrologer and astronomer, I’m just having the most fun I can, that’s still powerful. Because maybe for the first time in Sheryl’s life, maybe she’s not making herself small.
You’re the first to admit that every part of making this film was your favorite, but if you were forced to choose, what aspect of directing Woman of the Hour did you end up loving most?
Working with the actors. I know every department operates with the belief that movies exist to be vehicles for great production design, great cinematography, or great wardrobes and they should, they must. But it’s natural for me, as an actor, to think that movies exist as a vehicle for story and performance.
Every single actor delivered. I would’ve been so royally screwed if anyone didn’t. Everybody had to be incredible and I had the best time collaborating with the actors. Is there anything more enjoyable than watching great actors give great performances? In this lifetime, for me, there is not.
Woman of the Hour offers an all too rare take on a serial killer narrative that puts the victims first. What impact do you hope this film has on audiences, especially those who are drawn to true crime stories?
We definitely wanted to find that balance between telling an emotionally satisfying narrative without glazing over the repeated miscarriages of justice that took place over the course of Alcala’s killing spree. Part of what was so frustrating about his story was learning that no one was looking for him. There were so many heroes who raised the alarm about him and what was happening, and the reality is that things were not set up to protect victims. There’s no happy ending with a story like this.So I hope the movie speaks to anyone who has made themselves small and pleasing because they were just trying to survive physically or financially or mentally. It’s for those of us who have thought “thank god I listened to my gut” and certainly for those of us who know the pain of thinking “I wish I had listened to my gut.” And I hope it encourages people to forgive themselves for doing what they had to do to survive.
What kind of stories would you be interested in telling next?
I’ll admit I am sort of surprised by the darkness I’m finding myself drawn to. Of the scripts that I’ve been sent to look at, the ones I’ve really liked seem really diverse, but I did notice that there’s this underpinning in each of them of a man who is very unwell and the story outlines the repercussions of his actions on everyone around him. Then there’s definitely part of me that’s drawn to the lighthearted stuff. I would love it if somebody sent me a comedy that I can just fall in love with. I also want to direct a musical so fucking bad.
“Rodney seemed like an impossible ask. It’s such a demanding character. I started watching Station 11 and when Danny came on screen I immediately said, Him. It has to be him. If he’s not available I don’t think I have a movie. Danny was beyond what I hoped for. I couldn’t get over how terrifying he could be in some scenes and how open and vulnerable and safe he was in others. He knows how to balance eruption and restraint. It’s just masterful.” — Anna Kendrick on casting Daniel Zovatto as Rodney
What attracted Daniel Zovatto to this project?
One of the things that attracted me was that it was going to be told from the perspective of the women. I thought it would resonate by being told in a way where it had a bit more sensitivity from the other side, and not just Rodney’s. When Anna and I first spoke over Zoom, we had a great meeting where we just bounced ideas about how I perceived the character and what we wanted to focus on. It went really well and right after I remember thinking, Oh my God, Anna’s going to kill it. She was so prepared and so studious in her way of approaching everything.
How did Daniel Zovatto approach playing Rodney?
In my research, one of the things I found interesting about Rodney is when a lot of these people commit heinous crimes like these, they usually have some sort of a broken family. Something happened in their childhood, they have traumas, they have something in common in that realm. With Rodney, he committed crimes for many, many years before getting caught, but the research showed that he had a normal childhood. Nobody thought that he was going to go down this path. It was a shock to everyone.
So I made sure I tried to capture that in the performance. His purpose was that he wants to feel power. He wants to be as close to being God-like as possible. He wants to be the man and he showed that in the way he killed some of his victims. And that was really disturbing to me because what it created was a freedom to allow myself to show charisma and flirtatiousness and invite the woman in. And then once she said something I didn’t like, or once I made up my mind that this is my next victim, you see the other side of the coin. There’s footage of Rodney when he’s older. When he’s already in prison and you see him in court defending his own case. But that’s not the Rodney I played. The Rodney I played was the guy who was onThe Dating Game.
How does a film like Woman of the Hour set itself apart from the pack in terms of all the true crime stories out there, especially serial killer narratives?
Again, I think having Anna at the helm makes a huge difference. I love working with female directors. There’s a different sensibility, understanding, and a way of seeing things that distinguishes their voices. They’re telling the same story, it’s just what point of view do we want to make sure that is heard? The point of view of the victims in this film is highlighted with a care I haven’t seen before. I think the performances that each of the actresses give are so full of life. You really feel for them and you fear for them.
What impact do you hope this film has on audiences?
I hope what people take away from this film is that there’s a better way of looking at things. Why do we always talk about the killer? Why are we not talking about all the people we lost so that we can really understand what happened, how families are affected? By having a story being told this way, we’re given an opportunity to really look at the bigger picture and not always focus on the bad guy.
by Daniel Dercksen·Comments Off on Joker: Folie À Deux – A mesmerizing cinematic exploration of dual identity
“I will forever make movies for theaters,” says writer/director/producer Todd Phillips of Joker: Folie À Deux, the much-anticipated follow-up to the Academy Award-winning Joker. “I really believe that the theatrical experience is such a huge part of the experience of watching a film. Not just in the shared common space with 400 strangers, but in just the sheer size and sound and feeling you get, and that the film evokes.”
“In 2018, when we were first making Joker, we could have never imagined it would strike such a chord with audiences worldwide. Joaquin and I had talked about a sequel, but never seriously—that changed when we saw audiences’ reaction to Arthur’s story,” says writer/director/producer Todd Phillips. “But if we were going to do it, we knew we had to swing for the fences, we wanted to make something as crazy and fearless as Joker himself. So, Scott Silver and I wrote a script that delved further into the idea of identity. Who is Arthur Fleck? And where does the music that’s inside of him come from?”
Joker: Folie À Deux stars Joaquin Phoenix once again in his Oscar-winning dual role as Arthur Fleck/Joker, opposite Oscar winner Lady Gaga. The film finds Arthur Fleck institutionalized at Arkham awaiting trial for his crimes as Joker. While struggling with his dual identity, Arthur not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that’s always been inside him.
Todd Phillips directed Joker: Folie À Deux from a screenplay by Scott Silver & Phillips, based on characters from DC.
A conversation with writer/director/producer Todd Phillips
On how the term “folie à deux” came about for this film…
“In research that Scott and I would do about mental illness in general and different kinds of conditions, ‘folie à deux’ is an actual term used in—I think it was in DSM IV, one of those books—where it’s this idea of shared madness. In the movie, you can take it many ways. You can say, ‘Oh, well, obviously, it’s a shared madness between the two of them.’ Or is it between Arthur and Joker, his own internal folie à deux? It really depends, to me, on the lens that you’re watching the film through, you know?”
On why Arthur Fleck resonated with audiences in “Joker,” and how the process of starting on the new film began after the success of the first…
“Movies tend to hold a mirror up to society, or where we’re at, at that moment in the culture at least. I think that’s where we were on the first movie, for sure. The first one was really such a huge success for us, it was a whirlwind. It was a lot to go through, so it took a long time to kind of get over that. Scott [Silver] and I would talk on the phone about what would we do if we were going to do a sequel, and it just sort of slowly evolved.”
On what he and co-writer Scott Silver were thinking of, in terms of themes, as they began to explore the story…
“I thought that the themes in the first film were rather timely. And we started talking the way you talk about any movie, thematically. You’re not talking about structure, and even in a sequel, you’re not talking as much character, because we know Arthur, so you’re talking more themes, what would resonate, or where would we at least hope we’re headed.
“In the first film, Arthur says, ‘Is it just me or is it getting crazier out there?,’ which kind of was the beginning of the first film. And I think, if you’re watching it, you’re going, ‘No, it’s not just you.’ And in this film, well, I know that a character doesn’t say it out loud, but we were thinking, ‘What the world needs now is love.’ And that was the jumping-off point for writing the screenplay.”
On how they built on the first film to create something so new for this one…
“We went back to the things we liked a lot about the first film, and one of those things is Arthur’s fantasies, Arthur’s fantasy life. So, having that tool available to us helped us feel like we could do anything in this one.
“When you have the opportunity, coming off of something like ‘Joker,’ you go, ‘Well, we could kind of do anything, we could do something that challenges us’—I’m talking about Scott and I as writers, me as a filmmaker, Larry [Sher] as a cinematographer. How can we challenge ourselves in a way that’s something we’ve never done before?
On the story and themes, generally, of the film…
“It’s hard to explain what the movie is without getting into the specifics of what it is, but essentially, it’s the story of identity. It’s the story of who is Arthur Fleck and who is Joker, at least through his own eyes. And what does it mean to have to embrace your true self and who you are? Which is what he has to ultimately do at the end. I think this movie is infinitely more hopeful than the first film for Arthur. The first film, weirdly, was kind of similar thematically, as far as the struggle between Arthur and Arthur’s shadow self, which was this idea that we all walk around wearing masks in life, and what happens when you take that mask off and be your true self? In Arthur’s case, it was putting on a mask—which really confuses it all—that made his true self come out.
On where Arthur is when we meet him in “Joker: Folie À Deux”…
We’re catching up with Arthur, he’s obviously been heavily medicated by the institution. We wanted to feel him totally disconnected and not really connecting again until he sees [Lady Gaga’s character] Lee. So, it felt right for him not to talk. In fact, the first line in the movie from him is, “Can I have a cigarette?” Which also seemed appropriate.
On how long Arthur has been at Arkham when we meet him again…
“We didn’t really think about it that much, but we think it’s kind of unspoken that he’s been in this institution/prison for a couple of years. That was something we didn’t really talk about, even with Joaquin, because we kind of just like to begin where we begin, if you know what I mean? So it’s not so much about, ‘Let’s fill in these two years and figure out where he’s at,’ it’s more like, ‘This is where he is now.’ Arthur is just absolutely disconnected, he’s lost whatever spark he had at the end of the first film, whatever life he had in him at the end of the first film, and we’re kind of meeting a beaten-down, broken Arthur.
On early conversations with Joaquin Phoenix about preparing himself to be in Arthur’s frame of mind and physical state again…
“It wasn’t like I was first seeing him when that door opened, obviously, because I’d spent months with him before getting there. But he’s the most dedicated actor you can ever work with, so we talked early on in the process about losing the weight again. And I said, ‘Well, there’s a version where Arthur doesn’t have to be as skinny as he was in the first movie, you know, there’s medication and they don’t exercise there, he doesn’t walk up the stairs any more, he’s been locked up.’ I can make an argument that he’s not as skinny. And Joaquin’s like, ‘No, no, no, absolutely’; in fact, he wanted to be skinnier.”
On Joaquin Phoenix infusing Arthur with grace as in the first film, but taking it to the next level—including tap dancing…
“It goes back to this idea that I have, that he won’t admit to, but Joaquin can do anything. So, when you challenge him with something as absurd as, ‘Oh, and it turns out Arthur can really dance, not like just that beautiful bathroom dance, but he can tap dance,’ he has it in him. And Joaquin just goes, ‘Okay, let me figure that out,’ and you put him together with Michael Arnold, who’s a phenomenal choreographer, and they work on that tap for months… and then you watch him do it.
“And nowadays, people go and see movies and they think everything’s CG, everything’s fake. So, I had this thought like, ‘Are people going to think we just put Joaquin’s head on some dancer’s body?’ But he’s doing everything, and he doesn’t miss a tap. It’s just crazy. I mean, Jeff and I sometimes sat in the editing room and just watched other takes looking for a mistake. And it’s like, it’s always just, he just gets it, top to bottom, every time.”
On the moment that Arthur meets Lee and the transformation that’s going on in him…
“Well, it’s a tricky scene because, if you notice in the movie, we go into Slo-mo for a second when he sees her. We liked the idea of it being a bit of a mislead, because fool me once, right? In the first film, his relationship with Sophie wasn’t really real. So we kind of leaned into that idea, is this even real? And particularly when she puts the gun to her head, if you’re watching the movie for the first time, you’re going, ‘Oh, I get it. She’s made up, this isn’t real.’ It turns out, she is real, and she’s doing that because they made a TV movie about Arthur, and that was part of it.
“But yeah, when he gets into that building, and he hears her voice in that song, when she’s singing with the class, kind of cutting through, you can feel it in Arthur, that something’s changing, or that something’s awakening.”
On Lady Gaga’s character, Lee Quinzel…
“Lee believes in what Arthur did and what he spoke about on ‘The Murray Franklin Show.’ She’s watched the movie they’ve made about Joker ten times.”
On what Lady Gaga brings to this film as Lee who, with Arthur, goes between the reality and fantasy parts…
“What she brings, in her own way, is a reality to the character. And she really got the first movie. Our first conversations were very much about the first film. And she, I think, rather easily slipped into that world. So, it’s not like she’s trying to be Harley Quinn from another movie, or Harley Quinn from the comic books. She’s being Lee in this world. Again, like both these characters, as well as Harvey Dent, Gotham, all these things have been created before and actors have inhabited those roles before. So, all we’re doing differently is trying to ground them in a real world. And again, they’ve been grounded in real worlds in other films. It’s just through the lens of our world, I should say.”
On the importance of bringing the audience up to speed on how the world has reacted to Joker in the aftermath of the events of the first film, via his interview with Paddy Myers, played by Steve Coogan…
“I thought it was important for a few reasons. I think a lot of people had questions at the end of the first movie, because we end with Arthur in an institution. I remember people asking me all the time, ‘Did any of it happen? Was it all just a fantasy?’ So, we thought it’d be fun and engaging, I suppose, to answer some of those questions, in really broad strokes, and explain why here he is, paying the price for it.”
On running an open set, being willing to try things on the day, and the philosophy behind that…
“We always have a plan, of course, but we just like the ability to veer from that whenever possible. And I think it helps actors, feeling loose and feeling like anything can happen. It feels like… the day feels more alive. It’s not so much that I prefer it, but if they want to try three different ways of doing something, I would never go, “No, no, this is what Jackie’s like, so I just want to see his three gears or five gears,” or in Joaquin’s case, 19 gears, right? So it’s like, “Yeah, show it all to me,” because a movie gets written three times. A movie gets written by Scott and I, then Larry and I kind of rewrite it, and then Jeff [Groth], the editor, and I do the third draft, the final draft.
“So, we don’t really know if the Jackie that I wrote a year-and-a-half ago with Scott is gonna be the same Jackie that ends up in the movie. But if Brendan’s willing to do three versions, or play this scene that way, and then try it totally different, it’s only helpful to the last writing assignment, which is the editing, right?”
On shooting the music performances live, and how that informed the music coming from a more emotional place…
“That is exactly a great illustration of what I mean, in that you can’t pre-record it in a studio a month-and-a-half before you shoot the film and expect the actors to have the emotion that they’re supposed to have behind the song. So really, the only way to solve that is to sing it live, on the day, in the space. Clearly, she could do that, she’s a professional singer. For Joaquin, I thought it would be a harder thing to convince him, or to get him to do, or for him to be able to do it. But, like he frequently does, he blew my mind. Always. I mean, he’s just… he can do anything.”
On the music in the film becoming a key element to this story…
“That was something we had been talking about from even before we were talking about a sequel. This idea was something I talked to Joaquin about really early on, that Arthur has music in him, that there’s some panache to Arthur and a romance to Arthur, even in the first film. And I think that really informed—I hate speaking for Joaquin—but I think that really informed Joaquin, that idea that Arthur has music in him, informed a lot of the first film. Most obviously when he dances in the bathroom, but even his movements throughout the movie. So, we just thought that was a logical, leaping-off point.”
On the type of music chosen for the film, what he was inspired by…
“Well, music choice in something like this is a huge thing. I always wanted the music to feel like stuff that Arthur knew, stuff that maybe his mom played in the apartment when he was growing up. So, a lot of it came from that. I mean, if you remember in the first film, he’s listening to Lawrence Welk with his mother on the radio. So we always kind of wanted to embrace the kind of old-school vibe of music.
“So, for this film, it was very consciously not original songs, because we wanted it to be things that Arthur knew. We didn’t think it would make sense to have some great songwriter come in and write original music, because you’re not going to get near to what we were at with the standards we used, but also it didn’t feel very ‘Arthur’ to create original songs. The songs that exist in the world are the songs in his mind.”
On the realistic look and feel of the space…
“I think for every movie—this is not unique to this film—you want it to feel as grounded in reality as possible. That goes with wardrobe and costume and set design, background players. You want it to feel authentic.”
On the set builds being 360 and why that level of immersion was so important…
“Well, the 360 set speaks to [production designer] Mark Friedberg, the way [DP] Larry [Sher] and I shoot, but also Joaquin, putting him in a place where there are four walls and where he could go over there, even though we’re set up over here. You don’t want to necessarily dictate with an actor like Joaquin, you want to give yourself the freedom for him to come and feel the space.”
On the transformative scene with the umbrellas, where color is first introduced, and everything begins to change for Arthur…
“Well, for me, it really represents that there’s still magic left in Arthur. And so, when they come out of those doors and it’s dreary and it’s raining and they’re putting their umbrellas up, what Arthur sees is the colors. So, the idea being that he’s been here for two years and what’s it been like? In those first 10 or 12 minutes, he’s beaten down. But when he steps outside and he looks up and you realize, ‘Oh, there’s still some magic. There is still a little light. It hasn’t all been extinguished.’ That’s kind of what that represents.”
On ensuring the film’s color palette, scale, and general look were different from “Joker”…
“We didn’t want to do anything that was a rehash of the first film. We wanted the movie to feel entirely different, but the first film still had a language that we follow in this movie. I mean, the color palette in the beginning of this film very much reflects where we left off in the first film. And it’s not until Lee is introduced, and it’s not until magic comes back into Arthur’s life and music comes back into Arthur life, that things start to shift for him. [Production designer] Mark [Friedberg] and I talked really early on about it wanting to feel as if you would have made this movie a long time ago, not with CG sets and blue screens. We very much wanted it to feel, at least the sections that were fantasy and the music sections, like a throwback to how they made those movies then.”
On crafting a truly theatrical experience for audiences…
“I will forever make movies for theaters. I have friends and colleagues that make movies for streamers, but I just will never do it, ever, no matter what. I’d rather just not make films, because I really believe that the theatrical experience—obviously, this is not something new I’m saying—but it’s second to none and it’s such a huge part of the experience of watching a film. Not just in the shared common space with 400 strangers, but in just the sheer size and sound and feeling you get, and that the film evokes. So, Larry and I, Mark and I, every crew member and I, we make these films for the theatrical experience. And, particularly this one, Larry and I really leaned into the IMAX a lot. And I think if you see this movie in IMAX, particularly the true IMAX, it’s crazy.”
On what audiences who loved the first film will find when they see “Joker: Folie À Deux”…
“Well, I think if you love the first film, it’s because you loved Arthur, because really the first film was all Arthur all the time. So, hopefully, there’s still that love for Arthur, the character. And that’s kind of what we leaned into. I think there was a ton more love than we thought. I mean, the movie was way bigger than any of us thought. I think it was big, not just because of what Larry and I did, the way we shot it, not just because of the sets that Mark built, it was because of this love for the character that Joaquin created. So, we just thought if we leaned into that, and we really leaned into taking Arthur apart and breaking Arthur down by the end of it, that just felt right.”
On when—and why—the idea of the sequel to “Joker” came about…
“Todd and I started talking about finding a new story to tell with the character maybe midway through the shoot of the first one, long before its release. It was something that, even then, I think we both felt like there was more to explore with the character. And I loved the idea and the challenge of continuing the story but finding different tones to play with.”
On working with filmmaker Todd Phillips…
“Practically speaking, he’s just a seasoned filmmaker with a very specific and unique perspective, and that’s really the most important thing, at least for me, when working with a director. Additionally, I like the way that he solves problems. And he’s pretty fearless. He thinks very quickly, which is great, so it allows you to really come at a scene in a different way each take if you want. And any time you run into a problem, he just very quickly comes up with a line that just solves the problem. I’ve never worked with anyone quite like him.”
On his character, Arthur Fleck, having music in him…
“In the first film, we discovered moments in the way that Arthur and Joker move in the world that felt musical, oddly graceful, in a way—some kind of rhythm that motivates his movements. There was a nostalgia to the music that he listened to, the music in his head, that we kept discovering more and more as we were shooting.”
On the environments created for the film…
“The sets that Mark Friedberg built were pretty astonishing. Arkham had multiple levels; they were the kind of sets that you go in, and you get lost, they’re that vast. It’s really impressive and obviously important that you can go from the stage studio world, which is about as far away from the movie as possible, to entering the set and getting lost in those corridors. Everything was accessible and it felt authentic. It’s a huge part of the film, obviously, and also was a huge part of helping the actors find their place within the world.”
On the introduction of music into the mix…
“We started talking about music performance very, very early on, long before Todd and Scott [Silver] started really sitting down and working on the script. It eventually became obvious that we wanted it to feel spontaneous and off the cuff and dirty in a way that I don’t think you typically see with movies in that genre. We just felt like we didn’t want it to be like anything you’d ever really seen before, or to do it in a way that people typically perform songs in movies. That was exciting and challenging, because then it felt like we had to actually go out there and perform live in order to perform the songs in ways that felt accurate, authentic, but maybe weren’t the most beautiful renditions of the song. And there was something that felt very exciting about that.”
On working with pianist Alex Jules to perform the songs live…
“George Drakoulias is a music supervisor, he works with Todd all the time, and I’ve known him for years. And very early on he introduced me to a pianist named Alex Jules, and we started working together and we clicked. I had told him that I wanted each take to feel different, and we never really set in stone the phrasing or one particular way of singing. It was always changing from take to take. And he was really great at just listening, and at feeling when I might go; there were times where I would sing hard and loud, and other times it would be kind of softer. I just wanted to work with somebody that was going to go with me and be really receptive, listening to me and changing the dynamics live.”
On her reaction to the script and her initial feelings about her role in “Joker: Folie À Deux”…
“My feeling from reading the script initially was that I was excited about how much room there was to play. I felt like while the script was very intentional and it was clear that this was going to be a love story, that the way that we told the love story was going to be unlike anything any of us had made or seen before. And that also meant that Lee should be a character that we had never experienced before. So, one of my favorite things about the script was how real she was.”
On knowing that Harley Quinn has been portrayed in comic books and on TV, and how this is different…
“Of course I thought about all of the ways Harley Quinn has been in the world before this script, but it was exciting to me to create Lee in Todd and Joaquin’s world, and their world for ‘Joker’ was so different than anyone that we had seen before. And this story of Arthur Fleck, this story of the birth of Joker, is extremely heartfelt and emotional. So I knew that Lee had to also be grounded in that same kind of humanity for this movie to work. So I worked a lot with Todd and Joaquin every single day on how to bring out her humanity amidst a film and a story that’s wild.”
On where Arthur is in his mind when he meets Lee…
“I think at the beginning of the film, Arthur is in a terrible place. And I think Todd has always tried to say something profound about the system and the way that it beats people down. So, I think at the beginning of this film, we see that Arthur barely has a life. And this first meeting is a suggestion that there could be some hope.”
On the best part of discovering Lee while she portrayed her…
“I had so much fun discovering Lee on set, and I would say that working with Todd, working with Joaquin as close collaborators every day, was extremely eye opening for me about the filmmaking experience and how I could actually come to set knowing that I might discover the character in the scene. And in what ways do we inhibit ourselves from knowing who a character could be by deciding ahead of time? So it was really fun.”
On putting in the work to allow for spontaneity…
“We rehearsed the waltz for months. I learned all of my music for months, so did Joaquin. But we kept everything very loose because this was a big artistic playground, and ultimately the edit would decide the final film, but on set you don’t have to make decisions that are set in stone. We prepared, and then we got to play.”
On what the term “folie à deux” means…
“Well, I did research on folie à deux, and looked up the medical explanation of it. Some people refer to it as double insanity. Other people talk about it being this condition where two people who have psychosis, one gives psychosis to the other person, they believe a shared fantasy, a shared delusion to each other and those around them, and they will defend their fantasy at any cost.”
On defining the line between fantasy and reality…
“The fantasies in the film are an expression of the way Todd sees the two of them, Arthur and Lee, and they’re an expression of the way Joker and Harley or Lee and Arthur or Joker and Lee and Arthur and Harley are experiencing life. It’s really for the audience to experience and decide.”
On the intertwined nature of the music and how it connects to the story…
“You know, Todd always said that there was music inside of Arthur, and it’s hard for me to talk about the genesis of anything in this movie without starting with Arthur and the first film. So to me, music plays a huge role in this movie because it’s part of what brings Joker to life, brings Arthur to life, and I think in a way is, at times, teetering on a metaphor of how Arthur becomes Joker. This music within him. And also it’s, I think, an expression at any given moment of things that just cannot be said in the scene with words. It had to be said in song and in dance.
“I thought that the music was very artfully chosen for this film; they always put the story first, and everything was connected to a real part of these characters. I don’t know that music would have worked in this film without that. I think part of what makes all of this bonkers activity make sense to our hearts while we’re watching it is the fact that there’s some truth in all of it.”
On the process of finding Lee’s voice…
“Working with George Drakoulias, Jason Ruder, Randy Poster, Todd, Joaquin… we worked really hard to find everyone’s voice in the movie. And for me to find Lee’s voice was really an interesting process. I knew after a lot of time working on it that Lee’s not a great singer. She’s doing her best, and that’s sort of a part of this movie, right? Both of these characters are kind of doing their best. And aren’t we all in life just trying to do our best all the time? And so doing her best, given who she is, was the starting point for my vocal performance in the movie.”
On collaborating with Todd Phillips on the film…
“Todd took a very big swing with this whole concept and with the script, giving the sequel to ‘Joker’ this much audacity and complexity. There’s music, there’s dance, it’s a drama, it’s also a courtroom drama, it’s a comedy, it’s happy, it’s sad—it’s got all of these elements. Some of the music is fantasy, some of it’s in the scene. It breaks genre, and I think it was very, very bold, and that it’s a testament to him as a director, that he would rather be creative than just tell a traditional story of love. As a filmmaker, I don’t think he would ever land in one particular spot and say, ‘This is exactly what I want you to feel.’ I think he just is exploring these two people. I have always appreciated that he really celebrated Arthur in the first film, and in the second film, he goes even further.”
On working with Joaquin Phoenix…
“I loved working with Joaquin. He was just amazing to experience this whole process with. I learned so much about acting, working with him, and I had so much fun doing all of the music with him and the dance routines.”
On Lee’s feelings for Arthur and Joker, how deep they run…
“To me, in the beginning of the film, Lee really doesn’t know who she is at all, she’s just… everything is for him. I want to be close to you. I want to be near you. I want to talk to you. I want to break out of here. Lee is kind of unreasonable in her pursuit of Joker and Arthur. I think it’s through that love that she kind of discovers who she’s going to be for the rest of her life.”
On what audiences can expect when they see this movie in theaters…
“I think that, without question, this movie was meant for movie theaters, literally the movie is a theatrical experience, but not in the way that anyone would sense. I’m actually very careful not to use the word musical when I describe this film, because I feel like that limits the way that anyone might think about it before they watch it. It’s a movie that the sound, the score, the feeling in the theater, just completely transports you into the minds of the characters and the intention of the director, and it was just an absolute joy to be a part of.”
TODD PHILLIPS (Director, Co-Writer, Producer) is the director, co-writer and producer of what was until recently the highest-grossing R-rated film in history, the critically acclaimed, Academy Award-winning “Joker,” which earned more than $1 billion at the worldwide box office. “Joker” is also the biggest global October release of all time, and the sixth Warner Bros. Pictures film to cross the billion-dollar benchmark. The film also won the top prize at the 2019 Venice Film Festival, the Golden Lion. His next film, “Joker: Folie À Deux,” is the hugely anticipated follow-up, starring Joaquin Phoenix in the title role opposite Lady Gaga, and releasing in theaters October 4, 2024.
Phillips was a producer of commercial and critical success “A Star Is Born,” co-written and directed by and produced with his Joint Effort partner, Bradley Cooper, who also starred alongside Lady Gaga. Released in October 2018, the film grossed over $436 million worldwide and was nominated for eight Academy Awards including Best Picture, winning Best Original Song.
Phillips wrote, directed and produced the 2016 comedic drama “War Dogs,” starring Miles Teller and Jonah Hill, who was nominated for a Golden Globe award for his performance. In 2009, Phillips directed and produced the blockbuster comedy “The Hangover,” starring Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis, which won a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical. He then wrote, directed and produced the sequels, “The Hangover Part II” in 2011, and “The Hangover Part III” in 2013. Collectively, the trilogy grossed over $1.4 billion globally.
As a writer, Phillips was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” in 2006. He began writing and directing features in 2000 with the cult classic comedy “Road Trip.” In 2003, he wrote, produced and directed the comedy box office hit “Old School,” starring Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn. Phillips has also written, directed and produced such comedic successes as “Starsky & Hutch” and “Due Date,” the latter starring Robert Downey Jr. and Galifianakis. He also served as producer on the outrageous dark teen comedy “Project X.”
SCOTT SILVER (Co-writer) was nominated for an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award, among numerous others, for best adapted screenplay for “Joker,” which he wrote with the film’s director, Todd Phillips. Silver was nominated for an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for “The Fighter.” He also wrote “8 Mile.”
by Daniel Dercksen·Comments Off on The Art Of Animation – Panda Bear In Africa
“A lot of documents have to be prepared in connection with the financing of a movie. Of course, a script, a budget, cast and crew lists, but often a director’s statement is also required. I tried to squeeze something like this out of directors Richard and Karsten, but neither of them was particularly motivated to invest a lot of time in it. So, I decided to do an interview with both of them, and the transcript is the director’s statement of this movie,” says producer Chantal Nissen.
Young panda bear Ping’s best friend, Jielong the dragon, is kidnapped and brought to Africa. Ping follows her without question. After a dangerous ocean-crossing he reaches the faraway continent, totally unknown to pandas. There, our unlikely hero with a big heart, relying on his wits and some new found friends, needs to rescue Jielong from an evil lion and his henchman.
Interview by Chantal Nissen with Richard Claus and Karsten Kiilerich (in 2020
What is the origin of the idea and the story?
RC: I have a 6-year-old daughter (note: she is 10 in the meantime), and besides reading all kinds of stories to her, we are also inventing stories together. Her favourite characters in our own stories are baby-animals (in human terms probably her own age), which are most of the time from Africa. Seriously, the idea to tell a story with African animals was born this way. The next thought was to add a hero who would be a “fish out of water”, and that might have to do with myself. Then Chantal Nissen came up with the panda bear, who we subsequently designed as a role model for toleration and tolerance. In this context I might want to mention that my wife is from Kenya and both of my kids are “donker”, as the Dutch would say, and toleration and tolerance are terms which play a big role in our life.
KK: Richard brought the idea to me. He wanted to create a fish out of water story and send a Panda to Africa. It’s a wonderful and colourful combination with loads of options for drama and fun. Richard has been living in Africa for a while, so it might have to do with that. He loves that continent and he presented the idea to Edward Noeltner, the CEO of Cinema Management Group. They are a sales agent who is willing to engage in the development of ideas that they like. The animated movie “Loving Vincent” is one of them. It turned out to be a good choice, and let me add, we all worked together on the creation of “The little Vampire 3D”.
KK: It’s been a real fun journey. We know each other since “The Ugly Duckling & Me” and we also did “The Little Vampire 3D” together, so we connect, and that’s an advantage. You really have to be able to swallow a camel or two… or let me rephrase: You really have to be open-minded and communicative. If you try to protect your own idea because you are vain, then forget about it.
RC: Our practical collaboration (after having just exchanged thoughts) started with the second draft of the screenplay. We were working together in the same room in Copenhagen for a week. First, we made decisions what to keep and what to change, and then we went back to a new step outline. By the way: it is better to go “back to the drawing board” all the time for a new and hopefully better version. If you just make changes here and there in the same script, it will always remain the same script. That may be a way to polish dialogues or so, but not if you seriously want to change things. We were working act after act. We discussed, then I was writing the new step outline, then Karsten wrote a quick and first version of each scene, we discussed again, and then I took the scene and wrote a revised version, we discussed again and agreed on what the scene should be like.
KK: Sometimes you really have to accept input from co-writers even though you like your own ideas better. In the case of “Panda Bear in Africa” it really went smoothly. Neither Richard or I need to prove our own genius. We work for the film and we understand what the other guy is saying, kind of.
RC: Obviously our skills to write English dialogues are somewhat limited, and we knew all along that we would need someone to help us with that.
What did screenwriter Robert Sprackling contribute?
KK: Robert worked with us on two versions of the script. He is a very experienced and competent scriptwriter. He came up with a series of ideas that expanded the storyuniverse and took the outline to a higher level. We had quite a lot of conversations on email and Skype and Richard went to London several times in order to discuss the material with him.
RC: Robert is a very energetic person with very strong opinions. He forces you to have a good reason for everything in the story. That was sometimes hard, because you started to get used to certain things, of which you thought they would work, and you were happy about them, and then he comes and questions everything again. But like our hero Ping: Sometimes you have to leave your comfort zone if you want to achieve something, and that is what Rob forced us to do.
KK: Robert also put the final dialogue lines to the paper. We decided to do the script in English and Robert has a pretty obvious advantage being English himself. Of course, we had intense discussions concerning the content, but I can honestly say that we always landed on our feet and we always found a common direction.
RC: Robert worked on lots of scripts. Besides his credited work he did tons of polishes and re-writes for all kind of well know animation studios. It was clear that with his experience he would not limit himself to some dialogue polishing, nor did we want to limit him to that.
What has changed in terms of content in the story in the various versions of the script?
KK: First it was more or less a road movie. Then we added a kidnapping. Then we decided to change our dragon, in order to make it a real Chinese dragon, and this again affected the story. In the meantime we defined the tone of the film and worked out the relations between the characters. On top of that a lot of things were revised. Scenes changed places and the ending was reworked. Don’t forget: Three different writers from three different but all European cultural backgrounds worked together.
KK: May I quote the Danish poet Piet Hein? “Taking fun as simply fun – and earnestness in earnest – shows how thoroughly thou – none of the two discernest.” I don’t think you should limit yourself to only creating an entertaining movie. If you do not have an element of earnest the movie will probably not be entertaining either. You simply need to address the doubt, the bad consciousness and the fear of the characters. Otherwise, you will end up with a one-dimensional movie, and that’s neither interesting nor entertaining.
RC: …and by the way, what’s wrong with entertainment? Children and their parents definitely don’t go to the movies to get bored. Yes, we want to make an entertaining film, a fun and funny adventure, which will also be accessible to families with smaller children. But there is also a deeper message in our film about diversity and friendship, crossing the boundaries to “the others” and learning to understand them. Although the film has no human characters, we will ensure that the film’s young audiences can easily identify with our main heroes, which at first glance seem exotic. The panda bear Ping and the dragon Jielong will take the audience with them on a spectacular but also enlightening journey.
KK: Let me put it like this: I do not think that the human race would stop breathing if we will not tell this story. On the other hand, it’s a new and never seen combination of a panda, dragons and African wildlife. It’s an interesting friendship story between creatures from different backgrounds and different worlds, they learn to communicate, to accept and respect each other, become friends.
RC: The subject of strangers/foreigners/refugees is one of the big issues of our time. Demagogues around the world build their cases based on prejudices about “the others”. Understanding and acceptance of “the others” is the underlying theme of Panda Bear in Africa”, and in a way this theme was also beneath the surface in the story of “The Little Vampire 3D” as well.
KK: I guess moviemaking is all about giving the audience a fresh and unseen adventure and some food for thoughts, and I certainly think that this is what the audience will get when they go to the Cinema and watch “Panda Bear in Africa”, follow our panda Ping on his journey…
RC: …who is a lovable, polite and resourceful character, who protects his old friends and finds new friends under the most unlikely circumstances.
RC: We have a great variety of animal characters, which obviously represent humans: From a small and fast spoken talapoin monkey to a gnarled orangutan sailor, from an angry hyena to a spoilt lion prince. And because these are animals, and it is animation, and it is bigger than life, all these characters can speak in their own and very special characteristic way.
KK: Panda Ping, our protagonist, has to overcome unlimited challenges and he has to learn to trust himself. Being a panda in far-away Africa is certainly challenging to the limit. Jielong is a young female dragon and she is kidnapped, with another level of problems, especially since the power-seeking lion Shakeel believes that dragons spit fire, but Chinese dragons can’t do that. And then there will be a huge gallery of supporting characters in our movie, from rhinos to meerkats, from jackals to elephants and giraffes.
RC: The characters and the story are inspired by fables of animals and fairy tales, which exist in all cultures around the world. We know about old Dutch animal stories from the Middle Ages, for example “Van den vos Reynaerde”, and there are also more contemporary works, like the stories from Anton Koolhaas. In this tradition, Dutch human characters, human values and conflicts are embodied by a variety of anthropomorphic animal characters.
KK: Friendship… understanding and acceptance of foreigners. And add to that: the willingness to ignore your own needs and go to the end of the world to protect your friends.
RC: Also coming of age. And not only for Ping, our main character, who has to “man up” to achieve what he needs to achieve, but for Jielong too, who dreams to be a grown-up dragon from the beginning and in the end learns what a grown up dragon can do, for example flying.
Why so far from home, why China and Africa?
KK: Thank you. That’s a nice question. We are doing animation. We are not limited by anything. Only by our imagination.
RC: We hope and know that our film will have a bigger audience outside the borders of the Netherlands or the borders of the co-producing countries than inside these borders. It is common knowledge that animated films in general travel better across the borders of their country of origin than live action feature films. That is one of the reasons why I am enjoying making animated films. But this is still a very European film. Although the story is not set on the European continent, the values on which the film is based: tolerance, respect, openness, acceptance and understanding of “the others” are very European values.
KK: It’s fun to go places. The settings in China and Africa simply are wonderful to watch, to be in – and we travel the Indian Ocean. We wanted to bring two worlds together, the Chinese pandas, dragons and the orang-utan and all the African animals. Different animal characters meet and resolve misunderstandings between their different viewpoints.
KK: Yes and no. It is a no-time universe, and then again it is set in a kind of pre-industrial time, a time without mobile phones etc.. Our talking animals have a limited amount of gadgets, they can sail a boat, but we do not see a car or anything like that. You can say that time is not important.
RC: We were actually discussing if the film should be set in the past, being a period film, in connection with the first exposé. We came to the conclusion that the question might be irrelevant. When is the famous fable of Guy de Maupassant about the raven and the fox set? In the 19th century? I don’t think so.
How does “Panda Bear in Africa” differ from other, for example American animated films?
KK: We are not copying anyone, and just based on our experiences and backgrounds, which are different from other filmmakers in other countries, what we are doing is different too. The style and the aesthetic aspects of the films we are making won’t jump to the foreground, but that does not mean we are not thinking about this. What makes us different from a lot of American films is that we are socially and politically aware, don’t repeat racial, social and gender clichés over and over again, and we always try to avoid fake emotions. And there is something we hate very much, and that is Kitsch. It is a German word, but I don’t think I have to translate it.
RC: In connection with the “Sehgewohnheiten”, which I mentioned earlier, the films from the US studios are setting certain always evolving technical standards, which we can’t ignore. An example: Although it is expensive and time consuming to work with characters with digital hair and fur, and it would be better for our budget to avoid that, there is no way that we would make this film and the characters don’t have hair and fur. We will obviously go much more stylized with our characters, than say the new “Lion King”, but we would not get away with a look like “Madagascar” from 2005. We are 15 years further down the line and if we make a film with a panda bear hero, he needs to be fluffy and cuddly.
KK: There are a lot of technical challenges when you work in animation. Everything has to be planned very carefully. If the characters are not designed and rigged properly the animation won’t work. If the sets are too big and heavy, you cannot work in them and so forth.
RC: All of our characters are four-legged, each of them with different running, walking, climbing styles. We need great character sheets with emotions, expressions, poses from Patrick Schoenmaker and for the animation we need to produce in pre-production an archive of walking and running cycles for the characters, and a whole variety of poses for each of them, plus blend-shapes for their facial expressions. Also, our characters have a lot of hair and fur, we have vast landscapes, lots of sets, water, you name it, and many, many characters.
KK: Every second in an animation movie is expensive. You cannot just put up several cameras. You cannot just shoot a scene several times. As a consequence, you cannot go back and re-edit an animation movie if it is not working. You have to have a very precise vision when you begin the work. You have to produce the movie before you produce the movie. Let me try to explain. Based on the script you do the storyboard and then you edit the animatic. This takes place before you start animation, and there is no way back. The animatic has to be strong in the early phase. If it’s not, you won’t find out till it’s too late.
by Daniel Dercksen·Comments Off on Transformers One – A spectacular animated origin story
“The script got me so excited,” says the director Josh Cooley, Pixar veteran and Oscar winner for Toy Story 4, of Transformers One, the first animated theatrical feature since 1986 and a new look into the Transformers universe, catapults audiences back millions of years to the beloved behemoths’ home planet of Cybertron to reveal the origins of Optimus Prime, supreme leader of the heroic Autobots, and his nemesis Megatron, the diabolical commander of the Decepticon forces. “It was an opportunity to reimagine the Transformers while still honoring their roots. And it made me laugh, which was one of the important reasons I agreed to do this film.”
In 2007, the release of the Oscar-nominated, live-action epic Transformersstormed the global box office with its electrifying depiction of warrior robots battling for dominance on Earth. Inspired by the unprecedented success of Hasbro’s groundbreaking line of transforming toys, the film became a global phenomenon, spawning six more record-breaking films over the next 17 years, racking up international box-office receipts of more than $5 billion.
Lorenzo di Bonaventura, producer for all eight Transformers films, says the idea of an origin story has been in the works since the beginning of the franchise. “But we always knew it wasn’t realistic to think it would be a live-action film. Animation gave us the ability to do things we have never been able to do, like create a whole new world that has never been seen before, but that somehow feels organic.”
A fan of the franchise since childhood, executive producer Zev Foreman, head of Hasbro’s film division, was eager to tackle a story that he knew people had been waiting for. “The rivalry between Optimus Prime and Megatron is legendary, but people never knew the reasons behind it — until now,” he explains. “They will be able to watch our lead characters evolve from their younger selves into the iconic characters that they know. This is the first time we see real emotion and thought in them. They want what everybody wants, which is to be able to figure out who they are and to make their own lives.”
From the first meeting, the producers knew that there was only one choice to direct this film: Josh Cooley.
“You always want a director who respects the vision of a property but has full confidence in his own innovations,” producer Mark Vahradiannotes. “Josh won the Oscar for a movie about toys. We had toys too, but ours were older, bigger, and more aggressive. He was up to that challenge. More importantly, as a brilliant writer and director, he was eager to explore the personal hopes and dreams of our alien robots, something we rarely did in the live-action movies where the Autobots were focused solely on protecting humanity.”
Presented in state-of-the-art CG animation by the wizards at Lucasfilm’s International Light & Magic (ILM), Transformers One will delight longtime fans of the franchise and inspire the devotion of a new generation, according to Cooley. Like millions of kids around the world, he grew up with the toys, was a devoted fan of the original animated TV show and sat transfixed in the theater by the 1986 animated film The Transformers: The Movie.
Transformers One, the explosive, long-awaited origin story of Optimus Prime and his archenemy Megatron, journeys from the depths of Cybertron’s pitiless Energon mines to the planet’s forbidden surface in a quest that will define the future of a civilization. A group of lowly cog-less worker bots, led by Orion Pax and D-16, make a daring excursion to retrieve the long-lost Matrix of Leadership and restore the free flow of Energon, their planet’s life blood. Instead, they uncover a centuries-old conspiracy that will set off the Transformers bots’ millennia-long civil wars. Presented in stunning, state-of-the-art CG animation and directed by Oscar® winner Josh Cooley, Transformers One opens the door on a new era for the record- breaking franchise.
The first animated Transformers feature in almost 40 years, Transformers One’s all-star voice cast includes Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi, with Laurence Fishburne and Jon Hamm, in the exhilarating adventure fans have been waiting decades to see.
From Page To Screen
The screenplay by Eric Pearson (Thor: Ragnarok) and Andrew Barrer & Gabriel Ferrari (Ant-Man and the Wasp), also impressed producer Aaron Dem, a 30-year veteran of the animation world. “One of my ambitions has always been to create an epic animated movie with the visual complexity of a live-action film and appeal for a wide audience,” says Dem. “The script was compelling from the start and Josh is an amazing storyteller. We’ve made a movie meant for people from 8 all the way up to 88.”
As the movie begins, the audience meets Orion Pax and D-16, a pair of lowly worker bots in the Energon mines deep within Cybertron. They are on the verge of a journey that takes them from being the best of friends to the bitterest of enemies. It is a classic tale, points out Cooley, echoing powerful stories from the past, even as far back as the Bible’s Cain and Abel.
“The film is essentially about their relationship,” the director continues. “They will become Optimus Prime and Megatron, the equivalent of the Titans in Greek mythology. Every decision I made, every story point, every design element goes back to that.”
Orion Pax and D-16 are at the bottom of the pecking order in Iacon City. Together they rise higher than either ever dreamed, but at the cost of their friendship. “You will have compassion for both of them,” says Dem. “And you will also understand what drives them both. You will witness the struggles that make them who they become. The story is as much an emotional journey as it is pure adventure, which I think is unique in Transformers history.”
Transformers One takes place before the civil war between the Autobots and the Decepticons destroys Cybertron, and eons before the bots arrive on Earth. “It’s before anything we’ve ever seen in Transformers,” Cooley says. “That meant we could invent new things to help support the story, while also making sure it felt relatable and believable by incorporating elements that feel similar to Earth.”
The filmmaker says he is grateful to Hasbro for encouraging innovation, while providing a wealth of background information covering decades of Transformers lore. “They provided a Tolkien-scale timeline, most of which I had never heard before,” he says. “I could ask about the different characters, or if something had been done before. We were able to incorporate things like the Matrix of Leadership, thought to have been lost forever.”
And for the first time in franchise history, the audience will experience the world completely through the eyes of the Transformers bots. “There are no human characters, so we had the opportunity to approach the technicalities of filmmaking in a completely different way,” Cooley says.
With each new element, the story got richer and the visuals more spectacular, according to Dem. “We built a team that was innovative every step of the way,” he explains. “Working with producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mark Vahradian was an absolute pleasure. Our production designer Jason Scheier and his team gave us amazing visuals that were then realized by ILM Australia. We had a story team and editors that
were constantly making it better with Josh. Chris Batty, our head of layout, created dynamic camera work that elevates the movie. The cast is amazing. Add Brian Tyler’s score and it brings everything together.”
L-r, Jon Bailey (Soundwave), Steve Buscemi (Starscream) and Jason Konopisos (Shockwave) star in
PARAMOUNT ANIMATION and HASBRO Present In Association with NEW REPUBLIC PICTURES
A di BONAVENTURA PICTURES Production A TOM DESANTO / DON MURPHY Production
A BAY FILMS Production “TRANSFORMERS ONE”
A New Breed of Bot
Each successive chapter of the Transformers saga has included a visual update of the robots themselves, always referring to what Cooley calls Generation 1 from the 1980s television series. “We started by looking at what had been done before,” he says. “We put all the different styles and versions of the characters on big boards and then asked what they all had in common? What is that through-line that we need to incorporate in our design? And then what do these characters transform into when they’re on Cybertron instead of Earth?”
Production designer Jason Scheier went back to the roots of everything that made Transformers special. “Hasbro threw their entire visual bible at us, something I had never seen before,” he says. “We also looked at all the live-action movies. I became a sponge for everything Transformers.”
As the story begins, the hero bots are not yet true Transformers. Lacking the essential cog that their superiors possess, they are smaller and lack the ability to change their forms. “In general, they are a bit more rounded,” says Scheier. “As they evolve, they start to get more angular and their overall shape changes. In the original G-1 cartoon, the upper and lower parts of the body were balanced. We exaggerated the length of the legs and widened the feet so the characters feel like a big trapezoid, kind of like Superman.”
Because they spend most of their time working in the Energon mines, Orion and D-16 are dented and rusty. “Their paint is scratched and there are all these details that were fun to design,” says Scheier. “When they eventually get their cogs, it’s like they’re being reborn. Not only can they transform, their paint is brand new. The light hits them differently. The visual style begins to change.”
Head of cinematography Christopher Batty oversaw planning camera shots and compositions. “On a film like this, there is actually no physical camera,” he explains. “It all exists within the computer’s 3D programs, but we need to know where a camera would be. We emulate a real-life camera as much as possible including defining the lensing, so at the beginning of the film, we made it look more organic and handheld to reflect the bots’ lowly status.”
With no humans to compare them with for scale, Batty used a variety of camera maneuvers to indicate the evolving size of the robots. “When Orion and D-16 are miners, you can see the differences in their height compared to the other Iaconians. As they gain stature, we shot them from lower and lower angles, so it feels like we’re looking up at them.”
Designing the characters in 3D was an opportunity to do something totally different, says Cooley. “We always wanted the animation to have a handmade quality, almost like concept art come to life. With ILM, we were actually able to do that. There are moments that feel like paintings, but it still has the physics of real-world lighting and there’s real heft to these characters.”
According to Dem, the filmmakers and the craftspeople at ILM were equally excited about the collaboration. “The animation they’ve created on this film is some of the best I’ve ever seen. The visual complexity is staggering. We wanted to take this to a level beyond what’s been done before, and ILM was the perfect place to do it.”
Rob Coleman, creative director of ILM Sydney, was the initial animation supervisor for the film, followed later by Stephen King. “This is a beautifully crafted and designed movie,” Coleman raves. “The initial inspiration came from the ’80s cartoons and was redesigned to be three-dimensional by Amy Beth Christenson.”
The most important thing for Cooley was that the audience connects with the characters emotionally. “Josh wanted them to move like robots, but convey human emotions,” says King. “We made the characters’ bodies move in ways that didn’t draw any attention away from the expressions on their faces. We simplified the animation so that they would hit the poses a little harder. They don’t have the grace and arc that a human would.”
“In my early discussions with Josh, he emphasized that he wanted the faces designed so that a human audience could sense what they might be thinking,” adds Coleman. “Subtext was as important as text. We spent a great deal of time in the early development working on the eyes. They’re like camera lenses. They’ve got little shutters that open and close to make them appear as expressive as the human eye.”
All Is One
It has been said that the word “Transformers” is instantly recognized in any country in the world.
From the toys to the television series and the comics, video games and movies, the world has embraced Optimus Prime, Megatron and their followers for nearly half a century. Producer Dem believes that Transformers One has opened the door to unlimited possibilities to expand an already deeply loved universe.
“The Transformers world is such a great canvas to paint on,” he says. “To be a part of bringing it to such an exciting level has been a privilege. We’ve pushed the boundaries visually with our animation and brought authentic human emotion into it. It’s a complex story that is going to resonate with our core audience and attract new fans.
“When people walk into this movie, they’ll be expecting great action and a fast-paced story,” Dem continues. “And they will get exactly that. They will also get a heartful story. They’ll get comedy and drama and an adventure of a scale and scope they haven’t yet seen. This movie brings it all.”
One of the joys of this movie for Vahradian has been the ability to use the interactive animation process to perfect the storytelling. “We knew we had to do more than we had ever done in the live-action movies,” he says. “We were able to push the envelope in terms of camera movement and the physics of the world. With each iteration, the film became dramatically better, with more clarity, more color, more lighting, more shadows, more reflections, more everything. This film became more than cinema. At times, it becomes a deeply immersive physical experience, almost like a rollercoaster. That is unique.”
This latest episode is completely unique in the series, says di Bonaventura. “It is still an epic story filled with emotion, humor, betrayal and giant fights. If you’re a fan, it delivers on what you’re hoping to get. And if you’re not yet a fan, you’re experiencing something that you probably didn’t think Transformers had in it. There’s a resonance for anybody who’s had a deeply held emotional relationship with another person that fell apart. It’s emotional, it’s funny, it might make you cry.”
When Cooley took on the task of expanding one of the most popular sci-fi universes of all time, his hope was to bring back the feeling and the fun he remembers having about the original cartoon. Like so many others, Cooley has fond memories of the anticipation and excitement he felt all those years ago when he was glued to the television watching Optimus Prime and Megatron duke it out in each episode of the television series. He still feels the joy of getting a new Transformers toy to add to his collection. He has never forgotten the grief he experienced watching the death of Optimus in the 1986 animated feature.
“I am so honored to have become part of this franchise,” the director says. “I am very proud of what we were able to accomplish in a universe that is precious to so many people. There’s a lot of real love for the characters and the lore of it all. It is an enormous part of people’s childhoods and that was on our minds every single day. I hope our audience is surprised by the authentic emotion in this film, by the new type of action, by the new look of it, and that they find a bit of nostalgia as well. And who doesn’t love watching huge robots that punch each other?”
JOSH COOLEY (Director)
Josh Cooley is a director, screenwriter and voice actor. He is best known for his writing on the 2015 Pixar animated film Inside Out, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. In 2020 he won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature with his feature film directorial debut, Toy Story 4. Cooley has several projects in various stages of development. Most recently he wrote the live-action adaptation of the young adult novel Malamander for Sony Pictures, as well as a live-action/CGI hybrid film for Universal Pictures based on the classic Universal Monsters. Cooley also penned the live-action Tower of Terror for Disney and Scarlett Johansson, which is based on the popular theme park attraction. After graduating from art school Cooley was hired by Pixar Animation Studios as the first intern in the story department. He worked at Pixar Animation for 18 years, contributing to many notable features including The Incredibles, Ratatouille and Up. In 2015 Cooley became part of Pixar’s senior creative team and brain trust, helping to oversee such films as Coco, Incredibles 2, Onward and Soul.
ERIC PEARSON (Writer)
Eric Pearson currently has a robust schedule with several films in the works. He has three upcoming Marvel Studios releases set for 2025: Thunderbolts (May 5), The Fantastic Four: First Steps (July 25) and Blade (November 7). Pearson began his professional career at Marvel Studios in their writers’ program. Along with several screenplays, he wrote a majority of the short films from the Marvel “One-Shot” series, including “Agent Carter.” This short went on to become a TV series of the same name on ABC. Pearson wrote on both seasons of the series. Continuing his relationship with Marvel Studios, Pearson contributed writing at the pre-production and/or post-production stages of features Ant-Man, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Marvel Studios brought Pearson on to pen the screenplay for Thor: Ragnarok at the end of 2015 and then sent him to Australia to continue his work on the script throughout production. The film’s worldwide box-office take was over $850 million. At the beginning of 2019 Marvel Studios brought Pearson on to write Black Widow and then sent him to London (as well as other locations) to continue his work on the script throughout production (Pearson received the only “screenplay by” credit on the film). Black Widow was released during the pandemic but still achieved a worldwide box-office tally of $380 million, with over $125 million additionally in day-and-date streaming earnings. Also released in 2021, Godzilla vs. Kong made over $430 million worldwide. Pearson graduated from New York University, where he studied screenwriting at the Department of Dramatic Writing in their Tisch School for the Arts. He has twice appeared on Hollywood’s Black List, once for his script Perfect Match (co-written with Morgan Schechter) and again for his script Out of State.
ANDREW BARRER & GABRIEL FERRARI (Writers)
Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari are BFFs and writing-producing partners who hide from the horrors of the real world by constructing fortresses made of pure fiction. They’re best known for writing Ant-Man and the Wasp. They hope you like this movie.
by Daniel Dercksen·Comments Off on Lee – A vivid portrait of war correspondent Lee Miller who ultimately changed the way we see the world
The journey from page to screen for Lee began with a table that had been the centerpiece in the kitchen of the house where Lee Miller had many joy-filled summers in Cornwall with the likes of Roland, Max Ernst, Noel Coward and Paul Éluard to name a few. During those hedonistic summers of love, these artists would prepare meals, eat, discuss ideas and create at this table and acquiring it set Kate Winslet on her own subsequent creative journey as producer and taking on the role of Lee Miller.
Elizabeth ‘Lee’ Miller, born in 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York was, as Winslet explains, “An unstoppable force of nature with a tremendous lust for life.” Discovered by Conde Nast himself, she had a brief career as a model and worked for many publications including Vogue, before quickly tiring of being viewed through the male gaze and scrutinized in front of a lens. She switched careers and moved to Paris where she studied surrealist photography under Man Ray. It was Lee who discovered the technique known as solarisation, (something Man Ray long took credit for). She soon set up her own studio and began to work as a successful photographer in her own right.
Some years later, an introduction to the Englishman and Art Dealer Roland Penrose changed things again. Roland and Lee fell madly in love and she swiftly left her former life behind and moved to England to be with him in his home in London. This was at the outbreak of WWII.
Lee Miller, as a middle aged woman in a man’s world, refused to sit still and dutifully ‘do her bit’ as was expected of all women in England during the war, instead she decided to challenge the patriarchy and overcame enormous obstacles before eventually travelling to the frontline in Europe, alone, to begin photographing and reporting on the war for the female readers of British Vogue.
Her profound understanding of women and the plight of the voiceless victims of war and displacement, combined with her ability to capture fragility and ferocity in equal delicate measure, created her extraordinary WWII images and other work and gave her a rightful place in history as one of the most significant photographers of the 20th Century.
Lee Miller’s legacy consists of over 60,000 images & documents. The Lee Miller Archives (LMA) houses a diverse collection of images from Surrealist photography and Vogue fashion editorials to World War II photojournalism and portraits of the some of the most important figures of the 20th Century.
It was a chance moment that led to an encounter with a part of Lee Miller’s past that was the catalyst for Kate Winslet to embark on her journey of the film. As she explains, “Nine years ago a really good friend of mine who lives in Cornwall and works as a researcher for an auction house, phoned me and said, ‘Kate, there’s an amazing table in an upcoming auction and you just have to bid on it, the story behind it is incredible!’ Knowing my love of cooking and hosting big dinners, and my love of old tables, my friend knew this would fire up my intrigue. So, I bought it. It’s beautiful. It’s old and gnarly, with a rough uneven surface. Seats about eight!”
Directed by renowned and award-winning cinematographer Ellen Kuras, making her narrative feature directing debut, and written by Liz Hannah, John Collee and Marion Hume, Lee has a taut, transfixing pace, with striking detail throughout. Featuring superb supporting performances from Marion Cotillard, Andrea Riseborough, Andy Samberg and Alex Skarsgard, the film is a vivid reminder of the bold women who fought to penetrate male-dominated spaces — making great sacrifices and ultimately changing the way we see the world. It’s a fascinating portrait of the great American war correspondent Lee Miller, whose singular talent and ferocious tenacity gave us some of the 20th century’s most indelible images.
Uncovering more about Lee Miller posed a burning question for Kate Winslet, “Why had no one made a film about her?”
Winslet was determined to find out more. She contacted Antony Penrose, (Lee Miller and Roland Penrose’s son), and he told her, “Many men have tried to make a film about Lee, we have a whole box of screenplays in the attic that have never been made.” When asked by Winslet why that was, Antony replied, “they just didn’t quite get her.”
Winslet realized early on that perhaps the real Lee couldn’t be found in any of the historical books written about her. It turned out she was right.
Working extremely closely with Antony Penrose over the years that followed, Winslet began the lengthy creative process of finding a way into Miller’s extraordinary life. Using Antony’s book, The Lives of Lee Miller as a starting point, Winslet set about understanding the deeper sides of Lee. Granted full and complete access to the Lee Miller Archives, Winslet discovered the complexities of this brilliant, warm, charismatic, bold woman. Digging all the way back to her childhood and how that informed so much of her ability to live life at full throttle. Often viewed as the model and muse, Winslet quickly realized that the public persona of Lee was in vast contrast to reality of this determined, powerful, yet flawed middle aged woman who had the courage to take risks and head off to the frontline, completely alone.
The structure for the screenplay was going to be the biggest challenge. “Lee lived many lives and deciding on the most defining period of her life was the biggest challenge we faced,” says Winslet, “we kept telling ourselves, this cannot fall into the trap of being a biopic. We just weren’t interested in that story structure. Plus, it would have been impossible to tell the cradle-to-grave story of Lee Miller as a feature film, because she reinvented herself so many times across her entire lifetime.”
The film wisely did not set out to be a biopic as Penrose explains, “What the producers have done is to select the most salient moments of Lee’s life that accurately represent her personality.” As producer Kate Solomon says, “It’s not about the drama of Lee’s life, but rather, it’s about her inner life, how she felt and what drove her forward. It’s a story about a woman, a human being with a heart and a soul, and how the horrors of war affected her.”
For Winslet, focusing the screenplay on a particular decade of Miller’s life was a way “To get rid of all the preconceived ideas about Lee Miller as the model and the subject of many male artists’ gaze.” We wanted to tell the absolute truth of who Lee was and who she became through her experience of photographing the war, and that began to unfold as Winslet shares, “when we focused on her middle aged years as a female photographer who worked for British Vogue and went to the frontline as a war correspondent during World War II— that’s when we felt this would be the specific decade of her life that we wanted to focus on.”
Solomon explains; “It was about finding the period in her life that tells the crux of what she is about and, for Lee, that period is the ten years which take her from the pre-war sunlit days of the south of France where she spent time with her artistic friends, through to the heart of darkness of Dachau.”
The challenge was working out how in the script they could move from all of these varied moments of her life and transition between them in a way that keeps the audience connected to Lee’s internal emotional journey as a woman in a man’s world, as she sees the horrors of war unfold before her eyes. Employing the device of having a young man, played by Josh O’Connor, interview a much older Miller (also played by Winslet) about her younger life, enabled the team to shape the screenplay’s narrative and anchor it in a place of reflection and emotional resonance. As Penrose explains, “Observing Lee, in the later stages of her life, being interviewed about the photographs from her past allows us into her inner emotional world and allows us to move with her as the young journalist discovers her past. It gave us a very accurate way of being able to move from one event in her life to the next.” Winslet concurs, “When that element fell into place, it felt as though we had a workable structure for a truthful movie.”
Discovering what drove Lee Miller, unveiled to Winslet what an utterly unstoppable woman she was and how relevant her story is today, “She was a lifeforce to be reckoned with, so much more than an object of attention from the famous men with whom she is associated. This woman was a photographer, writer, and reporter. She did everything with love, lust, and courage. She is an inspiration for what you can achieve, what you can bear, and what you can do if you dare to take life firmly by the hands and live it at full throttle.”
Kate Winslet with director Ellen Kuras during the filming of Lee. Brouhaha Lee Limited 2023. All Rights Reserved
With pre-production revving up, Winslet began to go deeper into the actual playing of the role and as she says, “Lee Miller was a truth-seeker and a truth-teller. That was the thing that drove her and that was the reason she wanted to reveal the truth of the atrocities of the Nazi regime. She was a woman who was so intrinsically true to who she was, even though at times there was an enormous emotional and personal cost. She held up a mirror to the many horrific faces of evil, whilst being a selfless, defiant observer herself. It was these qualities that attracted Winslet to play Miller and drove her to tell her story as she explains, “I’m just so taken by her, how she lived, how she didn’t care what people thought of her, or her choices and opinions, how she was free with her affections, her ability to connect with other women and in revealing the truth, speaking the truth and encouraging other people how to do exactly that! That’s everything I live for, and Lee Miller was already doing it years before I was and way better than everybody and certainly better than me. To be playing someone who I truly admire, adore, look up to, and aspire to be even a little bit like, is the most enormous privilege.”
Spending a lot of time with Winslet during the pre-production period, Penrose discovered there were many similarities between Kate and his late mother Lee. The two women’s parallels extended far beyond aesthetics as he explains, “Talking to Kate, little things often came filtering into our conversation that were just unnervingly similar to what Lee would have said, Kate would ask the same questions Lee would have asked, always digging beneath the surface layer and wanting to know why and how. There’s an immersive quality in Kate that was also very present in Lee. If Lee wanted to figure out how to break into a locked up building she’d do it, or if she wanted find out how to cook a new dish, she would go into the most incredible detail to learn how and, by the end of it, she would have known as much as any master chef. That’s exactly the kind of attitude that Kate has towards Lee and to this movie. No stone was ever left unturned. And when she’d turned them all over, she’d go off and find more!”
Lee Miller lived so many lives, reinventing herself in a desire to be free of stereotypes, to know more, learn more, and be more. To be a leader amongst women and as she famously said, “I’d rather take a picture than be one.” She was an incredible woman, it is therefore no surprise that Winslet wanted to tell her story and to be the one to bring her extraordinary achievements and her overwhelming emotional journey to light.
As Penrose explains, “Lee Miller didn’t take no for an answer, and she got things done.” It was with this same energy and spirit that Kate Winslet led the film into pre-production as fellow producer Kate Solomon explains, “Kate put this film together the way Lee Miller put things together, with a passion and energy that gathered people and made them feel that they’re going on an adventure with her.” Castmate Andy Samberg agrees, “Kate’s been trying to make this happen for a little over eight years, because she believes it is important. I’m sure plenty of people have said no to her the same way people said no to Lee but like her she didn’t let that stop her and because of that tenacity it’s now been made.”
With the script in place the next creative decision was which of Miller’s original photographs to include in the film. As Winslet explains, “Only when it was clear what our story structure was, did we then go in search of the images that Lee had taken to fit those key moments.” Key moments like Hitler’s apartment and Dachau were crucial, but there were also the images of the suicides in Leipzig when entire Nazi families killed themselves that they wanted to include, as Winslet says, “there’s a very famous image of the Bürgermeister’s daughter taken by Lee, where she is so close to this young 15-year-old girl’s face, which looks like a Dresden doll, that you can clearly see her perfect pretty little teeth. This Nazi child had been forced to take her own life by her father, it’s a horrific and devastating image.” It was these images that set Miller apart as an exceptional war photographer and were therefore important to include in the film, not only to show her skills behind the camera but also to reveal something of the woman she was. “It’s powerful and brave work” Winslet explains, “and that’s where her work really stood out. Miller refused to allow things to be covered up, partly because she herself was covering up a trauma of her own youth, but also because she truly felt compelled to reveal to as many people as she possibly could the atrocities of the Nazi regime. And she did.”
For Penrose including these images in the film was not only a helpful story device but “A wonderful celebration of her work” and allows the audience to discover far more about Miller, as he explains, “the key thing that defines her photography is compassion, and that comes from somebody who knew what suffering really felt like. She knew what it was like to be marginalised, to be badly treated. She knew what it was like to be in danger and that comes through in her photography.” Miller herself was badly abused at a very young age, but rather than allowing it to destroy her, instead she was able to lay the foundations for an empathy that she used as a way of understanding the world around her.
Often the casting process for a film begins once a director is on board but, as with so many aspects of this film, many of the creative decisions had already been made by Winslet before Kuras came on. Given that Winslet had been working on the project for several years, she had a very clear vision for the project as Kuras explains, “Kate really put the whole thing together and has been phenomenal in shaping the vision for the film.”
The production completed filming in November 2022 with two days filming in London. Just as in Miller’s story, the production had at last returned home and brought with them their memories of the shoot. For Winslet, it was the end of an eight-year journey discovering Miller, “Coming into this, I thought: I must be my absolute freest self because that’s who Lee was. People loved Lee, she drove men wild, with no makeup and looking like an unmade bed, she was just irresistibly true to herself. And that’s what I’ve wanted to really encapsulate in playing her, this messy, haphazard, middle-aged sometimes catastrophic woman who knew how to stand on her own two feet and say, ‘this is me, yes.’
There’s something unbelievably powerful about that, and there’s a real lesson in it, too. I’ve loved discovering Lee, all the sides of her. Playing her has also taught me something about myself, I’ve always strived to use my voice to support other women, but I feel inspired by Lee to do that so much more.”
For everyone involved in the film, it carried with it a clear message from Miller herself as Winslet says, “To tell this story about a woman who saw the world her own unique way, and who gave a voice to those who didn’t have the power to use theirs. A woman who knew how to be a woman herself by embodying her femininity and power…that’s Lee’s message and with it she is still showing us all the way.”
by Daniel Dercksen·Comments Off on 11th European Film Festival
Film lovers can look forward to an entertaining and provocative array of new award-winning European films as the European Film Festival returns for its 11th edition in South Africa from 10-20 October.
Presenting films from 14 countries, and including two Oscar nominations, the festival is a showcase of high-quality cinema from the film industries in the respective participating countries of Belgium, Denmark, France, Georgia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.
Cinema screenings take place in Johannesburg at Sterkinekor’s The Zone in Rosebank and in Cape Town at The Labia. Eleven of the films will be available in the free programme of online streaming accessible across South Africa during the festival period of 10-20 October. For film synopses, film trailers and booking information visit www.eurofilmfest.co.za / HOW TO WATCH GUIDE
Italian director Matteo Garrone’s Oscar-nominated IO CAPITANO recounts the epic journey of two teenage boys from Senegal who make their way across Africa in pursuit of a dream called Europe and is based on accounts of actual experiences by people who have undertaken these arduous contemporary odysseys. Amidst the multiple dangers of desert, sea and hostile racketeers along the way, it’s ultimately a journey of hope and heroism and puts a very human face on migration issues that remain a tragic challenge to the world. SCREENINGS / TRAILER / ONLINE
The Portuguese film BAAN directed by Leonor Teles epitomises the pensive restlessness of 21st century Youth. It’s an innate search for freedom and belonging in what is ultimately a journey of ongoing self-discovery when L. meets the elusive K. This explorative and gorgeously shot film is by one of the brightest young filmmakers emerging out of Portugal today – who wrote it, directed it and filmed it. SCREENINGS / TRAILER / ONLINE
The Swiss film BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD BLACKBERRY, directed by Elene Naveriani, is about a 48-year-old woman in a Georgian village who finds herself passionately falling for a man and is suddenly faced with the decision whether to pursue the relationship or continue her life of independence. The film makes a powerful statement about ageism, sexual awakening, and self-empowerment. It won the Best Film prize at the Swiss Film Awards this year. SCREENINGS / TRAILER / ONLINE
From Georgia, CITIZEN SAINT is an evocatively shot black-and-white classic by Tinatin Kajrishvili, which tells the story of a mining town where the disappearance of a revered statue of a saint coincides with the arrival of a mysterious stranger. A series of miracles create more chaos than good and controversial choices must be made. This satirical film was Georgia’s submission to the Academy Awards this year. SCREENINGS / TRAILER / ONLINE
From Germany, the often comedic DYING directed by Matthias Glasner, unpicks the dynamics and dysfunctionality between the very different members of the Lunies family; the demented father, the sickly wife, the orchestra conductor son, and the radical hedonistic daughter. Dying is one thing, but Life is the real difficulty…. It won the Best Film prize at the German Film Awards this year. SCREENINGS / TRAILER / ONLINE
The Ukrainian film GREY BEES, directed by Dmyto Moiseiev, is about the last two remaining inhabitants in a tiny village in the no-man’s-land between loyalist and separatist forces in the Donbas region in the days before the Russian invasion. Sergiich the beekeeper is Ukrainian, Pashka is Russian, and circumstances have brought them together in a stubborn and sometimes adversarial companionship. It is a powerful testament to human connection going beyond our differences in moments of need. SCREENINGS / TRAILER / ONLINE
From the UK, KNEECAP by Rich Peppiatt, presents a riotous look at a hip-hop trio in Belfast who by rapping in their native Irish language become the unlikely figureheads of a Civil Rights movement to save their mother tongue. In this fiercely original sex, drugs and hip-hop biopic Kneecap plays themselves, laying down a global rallying cry for the defence of native cultures. The film won the coveted Audience Award at Sundance this year. SCREENINGS / TRAILER
From Belgium, LOVE ACCORDING TO DALVA directed by Emmanuelle Nicot, is a beautiful portrait of friendship, recovery and identity through a young girl’s childhood sexual abuse story.Nicot’s poignant film explores the ramifications of abuse with deep sensibility and grace, in Dalva’s journey to reconstruction and hope. The film won a remarkable 7 awards at Belgium’s Magritte Awards including Best Film. SCREENINGS / ONLINE STREAMING / TRAILER / ONLINE
From the Netherlands, SWEET DREAMS, directed by Ena Sendijarević, is an audacious tale of the delicious demise of colonialism on a remote Indonesian island. Satirical and sometimes surreal in tone, personal ambitions play out against a backdrop of workers’ uprisings, lust, and deep intrigue. Winner of the Best Film award in The Netherlands, it was also that country’s submission to the Academy Awards this year. SCREENINGS / TRAILER / ONLINE
In the Spanish film THE OTHER WAY AROUND directed by Jonás Trueba, a filmmaker couple have decided to separate and come up with the idea of throwing a party to celebrate the break-up. It is a very contemporary comedy-drama that teases out witty and highly believable performances from the cast with some revealing insight into how relationships work…. or don’t work. SCREENINGS / TRAILER / ONLINE
From Poland, THE PEASANTS, directed by Dorota Kobiela Welchman and Hugh Welchman is a comic, tragic, and reflective story of one woman’s yearning for independence in a rural Polish village in the 19th century. Full of ornamental songs and rapturous dance, the acted performances are meticulously painted frame after frame by more than 100 oil painters in a unique form of animation, reminiscent of the film LOVING VINCENT, by the same husband and wife directors. This film was Poland’s submission to the Academy Awards this year. SCREENINGS / TRAILER
In the Irish film THE QUIET GIRL, directed by Colm Bairéad, a young girl is sent away from her dysfunctional family to live with relatives for the summer where she blossoms and discovers a new way of living. Simultaneously raw and profoundly empathetic, it is a story about childhood and the transformative power of love and human kindness. It won an Oscar nomination at the 2023 Academy Awards, the first Irish film ever to do so. SCREENINGS / TRAILER / ONLINE
From France, THE TASTE OF THINGS is directed by Trần Anh Hùng, and stars Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel. Set in 19th-century France, it is a touching love story that revolves around gastronomy in a way you won’t see in modern foodie films and TV series. This refined masterpiece of Cinema won the Best Director prize at Cannes and went on to be France’s submission for the 2024 Academy Awards. SCREENINGS / TRAILER / ONLINE
Women’s stories are very prominent in this year’s line-up and none more so than in the Danish film UNRULY. Here, director Malou Reyman’s unflinching and empathetic depiction of young women battling patriarchy and suppression of their rights in a 1930s women’s institution is a deeply personal example of how women’s voices will not be silenced. It is also a strong reminder that achieving emancipation remains an ongoing process today. SCREENINGS / TRAILER
by Daniel Dercksen·Comments Off on Never Let Go – A Dark Fairytale
For screenwriters KC Coughlin and Ryan Grassby, when starting a project they say: “It always starts with a ‘what if’. With Never Let Go, it was simply ‘what if there’s a family confined within their home because of an evil force outside that’s after them, but the force is unable to breach the safety of their walls’?”
Never Let Go is the latest film from visionary horror director Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes, Crawl) and the producers of Stranger Things.
It began as a spec script written by KC Coughlin & Ryan Grassby “Most of what we had written before were thrillers, and this was our first true foray into horror,” says Coughlin and Grassby. “When we finished the script (right at the beginning of COVID) when suddenly, and coincidentally, we were all stuck inside our homes) we knew we had something special. But we never could have imagined what this would become.”
N(L-R) KC Coughlin and Ryan Grassby attend Lionsgate’s “Never Let It Go” World Premiere at Regal Times Square on September 16, 2024 in New York City. (Footage by New Vision/Getty Images)
“They’re great writers,” Dan Cohen, a producer on the film and at 21 Laps, says; he’d read their work and met with them after reading their eighty-page script in the spring of 2020. Cohen was drawn not only to the script’s quality and economical length but specifically to how Coughlin and Grassby “write like editors.” “When they decide to cut in or out of scenes,” Cohen explains, “they find [ways] to… elicit fear or intrigue in a way that I don’t think [even] a lot of other great writers do.”
Producer Shawn Levy and founder of 21 Laps says, “Beyond the great writing, we loved the terrifying nature of the ambiguity. Is The Evil real? Is Momma crazy? This story was written in such vivid detail and the family bond was very strong on the page. As the questions start to get answered and the horror sets in, it had a strong effect on us and made for an incredibly terrifying and gripping thrill-ride.”
“I remember reading and feeling a different type of fear than the usual fear I find in other scripts,” Alexandre Aja says of his experience reading the initial script. “But what got me right away falling in love with the project was that very singular and unique approach of the modern story through the code of the classic fairytale.”
Aja, whose distinguished and successful career as a horror director goes back two decades, felt like this would be “very different from everything I’ve done before.” The story portrayed a world “with a lot of symbols, a lot of symbolism everywhere… [and] a lot of layers… Layers of story. Layers of psychology. Layers of relationships. A lot like a great, dark, scary fairytale.” Like all fairytales, the fantastical setting reflects an all-too-real fear — in this case, “parenthood,” Aja says. “The relationship that you can have with your parents. What you need to leave behind to your kids. The trauma, the generational trauma that goes from you to your children.”
Alexandre Aja
Cohen, who’d been wanting and trying to work with Aja for a while, “was thrilled to hear he responded to the script. I’ve always thought he’s such a visual filmmaker… and so I felt, ‘who better to bring this world to life?’” Then Berry called, and “I mean, it’s just an amazing call to get,” Cohen says. “This is a small, contained horror movie. Halle Berry had always loved the horror genre, but with this film, there was the added excitement of, in her words, “having a family like this be seen in a way that a Black family has never been seen before.” With Berry on as a full creative partner, the story Never Let Go was well on its way to coming to life.”
“I think you’ll find different interpretations of the movie,” Aja says. “Already in the script that was the case. The studio, [Cohen and Jeter], myself, Halle — everyone kind of read something that was slightly different, the same themes but with a more personal approach.” Everyone who worked on the film was drawn in by this constant ambiguity, which only becomes more pronounced in the final act.”
“To have the producers of Arrival and “Stranger Things” sign on as the shepherds of this project, and find it a home at Lionsgate, then to get Alex Aja to direct and Halle Berry to bring Momma to life, has been a literal dream come true for us.” says Coughlin and Grassby.
The producers at 21 Laps emphasize their desire to tell genre stories that carry a strong dramatic core. Founder Levy says, “We always talk about – if the aliens never landed, if the monster never showed up, etc. – we need to really care about these people and want to spend time with them in a straight drama. Never Let Go has this in spades. It touches on so many potent things from the loss of innocence and generational trauma to things that feel incredibly timely in conjunction with what the world has gone through in the past few years. All while delivering on a really scary and unique mythology.”
Halle Berry plays June, known simply as Momma to her fraternal twin sons, Samuel (Anthony B. Jenkins) and Nolan (Percy Daggs IV). After an entity she calls “The Evil” takes over the world, Momma has kept her family safe for the past ten years by confining them to the cabin where she grew up. They forage and hunt in the surrounding woods, making sure to “never let go” of the ropes tied to the foundation of their increasinglydilapidated home, which they believe is the only place in the world safe from “The Evil.” But as food runs low, the boys began to wonder whether “The Evil” is even real — or if Momma’s just really, really sick. With the ties that bind them severed, a terrifying fight for survival ensues.
ALEXANDRE AJA – DIRECTOR, PRODUCER Alexandre Jouan-Arcady (born August 7, 1978, in Paris, France), known professionally as Alexandre Aja, is a writer-director who has worked primarily in the horror genre, beginning with his acclaimed French-language breakthrough film High Tension (2003) before making the transition to American films with his remake of Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (2006). He has gone on to direct other notable genre films such as Piranha 3D (2010), Horns (2013) and Crawl (2019). He is the son of French-Algerian filmmaker Alexandre Arcady
KC COUGHLIN & RYAN GRASSBY – WRITERS KC Coughlin and Ryan Grassby are originally from Montreal, Canada, and burst on the scene with their 2016 Feature Mean Dreams. Since Mean Dreams, Coughlin and Grassby have continued to work in a variety of genres in both Features and Series. Their most recent feature, The King Tide is a Gothic Canadian drama and premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2023. “Grassby is currently based in Montreal and Coughlin is based in Los Angeles.
by Daniel Dercksen·Comments Off on The Wild Robot – An epic animated adventure that follows the journey of a robot
For writer-director Chris Sanders, bringing The Wild Robotto the screen proved to be a profound personal and professional experience. “This project is one of the proudest achievements of my career. The artists have truly outdone themselves in giving life to a book, a story and characters that hold immense personal significance for me, the crew and hopefully, for all audiences. Like a life well-lived, The Wild Robot embraces tragedy, joy, failed plans and accidental triumphs.”
In a world where screens demand our attention and deadlines dictate our days, it’s easy to overlook the wonders of nature. We find ourselves constantly pursuing instant gratification, often missing the subtle beauty and wisdom around us. Yet, sometimes a literary marvel emerges—a story that transcends pages, carrying profound insights into nature’s unexplored beauty, connections waiting to be discovered and lessons yet to be learned. The Wild Robot is one such story—a tale initially crafted for young readers but swiftly recognized for its universal truths.
“The Wild Robot is a once-in-a-generation book,” says DreamWorks Animation President Margie Cohn. “It’s the kind of story that becomes a narrative and emotional touchstone for young readers and their parents, who then will share it with every subsequent generation to come. Not only is it a thrilling adventure tale with vivid, memorable characters, but it taps into something innate and unspoken about our sense of the world and our place in it. Once you’ve experienced it, it can’t be forgotten.”
The Wild Robot’s journey is not just one of survival but of self-discovery and unexpected connections with the island’s wildlife, including an orphaned gosling she nurtures as her own. Beyond its plot, the novel weaves invaluable lessons— emphasizing the importance and value of kindness in adversity, the resilience required for adaptation, the intricacies of parenthood, the emotional navigation of loss and the perpetual discourse between nature and technology. The Wild Robot celebrates diverse family structures, underscores the beauty of acceptance and belonging and offers a poignant reflection on what it means to be alive.
A powerful story about the discovery of self, a thrilling examination of the bridge between technology and nature and a moving exploration of what it means to be alive and connected to all living things, The Wild Robot is written and directed by three-time Oscar nominee Chris Sanders—the writer-director of DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon, The Croods, and Disney’s Lilo & Stitch, From DreamWorks Animation comes this eagerly anticipated adaptation of a literary sensation, Peter Brown’s beloved, award-winning, #1 New York Times bestseller, The Wild Robot.
The epic adventure follows the journey of ROZZUM unit 7134 – Roz” for short – that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings, gradually building relationships with the animals on the island and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling. Roz finds herself ill-suited for the wilderness, having been programmed for a modern, futuristic city life. Unaware of her predicament, Roz diligently pursues her primary objective: finding a person with a task she can fulfil. Instead of encountering humans, she meets animals, a realm entirely unfamiliar to her. Undeterred, Roz immerses herself in studying their behaviour, eventually learning to connect and communicate with them.
The Novel
Peter Brown’s The Wild Robot, an illustrated middle-grade novel first published in 2016, became a cultural phenomenon, rocketing to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. The book has since inspired a trilogy that now includes The Wild Robot Escapes and The Wild Robot Protects. Brown’s work on the Wild Robot series and his other bestselling books have earned him a Caldecott Honor, a Horn Book Award, two E.B. White Awards, two E.B. White Honors, a Children’s Choice Award for Illustrator of the Year, two Irma Black Honors, a Golden Kite Award and a New York Times Best Illustrated Book Award.
Brown’s journey with The Wild Robot began through research into robotics, artificial intelligence and animal behavior. “As I was researching these subjects, it dawned on me that animal instincts are a lot like computer programs,” Brown says. “Animals have a large set of behaviors that they do automatically. Robotically. It turns out, robots and animals have quite a bit in common, and that realization inspired me to write and illustrate The Wild Robot.” The impact of The Wild Robot has cemented its place as a staple in classroom curriculums, while also resonating with parents and sparking discussions beyond its intended audience.
From Page To Screen
Writer-director Chris Sanders, the three-time Academy Award®-nominated director of DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods, encountered the novel through his daughter’s school assignment. Sanders was captivated by the book’s depth and nuance and immediately envisioned the story’s cinematic potential. “What struck me most about the book was its deceptively simple yet profound emotional depth,” Sanders says. “I connected with its innocence and its earnestness. I’m drawn to stories with strong emotional undercurrents. While I appreciate big adventure stories, it’s the quieter, more intimate moments that truly resonate. These are the elements I prioritize as a filmmaker, and I thought The Wild Robot exemplified them beautifully.”
Years later, during a meeting at DreamWorks Animation, Sanders rediscovered The Wild Robot on the studio’s development slate. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Sanders says. “I immediately picked it out as the next movie I wanted to write and direct. Tonally, it paired perfectly with my sensibilities.” Sanders discussed it with DreamWorks Animation President Margie Cohn. “It was a very different story than had ever been told at DreamWorks—one devoid of the traditional heroes or villains, but rich in depth—and I was thrilled when Margie explained that was exactly why they’d acquired it,” Sanders says. “Something I’ve always admired about DreamWorks is their versatility—they’re not confined to a single style or tone. My first project with DreamWorks was How to Train Your Dragon, which was a blend of drama and humor that focused on emotions, subtleties and nuanced storytelling. I see a lot of similarities between The Wild Robot and Dragon in terms of their DNA and thematic depth.”
DreamWorks saw it that way, too, and had reached out to Peter Brown about the film rights to the book before it was even published, believing that it both had the potential to be a landmark film and that DreamWorks was the ideal studio to adapt it for the big screen. “At DreamWorks, our goal is to transport audiences into immersive places that they’ve never experienced before, whether it’s the fairytale landscapes of Shrek and Puss in Boots, the fantastical prehistoric world of The Croods or the natural beauty of Kung Fu Panda and, of course, the How to Train Your Dragon films,” Cohn says. “But our films also explore the emotional terrain of what it means to be alive: to be lonely, to be afraid, to experience the thrill of the unknown, to find the brave places inside yourself that you may not have known existed, and, above all, to find your home, and your family, in whatever form that may be. We were thrilled that Peter trusted us with his story.”
Allowing any film studio to make a film of your creation is ultimately a leap of faith for any author, but Brown’s own background eased some of the anxiety that most author’s may feel about that decision. Before writing and illustrating children’s books, Brown had a passion for animation. His journey began at an animation camp as a child, continued through college where he studied animation and encompassed various roles at animation studios before he ultimately found his true calling in creating children’s literature. “When I heard that DreamWorks wanted to make a movie based on The Wild Robot, it felt like my life was coming full circle,” Brown says. “Books and movies are very different art forms, so it’s only natural for The Wild Robot movie to differ from the book, but I had numerous discussions with the filmmakers, and I knew their goal was to capture the spirit of the story that I had dreamed up years ago.”
As DreamWorks Animation approaches its 30th anniversary in fall 2024, the studio continues to reach for new levels of artistic excellence. “We’re always in search of stories that ignite the hearts and minds of audiences around the world, and no story embodies that mission more than The Wild Robot,” Cohn says. “Chris Sanders is a true auteur, and The Wild Robot is a distinctly visual story that needed a director who could bring it to the screen in all its cinematic beauty and delicacy. Chris’ expansive and expressive portfolio made him the ideal choice to direct this project, and we were ecstatic when he came on board.”
Sanders set ambitious goals for the film, aiming to push the boundaries of narrative and artistic expression. Achieving this vision required the collaboration of a seasoned producer, and Jeff Hermann, who has worked on various DreamWorks Animation films, including The Boss Baby: Family Business and the Kung Fu Panda series, was a natural fit. Hermann also recognized the opportunity to pioneer new directions with the film. “From the start, we knew this story was exceptional,” Hermann says. “It encapsulates all of the best elements of movie storytelling—a mix of scope and intimacy, joy and sadness, humor and terror, excitement and discovery. It delves into fundamental human experiences through the lens of robots and animals, exploring themes of attachment, commitment, responsibility, love and the essence of emotion.”
In translating the book to the big screen, the filmmakers sought to adapt and refine the narrative while honouring the beloved elements that resonated with readers
Their objectives were clear: to celebrate the story’s bold, distinctive qualities; to push the visual boundaries of look and style; and to highlight the intricate emotions and themes interwoven throughout the narrative.
The filmmakers recognized the story’s potential as a perfect fit for animation, especially given that its characters are all nonhumans. “One of the unexpected joys in creating this film was portraying animals authentically,” Sanders says. “In animation, there’s often a tendency to anthropomorphize animals, giving them human traits like wearing clothes, driving cars and having jobs. While that can be enjoyable, there’s a unique admiration for stories depicting animals as they are in nature. What set this story apart is our creatures on the island being somewhat anthropomorphic in their ability to talk, but they behave authentically as real animals in all other aspects. We wanted to capture the essence of these creatures living in a harsh, unforgiving environment where the struggle for survival is palpable. The animators embraced this rare opportunity and infused warmth and authenticity into the animals’ movements and behaviors. Surprisingly, the absence of human-like elements led to a beautiful purity in the story.”
The filmmakers went beyond the storyline, committing themselves to pushing the visual boundaries of aesthetics and style. From the project’s inception, they were determined to create a uniquely sophisticated visual identity to complement the story.
The island setting offered an ideal canvas to showcase a distinctive, painterly animation style. “My dad once told me something I’ll never forget,” Sanders says. “He said, ‘There’s a limit to what you can build, but you can paint anything.’ That idea has always stuck with me. He also spoke about the lasting impact of paintings. He believed that while a photograph on a wall might fade into the background over time, a painting would always command attention and remain captivating. I’ve found that to be very true.”
Having started his career in the era of hand-drawn animation, Sanders deeply appreciates the artistry and craftsmanship involved. “While CG animation introduced exciting camera movements, it also sacrificed some of the intricate details and warmth of hand-drawn characters,” Sanders says. “Early on, I worried that traditional CG might limit us, so we opted for an illustrative, painterly appearance inspired by some of DreamWorks’ recent work in this style. We needed grace, power and poetry in our visuals, and this approach delivered that and more. It focused on painting with depth, emphasizing impressionistic details over exhaustive realism. This choice not only captivated me with its beauty but also gave the scenes a heightened sense of realism and emotion. We drew inspiration from the animal portrayals in early Disney classics like Bambi, and from the atmospheric forests of Hayao Miyazaki films. Leveraging DreamWorks’ technological advancements, we’ve created a film with a completely unique animation style. Imagine a Miyazaki forest brought to life through the work of Claude Monet.”
The process of refining the film’s visual style became a tremendous source of pride for the filmmakers. “Initially, as we discussed our aspirations and the capabilities of our tools, we envisioned a painting coming to life,” Hermann says. “Our entire team not only met but exceeded our expectations, delivering results far beyond what we thought possible.”
In addition to shaping the narrative and visuals, the filmmakers dedicated significant attention to exploring the film’s themes and emotional depth. Recognizing the wealth of ideas within The Wild Robot, they approached the task with mindful consideration. The result is a film that eloquently reminds us of our connection to the natural world and underscores the paramount importance of empathy. It encourages the audience to find beauty in unlikely places and emphasizes kindness above all else. “Animation has a unique ability to infuse non-human elements with humanity,” Hermann says. “This project allowed us to depart from a comedic tone and delve into emotional and substantive storytelling.”
For Sanders, bringing The Wild Robot to the screen proved to be a profound personal and professional experience. “This project is one of the proudest achievements of my career,” Sanders says. “The artists have truly outdone themselves in giving life to a book, a story and characters that hold immense personal significance for me, the crew and hopefully, for all audiences. Like a life well-lived, The Wild Robot embraces tragedy, joy, failed plans and accidental triumphs. It celebrates the everyday magic that weaves a life together, reflecting on the dynamics of parenthood, childhood, the essence of home, and, above all, learning to grow beyond our programmed boundaries.”
Impressionist Visual Style: The film’s unique painterly, impressionist style draws inspiration from iconic sources like Bambi and artists like Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro, and the impressionistic paintings of Claude Monet, creating a visually rich and immersive world. The film is divided into 31 sequences, with each sequence representing either a key story moment, location or action scene in the film. A total of 269 paintings were created by a team of 15 artists for these sequences.
Animation Techniques: A blend of traditional animation and advanced digital techniques brings the film to life, capturing the essence of classical artistry with a modern twist.
Evolutionary Color Palette: The film’s color palette evolves to convey emotional shifts and narrative beats.
Collaborative Visual Development: Collaborative efforts between visual development artists, concept artists and animators result in a cohesive visual language that balances realism with artistic expression.
Artistic Influences: The world of The Wild Robot is set in the not-so-distant future, which is characterized through scenes involving Universal Dynamics, the company that created ROZZUM 7134. The work of the late American industrial designer Syd Mead (Blade Runner films, 1982’s Tron) heavily influenced the design of the human world in the film, characterized by clean, swooping and slick shapes, contrasting with the gritty and chaotic wilderness of the island. The team also drew inspiration from science fiction artists John Harris and John Berkey.
Designing Roz: The design of Roz is a testament to the collaboration and creativity of multiple departments. The design journey of Roz was an intricate process that involved balancing her robotic essence with organic elements, reflecting her emotional growth throughout the film. The goal was to create a character that would evoke empathy and fascination while maintaining a high level of functionality and visual appeal. Roz’s design evolves throughout the film to reflect her emotional growth. Her body transitions from clean, crisp shapes to having more organic buildup and scratches. As she begins to blend into her environment, she begins to look like the forest itself and her design begins to look more like the film’s painterly landscape.
Animating the animals: The character effects team pushed boundaries in simulating realistic movement for the film’s animals, studying reference footage and conducting motion-capture sessions. In total, the artists created 47 species of animals for the film.
Film, like speech and writing, has a unique language. Film Is A Visual & Temporal Art. Writing, speech, and visual images all communicate within their own particular spheres. MORE
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