Movies Til Dawn

' Dig this twenty minute interview with Sam Peckinpah done for the BBC in 1976, as he was finishing post production on 'Cross Of Iron' and preparing to shoot 'Convoy' (I thought the two came in reverse order in his career as they do in his filmography but I was wrong...so so wrong). Sam is an interesting man. Intelligent, quiet in a lethal kind of way, darkly humorous, thoughtful etc. Much is made of the violence in his films which seems, from this perspective, to be a wasted interview opportunity--why bother with all that blather given where we are now in the world when we could be talking some really interesting shit with this singular fellow? Sam drinks coffee and smokes and talks and about halfway through you might find yourself getting a little tired of the line of questioning. Perhaps Sam felt the same way because that's when he reaches for the bottle of Bourbon on the table next to him and adds a healthy shot to his coffee. The next ten minutes of the i...

As always, I promised to blog the making of a movie and, as has become something of a habit, I have immediately failed to fulfill the promise. First of all, I'm dead tired from the get-go. Even if I had time to write and/or post pictures and stuff every day, I would be hard pressed to concentrate the effort necessary to do so.  But ultimately the big reason not to bother is: who cares? Let me explain. Having over twenty years of doing this, I've ceased to find the work glamorous or even basically fun in any way. What it is is satisfying...but only when you start to see it come together. The shooting of a film is essentially a footage-collection process. Me and the crew are basically a gigantic recording device capturing the actors who are inhabiting the roles that will eventually be seen as a representation of reality that tells a story that is hopefully believable, coherent, moving, funny or whatever. (Hate that last word. But I used it to my discredit and thus will let it...

I begin---or more accurately-- resume shooting my new movie "Stano" which stars Joe Mangianello and Sofia Vergara  tomorrow, Monday August 21. I say resume because we filmed four days of work a few weeks ago before shutting down for three more weeks of prep. This work stoppage was, fortunately, part of a bigger plan and not an accidental detour of the sort that all too often happens in the making of an independent film. We needed to shoot out most of Sofia Vegara's material in order to make room for her TV commitments. Thus our twenty-six day movie has twenty-two days of photography left ahead of us. Capishe? Nonetheless it really does feel like we're beginning a new movie and thus the attendant pre-shoot anxiety has already ruined much of the day. But this always happens to me (I suspect I'm not the only director who experiences this syndrome) and over the years I've developed a way to deal with it. Basically I spend the day watching sequences of films th...

This Monday, August 21, I begin principle photography on my ninth movie. "Sonny Stano" is the story of a middle-aged ex-con who gets out of prison to confront his past, which happens to have been a terribly thwarted one. As a teenager, Sonny was a baseball phenom, raised in the Bronx and loving the Yankee's (natch). His talent actually earned him a place on that fabled team's roster (it would have been in the 1998 season, which was one of the greatest of all for that ball club). But a street fight and an accidental death took Sonny away from his greater fate and sent him to Sing Sing. Will he repair his life? Will he play baseball again? Don't ask me. Watch the fucking movie when it's done, all right? Meanwhile, I will--as I have before--be blogging the making of the movie over the next few months. Our shoot happens in good old New York City and its environs (Queens, Bronx, whatever) and I'll be posting on-set videos, photos etc. So follow along as w...