I would be telling a lie if I claimed to be a fan of westerns. I think I have seen my share although there are a great many classic westerns that I have not seen nor do I plan to see. Why is this? I think my expectations as to what a western should be are not in line with what most westerns are and this usually leads to a lackluster viewing experience.
All that being said I have seen a few that have made a lasting impression on me and oddly enough most of these films were released in recent years. The film -- The Proposition – for example, was an experience, much like 3:10 to Yuma that caught me completely by surprise.
I suppose all of this is a very roundabout way of saying that I don’t expect much from westerns and that coming across one that moves me is a special occasion. This is why I am writing now.
3:10 to Yuma is what I call a man’s man kind of movie. It’s the kind of movie that I cannot imagine many women watching and enjoying. In part this is because there are so few women in the film and in part because it’s a movie about quiet resolve, longing and regret and sticking to your guns. Which is not to say that I don’t think women face these issues as often as men do, it’s just that the cinematic solution for men is often to run off and do something terribly brave (read: stupid) in order to try and solve these issues while women make sure that the children don’t die of tuberculosis and that the herd are fed so that the men have something to come home to. I imagine someone has made the movie that focuses on the latter part but Yuma is concerned only with the former.
I make those snide comments about westerns because 3:10 to Yuma is quite different from most in many regards. The hero isn’t facing bandits who murdered his family or sinister lawmen who beat him and left him for dead. His problem is that he can’t make payments on the loan for his house and he’s going to lose his home and ranch. Unlike a film such as The Unforgiven our hero isn’t a former criminal, and more importantly, he’s never been an exceptional anything. He now faces a very normal kind of problem, he has to find some kind of risky way to get the money he needs. When a dangerous opportunity presents itself he has no choice but to take it.
I’m not a movie reviewer and I won't try to review the film here, I am sure it has already received the treatment it deserves. I did want to take a moment and write a little bit about how impressed I am by this film. It’s a simple story with few twists or big reveals. When you look at the cast, and I am sure the budget, it is apparent that this isn’t some small, independent film. It’s a remake of a classic Hollywood film, and yet, there is nothing that feels revamped or reworked here.
Perhaps my opinion would be different if I had seen the original, I can’t say. I can say that I have never had any desire to and I don’t imagine I will any time soon. The experience of watching this version of 3:10 to Yuma is exactly what I hope for each time I sit down to watch a movie. It’s an engrossing story that I can relate to and because of this it seems quite real. I found the moments later in the film, when the two characters tell each other things about themselves, to be both touching and compelling in a way that felt natural.
As a writer I am constantly striving to find a way to imbue my characters' speech with more meaning than what the words convey. I try and find ways to have actions remain consistent with the character's true nature (despite the words that come out of their mouths) and to inform the reader (or viewer) as to who these people really are. Yuma impressed me tremendously in regard to these two aspects, all the more so because the two actors shouldering this film are such big stars and because I already have distinct impressions of them because of their celebrity.
About halfway through the movie it occurred to me that however the film ended, whether Christian Bale’s character succeeded in getting Russell Crowe’s to the train station or not, really didn’t matter. It was an odd thought because, from a plot perspective, this is all this film is about. Does he do it or not? I think the point of the movie is this realization. I feel that to have this realization while watching (this strikes me as something you conclude after thinking about a film for a while) and to still be interested and invested in the characters is an amazing feat.
That, ultimately, is why I felt I should try and write a little something and say my piece about the movie. It’s a good film and from a creative point of view I find it very inspiring. I hope you do too.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Doing my part
This is just a brief post and not really related to making movies at all. In fact this post is all about watching movies.
Like most people who are interested in making movies I love watching them. Up until a few years ago I saw many, many movies each year in the theater. Then something happened. What happened I couldn’t say for sure, there was not one event that changed everything. I only know that one day going to the theater was no longer an option for me, it had become unbearable. For some time I believed it was because I had moved to Washington, DC, that the theaters I was going to were terrible and that the people here lack all of the social graces.
In some ways I think some of those points are true but as an article published in Empire Magazine makes quite clear these things are certainly not location specific.
In some of my more bitter moments I have thought of making a list of rules to try and share with the world, in order to help others to improve the movie-going experience. It looks as though some kind soul has done that part for me so now I shall do mine.
This is my attempt to help be part of the solution, read the list (I am in almost total agreement with it) and change your wicked ways!
http://www.empireonline.com/empireblog/Post.asp?id=112
Like most people who are interested in making movies I love watching them. Up until a few years ago I saw many, many movies each year in the theater. Then something happened. What happened I couldn’t say for sure, there was not one event that changed everything. I only know that one day going to the theater was no longer an option for me, it had become unbearable. For some time I believed it was because I had moved to Washington, DC, that the theaters I was going to were terrible and that the people here lack all of the social graces.
In some ways I think some of those points are true but as an article published in Empire Magazine makes quite clear these things are certainly not location specific.
In some of my more bitter moments I have thought of making a list of rules to try and share with the world, in order to help others to improve the movie-going experience. It looks as though some kind soul has done that part for me so now I shall do mine.
This is my attempt to help be part of the solution, read the list (I am in almost total agreement with it) and change your wicked ways!
http://www.empireonline.com/empireblog/Post.asp?id=112
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Sullivan on Sullivan
Perhpaps it's bit premature to start such a thing but I felt a bit inspired today to do a little bit of sharing. So here it is, part one of what will surely become a terribly long and self-indulgent interview series where I ask myself strange and silly questions.
At what point did you realize you wanted to become a filmmaker?
I realized that I wanted to become a filmmaker after I saw the movie Clerks. I was 15 or 16 at the time, I can’t recall for sure. I do remember that when I was watching the movie and after it ended I thought for the first time that I wanted to make movies. It was odd because I didn’t have an idea for a movie for a very, very long time after. I just felt like I could make a movie like Clerks, and that it would be fun to do it. Several years later I found our that Kevin Smith had a very similar experience watching Richard Linklater’s film, Slacker and that was kind of neat.
Why do you think you had a similar reaction to Kevin Smith?
I think I had a similar reaction because Clerks was quite different than most movies I had seen before. I watched a lot of movies, the video store in my town was very small and the selection was quite limited. I went to the movie theater some but Independent films were not really shown in Vermont much at the time and most likely I would not have gone to see them even if they were.
So most of what I watched were big Hollywood releases and just the really cheesy B-movies that our video store was filled with. I had never seen a Woody Allen or a Robert Altman movie at that point, so for me, Clerks was a pretty new kind of movie. Which I think is why when I saw it I thought, “This doesn’t look so hard.”
The subject matter of Clerks must have played a large part as well.
It really did. I worked a crappy job and I spent a lot of time with my friends sitting around and talking about nonsense. This movie really got me on two fronts. It appealed to me in terms of relating completely to the main character and his story as well as being a movie that didn’t look or feel like most movies I had seen. It was in black and white but not in this artsy, dim and out of focus way. The characters spoke in this very unnatural way yet the things they were talking about and the amount they cursed made it seem strangely familiar. It was an odd experience because I felt like I was watching a movie that I could have made with my friends had any of us owned a video camera. I think that was what really struck me after watching this movie, that you could make a movie about things as normal as everyday life working as a cashier. That was a really big revelation for me.
So after this realization what came next?
What happened next was a very long period where I thought about movies and how I’d like to make them. Other than thinking about this almost nothing else happened for about at decade.
You went to college, you didn’t take any courses while you were there or decide to major in film?
I didn’t do either of those things. In part it was because the first college I went to was very small and it didn’t offer any film courses. After I transferred my sophomore year I could have taken a few classes in film but the program was still too small to major in the subject.
Why didn’t you take any classes?
The honest answer is I was lazy. They offered one intro class and it was at eight in the morning. If you wanted to take any other film classes you had to take this intro first. I lived at home, about half and hour from the school and I had to park about twenty minutes or so from the campus. This would have meant getting up by quarter of seven at the latest and at that time getting up by nine was an impressive feat for me. Looking back it might have been the best thing for me, but who can say? I never took a film class because it was too damn early, it’s sad but that’s why.
So despite this long break from your realization that you could make a movie to your first foray you remained focused on this goal?
I think so. I would be lying if I said my interest was constant though. I was very much interested in my major in college but once it was made clear to me that the only future I could have in that field required a PhD I decided that I didn’t really want that kind of career. I wrote a bit during college, just scraps of ideas and things in the back of notebooks, usually during class, and I was really always most interested in dialog.
Yet you remained convinced that your future lay in film/video?
Not at all. I was, and still am to a large degree, quite uncertain what I will be doing for work in the future. After I was married it seemed like the smart thing to do to focus my energies on writing. Largely this seemed smart because I have always loved to write and I started writing for myself when I was pretty young. Like I said I never really finished much but it was something that remained constant throughout. What made me quite sure that I wanted to be a filmmaker, because I should mention I had never done much of anything other than think about it up to this point, was when I was given my first video camera for my 26 birthday.
This was a turning point for you.
It was. The reason was pretty simple: this was the first time that I got to test things out, even if it was just me and the camera. Prior to having the camera in my hands I had never really tried to set up a scene before and although I had tried to imagine how I would put sequences together and tell a story visually, it wasn’t until I started editing footage that all of these things became very real to me. At that point, once I started putting together small projects, I felt confident that I had some skill in this area and even better that I enjoyed doing it.
So since then you’ve done only a handful of small projects…
That’s true. The first that I did was a short video where I was the only person to appear on screen and it was really a one-man show. I had come across an ad for a small and kind of far out film festival and thought I would try submitting it.
How did that go?
Okay I suppose, it really isn’t a serious film festival, I think they show something like twelve short films and maybe forty people go. I didn’t actually attend, which is kind of a shame because it appears that everyone who submits and attends gets an award of some kind, but I really was just interested in getting something completed.
Having a deadline was important to you.
It was because I was doing the same thing I had been with my writing, I would do little bits and tinker around but I wasn’t creating anything that I could show to someone I didn’t know and have them get it. All of the clips I was doing I was sharing with my friends and family but none of it would have stood alone. So I decided I would finish this twelve minute short and have it stand on it’s own.
Did it?
I think it does. It’s not very good in terms of how it’s put together, the lighting is beyond terrible and one of my split-screen shots completely fell apart with the last render I did. It’s odd because I had scenes where there were two or three versions of myself on screen and I would test the material by rendering it to DVD and then watching it on my television. Everything was fine until that final render, which I did not check on my television, and I can only imagine how bad it was when they blew it up on the screen for the festival.
In spite of all that I still like it because I feel like it does have a story and the first minute has some interesting split-screen work that I just came up with because I felt the footage wasn’t terribly interesting. As far as a first effort goes I am still pleased with it.
At what point did you realize you wanted to become a filmmaker?
I realized that I wanted to become a filmmaker after I saw the movie Clerks. I was 15 or 16 at the time, I can’t recall for sure. I do remember that when I was watching the movie and after it ended I thought for the first time that I wanted to make movies. It was odd because I didn’t have an idea for a movie for a very, very long time after. I just felt like I could make a movie like Clerks, and that it would be fun to do it. Several years later I found our that Kevin Smith had a very similar experience watching Richard Linklater’s film, Slacker and that was kind of neat.
Why do you think you had a similar reaction to Kevin Smith?
I think I had a similar reaction because Clerks was quite different than most movies I had seen before. I watched a lot of movies, the video store in my town was very small and the selection was quite limited. I went to the movie theater some but Independent films were not really shown in Vermont much at the time and most likely I would not have gone to see them even if they were.
So most of what I watched were big Hollywood releases and just the really cheesy B-movies that our video store was filled with. I had never seen a Woody Allen or a Robert Altman movie at that point, so for me, Clerks was a pretty new kind of movie. Which I think is why when I saw it I thought, “This doesn’t look so hard.”
The subject matter of Clerks must have played a large part as well.
It really did. I worked a crappy job and I spent a lot of time with my friends sitting around and talking about nonsense. This movie really got me on two fronts. It appealed to me in terms of relating completely to the main character and his story as well as being a movie that didn’t look or feel like most movies I had seen. It was in black and white but not in this artsy, dim and out of focus way. The characters spoke in this very unnatural way yet the things they were talking about and the amount they cursed made it seem strangely familiar. It was an odd experience because I felt like I was watching a movie that I could have made with my friends had any of us owned a video camera. I think that was what really struck me after watching this movie, that you could make a movie about things as normal as everyday life working as a cashier. That was a really big revelation for me.
So after this realization what came next?
What happened next was a very long period where I thought about movies and how I’d like to make them. Other than thinking about this almost nothing else happened for about at decade.
You went to college, you didn’t take any courses while you were there or decide to major in film?
I didn’t do either of those things. In part it was because the first college I went to was very small and it didn’t offer any film courses. After I transferred my sophomore year I could have taken a few classes in film but the program was still too small to major in the subject.
Why didn’t you take any classes?
The honest answer is I was lazy. They offered one intro class and it was at eight in the morning. If you wanted to take any other film classes you had to take this intro first. I lived at home, about half and hour from the school and I had to park about twenty minutes or so from the campus. This would have meant getting up by quarter of seven at the latest and at that time getting up by nine was an impressive feat for me. Looking back it might have been the best thing for me, but who can say? I never took a film class because it was too damn early, it’s sad but that’s why.
So despite this long break from your realization that you could make a movie to your first foray you remained focused on this goal?
I think so. I would be lying if I said my interest was constant though. I was very much interested in my major in college but once it was made clear to me that the only future I could have in that field required a PhD I decided that I didn’t really want that kind of career. I wrote a bit during college, just scraps of ideas and things in the back of notebooks, usually during class, and I was really always most interested in dialog.
Yet you remained convinced that your future lay in film/video?
Not at all. I was, and still am to a large degree, quite uncertain what I will be doing for work in the future. After I was married it seemed like the smart thing to do to focus my energies on writing. Largely this seemed smart because I have always loved to write and I started writing for myself when I was pretty young. Like I said I never really finished much but it was something that remained constant throughout. What made me quite sure that I wanted to be a filmmaker, because I should mention I had never done much of anything other than think about it up to this point, was when I was given my first video camera for my 26 birthday.
This was a turning point for you.
It was. The reason was pretty simple: this was the first time that I got to test things out, even if it was just me and the camera. Prior to having the camera in my hands I had never really tried to set up a scene before and although I had tried to imagine how I would put sequences together and tell a story visually, it wasn’t until I started editing footage that all of these things became very real to me. At that point, once I started putting together small projects, I felt confident that I had some skill in this area and even better that I enjoyed doing it.
So since then you’ve done only a handful of small projects…
That’s true. The first that I did was a short video where I was the only person to appear on screen and it was really a one-man show. I had come across an ad for a small and kind of far out film festival and thought I would try submitting it.
How did that go?
Okay I suppose, it really isn’t a serious film festival, I think they show something like twelve short films and maybe forty people go. I didn’t actually attend, which is kind of a shame because it appears that everyone who submits and attends gets an award of some kind, but I really was just interested in getting something completed.
Having a deadline was important to you.
It was because I was doing the same thing I had been with my writing, I would do little bits and tinker around but I wasn’t creating anything that I could show to someone I didn’t know and have them get it. All of the clips I was doing I was sharing with my friends and family but none of it would have stood alone. So I decided I would finish this twelve minute short and have it stand on it’s own.
Did it?
I think it does. It’s not very good in terms of how it’s put together, the lighting is beyond terrible and one of my split-screen shots completely fell apart with the last render I did. It’s odd because I had scenes where there were two or three versions of myself on screen and I would test the material by rendering it to DVD and then watching it on my television. Everything was fine until that final render, which I did not check on my television, and I can only imagine how bad it was when they blew it up on the screen for the festival.
In spite of all that I still like it because I feel like it does have a story and the first minute has some interesting split-screen work that I just came up with because I felt the footage wasn’t terribly interesting. As far as a first effort goes I am still pleased with it.
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