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Seattle's International Film Festival: Part 4

SIFF Day 5 – Magnificent O Star of the Weekend

By Sara M. Fetters.

It’s Memorial Day morning, day five of my continuing coverage of the Seattle International Film Festival. Only 20 days left to go and I’ve seen 20 films up to this point, 21 if you count the fact I’ve seen one film twice. I figure, at this rate, I can get to about 80 to 90 films of the more than 250 showing. The number I’ve seen doesn’t seem as impressive knowing how many films are actually here. Oh well – such is life.

Ogling O

Director Tim Blake Nelson and writer Brad Kaaya were in town Saturday for the world premier of their long-delayed film O. Judging from the reaction of the SIFF audience, they should be pleased.

Featuring terrific performances from the three leads – especially Josh Hartnett as the evil Hugo/Iago character - the movie itself is an audacious, simply terrific riff on Shakespeare’s Othello set at an exclusive Savannah prep school. I won’t review the film until later this summer, but until then know that O is a supremely confident and handsomely mounted cautionary epic that makes the transition from Shakespeare to high school beautifully.  Nelson, director of 1996 SIFF award-winner Eye of God and co-star of O Brother Where Art Thou, and adapter Kaaya have outdone themselves with the controversy surrounding their film largely unwarranted. It’s a cautionary epic on pride, love, violence, envy, manipulation and greed and should not be missed.

The duo spoke to this and other questions during a spirited Q&A following the film.

On the Genesis of the Project

“I wrote the script in 1997 at [the] Sundance [Film Festival],” said Kaaya. “I went to a fairly white prep school and thought it would be interesting to set a film in that world.  I love Othello and thought it would be a perfect fit and that I could do visual cliff notes. [The film] would be like six hours long if we didn’t. From play down to the movie I just started chopping.”

“What I appreciated about the script was the seriousness and gravity of it,” said Nelson. “The cast was chosen for those reasons. At that time [1997/98] they were not the teen stars they are now. They were unknown. We rehearsed for two weeks [prior] to shooting, much of that on the original play.”

On Savannah, Georgia

“I originally set [O] in San Francisco,” said Kaaya. “For financial reasons, we thought about Toronto. As you know it’s cheaper to film in Canada. It was Tim’s idea to move the location to the South. [We] decided on the south for it has that exotic and foreign quality that is like Cypress is in Othello. [Savannah] is there in the film, but [Tim] wanted [the location] to be there so you noticed it but not in an obvious way, much like a background character.”

On Controversy, Release Dates and Miramax

Neither man wanted to go into depth on their feelings towards Miramax or Disney, but Nelson did do a quick run through on the controversy surrounding the film. “We made this with the knowledge that there had been many high school shootings around the country. We made a conscious effort to try and address those issues in the film. Miramax saw the film right after the Columbine shootings, something none of us could have predicted.  For many complicated reasons the film delayed, delayed and delayed.”

“Luckily, we had some great producers on this film who really wrote a great contract with Miramax, knowing their history of not releasing movies. Lion’s Gate bought [O] earlier this year and it will be coming out in August. As to the rest, I don’t know. [Probably] not something I can talk about, yet.”

I asked Nelson after the Q&A how had it was to leave this film for a year while working on the Coen Brothers’ O Brother Where Art Thou which was ironically being made by the same studio that was refusing to release O. He chuckled, and then commented, “I thought about that. At the same time, you can’t burn bridges in this [Hollywood] town and expect to get very far. Besides, how can you turn down working with the Coens? That would just be stupid.”

Talking Sidewalks with Ed Burns

On Sunday, Ed Burns was in town for the Seattle premier of his latest directorial effort, Sidewalks of New York. The film is pretty slight but is an improvement over Burns’ last directorial misfire No Looking Back. It is also far better than his last appearance on screen, the derivative and misguided media satire 15 Minutes. On the basis of being better than those two duds I guess Sidewalks could be called a success of some sort.

Basically, Sidewalks mines familiar Woody Allen territory, especially Husbands & Wives, although I also found streaks of Manhattan and Annie Hall amongst some of the plot strands. Ostensibly about the lives of three couples in New York, the film tries to be an examination of love, sex and commitment among the two sexes. It’s harmless enough, at times downright charming, but it doesn’t stay with you very long.

Burns himself is the real charmer. Witty, hip, self-effacing and extremely knowledgeable (and not mention devilishly handsome), his Q&A was well worth sticking around for.

On Influences

The first question from the audience was an obvious one due to the nature of the film having to do with Sidewalks relation to Woody Allen. Burns politely brushed off the comparison, saying, “Woody and Truffaut were definitely big influences on me coming out of film school, but I don’t see this film being so much an homage to [either of] them as it is to being in that style. I’m a big Woody Allen film fan [but] the film I watch at least every six months is Tender Mercies. The “Texas Trilogy” I call them, Mercies, Last Picture Show and Hud, those are my favorites. I’ve been heavily influenced by them.”

“If anything, the film came out of my experiences making Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. Seeing how quickly Spielberg worked and how much hand-held camera worked he used made me realize how so much more efficiently and less expensive making movies could be. I wrote while making Ryan, the characters in [Sidewalks] coming out of the actors I was working with. I wrote parts for Vin [Diesel], Giovanni [Ribisi] - all those guys. We only talked about sex during the Ryan shoot – everything about sex.  [My] first draft primarily only the jokes, it was later that I came back to it and decided to turn it into something.  When they couldn’t be in the film, I definitely had to make some changes.”

On Studios and Budgets

“Personally, I’ll never make studio films [as director] again unless I get lots of cash,” said Burns in regards to making movies for studios. “With No Looking Back, nobody saw it and it was the biggest budget I’ve had to date at six million. [The studio] gave me a list of people I could and could not cast, changed the title and gave lots of ‘suggestions’ as we were making the film. It bombed, got crappy reviews and it’s now out on video and it’s not even my film.”

“We made [Sidewalks] for under a million dollars. Everyone worked for scale, we shot the film in 17 days and we had a real small crew. We only had Heather [Graham] for four days and Dennis [Farina] for only one [and] he wore all his own clothes in the film. There was no production designer, every location we used was real and was real - in many cases we were shooting scenes while the business we were shooting in were still open. With the lower budget, [I] could make the film I wanted. You can maintain control of the cast, script, etc.”

On DV, Writing, Directing & Someone Else Doing It

“Well, other than No Looking Back which the studio directed I can’t imagine someone else directing one of my scripts,” chuckled Burns. “Unless it has been in the drawer too long and I’ve gone passed it, I just can’t see doing that. I [also] can’t imagine directing someone else’s work. It takes such a big chunk of your life [directing], I would rather spend that on the work I’m passionate about.”

As to digital video, Burns as mixed emotions. “I hear it is cheap and fast, which I really like. But, if I can make a movie for under a million [dollars] on film I don’t see any reason to change.”

Thoughts

I saw eight films between Saturday and Sunday and very few stood out for reasons other than that their directors and/or writers were present.  Other than O and The Big Animal (my second viewing of Jerzy Stuhr’s marvelous fable), I can’t say I’ve been all that enthused.  It hasn’t been that the films have been bad – I’ve only seen two real disappointments, the Hungarian film Glamour and the Belgium comedy Everybody’s Famous – it’s just that nothing has really left me exactly smiling, either.

Hopefully today will be different. There is a “Shooting in Seattle” panel discussion at 11:30 a.m. that sounds promising, and then I’m going to take in the much talked about Australian film Chopper at 1:45. From there, I’m hoping to get into Italy/French co-production Ignorant Fairies – I missed the last screening so I’m hoping for the best this go around. Not sure what I am going to fill my last two slots of the day with, 101 Reykjavik has a lot of advanced buzz but it’s playing against Tony Gatlif’s (Latcho Drom) Vengo which I’m excited about, too.  Opposite problem at 9:30 – none of the four sound interesting. Maybe I’ll just call it an early night and finally write that review for The Anniversary Party.

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