tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87656897758582909592011-10-26T20:08:10.390-07:00<br><br>A Blog by Brian Pera<br><br>a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.comBlogger571100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-43979167805098652592011-01-08T08:22:00.000-08:002011-01-08T08:55:48.998-08:00

Last night, I saw one of the more beautiful paintings I've ever stood in front of. It felt like more than a painting but it wasn't trying to be an exclamation point; it was happy to suck in the world and simmer it in the frame, and going over to it was like checking in on a stew. I couldn't figure out what the cook put in it to make it smell so amazing. Some cooks make you immediately ask the

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I've been looking back at the experience of my first film a lot lately, not just because it's been offered distribution but because it was a vastly different endeavor than the one I'm working on now. We edited that first film, THE WAY I SEE THINGS, over the course of several years, then I started taking it around to festivals. The music we used consisted of tracks already recorded by Harlan T.

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-38597288436116642842010-07-10T08:39:00.000-07:002010-07-10T17:13:13.593-07:00

Building sets was a big part of making WOMAN'S PICTURE for me. So many of the characters are trying to create and control their own spaces, spaces which vary in degrees from total constructions to practical locations, just like on a movie shoot. What makes each space real has more to do with powers of imagination than anything else, and the level of vigilance used to enforce certain desired

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When Ingrid and Mackie arrive at Ingrid's childhood home, they park outside with the windows open. Ingrid stares hard at the house as Mackie struggles with the tie she's made him wear. He complains, wondering what they're doing there. Ingrid hasn't spoken to her mother in a decade. The woman is obviously a bore. Why is Ingrid, who seems so independent, subjecting herself to the scrutiny,

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-13242624471196563402010-06-07T12:40:00.000-07:002010-06-07T13:01:31.355-07:00

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-27539483374768216672010-05-28T08:36:00.000-07:002010-05-30T11:13:22.061-07:00

The last third of Woman's Picture involves an incident with a bottle of perfume.The bottle sits out on Miriam Masterson's dresser, away from everything else. It belonged to her mother. Miriam doesn't seem to wear it, but at night, sitting there alone, she sniffs from it, stepping into some parallel dimension of stillness beyond regret, self-doubt, and the hamster wheel of ceaseless daily

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-70239497818107633182010-03-27T09:03:00.000-07:002010-03-27T10:34:14.841-07:00

It's exhilarating to watch Tilda Swinton in JULIA. The director says their film was inspired by Gena Rowlands in GLORIA. I would say the inspiration is a lot more expansive than that, because while Julia, like Gloria, is selfish and tough, she's also channeling a certain alcoholic dishevelment that Gloria doesn't share. True, there's the uneasy relationship with a child. Both Gloria and Julia

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-40914308882683221682010-03-11T06:57:00.000-08:002010-03-12T08:32:38.972-08:00

Several years ago, when my novel Troublemaker was published, I was inevitably asked by people whether it was autobiographical or not. They wanted to know how much of it was real. That seemed like such a bizarre line of questioning to me. It wasn't something I'd heard much, or asked of the books I'd liked. This was 2000. It's worse now. Back then, already, everything had to be memoir.

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-82142836189302469202010-02-21T07:57:00.000-08:002010-02-21T11:38:36.932-08:00

A few weeks ago, I attended the Film Finance Summit in Los Angeles. I could probably stop there. People who think they know me ask what the hell I was thinking. I like to see how things work. I like to observe people. I love film and what's happening excites me, the democratization of means, the sound of all those doors flying off their hinges. A thing like the Film Finance Summit declares

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-48855219475395649502010-02-05T08:08:00.000-08:002010-02-05T09:26:01.490-08:00

"Most movies use music the way athletes use steroids. There's no question that you can induce a certain emotion with music--just like steroids build up muscle. It gives you an edge, it gives you speed, but it's unhealthy for the organism in the long run."I might have agreed with editor Walter Murch at some point. It's a way of looking at film, having to do with willing suspension of disbelief.

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-26828470866973887722010-01-21T09:07:00.000-08:002010-02-05T09:28:06.464-08:00

When contemporary filmmakers start talking about beating the system, I tend to put them on mute. It's like the creeping realization that the once-familiar lady you're talking to at the supermarket is the latest to have been grabbed, lobotomized, and made over in a silly shade of lipstick by the Stepford contingent.Beating the system used to be a pretty noble idea. The thing is, there is no

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-76391874287738539072010-01-13T09:02:00.000-08:002010-01-14T09:04:36.806-08:00

A heated boardroom exchange between characters played by Ann Magnuson and Gerald L'Ecuyer is one of several set pieces in WOMAN'S PICTURE which have required a special kind of attention in the editing room.The exchange is scripted at fourteen pages, much of which is delivered by Ann. The segment she appears in as Miriam Masterson is seen through the eyes of her character, a woman who recalls

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-9249835559338590832010-01-08T07:25:00.000-08:002010-01-09T07:12:47.436-08:00

I've been watching other movies to see how they handle gore, accidents, violence, hysteria. A crucial scene of WOMAN'S PICTURE concerns a woman who lives inside her head, and the whole segment, her story, is very insular, ultimately concluding in an act of trauma.The woman works as a maid in an out of the way motel. She's a very repressed character and if you go by critic Mary Ann Doane's

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-51719994449121551672010-01-07T06:13:00.000-08:002010-01-08T16:30:32.780-08:00

I appreciate what Joel and Ethan Coen do much of the time but as a whole their work can leave me cold. It's too airtight in a certain way. It tends to be a little smug. I respond to about one in three of their films, which seems generous, given how prolific they are. I'd never really paid much attention to their editing, though I know it's a huge part of what they do. These days, I'm

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-36269260199175679782010-01-04T15:27:00.000-08:002010-01-04T16:23:46.665-08:00

I've been reading Fine Cuts and First Cut, two anthologies of interviews with film editors, as I edit WOMAN'S PICTURE. I can't remember where I got First Cut, back in 1992, but I guess I've probably read it a dozen times or so since then. I gave it away at some point, thinking I'd internalized the information and could do without it. Someone else seemed to need it more than I did at the time.

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-69579690021731016712009-07-02T15:32:00.001-07:002009-07-02T15:34:47.800-07:00

This year’s SILVERDOCS Sterling Award for a US Feature goes to OCTOBER COUNTRY. The film, directed by Michael Palmieri and LIFE AS WE SHOW IT contributor Donal Mosher, documents the multi-generational story of a working-class family coping with poverty, teen pregnancy, foster care and the ineffable horrors of child molestation and war. The directors will receive $10,000 cash. The festival ran

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-3003894893037392812009-05-29T15:02:00.000-07:002009-05-29T15:09:41.123-07:00

"To put it very simply, and to return to the matter of absorption or direction, I suggest that many people from a certain range of history--people born between about 1900 and 1950--are like screens. That is to say that countless films have played upon our surface, whether we like it or not. And not just many films, but many films many times... We have seen Dark Victory or Chinatown or Kane so

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-38424947738797490052009-05-27T16:33:00.001-07:002009-05-27T16:42:54.438-07:00

"It's hard to figure out what's relevant and what's not relevant" ahip young man, probably a cult film fan, says to a chubby smart-girl at a wedding.Well, these are times of confusion and changes, right? observes an off-screenonlooker. I'm not confused, the smart girl says"That's because you aren't relevant" says the young man.Alouette plays in the back on accordion and later the same young

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-92030626240847732672009-05-26T15:45:00.000-07:002009-05-26T15:57:33.434-07:00

Are you afraid to be a woman?Cindy and Donnawear short skirts Donna lets a boy put his hand between herlegs as a form of goodbye. Theirhouse appears to have a beautiful Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass window,except up close it’s a dingy kitchen curtain. There’s a bar by the door; it seems like somethingsomeone saw in a movie. Cindy is 20 and 13 and she’s Donna’s sister.Their mother does a bad

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-33884692360139864142009-05-21T09:45:00.000-07:002009-05-21T09:50:31.475-07:00

LIFE AS WE SHOW IT contributor Richard Grayson's story has been excerpted on the literary online mag Rumpus, with original artwork.

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-35056314581167455702009-05-21T06:42:00.000-07:002009-05-21T07:29:39.204-07:00

Blood Maniaincest in the context overlaid by credits in the first 2 minutes then we’re ask to forget it matters.The secret blood is abortion we find out although there is no blood in much of the film.Only nice house and women that maybe abortion allows. It’s the chiaroscuro thattacky houses produce, crazy shit going down around the dying father. A woman slashing away at an unseen picture,

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-61414911362452088572009-05-20T09:06:00.001-07:002009-05-20T09:23:33.406-07:00

“Hysteresis”, Elizabeth Hatmaker's contribution to LIFE AS WE SHOW IT, re-views a largely forgotten film called Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff, regarding it from various perspectives (close-up, wide shot, inside out, outside in) which call into question the idea that only so-called classic films have something to say or to read and that only one way of watching is worth one's time or reaps rewards.Over

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-14829709892207416852009-05-15T09:30:00.000-07:002009-05-15T09:36:57.318-07:00

Growing up with this preoccupation with stardom...people from official histories also become stars. So for you, Emily Dickinson is a star, in the same way that Michael Jackson might be.WAYNE: Right. Well, stars ... I have my most interesting thoughts and feelings around stars.Is a star someone you intensely transfer feelings onto?WAYNE: Right. Somebody I discovered, not by meeting them, but by

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-91342544779995024512009-05-14T10:19:00.000-07:002009-05-14T10:23:14.520-07:00

LiP Magazine: Are you a fan of slasher films?Daphne Gottlieb: I admire them, I like them. Like pornos, they’re about bodily fluids, in this case blood and guts—things we normally don’t get to talk about. At their center, slasher films represent all the things we have to suppress to function as a society—incest, mental illness, deformity, death, vomit, blood, feces. They socially mimic what our

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-2661312550680326062009-05-12T13:47:00.000-07:002009-05-12T15:54:09.725-07:00

After writer Maggie Nelson’s aunt Jane was murdered, Nelson’s mother could no longer stomach films in which women were threatened by guns. Going to the movies years later, Nelson describes how “whenever such a scene arose I immediately felt my mother close beside me in the dark theatre. Her hands spread across her face, her pinkies pushing down on her eyelids so she can’t see.” There are many

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-43137336968816587342009-05-06T09:28:00.000-07:002009-05-06T17:55:43.004-07:00

Several years ago, LIFE AS WE SHOW IT contributor Robert Glück participated in an exercise for the website lowblueflame.com. Writers and artists were asked to collaborate on describing the plot of a film they'd never seen but heard enough about to form strong impressions.The idea was that an entirely separate but symbiotic movie existed in the mind, reliant on the imagery, tone, and silhouette

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-70425391954579986652009-04-26T20:13:00.000-07:002009-04-27T05:36:49.009-07:00

When Masha Tupitsyn and I started trying to figure out how to turn our ongoing discussion about film into an anthology, we looked to writers we loved whose work seemed to be having that conversation in some way too. Kevin Killian was one of the first people who came to mind.Several years ago, I asked Killian to play a game of word association revolving around the subject of movies and movie

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-37660422940107144122009-04-22T10:32:00.000-07:002009-04-22T11:52:51.094-07:00

Like Michael Lesy's WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP, writer Bard Cole's THIS IS WHERE MY LIFE WENT WRONG assembles itself around what seem to be localized, everyday events, providing lists, titles, anecdotes and a wealth of evocative detail to engage its reader in uniquely trippy ways.The story behind WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP: Lesy found an archive of black and white photos from the town of Black River Falls

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-64203777640363891092009-04-22T08:58:00.000-07:002009-04-22T11:45:51.816-07:00

Last summer, LIFE AS WE SHOW IT contributor Richard Grayson, whose story in the anthology is called "The Forgotten Movie Screens of Broward County", published a collection of his diaries, Summer in Brooklyn, 1969-1975. The following are excerpts which detail his trips to the movie theater during that time. Monday, August 11, 1969I saw "Goodbye Columbus" & thought it was very good. The theater

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Recently, I asked Bard Cole, one of the contributors to LIFE AS WE SHOW IT: WRITING ON FILM (City Lights, June 2009), to talk about the last five movies he watched, interested to see what his observations would be. So much of the anthology is about exploring the way each individual engages uniquely with the screen, unlocking networks of personal memory and perception through the keyhole of

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Some of the contributors to the LIFE AS WE SHOW IT anthology have pretty fantastic web blogs. Case in point, Dodie Bellamy, whose story in the anthology, "Phone Home", relates the experience of her mother's illness to life and death issues in the movie "ET", finding deep pockets of meaning and identification.Contributor Donal Mosher is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker living in Portland,

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-54263466425468324352009-03-19T11:57:00.000-07:002009-03-20T06:38:18.332-07:00

It's probably too early to tell how much the upcoming film about the Beales women will deviate from or correspond to historical record, but it's clear from the criminally brief trailer which has surfaced on HBO's website that the Grey Gardens "remake" is more than a little faithful to the documentaries and the musical.When creating their Big Edie Beale, the filmmakers and Jessica Lange had the

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-49502772358302936372009-03-10T08:31:00.000-07:002009-03-10T08:40:33.119-07:00

"Andy Kaufman is a perfect example of somebody who went very far in the other direction. What Andy Kaufman did is the equivalent of what Picasso did. Picasso basically said everything you’ve been looking at in normal paintings is limiting. The edges of the canvas - we always assume - are the audiences laughing, and the joke ends at the edge of the stage, and there’s the audience’s response. What

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-15508002714918155972009-03-03T20:14:00.000-08:002009-03-03T20:15:28.834-08:00

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-14421244372288900542009-03-03T13:31:00.000-08:002009-03-05T06:08:14.559-08:00

The movie was marketed and is probably best remembered as a Paul Newman vehicle, but the second Patricia Neal starts talking in Hud your attention shifts and the narrative reassembles itself around her so that you see everyone in the story through her eyes. Her screen presence is so striking you wonder why you haven't heard more about her.She was a "patron" in Breakfast at Tiffany's. In The Day

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-3529776936108766542009-02-20T07:23:00.000-08:002009-02-20T07:39:26.636-08:00

"All the changes upon changes. A scene is stretched. A scene is too many things. It has too many subtleties. Or too much pathos. Or too much humor. A scene may be replaced by an alternate. Or the scene doesn't work until it's a composite of alternates. Maybe it's cut entirely. And with it gone other scenes don't work. The dialectic of film is that every time you add dimension, it

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-63639236386965312322009-02-16T20:54:00.000-08:002009-02-16T21:07:47.959-08:00

The editor plays an invisible part in a movie. The only people who know what goes on in a cutting room are the editor and the director, anybody else who happens to be there, the flies on the wall. You can't evaluate the work of an editor unless you are there, in the cutting room, because an editor can do wonderful things with a lot of bad footage, or he can perhaps destroy a lot of good footage

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-79707125790026652332009-02-15T14:00:00.000-08:002009-02-16T20:51:01.769-08:00

Some faces are made for cinema. Expressive from nearly any angle, alive in repose, they draw the eye no matter where they are on the screen. Some of the most cinematic faces are made most peripheral by filmmakers, belonging to what Hollywood calls character actors, a term which basically identifies people who have big chemistry on screen but don't fit into a specific, narrowly defined,

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-16544856688336241792008-11-06T08:36:00.000-08:002008-11-06T08:43:36.164-08:00

"I find that the actual shooting of a movie is a very painful agonizing process of constant minor disappointments. What you've imagined ideally frequently cannot be achieved with flesh and blood and with real circumstances, so you feel with each scene that you're losing something. And it's a heartbreaking process. Frequently, when I wind up with a thing I feel, 'My God, it's no good at all,

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-5051510942836819062008-11-02T15:23:00.000-08:002008-11-04T22:00:11.652-08:00

Recently, I filmed a short here in Memphis, a week-long production with a cast of three and a crew of four. One of the actors was Calpernia Addams, whom I'd first seen on TV, subsequently contacted by email, and eventually met at Outfest in LA. Like many people who meet at film-related events in Los Angeles, we exchanged compliments and expressed what seemed like a genuine interest in working

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-15519725137969058272008-10-31T17:48:00.000-07:002008-10-31T17:53:29.707-07:00

"Steamboat Bill, Jr. was his last really fine feature. His face is older and sadder, but he still exhibits humid romanticism, sniffing a girl's hair as if in a trance. The gags play with expectations and build suspense; in one perfect moment, though knocked out and stuffed upside down in a car, Buster still manages to cross his legs jauntily.These last few films are the most refined expression of

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-88358243036876295512008-10-31T08:08:00.000-07:002008-11-03T10:43:53.786-08:00

You can't really talk about Team Picture without mentioning Mumblecore at this point, which is unfortunate, considering how many things the film does as you watch it, and what an accomplished stylist the director clearly is. Mumblecore might have died a slow death as a conversational seque into a group of films and filmmakers Kentucker Audley has fallen in with, the most active verb of which has

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a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-26179284693320116762008-10-29T13:01:00.000-07:002008-10-29T15:09:59.071-07:00

Discussing his preparation for the role of Mark David Chapman in the film Chapter 27, Jared Leto talks almost exclusively about the weight he gained, and the toll this took on him physically. Chapman, you'll recall, murdered John Lennon outside the Dakota Building in December of 1980. He wasn't a small guy, or even apparently in any condition approaching "fit"; nor does he seem, in the pictures

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-18208151387424221642008-10-26T16:39:00.000-07:002008-10-26T16:43:30.448-07:00

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-21493842310662362122008-10-26T10:59:00.000-07:002008-10-26T16:26:59.163-07:00

Books on Roman Polanski, even critical studies, tend to regard the events of his life and the movies he's made as somehow interchangeable on some perhaps Jungian level, as if the two realms informed each other in readily identifiable, quantifiable ways. Within that system of logic, Rosemary's Baby ties directly into the murder of Sharon Tate, and Tess becomes a response to the incident at Jack

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-38670647018030405262008-10-25T10:08:00.000-07:002008-10-26T10:40:25.829-07:00

JT Leroy, the subject of the book GIRLBOYGIRL, was a literary phenomenon who turned out never to have existed beyond the imagination of Laura Albert, a middle-aged San Franciscan. A small time James Frey, Leroy began his brief existence through phone calls to various writers whose work might be said to have been sympathetic, if not catalytic, creating imaginative back-story and relationships

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-73910278493997054562008-08-25T19:54:00.000-07:002008-08-25T20:01:11.101-07:00

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-22430020805695070552008-08-19T20:37:00.000-07:002008-08-19T21:28:31.502-07:00

At one time, I basically thought that if my first movie was ever seen, and people appreciated it, I would stop hearing all the things you need, everything you "must have", before you can make one. I didn't understand how anyone would be able to appreciate what we'd done--with practically nothing, with a crew of three, with no gear, no lighting, no catering, no budget--and persist in that line of

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-82199075454607037772008-08-17T09:12:00.000-07:002008-08-19T20:36:04.560-07:00

Paul Schrader: As we get older - particularly as the whole process of movies and film storytelling gets older - people have different notions of what's necessary dramatically. They start to see a lot of the melodramatic machinery of the past as outdated. Reality television isn't popular for no reason. It's popular because we're tiring of artificial drama, and reality TV seems less

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-652106670419613742008-08-16T10:12:00.000-07:002008-08-16T10:17:44.319-07:00

Her performance as Millie in Three Women is brilliantly strange and touching, and after seeing behind the scenes footage of the Shining, you know she isn't just playing herself. Now, people like Stephen Soderbergh seem to revere her. If so, how come she gets these trifling little walk ons? See The Underneath: a nurse whose screen time lasts as long as it takes to administer a shot? What a

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-64942390563300033272008-08-07T14:28:00.000-07:002008-08-13T16:57:39.869-07:00

Whenever I talk to people about the making of my first film, The Way I See Things, I'm amazed at how they think movies come together. If a scene is done well they seem to generally assume it was filmed by multiple cameras from various angles simultaneously. It rarely occurs to them that on a small film like the ones I make there's often only one camera, practically no crew, seemingly

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-19021429530149539182008-07-31T15:22:00.000-07:002008-12-08T20:27:35.100-08:00

See Shampoo, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Darling, Away from Her. She's such an accomplished stylist you don't realize how hard she probably works at it, until you see something like Memoirs of a Survivor, where the direction failed her and she didn't seem to get the swing of things.Supposedly, she's not as interested in working as some of her contemporaries, and though she admits to surgical

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-48778227933061929692008-07-15T16:42:00.001-07:002008-07-15T17:11:15.551-07:00

Last night, Outfest screened their newly restored version of Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives, a documentary originally released in 1977. The restoration took a year or more and is the second film in festival's ambitious project to preserve key films of the GLTB canon, such that it is. Word is Out was directed by The Mariposa Film Group, a team of filmmakers led by the late Peter Adair

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-81205423835298873512008-07-08T19:05:00.000-07:002008-12-08T20:27:36.011-08:00

The stage in Opening Night is not a comfortable place, a place that allows one to stay in touch. "[Q]uite the contrary," writes Jousse, "it is a fluid space, subject to variations of mood, the feeling of the moment, the unpredictability of the present moment, when a moment of madness could at any time cause the scene to shift and jeopardize the performance and the very idea of performance

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-10623183024756821892008-07-07T10:28:00.000-07:002008-12-08T20:27:36.167-08:00

Last week, Criterion issued a DVD version of Paul Schrader's Mishima. The restoration is crystal clear and the extras, typical of Criterion, are fantastic. Watching Mishima you wonder how it ever got made. A Japanese cast in a subtitled art movie about a conflicted gay writer who ends his life by ritual suicide isn't the most commercial proposition. It couldn't have been at the time the

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8765689775858290959.post-72852687005342937362008-07-05T18:32:00.000-07:002008-12-08T20:27:38.251-08:00

Directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, 2008When people say a movie like Inside is really, really gory, they generally mean that the horror has been conceived and executed convincingly, as opposed to merely expertly, substituting for the typical reassurances of irony and self-conscious, endearing ineptitude, a fatalistic remorselessness borrowed from real life. Inside is the antithesis

a blog by Brian Perahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00545823740861750963noreply@blogger.com0