Francis Ford Coppola

NPR’s Fresh Air show recently broadcast an interview with Francis Ford Coppola, which was recorded last September at the Toronto International Film Festival. It is a great interview for filmmakers and lovers of his film.

You can listen to the interview on the player below or read the transcript. One of the nice things about the Fresh Air replay is that they cut in scenes from the movies, illustrating what Coppola is talking about.

Among other things, Coppola talks about working with Brando on Apocalypse Now (Amazon affiliate link), and how Brando got $3 million for three weeks work, and that they spent the first week just talking about things like termites. He also describes how he dealt with the fact that Brando arrived much larger than was expected, and how that was, indeed, a problem for the film.

Coppola gives career advice to young filmmakers. (Summary: if you are male, get married; if you are female, don’t get married.)

He talks about how his rehearsal process is built around improvisation rather than working on scenes.  Rob Lowe talks about his experience with this on Rumble Fish in his book Stories I Only Tell My Friends, so between this interview and Lowe’s book, you can see that process from both sides.

Coppola also talks about how he ended up with succes writing the film Patton, for which he won an Oscar, ending the anecdote saying:

What happened was for five years later they revisited it and they had hired George C. Scott and Scott didn’t like the script they then had, and someone remembered this earlier script. So they went back to my script and that’s how I got to be in it. So the moral I want to teach all the young people here is that the same thing you get fired for is what they give the Lifetime Achievement Awards 30 years later.

All in all, a very interesting interview from one of the great directors.

Oh, and here is that famous opening scene from Patton. “Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country…”

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Photo credit: fikirbaz

I am working on a new video for the Billie Dean International Deep Peace Organisation, and I realise I have yet posted our previous video about our brumby rescue work. Enjoy!

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The glorious music is from Susan Raven, and we thank her for the opportunity and permission to use it.

Steve Jobs Introducing the iPad in 2010

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPad in 2010, he famously invoked the idea of liberal arts, saying:

“The reason that Apple is able to create products like iPad is because we always try to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, to be able to get the best of both.”

So it was interesting to hear the 1996 interview he did with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air (replayed in honour of his passing), where the idea of liberal arts features so strongly.

“In my perspective … science and computer science is a liberal art, it’s something everyone should know how to use, at least, and harness in their life. It’s not something that should be relegated to 5 percent of the population over in the corner. It’s something that everybody should be exposed to and everyone should have mastery of to some extent, and that’s how we viewed computation and these computation devices.”

And:

“I think our major contribution [to computing] was in bringing a liberal arts point of view to the use of computers. If you really look at the ease of use of the Macintosh, the driving motivation behind that was to bring not only ease of use to people — so that many, many more people could use computers for nontraditional things at that time — but it was to bring beautiful fonts and typography to people, it was to bring graphics to people … so that they could see beautiful photographs, or pictures, or artwork, et cetera … to help them communicate. … Our goal was to bring a liberal arts perspective and a liberal arts audience to what had traditionally been a very geeky technology and a very geeky audience.”

Interesting how the liberal arts orientation was something he carried with him for decades.

Also interesting how he had to fight for the mouse, and how a bottom-up approach for ideas was encouraged.

This talk was recorded while he was still at NeXT, although much of the discussion covers Apple.  He was yet to return to the company and start the long process of turning it around.

Worth a listen, which you can do here:

. . . . . .

 Photo credit: mattbuchanan

Steve Jobs, from around the time I saw him in 1981. (Image from nymag.com)

I find myself deeply saddened at the news of Steve Jobs’ passing. Yes, we knew he had been unwell, but the shock and the depth of feeling have taken me by surprise.  Not since I heard of John Lennon’s death have I felt this way about someone I did not know personally.

My life has been marked by Steve Jobs, his Apple company, and its products.

It started in 1979, when I found a part-time summer job working for a hole-in-the-wall, seat-of-the-pants store in Austin, Texas called Computer ‘n Things. It was the smaller, scrappier competitor to the Computerland a few miles away.

Computer ‘n Things was a “microcomputer” retailer, selling mostly Apple II’s (and its software and peripherals), along with a few other brands like Cromemco and Altair. But mainly it was Apple, and I came across it looking for a summer programming job, having just finished a course in Basic at UT Austin.

It’s owner and manager, Charley Randall, answered the phone when I cold-called. In response to asking if he needed a programmer, he said, “We don’t need that at the moment.”

Me: “What do you need?”

Randall: “Someone for sales.”

Me: “What do you need in a salesman?”

Randall: “Someone who will work for straight commission.”

Me: “OK.”

At the job interview, while Randall conferred with his brother about whether or not to take me on, I sat in the front of the shop watching an Apple II draw geometric patterns on a TV being used as a monitor.  I did something to the keyboard and promptly crashed the program that was running. Oops.

Not the most graceful start to my life with Apple. But a start it was.

That summer job turned into two years part-time, then full time.  I learned how not to crash the Apple. I learned enough about a program called Visicalc (a new thing called a “spreadsheet”) to sell Apples to people who might be able to do something with them. I learned to load programs from cassette tapes. We played Space Invaders and Bill Budge’s Pinball game.

I learned how you could often fix one using what my boss called “percussive maintenance” – banging it on a table to reseat the integrated circuits.

I remember the Apple III, and what a disappointment it was to get it out of the package and have it not work because components had popped out of their sockets during transport.

But the Apple II+ sold really well, and made a lot of people more productive, especially when we were able to make the jump from cassettes to 5 1/4” floppies (and two of them, if you could afford them).

Somewhere around the first half of 1981, Randall and I went to a retailers’ conference put on by our distributor High Technology. I don’t remember if I shook his hand, but I definitely remember Steve Jobs was there, talking to us about his company and his products.

There’s one thing Steve Jobs said that has stayed with me in the three decades since. He said, “Apple Computer makes more mistakes than anyone else in the business.”

The point was they were willing to try things, to innovate. They were willing for what they tried to fail. And they were capable of learning from those mistakes, and improving.

I left Computer ‘n Things in June of 1981. One of our customers at the time was a guy who worked for IBM, and he had mentioned that his company was just about to bring out a personal computer as well. So I wasn’t around for the release of the IBM PC in August 1981, or the way the PC, the XT, the AT and later models ate Apple’s lunch.

But still, my heart was with Apple. When I returned to the USA in 1983 from a couple of years in Germany, Randall cut me a deal on an Apple IIe.  That machine got me through grad school, and when I moved to Australia to be with my wife in 1987, that IIe came with me, and became the first computer she ever touched. (It is still in my garage somewhere, although the power supply is long dead.)

Our Apple IIe was eventually replaced by a Mac SE/30, which lasted eight years or so (and probably would still boot if we plugged it in).

And while I had a few IBM PCs along the way (mainly because I needed them for work, and mainly during the time that Steve was away from Apple), I always came back to the Mac.  Our family has had any number of the machines. My wife has had a series of Macbook Pros. I had a Mac Pro that lasted six years, and since, a couple of iMacs. My daughter uses a white Macbook. We all have iPhones. We all have iPods. When I get a tablet, it probably will be an iPad 3.

You get the picture.

So Steve, all I can say is thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for your part in my life. Thank you for the products you brought to the world, for your vision, for your inspiration, for your attention to detail, and for your tenacity.

My life is the better for them.

Rest in peace, Steve Jobs.

. . . . . .

Image source: nymag.com

Dear Dr Kelly,

I am writing to you on behalf of myself and my wife, Billie Dean, in your capacity as our local member for Eden-Monaro and as Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.

We must express our deepest concern, and indeed, outrage at the live export trade as conducted by Australia. While many of us have long felt that the current practice of shipping of animals to other countries is nothing short of evil incarnate, the images seen on 4Corners on ABC1 last night, May 30, 2011, including the treatment of animals and the slaughter practices in Indonesia, have once again brought into sharp relief just how unacceptable this is.

We feel that Australia should not be involved in this form of trade and slaughter either actively or passively. It is no longer acceptable to treat animals in this way.

We urge the Australian Government to stop this live trade immediately, and to ban all live exports of all species (cattle, horses, sheep, goats – all of them) and to all countries. We further urge the government to exert whatever pressure it can to encourage Indonesia and other countries to treat animals in a way that is fully humane.

Dr Kelly, we have here a fantastic opportunity to show the rest of the world a moral leadership that is sorely needed. While we understand that there are economic concerns involved, I remind you of what Ghandi once famously said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.”

Australia has an opportunity to be a leader in pushing forward for humane treatment of animals.  Let us reflect an admirable “greatness of nation”, and immediately stop this cruel and unacceptable practice immediately.

Yours in deep concern,

Andrew Einspruch and Billie Dean

. . . . . .

I encourage you to write your own letters as well.  Remember that it is important to not come from anger, but to write letters that people can hear. If you would like to use some of the language I have used, feel free.

Old Spice Guy

Last year, the Old Spice campaign dominated the Internet in an amazingly comprehensive way.  Part of what was clever was the social media outreach, but the ads themselves were little jewels of magic.  But how was that magic created? A dash of clever writing, a pinch of technical wizardry, some good old special effects, and surprisingly little CGI.

Leo Laporte and Tom Merritt did an in-depth interview on their Triangulation show with Eric Kallman and Craig Allen of Wieden + Kennedy, the ads’ copywriter and art director, respectively. It is a great listen, and they go into a lot of the specifics of the campaign and the ads themselves.  You can hear it here:

Here is the behind-the-scenes look at the making of the ad they are talking about in the interview. A lot of the clip is fatuous, but the few glimpses at mechanics of filmmaking that they show are fascinating.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

And here is the ad itself:

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Ray Kurzweil

The first is with Ray Kurzweil, who has done more in his life already than most of us will ever dream of. He is an author, inventor and futurist who developed the “first CCD flatbed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition.” Kurzweil’s books include The Singularity Is Near, The Age of Spiritual Machines, and Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. (Amazon links.) Kurzweil’s take on where we are headed, and how we will continue to integrate technology into our lives is fascinating. You can listen to the Triangulation interview here.

Cory Doctorow

The second is with Cory Doctorow, well-known blogger, journalist and the author of any number of books, including Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Little Brother, and For the Win. (Again, Amazon links.) Doctorow is the co-editor of Boing Boing, one of the busiest sites on the web, and is a strong proponent of giving away versions of his work for free (you can, for example, download Little Brother legally here). But part of what is fascinating about the interview is just his take on how to innovate as an author and how, basically, as an author, obscurity is your enemy. You can listen to the Triangulation interview here.

The news is out that Hollywood wants to let you pay for a new service – watching movies 60 days after release in the comfort of your own home with a discomfort to your wallet of $30 (see coverage by Variety, All Things D,  GigaOm and The Guardian).

Colour me sceptical.

Yes, it would be perfect for families who can save the hassle of schlepping the kids to the theatre, and then fighting over how much over-priced popcorn and sugar-products will be bought. That is a clear use case.  And maybe it would be worth it if you are gathering friends together for the occaission.

But I think there is a lot that speaks against it.

For one, that price is too high. It is a huge premium for something that will be out on DVD (or its digital equivalent) very soon after. And as one podcaster said, “For $30, I want to own it.”

I think it will take really compelling viewing to get people to pony up that kind of money.  You’ve just chosen not to take your money to the theatre for that Adam Sandler flick.  Are you really going to plunk down $30 to see it at home? Doubt it.

Exhibitors will, of course, hate it. We have seen over and over how they scream when anything encroaches on their territory.  While I’m all for day-and-date release  across all media and all platforms, exhibitors have resisted any further erosion of their windows. We saw that with the stink raised in the UK over Alice in Wonderland last year.

I also think there is a problem with the 60-day period.  The vast majority of movies are well and truly gone from the theatres in the first week or two.  I don’t know how much buzz will still be around six or seven weeks on.  60 days seems too long to me to capture any sort of theatrical release enthusiasm.  14 days? Yes. 30 days? Maybe.  60? I don’t think so.

Distribution is certainly changing. And we can say good for them for trying something new. But I don’t see this idea making much of a dent.

Photo credit: Hitchster

In the shadow of Emile Sherman’s gold statue for “The King’s Speech”, the ACT chapter of SPAA held its inaugural meeting, followed by a reception at Parliament House. The organisation of a chapter of the producer’s association reflects the growing feeling of local screen content creators that the ACT region is finding it difficult to get the national-level attention that it deserves.

“We have a thriving screen sector,” said Georgina Jenkins, SPAA ACT Chapter Head. “A recent survey showed us that there are more industry people employed here than in Tasmania and the Northern Territory put together. So it is frustrating that people think of the ACT region as a screen production desert, or as some sort of subset of NSW.”

Read the rest here.

Listening to podcasts is a great way to keep up with what is going on in the business of show business.  Here are five I consider essential for filmmakers.  Note that I subscribe to my podcasts on iTunes, although there are other ways to do it as well.

Showbiz Sandbox

Showbiz Sandbox is a weekly hour-long show hosted by J. Sperling Reich and Michael Giltz. Reich writes for Celluloid Junkie and Giltz is a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post. Each week they cover the breadth of showbiz news, including film, TV, box office results for the US, plus a segment of short news bits called Big Deal or Big Whoop, and an Inside Baseball segement that dives into topics that “no one outside Hollywood would really care about”. Their analysis is cogent and their delivery is insightful and  fun. (Showbiz Sandbox on iTunes)

KCRW’s The Business

Another insider look at Hollywood is KCRW’s The Business hosted by Kim Masters, a half-hour weekly that focuses on “the people who make the entertainment”.  The Business starts each week with a bit of banter between Masters and John Horn, staff reporter for the Los Angeles Times covering current and lighter topics.  Masters then dives into longer segments on particular issues. For example, check out her interview with Tom Shadyac where he talks about making films with meaning, or this one with the guy who is Jeff Bridges’ decades-long stand-in.  (The Business on iTunes)

Oh, and while you are there, you should also subscribe to the shorter weekly podcast, KCRW’s Hollywood Breakdown, a three-minute look a a current topic with Masters and Horn. (Hollywood Breakdown on iTunes)

The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith and Creative Screenwriting

The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith is the newest podcast on the list, at only a few episodes old.  But Goldsmith was, until recently, the podcaster behind the fabulous Creative Screenwriting Magazine podcast, which is still a must-listen-to, especially for writers.  Check out this interview with my hero Aaron Sorkin when he was doing publicity for the Social Network, or this interview with Joel and Ethan Cohen.

With The Q&A, Goldsmith has said he will broaden his horizons beyond what he did for Creative Screenwriting, adding directors, producers, and actors to the mix, along with writers.

(The Q&A on iTunes; Creative Screenwriting on iTunes)

Filmspotting

With Filmspotting, we leave the producer’s point of view behind, and come at films from the consumer’s point of view.  Each week, hosts Adam Kempenaar and Matty Robinson cover a number of films in depth, some new, some from the archives, and some just plain strange ones.  Their discussion (and their taste) is often erudite and opinionated, but very listenable.   For filmmakers, it is an interesting look at how true film buffs talk about film.  Their shows typically have some sort of Top 5, like Top 5 Long Takes or Top 5 Manic Pixie Dream Girls, a segment called Massacre Theater (where they butcher a scene from a movie), and various bits of news about films and DVD releases.  Plus, a few times a year, they do a marathon on a particular filmmaker or topic.  Past marathons have had themes like Akira Kurusawa, Angry Young Men, or New Hollywood.

Filmspotting has been going for a number of years, and they have a large and loyal following, which gives a them plenty of input. (Filmspotting on iTunes)

So…

What’s your favourite podcasts that’s important for filmmakers? Let me know in the comments below.

Image credit: derickkwa