Editor’s Note: This is the second installment of SHOOT‘s two-part coverage of the Sundance Film Festival.
PARK CITY, Utah—Spotmakers made their presence felt at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival through competitive and non-competitive shorts entries, with David LaChapelle, who is represented for spotwork and music videos via bicoastal HSI Productions, earning an Honorable Mention in Short Filmmaking for Krumped. LaChapelle’s film examines a dance craze born in Los Angeles known as clowning or krumping. Word is that the director might expand the short into a feature-length documentary.
While LaChapelle’s short was well received, director Andrew Jarecki’s non-competitive short Just A Clown, generated a lot of interest. It was while making this film, which delves into the world of New York City party performers—and professional clown David "Silly Billy" Friedman in particular—that Jarecki uncovered a story that led to him temporarily shelving this project to make Capturing the Friedmans, which sheds light on the sex abuse scandal that sent David’s father and brother Jesse to jail. The feature-length film won the Grand Jury Prize in the documentary category at Sundance last year.
Marc Smerling, principal/executive producer at bicoastal Notorious Pictures, which has spot representation via bicoastal Cohn+Co., produced both Just A Clown and Capturing the Friedmans. Smerling said that he and Jarecki weren’t sure they would ever revisit Just A Clown, but they decided to after receiving encouragement from Sheila Nevins, executive VP for documentaries at HBO, who thought they should make a 20-minute short to accompany the Jan. 27 DVD release of Capturing the Friedmans, being put out by HBO Video.
"It’s a fun film. It doesn’t deal with the Friedman past at all," Smerling said of Just A Clown. "In a lot of ways it was a great relief to go back to making a fun film after going through [Capturing the Friedmans, which] was difficult to make, and had a lot of ethical and moral questions that Andrew and I had to talk through every day."
In the wake of Capturing the Friedmans, David, who has been a professional clown for nearly 20 years, saw a loss of business. "David has really suffered because of the film. I was surprised at how much he suffered," Smerling said. "I think people are being very unsympathetic to him. There’s an unfortunate crowd out there who just hears the word ‘pedophile.’ Even though David was never charged, and there was never a question that he was a part of anything like that, it has tainted [his reputation], and it’s a shame." Smerling hopes that the release of Just A Clown will repair some of that damage.
DREAMS COME TRUE
Like the aforementioned LaChapelle, director Bryan Buckley of bicoastal/international Hungry Man was another spot helmer with a short in competition. His film Krug was originally commissioned as part of the ’03 Sony Dreams project. Sponsored by Sony Electronics Broadcast and Professional Co. and Young & Rubicam (Y&R), New York, the project called on directors to shoot films dealing with the concept of joy on Sony’s 24p high-definition camera.
Shot in Yonkers, N.Y., Krug, which is Buckley’s first film, centers on a chubby young boy who is sent to school on Halloween dressed as a clown by his mother. Unfortunately, Krug is the only kid in costume at school—turns out he is a day early for Halloween. Adding to his humiliation, Krug is forced to hand out religious pamphlets by his Jesus-obsessed mother. But at the end of the day, when his mother asks him how school was, Krug hugs her and says it was fine. "The point of [Krug] as a character is [that his mother] is the only person he has, and he will do anything to protect her—the same way a parent would protect a child," Buckley shared.
The original version of Krug, featured in the Sony Dreams showcase, was four-minutes long (that was the limit imposed on the filmmakers). The Sundance entry was lengthened to seven minutes.
As for the concept of Krug, Buckley said it was inspired by the experience of his brother-in-law, who once went to school dressed as a clown on the wrong day. Buckley loosely based the character of Krug’s mother on one of his relatives. He isn’t worried about her seeing it and being offended. "I don’t even think she would get it," Buckley said, laughing.
Buckley took a risk in hinging his film on the performance of an eight-year-old boy who had never acted before. In the end, the kid came through. "It was very interesting working with him. You’d give him a line, and he’d adjust his read to it. He just got it. He’s a very smart kid. He didn’t just go through the motions but lived the moment," Buckley praised.
Now that Buckley has had a short in Sundance, might a feature film be in the offing? Buckley related that he has tried to get feature film projects off the ground before only to be frustrated, but was certainly inspired and encouraged by the inclusion of his work in Sundance.
Incidentally, another film from the ’03 Sony Dreams project—The M Word, directed by Rocky Morton of bicoastal Morton Jankel Zander (MJZ)—was also showcased (not in competition) at the ’04 Sundance Film Festival. Morton’s film is based on American Beauty screenwriter/Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball’s play of the same name, and depicts an unorthodox marriage proposal.
TAKE TWO
Martin Bell, who is repped for spots by Cohn+Co., had a non-competitive short in the festival called Twins. Essentially, the simple 17-minute production finds various sets of twins standing in front of colored backdrops answering questions.
Bell said the film came out of a book project his photographer wife Mary Ellen Mark was shooting. Mark was shooting stills of twins who were in attendance at an annual event in Twinsburg, Ohio, known as The Twins Day Festival. (Those stills can be seen in a book titled Twins, published by Aperture last fall.)
"I thought it would be great if we could take these twins behind the backdrop [Mark had set up] and have cameras set up there and just ask each set of twins a set of questions," Bell said. "The film is constructed out of their answers to those questions.
"I was surprised when we got to the editing of this, and I saw the themes running through it," Bell continued. "They were very surprising." What struck him most was that in general the twin born first—even if it was only a minute before the other—was the dominant one. "You notice quite often in the film that [the older twin] will assume responsibility for saying the name of the other," Bell shared.
Bell, who has previously been to Sundance with his films Streetwise, a documentary about Seattle street kids that won a Special Jury Prize in the documentary category in ’85, and his first feature film American Heart in ’94, said he got a kick out of making the audience see double with Twins. "It’s a lovely atmosphere," he said of Sundance. "And people were appreciative of the film. It’s great to have an audience’s reaction."
