Tribeca Film Fest - Opening Day Presser

Francesca_Maxime_NYC_Reporter/Anchor_Demo_2010

Tribeca Day 1 - Extended Interviews

"Metropia" animated film News Conference Notes from Tribeca Film Festival, NYC 2010

“Metropia” Film News Conference, 4/25/10

Francesca Maxime for Film Slate Magazine

Attendees: Juliette Lewis (actor), Tariq Saleh (director) Alexander Skarsgard (actor, “True Blood”’).

Tariq Saleh is Metropia’s writer/director. He grew up in animation studio. Saleh’s background is documentary filmmaking. He went to Guantanamo 2003, before Abu Graib scandal when it was a controlled environment. He interviewed young American soldiers just 20 years old. Saleh says he could tell they’d seen things they shouldn’t have seen. While taping at the camp, they heard people screaming inside. Turns out the Pentagon/Rumsfeld was holding press conference, that day in April 2003, and declared that “we have won the war.” It was the same day when the statue of Saddam fell. A relative of his said in Egypt that once the statue fell, that’s’ when the war started. Saleh says they were working on Metropia at the time, and the film is about the world, and people going insane. “When you are scared, people do insane things. The movie is about fear.” It all started during and after 9/11. For the film, Saleh sayd he wanted “real actors, not voice talents: the best actors and actresses… That they’d approach it for a real acting job. “

Juliette Lewis: “I’m just into radical and unique points of view and any fresh voice. I’m also into things that question the status quo. So I love the sentiment about where these voices come from, how they get into your head.” Animators, process of using human eyes, the governmental figures… using real human eyes (as part of the animation.)”

Alexander Skarsgard: “I didn’t have anything to watch, it wasn’t animated yet. It wasn’t about lip synch or hitting certain beats. But it was quite surreal first time I saw the movie in October, over a year after we recorded it and it’s really weird b/c you sit down and you watch it and suddenly there’s a face and a reaction with other characters.”

Tariq: “We started doing animation in 2002. We used old animation. The whole thing is 2-D. This is the most flat film you will ever see. One dimensional almost. We move the eyes ears nose mouth at different speeds to create the illusion or turning. I like that idea. I like the idea of doing the film. It’s like hypnosis.”

Question: It’s not really science fiction, but how did u develop the back story?

Tariq: I found a folder in the Swedish Metro. “I think a lot of public transportation companies are in the crosshairs of the corporate, private, and the state… They talk to you like a child.” What if a public transportation company became the most powerful organization in Europe. With (the recent) volcano, Europe was like Metropia for a month. Roger of course is based partly on myself; I like to think of myself as a little more sympathetic than he is. “

Juliette: “When he used the word film noir, I got it. Vocally I’m trying to achieve what I’m normally trying to achieve which is a real reality and something honest, so I used my regular voice. Usually for characters I’ll pitch it higher or whatever. I have a very base voice (like my fellow ‘deep voice ladies’ like Lauren Bacall). “



Tariq: “A lot of actors and actresses sound the same when they take away their faces, but all the Metropia cast isn’t that way.”

Juliette: “It’s a hyper-reality. It’s a universe that’s exaggerated with its color, its sparseness, the sterile nature (of it). You can do these things… create a hyper-reality, an aesthetic… that heightens your feeling of eeriness, paranoia, alienation. The color in it: the lead character, I fell in love with him when I first saw it. I was drawn to this funny character. I’d never seen anything like it.”

Tariq: “Animation gives you so much freedom to do this kind of storytelling. It brings you emotional proof. Animation shows you how things feel, not what they look like. My favorite film is Dumbo. It’s about child abuse. His mother goes to jail. I cry every time I see this film. When the clowns abuse him… Animation is not what it looks like, it’s about what it feels like.”

Tariq: The biggest inspiration for me is “the process” by Kafka. I misunderstood it as comedy when I first read it. With “dream logic” – there two kinds of dreams… if I dreamt about pigs, it’s uninteresting. If I dreamt about you, it’s interesting. I wanted the film to feel like that: when you wake up from Metropia, it’s real, but wasn’t real.”

Film Slate’s question to the actors: How do you prepare for an animation role differently than a “regular” acting role, have you done animation previously, and would you do it again.

Alexander: “Creative freedom, there are no boundaries – we could play around with it, we could do with it whatever we wanted. Tariq’s an old friend, we talked about it for a long time, for this dark/bleak idea. It’s not so far from where we are now, like in the states. People trust big corporations more now than the government. To me it wouldn’t be interesting if it weren’t related to our society.”

Juliette: “My process is a very instinctual, imaginary place, my faraway place where things come alive. And I love complexity and subtext, so even in my character you have all that because she’s not really helping him, she has her own personal vested interest. She’s an opportunist in a way, but she’s benevolent in a way, b/c she doesn’t kill him. She’s self serving in a way, but in the end you get the feeling that in the end she’s gonna go out and do something more corrupt than the father. So I really rely on my director, and it’s always a game of trust. I really am a big believer in the choices of the director, so I’d ask him if she should be more or less angry here. I did a voice once for Japanese animation once. I’d love to do more (animation).”

Question: What character do the actors relate to the most in the film?

Juliette: “I relate to Roger. Some small portion. And then projects, I was just making music and writing songs and touring with the last five years and I just started making movies again a year ago. So I’m approaching it with a deep love, a rekindled love, this experience. I just worked with Drew Barrymoore and Ellen Paige, and Mark Ruffalo. And I’m gonna be in two big comedies, one with Jennifer Aniston called the Switch. I’m just drawn to charcter work. My dad’s a character actor. I’m doing another comedy, with Robert Downey Junior.”

Alexander: “What: what character did I identify w/ the most? Stephan? Cold delivery. Not a very sympathetic character, but a very amusing one.”

Question (to Alexander): True Blood: people are curious what you’re doing.

Alexander: “We’re shooting season three right now. We’re doing that for another few months. Season 3 is about vengeance. I’m flying back tonight.”

Question: What is the process of directing an animation movie really like compared to “regular” films?

Tariq: “Animators are like actors and actresses. It’s a problem b/c they are like actors. They put themselves in it. You have to cast the animators. If you have a shy animator, you’ll have a shy character. If you work with great people, they’ll bring it back to you.”

Juliette: “It’s the same in a way, visionary – the difference in this work is that it’s all voice, you’re doing it in this finite part of time. You’re using one aspect of your instrument.”

Video Coverage/Opening Day News Conference of Tribeca Film Festival for Film Slate Magazine

Check out the brand NEW video of my coverage of Tribeca Film Festival Opening Day newswer 4 Film Slate Magazine w/ Robert DeNiro & exclusive interviews w/ co-counder Jane Rosenthal & Chief Creative Officer Geoff Gilmore. http://vimeo.com/11128622

Tribeca Film Festival Opening Day News Conference Coverage

The Tribeca Film Festival is in it’s 9th year. Begun in 2002 following the 9/11 attacks, it was meant to serve as a way to get people back to the World Trade Center neighborhood of Tribeca. And now, nearly a decade later, it, is coming to them.


The 2010 Tribeca Film Fest is marked most notably by it’s “virtual” or “video on demand” offerings through cable partners like Time Warner and Direct TV. With a full slate of films that will be released online simultaneous to their Festival release, the move ensures that everyone who wants to, can take a bite out of this iconic New York event.

At today’s opening news conference, co-founders Robert DeNiro and Jane Rosenthal were joined by newly de-“Sundanced” Chief Creative Officer Geoffrey Gilmore and the Festival’s Executive Director Nancy Schafer. All gave props to American Express for their continued festival sponsorship – which this year is notable not just for its financial support but for the new ways in which that support is helping independent and foreign Festival films reach new audiences online. Shafer notes the reach is up to 40 million viewers.

Rosenthal talked about the Festival’s roots in the neighborhood, and how it’s really a community festival. With special outdoor “drive-in” showings of family favorites like “Big” alongside other kid-friendly fare like the BMX Jams tour and Family Street Fair with performances from Broadway stars.

Filmmaker Alex Gibney has three movies at this year’s festival, including an untitled Eliot Spitzer movie sure to draw New Yorkers, as well as ”My Trip to Al Queda,” which harkens back to the festival’s roots. Comedies, however, also abound, which can be unusual – says Executive Director Nancy Shafer – in a Film Festival that highlights independent film. Out of the over 5,000 film submissions, there are several that were chosen including the “revenge of the teenagers” flick, “Beware the Gonzo.”

Still, the 3-D movement that splashed towards us with Avatar will now open the festival with Shrek’s final installment, the premiere of “Shrek Forever After.”

Whether you’re in town or not, check out all of our film reviews and interviews here on Film Slate… and hit the Tribeca site too, at www.tribecafilm.com. $45 buys you a “premium pass” enabling you to stream eight full-length 2010 Tribeca feature films. They kick off April 23rd with Edward Burns’ “Nice Guy Johnny.” You can also watch filmmakers discuss various issues on live panels, and even see shorts.


So… Stay tuned… There’s much more to come!
-written 4/20/10 for/originally published in Film Slate Magazine

Currents: 4/16/10

Mocha Moms Help Haiti – 3/23/10 : Currents

The devastating earthquake that hit Haiti January 12th continues to
take its toll. 230 thousand dead, 1.3 million, homeless.

Here in Brooklyn, a group of women came together to do their part to
help. Mocha Moms found a couple of reputable organizations whose
efforts they wanted to support, and last weekend, held a fun
fundraiser, to help buy needed goods for earthquake survivors –
especially women and children – in Haiti.

Here's my report for Currents.

Mocha Moms Help Haiti – 3/23/10 : Currents

Film Review of "Cold Souls," by Francesca Marguerite Maxime

Original Content Created for and published in Film Slate Magazine

Cold Souls

FRANCESCA MAXIME

We could call “Cold Souls” “Being Paul Giamatti,” or, perhaps more appropriately, “Not Being Paul Giamatti.”  Just as the titular “Being John Malkovich” had the actor in self-portrayal, so does this first-feature foray for director Sophie Barthes.  

The premise is simple:  Giamatti is having trouble with Chekov’s play Uncle Vanya, reads a magazine article promoting “soul extraction” technology promising to alleviate the ailments one’s may cause, and takes the plunge to have his removed and stored until the play is complete.  The problem is, two weeks unexpectedly turn into much more, after his chickpea-shaped soul is implanted into a soap opera actress seeking greater talent.  Giamatti goes soul-searching - all the way to Russia - to reclaim his discarded inner being and in the process learns a thing or two about self-acceptance and the human condition. 

The film is so satirical it’s hard to say it’s a comedy, because it doesn’t provoke chortles or belly-laughs like, say, the one-lines you get in “Forgetting Sara Marshall.” But it’s not that kind of film. It is instead a cerebral comedy, where the brain, the body and one’s being are picked apart and mocked as the commodities they’ve come to be in the modern age and Western world. 

Giamatti is an actor who can’t separate his Chekov character from himself, and says he needs to be “unburdened” to perform well.   His agent recommends newly-pimped soul-extraction technology profiled in The New Yorker.  Giamatti, like real-life contemporary Philip Seymour Hoffman, is known more for his acting chops in films like “Sideways” than for his looks, and once again delivers in “Souls.”  When primary soul-extractor Dr. Flintstein (played with a cool sense of ambiguity and enthusiasm by the familiar David Strathairn) asks the actor how he feels once soul-less, Giamatti replies “Light, empty, bored, great.”  It seems the “operation” may very well work well for its intended purpose.   

But when Giamatti rehearses an Uncle Vanya scene, he’s overly sarcastic, insensitive, and quite hilarious. And later in the evening at dinner with his wife and friends, he loudly chomps celery while recommending that one of their friends just “pull the plug” on an ill and non-responsive loved one. Without his soul, Giamatti lacks measure and sensitivity, easily maligning others, albeit unintentionally. With poor on the job performance and the inability to make love to his wife, he goes back to have his soul re-implanted.  And then, the true fun of the film begins. 

Dr. Flintstein argues the soul extraction is working well, since Giamatti admits to not having one dark thought, and, to the actor’s ability to perform Vanya without feeling distress.  But goes on to tell Giamatti that the moment he gets his soul back, he’ll feel the unbearable weight (of it) and again be unable to perform.  The good doctor then proffers a “soul catalogue” where clients can peruse and rent the purchased and traded souls of everyone from a Chicago sportswriter to a Russian poet. Giamatti elects the latter, begins to experience some of the poet’s essence once hers is implanted, and ultimately finds the new “organ,” as Dr. Flintstein put it, “too beautiful” and rejects it.  He decides to take his old soul – imperfections, darkness and all – back.  But when he goes to retrieve it in the locker, it’s gone, traded on the black market to a talentless Russian Soap Opera actress.   

Imagining the commoditization of souls, like livers and hearts, isn’t that far flung. Plastic surgeries, human trafficking, sexual slavery; all are prevalent in today’s world.  It seems nothing, however immoral, is kept from the auction block.   

In order to reconnect with himself prior to re-implantation, the actor must actually look into his soul (caged in a jar) – something he’d refused to do when it was first extracted.  Getting over this obstacle has been the protagonist’s challenge all along.  

“Cold Souls” combines a shaky balance of pathos and eccentric humor that sadly become less comical, in direct relation to how eerily realistic the jokes are. And while cloaking the moral commentary in chickpeas and prunes, jars, chambers, and foot lockers, the film attempts to reach its hands into our innards, hoping that they’re still warm to the touch, and that they stay put. 

DIRECTOR: Sophie Barthes SCREENWRITER: Sophie Barthes PRODUCERS: Paul S. Mezey, Andrij Parekh, Jeremy Kipp Walker CAST: MPAA RATING: PG-13

My TV Demo Reels

Hi everyone,

Loong time no see! Been busy settling into New York City life... writing a lot of poetry... playing tennis... and otherwise trying to get through the winter hibernation period, lol.

I have, however, continued to host my daily TV show "Currents" in NYC (www.CurrentsNY.net or www.facebook.com/currentsny) and I wanted to share my recent demo reels. (My previous ones from Florida are here also).

Feedback's always welcome!

Take it easy,
Francesca