Probably the most fantastical designer of the last thirty years, Thierry Mugler is the godfather of dominatrix high fashion. He turns real-live women into comic book characters on the runway. No smoke and mirrors, no CGI, there's no way to deceive you, watching these models is an invitation to shit your pants in the face of awesome. There is always a way to do it bigger and better. Its all in how much commitment you have to sewing a million bugles on a dress and endure the smell of plastic. Here's some visual stimulation to get your next fantasy script going.
The famous Harley dress, that simultaneously empowers and (controversially) objectifies the woman. (ride her hard) ---------->
We also talked about the inherent opportunity for smaller studios, free of the weight these mega corporations carry, to be nimble and react to the quality products that are sure to change hands as studios try and find buyers. A great example of this that Don gave was Summit Entertainment’s pickup of the “Twilight” book series from Paramount in turnaround.
From a satisfyingly specific interview with Don Starr (CEO of Grosvenor Park (Defiance, P.S. I Love You, Righteous Kill). I want to read Part 2. Thanks to The Screenwriters League for the tipoff.
(So this is the start of a technique I'm using to blog more consistently. This is The Fix, where I talk about something that inspires me creatively at the moment.)
I started mucking around the interweb about Danny Boyle based off of the interview I posted from Variety, and youtube handed me some fine videos of the man giving some real sincere insight on filmmaking. I love this man. He gets me to go all night! (Writing that is! Your dirty mind, he has like a 20 year old kid or something!)
When the girls on Charm School go into Sharon Osbourne's "office" what kind of work do they expect us to imagine she's doing? I'm sure she's grading some classy essays like a diligent headmaster.
I recently finished reading a book called "The Devil's Candy", by Julie Salamon. It chronicles the production of "The Bonfire of the Vanities" directed and produced by Brian De Palma. I'd never seen "Bonfire" before but it has a reputation as the infamous bomb of the 80's. The book does a pretty fantastic job of methodically narrating the evolution of a box-office disaster, mainly by inadvertanly pointing out that nothing at the time ever seemed to be terribly wrong. If I was asked after reading the book why "Bonfire" went off the rails, the answer is totally obfuscated. This was no "Lost in La Mancha". It was no one person's fault, and everyone was either just doing their job or acting with the best of intentions. Because the plot totally focuses on racism between the Black of the Bronx and the White of the WASP, its a totally un-P.C. story. How does the studio handle it? This is an offensive story, but we don't want to offend anyone! So lets switch up some races here and there. Oh did we end up making it MORE offensive by trying to cover up the fact that we were offended in the first place? Oops. We were only trying to make you happy by casting the happy Tom Hanks as a total waste of space banker character. Because that's as believable as having Angelina Jolie play the cheek-pinching grandmother in a Christmas movie. Actually, that would be kinda funny. Somebody do that.
But back to the point. The crux of the production is that it went about $20 million over budget and hit an all-time high cost for its time at $50 million. With that much money at stake, everyone was doing double-takes, looking over their shoulder, forgetting the unity and concept of the movie because it had to be painstakingly separated into financial details: could this set be removed, could this actor be replaced, could this line be changed. And while that's all rice and beans in film production, the higher the budget the higher the stakes, and the more the fear. And when there's fear in a production, the film disappears. Movies are incredible in that while being these canvases of smoke and mirrors, these imperceptible illusions, they still reveal an incredible amount. The camera still, among all the lies, finds a way to tell the truth.
If you see the movie "Bonfire of the Vanities" it's so evident. This stamp of fear is practically everywhere. After 500 pages of reading about the making, you kind of forget the movie actually exists, so it's very strange to see it and recognize that everything on the page is seemingly true. The star-mongering, the excessive, stereotypical set dressing, the blatant camera choices, a De Palma staple, but clearly trying to add depth where the foundation of the movie crumbled away. Nothing fits, the movie's shallow and confusing and above all else, is more afraid of its material than anything I've seen in recent memory (for the full plot click here). It is so afraid in fact, that its twist of real issues into Hollywood ones really IS offensive. By trying to appease everyone, it appeased no one, and grossed about $10 million at the BO.
The book does not end happily, predicting a scary road ahead. "Bonfire" tanked due to its excessive spending and at the moment it was a lesson to the studios to keep their money in their pockets. But memories are fleeting and the afterward makes a point that the average budget jumped to $54.8 million in 2000 when in 1980 it was $9.5 million. A mere couple years later or so and Spiderman 3 smashed records by costing $300 million. And I feel like part of the system, part of the problem, because the movie I'm working on now is very big as well. Now that the economy is pretty much imploding on itself like a leaky stress ball, this budget inflation is a goddamn issue. Movies will ALWAYS exist for Americans, but if we're to make any money doing this anymore hopefully there's some change on the way, maybe similar to what happened in the early 70's, when the giants fell to let the little guys show their guns for a bit.
Hopefully slow ticket prices will remind executives to watch their material. Hopefully large chains will be forced to lower their ticket prices, movies shouldn't be and never were a luxury for the public. Hopefully there will be much needed reform in distribution. Film festivals have got to survive somehow. And hopefully the star's asking prices will finally go down to allow all of this to happen. Hopefully I'll still be able to work here.
Working at a studio, passing by big productions every day, I have to say it is amazing how quality becomes subjective when there is a lot of cash to spare. The more I hang around all of this, the more appealing Danny Boyle's words become:
The more money I take that is not restricted, which technically gives you freedom, equipment and more days, the more the spirit of the film dies, falls flat... These instincts you have when filming sometimes are often indulgent bullshit. You feel like a spoiled prince with a hundred people asking you what you want.
Well, clearly, I need to make a movie already. And stop philosophizing on one.
I have something to admit (other than turning to Paris Hilton's show every week, not helping at all): I'm a big Sarah Brightman fan. I've always been. I grew up in a house that played Opera and Classical music during lazy afternoons. I played classical piano for eleven years. I guess I naturally gravitated to the pop-opera that Brightman produced when I was a lass in the 90's without much musical background other than the local classic rock station.
Sarah Brightman is a funny sort of thing. She stopped being cool to me once I grew up and realized the rest of the world doesn't really recognize her (plus she does all these Christmas recordings... shudder). She's not really what all the kids listen to in the pop culture sinkhole that is high school.
But Darren Lynn Bousman saw hope in what I had given up on. He cast the original Christine in his gothic wonderland "Repo: The Genetic Opera." I didn't know until recently seeing the trailer, and I pretty much flipped my shit. She's singing her usual rock-opera but now around grisly gore and legal murder. Her corsets are not sky blue but black, on her head is velvet hood instead of a crown of crystals, and her eyes glimmer with digital machinery.
Here's my former favorite star, stepping into my world. I'm not much of a goth (can't afford the accessories), but I have always been by far more comfortable in black. It is undeniably satisfying to see proof that this faded star, pushed to the back of musical culture by her own obsession for traditionalism, is now willing to step into a new era. Sarah Brightman is cool again. She loves horror just like I do. And I'm for the first time in a long time proud to say that, yes, I am a fan of Sarah Brightman. I actually have all her albums back to when she first sang with Andrea Bocelli. I'm a total dork. I've even seen her in concert. Yes, I went with my mom and was surrounded by old women. I admit it.
The world she builds around her is really quite funny. Her persona is swelled into something of a goddess. She performs wearing tiaras and dresses with a train the length of the stage. It has to be theatrically moved by twenty plainclothed dancers. She's always got those dancers... bowing. She's lifted on wires 90% if the time, 30 feet above the stage, as if her body along with her voice can defy gravity (she's lifted on wires in "Repo" too and I started laughing). She's also a fan of the giant swing thing as well. Basically, going to a concert of hers is equivalent to going to see the Dali Lama or something. You might as well walk up to her and kiss her feet and ask for a blessing. It's kind of hysterical how grandiose she tries to make herself. What's amazing is that in "Repo", she's the same star she always was. She's just a dark princess instead of an angel. Actually, in "Repo", the dark princess fantasia does everything to bolster her charm through the roof: she is, along with Anthony Stewart Head (who I could watch for fifteen hours and not get tired of) the saving grace of the movie.
It's too bad she's not onscreen often and is mostly just an image plastered on walls advertising "Blind Mag in concert". She only uses her awesome mechanical eyes once, which are totally sweet and an element that can only be achieved in film rather than onstage. That's where "Repo" kind of misses out. I liked it a lot, but it was rather weak. It really improved in the last half hour, where the songs became much more memorable and the theater actors had more screen time, and the drama finally cranked to eleven. Other than that the movie's budget was showing, it felt kind of small and underperformed. A lot of blame is to be put on the original story and music: I haven't seen the original opera but it often sounded clunky and vulgar, and english opera sounds bad enough, they didn't try so hard to make english sound any better to the ears with well placed wording. It felt like many numbers were underfilmed. They needed more blocking and choreography to make them seem grandiose rather than lots of intercutting steadicam shots (an entire musical number took place in the backseat of a towncar. The best I can say about it is that it sucked).
And about story, the film medium simply asks for a different one than is required on stage. I know nothing can be done about it, but when I heard the movie's fantastic backdrop, a dystopian future where the Corporation can legalize murder, I knew there's a much more social story here than the personal one the stage has to focus on. I found myself asking big questions: isn't there more than one Repo Man? What about underground resistance groups? Where's the government? If this movie is about a world where organs are reposessed, can we focus on that rather than this father/daughter overdue love triangle thing because this is the director of SAW movies and I wanna see my main character in that predicament? To be fair, Blind Mag IS in this predicament but you know, she's unfortunately a minor character, which kinda sucks. Its hard to change original source material, but I'm sorry, this felt kinda diluted all across the board. There were opportunities to make the film as bold as the Blind Mag's eyeshadow makeup but those were missed for the most part, as the movie was saddled with backstory about this love affair for a chick we only see in grainy holograms.
It sounds like I didn't enjoy myself at all, but in fact it was still a good time and I encourage everyone to go because there's plenty of fun to be had. Also, I encourage all support for this kind of alternative movie-making. It's definitely something new and different and I'm all for that. The songs do get quite catchy and the costume and set dec are awesome. As stated earlier, Anthony Stewart Head is positively kickass and when he and Sarah Brightman are actually together for the five seconds that they are it's like Robert Deniro and Al Pacino in "Heat". When you see that electricity you kind of realize what the rest of the movie is missing.
Plus, Paris Hilton's face falls off. That's something I won't see on MTV.
The song above, "Chromaggia" is the only opera-like song in "Repo", but it is also the best.
The 2012 teaser was internationally released today ahead of "Quantum of Solace", the myriad of posters for which I pass by every single day* (Sony owns the Bond license) ...
It was neat to see these few shots develop from basic blue blocks into what you see today, the inner workings of which are absolutely imperceptible to untrained eyes.
By the way, before the release of the trailer the top search for "2012" turned up Sarah Palin.
*No seriously there are three 007 posters in front of the elevators and 20 posters lining the Sony store and 3 giant towering billboards on the lot all advertising the same thing.
This new video from my good friend from NYU, Stephen Neary, forced me to break my blogging silence. And good thing too! The guilt was getting kind of old. As Burbanked put it, a week is like four months in the blogging world.
“The sooner we have these conversations in the family and as a society,” said Dr. Manning, the economist, “the sooner we can focus on core values, and have a more realistic dialogue about the meaning of happiness and money.” The New York Times discusses it.
This article (10 silliest bits of advice to ignore when running a business) from a site targeting small business owners is just as relevant to people looking to work in Entertainment. The theory of success works in both worlds, after all, business is business.
Amazingly enough, such classes are not offered in College either. Who needs to learn practical stuff in college anyways? Pfft.
New York University was an amazing experience. Those four years informed me as a person and as an artist. I emerged tougher and more driven with a formidible portfolio, degree, and many classic memories, but the school is out of touch, often fueled by fantasy. For the most expensive private institution in the United States, it doesn't do anything to inform its students of the reality it is condemning them to.
I have way too much to say about Film School. So much so that I can't pack it all into an article right here right now. The worth of Film School is a double-edged sword, a love-hate relationship, a shifting tide, the wax-wane of the moon, insert other ambivalent metaphors here. I will leave the subject for now, but opinions will bubble up around here every once in a while, as they always do.
Probably the most fantastical designer of the last thirty years, Thierry Mugler is the godfather of dominatrix high fashion. He turns real-live women into comic book characters on the runway. No smoke and mirrors, no CGI, there's no way to deceive you, watching these models is an invitation to shit your pants in the face of awesome. There is always a way to do it bigger and better. Its all in how much commitment you have to sewing a million bugles on a dress and endure the smell of plastic. Here's some visual stimulation to get your next fantasy script going.
His Official Site.
