Movies Til Dawn

Today's clip shows Andy and Steven working in the yard together and ends with an impromptu boxing match. Again, a nice bit of work that won't find it's way into the finished film, so I'm dumping it into the blogosphere. In a sense, this blog is becoming the film's "trimbim"--a parking lot for all the little things that otherwise would have been abandoned along with the harddrives when the editing is completed. Within this scene, as you'll see, is the explanation of what makes City Islander's so unique: the insistence that to be considered a true local, you need to have been born on the Island. This makes you a "clam-digger" in their parlance. If you simply pick up and move to City Island from somewhere else, you're a "muscle-sucker". This point was made in the New York Times article which first brought this strange and lovely place to my attention. I dutifully wove it into the script but somehow didn't quite believe that...

Here's a take of a perfectly nice scene of Andy Garcia walking down the main drag of City Island, talking on his cell phone and then entering the famed City Island Diner. It appears unlikely to make it into the final version of the film so I decided to let it live on this blog for as long as this blog lives. (What about that? Will the blogosphere ever self-erase? I have no intention of closing this blog, but what do we know about the shelf life of blogs?) One of the forever fascinating and frustrating things about filmmaking is that, no matter how much you cut the script before shooting--no matter how certain you are that you're only shooting what's absolutely necessary--you still wind up dropping large chunks of material once the picture is assembled. What makes this doubly frustrating for me is the time I've lost on these unnecessary scenes is especially precious when working on a tight schedule as we were (the whole film was shot in 28 days). Nonetheless, its "p...

Below I've posted a fascinating clip from a truly strange Laurel and Hardy movie, "Twice Two" . Shot in 1931, it's one of several films in which L&H play dual roles (the only other that I can think of at the moment is "Our Relations" but I'm sure there are at least two more)--in this case they play men who married each others sisters. Thus Laurel is married to a female Hardy and vice verse. Furthermore they live together in one house. And L&H work together at the same place. The incestuousness of this would be weird enough in a movie with four different actors. But with L&H playing each others wives, it becomes almost too weird to watch. Ah, wait--there's "Brats", where they play their own sons! Yes, very good. But while its charming to see Stan and Ollie as fathers to two little Stan and Ollie's, its unsettling thinking of them having sex with each other. Indeed, one of the strange things about L&H that has often been...

For the "car crash" scene in "City Island" (yes, even quirky romantic family comedies need a good car crash) we mounted our lovely brand new 35mm Arricam on the back of our not so lovely 1970 Ford Galaxy. There was a lot of talk about how to achieve the car crash--we were going to have the car on a "leash" controlled by a vehicle behind the picture car, we were going to rig something to do with a fake bumper etc. etc. Finally Andy Garcia simply said: "Why don't I just crash the car myself"? Why not indeed? Andy is a very confident actor (and person) who likes to keep things simple--one of his favorite things to say to me was to give him stuff to do "so I don't have to think about acting". We made a few safety adjustments, lined up the car in front of him and decided to go for it--after all, as car crashes go it was quite modest: just a nice, simple rear-ender. We lined up the shot, tied down the camera, got into position and I c...

Below are two clips from a scene which takes place on the Roosevelt Island Tram. For those unfamiliar with Manhattan and it's satellitte islands, Roosevelt Island is a strange little place located to the east of Manhattan, on which for many years the only thing of any importance was a mental hospital. (The building is still there but is closed, abandoned, deeply ghostly). Later, projects were built--middle-class projects to be sure but nonetheless vast, gray, uninspiring projects. (Somebody I know once referred to them as looking like "retirement homes for old spies"). But in the early seventies, a tram was built to take people from 59th Street on the East Side of Manhattan over to Roosevelt Island...and suddenly, one of New York's loveliest secrets was born. For the tram ride through Manhattan, over the East River and descending upon Roosevelt Island is truly a magical experience--by night or by day, in the rain or in the sunshine. The trip is a mere five or so minut...

Apropos of the interest expressed by several readers about why we use the device known as a "process trailer" to film car scenes on, I thought I'd re-post the "tour of the trailer" that one of our interns did--believe it's already been up once but I figure if Sinatra can repeat material, so can I. As far as process trailers go, ours was pretty hinky. It had, frankly, seen better days and none of us were convinced that it would survive the days work. But it did and I have a feeling that the company we rented from have no plans to retire the old horse until it literally collapses on the job. Some of the coolest equipment along the same lines are made by a company called Shotmaker--I tried but was financially unable to deploy some of their equipment. Click here to check out their website. Tomorrow I will be writing at length about my old friend, filmmaker Edward Dmytryk ("Crossfire", "Murder My Sweet", "The Caine Mutiny") whose c...

In my experience there are three kinds of improvising actors: those that can, those can can't, and those that think they can but really shouldn't bother. Ezra Miller belongs to none of the above categories. He belongs to one of the rarest of all actor categories: those that MUST improvise because their flow of creativity so surpasses whatever material they are working with that it would simply be irresponsible for a director to not encourage it. When I hired Ezra--who most of you don't yet know, but trust me you will soon--it wasn't because I knew he had this gift; rather it was because of his charm and natural humor that he displayed in his reading. And his confidence. Often, actors coming in to read for a part may not even be the best actor for the role--but if they give the director a sense of security, if they display a sense of self-sufficiency, that can go a long way to making a director feel...how to put it? More at ease. Like there's one less burden on my s...