Next Cinema Lounge

The Cinema Lounge meets Monday, November 10 at 7:00pm to discuss the topic "Directed by Mad Max." With the anticipated release of Mel Gibson's The Passion, the story of Jesus Christ shot in the ancient language of Aramaic without English subtitles, we'll talk about what actors bring to film when they become directors.

Cinema Lounge, a film discussion group, takes place the second Monday of every month at 7:00pm at Borders Books, 600 14th St., NW in Washington, DC (near the Metro Center Metro stop).

Coming Attractions Trailer Night

Check out the Holiday Feast of Movie Previews! A veritable "horn of plenty" of movie trailers for the holiday season is being lined up for the Fall 2003 edition of the DC Film Society's Coming Attractions Trailer Night. Movie fans will catch a glimpse of holiday blockbusters, comedies and dramas, along with some of the smaller, independent films scheduled to open in the fall and winter coming months. This year's program is set for Wednesday, November 19, 2003 from 7:00-9:00pm and will be held once again at Loews Cineplex Wisconsin 6, 4000 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W. Admission for this one-of-a-kind semi-annual event is only $5 for DC Film Society members and $8 for non-members and guests.

Coming Attractions is also a rare chance to talk back to the screen as film critics Joe Barber and Bill Henry get the audience involved in analyzing how Hollywood is trying to get you off the couch and into the theater.

As they say on the game shows, "But that's not all." Chipotle will be on hand offering complimentary burritos, there will be plenty of free film giveaways and posters plus two hotel weekends will be raffled off to attendees of the event. The "horn of plenty" is overflowing!

New Film Society Leadership

Premiere Screening of Hitting the Right Cord

The 28th Annual Toronto International Film Festival

In Their Own Words

By James McCaskill and Ron Gordner

TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA. Most of these comments were made by filmmakers at the Toronto International Film Festival:

Stephen Fry at the world premiere of his new directorial debut film, Bright Young Things: "If there is anything I could say to make this film clearer, I should have said it in the film."

Solveig Anspach at the launch of Stormy Weather (Iceland/France/Belgium): "I had already chosen Elodie Bouchez, a French actress to play Cora, the young psychiatrist working in a Belgian hospital. When I went to Iceland to cast the part of Loa, I saw many beautiful, tall, blue-eyed blond women. They looked like models and not what I wanted. I sat in a cafe where a woman in the corner had the exact type of strong face and even coat I was looking for. I asked her what she did and Didda proudly said, 'I am a poet.' Didda said she would help with the writing and was very willing to do a nude scene if necessary."

Luigi Falorni, director of The Story of the Weeping Camel (Germany) (a film shot in Mongolia and in the Mongolian language that was his and fellow graduate student and co-director Byambasuren Davaa, graduate student film project at Munich Film School) told how his co-director knew of the tale of the ancient ritual of bringing in a musician to try to bond a newborn camel calf with its mother. "We had given up hope of finding this event in the Gobi desert, when one of the leaders said there were still a cluster of some families some distance off, with camels about to go into labor. The last family visited and the events that transpired during our co-habitation for the next seven weeks of shooting became a mixture of documentary and feature film never before recorded."

Xavier Gianolli at the showing of his directorial debut, Les Corps Impatients (Eager Bodies) was asked where he got the Asian looking actress to play Charlotte. He said, "I have been asked this question before, but Laura Smet was really the daughter of French actress Nathalie Baye and French singer/actor Johnny Hallyday. I was inspired to make the film when I read the novel of the same name by Christian de Dontella."

Barbara Albright at the showing of Free Radicals (Boze Zellen) (Austria) when asked about the title of the film, said, "I preferred the English title Free Radicals to the German one which means "Bad Cells" because the latter sounds like cancer. The English title also captures the mood of the film more since it is about many single lives that may intersect and how fate removing one link can affect the whole chain. I also found it interesting that North American audiences do not laugh as much as the European audiences about the group therapy sessions."

Andrey Zvyagintsev, director of The Return (Vozvraschenie) (Russia) which was the winner of Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion Award. "I believe that a child is born of the mother and makes a journey toward the father. The film was shot in a town north of St. Petersburg. The Director of Photography was a nonprofessional who was self-taught by reading the journal American Cinematography. I had seen a series of his home movies and knew immediately that he was a genius and that I wanted to use him."

Ewan McGregor has been quoted in the British press as saying that when his latest film, Young Adam, is shown in the states he is afraid they will "cut my willy." Ouch, Ewan. Sounds dreadfully painful. And didn't we see your bits in Pillow Book? If that wasn't cut then Young Adam won't be.

In America: Interviews with Jim Sheridan, Paddy Considine, and Samantha Morton

By James McCaskill

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND. The following interviews and press conference took place at the 56th Edinburgh International Film Festival. The 57th EIFF takes place 18 to 29 August 2004.

Of all the films I have ever done this was the most personal in regards to art imitating life. I did four films in a row that had brilliant scripts, brilliant film, and great filmmakers and the last film I did was In America which is all about family. At the end of the film the most important thing for me is family and love. I did take it home with me. (Samantha Morton).

After a six year wait Jim Sheridan is back with his fifth film in a reality based film career (My Left Foot(1989), The Field (1990), In the Name of the Father (1993), The Boxer (1997) and In America is a love song to New York City, based on his own life. In the early 1980s Sheridan, wife and two children moved to New York City and many incidents in the film came from those early days. He tells the story of stealing an air-conditioner from a theatre he worked in and dragging it across Manhattan as his family was not use to the summer heat and humidity. Two guys were sleeping on bunk beds there and one was Carl Frank. Carl use to wait outside his house every day and Jim would give him a quarter. One day he just looked at it and from then on Jim gave him a dollar. Carl went missing for a week once and when he returned "he said I owed him seven dollars." "Most of the characters were true that I based the whole thing on. Sometimes the facts were more extraordinary than the fiction. Like I did go across the American border with Canada and got arrested for speeding. The two policemen did take us to an midnight court and we got fined $40 but we only had $38. The two cops gave a dollar each. And the judge asked me if it was my money and I said 'No." He asked me again, I said no again. I thought this guy wants to get me for perjury. He got the two cops to perjure themselves by saying I put the money down. Outside, the cops said, 'We didn't mean to arrest you. Our grandparents came over from County Kerry. Here is $10 to get back on the highway.' That was nice."

"When I was throwing the balls for the dolls, I lost." Sheridan continued, "But when you change one fact which is that they had a dead child when it was my brother who died of a brain tumor, you have to temper reality with a little bit of (salt? pepper? No, that does not sound right.) sugar. I could not have them lose the doll. I did steal that air conditioner and it did blow the wiring in the house. All that happened."

"And our third child arrived early," he revealed. "I was taking over for an actor one night in a play. Usually I did not care to the extent that I cared about the lines, but it was a regular play and I had to feed everyone their lines. I heard a voice when I was trying to remember a line and looked out into the audience. It was my daughter and she was prompting me. So there is nothing like your daughter prompting you to make you totally freeze up so after about three prompts she was doing all the lines and the audience was in hysterics. At the interval I said move her to the back row. Then at the end I asked her why Fran [his wife] sent her down. 'Oh, it is because she is having the baby.' My wife had walked down four flights, walked to the Roosevelt Hospital only to be told that they did not handle emergencies. She had to go up to Harlem. So she went back out, stopped a cab, put the kids in the cab and went up. I arrived as Tess was being born early. The only result of being in an incubator for the first five weeks is that she has extraordinarily good hearing."

Paddy Considine was asked about the difficulty of playing the director's life. "When I read the script," he answered, "I did not know it was about your life. I read it, thought it was brilliant. I remember your saying to me early on, 'You are not playing me.'" Said co-star Samantha Morton, "I think that was very gracious of a director to do that. It takes the pressure off. 'You don't have to be me.' I was terrified at the thought of playing someone who was alive. I could not get my head around it," she continued. "It was written so well that like an amazing book that haunts you. You put it down but have to pick it up again. Pick it up again and again. Haunting. This was like that. Perhaps my instinct as a mother means I can interpret life a little bit better." Jim shares screenwriting credits with his daughters. "I gave them a script that was little more that a series of humorous anecdotes. They gave me a script in which I had vanished. We worked on it."

Jim (everyone calls Sheridan by his first name--he is comfortable and low key in interviews) picked up the reading theme. "Two kinds of ways of reading. A lot of people read logically and don't really see it. And other people see it and you don't have to fill in all the dots. But [the script] was very sparse."

"It is all about instinct," Samantha interjected, "and being directed. That opening yourself up and saying 'Yeah, I will go to any place you want to take me to; just look after me when you take me there and bring me back.' Which is what happened."

How did an actor from the English Midlands learn an Irish accent? Paddy revealed that "I hung around with [Sheridan]for a while. Went to the races. Lived the Jim life for a few weeks. We did have good voice guy. When you are working with an Irish crew, we lived in Dublin for a few months, you just develop it. Soak things up."

Samantha felt that "You have to get the person first." Paddy picked up the point, "Accents should be like the clothes you wear and not the point of the performance--so it should be secondary." How did he feel about the scene where his character was auditioning? "That was one of the more difficult scenes we did. Just one of those scenes you just struggle through."

"Paddy and Sam are convincing as parents of two children who aren't changing their accents at all," Jim said. "When you have those two kids there is no way you act. The main thing for me was to get a real family."

"The story will always bring you back because the film has its own life and it will always pull you up," said Samantha. "Not the kids. It is their truth. When there is that much truth around, you can't lie. You would stand out like a sore thumb. The children express love every second of the day."

Jim came back to an earlier point of Samantha's, "The actors have to trust that you will not let them die. You have a more complex relationship with actors. But with kids and their innocence you are back in the Garden [of Eden]. Each actor has crossed that border in a different way and has a different set of complexities."

How did he find those two "scene stealing" Bolger children? "My daughter had been through every kid in Ireland to cast another film. I walked in the rehearsal hall and saw this kid, Emma. Had her read the script. And amazing for a six-year old, her reading was excellent. She was too good so I had another child read. Felt a tug on my jacket and turned around. There was Emma with a look like God help you. 'Is she reading my part?' I tried to stare her down but it didn't work. This kid has focus and that is important so I said, 'No one is reading your part. You are cast.' She then wanted to know who the other girl was. 'My sister is in the car,' she said. How old? 'Ten.' Too young. 'Come down and give her a chance.' I knew I would gain a lot with two sisters and they were cast."

"On the first day of shooting something did not go right with one take and I said, 'Shit.' Sarah came up and said, 'It is OK to curse in front of me. I'm ten but my sister is only six. Rude to curse in front of her.' Told her I didn't think I could do it [stop cursing] so they could yell 'Action' and 'Cut' and that they did throughout the shooting."

What qualities did the actors bring? "Looking at a six year old and saying this kid has self confidence," Jim answered. Like Sean Connery who only does Scottish accent. 'This is who I am. Scotland is OK. Go to Hell.' I had seen the work of the adults and knew the actors. Sam is too young to be the mother of the oldest girl but you never for one minute don't believe it." He went on, "I needed people who were certain that they could play Irish in Ireland. And at the same time I needed people who were strong enough and had the intelligence and the self esteem. So, for me, it was always a combination. Just sitting down and talking to people. You know this will work. I have seen what they can do in film. I know actors You get to know the melodies. They were great to work with."

The actors were asked what it was like to work with Jim. Paddy said, "I grew up with Jim's films. His are quite pivotal films for me. He cuts the bullshit and goes straight to what is going on. Creates a very safe environment where you do not feel you are going to fall. He had a script that was fantastic. Once we were doing a scene that was just not working. Jim stripped to the waist, moved the other actor aside and pined me to the wall. I have never had a director that involved."

Samantha added, "I am 26 and have been doing this since I was 12 and I have never worked with a director who feels what you feel. Knows when you are lying. A good director knows when you are lying."

"I remember a day," she concluded, "when were were doing a scene where something had gone wrong. We were all just sitting around waiting. I was Paddy with one kid on an arm and another on a leg. I wanted to say, 'Careful, you'll get hurt.' I knew we had become a family."

Credits for In America. Principal actors: Samantha Morton, Paddy Considine, Djimon Hounsou. Produced by Jim Sheridan and Arthur Lapin. Screenplay by Jim Sheridan, Naomi Sheridan, and Kristen Sheridan. Directed by Jim Sheridan. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. UK/Ireland. 2003.

Cast Notes: Samantha Morton (Sarah) was last seen in Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar. She also appeared in Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, Alison McLean's Jesus' Son, and was nominated for an Academy Award (2000) for Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown. Paddy Considine (Johnny) was most recently seen in Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People. He also had the lead roles in A Room for Romeo Brass, Happy Now and The Last Resort. His next film is Pavel Pawlilowski's My Summer of Love. Djimon Hounsou (Mateo) was not at the EIFF. He received a Golden Globe nomination for Cinque, the rebel slave leader in Amistad. His recent films are The Four Feathers and Gladiator. Sarah Bolger's (Christy) first film was A Love Divided. Emma Bolger (Ariel) is making her acting debut in In America.

Do You Know You Have Lee Marvin on Your Roof?

By James McCaskill

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND. I don't usually write book reviews but occasionally one comes along that would be a splendid addition to a film lover's library. Most film biographies are little more than the "And then I wrote" variety that give little insight into the life of the film. This book, Adventures of a Suburban Boy, is not like that. It illuminates the roller coaster career of acclaimed film maker John Boorman. Many of his films have reached cult status while others have been quickly forgotten.

Boorman grew up in suburban Surrey, in the fringes of London during World War II and has drawn upon his upbringing in his films. He used parts of this childhood in the highly acclaimed 1987 film Hope and Glory. He came from a family that at one time had wealth but lost it shortly after World War I. Boorman's father had been posted to India but returned to England to a clerical job he hated. Gradually the love left his parent's marriage and his mother drifted into an affair with a former sweetheart. This infidelity provided the background for the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot triangle in Excalibur (1985). For his family, just as the family in Hope and Glory, World War II provided a release from suburban life. To escape war torn London, his mother took the family to her father's summer house in Shepperton. Boorman flourished in this country setting and in the local Catholic school. It was this school that was actually bombed in the vivid portrayal in Hope and Glory. A teacher at his school, Father John McGuire, saw his talent and encouraged a writing career. It was some years after leaving school that he began to write articles for the newspaper, the Manchester Guardian.

Boorman began his film career after learning the basics behind the scenes work in television. It was work on a film about the Dave Clark Five that provided his transition to features. MGM offered him the chance to direct Lee Marvin in the critically acclaimed Point Blank (1967). It is the Lee Marvin connection that propelled Boorman into film making. Adventures of a Suburban Boy has a superb portrait of this macho actor. The following year he and Marvin made the disaster prone film Hell in the Pacific. His reporting on this film gives great insight into what can go wrong in film making.

Marvin was rarely easy for a director to get along with and one fierce altercation led to Boorman's car being stopped by a Los Angeles policeman with the question, "Do you know you have Lee Marvin on your roof?"

Warner Brothers asked him to bring James Dickey's Deliverance to the screen in 1972. Academy award nominations followed. But so did two truly terrible films, Leo the Last and Exorcist II: The Heretic. Boorman has never taken the easy way; his willingness to take chances have been the hallmark of his career. His next film is Country of My Skull with Samuel L. Jackson and Juliette Binoche. Jackson plays a Washington Post reporter sent to South Africa to cover the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's inquiry. The film is scheduled for release in 2003.

For insight into the life of a man who takes filmmaking seriously and who never insults his audience, readers of Adventures of a Suburban Boy will be amply rewarded. The book will be published in November by Faber and Faber. Discounted pre-publication orders are available from online book sellers.

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