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I’m mentoring a young friend through the process of writing and directing his first feature, which he’ll shoot in a year; he’s still in development tweaking the script before it goes out to cast. His executive producer, the former president of a major studio, said to him the other day, “Your cinematographer is the most important person on set after you.” I couldn’t agree more.
There’s nothing like working with a great DP, it makes all the difference in the world to the outcome of your film on many levels. The most important level for me is the personal, the experience of making a film. I don’t get to direct often, so when I do I want to enjoy it, to be carried away by, yes, the quasi-spiritual experience of creating something worthy in harmony with my crew, as cheesy as that might sound.
A couple of weeks ago I was in a preliminary meeting for a TV series I am being commissioned to write. One of the associated producers, who has hitherto exclusively made reality-TV fare, suggested the characters break the fourth wall and talk to the camera, in mockumentary style, which works to great effect in both TV and feature-film comedies — note the word “mock” — but not in drama.
As a purist, I was taken aback by the suggestion of deploying this unnecessary device. I reigned in my kneejerk contempt for it by nodding and muttering, “Hmm, interesting idea.” It just didn’t suit my vision for this particular piece at all, but I’m also coming in later in this project’s process. I’m changing it from a comedy to at most a dramedy, although by the time I’m through it’ll likely be an outright drama with comedic hints now and then; one of the main characters has a personality disorder that is too often the butt of jokes, which isn’t so bad as it is tiresome and inauthentic to how both people with the disorder and their caretakers deal with it in real life.
I first stumbled on the theory of multiple intelligences around a decade ago while training at a boxing gym in London. I was a competitive swimmer as a youth, then into “power yoga” as it was called when the craze first hit these shores, then weight lifting, all solitary sports that requite little interaction with anyone else. Learning how to box was transformative, empowering; fighting other men in a rather primal sport forces you to overcome the innate resistance to violence that most people are born with as a survival instinct. Contact sports like boxing teach your body that fight is as viable as flight.
I was privileged to attend a screening of The Case Against 8 at LACMA the other night, hosted by the New York Times, followed by a Q&A with the cast and filmmakers. If it isn’t the best documentary I’ve ever seen, it is certainly the most emotional and among the most effective: my head from my eyes to my throat stung and throbbed with the weep-ish feels for most of it.
This is saying a great deal; I’m a real hardass, especially if I feel I’m being in the least bit emotionally manipulated. Manipulation there is in this film, aplenty: the score by Blake Neely grabs and wrings you as much as the words and images on the screen. The superlative editing brings out performances from the cast reminiscent of 70s and early 80s political activist dramas like Silkwood.