While assorted films will be showcased at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival, which gets underway on April 21 and runs through May 2, SHOOT provides a taste of the proceedings by tapping into two directors who are on opposite ends of the experience continuum when it comes to long-form fare and for that matter, the Tribeca Festival itself.
Alex Gibney is an Oscar-winning feature documentarian (Taxi to the Dark Side, which premiered at Tribeca in 2007) and now has three films on tap for screening at this year’s festival. Meanwhile Keith Bearden is making his feature directorial debut at Tribeca.
Both Bearden and Gibney reflected on their projects at Tribeca, the meaning of the film festival for them, and their prospects in commercialmaking.
Alex Gibney “It means a lot to me,” said Gibney regarding the Tribeca Film Festival. The director recalled that his documentary Taxi to the Dark Side had been rejected by the Sundance Film Festival as well as the Berlin Film Fest. “But Tribeca accepted the film which won the best documentary award there [in ’07]. That gave me a real shot in the arm when I needed it. The film went on to win the Oscar, which certainly vindicated Tribeca’s choice.”
Tribeca represented a most apropos venue for Taxi to the Dark Side given its subject matter. The poignant, unsettling film–written, produced and directed by Gibney–examines the torture practices of the U.S. in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, focusing on an innocent taxi driver in Afghanistan who was tortured and killed in ’02.
“The Tribeca Film Festival started very much in response to the 9/11 attacks in New York City,” related Gibney. “The festival is a celebration of the vitality of our American culture, a vitality that makes us who we are. That seemed to me a better response to the 9/11 attacks than some of the policies of Dick Cheney. And I felt that what Taxi to the Dark Side was about made it terribly important that it premiere at Tribeca.”
Now Gibney finds himself with an embarrassment of riches with three films he directed slated to debut at Tribeca this year: My Trip to Al-Qaeda, a documentary to be presented as part of Tribeca’s Encounters section, which offers original films that reflect pop culture and contemporary issues; a special event screening of a work in progress, an untitled film about former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer; and the documentary Freakonomics (Gibney directed a portion of this film), the closing gala premiere of the ’10 Tribeca Fest.
My Trip To Al-Qaeda is based on Lawrence Wright’s one-man play, which grew out of his Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Looming Tower.” Like the book and the play, the documentary explores journalist Wright’s quest to shed light on and define fundamentalist Islamic terrorists, as he comes to grips with the moral issues tied to that process and his struggle to maintain objectivity along the way.
Meanwhile the Spitzer documentary examines his rise and fall, revealing characters in this story who have not yet been revealed. “I always intended to have this film debut at Tribeca if they would accept it,” said Gibney. “Though it’s a national story, the heart of it is in New York.” Gibney noted that the documentary is pretty close to completion but not yet finished. The norm would be not to show the film in this state but Gibney elected to based on several factors.
For one, he took on the project in conjunction with Peter Elkind, a co-author of The Smartest Guys In The Room (which helped inspire Gibney’s lauded Enron documentary). Elkind’s new book on Spitzer is scheduled to come out the week the film screens at Tribeca. “We shared investigative duties on this,” said Gibney. “Some of what I uncovered is in Peter’s book, some of his work is in my film. I felt it was important to publicly plant the flag on the Spitzer story, to establish at Tribeca that this is the film on that subject. It seemed like the timing was important and right to debut the film even though it isn’t quite finished.”
And Freakonomics is based on the book “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Exposes the Hidden Side of Everything” by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Notable filmmakers each took on documentary adaptations of different chapters in the book, which was on the New York Times Best-seller list for more than two years. These documentarians included Gibney, Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), the team of Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, a.k.a. LOKI (Jesus Camp), and Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight). Filmmaker Seth Gordon (The King of Kong) directs the interstitial glue that meshes these chapters into a unified film. (See sidebar story for more details on the Gibney-directed segment of Freakonomics.)
The LOKI duo recently took on spot representation via New York production house Rabbit, and was profiled in our Up-And-Coming Directors feature in SHOOT ‘s Spring Directors Series (3/19). Gordon is handled for commercials by bicoastal/international Moxie Pictures. And Gibney too has commercial representation, via bicoastal Chelsea. Gibney told SHOOT that he is slated to embark on a project that will mark his spotmaking debut this summer.
Keith Bearden
Meet Monica Velour prompts us to meet up with Keith Bearden, who wrote and directed the film, which marks his theatrical feature debut.
“One of my prime goals all along was to make a feature film,” said Bearden who made his first directorial mark with a lauded short film, then dovetailed into European commercials, scored with another notable short, and then nurtured a script which has now brought him into independent moviemaking nirvana at a festival that holds special meaning for him.
“Along with Sundance, Tribeca is the top film festival around. To get recognition at Tribeca is great, and Tribeca is a good audience festival that has helped propel films to success,” related Bearden. “The biggest personal kick is that I am a New Yorker and to have my film premiere in my own backyard, at theaters I normally have to pay to get into, is special.”
Bearden made his initial directorial splash with the short film The Raftman’s Razor in 2005. Mixing visuals, humor and an off-center take on reality and bittersweet situations, the film took best short honors at the South By Southwest Festival (SXSW) as well as at fests in Seattle, Nantucket, Chicago and Montreal. The Raftman’s Razor played on PBS and broadcast TV worldwide, wound up in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection, and elicited an invite for Bearden to direct an anti-smoking PSA in France.
Bearden’s career as a commercialmaker picked up momentum in France, among the notable credits being the humorous “Apartment Sharing” for Brandt Washing Machines out of DDB Paris. “Apartment Sharing” contributed to Bearden being included in SHOOT’s 2008 New Director Showcase at the DGA Theatre in New York. He continues to helm ads in France, where he’s repped by Big Productions, Paris, his latest credit being a French magazine commercial featuring Paris Hilton bearing the brunt of a catfight over a handbag. Bearden has also landed stateside spot representation via bicoastal production house Skunk, and is repped in the U.K. by Annex.
In ’07, Bearden’s short film Train Town also generated buzz, taking a Silver Medal at the Chicago International Film Festival, playing at SXSW as well as other fests worldwide, and gaining broadcast time throughout Europe on Canal Plus.
“When I first established myself and started to do well, the goal was to move towards making a feature film,” recalled Bearden. “I wrote this script, a relatively inexpensive movie to make that I could pitch to people. I pushed and pushed and finally found some producers who made a genuine commitment to the project. Getting a Tribeca launch and securing Andrew Herwitz, a solid American sales rep for the film–he sold Waitress–represent major strides.”
Meet Monica Velour is characterized in the Tribeca Film Festival rundown as “a quirky comedy,” a description which gives Bearden pause. “The word ‘quirky’ is sometimes an excuse for a comedy not being all that funny. I prefer to think of Meet Monica Velour as a comedy with dramatic elements.”
The film centers on Tobe, a teenager (played by Dustin Ingram) who’s an orphan living with his grandfather. The teen has his share of weird obsessions, including an all consuming one over an adult film star from the 1970s and ’80s named Monica Velour (portrayed by Kim Cattrall). Through the Internet, he finds out where she lives and drives across the country to meet her. She lives in a trailer home in the Midwest and is in the midst of a very nasty child custody battle against her ex-husband.
“Tobe confronts the reality behind his fantasy,” related Bearden. “He’s innocent and naive, and Monica is pretty bitter.”
Beyond his film gaining further exposure and landing a distribution deal, Bearden hopes Meet Monica Velour will also advance his commercialmaking career in the U.S. “I’ve managed to do well in commercials in France with a language I don’t understand. Imagine what I could do in my own language. This film showcases me in this language. I feel great about the performances delivered by Kim Cattrall and Dustin Ingram.”
Meet Monica Velour is one of just 14 films selected for Tribeca’s aforementioned Encounters section.
