At the recent Sundance Film Festival in January, I spoke with three first-time feature directors whom I believe will be directors to watch and whom actors will want to work with. Each of these filmmakers comes to the profession with a passion for telling stories and for actors. There were of course many other great stories of neophyte filmmakers at this year's Sundance event, and you can be sure we will be speaking to them throughout the year.
Georgina Garcia Riedel was one of only two female directors in the Dramatic Competition at Sundance this year. Her accomplished debut feature, How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer, which she also wrote, showcases a talented Latino cast that includes Elizabeth Peña (Lone Star), America Ferrera (star of Real Women Have Curves), Jorge Cervera Jr. (Kingpin), and veteran Mexican actor Lucy Gallardo as the eldest of three generations of women who come to embrace their dormant sexuality in a small Arizona town. The town the film was shot in, Somerton, Ariz., is home to Riedel's grandmother, who provided the initial inspiration for Riedel's story.
"About three years ago, I asked my grandmother what she wanted for Christmas," says Riedel, a recent graduate of the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. "I would do this every year, and every year she would never tell me anything because she didn't want to help—she wanted you to suffer. [Laughs.] But this time, she said she wanted a car. So I asked her again, like I hadn't heard her right the first time. And again, she said she wanted a car. Well, all conversation ceases at that point, because she's in her 70s, and she had never driven before, doesn't own a car, and it gave me the idea to write the script for the short."
That short, which Riedel wrote as an idea for her AFI thesis, was never produced, but, a year after leaving school, she decided to adapt it into a feature-length screenplay. "I was doing office jobs, which is fine to pay the rent, and I was trying to write, but it was so unfulfilling. The next step was trying to make a feature, but it was scary. Once I made the decision [to make it], everything was easier. I knew I was going to make it, because I've never said I was going to do something and not done it.... I told my family, 'I want to make this, and I think I can do it. Can you help me?' and they said yes.... So just through family and my 'escape money,' which I had saved in stocks and was, like, $15,000–20,000 for when life got really bad, I was able to do it."
In putting together a crew, Riedel recruited alumni from AFI. She also found support from Kodak, Fuji, Rocky Mountain, and Denton, which provided her shoot with high-end lenses. She also struck deals in postproduction. "People were really good to us. Any sort of thing they would do at regular price, we got for half," says the filmmaker. "The people who responded were the people we worked with and are the people I'll work with later, if I'm so lucky to make another one."
Riedel knew she wanted to hire a casting director to assist her on her project. She was particularly interested in CDs who had knowledge of the Latino talent pool, as her entire cast was Latino. She settled on Belinda Gardea, who cast Miguel Arteta's 1997 debut feature, Star Maps. "Some of them, the [CDs] I didn't hire, were the ones who hesitated when I was, like, 'All I know is that I want Elizabeth Peña for Lolita, because she is Lolita, and she's the only one I have in mind.' So I would interview casting directors, and the ones who were, like, 'You know, that'll be kind of hard,' I was, like, 'Goodbye.' I wanted a person who would say, 'That's an amazing idea. I'm going to work at it and make sure it happens.'
Gardea made sure it happened, and she talked respected young actor Ferrera into auditioning for the other lead as Peña's teenage daughter. A second casting director, Lollie Ortiz, helped Riedel with the supporting casting. Riedel also held two casting calls in Somerton, where she had success casting locals.
The director says she's in awe of what actors do. "I just think actors are so brave," she says. "I'm shy. I'm a coward. I'm a weenie. I will never do what you guys do. They trust. When anybody says, 'Yes, I'll be in your movie,' I'm honored. I respect it, and I try to honor that."
On the set, Riedel had a habit—to the annoyance of some actors, she admits—of purposely not yelling "cut" at the end of takes. As she explains, she loves those impromptu moments that actors create when they're in character, and she found that she used quite a lot of that footage in her edited film. "I think the coolest, most honest moments happen when an actor thinks that you're going to yell 'cut,' and I never yell 'cut,'" she says. "I don't mean to torture them, but I don't think sometimes they realize just how wonderful they are, even when they feel the scene's done, because the scene is never done—because they're so good, they're in the moment, and they never break character."
Riedel is most interested in writing female characters and is currently working on two screenplays: one that she hopes to shoot in Mexico and one that is a "full-fledged" romantic comedy. "I think that's something that is needed, because there are not a lot of great female roles. I think one of the reasons I got such an amazing cast was because, dare I say it, I think they were great roles, and they weren't stereotypes. They were human beings, and they didn't have to be 'the angry Latin woman.' It gave them range."
As for the status of Garcia Girls, Reidel is still seeking a distributor.
Master Class
How did first-time feature director Arie Posin persuade Glenn Close, Ralph Fiennes, Allison Janney, Rita Wilson, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jamie Bell, William Fichtner, John Heard, Lauren Holly, Rory Culkin, and Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy of the Harry Potter films) to sign on to his low-budget ensemble project, The Chumscrubber? The answers: He had a provocative script, which had name actors chomping at the bit, and he secured two of Hollywood's top producers—Bonnie Curtis and Lawrence Bender—to get behind the project.
That doesn't mean Posin's career happened overnight. He's been plying his trade for 12 years, since graduating from USC as a film major in 1993. During that post-graduation period he wrote scripts and made the 2002 short film Over My Dead Body, which was cast through Back Stage West. While showing that short at a film festival in Houston, he fatefully befriended filmmaker Zac Stanford, who became his partner on The Chumscrubber.
Says Posin, "I won a prize for comedy, and Zac won for drama. We thought it would be fun for us to do something together, because it seemed like this sort of interesting collision. He had a really dark movie there, and mine was pretty funny. We had an agreement early on: Zac would be the writer. I would be the director." In combining drama and comedy, the two hit on the idea of telling a tale of an alienated youth (played by Billy Elliot's Bell) forced to confront the disconnect between parents and teenagers in suburbia. Picture American Beauty meets River's Edge and Donnie Darko, and you have something like The Chumscrubber (the title refers to a fictitious video game and animated TV series shown in the film).
Once Stanford completed the script, he and Posin sent it to producers. Neither of them had an agent, so they relied on friends to deliver it to the right people. They were also selective about whom they sent the script to. The director explains, "We got some really good advice, which was: 'Don't send it out to everyone in the world. Pick the five producers you think are right for this material and just send it to them.' Lawrence was right at the top of that list because, first of all, he's an amazing producer and has made some incredible films—with [Quentin] Tarantino obviously, but also Good Will Hunting, Fresh, and White Man's Burden—that are not only interesting movies and great movies but also tend to have a social consciousness. This is a movie that has a social consciousness.
"Also, I love the fact that Quentin, with all the success that he's had, has continued to make movies with Lawrence, because, as a filmmaker, that's what you hope for, to have a producer that you can grow your entire career with," continues Posin. "So, Lawrence seemed like a no-brainer, and we sent it to him. My phone rang one day, and he said, 'I read the script. I love this project. Who the hell are you?'"
Bender signed on and asked that a second producer work with him on the film because he was committed to producing other projects at the same time. Bender's agent at William Morris suggested Curtis, who was interested in producing her first low-budget film. She had previously worked on many of Steven Spielberg's blockbusters, beginning with Schindler's List, on which she was a production associate, working her way up to associate producer, then co-producer, and, finally, producer on A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Minority Report.
The most challenging aspect to casting this film was not convincing well-known actors to sign on but rather discovering new talent. Most prominent are Camilla Belle, who plays Crystal, the prettiest girl in high school, who goes out with Billy, the handsome school bully, played by Justin Chatwin. Posin said he instinctually knew Belle was perfect for the role on her first audition. Other young cast members included Lou Taylor Pucci and Thomas Curtis. For each of these roles, Posin was looking for the right combination of confidence and vulnerability.
"I think it's all about opposing qualities," says Posin of his idea of strong acting. He made it a point on Chumscrubber to cast well-known actors in roles that were unlike what they normally play. Most notably, the typically intense, brooding Fiennes plays a rather goofy, simple, sweet guy. "Look at all the great actors. Marlon Brando is this great tough guy who's got this incredibly feminine quality that he always nurtured, that seeps through. James Dean had that contradiction that doesn't make sense. They aren't one thing; they are two opposing things at the same time."
For Posin, that duality is an innate quality that cannot be taught to actors. He says, "The trick is to nurture it and to not kill that essential quality, and that can happen when you're trying to be like everyone else. I think it's really important to maintain a certain sensitivity. I think that's critical, and it's really hard to do, especially if you're an actor in L.A. and you're going to auditions all the time. You're up for the test or the show, it's down to you and someone else, and someone else gets it—how do you keep your nerves open to that? There are a lot of heartbreaks along the way. It's difficult, but I think that's the most important thing to do."
Before stepping behind the camera as a feature director, Posin knew that he wanted to study acting to be a stronger filmmaker. At the suggestion of Jon Voight, whom Posin met while studying at USC, he interviewed and studied for a year with the famed acting teacher Sanford Meisner, who, at that time, was teaching classes in Los Angeles. That experience, says Posin, was critical preparation for becoming a director.
Says Posin of directing this feature, "The only challenge for me [in working with my actors] was to be as prepared as I could be.... For me, the big thing was that I treated each of these roles as if I was going to play it. So I went through a pass of the script as [each of the characters]. And each day I had all of my acting notes for the scene, literally moment to moment, line by line, and between the lines, so if [the actors] wanted my input, or if I wasn't quite getting what I wanted, I was prepared."
As for working with such pros as Close, Fiennes, and Janney, he found that even great actors seek direction. "I was nervous, honestly, until we started working," admits Posin. "And then you see they're great actors not only because they have this amazing instrument and this incredible talent and this ability to convey emotion and behavior in such a convincing way but [because] they're also incredibly generous and at ease, and looking and seeking direction sometimes, and sometimes knowing exactly what they want to do. I think if I was nervous it was only until we started working, and then you just find you're playing with masters. It was fun. It really was."
Posin and Stanford are currently finishing up a new script, titled Irak (yes, with a "k"), which, like their first effort, "doesn't fit neatly into any genre." Adds Posin, "It's sort of a surreal, absurdist look at a parallel world. It's set a month after the war is over, in June 2003. It will be about two American soldiers who are over there and who are given a crazy mission in the midst of the end of major combat." As for The Chumscrubber, it should be released this year, and it has a distributor, Newmarket Films.
Acting, Schmacting
Craig Lucas arrived at his film directing debut with a body of impressive work already behind him. He recently won an Obie Award for Best American Play for Small Tragedy and the New York Film Critics Award for Best Screenplay for The Secret Lives of Dentists, starring Hope Davis and Campbell Scott. He also wrote the screenplay for Longtime Companion, also starring Scott, which won a Sundance Audience Award. His other plays include Blue Window, Prelude to a Kiss (he also wrote the screenplay), God's Heart, Missing Persons, Strangers, Singing Forest, and The Dying Gaul, which he adapted into the feature film he recently directed.
The Dying Gaul is a psychological thriller about a fledgling, grief-stricken screenwriter whose life changes when he is offered $1 million for his spec script: an autobiographical story of the death of his male lover. Of course there's a catch, or two, or three, and the ensuing tale involves a series of deceptions, confessions, and betrayals. The film premiered at Sundance, and stars Scott, Patricia Clarkson, and Peter Sarsgaard are all at the top of their games in this project.
At 53 years old, Lucas may have been one of the oldest first-time film directors at Sundance, but he is not a neophyte when it comes to appreciating what actors bring to a project. As a stage director, the New York–based artist has long enjoyed helping actors craft their performances. Contrary to popular belief, he thinks that cinema is the actor's medium, not the director's medium.
"Acting is the art of moviemaking for me—not directing, not even the storytelling. It's about acting," he says. "Of course it's wonderful to learn about [camera] lenses and light and film stock, how you can move [the camera], and how you can underdevelop or overexpose the film. I love all of that. But the great part about movies is getting close to the actor's face."
Lucas says, whether directing for stage (among his credits he's won an Obie for his direction of Saved or Destroyed) or screen, he appreciates performances that are less showy and more subtle. He loathes, as he calls it, "schmacting," which he defines as when an actor "crosses the line between doing just enough and doing more than enough—the artifice is visible. You know, that little shake of the head—it's called eating the lights—that extra oomph and that little push, that 'look at me!' Sometimes it makes stars. What distinguished Duse, I think, and certainly Brando and Peter Sarsgaard and Campbell and Patty [Clarkson] is their trust in the audience and trust in themselves to do, if not just the right amount, a little less than the right amount, which pulls you in. It's engaging."
Lucas says he was not looking to become a film director, but he was encouraged by two of his previous collaborators—Scott, and Alan Rudolph, who directed The Secret Lives of Dentists—to step behind the camera. "Campbell has been asking me to direct. I thought, 'I love directing, but there's a lot more to know [about filmmaking.] There's a lot more to the process. There are many things to think about. Your point of view can be anywhere. There are too many choices.' But Alan just said to me, 'You can do it. I'll tell you what you need to know. Get the right people. You are a movie director.' He felt—from the rhythms and the staging and the sense of the visual that he'd seen in my theatre work—that I would take to it, and, I tell you, it was like buying a suit in a vintage shop, putting it on, and becoming another person. It fit so perfectly, and I loved so much being responsible for all those people. I'm much better at taking care of other people than I am at taking care of myself."
Not surprisingly, he says his favorite part of directing The Dying Gaul was working with his actors. Says Lucas, "Their problems are interesting to me. Some directors don't like all that 'process,' but, to me, that's the cool thing about movies, is that you get to be so close to the face. You can see every blip on the radar.... So many movie directors are not interested in that process, and that seems tragic to me, because it just seems like there's an infinitely deep well in the human spirit and soul and mind, and what people go through, and how they stand up to adversity, and how they laugh in the face of terrible calamity. That's why we go [to the movies]: to see people getting through their lives, trying to make their lives better. I don't even understand why we do it. What kind of a weird species are we that we like to pretend that things are happening to us that aren't happening at all? It's kind of astonishing, you know? It distinguishes us."
Encouraged by his first effort, Lucas is planning to direct his second feature, based on his play Small Tragedy, which he describes as being "about six amateur actors who get cast in a non-Equity production of Oedipus Rex." The Dying Gaul is still in need of a distributor. BSW