the first film I’ve seen this week which uses basic genre tropes to delve deeper into everyday human horrors––but if this a new trend, I’ll have more, please.

Oskar (), who also claims to be “12…more or less.” Eli catches Oskar making his imaginary bully threats and seems intrigued, but the mysterious girl insists that she and her neighbor cannot be friends. “I want to be alone,” says the teenage Garbo. “So do I,” counters Oskar. And yet soon they’re meeting up every night, and trading brief romantic messages via Morse code through their apartment walls. It’s not until after Eli has agreed to go steady that Oskar puts the pieces together, and realizes that the female salve to his soul-sucking loneliness is actually a blood-sucking killer. But is that really any scarier than the barely-pubescent nihilists in his class who try on more than one occasion to drown him?

looking better or more successfully conveying the coldness of the everyday human world. This is nice.

And yet, is good enough, but it’s okay to ask for more.

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Fantastic Fest is hosting four “Secret Screenings” of movies that haven’t been released yet, and the first one unspooled last night to a theater full of people who had no idea what they were about to see. Rian Johnson was in town with a print of his movie and one lucky audience got to see it several months early.

It’s hard to watch has it in spades. It’s a fantasy world that Johnson himself probably wouldn’t mind living in, and I’m sure he’d have a fair share of people willing to follow him. At least one theater full of people last night wouldn’t have minded.

is the story of two brothers, Bloom and Stephen, who bounce from house to house as foster children while cooking up elaborate confidence schemes to line their pockets with. In one of their first successes, they lure the local children to a mud-drenched cave in search of a fairy. Although they are found out and lose the admission ticket cash, they’d previously set up a profit-sharing percentage with the local drycleaner.

What makes these cons work so well are Stephen’s elaborate plans, which often involve hand-drawn flowcharts and maps, and Bloom always serves as his central hook. As a result, Bloom is often the central face of these cons, and it keeps him from getting the girl, and he’s playing puppet to his older brother’s machinations.

Throughout the opening scenes, when the brothers are young, con-artist expert and cardsharp extraordinaire Ricky Jay provides the narration. When we see the brothers again, they’ve aged through the miracle of movie magic into Brody and Ruffalo, and they’ve been joined by a silent third partner, Bang Bang, played by Rinko Kikuchi from . By then they’ve been working the con circuit for years, and have become fairly successful at it.

However, Bloom has become more and more melancholy, and longs for “an unwritten life,” meaning one where his brother hasn’t scripted everything out for him. He wants out of the con business so he can set out on his own. The only problem is, once Stephen grants him this wish, he winds up drunk and running low on cash. Stephen has no trouble finding him, and he lures him back for “one last con and then you’re out.”

Bloom agrees, but the problem is that the he falls for the next mark, eccentric millionaire Penelope (played by Rachel Weisz) and despite his efforts to remain aloof, it throws a monkey wrench into the works. Especially once she discovers that they are con men and she wants to be one as well. That’s where the bulk of the movie takes place.

The only problem with movies about cons, like , is that you’re not quite sure what to believe, because in the end almost everything has been part of the con. or anything, but if there is…you won’t be caught off-guard.

I have to admit that I’m not the biggest Adrien Brody fan on the planet, but he manages to charm in his role as the depressed Bloom, and Rachel Weisz somehow finds an entirely untapped well of oddness within her psyche that was probably hinted at back when her librarian character got drunk in . She’s disarmingly approachable as a sad and lonely heiress. Ruffalo is cheerily robust in her role as the the ringmaster of all the cons and maintains a huge smile throughout the movie, but it’s really Rinko Kikuchi who owns this film. Her mute Bang Bang character is not only gorgeous, but she manages to convey more by not speaking than most actors can with a three-page monologue.

Rounding out the cast is Robbie Coltrane as a co-conspirator who joins their long con, although Johnson had originally wanted Ricky Jay for this role, and Bob Dylan as the narrator. When he couldn’t get Jay because of scheduling issues, he got him to narrate instead and decided that worked out well because he didn’t know how he could possibly direct Dylan. Dylan’s participation probably wouldn’t have really affected the film that much, but Ricky Jay is honestly a perfect choice in the role of The Curator. Not that Coltrane didn’t do a good job, but given Jay’s obsession and earnest love for confidence games, it would have been great to see what he could have done with the part.

While opens on January 19th. Hopefully it won’t get lost in the post-Christmas/pre-Sundance dead zone for movies.

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director Timur Bekmambetov is helming an effects-heavy adaptation of Herman Melville’s is turned into a reality TV show.

Although I’m not exactly well read as far as literary classics go, I’ve been wondering what other revered books (particularly those in the public domain) could be reworked as potential summer blockbusters. Obviously, there are certain sci-fi, fantasy and adventure novels that work, yet the fitting fictions of Verne, Wells, Burroughs, Dumas and others are already fodder for cheap movies with lots of action and/or special effects. Therefore, I’ve tried to limit my choices to those books that aren’t such easy candidates for a Memorial Day weekend opening.

Dante’s epic poem has inspired a few films over the years, including the hugely successful 1911 silent already made some attempt at this, and it failed at the box office. Sure, but it was still an awesome spectacle of a film. Now, think of something similar starring Will Smith as Dante. And some rewrites to allow for more fight scenes (yes, even in Heaven). The poem will be divided into a trilogy of films, of course.

Georges Méliès, the original visual-effects cinema showman, made also had decent effects, at least for a TV miniseries, but it’s high time for a new big screen attempt, which shall employ all the latest effects innovations. And Will Ferrell. It should also have a more contemporary setting and lose all the allegory and commentary stuff. Nobody needs to be thinking about antiquated messages at the multiplex; they just want to watch giant people destroying little cities, pirate attacks and other straightforward spectacles.

Similarly, Voltaire’s satire could be made into a more straightforward adventure through life’s calamities. And yet just by adhering to the basic plot, the main idea could still be communicated without making the audience think they’ve actually been made to think about it. It should probably be modernized, and it should probably star Shia LaBeouf.

I guess a modernization of this classic would seem like just any other movie about a man forced into hiding as an actor, and a more faithful adaptation would probably not feature a better swordfight than the one in .

I’m picturing Nicolas Cage in yet another movie involving prophecies. Only in this one, he not only can’t avoid killing his father and mating with his mother, he also fails to save the world from an apocalypse. See, the movie is about how you can’t change your destiny, and it’s also about a lot of cool and disastrous destruction occurring at the film’s climax.

Matt Damon is reunited with director Terry Gilliam for an absurd action movie that’s as much as it is . Damon plays Gregor, a man who wakes up one day to find he’s a giant bug. That’s about as far as Kafka’s story is retained. From there, he must go on the run while being chased by an organization of pest control operatives in an attempt to find out why he’s transformed and how he can return to human form.

I know, it’s been filmed a billion times, and it’s technically one of those books I wanted to exclude on account of its ease in becoming a blockbuster. But here’s the thing: it would be completely different this time, and I don’t mean because it will be set in space. That’s movies, the story of Jim Hawkins (Cameron Bright) and Long John Silver (Gerard Butler) will include some paranormal additions, courtesy of Hollywood’s idea of poetic license.

I don’t know if this is still considered a classic, but as long as book (which was once to be directed by Roman Polanski) is struggling to get made, now is the chance for some big producer to get a blockbuster made out of this book. And worse comes to worse, there ends up being competing Pompeii movies, which would fit in with the tradition of disaster movies anyway.

In a way, this movie will just be a combo of , but it will have that more respectable title and a less respectable script. And Nic Cage can again play twins.

Many of cinema’s greatest filmmakers have had the ambition to make a great adaptation of Cervantes’ masterpiece. And now it’s time for Michael Bay to admit he’d also like to give it a try. And with a big enough budget, he’ll succeed, though it won’t exactly be faithful to the book. Instead it will be about a man (Nic Cage again) who’s seen too many action movies and so, with great delusions, takes it upon himself to become an action hero. I can’t wait to watch all those windmills explode!

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I’m finally heading back to New York tomorrow after almost 5 weeks away, and a number of can’t-miss film events are awaiting me. A sample:

• Carlos Reygadas’ is finally, finally coming back to New York, a year after it .
• .
• IFP is launching a new series of screenings called First Weekend, in which they help ensure an indie release has a successful first weekend by inviting their members to buy tickets for a special screening featuring a discussion with the filmmakers and an after party. The first film to get the treatment will be , which we .

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Fantastic Fest announced their film awards late last night, even through we’ve still got three more days of movie watching and alcohol drinking to go. As expected, a special award in that category.

We’ll have a lot more to say about these films and much more soon, so keep checking back for more festival information and news throughout the week. Heck, I’ve even enjoyed seeing at this thing. The complete awards listings can be found after the break.

Animated Shorts:
First Place:
Second Place:
Third Place:
Special Jury Award for Technical Merit: Facts In The Case Of Mr. Hollow

Fantastic Shorts:
First Place:
Second Place:
Third Place:
Special Jury Award for Visual Invention:

Horror Shorts:
First Place:
Second Place:.
Third Place:
Special Jury Award for sheer enjoyability:

Fantastic Features:
First Place:
Second Place:
Third Place:
Special Jury Award for originality and vision:

Horror Features:
First Place:
Second Place:
Third Place:
Special Jury Award for most politically incorrect gore:
Special Jury Award for best use of latex: JACK BROOKS MONSTER SLAYER

Audience Award:
First Place:
Second Place:
Third Place:

AMD Fantastic Fest Online:
Best Feature Film:
Best Short Film:

AMD Next Wave:
First Place:
Second Place:
Third Place:

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On October 28 the world will plunge into an irradiated nightmare, littered with the wreckage of civilization, overrun by savage super mutants. Or, , a now classic post-apocalyptic role-playing game. How has the franchise maintained such a devoted fan base? Simple: great story, great characters, great setting, and killer cinematics.

The games have always been deeply indebted to post-apocalyptic cinema. The opening sequence of the first game is almost identical to the one in has its own brand of dark humor and retro-futurism.

After the jump, I take a crack at assembling a dream cast for such a film. I’m going to stick to characters from the first game, where it all began. Chime in with your own picks in the comments.

The game follows The Vault Dweller, a young person raised in the safety of a large underground vault. The vault community intended on riding out the nuclear storm for 200 years, but their water purification chip broke, so our hero must go and seek another. The badass wanderer of the wastes could be almost anyone, as gave the player the option of creating an entirely original protagonist. The game also provided three pre-made heroes, any of which could translate well to the screen.

The option to play Albert lets the player capitalize on charisma, while still doing a fair amount of damage with small arms and unarmed combat. Albert’s strength is talking his way out of tough situations, but some situations require action when words fail. DiCaprio has a great way of wearing frustration on his face, which is perfect, as I imagine that killing ghouls while fighting an addiction to radiation-resisting drugs would be quite frustrating.

Max Stone is set up in the game to be a big dumb bruiser, but Perlman could give the character depth beyond that stereotype. This choice is obviously informed by Perlman’s work in movies. Also, Perlman had to be on the list somewhere, given his involvement in the games. He provided the voice-over narration for the openings of Fallout 1 and 2, and provided character voices.

While we can all agree that the trilogy went downhill, that shouldn’t ruin things for Ms. Moss. She has a lot of potential as an action star, and the role of Natalie, a thief/assassin daughter of KGB spies would serve her nicely.

The other Vault Dweller option: use all three as a team! It would break from the lone-wanderer feel, but it would be pretty cool.

In the spirit of all great role-playing games, let the player wander around at his or her own pace, exploring, doing quests, making friends and making enemies. It wouldn’t make sense to include all the characters in the film, but here are some essentials:

The Overseer is the leader of Vault 13, the hero’s home up until this point. He sends the Vault Dweller on a mission to save the vault by finding a replacement water purification chip before it’s too late. The Overseer starts out as a kindly father figure, offering advice and encouragement. But in the final scene of the game, he betrays the Vault Dweller in a way that’s so maddening, the game designers actually included a rare alternate ending in which the Vault Dweller blows the Overseer’s head off. Cox is really good at being both fatherly and a total dick, example: .

Whole regions of the scarred world of are populated by ghouls, most of them mindless flesh-eaters. The Vault Dweller encounters one ghoul who’s different, who provides him with some key information. Harold was once a vault dweller like our hero, but was infected by a virus that both killed him and kept his consciousness alive in his animated corpse. That pretty much explains the choice to cast Harry Dean Stanton.

Morpheus is the leader of The Children of the Cathedral, a sick cult that worships The Master (see below). Michael Palin is the natural choice, because he seems like a nice and funny guy whose religion you’d join, until you find out that he’s completely nuts. He pulls off this double role in Terry Gilliam’s dystopian masterpiece, . Also, there are only two people that could pull off that mustache, Michael Palin and Salvador Dali, and Dali is dead.

General Maxson is the leader of the Brotherhood of Steel, a league of soldiers with incredibly high-tech weapons and armor. With luck and a fair bit of skill, the Vault Dweller joins their ranks and gears up for the final confrontation. Max von Sydow is one of those actors who can bring the clout he carried in . Perfect.

The Master is a pulsating mass of human flesh and machinery with the ability to capture and incorporate intruders into its body. It speaks with multiple voices, representing the unlucky souls who are now a part of its writhing conglomeration of body parts. The Master would have to be CG of course, but what better voices than Jones and Jolie for that perfect mix of ominous and seductive?

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makes . There are plenty of films that use real history as the jumping off point for genre fantasy (and even a couple of others at this festival), but Aleksei Balabanov’s brutal, fetid vision of personal sadism and political policy intermingled is the only work of serious, modern social criticism in recent memory that actually made me want to puke. This is a compliment of the highest order.

It’s 1984. A professor of Scientific Atheism (academic backup for the Communist state’s embargo on religion) leaves the home of his Army colonel brother to visit their mother in fictional Russian broken-down factory town Leninsk. Along the way, his car breaks down, and he seeks refuge in the dismal, nowheresville shack of a bootlegger. The professor and the bootlegger get into a heated, vodka-fueled argument about faith and the possibility of utopia while the bootlegger’s Vietnamese handyman fixes the car. The bootlegger is drunk and riled up from the ideological debate, but the professor is ultimately able to drive off before any non-verbal conflict ensues. The bootlegger’s next guests, the boyfriend and best friend of the Colonel’s teenage daughter, are much less lucky.

To say more about the plot would spoil the excruciating experience of watching unspeakable horrors unfold in matter-of-fact realism. Balabanov has crafted horror setpieces as vile (and strangely aesthetically pleasing) as anything you might see in contemporary torture porn, but ’s slow-burn build (there’s a good hour of steadily mounting dread before anything remotely violent happens) give each act of rape, murder, torture and necrophilia (sometimes all on the same bed!) that much more weight.

Pretty much tied with as an allegorical polemic against a toxic but increasingly common ideology. Equal parts sad, sickening and sharply critical, it puts Eli Roth’s sensational pretenses towards cultural relevancy to shame.

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Happy autumn! Today marked the fall equinox for the Northern hemisphere, and while the season can be a depressing one for mainstream moviegoers (at least until Thanksgiving ushers in the holiday blockbusters and Oscar-bait releases), it is otherwise a wonderful time of the year. Having grown up in New England, I’ve always had a great appreciation for the changing leaves, the brisk weather, the pumpkin and apple picking and the foodie holidays (as a rather chunky kid, I really only liked Halloween for the candy and Thanksgiving for the stuffing of my face). I even looked forward to going back to school every September.

But autumn can be a great season for cinephiles, too, despite the significant lack of worthwhile theatrical releases. For one thing, the colder weather, particularly the colder nights, keeps us indoors more often for DVD watching. For another thing, the season has lent itself nominally and spirtually to some great films by the likes of Ozu, Bergman and Rohmer, among others. Personally, I think movies set in the fall tend to look the most beautiful, although I recognize that part of my aesthetic appreciation comes with my general love for autumnal landscapes and activities.

To get myself in the mood, and share the spirit with fellow fans of the fall, I’ve found ten scenes that will help us to welcome the season:

I shouldn’t have to explain why this is on here, but I guess there are a ton of you who unfortunately skipped this animated film when it was out in theaters (when you could have seen it properly in 3-D). Hopefully, the beginning will entice you to watch the rest, although I admit the rest of the film isn’t quite as good as its opening. The falling leaf may remind you of the beginning of , which could have been intentional since Robert Zemeckis was a producer on this film, but I much prefer this sequence, mostly because director Gil Kenan manages to make me believe it was shot by an actual camera and not just set up to look that way with a computer.

The opening shot from opening). But I can’t find that sequence online, plus it would possibly be redundant to include it, so here’s another scene displaying the gorgeous fall colors as shot by cinematographer Edward Lachman. Perfectly evoking Sirk’s films, there isn’t another modern film that better recreates the Connecticut autumn foliage as well as I know it.

More blowing leaves. With much less grace than the one from , of course. But as much as I love the falling leaves that come with this time of year, I do get frustrated with all the dry, brown ones that slip through your door later on in the season. In any event, I had to include something from Sirk, despite an apparent lack of clips from his films available on YouTube.

If you want evidence that YouTube isn’t the proper format with which to watch film clips, check out the above sequence from Zhang Yimou’s historical spectacle. Still, you should be able to tell that those colorful blurs are leaves. If there’s anything I’d like to do more than jumping into a pile of leaves right now, it’s flying through a flurry of blowing leaves, with or without a blade.

Enough blowing leaves. Let’s move on to the first big holiday of the season: Halloween. But to make things interesting, I’m not including any favorite scenes from where he explains the origin of Michael Myers’ powers and in an earlier bit where he inadvertently makes a kid drop his pumpkin (fast forward the above clip to 8:01).

Here’s another great Halloween movie that isn’t Halloweeny, so it’ll hopefully get you more in the mood for the fall than for trick or treating. Though it’s clearly a set, I’ll always love the autumnal outdoor scenes from this adaptation of the high school drama staple. In particular, I like the bit above (fast forward to 6:00), where Cary Grant lecherously chases his new bride around a tree. I so wish autumn in Brooklyn still looked so quaint. And I so wish I could have married Priscilla Lane.

And now we move on to the other big holiday with a look at my favorite Thanksgiving scene in all of cinema. Maybe it’s because I’ve had many a dysfunctional turkey day myself, and watching Pam throw the sweet potatoes and Jim stomp on the duck, let alone the other awkward moments involving sex partners and murder attempts, always makes me realize that I could have experienced worse. By the way, The Doors are also a good band to think of in terms of the transition from summer to autumn because of their songs “Summer’s Almost Gone” and “Indian Summer.”

Speaking of Indian Summer, that wonderfully warm spell that comes later in the season following the first frost and before it really starts to get cold, here is one of its many cinematic namesakes. It may not even be the best of the films with this title, but some of the visuals are good for celebrating the seasonal cusp. Also, Sam Raimi is hilariously memorable as the camp maintenance man. In one great scene in the above montage, he reminds me of Buster Keaton as he attempts to pull fallen luggage out of the lake.

No list of autumn-themed movies would be complete without something related to a harvest, though I’m certain that I’m veering off season a bit by using as my choice of such a film. I’m pretty sure the harvesting of wheat in India occurs in the Spring. Regardless, it’s the film that first pops into mind when I think of harvest, likely because of the incredible India-shaped crop set piece seen above. (Click on the image to get the un-embeddable clip).

Another great thing that happens in autumn, specifically the beginning of autumn, is Oktoberfest. And sure, I probably could have included a clip from Broken Lizard’s , which actually takes place in Munich. However, nobody can deny that is a funnier film, and there’s no better Oktoberfest-set scene than the one in which Hosehead the dog flies into a Canadian celebration, is mistaken for a skunk and successfully saves hundreds of people from drinking contaminated beer. Hosehead is a true hero. Yet for some reason nobody has honored the beer-loving canine by putting a clip of the scene up on YouTube. So, we’ll have to make due with a montage from the film set to a song about beer, which has a few minimal flashes of the Oktoberfest part. Enjoy, eh?

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Kevin Smith has directed his most emotional film with a decidedly non-emotional title with ), but I found myself really liking .

In our in-depth interview, Kevin Smith talks about Jason Mewes’ penis and Ben Affleck’s reaction to it, dealing with the MPAA’s obsession with poop, and how this movie came together. He also talks a bit about his next project, . Don your flak vests and kevlar helmets, because there’s quite a few f-bombs in here, as well as a slew of spoilers from Zack & Miri.

It’s going well, sir, it’s going well.

No. After Toronto I went to Jersey, and we were based out of Jersey for about a week. I had things to do at the latest screening in Westchester for Janet Maslin and her theater group, and then I went to the IFP, Independent Film Week for the 15th anniversary for and a keynote. Then I did a Q&A, a college gig at South Carolina last night, and I got on a plane and came here. So, tomorrow I get to go home for the first time in two weeks. I’m really looking forward to it.

So, did you get to see the movie yet?

Right on, thank you. How did it play with the small group?

Did he? Right on!

[laughs] It’s always frightening when you have a screening of a comedy for a very small group, because laughter is kind of infectious. When you’ve got 300 people laughing, people who were maybe on the fence who don’t like it will be more kind to it. They’re inclined to be more kind, because “Obviously, I’m missing something.” But if you get a small group and nobody is laughing, your all unified frontward, just like, “This sucks!”

I’ve never sat through it with a full audience. I mean I guess I did at the test screenings, but I didn’t sit; I just kind of skulked in the back. At Toronto I just popped in for the key sequences. I’m like if the reunion sequence works, then the rest of the movie is going to work. If I ever get nervous I pop in on the first porno, and if that works I feel good. And then I’m like, “I got to see how the love story plays,” so I go back for their love-making scene, and then I check out until the end.

The porno part was definitely the hardest. The naked emotion stuff, I feel like we had in they’re sitting between Dante and Randal in the jail scene, which is just emotionally devastating. You watch one dude who’s always confident, always a wise ass, like laid bare. That to me is like devastating, because that’s a dude completely unguarded.

So doing a version, not a version of that, but doing a girl-boy type emotion that lay bare, that was easy. Shooting fake sex––that was definitely something I wasn’t ready for. Mercifully, the first scene we shot was Lester and Stacy, was Mewes and Katie Morgan. You couldn’t ask for two better people in the scene, your first sex scene to kick it off with. Because you have one person who sprang forth from the womb pretending to fuck everything in the room anyway, and you have someone else who’s day job is the adult film industry, and nothing you ask her to do in your movie will ever compare to like the lightest day in her day job so to speak. So I felt like I was in good hands.

So I cleared the set, and just talked to those two for about 15 minutes, and we kind of mapped out everything. I was always like, “Is everyone comfortable with this?” They’re looking at me like, “What, are you insane? Of course we’re comfortable with this.”

So once we got into it, it was fun and weird. You felt like you were really directing porn, because from the vantage point of the monitor he could have been in her for all we knew. I knew he wasn’t, but it just looked convincing.

Everyone was just kind of standing around and not like, “This is fucked up, isn’t it?” and like everyone is just kind of concentrating on their jobs. It just seemed like a porno set for some reason. So it kind of worked out, but that was the one I was most nervous about going into.

[laughs] Yeah.

I think that’s kind of what he looks like.

I’ve seen that dude’s dick, more than I’ve seen my own to be honest with you. And in this movie, that’s the biggest I’ve ever seen his dick.

Because in real life, it’s an average dick. When we were shooting that sequence and he comes out that door, like he was hanging low! I was just like, “Did Mewes sneak a prosthetic onto the set, because that doesn’t look like Mewes…”

He was fluffing himself, sir. He was fucking tugging furiously. Although he’s fond of saying, “That wasn’t on its way up; I was on its way down,” and I was like, “I don’t want to know about that.” I had it confirmed too by Affleck. Affleck came over the house to watch the movie. He hadn’t read the script or anything, so he kind of went in fresh. The third thing he said about it after it was done, he was like “You realize Mewes was one pump away from being totally hard.” I was like, “Right!” He said, “Because his dick has never been that big.” I said, “I realize that.”

It’s a sad commentary really, because either it means that he is way too comfortable in exposing himself, or that my gut is so big I haven’t seen my dick in years. So I’m just more familiar with his dick than my own by this point.

Dude, he has been that guy forever. In many ways even more so than Jay, in , he was born to play this role. It caters to all of his shrines: cluelessness, sweetness, utter filth and raunchy, pretend fucking. It was just so right up his alley.

Totally.

When I was writing it I was like, “I’m going to write this role, the Deacon role for Jeff,” just because I love working with Jeff. I thought he did a bang up on job on , but I just wanted to have him for the next flick as well. I was worried when I gave him the script that he would be like, “I don’t know, it’s kind of a small part comparatively,” but he was so elated to like not have to carry the movie. He was just like, “It’s going to be fun to just kick back and watch somebody else carry the movie, and just come in when I need to come in.” So, it kind of worked out.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but him even more so than Elizabeth, because it was written expressly for him. At one point the Weinstein Company was just like, “What if he says no, who’s your backup?” I was like, “I have no backup. This is the only guy who can play this role. Let’s not let any negative thinking into this process. Let’s just all hope that he’s going to say yes, and do the right thing,” because he was the guy.

I had been working on this idea about a movie set on the outskirts of the porn industry since ‘96, since we wrapped that I was just like, “I’ve got to work with that guy. That guy is amazing! He sounds like one of my characters, ” and suddenly I was like, “Oh, my God! He’s the guy!” Then I built it around the notion of having him in the movie.

So without him there is no instead.

We did together.

I knew Justin after working with him, because we spent a week together on that flick, but never…the dude didn’t cross my mind for some reason when we were figuring out who to play Brandon. And Seth was just like, “What about Justin Long?” And I was like, “Oh, my god, yes. Justin Long.”

I had a lot of moments like that. He brought in Craig Robinson, who played Delaney.

Because I had written it for this dude Earthquake, who was in and he was fantastic.” He’s just like, “Let him come in and read. If he sucks, don’t worry about it.” And he came in and he just kind of knocked it out of the park, so boom, he was there.

Banks was––it was written originally for Rosario Dawson. I wanted Rosario to play Miri. But she wound up taking this role in and the dates didn’t work any more, so she was committed to that. I couldn’t blame her, it’s a fucking Spielberg movie with Shia LaBeouf and whatnot, so why not?

But we were going to be shooting in the fall and she could have done it, but then when we moved into January and March, she was committed to that, so it was all over. We were at ground zero and we started looking at actors’ availabilities of all the agencies to see who was going to be free from January to March.

We narrowed it down to six possible names of chicks who might be interested in doing this movie. Because the material’s not for everybody. I’m sure we would get a lot of “no’s” is we went out into the world with it. So Banks alphabetically was at the top of the list.

Seth comes over and we’re talking about a bunch of other stuff, and I was like, “Let’s talk about possible Miris. I’ve got a list here.” And he was like, “Elisabeth Banks is your first choice. She would be my first choice too. She’s amazing.” And I didn’t have the heart to tell him that alphabetically she was first. [laughs]

But he was just like, “Oh my god, she was so good in , I like her in everything I’d seen her in.

So I said, “Let me just see her whenever.” She came over to the house, read the script, and then we sat talking for like two hours, and I was like, “You are so it. The movie’s yours if you want to do it.” And thank god, because she’s hands down the best actress I’ve ever worked with.

She really…I mean Miri kind of is the emotional sign and grounds the movie and makes it very real, makes it plausible for some reason. And she pulls it off is all. Because Banks is that good of an actress and that good of good of a comedienne on top of it.

Ow!

Ow, ow, ow. Crap. My calf.

Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.

Charlie horse.

No. Bad one, bad one, bad one. Ow! Ow, ow, ow. OK, it’s going now. Holy shit, that hurts.

Oh, shit. Ow, ow, ow, ow. OK. Ow.

That’d be weird.

Hold on, just let it work itself out. Oh, shit.

That’s one of those things where you really feel your age.

Oh, shit. Come on. Come on. I would just like to see what it looks like inside.

I don’t even know what causes that. It’s like blood gets starved to one area or something?

It literally feels like the muscle gets inverted around the bone. Like it feels like it shifts into a place it shouldn’t be.

It usually happens to me in my sleep. I wake up in fucking agony.

Oh, yeah. I think it’s about gone now.

I’m sorry, what were we talking about?

What we did was we didn’t submit something where I was like, “Let’s give them the worst and see what happens.” We had an hour and forty five minute cut of the movie and we had just test screened it in Kansas City. We had a great test screening and scored really well.

So I said, there’s stuff in the movie with now having seen it with 300 people at once, I hear is just not as good as the other stuff. Ow. Oh, shit, dude. Ow.

Hold on. Yeah, man, just the one. Let me just stretch it. Oh, shit.

So I submitted the hour and forty five cut that we had test screened, knowing that I was going to take out at least 10 minutes, probably 12. So I said listen to this, that way if there is any problem, chances are I’m going to be addressing with the cuts I make anyway.

At the very least I’ll be able to turn in another cut in three days, and they’ll think I did a massive amount of work on it. So we submitted the 1:45, and they immediately said it was a NC 17. So we waited a few days and submitted the shorter cut, which I think was 12 minutes shorter.

And they said, “Wow, you’ve done a lot of great work, but there’s still the two scenes that you need to focus on. One is the first porno sequence with Lester and Stacey. And the other is the shit shot. The shit shot is never going to play in a R rated movie. It’s not going to work in an R rated movie.”

And I was like, “Well, I’ve seen it play with an audience and I’m really hesitant to lose it. I just can’t. I’m married to the shot. It works like crazy.” And I’ve seen shit in other movies, so it’s not like it’s without precedent.

And they were like, “Maybe you can work with some of the other elements involved. Like maybe if you bring the sound down on it. Maybe the sound is the problem.” And I’m like, “Really? It’s the egregious visual of shit hitting somebody’s face? Fake movie shit?”

But I felt like I was on good ground, because it’s not even a second long. It’s 14 frames. And I felt like I think I can win this fight. So I did what they suggested, I submitted a version with the sound turned down and they were like, “No, no. It’s still not working.”

And at that point I was like, “Look. Let’s just go to the appeals part of the process.” And they were totally content to do it. I put everything into the movie. I submitted like the perfect version of the movie for me. Like, this is everything I want. Because I’m like, if we’re going to get this second bite of the apple, let’s do it. If we win, let’s make sure it’s the movie that we really want out there. So they did the appeals process and they flipped it without us having to make any cuts. So it was kind of delightful, but still like a process that you didn’t really want to go through in the first place.

No. And it’s not even the frequency or how many times we had to do it, it’s just like it’s kind of embarrassing. You don’t want to go out there in the world and be like, you know, they have a problem with the movie. You just don’t want to send anything out there in the world.

It’s tough enough to open up a movie. It’s tough enough to make sure you’ve got good buzz and not bad buzz. And then deal with the reviews when they come out and shit like that. All that stuff’s difficult. Making a movie, all that stuff. But it’s a necessary part of the process.

This part of the process, not really. Not everyone goes through it. In fact, after we won I said to Joan Graves, the woman that heads up the MPAA––who’s really lovely and I was very friendly with. I said, “Do you have another one of these today?” And she’s like, “We do maybe––maybe––10 of these a year.”

Yeah. And I’m like, “Really? It doesn’t happen that much?” And she’s like, “No, most people just do the cuts.”

But I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t go for it. It’s worth it. At the very least, what are they going to do? Uphold the rating you already have? And the very most you could flip it, without having to cut anything.

I was always shocked though, they focused on two things and I was just like, “Really? That?” The sex scene to me––and I argued it when I was doing the appeal thing––it’s just so cartoonish. It’s like a caricature of sex. It’s a caricature of a caricature of sex, because it’s porno sex.

Porno sex is over the top to begin with. I don’t know anybody that does 26 positions in 10 minutes. But in order to make fun of it or lampoon it, you have to be bigger. But still, it was very much a cartoon and not meant to titillate. Clearly it was meant to draw laughs out of people.

And the shit shot to me was so brief and clearly it’s movie shit and not real shit. To me it’s like, “Yeah it’s a gross out gag and maybe it might not be everyone’s cup of tea. But it’s not egregious, it’s not like this thing you have to protect children from.”

The things that I thought they would hit us with, were there’s a shot in the strip club where one of the strippers, you flat out see the labia, man.

And if you look really closely, and I have because I have it on the Avid and I got frame by frame, you see a little bit of brown eye in there.

And I’m like, yeah, it’s definitely there. And I felt like that would be the thing that they would harp on. And because of that, when we were shooting it, we shot I think five takes of completely nude, and before that Scott Mosier was like, “I don’t know if we’re going to get this through. There are flat out pussy lips all over the shot.”

And I was like, “All right. Let’s grab one of here in a G string. So we had that in our back pocket in case the MPAA came down on it. The other shot I thought that they could have tagged was Jason’s cock shot. Not because it’s just a shot of a dick, but that dick is so close to being fucking erect, it could very well be considered hard…

That too.

Those are his balls.

But it’s backlit so you can’t see anything else. You don’t see a ring piece or anything. But I felt like that was the moment we could have gotten in trouble for. Because the rule is any erect penis will get you an NC 17. And I look at his cock in that shot, and I’m like I have had sex with a dick that engorged. Not all the way hard but almost there.

If you’re going for a second or third round or something like that and you’re like, “I ain’t got much left, but I’ll try to work with this.” So to me, that’s classified as an erection, but they didn’t see it that way.

I’m not saying the should rethink it by any stretch of the imagination, but if I was a member of the MPAA, those are the two things I would have went after. And I think if I was a member of the MPAA, I would have won the shit shot argument. Because when I stood up to defend the shit shot, I referenced other movies that had shit moments, like with the fart helmet, where…

It’s real shit in that funnel! You can see it. And I said, “If they have real shit and the get an R, how come fake shit gets an NC 17?” But if I was Joan Graves I would have turned around and been like, “None of those shots you mentioned is in the midst of a sex act.”

And that’s kind of what like sets our shot apart, but they just didn’t, for some reason, zero in on why it was questionable. Because it’s not just that it’s a simple shit shot. It’s coming from somewhere and it’s a sex act. So I think I could have won that one if I was on their side.

Not yet.

I heard about it.

Really, they brought that up?

They don’t tell you what to do, but they will make suggestions to work around things.

And on the shit shot they were like, “Look, just cut the shot, and be on somebody’s face and hear the sound. And then when you’re outside and you see him caked I shit, the audience will know what happened.” But I’m like, “It’s 14 frames, man.” 14 frames and it works like crazy. I don’t want to lose it.

Yeah. I’ve seen mostly all the summer films. There are only two that I want to see that I didn’t get to see yet, and that was . But I saw pretty much everything else. It was a good summer, man.

It was bookended by wonderful comic book movies. was great.

Yeah. I mean, I’m certainly nobody’s career counselor, but I couldn’t believe that that dude said that. Because it’s like he came back in a big way with , and everyone remembered how much they love Robert Downey, Jr. He knocked that role out of the park. He was sublime.

comes out a couple of months later and it is universally beloved. Everyone takes it very personally, everyone defends that movie, everybody loves it, it did killer business, it may be one of the perfect Hollywood movies. One of the most perfect Hollywood movies ever made.

It appeals to a bunch of different people on a bunch of different levels without being saccharine or sophomoric. It’s dark; it’s a bleak fucking picture. I never in a million years, even if I hated .”

Because, man, they would all turn on me so fucking quickly. So when I saw him make that quote I was just like, oh my god, dude. You’ve got to be very, very ballsy to say that.

It’s was a weird thing for him to say, but it doesn’t seem to have affected him.

?

We’re trying. The script’s done, and it’s been done for a year or more. Finding money for it has been fucking difficult. Bob and Harvey didn’t want to do it, so that kind of opened us to go out and raise financing. But it’s been tough.

I get it. It’s not a very commercial film. It’s very bleak. It makes look like Strawberry Shortcake. There’s nobody to root for. Everyone dies. It just a series of bad choices made based on questionable morality throughout the film. No character for an audience member to latch onto.

So I get it. If it does any business at all it would be because it played well at festivals. It’s a total festival film. But if it had a little water cooler buzz coming out of the festival, maybe it does.

I get why people aren’t racing to flip open their checkbooks. And I figure sooner or later the money will come. For some reason, the lack of confidence… financial confidence from anybody has just served to make me feel like I’m on the right track.

Because these are cats that are like, hey, if I wanted to make a comedy, everyone would pony up but I get it. I’m working outside my comfort zone. I’m working in a genre that I’m certainly not proven in by any stretch of the imagination.

With material that doesn’t lend itself to a type opening or anything like that. So I can completely understand why people would be hesitant to cough up   and for some reason it only makes me more confident that it’s the right thing to do next.

Most days I’ve never felt like a filmmaker. I just feel like a guy who writes movies and happens to direct what he writes. If I could make that movie and pull it off, like I would feel like maybe I am a filmmaker.

But if it doesn’t work I’m just as content to go, “OK, I’m the dick and fart joke guy, and I’ll go back to doing that. But it’s worth a shot, you know?

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It’s been 15 years since Jennifer Lynch directed is much easier to swallow, although the subject matter is still upsetting to the stomach. The film takes an interesting premise and manages it to cram it through a meat grinder until you’re left with something that you wouldn’t really want to eat in the first place. Rather than the commentary on surveillance that the film starts to establish in the beginning, you’re left with what feels like an homage to .

takes place inside three different interrogation rooms (actually meeting rooms and supply closets that have been appropriated for use) inside a very small town’s police station. Two FBI agents, Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond arrive on the scene following a brutal multiple homicide, and set up three video cameras inside the room to record separate eyewitness events. Most of the film is told in flashback through these stories.

The main problem with is that it rests solely the directors ability to try and not telegraph a huge twist to the audience, and that sadly doesn’t happen. It’s the sort of twist you can spot coming a mile away. As a result, when the reveal actually happens, and I can only guess that the director and writer wanted to keep this a secret, you’ve seen it coming for so long that you don’t even bat an eye. It’s like the train pulling in to the station an hour late.

The performances in the film are fairly decent; Pullman hasn’t been this wacky or off-kilter in a character since the under-appreciated , and French Stewart and producer/writer Kent Harper are both fascinatingly reprehensible as two cops who take pleasure in shooting out a vehicle’s tires just before they pull someone over for speeding. They aren’t just morally grey––they’re downright pitch black in their performances.

Cheri Oteri tries to stretch her dramatic legs in this movie, although it’s difficult when you keep expecting her to say something funny, which is a singular frustration that most comedic actors run into. She plays a slightly redneck mother of a young girl and her brother who witness some of the brutality with her family while on vacation.

But the real star of this film is Pell James, who plays drug addict Bobbi Prescott. She plays a hard-edged woman who turns on a dime when she gets threatened, and as a result she becomes the most vulnerable character in the movie, even more so than the little girl. There’s an extremely uncomfortable moment between her and Ormond’s character that is probably one of the best––and worst––of the entire film.

By the time the end of the film rolls around, it’s unclear exactly what you’re left with. There’s a clear disconnect when the final scene rolls by, and there’s no one left to care about in the movie. Is that a comment on the audience surveilling the film? Or is it surveilling us? Or do we even care? It’s clear that Lynch has a tendency to try and follow in her father’s footsteps, or at least Bill Pullman felt the need to try and channel some of his characters, but you have to wonder what sort of filmmaker she’d be if she didn’t have that pedigree.

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