December 14 2005

One of those columns…

Don't want to write about the awards season. Gary Dretzka gets into the issue of Old Media outlets chasing New Media… so I'll sit on that column idea for a while.

Hmmm…

Over the weekend, I spent some time with three of the twelve documentarians short-listed for the Oscars. And besides being quite impressed by the work of the filmmakers, I was impressed by how good looking documentary filmmakers have gotten. The guys from Favela Rising, Matt Mochary and Jeff Zimbalist, were like talking to a smart, talented version of Abercrombie & Fitch catalog boys. Street Fight's Marshall Curry looks like a guy out of School Ties. And hanging out with the trio of Marilyn Agrelo, Amy Sewell and one of the film's heroes, Yomaira Reynoso was a little like being on the set of Charlie's Angels: The Last Generation.

Whatever happened to neurotic, ugly men with heavy cameras? Even last year's Oscar winners, Zana Briski and Ross Kaufman looked like they fell off a slightly unbalance wedding cake.

Anyway…

All three of the filmmakers are from the new generation of "Let's grab a camera and put on a show." There are varying degrees of film experience in the group, but none of these filmmakers had really done it before. Mochary and Zimbalist went to another country and just kept shooting, feeling their way through a culture that is heavily invested in illegal activity and violence as they went, and managing to find - after shooting, basically, an entire film that had a different focus than the one now on the short list - one extraordinary story that said everything they were trying to say.

Marshall Curry decided to invest the money that would have gone into film school into making his first film and learning as he went. What he found was more than one great character, but the scary truth of how power corrupts and decades of power corrupts absolutely.

In Amy Sowell's case, she was writing a story about a ballroom class at a Tribeca school when it suddenly occurred to this woman, who self-describes as a 40something mom and a wife, that there was a movie in that thar' ballroom. She called her friend Marilyn, who had some production experience, and they jumped right in. As they expanded beyond the one school in Tribeca to other parts of New York, they came upon Yomaira, who had shifted from teaching 2nd & 3rd grade to teaching in the ballroom dancing program. (The program has doubled its size in New York since the film came out.)

All three films have ongoing stories, as their subjects continue to evolve. Mad Hot is the least likely to sequelize, with the kids moving on already to junior high and Sewell & Agrelo's work done, both seem on track to do some work separately before getting together again. Marilyn will shoot her first feature next March. Marshall Curry's central subject, Cory Booker, will do battle again with Sharpe James this summer… and after a surprisingly close race last time, is expected by many to win this time, in no small part thanks to the movie. And Mochary and Zimbalist don't actually intend to do a direct sequel, but they are both interested in making more films about the little seen South American cultures.

Hmmm…

Almost everyone at every studio in town seems to be walking around in a bit of a paranoid daze, waiting to see whose blood hits the sidewalk next. The honeymoon on the DreamWorks deal is already near an end, as the transition issues seem far more complex and scary for a few hundred employees - on one side or the other - than it was made to seem over the weekend. (Wall Street doesn't seem very excited either, as there is little movement on Viacom stock since the market reopened on Monday morning, though there has been fairly heavy trading.)

Hmmm…

Christmas (I'll say it, even if George Bush can't) can't get here soon enough.

E-ME.