From Flies to Spiders: FFC Interviews David Cronenberg

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Directors: David Cronenberg, Horror, Interviews


November 15, 2002|Of the many opportunities afforded to me by my association with FILM FREAK CENTRAL, the ones I treasure most are interviews with favourite filmmakers. Guillermo Del Toro, Cory McAbee, John Sayles, and now David Cronenberg–easily the most important Canadian auteur of the last thirty years, and one of the most vivid and innovative voices in a horror genre otherwise moribund since the early 1980s. Cronenberg’s films are obsessed with the twisting of the flesh by machineries and ambition, sexual perversion and insectile dissociation, and the blurring of lines between reality and the phantasms constructed by the Icarian aspirations of its doomed protagonists.

Ray Liotta is One Cool Bastard: FFC Interviews Ray Liotta

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

RayliottainterviewtitleNovember 4, 2002|Taking notes in the lobby of Denver's Brown Palace Hotel, I was surprised to look up into the vaguely terrifying gaze of actor Ray Liotta, in town to promote his latest film and first foray into producing: the gritty, harrowing Narc. Unfailingly polite, Liotta impresses most with his candour and forthrightness–a breath of fresh air in a business that too often resembles a mutual admiration society of professional spin-doctors and overripe hucksters. I was disarmed more than once during our conversation (punctuated occasionally by his trademark laugh) by the careful attention Mr. Liotta afforded my questions. I'm far more accustomed to being a sounding board for folks with something to promote, questions be damned. I began by asking Mr. Liotta why he chose at this stage of his career to begin producing.

Queen of Swords: FFC Interviews Cheng Pei-pei

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, China, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Interviews

CpeipeiinterviewtitleOctober 26, 2002|I confided in the amazingly beautiful Hong Kong action legend Cheng Pei-pei–recently seen as the villainous Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon–that a screening of her classic Shaw Brothers film Come Drink with Me on a grainy bootleg copy as a small child gifted me with both a lifelong love of martial arts films and my first crush. Still lovely and distinguished almost forty years later, Ms. Cheng met me at the Daily Grind coffee shop in the Old Tivoli Brewery, where the Denver Film Society was running the 25th Denver International Film Festival and featuring a new print of Come Drink with Me that was originally struck for this year's Venice Film Festival. She was soft-spoken, polite, and exceedingly gracious; I was stricken by her humility and friendliness–old crushes die hard, I guess. I began by asking Ms. Cheng about her training as a dancer.

Burger in a Restaurant: FFC Interviews Neil Burger

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Interviews

NburgerinterviewtitleOctober 26, 2002|The writer-director of the nifty Interview with the Assassin, a Blair Witch construct involving suburban bogeys and the hypothetical existence of a gunman on the grassy knoll, Neil Burger arrived for our interview at Panzano restaurant in the suddenly chic downtown Denver. Tall, thin, dapper, Mr. Burger lives just six blocks from the World Trade Center site; over the course of our lunch, he recalled how large pieces of debris fell just feet from his home–and how an atrocity of that magnitude puts everything else into sharp perspective. We spoke about the massacre at Columbine High School near my house and compared notes on the funereal, vaguely psychotic atmosphere that followed our respective intimate tumults.

Noyce Guys Finish First: FFC Interviews Phillip Noyce

Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Interviews

PnoyceinterviewtitleOctober 24, 2002|2002 is a banner year for director Phillip Noyce, who, after years toiling in the Hollywood dream factory, has returned home to his native Australia to helm a pair of spectacular and disparate films: The Quiet American and Rabbit-Proof Fence. Both played at the 25th Annual Denver International Film Festival, with Noyce also honoured as a tribute guest at a special screening of his marvellous "locked room" thriller Dead Calm (1989). I met Noyce at the historic Tivoli Brewery's hospitality suite on the coldest morning in Colorado since probably last March, resulting in the imposing Noyce (6'4", easy) bulking up even more in a down jacket.

Finding the Giant Within: FFC Interviews A.J. Schnack

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Interviews, Music

AjschnackinterviewtitleOctober 24, 2002|The kind of interview that They Might be Giants (hereafter TMBG) might appreciate, my chat with filmmaker A.J. Schnack was short, sweet, and to the point. In town for the 25th Denver International Film Festival with his film Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns, a pop journalist-laden look at the phenomena of geek rockers TMBG, I shared a large sofa with the nebbishy Mr. Schnack and asked what moved him to make a feature-length documentary on his favourite band.

The Lost Boys: FFC Interviews Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Directors: Terry Gilliam, Film Festivals, Interviews

LamanchainterviewtitleOctober 22, 2002|Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe–the team behind the Terry Gilliam documentaries The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys and this year's excellent Lost in La Mancha–define a collaboration of complementary parts. Meeting the pair in a below-street level conference room at Denver's chichi Hotel Monaco, I was stricken by the realization that the two themselves resemble a Gilliam dyad (the duct repairmen of Brazil, perhaps)–they're an exercise in interesting, opposing body types. Gilliam, one can only conclude, is infectious.

You Might Even Say They Glow…: FFC Interviews Alan Rudolph & Michael Henry Wilson

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

ArudolphinterviewtitleOctober 21, 2002|I don't know exactly what I was expecting from Alan Rudolph, the director of such peculiar films as Love at Large, Trouble in Mind, and the frankly misguided Vonnegut adaptation Breakfast of Champions, but a smallish, balding, unassuming man with a flat west-coast accent wasn't it. (This despite his cameo in The Player pitching "a cross between Ghost and Manchurian Candidate.") In Denver for the city's 25th International Film Festival with his latest, Investigating Sex, in tow, Mr. Rudolph–along with the film's co-screenwriter, Michael Henry Wilson–sat down with me underneath the canopy dome of the Denver Performing Arts Complex, high above the bustle below of the crowd arriving at the Temple Buell theatre for the screening and reception to follow. (A privileged vantage reminiscent of the ivory tower interplay of his collection of intellectuals in the picture.) I began by asking Mr. Rudolph about his long association with friend and mentor Robert Altman.

A Get-Together with Chen Kaige: FFC Interviews Chen Kaige

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, China, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Interviews

CkaigeinterviewtitleOctober 19, 2002|Stentorian in voice and a little dreamy in mien, Chen Kaige ("Tzen KI-guh"), one of the primary members of China's Fifth Generation of filmmakers, is a tribute guest at the 25th Denver International Film Festival. A group that included Zhang Yimou (a cameraman on Kaige's Yellow Earth prior to becoming a director), the Fifth Generation introduced more intimate stories told on a larger scale than the Chinese cinema that came before. It is a movement also marked by remarkably vivid colour schemes, interest in period pieces, and epic tableaux.

The Fast and Furious Cole Hauser: FFC Interviews Cole Hauser

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Film Festivals, Interviews

ChauserinterviewtitleOctober 15, 2002|I met Cole Hauser, visiting Denver with his latest film, White Oleander, in tow (it opened the 25th Annual Denver Film Festival), at the press suite of the city's Hotel Teatro. A rising star, Hauser is along with Alison Lohman the best thing about the intensely mediocre White Oleander–he's the best thing, in fact, about a lot of films. With the virile presence of a young Brando (crossed with Jon Favreau) and a glacial mien, Hauser has escaped stardom only through his steadfast decision to take roles based on the quality of director or role rather than succumb to the bright lights of easy stardom. (Director John Singleton, with whom he worked on Higher Learning, is at least partly responsible for his upcoming appearance in The Fast and the Furious 2.) I asked Mr. Hauser about playing a skinhead, about the underestimated The Hi-Lo Country, and about his once-estranged father, actor Wings Hauser.

Skins Game: FFC Interviews Chris Eyre

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

CeyreinterviewtitleOctober 2, 2002|Striking a chord with his first film Smoke Signals (based on a collection of short stories by Sherman Alexie, who himself makes his directorial debut this year with The Business of Fancydancing), director Chris Eyre is now on the "Rolling Rez Tour" with his second film, Skins, travelling across the country in a giant semi-trailer equipped with, of all things, a 35mm projector and comfortable, air-conditioned stadium seating for ninety. There's even a popcorn machine.

Psst!: FFC Interviews Christian Frei

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Film Festivals, Interviews, Switzerland

CfreiinterviewtitleSeptember 30, 2002|While flipping through a magazine on a flight to Chicago in April 1997, Swiss director Christian Frei became acquainted with the work of photojournalist James Nachtwey, one of the most decorated artists in his field and the subject of Frei's remarkable documentary War Photographer, which debuts this week in Denver at the Argus Human Rights Festival. A fascinating, almost Lacanian separation of observer and observed indicates the piece, a film shot with a specially designed camera-mounted camera that provides an intimate point of view of the photographer at work. I had the pleasure of speaking with Mr. Frei this morning on the telephone to Switzerland as the director, fresh from a trip to Kabul researching his newest project, The Giant Buddhas, spends the next week and a half in his homeland.

Last Action Hero: FFC Interviews Steven Silver

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Film Festivals, Interviews

SsilverinterviewtitleSeptember 29, 2002|At once a startling exposé on the horror of Rwanda's 1994 genocide and a stirring portrait of heroism, Steven Silver's fantastic documentary The Last Just Man is a balanced, provocative film that demonstrates a steady hand at the rudder and an educator's philosophy at the helm. It is wrenching and difficult to consider one's own life from the same perspective once watched–thus it fulfills the noblest aspirations of the medium: to move, to inspire, to edify, all so professionally composed that it manages to disguise its mechanism. Finding the right balance between history and irony, outrage and careful consideration, is a devilishly tricky thing, and Mr. Silver carries it off with a surplus of apparent ease. I was honoured to chat with Mr. Silver on the telephone from Toronto this morning preparatory to the Colorado debut of The Last Just Man at the Argus Human Rights Festival.

In Conversation with Arthur Dong

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Film Festivals, Interviews

AdonginterviewtitleSeptember 27, 2002|The latest by a veteran and much-lauded documentary filmmaker based in the Los Angeles area, Arthur Dong's Family Fundamentals examines the toll that hatred and intolerance have taken on either side of the ideological divide separating fundamentally Christian families from their homosexual children. Following three families, Dong's picture is notable for its remarkable restraint–its amazing lack of stridency in the face of as insidious–and puzzling–a form of fanaticism as any in our cultural dystopia. Such objectivity graces all of Mr. Dong's late production–works such as the (twice-honoured at Sundance) documentary Licensed to Kill (in which murderers of gay men are interviewed in prison) and Outrage 69, which details, in part, the Stonewall riots of that incendiary summer of '69. I talked to Mr. Dong, a Chinese-American and an openly gay man raised in the Chinatown section of San Francisco, about getting started in film and growing up Chinese in the United States.

When There’s No More Room in Britain: FFC Interviews “Shaun of the Dead” Filmmakers Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

ShaunofthdeadinterviewtitleThe makers of Shaun of the Dead on building a better zombie movie

September 26, 2002 | I met up with Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright, the creative team behind the Britcom "Spaced" and now the brilliant zombie rom-com Shaun of the Dead, right before I was scheduled to host a Q&A after a free screening of the film (comprised mainly of Romero fanatics and genre geeks) at Denver's Pavilions Theater. As the movie unspooled, the four of us retired to a Planet Hollywood where they were playing, of all things, an old, unknown FIXX song from the '80s. There was something pleasantly right about that, chatting with these blokes–who had made a half-assed record collection in Shaun of the Dead into an arsenal to irritate the legions of the shambling undead–as the detritus of our glossiest, Teflon age pounded the corners of one of the most soulless prefab eateries in the world.

Cory McAbee in Black and White: FFC Interviews Cory McAbee

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Esoterica, Interviews

CmcabeeinterviewtitleSeptember 18, 2002|Cory McAbee's The Billy Nayer Show is a brilliant aural assault of a band that just so happens to be involved in the process of filmmaking. The American Astronaut–written, directed, and starring McAbee–is an amalgamation of traditional 35mm cinematography, still photographs, paintings, and in one particularly disquieting scene, sculpture. In many ways, the film is the logical end to years of celluloid experimentation from McAbee, beginning with 1993's The Billy Nayer Show, a 150-second animated short film created with house paint and paper; continuing through 1994's twenty-minute Pixelvision-wrought The Man on the Moon, which details a cuckolded husband who takes his cat to the moon, where he broadcasts something of a radio show back to Earth; and reaching something of an anti-climactic pinnacle with 1995's thirty-minute The Ketchup and Mustard Man, essentially a discomfiting performance art concert (complete with a bizarre sculpted application) edited in such a way as to suggest that it's the fever dream of a demented mind (which may not, after all, be far off).

Circus Vargas: FFC Interviews Peter Sollett

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Film Festivals, Interviews, TIFF

PsollettinterviewtitleSeptember 10, 2002|Peter Sollett had been judged by his cover in most of the interviews preceding mine at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. As I was packing up to leave his hotel room, he thanked me for not asking, to put it in no uncertain terms, What the hell’s an upper-middle-class white guy doing make a movie about a Latino neighbourhood on the lower east side of Manhattan? The truth is, I couldn’t care less–been pigeonholed a time or two myself based on appearances. The beauty of NYU film-school grad Sollett’s feature-length writing and directing debut Raising Victor Vargas (an expansion of his like-themed short film Five Feet High and Rising) is that he could’ve set it anywhere. The milieu is all but incidental (he picked the film’s central location based on the Latino community’s enthusiastic response to an open casting call), though it does lend verisimilitude to the boy-meets-girl story basic. Call it apolitically political.

Your Secret is Safe with Payami: FFC Interviews Babak Payami

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Interviews, Iran

BpayamititleAugust 25, 2002|I met Babak Payami last week while he was drinking an espresso in a leather-upholstered booth at a chichi Denver eatery. In town to discuss his second film, Secret Ballot (Raye makhfi), Payami was not the craggy visage in a fisherman’s knit-wool sweater with a shock of white hair–the living incarnation of Samuel Beckett as would befit the author of a film that plays like a cross between “Waiting for Godot” and “Endgame”–I expected. Instead, I was greeted by a compact, powerful-seeming man in a sweater. Articulate and confident, yes, but there the similarity to papa Sam ended.

Butler Did It: FFC Interviews George Butler

Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Interviews

GbutlertitleAugust 25, 2002|George Butler is perhaps best known as the maverick filmmaker behind 1977’s Pumping Iron, the benchmark bodybuilding documentary that almost single-handedly introduced a young Austrian fellow by the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger to American audiences. Each of Butler’s subsequent projects have been examinations of the urge for achievement in ages of relative leisure, from the groundbreaking female bodybuilders of Pumping Iron II, the big game hunting of the disaster- and controversy-ridden project In the Blood, and finally this year’s IMAX Shackleton’s Antarctic Adventure and companion feature-length documentary The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition. Despite the similarity of Mr. Butler’s projects, the bonhomie growing between people during strife and outrageous circumstance, and the evolution (or lack thereof) of machismo, he frowns on discussions of intentionality in his work and choices of subject material. That’s something that I learned the hard way. (Please note: this interview was conducted during last winter’s awards season.)