My First Movie: Take Two

My First Movie: Take Two — Ten Celebrated Directors Talk about Their First Film [Buy Now]

Edited by Stephen Lowenstein

Pantheon, $26, 286 pages

In theory, this book should be a wet dream for would-be filmmakers. It aims to get inside the skulls of talented maverick filmmakers, finding out what made them tick as they created their first features.

Interviewees include Richard Linklater, Terry Gilliam, and Sam Mendes, none of whom are known for being coy about their working process. So why is this book such a disappointing bore?
The staid format of the book doesn’t help. There are dry questions and big chunks of text. Editor Stephen Lowenstein’s repetitive interview techniques don’t help much either; he takes his subjects through their early filmic yearnings, then from pre-production to the critical responses to their films — and how they feel when their celluloid “babies” are praised or boiled in the media spotlight.

But the real reason why the book is so unedifying is its overall lack of commentary; Lowenstein comes to no conclusions of his own about the filmmakers’ processes, leaving directors to speak for themselves. Because of this, the book comes across like a series of extended interviews from a nerdy filmmaker magazine, crammed into a hardcover.

For all Lowenstein’s faults, he obviously had fun tracking down directors and interviewing them. Quite right too — the subjects have juicy stories to tell. Richard Kelly is the new kid on the Hollywood block, making the deliriously uneven films Donnie Darko and Southland Tales. He admits that visuals are his forte, and that if you mute the sound on his graduate film (Visceral Matter), then it’s watchable.

Linklater is one of the few directors in the book who seems to have attained his reputation through sheer hard work, rather than a lucky break with a studio. His attempts to make an “anti-movie” where nothing happens became an unexpected cult phenomenon — according to the book, the film’s title even introduced a new word to the popular consciousness: Slacker.

Mendes is one of the lucky ones, leaping from a Broadway revival of Cabaret to a multimillion dollar Dreamworks project. Mendes gushes about receiving advice from Spielberg (“be strong”) and is humble about this good fortune (his first film, American Beauty, won five Oscars and three Golden Globes).

The main linking element between the directors seems to be their lack of technical knowledge. When Lowenstein asks them which lenses they used, they often reply that their grasp of all that stuff is limited — they have their directors of photography to rely on for that. Being a director, it seems, is more about communicating ideas and getting a job done than creating an artwork.

It’s been two years since Aryan Kaganof shot SMS Sugar Man, the first feature to be filmed entirely with cell phones. In this age of digital videography where a professional production doesn’t have to cost millions of dollars to make, Lowenstein’s book should raise interesting questions about what constitutes a “movie.”

In the first book of this series, Oliver Stone refused to talk about his early films (Seizure and The Hand). Lowenstein included the interview anyway, presumably so that he could use Stone’s name to sell more copies of his book.

This time around, Linklater only briefly mentions his original Super 8 mm feature, It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books. His interview focuses on his breakout 35mm film Slacker instead. Lowenstein seems to be cheating, which isn’t very fair on his readers. So a more appropriate title for this book might be My First Movie of Consequence or My First Movie that Didn’t Suck.

While this book has the potential to instill you with interest in filmmaking, it’s more likely to put you to sleep because of the way it’s presented. If only Loweinstein had taken his cue from some of his maverick interviewees to do something fresh and interesting with this material.

BOOK REVIEW: Force of Nature

Force of Nature

By Mark Sloan & Brad Thomas

Published by Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art & Van Every/Smith Galleries

$30

Force of Nature, a 144-page hardcover book that documents the groundbreaking exhibit of the same name, is a sober affair compared to Mark Sloan’s previous publications, which include circus/sideshow tributes Hoaxes, Humbugs & Spectacles and Wild, Weird & Wonderful. But in its own right, Force of Nature captures the exuberance of the 10 Japanese artists who visited the Carolinas last year to make site installations.

Sloan, director and senior curator of the College of Charleston’s Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, co-curated the exhibition with Brad Thomas, director of the Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College in North Carolina. About five years ago, the two men decided that it would be a good idea to organize an art show together, putting contemporary work on display at both institutions. The idea escalated into a mammoth multi-site undertaking, encompassing the College of Architecture at UNC/Charlotte, Winthrop University Galleries, Clemson Architecture Center in Charleston, McColl Center for Visual Art and Sumter Gallery of Art. For art lovers who couldn’t take the bus tour to the various sites, this book documents the entire project.

It’s far more than a simple catalog, though. The rich color photography shows the artists at work, using their paraphernalia, sketches, schematics, and captures the final works along with visitor reactions.

A chapter devoted to Motoi Yamamoto accentuates the sheer scale of the artist’s elaborate labyrinths made of salt, mirroring the logistical and red-tape issues that the curates faced when coordinating Force of Nature. The shots of Motoi’s salt art trickle off the page, in one instance stretching off into a distant white desert of miniature salt dunes. Close-ups show Yamamoto’s incredible attention to detail.

The Addlestone Library on Calhoun Street wasn’t the only site used by Yamamoto, who also went to Davidson and hung a 40-foot gouache on mylar drawing above a delicate horizontal piece in the Belk Visual Art Center.

On the ground floor of the Halsey, Noriko Ambe transformed trees into otherworldly drawings and cut-paper sculptures. One of the latter graces the book’s cover, giving it a three-dimensional look. One chapter shows her at work, projecting a photograph of a dissected tree trunk onto a wall and then drawing over it. For Noriko the process is as important as the final product, and the book serves her well. Wider shots indicate the relationship between her drawings, the sections of tree trunk, and her paper art.

All 10 artists get equal face time. Their creative processes receive as much attention as their completed art. Takasumi Abe is shown with helium-filled garbage bags, kite string, and an iPod, preparing to record cloud sounds. There are dramatic photos of Ayako Aramaki and Junko Ishiro, who use fire to forge their work in unexpected ways.

The book’s only failing is a consequence of the original project’s ambitious scope. Extensive blogs, videos, podcasts, and Flickr photos were posted on Force of Nature’s “online exhibit” website, telling the full story of the project from the artists’ viewpoint. Although some self-portrait photos of the participants are included, there’s no way to adequately reveal this fascinating aspect of the show. Fortunately, the online component is still accessible through the Halsey website (www.cofc.edu/halseygallery).

Force of Nature ultimately teaches and delights, providing a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process while telling the over-reaching story of the project itself. Sloan’s photography is compelling, focusing on the forces of nature — trees, clouds, even something as common as salt — that inspired these artists to create.