Tribeca Film Festival – Bitch Flicks

Things I Learned About Rocker/Poet Patti Smith at Tribeca Film Festival Talk Series

Rock legend Patti Smith and Oscar-nominated actor Ethan Hawke shared stories and ideas about process, acting and writing Thursday afternoon at the SVA Theater in Chelsea to kick off the Tribeca Film Festival talk series. Here are things I learned about the rocker/poet, who is a fascinating raconteur who had a packed audience spellbound.

This is a guest post by Paula Schwartz.

Here are things I learned about the rocker/poet, who is a fascinating raconteur who had a packed audience spellbound:

How she came to co-write “Cowboy Mouth,” a one-act play with music with Sam Shepard:

Sam and I wrote this play cause we had this relationship which we shouldn’t have because he had a small kid, a family. We were young, and we knew we had to end our relationship even though we liked each other so much, (so) we wrote this play sort of as our swan song… (He said) let’s stop crying and write a play.

I said, ‘I don’t’ know how to write a play.’ Sam said, ‘You’re the girl and I’m the guy… Just do what I say…He writes a little set up and then he says something and he hands me the typewriter so I just answered him, and we wrote out a whole play that way and then he thought we should perform it… Sam at the time was sort of like a big deal, so we got to do the play at American Place Theater and there was a part in the play where Sam wanted us to have a battle of language…We battled with language.

How Smith learned to improvise:

Sam improvises his language, and my character is suppose to improvise back, and I said, ‘How do we do that? What will I say?’ … He said, I’ll say stuff and you’ll say stuff back to me, any kind of rhythm and poetry… ‘What if I make a mistake?’ He said, ‘It’s improvising! You can’t make a mistake. If you lose a beat then you invent another beat,’ and that made perfect sense to me. And that little instruction and then doing a play with him I learned how to improvise, which has served me my whole life in everything I do. It was one of the greatest lessons I ever got was from Sam.”

Smith likes getting awards:

It’s really fun to get like accolades. I’ve gotten awards from the French government. I love my medals, and I do I really I get in the swing of it. Somebody wants to give me a medal, I’m really happy. But really the only real success is that success that you know when you’ve done something well, when you finish a poem or you do a certain performance and you know you’ve done a good job.

Gregory Corso and Smith’s first poetry reading:

Of the beat poets, Gregory Corso was the youngest… Gregory had intense energy and he was also very academic as well as being one of our greatest poets… We would go to poetry readings. I was only 20 years old. They don’t have poetry readings in South Jersey… A lot of these poets go on and on… I have to say it was kind of boring… I just sat there quietly… Gregory goes, ‘Shit, shit, shit… No blood, get a transfusion.’…and I was like, ‘If I ever do a poetry reading it can’t be boring, Gregory will cream me.

So I did my first poetry reading in St. Marks in 1972. I was talking to Sam Shepard, and I was telling him I’ve got to deliver. I have to do something that will transcend boredom and Sam said, ‘Play a guitar because a lot of your poems have a lot of rhythm.’ I asked my friend Lenny Kaye, and I asked him if he could play like car crash sounds or feedback and things to the poem and stuff like that, and he did and it caused quite a ruckus and Gregory wasn’t bored.

Smith’s work habit rituals:

I write in the morning usually for a few hours, since I was about 10, almost every day. If I don’t write I feel agitated. I’ll write in a bathroom or a train. I just feel the need always to write something. When I was younger I would stay up all night or smoke a little pot and write… I would sit all day typing on the typewriter but once I had children, once I had children, a baby, I couldn’t do that, I had to redesign and redefine my work time and so I started waking up at 5 in the morning – this was in like 1981 — and from 5 to 8 when my husband and baby were sleeping that was my time to write. That’s when actually really developed a certain work ethic.

How Smith went from being a poet to a performer:

I started out writing poetry, which is a very solitary discipline, drawing, painting also, and I never wanted to be a performer really, but through writing poetry and performing it I evolved into being a performer and then having a rock and roll band but it was not a planned thing. It was nothing I aspired to so it was evolving right in front of me but it was evolving and the people were part of the fabric of that evolution. I would never have done that by myself because I was a solitary worker… I think that’s the one thing that makes me a little different from other musicans, other performers or other rock and roll singers. I’m really of and from the people as a performer. I feel we’re all part of the same fabric I just never would have done it. I wouldn’t have found it on my own. I didn’t even aspire to it.

Paula Schwartz is a veteran journalist who worked at the New York Times for three decades. For five years she was the Baguette for the New York Times movie awards blog Carpetbaggers. Before that she worked on the New York Times night life column, Boldface, where she covered the celebrity beat. She endured a poke in the ribs by Elijah Wood’s publicist, was ejected from a party by Michael Douglas’s flak after he didn’t appreciate what she wrote, and endured numerous other indignities to get a story. More happily she interviewed major actors and directors–all of whom were good company and extremely kind–including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Hoffman and the hammy pooch “Uggie” from The Artist. Her idea of heaven is watching at least three movies in a row with an appreciative audience that’s not texting. Her work has appeared in Moviemaker, more.com, showbiz411 and reelifewithjane.com.

‘Viaje’ and ‘Love Between the Covers’: Women Who Aren’t What We Expect

What will surprise no one who reads ‘Bitch Flicks’ is: films directed by women and told from a woman’s point of view are often the last to get distribution–and more likely to have limited theatrical runs or are released only on VOD and streaming services, skipping theaters entirely. Two great films by women I saw during the spring are still very much on my mind and will be playing film festivals in October.

Going to film festivals means watching the sometimes dispiriting process of which films get picked up for distribution and which ones languish: the best documentary I saw last year, One Cut, One Life didn’t get its brief, limited theater run until this spring, 13 months after I’d seen it. At the same time, an offensive piece of pap like Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (which shared some of the same elements with One Cut, One Life) was everywhere, at least until word-of-mouth could debunk the puzzlingly rapturous reviews it received.

What will surprise no one who reads Bitch Flicks is: films directed by women and told from a woman’s point of view are often the last to get distribution–and more likely to have limited theatrical runs or to be released only on VOD and streaming services, skipping theaters entirely. Two great films by women I saw during the spring are still very much on my mind and will be playing film festivals in October.

Writer-director Paz Fábrega’s Viaje (non-Spanish speakers: say “bee-YAW-hey”) which plays the London Film Festival Oct.11 and Oct. 15, is the more realistic counterpart to Sleeping With Other People (which I enjoyed in spite of its conventionality) in its portrayal of how couples meet, pass the time and get to know each other. Shot in lustrous black and white (by Esteban Chinchilla) the film follows two Costa Ricans in their late 20s, Pedro (Fernando Bolaños) and Luciana (Kattia González) from their first drunken encounter in the city waiting for the bathroom during a costume party (Pedro dressed as a bear, Luciana as a schoolgirl: at first she’s not interested but then returns to where she left him) through a shared taxi ride in which they both agree (and high-five) on the best way to have a family. Luci says, “I think I could have kids if I could raise them with one person, but could still go on dates sometimes and it wasn’t an issue.”

Pedro, always the joker, then suggests, “Let’s have a kid together… you can go out on Fridays and I’ll go out on Saturdays.” When they discuss the advantages of sharing parenting with a queer couple, the cab driver (whom we don’t see: the choice of shots in the film is often quite shrewd–and its stills are beautiful enough to fill any coffee table book) cannot resist interrupting and berates them for not wanting the traditional family life that he and his wife have. Pedro and Luci don’t argue and resist rolling their eyes: we’ve seen they had to wait forever for this cab.

The “trip” of the title is on a bus to a national park situated around a volcano, where Pedro has work studying biology for his graduate degree and a hungover Luciana (still in her costume, with no luggage other than her purse) has spontaneously agreed to accompany him. The film has a leisurely pace, especially once they are in the wilderness (in spite of its 70-minute length I found myself nodding off a couple of times) but its pleasures (the beauty of the Costa Rican landscape and the chemistry between Bolaños and González, whether their characters are about to have sex or are just shooting the shit) and surprises (this film might seem like loose, funny improvisation at first but by the end we see it’s cleverly scripted) are genuine ones that many will recognize from their own lives–and which rarely, if ever make it into the movies.

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On Oct. 14 and Oct. 16, Mill Valley Film Festival in California will be showing writer-director Laurie Kahn’s Love Between The Covers, a feminist, bad-ass, diverse documentary about the successful authors of romance novels. The women (most of whom attend romance novel conferences and other similar get-togethers shown in the film) talk about a “pay it forward” philosophy in which each explains how veteran writers helped her out at the beginning of her career and so she now helps writers who are just starting out.

Every time I expected this film to let me down it proved me wrong. When I thought, “Oh, it’s going to be all straight women,” it included as one of its main players a queer writer, Radclyffe (Len Barot) a former surgeon who writes about queer women. When I thought the film would be all white women it included, again as part of its main focus, Beverly Jenkins, a Black woman whose novels feature Black protagonists. We also see other women of color and queer women in one-off scenes and interviews. And nearly everything the women tell us in this film is a revelation. As Jenkins says of the romance sector (which includes its legions of fans) “You have nothing like this in science fiction. You have nothing like this in fantasy. You have nothing like this in mysteries. We are the shit.”

For those of us who aren’t romance novel readers, the film is not only a pretty good case to reconsider, but also has Nora Roberts, a superstar of the genre (she employs at least two men in her immediate family as part of her empire) setting straight those who might dismiss romance novels as “formulaic.” She tells us most genres adhere to a formula, including mysteries: for a whodunnit, the author had better reveal who the murderer is at the end!

Other genre fiction doesn’t get the flack romance novels do, namely because romance novel readership is nearly all women–and romance novel sales are what support more literary writing (which sell just a small fraction of books) in the publishing industry. As one author says, “We’re the ones who keep the lights on.” Another interviewee tells us it’s not unusual for a romance fan to read a book a day.

Although the writers are in the business of Happily Ever After (HEA) stories, they aren’t under the thumb of traditional gender roles and family life: more than one woman says that she started writing because of how bored and frustrated she was as a stay-at-home Mom. They also show no hesitation in cutting lose men who don’t respect their work: two of the authors (who also write together) divorced their husbands and then decided to move in (platonicly) together. We also see how hard the women work: in-demand authors are expected to write more than one full-length book (sometimes many more than one) a year, every year and they (or their assistants) are expected to engage with fans on their own websites, on social media and in person as well. Love Between the Covers is my favorite documentary of the year so far and could easily turn out to be the best one I see in 2015. Go to the theatrical showings of these films while you have the chance.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwABHUXofhY” iv_load_policy=”3″]

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

Lies The Government–and Movies–Tell Us: ‘(T)ERROR’ and ‘Me and Earl and the Dying Girl’

To see a portrait of the inner workings of the FBI we have to look to films like the new documentary, ‘(T)ERROR’ co-directed by Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe, showing this Sunday, June 14 as part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. In a highly unusual coup, an FBI informant Saeed aka “Shariff” (who used to be Cabral’s neighbor) agrees to be followed by the camera (though he complains to Cabral during closeups “You’re always getting the fucking headshots”) as he talks about his past cases and sets up a current one.

In most movies, US government agents, whether they are from the FBI, like Mulder and Scully, or from the CIA, like Melissa McCarthy’s character in Spy, invariably play the hero (or heroine) thoughtful, competent, and above all, ethical. The news tells a different story; FBI protection was a key factor in organized crime head Whitey Bulger escaping prosecution for his crimes (which included murder) for decades. When the FBI was investigating the Boston Marathon bombing they interrogated an unarmed immigrant friend of the bombers, and even though he was not implicated in the crime they shot and killed him. Just last week, after targeting a Boston-area Muslim man with surveillance for a number of months, the FBI (teaming with local police) stopped him near a CVS parking lot to “talk” to him. They ended up shooting him dead right there–at 7 a.m. on a workday morning.

To see a portrait of the inner workings of the FBI we have to look to films like the new documentary, (T)ERROR, co-directed by Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe, showing this Sunday, June 14 as part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. In a highly unusual coup, an FBI informant Saeed aka “Shariff” (who used to be Cabral’s neighbor) agrees to be followed by the camera (though he complains to Cabral during closeups, “You’re always getting the fucking headshots”) as he talks about his past cases and sets up a current one.

Saeed is an older Black American Muslim whom we see pull up stakes from his home (so he is away from his young son) and his job as a cook in a high school cafeteria to move to a strange city with his dog and his weed, working on getting entrée into the life of a younger American jihadi who makes inflammatory YouTube videos but seems not to do much else. We see Saeed haggling with the FBI about money (he does not seem to earn much–at all–for his efforts) and admonishing them to stop being so obvious about setting this guy up.

Meanwhile, the jihadi, using Google and a piece of mail he sees on Saeed’s car dashboard figures out his FBI connection early in their acquaintance. We find out later that Saeed started his career with the FBI because he himself was charged with a crime, and then set up a man who was a friend of his to escape punishment, a chilling reminder of the questionable use of informants in the US justice system. This cycle perpetuates to the end of the film–someone barely getting by (the jihadi lives in public housing and does not to have a car) preyed upon by someone nearly as desperate, Saeed, as the FBI eggs him on. Saeed seems unrepentant about his targets, saying, “I don’t have no feelings for them. You making the Islam look bad, you gotta go,” but as he smokes blunts and bakes a succession of cakes he seems bent on convincing not just the directors and us, but himself too.

The lie the designated Sundance “breakout” movie Me And Earl And The Dying Girl (which opens this Friday, June 12) tells is familiar–that the experiences of white, straight guys are the only important ones; the main white guy can learn valuable lessons thanks to women and people of color, but nothing they do or say could possibly be as fascinating to us. The “me” of the title is Greg (Thomas Mann) a senior in high school, quirky in that cliché movie way that never crosses into weird or creepy and creative (he makes films at home with pun titles of famous works). His only friend is Earl (RJ Cyler), the Black best friend as stereotype: Earl’s main attribute is his repetition in more than one scene of the word, “titties.” Greg’s mother (Connie Britton) (she along with Nick Offerman who plays Greg’s Dad and Molly Shannon, who also plays a parent in this film, wrest what they can out of the script which bestows no human qualities on them, just more quirks) commands him to visit a girl, Rachel (Olivia Cooke), newly diagnosed with cancer, saying, “You might be someone who could make Rachel feel better.” He hasn’t hung out with Rachel since grade school and she greets him at her house by saying, “I don’t need your stupid pity,” but the two begin a friendship anyway.

Too bad Rachel is really the manic, pixie, dying girl (the one way the movie doesn’t fall into predictability is that she and Greg never embark on a romance) since we find out, too late, she is an artist as well, but her aspirations and thoughts get short shrift. Olivia Cooke does well with a limited role and gives us a glimpse of how much better the movie could have been in one scene when she gives Greg a pep-talk about his future, but when he asks about hers, she suddenly goes quiet.

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon directed the script by Jesse Andrews based on his own YA novel; future filmmakers of similar material should note that no one over 20 gives a shit about high school social hierarchy. The film has great art direction and soundtrack selection (with artists like Brian Eno and vintage Velvet Underground), but nothing can disguise or improve its white-guy narrative of “Person unlike me who changed my life for the better,” which seems more fitting for an undergrad college entrance essay than the basis for a film.

Earl has received puzzlingly decent reviews and its trailer seems to have piqued the interest of people who should know better, To try to understand how retrograde this film is, think if it were instead Me, The Girl and Dying Earl. The “me” would still be the white guy, his best friend a white girl who says “balls” a lot (which actually would make her a more nuanced character than most teenaged girls in movies, including this one) and Earl would be a variation of The Magical Negro, this one with terminal cancer who, as a last good deed, gives Greg precious guidance–and a plot that shows us all what a great guy Greg is. No one would hesitate to call bullshit on that film, so I’m unsure why no one is complaining about this one. I was also disappointed that a contemporary film that takes place in the suburb of a large American city doesn’t include any queer students in its high school especially since Greg, Rachel, and Earl would all be more interesting–and their sexless bond more true-to-life–if one or more of them were queer.

As I sat through Me and Earl I couldn’t help thinking of the Sufjan Stevens song “Casimir Pulaski Day” which covers some of the same ground–dying high school girl, quirkiness and a straight-guy narrator–but in less than six minutes reaches depths of feeling this film never comes close to. To equal the duration of this film you could instead listen to that song about 17 times–and save yourself $12.

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing, besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

Seed & Spark: Vive La Revolution!

In my own life, I’m embracing the idea that films can make a difference, and that they do. It’s not just the content of the film, but how we make them, how we finance them, how we share them.

Scene from Test Shoot for Of Dust and Bones — Scene from Test Shoot for *Of Dust and Bones*

This is a guest post by Diane Bell.

Last year, like many people I know, I was overwhelmed by the terrible events unfolding across our world. From Ukraine to Gaza, from the streets of Ferguson, Missouri to the ongoing war in Syria, it seemed like the world was reaching breaking point. It felt like it was all falling apart.

At the same time, I was facing my own small battles, finishing my second film, Bleeding Heart, which just premiered at the Tribeca Film Fest. Bleeding Heart is a kind of feminist fantasy thriller starring Jessica Biel as an affluent yoga teacher and Zosia Mamet as her biological sister, a young sex worker trapped in an abusive relationship. It was born from my desire to see on screen a story I rarely see: a woman rescuing another, a celebration of strength in sisterhood and the sacrifices we can and should make for it.

In the depths of my struggle to finish it, I wrestled with the question of why I make films. The process can be so long and hard, financial rewards so meager; what is the point? Why do it? In the face of so much real suffering and true hardship in the world, is it just a vanity? Wouldn’t it be better to pack it all in and do something truly meaningful? Something that could help the world be a better place? Isn’t that why we’re all here?

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Concept trailer from test shoot for Of Dust and Bones

As I meditated on these questions, I kept coming back to this belief: films can change our world. The stories on our screens don’t just reflect our reality, they create it. And that is why it is essential that many different voices are empowered to make movies and why as audiences we must seek out the voices that inspire us and support them however we can. We can’t let the only movies out there be those that support the Big Lies (no matter how entertaining those movies can sometimes be). We need films that tell small, honest truths, that shed light onto our shared humanity, that enable us to explore the problems we face individually and collectively, and help us see a way towards positive change in our troubled world.

After coming to these conclusions, with my producing partner, Chris Byrne, I launched the Rebel Heart Film Workshop to teach two-day intensives on how to make a standout indie film. These workshops are not only for people who already consider themselves narrative film directors, but also for storytellers of all kinds: actors, writers, producers, poets, activists, documentarians, artists. Based on our own experiences making our first film, the Sundance award winning Obselidia, we break down the process of making a film to 16 simple steps and provide a clear blueprint for how to make a stand out indie. My hope is that through these workshops we will empower diverse voices to tell their stories in films – and to do it successfully.

To that end, we share the honest truth about making films. There’s no gloss, no lies. We share our budget, our schedule, the amounts of money we made from different sources. Crucially: we share our mistakes as well as the things we did right, something incredibly rare in our industry – and in doing so, we give other filmmakers a shot at making better choices with their films, creating a situation where they can make films over and over, regardless of whether their first or second (or third or fourth for that matter) is as outwardly successful as they hoped.

Still from Bleeding Heart — Still from *Bleeding Heart*

Through teaching these workshops, I realized that I had to walk the talk. What I was teaching about building community, about making creatively risky films that come from the heart: this is what I had to do again myself. And so I wrote a film called Of Dust and Bones.

This film is as far from mainstream as you could imagine. It was borne totally from my reflections on the global situation last year, particularly the ongoing devastation in Syria, as well as my horror at the beheadings of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff by ISIS. These are not sexy, easy to market, Hollywood subjects, but it’s where my heart was.

I started to dig into the idea of a film about the widow of a war journalist who–following his brutal murder–has retreated to a reclusive life in the desert. The only sane reaction to an insane world, she believes, is to have nothing to do with it (something I often feel myself). An uninvited guest arrives: her dead husband’s colleague, and he’s come with an agenda. He wants the rights to her husband’s last work for a film that he is making – rights that she doesn’t want to give him.

From Test Shoot for Of Dust and Bones — From Test Shoot for *Of Dust and Bones*

The film wrestles with the question: can a film change the world? Can a picture? What is worth sacrificing to get that picture or make that film?

These aren’t easy questions and I don’t think the film will give easy answers. In my own life, I’m embracing the idea that films can make a difference, and that they do. It’s not just the content of the film, but how we make them, how we finance them, how we share them. To that end, I’m trying to make this film in a far more community based way than my previous works. I’ve been blogging about it on my website and we launched a crowdfunding campaign, not just to raise crucial finance, but also to involve a village of people in the making of it.

The world still often seems like an incredibly dark, chaotic, violent place, but I honestly believe the only hope we have is to come together, support each other, and create strong community networks that are founded upon shared dreams and stories.

We can’t do it alone – any of us. But together we have a real chance to create the world we want to live in. Let’s do it.

Diane Bell is a writer and director. Her second film, Bleeding heart, a thriller starring Jessica Biel and Zosia Mamet, premiered Tribeca 2015. Her first feature, Obselidia, premiered in Dramatic Competition at Sundance 2010, winning two awards and was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards. She recently launched the Rebel Heart Film Workshop, teaching how to make a stand out indie film, and is currently raising funds for her next feature, Of Dust and Bones.

Tribeca Reviews: Lost Children in ‘Meadowland’ and ‘The Armor of Light’

In a close-up Sarah takes a piece of a (year-old) cookie that is trapped deep in the car seat and puts it in her mouth, like a communion wafer: she closes her eyes and, for the first time since before her son went missing, we see her face smooth, for a moment, into bliss. The only other time we see her free from tension and sorrow, is when, in another stunning shot, this one on a rooftop, she states with great confidence, “My son is alive.”

Written by Ren Jender.

Meadowland, part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival (playing this Friday, April 24) has a great first scene–a husband and wife in the front seat of a car with their young son chattering and eating cookies in the back. What we know (from every synopsis of this film) is: the son will soon go missing. So the short car ride and trip to the gas station convenience store becomes a thriller in which we wonder: will it happen now? How about now? At the terrible moment when both parents realize their son is lost the camera lingers separately on their anguished faces, then we’re immediately transported to a year later: the mother, Sarah (Olivia Wilde) drunk at their friends’ apartment while the husband, Phil (Luke Wilson) sits on the couch wearing a tight smile. Wilson turns in another solid performance as a working class guy: after a similar role in The Skeleton Twins, whose cinematographer, Reed Morano, is Meadowland’s director (her first time directing).

The couple, we see in a cab ride home, are still stung with grief, especially since they’ve never found out what happened to their son. A detective visits with vague leads about what might have happened to the boy (the worst scenario possible, perhaps caught and eventually killed by a serial pedophile), but Sarah refuses to even glance at the photos of the suspect.

Morano acts as the film’s cinematographer as well as the director (a more unusual combo than one would expect) and, as in her work in Kill Your Darlings, The Skeleton Twins, and the first season of the recently cancelled Looking, she has a stunning visual sense: impressionistic shots of sky and clouds, and one scene with the camera looking an animal directly in the eye. She also shows a gift for working with actors. In a close-up Sarah takes a piece of a (year-old) cookie that is trapped deep in the car seat and puts it in her mouth, like a communion wafer: she closes her eyes and, for the first time since before her son went missing, we see her face smooth, for a moment, into bliss. The only other time we see her free from tension and sorrow is when, in another stunning shot, this one on a rooftop, she states with great confidence, “My son is alive.”

Olivia Wilde, as Sarah, Director Reed Morano shooting behind her — Olivia Wilde, as Sarah, director Reed Morano shooting behind her

Throughout much of the rest of the action, Wilde as Sarah, with dark circles under her large pale eyes and hollows under her cheeks, resembles the figure in the Munch painting The Scream, especially when she wears a yellow hoodie to wander the city by herself, sometimes imagining she catches a glimpse of her son on the crowded sidewalk, another time teetering too close to the edge of the subway platform.

Phil is a New York city cop, and the film’s script operates under what–considering recent headlines–seems like the naive assumption that he mainly acts as a kindly social worker, as when he comes in for a repeat noise complaint from a young couple who aren’t getting along. Also in the mix is Phil’s brother, Tim (Giovanni Ribisi) who comes to stay with the couple “temporarily.” It’s the sort of role in which the screenwriter (Chris Rossi) asked himself, “How can I convey this character is a self-medicating, self-loathing fuck-up,” so gives him a line early in the film in which the character says… he’s a self-medicating asshole. Ribisi’s performance is equally unsubtle.

Sarah works as a teacher and starts to identify with an autistic student who gets in trouble for stealing school library books about his favorite obsession, elephants. She finds out he is also a foster kid. Rossi can’t seem to stop himself from piling terrible circumstances onto this kid: when Sarah follows his surly, neglectful foster mother (Elisabeth Moss, at first shot from the back and at a distance so we don’t recognize her from Mad Men) after she drops his lunch off at school, Sarah sees her disappear into a gas station bathroom to turn a trick, and when Sarah later engages her in conversation, the woman denies she has any children. She wears sweatpants with “Juicy” across the ass and bright, heavy, blue eye shadow just in case we didn’t get the point that she’s supposed to be tacky as well as a “bad” Mom.

Rossi’s penchant for overkill ruins the film in the last third, in which Sarah becomes increasingly desperate and unhinged. Meadowland is one of those movies in which to show how full of self-loathing a previously level-headed character played by a beautiful actress is, she fucks a really gross (in every sense) guy after we in the audience have repeated to ourselves, ”Please don’t fuck the gross guy. Please don’t!” Sarah also cuts into her arm, has a breakdown in front of her students, tries a highly addictive drug, and takes actions creepily parallel to those the police suspect someone did to her own son.

Pauline Kael once wrote that critics often cry “art” when they should be saying “ouch” and though Kael has been dead for years, this film shows that trend, which she wrote about a half-century ago, is still going strong. Everything that is terrible in Sarah’s life (and Sarah, not Phil, is the film’s central character) just gets worse (with a tiny sliver of redemption at the end that is too little, too late): an adolescent’s idea of “realism.” Better films show us grief over the loss of a child in a more nuanced context. In The Accidental Tourist, William Hurt’s character, Macon, meets a slightly older boy who resembles his dead son (and is the age he would have been had he lived) and the encounter gives Macon some closure. In The Orphanage the mother’s last interaction with her son happens while he is having an incredibly violent tantrum. We sense that part of her effort to reunite with him is to make sure this memory isn’t the last one the two have of each other.

An additional note I mention often in my reviews: maybe I’m a dreamer, but I’m hoping Meadowland will be one of the last films set in New York in which every main character is white. John Leguizamo plays a member of Phil’s grief support group, and Sarah has Black colleagues and students, but otherwise the film might as well take place in Oslo. When I think of a teacher married to a cop in today’s New York City, I don’t picture two white people–or even two straight people. The current mayor of New York is a white guy married to a queer Black woman, but film directors and producers still can’t imagine anyone would be interested in seeing a movie about a similar family onscreen.

Lucy McBath (right) in 'The Armor of Light' — Lucy McBath (right) in *The Armor of Light*

Another film at Tribeca about a mother’s grief for her son is the excellent and multi-layered documentary The Armor of Light (playing this Saturday, April 25) the first film directed by Abigail Disney who has had a prolific career as the producer of films including She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, Pray The Devil Back to Hell, and Vessel. Much of the film’s promotional materials emphasize the trajectory of Rob Schenck, a white Evangelical minister and fixture of the far right, who comes to see his “pro-life” views must include a stand against the National Rifle Association (NRA). But the more interesting person in the film (who gets about equal screen time) is Lucy McBath, the mother of a Black teenager, Jordan Davis, shot inside a car at a gas station. Davis’s killer invoked Florida’s “stand your ground” laws in his defense, which state that anyone who “feels” as if his life is in danger is free to shoot and kill the person he thinks is a threat. McBath, whose dentist father was part of the NAACP in 1960s Illinois, immediately understands the racial aspect of this killing and others like it, but Schenck doesn’t bring up race until the film is more than half over. We in the audience see a marked difference in how a white congregation and a Black congregation react to his new rhetoric against guns and the NRA.

What goes unsaid in the conversations of right-wing, white men and the repeated montage of white guys at gun shows is the connection between gun violence and masculinity: the popular fantasy articulated by many of the men to be “a good guy with a gun” who stops “a bad guy with a gun” by shooting him, something which even many police officers rarely, if ever, do. While the men talk about “protecting their families” I thought about all the women who are threatened or killed by guns their own husbands, boyfriends, and acquaintances point at them, a concern to which these men seem oblivious. Instead, they talk about the government taking away their guns with the same vehemence they would about government taking away their balls.

Also fascinating is McBath’s meeting with Schenck in which both cite Bible passages to make their points, but which concludes with McBath in tears telling him, “It’s vitally important that you help. They will listen to you.” McBath states later, when she is alone on camera that although she doesn’t “condone” abortion, she would never interfere with another woman’s reproductive choice, but feels like she and Schenck have some common goals around guns, saying, “This is what this is all about: fighting for life.” We see her testifying in front of Congress, and she eventually quits her job to devote her time to being the spokesperson for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

I couldn’t help being a little cynical about Schenck’s intentions. He keeps citing the Bible and Jesus for his newfound, anti-gun mindset but with his long support of right-wing politicians (including members of the Tea Party) I wondered if he had read any of the many Bible passages in which Jesus ministers to the poor, the people those same politicians build their careers disparaging while defunding public programs meant to benefit them.

We see the slow, frustrating course McBath and Schenck have ahead when Schenck meets with three other anti-choice stalwarts (all white men, of course) across a table and tries to persuade them the NRA is antithetical to Christian values, asking, “Is that a pro-life ethic?” Two of the men yell at him in response, but he seems to sway the third, a triumph we can’t help hoping will repeat itself at other tables across the country.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSP0Soy8ACk” iv_load_policy=”3″]

‘The Wolfpack’ Brothers Walk the Red Carpet at the Tribeca Film Festival

Six brothers spent their lives cloistered inside a messy Lower East Side tenement in Manhattan where only their father had the key. Only once or twice a year were they allowed outside their claustrophobic apartment, subsidized by welfare checks their mother received from home schooling them. They spent the day watching movies. This went on for years and years. This is not the subject of some horror film. It’s a stranger-than-fiction story that is the subject of documentary, ‘The Wolfpack.’

Wolfpack director Crystal Moselle — *The Wolfpack* director Crystal Moselle

This is a guest post by Paula Schwartz.

Directed by Crystal Moselle, the documentary created a stir at Sundance where it premiered, where the brothers turned up for the screening but spoke very little with the press.

Last weekend, The Wolfpack made its New York premiere at the TriBeCa Film festival at the SVA Theater on 23d Street, not so far from where the boys spent almost all their lives inside the closed walls of their claustrophobic and unkempt apartment.

Everything that the six boys – whose surname is Angulo – knew of the world they gleaned from movies. Quentin Tarantino’s movies were favorites, along with those of Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, and David Lynch. The boys – Govinda, Bhagavan, Narayana, Krisna, Jagadesh, Mukunda – spent their time watching movies and then reenacting scenes wearing costumes they created out of thrift shop clothes they retooled to resemble that of their characters.

One of the brothers described their existence as living in a prison. One sibling said they lived inside their minds.

As they got older, once or twice a year the siblings would walk in the streets. It was on one of their rare expeditions that Moselle found them. The production notes from the film said it was like “discovering a long lost tribe.” They were a vision in their waist-length hair and Pulp Fiction-inspired wardrobe, which featured a badly fitting dark suit, white shirt, and sunglasses. Over five years, Moselle gained their trust and recorded their story. She is still very protective of them.

On the red carpet, I asked the director if the boy’s father, Oscar, a Peruvian immigrant, who in the film was often drunk and ranted incoherently, had emotionally abused his sons. She replied tersely, “I’m not going to answer those questions.”

Moselle described her relationship with the brothers as sisterly, so they felt comfortable around her. (Their actual sister, to whom they are very close, is mentally disabled.)

“I watched them grow up,” Moselle told me. “There’s an incredible transformation that they went through so it was a beautiful thing to see this great transformation, and then now they’re making films in the world and socializing and happy people.”

Neither of the boys’ parents, including their mother Susanne, who seems as controlled as her sons in the film, appeared on the red carpet.

I spoke to Govinda, who is the second oldest and has a twin, what life is like now. “Life now is busy. It’s taken off cause this has pushed us to just start relationships with people, and in the filmmaking world it’s all about relationships,” he said like a pro.

“Offers are flowing in,” said the charismatic, handsome 22-year-old. “We’re starting our own production company, Wolfpack Productions. We’re working as assistants on sets, so there’s a lot happening for us. It’s opened up a lot of doors.”

The brothers still play out scenes from their movie scenes. “We’ll always do that,” Govinda smiled. “That’s the heart for us, so we’ll takes these movies with us wherever we go.”

They are still stunned by the Sundance success. “What could be more surprising and stupendous than that, the Oscars?” I asked. “You never know,” Govinda told me.

This red carpet stuff is something they’ve dreamed about since they were kids sitting on dirty mattresses watching movies, Govinda said. “This is something that we always dreamt about when we were 12 year olds and we’d turn on the TV and watch people on the red carpet and be like, ‘I want to do that some day! I want to be in front of those cameras some day and be on the red carpet!’”

The boys wore their signature outfits. “We actually thrift shop buy everything,” he told me. “We search around all New York City; we go to all the different stores and then we reference clothes from movies and this is like our Reservoir Dogs look.”

Soon, designers will be calling them and asking them to wear their suits, I told them. “That started already,” Govinda noted. They already have a fashion spread in the works. “We’re doing stuff with big magazines, so there’s a lot of talk in the works.”

Maybe because of years of being shut off from the outside world, the brothers’ speech is still a little off kilter, and Govinda speaks slowly and chooses his words carefully. I asked him how his parents were doing with all the media attention.

“They’re doing well. Dad’s more – he’s not a big public eye guy so he doesn’t like being in front of the camera and everything. You know how he was in the documentary, but mom is all for it.”

How did his Dad feel about the way he was portrayed? “We got a bunch of comments from people saying I wish I could do that to my children, in a joking kind of way,” Govinda laughed. “But my Dad, he loved the movie. The movie was an honest portrayal.”

Paula Schwartz is a veteran journalist who worked at the New York Times for three decades. For five years she was the Baguette for the New York Times movie awards blog Carpetbaggers. Before that she worked on the New York Times night life column, Boldface, where she covered the celebrity beat. She endured a poke in the ribs by Elijah Wood’s publicist, was ejected from a party by Michael Douglas’s flak after he didn’t appreciate what she wrote, and endured numerous other indignities to get a story. More happily she interviewed major actors and directors–all of whom were good company and extremely kind–including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Hoffman and the hammy pooch “Uggie” from “The Artist.” Her idea of heaven is watching at least three movies in a row with an appreciative audience that’s not texting. Her work has appeared in Moviemaker, more.com, showbiz411 and reelifewithjane.com.

‘Farah Goes Bang’: A Love Letter to Female Friendships

Farah Goes Bang movie poster

Written by Amanda Rodriguez
Spoiler Alert

“I wanted to do something I hadn’t done before. Change the world and be awesome.” – 17 year-old female John Kerry Campaign Volunteer in Farah Goes Bang

Meera Menon’s Tribeca Film Festival award-winning Farah Goes Bang is a lot of things: it’s a coming-of-age and sexual awakening story, a road trip narrative, a political tale, a multicultural expression, a chick flick, and a love affair with all the beauty and grit of the American experience. The strongest facet of this film, however, is its unflinching depiction of the strength and intimacy of female friendship.

The story centers around three young women who’ve just finished college and decide to take a road trip together as volunteers on the John Kerry presidential campaign. Our heroine, Farah, is tired of her pesky virginity and wants to lose it on the campaign trail. On the road, both Farah (Persian) and her friend Roopa (Indian) encounter racism along with its companions stereotyping and bigotry. Menon talked in an interview on KeralaNext.com about the culture clash the women encounter:

“Their odyssey through the heartland of America is meant to demonstrate the ways in which these girls are often not seen as American, though they are as American as any other. I really wanted the film to integrate their faces and races into a new sense of American identity, one that embraces the hybrid, cross-cultural form that I have experienced in my own sense of citizenship.”

All I have to say is: YES. As a feminist woman of color, this kind of representation of my experiences (and the experiences of countless women just like me) is invaluable. Showing these women as rounded human beings with troubles that are not so foreign or alien as white culture would have you believe is something we desperately need as part of a movement toward inclusivity, toward acceptance and the embracing of those our society typically marginalizes and others.

“I think [the scarf] looks pretty, kinda like it belongs on you.” – KJ “That is so racist.” – Roopa

Farah Goes Bang passes the Bechdel test all day long. The core of this film is the connection between these three women and how it supports them, gives them strength, allows them their fluidity of identity, and is fun as well as necessary for each of their unique journeys. Menon says,

“The film, at its heart, is about the importance of female friendships during the rapid period of personal growth that is your twenties. I have learned so much through my friends, particularly female, about who I am and the woman I hope to be. This film is a love letter to how formative those relationships are when you are young.”

Near the end of the film, Farah finally gets her hook-up on the much anticipated election night. It’s dark out, so we never clearly see the man she seduces, nor do we learn his name. (The seduction itself is a pivotal character shift because, until this point, Farah had always been meek and incapable of owning her sexuality.) After they have sex, she goes back to the cabin where her friends are, wanting to spend the rest of this meaningful night with the people who are most important to her: her girlfriends. It is the bond of friendship that sees these young women through the crushing disappointment of the election and the very adult realization that the world isn’t very easy to change.

KJ, Farah, and Roopa enjoying a special night of anticipation and fireworks.

Though the film is a bit rose-colored and unrealistic with some of its themes (Roopa’s lack of internal struggles render her one-dimensional when compared to her two friends, KJ’s cathartic conversation with a military vet, and Farah’s empowering encounter with a drag queen followed by her ideal one-night-stand with a beautiful, nameless stranger), it turns out it’s still nice to watch a movie about women that doesn’t involve a rape or murder (especially a women-on-the-road story), where the women don’t necessarily all get what they want, but they come out the other side together, happy, and ready for the next challenge.