The 2006 Sundance Film Festival just wrapped, but the buzz about two films from spotmakers–director Jason Reitman’s Thank You For Smoking and co-directing duo Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ Little Miss Sunshine–has only just begun. Both films, which were hot tickets, are headed for wider release, with Thank You For Smoking hitting theaters in March, and Little Miss Sunshine opening in June. SHOOT caught up with the directors behind these remarkable films as well as other talents from the commercial production industry who saw their work showcased at Sundance.
Thank You for Smoking
After reading Christopher Buckley’s book, Thank You For Smoking, the central character of which is a tobacco industry lobbyist, director Jason Reitman–who helms spots via Tate USA, Santa Monica–knew he had to make it into a feature film. “It was the first time in my life I read something and said, ‘I need to make this into a movie,’ ” Reitman shared.
Thankfully, Reitman is a patient man because he read the book 10 years ago.
To tell the entire tale of what Reitman went through to get the film made would require, well, the writing of a book. So let’s just cut to the chase: Reitman’s screenplay ultimately fell into the hands of David Sacks, who after making a fortune by selling PayPal, the company he had founded, had come to Hollywood to become a movie producer and wanted this film to be his first project.
The guy with the checkbook who says, “Let’s go make your movie.” It’s every filmmaker’s dream.
Reitman’s dreams continued to come true when it came to casting. He landed stars such as Robert Duvall, William H. Macy, Sam Elliott and Maria Bello, with Aaron Eckhart in the lead role of Nick Naylor, a tobacco industry spokesman who promotes cigarette smoking while trying to be a role model to his 12-year-old son Joey.
“The main character’s son is not a very big character in the novel,” Reitman pointed out. “But he was an important character to me. I thought the son would be a window to the soul of the main character, and if the son could like him, we could like him, and likeability was a big deal in itself because our main character is the head lobbyist for big tobacco, an industry that kills half a million people a year. So I beefed up the son’s role and made him very integral to the main character’s journey.”
Film festival audiences have loved the film. In fact, when it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, there was a bidding war that got ugly when both Fox Searchlight and Paramount each spent a week claiming they had bought the rights to the film–ultimately, Fox Searchlight came out on top.
Certainly, the film, which pokes fun at both sides of the smoking debate, will spark more controversy when it opens in theaters on March 17. People will see what they want in the film predicted the director. “The old joke of the book is that conservatives thought it was their book, and liberals thought it was theirs, and I imagine the same will be true for this film.”
Little Miss Sunshine
Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the husband-and-wife directing team out of Bob Industries, Santa Monica, have produced feature films but have turned down numerous offers to direct them over the years. “Doing a feature film was not this end all, pie in the sky goal,” Dayton said. “It was something that we wanted to do, but it wasn’t a generic wish. I was really about making a film that meant something to us.”
That film finally came along when the pair saw screenwriter Michael Arndt’s script for Little Miss Sunshine, which told the tale of an offbeat family trying to get a seven-year-old girl from Alburqueque to Redondo Beach, Calif. to compete in a pageant.
Both Dayton and Faris found the quirky road movie disarming. It took almost five years to get everything from financing to a cast in order, but the film got made and earned a premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
After a week of rehearsals with an all-star cast that included Steve Carell, Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette, Dayton and Faris shot Little Miss Sunshine in 30 days on location in Los Angeles and Arizona last summer.
“I was just surprised at how easy it was,” Dayton said when asked if directing a first feature was at all overwhelming. “I expected it to be much harder than shooting commercials and that there would be some new aspect [of filmmaking] that I had never experienced before.”
Faris enjoyed having the time to build real bonds with the cast. “In commercials, you just jump in, shake hands, and you’re working together,” she said, “so it was really nice to build longer-term relationships.”
It looks likely that Dayton and Faris will be fielding more film offers than ever given the positive response Little Miss Sunshine got at Sundance. The famously jaded Sundance audience at the two screenings the filmmakers attended gave the film standing ovations. “It was just unbelievable to have an audience respond that way,” Dayton said, adding, “The film, hopefully, is entertaining and makes you laugh, but what I’m hoping is it that does a little more–that it moves you and makes you think about your life.”
Old Joy
Peter Sillen, who directs spots through New York-based Washington Square Films, took a supporting role in the making of Old Joy, serving as DP on the feature film, which was directed by Kelly Reichardt, written by John Raymond and produced through Washington Square Film’s Independent Film Sales division. “The whole project was nice for me in that I got to change hats and immerse myself in a singular element of the production,” Sillen remarked.
Old Joy, which was screened at Sundance as part of the Frontier program, tells the story of two old friends (played by Will Oldham and Daniel London) who go on a camping trip and struggle to redefine a friendship that has been altered by time and life experiences.
The film was shot on location, with much of it taking place in the woods of Oregon near Bagby Hot Springs. Surrounded by an amazingly beautiful backdrop, Reichardt, Sillen and a small crew shot Old Joy on Super 16 over 18 days, with Sillen relying on his old Aaton camera. “It’s so small. It’s got a two-hundred foot mag and only lasts for about five minutes of film,” Sillen shared. “But it allowed us to get in and out of places easily.”
While Sundance festivalgoers were taken with Old Joy‘s scenery, the film also earned praise for the performances of its lead actors. Sillen, too, was impressed with Oldham and London, and praised Reichardt’s ability to guide her performers yet give them the freedom they needed to fully inhabit their roles.
Looking back on the project, Sillen said he had a great time helping to make the film and getting back to nature. The crew actually stayed at a rustic old camp, Sillen said, “shooting by day and hanging out by the bonfire at night.”
Bugcrush
Director Carter Smith, who directs spots through bicoastal Park Pictures, walked away from Sundance with a jury prize in short filmmaking for Bugcrush. Based on a short story by Scott Treleaven that Smith adapted, Bugcrush centers on a shy, awkward high school loner named Ben who winds up following a seductive new friend, Grant, down a dark, destructive path.
It’s a twisted story, according to Holle Singer, a partner at New York-based Consulate who cut the film. “It’s got homoerotic tension and bugs and boy crushes and gang sex. Everything you could want in a film,” enthused Singer, who admitted being partial to “sick” material.
Singer didn’t go to Maine to check out the shoot as she was working on another project at the time, but she was quite involved in the pre-production process. Smith, a director for whom she has cut numerous spots and other projects, sought her opinion on the script and asked for her feedback on his storyboards. Singer noted that they were both trying to ensure that she would have everything she needed in the editing room.
Once the film was shot, Singer said the biggest challenge was finding the rhythm. “It’s strange because it wasn’t until the very last scene, which we were really struggling with because it is a very tense scene, that we actually found the rhythm of the film,” Singer recalled, “then we went back and tweaked the rest of the film.”
Singer took what she described as a unique approach to the pacing, holding longer on shots than she normally might, then following up a longer-held shot with a short shot, then another short shot before going back to a longer-held shot. The technique helped to build tension and suspense, according to Singer.
Usually, Singer works alone in the editing room, but Smith joined her this time. “He had this amazing way of trusting me and sitting back and watching and looking,” Singer said, “and I would think if I was in his shoes, it would be very difficult to do that.”
Robin’s Big Date
Robin’s Big Date isn’t your typical date movie. The short film, directed by editor James Duffy of bicoastal Mad River Post and scripted by his friend Will Carlough, finds Robin–as in Robin of Batman and Robin fame–trying to make a good impression on a dinner date only to have his obnoxious boss Batman show up and ruin everything.
Given the ridiculous premise, Duffy didn’t expect the film to be chosen for showcasing at any film serious festival, let alone Sundance. In fact, when Carlough, who submitted the film to Sundance without telling him, broke the great news, Duffy didn’t believe him. “It took him an hour or two to convince me that he wasn’t just joking around with me,” Duffy said.
Duffy rounded up favors from friends to get Robin’s First Date made, casting actor pals including Sam Rockwell in the role of Batman and Justin Long as Robin, and shooting the film with DP Trish Govoni in under four hours at ‘inoteca, a restaurant down the street from Duffy’s Manhattan apartment.
The actors got their scripts the morning of the shoot. “If you look closely, you can see them all reading their scripts in the film,” Duffy pointed out.
You also can’t help but notice that the superhero costumes are ill-fitting–the cutouts in Batman’s mask through which he is supposed to see aren’t even properly positioned over his eyes. “It wasn’t intentional,” Duffy says of that particularly notable wardrobe imperfection, “but we really went with it.”
By the way, one has to ask: Is Duffy afraid he might be hearing from lawyers for DC Comics, which owns the right to the Batman and Robin characters? “We’re really hoping not,” Duffy said laughing, noting that he doesn’t expect there to be any accusations of copyright infringement because this short film is a farce.
Aruba
Hubert Davis, who directs PSAs and commercials through Toronto-based Runt, has seen his talent as a documentary filmmaker recognized–in 2004, he earned an Oscar nomination for Hardwood, a deeply personal film in which Davis, son of former Harlem Globetrotter star Mel Davis, explored his relationship with his dad.
More recently, Hubert Davis’ ability to spin a compelling fictional tale was acknowledged when the short film Aruba, which he wrote, directed and edited, was shown at Sundance.
The film centers on a boy who escapes the domestic violence and abuse he sees at home by imagining himself traveling to the tropical paradise of Aruba. “What we do in order to survive is the theme,” said Davis, who noted that he once worked with at-risk youth and was always “amazed at the adult things they were going through and what they did to survive.”
Davis cast a 13-year-old actor named A.J. Saudin in the lead role of his film, which was shot over the course of four days in Toronto, using a community center that was once a school and a housing project as the central locations.
David Tennant, who had worked with Davis on Hardwood as DP, also shot this project. “We wanted it to feel pretty stripped back and real but at the same time find some interesting framings,” Davis said.
The biggest challenge from a technical perspective was pulling off an effect involving making a postcard of a beach in Aruba come to life with swaying palm trees. For that, Davis called on the expertise of design/effects house Crush in Toronto. “[Crush visual effects artist] Sean Cochrane talked me through how it should play out and what we should do. He had only three days to work on it and comp it and make it seamless,” Davis said, stressing, “I can’t say enough about his contribution and Crush’s contribution to making it all work.”
Losing Lusk
Director Vance Malone appreciates the standard documentary form, but he set out to make his short, experimental documentary Losing Lusk something “that was a little bit more impressionistic.” The result is a gorgeously poetic film that melds spoken word, music and imagery to share a bittersweet story about a young man named Ty Baker who had to leave Lusk, the small, Wyoming town where he grew up, and head off to the big city to make a living and have a career.
Malone, who directs spots through Food Chain Films in Portland, Ore., was actually inspired to make the film after meeting Baker, a creative director at New York-based advertising agency Momentum, and discovering they had strikingly similar backgrounds. Like Baker, Malone grew up in a small Wyoming town and had to leave to pursue his dream. “It’s this bittersweet realization once you realize, ‘God, the thing I love to do means I have to leave the place I love,’ ” Malone shared.
Malone shot Losing Lusk on Super 16mm in both Lusk, where he interviewed townspeople who had known Baker since he was a baby, and in New York City, where Baker now resides.
Malone commissioned Keith Schreiner, a Portland musician who is part of a group called Auditory Sculpture, to craft the music for the film. Malone was amazed to find that Schreiner was able to capture so much of the feeling in the imagery in the music.
Drawn to the hauntingly detached quality of voiceover artist Nick Eldridge’s voice, Malone brought him onboard as narrator.
While the film focuses on Baker’s personal tale, the story certainly has universal appeal and subtly comments on how big box retailers and the effects of globalization are killing our rural communities in the U.S. “It’s my first attempt at social commentary,” Malone said, noting that he tried to go beyond “pointing fingers at big corporations.”