My week (or the week according to this blog) now begins on Tuesdays. It's an Obama thing. Don't ask what that means. I don't know.
Still "shadowing" on "The Good Wife", though the shoot doesn't begin until Thursday. Much driving around strange byways of Queens and Long Island searching for locations. As always, a good attitude prevails on these trips--crews out scratching together movies or episodes of shows are truly engaged in a strange pursuit, almost Gypsy-like in its private codes, practices, meanings etc. Ever wonder why elaborate movie crews are frequently found shooting in the oddest little places--like filling stations, pizza parlors or eyeglass stores? "Why would they bother to shlep out here for this little shop?" is the usual question. Like everything in movies, there's a real reason--though one that doesn't make much sense in a normal world not viewed through a looking glass. Generally its because these smaller locations are tied to a larger one nearby. And then every so often, people just go DAFT and decide they really need a "certain look" for something relatively trivial (a filling station, a pizza parlor, an eyeglass place). When that look isn't found, the indecision becomes paralyzing; eventually any old place will do--as long as its near something else. I'm afraid I've been guilty of this a few times and later wondered how the hell I wound up taking everybody so far out of the way to shoot something that probably could have been accomplished anywhere.
Now: what has this to do with "City Island"? Nothing. For I've nothing to report--YET. But I do here scratchings that we'll be in some more festivals before the official opening on MARCH 19, 2010. All of these will be duly noted in upcoming posts. Meanwhile, I will once again begin recycling some of the on-set clips we posted during production, for those of you knew to this blog. But before we flashback to summer '08, dig the below--an interview with the actors (which I'd never seen and hence hadn't posted) done right after we'd won the Tribeca Audience Award. It features a generous amount of Julianna Margulies who I look forward to seeing on set in a couple of days. I'll soon get some behind the scenes stills up on this blog as well.
As soon as I remember where I left the disc that they're on.
And now for the mantra.
"City Island" is your movie. Help us get the word out. Forward this blog to your friends and enemies alike. Comment on our Facebook page (I'll check in on that every day as well).
And don't forget the ever-delightful, still confounding Twitter stream.
Keep comin' back. It works if you...if you...it works if you...how the hell does that thing go?
Ghent is a candy-box city, literally, As beautifully crafted, modeled and sweet as the chocolate which its country is so famous for making. I made the tactical error of telling one of our hosts upon arriving that I couldn't wait to see neighboring Bruges (as in "In Bruges"). "But why?", they asked. "Ghent has everything and more. It is alive! Bruges is merely a museum city. Ghent has a university, people, life!" I half-expected them to break into a Flemish chorus of "L'Chaim" and realized, glumly, that I'd stumbled into an old rivalry while merely attempting to behave a trifle more...aware...educated, if you will, about my surroundings than the usual ugly American filmmaker.
Afterwards, Andy, Joe and I (and the cool-as-all-get out Laura Engel) had dinner with Marvin Hamlisch and his wife, Teri. Now most people know Marvin from the above mentioned credits; when I was a kid, everyone thought he wrote Scot Joplin's "The Entertainer" from the Redford/Newman/David Ward/George Roy Hill classic "The Sting". The truth was he didn't; he had the cleverness to fit that ancient piece of ragtime to the picture and adapted it for the film. Obviously "The Way We Were" and "A Chorus Line" were hugely successful events in their time--and these he most definately did write. But what I remembered about Hamlisch--which I mentioned to his surprise and I think delight last night--was a record album I had called "An Evening With Groucho". This was Groucho Marx's one man show as presented in the late sixties (prior to Hamlisch's emergence on the big-time circuit) at Carnegie Hall. And who was Groucho's accompaniest? Marvin, of course! Earlier he had been the rehearsal pianist for Streisand when she did "Funny Girl", her breakthrough Broadway hit. This was the stuff I wanted to talk about with Marvin and he was most engaging and--i suspect--happy to talk about a piece of his early life that is now vaguely remembered by others, if at all.
At the after party, I had an agenda to fulfill. The DGA has yet to collect the oral histories of three New York legends--Scorcese, Jonathan Demme and Spike Lee. We've been trying but all three directors have eluded us--usually sightng scheduling conflicts. All three happened to be attending the after party so I thought I'd take the opportunity to press them a little. Scorcese was first: he told me that he'd like to do it but to ask him after the first of the year when he'd have a better idea of when his new movie was going into production. "Be patient" he advised. I said we would.
Next was Jonathan Demme, who I've met before and whose a lovely gentleman--and a real enthusiast. He'll talk movie history with you any day and has the kind of infectious enthusiasm that makes you realize how he gets such great work out the people he works with; he inspires you, plain and simple. Demme seemed just a bit hesitant--I think the word "history" makes people feel a bit like the interview is a final summing up which it really needn't be at all. Still he said to keep pressing him, he'd find time soon.
And then there was Spike Lee. Now Spike Lee is one of the people responsible for making me an independent filmmaker--he doesn't know this, of course, but like so many people film people my age, he changed my life when he changed the rules of the game with "She's Gotta Have It" and showed us young-un's (I was twenty when that movie came out) that the way to make movies was...
