Peter Hawley – Page 14 – A portfolio for my work as a filmmaker and podcaster

Helvetica

During the late summer just before my friend Dan Devening, an artist, gallery owner and college professor, went to Austria on a fellowship (show-off) he told me about a film he just saw called Helvetica. It’s a documentary about the typeface by that name and the revolution it has caused and the reaction to that revolution. Who would have thunk that a documentary about a font could be so interesting, but it was.

A lot of filmmaking is about paying attention to details. In fact almost all good art in some way pays attention to the little things. And perhaps there is no group of artists more into the details than graphic designers. Throughout Helvetica one watches half-crazed designers discuss the greatness of the font, while another group of designers talks about how Helvetica is a curse. One camp thinks fonts should be neutral while the other group says fonts should add something to the text. As a side note my favorite font- until seeing this film- has always been “default.”

In addition to the joys of watching passionate artists in a great debate, and learning a lot about how typefaces are created and used, Helvetica is also visually very stunning and has quite a lot of humor in it. (Though it helps if you think it is funny that all the graphics in the film and in the subtitled part of the DVD are also set in Helvetica.) The director, Gary Hustwit, and his crew take great pains to frame all of the interviews and visuals -there is a lot of signage in the film- with great care.

To me Helvetica is an example of just how great the documentary form can be. Here is a film about something few of us care about and all take for granted(at one point Helvetica font is compared to air) yet our attention is riveted. I suggest you check it out.

PeterH

I Am Still Here

This has been the longest the dumb filmmaker has been away fom his blog since he began it. Things have been very busy for him, but there is light at the end of the tunnel, and he promises to stop referring to himself in the 3rd person.

A brief recap of the last few weeks:

Singer/Song writer Michelle Shocked came to Flashpoint where she cut a song and shot a music video- coming to your computers soon.

Last week Chevy Chase was at school. That’s us with Paula Froehle, our academic dean and Steven Berger Flashpoint’s in-house producer. Chevy was great. Very funny and he spoke well about the importance of collaboration and writing.

All of the film students have shot and are no editing their first films. I have seen many of them and I am quite pleased with the outcome.

On the professional front Jim shot one final (he promises, really) sequence for the teen parent film while I was with Chevy Chase- thanks again Jim. And we are racing to the conclusion of this major top-secret (non-disclosure) film we began in October.

By the end of the week things should return to some sort of consistency and blogging can resume in earnest.

PeterH

Don’t Just Take My Word On It

I wrote the blog about August: Osage County, the Broadway play, last night about 10pm. I woke up this morning and opened my New York Times to see this glowing review by Charles Isherwood.

All happy families are alike, Tolstoy told us, and each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. But I’d bet the farm that no family has ever been as unhappy in as many ways — and to such sensationally entertaining effect — as the Westons of “August: Osage County,” the new play by Tracy Letts that blazed open last night at the Imperial Theater.

A fraught, densely plotted saga of an Oklahoma clan in a state of near-apocalyptic meltdown, “August” is probably the most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years. Oh, forget probably: It is, flat-out, no asterisks and without qualifications, the most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years. Fiercely funny and bitingly sad, this turbo-charged tragicomedy — which spans three acts and more than three blissful hours — doesn’t just jump-start the fall theater season, recently stalled when the stagehands went on strike. “August” throws it instantaneously into high gear.

You can read the rest of the review here. I am glad I got to see the show in Chicago.

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/theater/reviews/05august.html?ref=arts

PeterH

One Strike Down One to Go

A few weeks ago I wrote about the writer’s guild strike and how it is affecting people on all ends of the entertainment business pay scale. Until now I haven’t mentioned the other big strike- the Broadway stagehand strike that recently was resolved.

There is an interesting piece in the current New Yorker about a woman who is a wig maker for both Phantom of the Opera and Saturday Night Live. She was forced out of a job because of both strikes and has resorted to cutting hair out of her Manhattan apartment bathroom. Since the stage hands have returned to work, I assume she has half of her income back, but it goes to show you how tough it can be for people who aren’t rich and famous.

My connection to the Broadway strike is through my friend Sally Murphy (above) a member of Steppenwolf Theater and one of the stars of August: Osage County. The play had it’s world premiere in Chicago at Steppenwolf this summer and made the move to Broadway only to get there in time for the strike. August is terrific. It’s funny (often very) sad (often very), tragic. The three hours fly by and I hope New York audiences get to see it. A modern day Death of a Salesman, perhaps.

Anyway, I am glad the strike is over and the show is back so Sally and the rest of the cast can return to work. August: Osage County is a play that needs to be seen.

PeterH

Chuck Close

Perhaps the most frustrating thing to me about being a dumb filmmaker is the lack of opportunities I get to practice my craft. I just can’t wake up in the morning and announce that today I am going to make film. Like Blanche Dubois, I am dependent on the kindness of strangers (well-paid teamsters, SAG members, and other crew types.) I don’t know if I would be a better filmmaker if I had more opportunities, but I certainly would be a different kind of filmmaker. I would really like to explore different visual styles and techniques.

All of this brings me to Chuck Close the photographer and portraitist, one of his self-portraits appears here. For more than thirty years Close has explored different versions of the same form. Typically he takes a photograph of his subject and then creates a grid on a canvas and paints huge portraits from the picture. Over the years his method has remained the same, but his style has changed.

Earlier in his career his portraits were photorealistic. Stunning giant portraits of his subjects that worked on the viewer differently from various distances. By the time you get close to a nine-foot tall face you see it very differently than from across the room. Today his portraits are much more abstract- see above- yet he still works within this same process of taking a photograph and creating a grid. Close’s paintings take months to complete but they all start with that 1/100th of a second image which captures his subject and over the years he has returned to the the original photographs to make new portraits. I am envious that he can return to the same source material and create new works of art while exploring new artistic territory.

To me his process has many benefits. Everyday he can work on little pieces of his paintings. Each square of his grid becomes a mini-painting with its own abstract style. He can stop the work and return to it on and off for weeks. Each grid builds positively on itself and over time he has a finished portrait. The key here is belief in the process. Close has created a system which works for him and within that system he is free to change his style.

One final thing about Chuck Close. About 20 years ago he had a major stroke that rendered him paralyzed from the shoulders down. Since then he has done all of this work from a wheel chair with a paint brush strapped to his wrist.

PeterH

The Future is Unwritten

Career opportunities are the ones that never knock
Every job they offer you is to keep you out the dock
Career opportunity, the ones that never knock

Last week my friend Dan took me to see The Future is Unwritten, the documentary about Joe Strummer, the man who wrote those words. It’s a really great piece of filmmaking and it helps if you are a fan of the band The Clash and punk rock but there are several things that make it stand out as a film.

The film opens with an amazing image of him recording the vocal track to White Riot. They have taken out all the other musical tracks and all you hear is Strummer screaming the lyrics into a microphone. It is an arresting image and draws you into the film immediately. Slowly the instrumental tracks fade in and White Riot as we know it plays, but until that happens all we see is a mad Brit screaming into a microphone.

There is no narration. The entire Strummer story is told through pictures and interviews with friends and colleagues. Hard to pull off, I have tried, but it really works. This technique drops the viewer into the film and we find our own path rather than have someone lead us.

Many of the interviews are done around a campfire at night. Interesting the first couple of times you see it, then frankly annoying…until near the end of the film when we discover Joe Strummer loved campfires and towards the end of his life he began inviting people over to sit around a campfire. Suddenly this visual style had meaning.

Julien Temple directed. He is best known as a music video director, but clearly the subject had meaning to him- he was friends with the band in the 1970s- and had a lot of his own archived material in the film. The Future is Unwritten is clearly a labor of love. When we saw it at the Music Box Theater it was the only theater in the country screening the film, though it had a successful festival run. If you are a fan of the Clash or just want to see an artist at work see the film.

Joe Strummer died from an undiagnosed heart defect on his couch in December of 2002 shortly after returning from walking his dog. The day before he mailed Christmas cards to his friends, cards he designed and created. They arrived just as those friends were learning about his passing.

PeterH

A Death in the (TV) Family

When I learned about the passing of Dick Wilson, TV’s Mr. Whipple from the Charmin ads, I cannot say I was overly saddened, but it did make me pause and reflect on some of my wasted youth in front of the television and how TV advertising has changed.

Mr. Whipple, along with Mrs. Olson, the Folger’s coffee lady, and Madge the Manicurist for Palmolive dish soap, were staples of TV for two and a half decades. Dick Wilson made 504- that’s over 4 hours!- Charmin commercials. Mrs. Olson and Madge also had TV lives that spanned more than a generation. The ads must have been successful because you don’t keep going back to the “Ladies, don’t squeeze the Charmin,” well if the TP ain’t moving off the shelves.

Today these ad campaigns wouldn’t last more than a TV season and that says as much about how we watch TV as it does about the ads themselves. In the 1970s when Madge had her customers soaking in Palmolive I would have had to get up off the couch and turn the channel to make her go away. Since there were only two other channels I left it on and Madge and the others were begrudgingly allowed to come into our living room. Today with the clicker and the Tivo and downloading episodes from the Internet who watches commercials- especially one’s with characters like these three?

The other thing that strikes me about these characters and ad campaigns is the complete lack of irony and sense of humor. In reviewing these spots you can just see comedians like David Letterman waiting to skewer them. In fact an early Letterman memory of mine had him making fun of the Florence Henderson Wesson Oil commercials. Today if a TV spot isn’t quick hitting eye candy then it won’t last.

So, I am sorry Mr. Whipple, Mrs. Olson and Madge your time has come and gone. I am sure you will live on in You Tube land where people can get there nostalgia and irony in two clicks.

PeterH

Religion-part 1

I guess it should come as no surprise that organized religion is having an influence on the film business. I am not talking about films like Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ or Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ, but rather the impact from new modern day mega-churches and television ministries.

Over the last 10 years I have had more and more students come to class with film production experience not from their high schools but through their churches. Many churches have youth groups devoted towards filmmaking. Many of those same churches also have expensive cameras, switchers capable of creating a live TV broadcasts, and advanced editing suites.

Who would have thunk it?

I have seen my share of church-produced films and I have yet seen one that made me really take notice. What I have seen is a lot of young people having fun, going on outings and generally making a high end home movie. Not bad really, but like most home movies, of no interest to anyone who isn’t part of that family.

So I don’t really know what to make of this church based filmmaking. I assume it is a way to get more young people interested in the church. But what is the goal? I don’t see it as a training ground for young filmmakers. Is it the modern day equivalent of an ice cream social? “Hey everyone come over to our sanctuary and let’s make a movie?”

By contrast a student recently showed me the trailer for a feature film his high school made. And based on the two minute trailer it was really terrific. I could see the student filmmakers learning craft and taking something from it. It was not a home movie. Maybe this is an example of the separation of church and state.

I dunno. More on this topic later.

PeterH

Solidarity

This is a picture of my friend Craig walking the WGA picket line in Los Angeles earlier this week. His TV show, Unhitched, for Fox is on hold due to the strike and Craig walked the line in support of the writers.

The day before Criag sent me the photo a former student and teaching assistant of mine who is now in Los Angeles e-mailed me to say she, too, was walking the line in support of the writers. Eliza Hajek is not a celebrity actress but an up and coming editor. She was offered an assistant editor position on Grey’s Anatomy, but the show and job is on hold due to the strike.

I think these two stories really highlight some of the overlooked issues of the strike. While Craig is a successful actor who has money in the bank (though I am pretty sure he still owes me $50 from 20 years ago) and can ride out a strike, Eliza and her brethren are a few pay grades lower and while not living paycheck to paycheck, still need to pay the bills. I am glad to see them both on the line putting a different face on the battle between the writers and producers. And for everyone’s sake I hope the strike ends soon.

PeterH

All The President’s Men

Yesterday’s post about Peter Morgan and his films The Deal, The Queen and The Last King of Scotland has me thinking about other movies that depict real news events in a dramatic fashion. How someone dramatizes and makes interesting a story that was recently headline news is beyond me. When it is done well I always like it.

Recently I saw A Mighty Heart starring a nearly unrecognizable Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl, the wife of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in Pakistan in 2002 and murdered by members of the Taliban. Jolie is great and honestly I don’t know much of her work unless Brangelina is a film I missed. Here is the thing about this film: you know what is going to happen from frame one, yet you are riveted. Go figure. It’s part detective story, part documentary, part love story and all terrific.

To me the touchstone of these real life films is All the President’s Men. Here is a film that came out not long after Nixon resigned, when the country was Watergated to death, yet the film did huge box office, won Oscars and still holds me in its grip when I watch it.

Both films are about journalists and the slow, often boring process of discovery. Both have excellent performances by big name actors and both are gripping. Even though I know Woodward and Bernstein survived and Nixon would resign I still get spooked when I see Woodward in the garage with Deep Throat.

To me what makes All the President’s Men work is the quality of filmmaking. Alan Pakula, the director, brought all of the elements together- great source material, an excellent script, top notch actors and great Gordon Willis visuals. It is a defining moment of translating a real story to the screen.

PeterH