Director Barbara Kopple, a two-time Best Feature Documentary Oscar winner (Harlan County USA, American Dream), has been a film festival circuit mainstay and her latest effort, Running From Crazy, is no exception, having debuted back in January at the Sundance Film Festival and now making its way to the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, which began on Wednesday (4/17) and runs through April 28.
The festival exposure never gets old for Kopple who is particularly gratified to return to the Tribeca event. “It’s New York, which is my hood. That means so much to me. It’s where I’m from. I’ve always been a supporter of Tribeca. I’m on the advisory board. I’ve been a juror whenever they asked me. I love Geoff Gilmore [Tribeca’s chief creative officer] and Genna Terranova, head of programming there. I was literally screaming for joy when I found out that Running From Crazy was selected for Tribeca.”
Running From Crazy introduces us to actress Mariel Hemingway, granddaughter of legendary author Ernest Hemingway, as she examines the mental illness and suicide that colors her family history and tries to avert that fate for herself and her daughters. There have been seven suicides in the Hemingway family, including that of Ernest who shot himself in the head in 1961, and Mariel’s sister Margaux Hemingway who died of a drug overdose in 1996. Mixing in remarkable archival footage of the three Hemingway sisters–Mariel, Margaux and Joan (a.k.a. Muffet)–Running from Crazy captures the inner workings of a family and in turn the courage it takes to face the past and change one’s future. There’s footage of Margaux in 1984 retracing the steps of her grandfather, interviewing her father, being together with Muffet. “We get to know Margaux, learn who she is as a person and see her rise and fall,” related Kopple.
Mariel Hemingway is integral to Running From Crazy in that she is, said Kopple, “very open, everything comes out because she has a higher purpose, to shed light on suicide and mental illness.” The documentary shares her touching reunion with Muffet who was in and out of mental hospitals for years, and a look at the self-help techniques used by Mariel Hemingway to help overcome depression.
Kopple didn’t initiate the project but rather it gravitated towards her. “I was asked to do this film which can sometimes be the best way,” recalled the director. “I remember being asked to do the Mike Tyson Film [Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson]. Never in a million years would I have thought back then of doing a documentary on Mike Tyson. But I got the chance and it opened up a whole new interesting world I wouldn’t have encountered otherwise.”
Similarly for Running From Crazy, Kopple related, “I hadn’t thought of doing a film on mental illness. But I was immediately intrigued when presented with the opportunity. Everyone thinks they know about the Hemingway family but they don’t. They only have this surface sensiblity of it. I met with Mariel and loved her right away, seeing how important it was for her to be able to tell this story, to break the family cycle of self-destruction and for others to learn from that.”
Running From Crazy adds to a Kopple filmography that beyond the two aforementioned Oscar winning documentaries and the Tyson film includes such notable docs as Shut Up & Sing (co-directed with Cecilia Peck), Wild Man Blues, Bagels, Borscht and Brotherhood–Allen Ginsberg, A Century of Women, Woodstock ’94, and forays into dramatic narrative, perhaps most notably for the “Documentary” episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, which earned Kopple a DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Series Television.
Kopple has also been a pioneer of sorts in terms of documentary filmmakers diversifying into commercials. She extended her reach into the ad arena back in 1996, joining Nonfiction Unlimited for spot representation, helming assorted jobs over the years, including work in Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign. “I was the second documentary filmmaker Nonfiction signed and I’ve learned to enjoy immensely the discipline of weaving people’s stories into a minute or 30 seconds,” related Kopple. “The production is so intense, done within such a tight timeframe, and the gratification of seeing the final work is so immediate, much quicker than a feature documentary. As a filmmaker you want to be challenged–every story you do whether it’s long form, fiction or a spot, there’s always a wonderful surprise because you don’t know exactly where the journey will take you and what you will learn from the experience.”
This Exquisite Forest Featured in Tribeca’s Storyscapes transmedia section is This Exquisite Forest, a piece that was originally installed in the Tate Modern museum in London last summer and continues its run there for the next couple of months or so. Inspired by the surrealist game “exquisite corpse” and its idea of collaborative creation, This Exquisite Forest allows visitors to create short animations right in their web browsers. Other users may build on the animation at any point or start a new branch for others to build on, creating a collection of navigable, branching narratives resembling trees that grow as more artists contribute. On display at Tate Modern is a fully immersive forest that visitors can enter and view the varied storylines contained within the branches of the trees. A more portable version of this installation is slated for Tribeca, with visitors also having the capability of creating and adding to the artful narrative.
Produced by Google and Tate Modern, This Exquisite Forest was conceived by director Chris Milk of @radical.media and Google creative technologist/data visualization artist Aaron Koblin. Milk described This Exquisite Forest as “a two-part piece–the physical installation and the online component.” The latter lends the potential of perpetuity with a life on the web that will go beyond the physical exhibit at Tate Modern or Tribeca. “It’s an ongoing project, an experiment in what kind of stories can come out of this unique form of collaborative visual dialogue that we’ve built,” related Milk. Furthermore, there’s a musical tool with which participants can score their branches in the forest, making for a visual and aural storytelling experience.
And in the big picture, noted Milk, what’s being built in This Exquisite Forest is not just artwork but also a complex social network bringing people together in collaboration.
Speaking of positive collaborative relationships, consider the track record of Milk and Koblin which includes creating interactive music videos “The Johnny Cash Project” and Arcade Fire’s “The Wilderness Downtown,” two of the three honorees in the AICP’s Next Awards Website/Microsite category a couple of years ago. At the time, Next jury member Dustin Callif, digital executive producer, Tool of North America, described the two clips as representing “the next iteration of music videos, reflecting what can be realized by teaming a storyteller/filmmaker [Milk] with a creative technologist [Koblin]. Both interactive videos were directed by Milk, with Milk and Koblin serving as creative directors.
Indeed the two clips contributed to a redefining of the music video discipline. The Arcade Fire clip centers on its single “We Used to Wait” from their album “The Suburbs.” Deploying Google Maps and Street-view for Google Chrome Experiments, the video takes a personalized approach by enabling users to input (to the film-dedicated website www.thewildernessdowntown.com) an address from their childhood which then places them at the center of the film’s story. Viewers could see themselves in the film as they ran through the streets of their old neighborhood and finally reached their childhood home. This was tied very closely to the song’s lyrics to make for a moving emotional experience. At the end of the film, the viewer was urged to write a letter to his or her young self. Within days, the site received some 20 million hits and 3 million unique views.
“The Johnny Cash Project” was a web-only video with visuals set to the song “Ain’t No Grave.” Milk recalled of the Cash video, “We built a website where fans could choose one single frame of that video’s archival footage and then draw that frame. Those frames got aggregated and curated into different versions, showing us what a global community of passionate people could do together. One of the most interesting parts of that project was how people would try to change the direction of the narrative within that one single frame. We’d have Johnny Cash on a train track. In one frame, the track would turn into a stairway to heaven. Or Johnny would have angel wings. In seeing these little flashes of creative inspiration, we wanted to try to figure out how to expand the opportunity for creative inspiration–it was hard to fully change the direction of the narrative with someone else coming in with his or her vision one-eighth of a second later from one frame to the next….This Exquisite Forest sprung from that desire to do more, offering the chance to create a lot of different narratives branching out in different directions as they go forward in time. What we’ve been getting is a cornucopia of styles and stories, from the abstract to the very literal.”
Milk views the internet as “an interactive canvas–whether it be for a video game, an app, an interactive installation or sculptoral piece on the wall of a museum. There’s an actual conversation that happens between the work and the viewer–and from that, storytelling methods can evolve. For a very long time, stories dating back to the campfire all the way to modern television have the most part been one-directional. What we’re opening up now is a two-directional channel. Existing platforms have their models–a half-hour sitcom, an hourlong drama, a miniseries on television. Feature films have a structure. But in an interactive medium, no one has any idea what the model is–there are compelling two-way stories to be told in the medium. You open up not only a dialogue between the work and the viewer but a construct where there’s a larger conversation among all the viewers–moreso than ‘The Johnny Cash Project’ where there was a basic story framework that I established with everyone building toward that goal of having it all illustrated from frame one to the very end. But with This Exquisite Forest, there’s no rigid container. The trees keep sprouting, growing in different directions as dictated by the contributors. That’s a scary thing for a storyteller in certain respects. How do you tell a compelling story where everyone is trying to tell a story simultaneously. It’s a great collaborative challenge.”
As for what’s next on Milk’s agenda, he continues to be handled by @radical.media for commercials, videos and branded content. He recently designed a live show for Beck in the form of a reimagineering of theater in the round where the performer is rotating in one direction and the audience is revolving in the opposite direction, accompanied by a 170-piece orchestra with instruments surrounding the audience and being heard from different directions–violins at 6 o’clock, guitars at 12 o’clock and so on. With facial tracking and a 360-degree camera perspective, a robotic dolly, and binaural sound, Milk fashioned an immersive experience which can be applied to a live concert or enjoyed on a website.
On the long-form feature front, Milk has a linear, visceral narrative character piece in the works titled Biterroot, with Nick Nolte attached as the star. Milk hopes to begin shooting that feature in September. Further down the road, the director is developing an interactive, full-length transmedia feature with the concept album “Rome” (by Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi) as the soundtrack.
Lineup Among the other films at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival from directors with commercialmaking affiliations are:
• Adult World, written and directed by Scott Coffey. (USA) – World Premiere, Narrative. Amy (Emma Roberts) is na๏ฟฝve, awkward and anxious to get her poetry career off of the ground. She begrudgingly accepts a job at the local sex shop, Adult World, while pursuing a surefire kick-start for her success: a mentorship with reclusive writer Rat Billings (the hilarious John Cusack). As Amy’s world melds with that of Adult World, she slowly learns that inspiration can be found in the most improbable places. (Coffey directs commercials via Food Chain Films)
• Almost Christmas, directed by Phil Morrison, written by Melissa James Gibson. (USA) – World Premiere, Narrative. Two French Canadian ne’er-do-wells travel to NYC with a scheme to get rich quick selling Xmas trees. Easygoing charmer Rene (Paul Rudd) clashes with misanthropic ex-con Dennis (Paul Giamatti). This odd couple must make an honest go of it in this fresh buddy comedy. (Morrison directs spots and branded content via Epoch Films.)
• At Any Price, directed by Ramin Bahrani, written by Hallie Elizabeth Newton and Bahrani. (USA) – NY Premiere, Narrative. The robust farming industry of Iowa is the backdrop for this father-and-son story. Dean Wipple (Zac Efron) longs to be a professional racecar driver. His father Henry (Dennis Quaid) plans to make him the heir to their family farming empire. When Henry’s ethics and expansion practices come under fire, the family must unify or risk losing everything. A Sony Pictures Classics release. (Bahrani is repped for spots and branded content by Moxie Pictures.)
• Oxyana, directed by Sean Dunne. (USA) – World Premiere. Oceana, West Virginia–known as “Oxyana” after its residents’ epidemic abuse of OxyContin–is a tragically real example of the insidious spread of drug dependency throughout the country. Set against an abandoned coal mining landscape to the melodies of Deer Tick’s haunting score, this unflinchingly intimate documentary probes the lives of Oceana’s afflicted and exposes the day-to-day experience of a town living in the harsh grip of addiction. (Dunne directs commercials and branded content at Nonfiction Unlimited)
• Prince Avalanche, directed and written by David Gordon Green. (USA) – NY Premiere, Narrative. Alvin (Paul Rudd) and Lance (Emile Hirsch) spend the summer of 1988 repainting a highway in a fire-damaged forest. The isolation quickly wears thin on Lance, yet an unlikely friendship emerges within their cutting jibes and forced reconciliations to meet the long road that lies ahead. (Green’s spotmaking roost is Chelsea Pictures.)
Shorts The Tribeca shorts lineup involving directors with spotmaking ties include:
• Likeness, directed and written by Rodrigo Prieto (USA) – World Premiere. A young girl battles with body image and enters the world of eating disorders where worth rises as weight falls. This marks the directorial debut short film of noted cinematographer Prieto (Argo, the recently wrapped The Wolf of Wall Street directed by Martin Scorsese). Little Minx and Idealogue, two companies that previously produced the web series Little Minx Exquisite Corpse, reunited on this project, partnering with Candescent Films. (Prieto is on the Little Minx roster.)
• Playdate, directed by David Shane (USA) – World Premiere. Paul and Kate excitedly arrive for dinner at the home of a cool couple from their kids’ school, only to discover an interloping third couple already in attendance as playground politics boil over. Playdate marks Shane’s first career short film. He wrote Playdate with Scott Organ who also portrays Paul in the film. Known for his broad range of comedy in the advertising arena, Shane wanted to go a bit darker in terms of humor for Playdate. He reveled in feedback from Sharon Badal, Tribeca’s head short film programmer, who told him that she loved the film and hated all the characters in it. (Shane directs spots and branded content via production house O Positive Films; for more on Playdate, see SHOOTonline, 4/12.)
• Space Cadet, directed by Paul Riccio (USA) – World Premiere. Paul, a distracted 15 year old is asked to help prepare dinner but nearly blows up the place instead. When his hippie parents tell him to see a shrink, Paul’s self-esteem plummets but he pulls out of the funk thanks to a burglar, a monster pot plant and his quick thinking. (Riccio is a commercial director represented by Sandwick Media.)
