Sophomore Jack Kyser is Edward Teller (James R. Burton Award Nominee - Best Supporting Actor 2006-2007). From The Red Dragon Players' production of "The Lovesong of J. Robert Oppenheimer" - October 2006.
Jack is a 2013 graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he was a Dean's Scholar and film major. He is currently in pre-production on his first feature film. Jack’s previous seven short films have screened at film festivals nationwide over the last several years. He is the recipient of numerous awards from Tisch during both his enrollment and post-graduation, including the Richie Jackson Artist Fellowship, the Sony Electronics Scholarship and the Emerson Scholarship. He currently works as an editor at Comedy Central for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Previously, he was an associate producer and assistant editor for Emmy-winning filmmaker Nancy Buirski, and interned for a year-and-a-half at Martin Scorsese’s Sikelia Productions. He studied acting at Manhattan’s Herbert Berghof Studio under the direction of Austin Pendleton. During his four years at Austin High School, Jack performed in twenty-three plays and won fourteen Best Actor or All-Star Cast awards at all levels of UIL competition, and advanced to Nationals competition in Monologue, Duet Musical and Shakespeare performance. He has written a monthly film column for Austin Family Magazine since 2004.
In October, I wrote a letter to Bruce Springsteen - the first "fan" letter I believe I've ever written - to express the extent to which his music and ethos have influenced me. I highly doubt the letter actually reached him, but nevertheless, I thought I'd share it here.
Dear Mr. Springsteen,
When I was ten years old, my father – who, at the time, was in and out of rehabs across Texas to treat his alcoholism – was visiting my mother and me during a period of brief recovery. It was the early days of purchasing music from the internet, and I was happily showing him how it worked. When I asked him for a song selection, he said to me, “Download Human Touch by Bruce Springsteen.”
Less than a year later, he died of a heart attack, in large part due to his drinking. I was left with a fleeting image of a man I would never fully know – but I held on to the things he loved, the pieces I had picked up during my childhood that formed my image and understanding of him. And in listening to your music, your voice grew, over the course of many years, into the narration of my life.
I mention this because I had the privilege of attending Springsteen on Broadway for the second time this past August. I saw the show during its initial run in 2018, where – even from the back row – I could feel the power and resonance of your every word. Songs I’ve known for what feels like my entire life were given new meaning and context. And with each new chapter of your life, I felt like I was there – the details and imagery in each story were as evocative as the song that accompanied them.
When I saw the show this summer, I was able to sit a bit closer – with my mother by my side, which added a tremendous amount to the experience (particularly during your renditions of My Father’s House and The Wish, during which we were both choking up underneath our face masks). But I was struck most by your admission that you crafted your stage persona in your father’s image, and how this act felt like a way of getting to know him better.
I found myself nodding in recognition while listening to this passage of the show. My father felt similarly unknowable, and as I get older, I see more of him when I look at my reflection in the mirror. I wonder what he was experiencing at my age, what internal demons he wrestled with, his joys, his sorrows – and his relationship with your music. It’s a funny world where a few words said off-hand to a child lead to a lifelong connection with an artist – one who has shaped the way I think, feel and relate to the world.
I have no doubt you receive letters like this by the hundreds daily, and I hesitated at first to write, because I’m certain my relationship to your work is not unique. I’ve heard the story in which a fan approached Bob Dylan and told him his music changed his life – to which Dylan supposedly replied, “What do you want me to do about it?” But in this case, the connection feels deeper than just the music. It’s the ethos, the pains taken to live a life well, the disappointments and resentments either embittering us to the world or providing a pathway to renewed growth and strength – all of these tenets find their way into my heart and mind through your music.
If I may add a bit more – one of the many things I love about your songwriting is your directness. I learned a key lesson from your work early on – life isn’t perfect. Lyrics like “You’ve got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above,” or “Round here, baby, I learned you get what you can get,” or “I know I ain’t nobody’s bargain but hell, a little touch-up and a little paint” – these words feel like an honest representation of what life is really like. Your music is truthful about so many things, chief among them love.
More than anything, you’ve provided me with two essential lifelines over the years. The first is solidarity when I’m heartsick or despondent (I have struggled with depression and anxiety ever since my father’s death, and I am deeply moved by the candor with which you’ve described your own mental health struggles). Whether it’s the haunting loneliness of Stolen Car or the world-weariness of The Wrestler, devastation never feels quite as brutal as it might if I didn’t have a Springsteen song by my side.
The second is perhaps even more important – you’ve always extended me an invitation to the party. I’ve recently started dating someone after a rather prolonged and messy break-up, and I’ve warmed up for each date by watching one of your live performances. I’m talking about the hip-swinging, guns-blazing rockabilly of Cadillac Ranch live in Tempe, Arizona in 1980; the joyous medley of Sweet Soul Music and Raise Your Hand during your 1988 tour; the 11-minute Amnesty performance of Twist and Shout, which delightfully morphs into La Bamba midway through. To quote a seemingly improvised line from your 19-minute rendition of Tenth Avenue Freeze Out at Madison Square Garden, “It’s all right to have a good time.” Sometimes I need a little reminding of that.
Simply put, there’s not another soul on this earth who can play so readily to these contradictory feelings – joy and anguish – that make up so much of our lives.
But back to my original reason for writing you. Watching Springsteen on Broadway this last time around and hearing you talk about your father, I felt I had come full circle from when I first heard your music. It took me back to the genesis of what drew me to your work. And in a year marked by so much loss, the choice to close the performance with I’ll See You in My Dreams felt right. The power of your show comes not just from us getting to witness your onstage visitations with those you’ve lost, but the joy of having our own memories and ghosts pop up right alongside yours.
God bless you, sir. Thank you for a lifetime’s worth of encouragement, and for your continued inspiration with every new record (Western Stars and Letter to You get a lot of play in this household). I’m forever grateful you have been able to use your gift to lift people up everywhere – myself included.
Near the end of every year, I write a list of the ten best films of the year – though last year, I substituted it for a Best of the Decade list. In advance of this year’s top ten films (which may take a little longer to deliver, given that many 2020 movies won’t be widely available until early next year), I thought I’d provide an additional list devoted to the music that shaped my experience of 2020 as a whole.
In these strange, unprecedented last twelve months, music has played as large a role as cinema in my day-to-day experience. As I mourn the end of a relationship and grapple with the fact that our country will never really be the same again, I find myself retreating again and again to the new albums from two of my favorite artists, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan.
The songs on these albums may have been arranged and recorded before the pandemic, but both feel like reflective odes written for a world crumbling around us.
That’s not to say that they’re not energetic and rousing – Springsteen’s Letter To You is packed with his characteristic exuberance (not to mention the full-throttle sound of the E Street Band), and Dylan delivers a number of toe-tapping blues numbers (which have become his specialty in recent years).
There are two songs in particular that I think really capture the mood and tenor of this year – for me, anyway. I’ll start with the Dylan song, Murder Most Foul – which, I’ll be frank, is one of the best compositions of his indelible career. The 17-minute song made headlines this summer for being Dylan’s first-ever track to hit #1 on any Billboard chart, a feat that feels precisely in tune with the overall strangeness of 2020 (there were a few other examples of this – for instance, Woody Allen’s long-delayed A Rainy Day in New York topped the global box office in May, when only a few countries had opened their cinemas). Murder Most Foul is, as Dylan puts it, “a blood-stained ballad” about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but in its astonishingly expansive 17 minutes, the song seems to transcend specifics and become about everything.
I got blood in my eye, I got blood in my ear
I’m never gonna make it to the New Frontier
The song makes us feel like we’re all passengers in Kennedy’s limousine on that horrible day in 1963, slowly rolling toward a tragic end. To numb us along the way, we can switch the radio dial (Dylan repeatedly refers to disc jockey Wolfman Jack), but should we choose to look up, we’ll once again be faced with the horror that awaits us. The song is a slow-moving conveyer belt, and there’s no way to get off.
Even as we’re engulfed in a comprehensive play-by-play of the most excruciating details of the assassination, Dylan journeys forward and backward through time, going through a litany of references to music and films. The song seems to be about how now, more than ever, pop culture and national tragedy are inseparable – Billy Joel’s Only the Good Die Young goes hand in hand with the place Tom Dooley was hung – and we turn to music (and other art forms) to numb us to the horror around us (Hush little children, you’ll understand; The Beatles are comin’, they’re gonna hold your hand). In the second half of the song, around the 9:15 mark, there’s an interesting break, as if Dylan is too repulsed to keep recounting the details of the assassination and instead turns to requesting one song or artist after another to Wolfman Jack. And just when you think he’s spun off in a tangential direction, Dylan brings it all back to the murder.
Although Murder Most Foul is a bleak piece of work, Dylan is still as playful and inventive as ever (dare I say the song is occasionally funny, making it even more horrifying). He has particular fun with word association, hopping from Kennedy reference to musical reference without even announcing it (I’m just a patsy like Patsy Cline being one of the best).
Most importantly, Murder Most Foul pinpoints the Kennedy assassination as the original sin of modern-day America, around which all of our other cultural and political accomplishments, atrocities, victories and triumphs revolve (The day that they killed him, someone said to me, son; the age of the Antichrist has just only begun). Dylan’s not just singing about the death of a President – he’s talking about the death of a country. This is our national retrospective, and Wolfman Jack is playing America’s greatest hits as we roll along toward the afterlife in Kennedy’s limousine.
The soul of a nation been torn away, and it’s beginning to go into a slow decay…
The entire Dylan album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, is a delight. I mean, how can you resist lyrics like I’ll take the Scarface Pacino, and The Godfather Brando; Mix it up in a tank, and get a robot commando? As is so often the case, the song that I now find myself playing most often (other than Murder Most Foul) is one I didn’t immediately respond to - Key West (Philosopher Pirate), which never fails to lull me into a relaxing mood.
I’ll never forget the day that the full album was released – I got off work at 8pm, and my then-girlfriend and I went for a nighttime drive out of Charlottesville and into the Virginia countryside, listening to it in its entirety. By the time Murder Most Foul closed out the album, I had already heard the song many times, but it was still revealing new things to me. It’s the rare kind of composition that asks you to stop everything you’re doing, lean forward, play it loud and reflect. And this was truly the year for reflection.
There’s more uplift to be found in Springsteen’s Letter To You (thought the album is still quite mournful), which is a stone-cold classic in the Springsteen canon. The song that most speaks to the present moment is the eighth track on the album, Rainmaker. It’s a song about a snake oil salesman and the depressing extent to which his followers will hang on to his empty promises. Sound familiar? What differentiates Springsteen’s song from any number of editorials on the mindset of Trump voters (in particular, voters who have been swindled into voting against their own self-interests, time and time again) is the empathy Springsteen brings to the table. Instead of examining the vitriol and hateful rhetoric that rises out of blind loyalty to a con man (which, make no mistake, is as destructive as any threat from outside our country), Springsteen instead examines the very real and unsettling economic realities some of these people are facing.
Parched crops dying ‘neath a dead sun We’ve been praying but no good comes The dog’s howling, home’s stripped bare We’ve been worried but now we’re scared
People come for comfort or just to come Taste the dark sticky potion or hear the drums Hands raised to Yahweh to bring the rain down He comes crawlin’ ‘cross the dry fields like a dark shroud
Rainmaker, a little faith for hire Rainmaker, the house is on fire Rainmaker, take everything you have Sometimes folks need to believe in something so bad, so bad, so bad They’ll hire a rainmaker
Make no mistake – Springsteen is describing a very specific kind of gathering, but examining it from the perspective of folks who really are looking for something to believe in. It’s entirely conceivable that a number of Springsteen’s haunted protagonists over the years could have turned into Trump voters (in fact, many of the blue-collar individuals who so identify with his music are often aghast when Springsteen delves into the political – when, of course, his music has always been political). In an interview on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah in October, Springsteen eloquently described his approach to writing about American’s failures and triumphs as follows:
“I think what the issue is, is that the key to some of my music is you need to be able to hold two contradictory ideas in your mind at the same time, which is sort of the measure, a bit of a measure of adulthood. So you need to be able to deal with the fact that a song can be both prideful and critical. And that idea is very central to a lot of my music, because that’s how I feel. You know? I am proud of my country, I’ve had an amazing life and gotten the best out of it through living here, but there’s a lot to continue to be critical about. So both of those things are going into my music. It’s a bit up to the listener to listen well if you want to get the whole picture. But to do so, you’ve really got to be able to hold the idea: pride and criticalness can go hand-in-hand.”
Amen to that.
With Rainmaker, Springsteen also recognizes the people about whom he’s singing aren’t victims, and the song wisely doesn’t let them off the hook for allowing a charlatan to run the land. The key lyrics here are:
They come for the smile, the firm handshake They come for the raw chance of a fair shake Some come to make damn sure, my friend This mean season's got nothin' to do with them
They come 'cause they can't stand the pain Of another long hot day of no rain 'Cause they don't care or understand What it really takes for the sky to open up the land
‘Cause they don’t care or understand what it really takes for the sky to open up the land… you hit the nail on the head there, Bruce.
As I found myself writing some goodbye letters of my own this past year, the entirety of Springsteen’s Letter To You resonated with me on a profound level. Springsteen even released a film companion piece to the album on Apple TV, titled Bruce Springsteen’s Letter To You, which I adored. It is exhilarating to witness the E Street Band record a new album in real time - and one of their all-time best ones, to boot. Just as profound are Springsteen’s musings on loss, the afterlife, recollections of his youth and the importance of living life in a caring and empathetic way.
Letter To You can be seen as a companion piece to last year’s beautiful Western Stars (which accompanied Springsteen’s album of the same name) and the previous year’s Springsteen on Broadway, which I had the privilege of seeing live during its Broadway run. This trilogy finds our greatest living American musician examining his legacy and making a personal statement, both musically and cinematically. Director Thom Zimny, by the way, is an excellent filmmaker - his choice to shoot One Minute You’re Here (the first song on Letter To You) in an unbroken close-up on Springsteen’s face is remarkably powerful.
As a die-hard Springsteen fan, I’m predisposed to love these films - but in the most objective sense, Western Stars and Letter To You are two of the most moving and masterful albums of Springsteen’s career, and taken together with Springsteen on Broadway (and his memoir, for that matter), they represent the late career work of an artist who is never finished investigating, creating and pushing his artistic practice forward in new and revealing directions.
My other favorite songs off Letter To You, by the way? I adore If Was A Priest (first written by Springsteen in the Asbury Park days) – a song I’ve listened to I don’t even know how many times. I still don’t completely know what it’s about, but it continues to lift me up every time I hear it. I also love Burnin’ Train and the titular song, but they’re all equally excellent. I wish we had gotten performances of Rainmaker and Janey Needs a Shooter in the Letter To You film, but I imagine they may not have fit thematically with what Springsteen was trying to evoke with the movie.
I’ve continued listening to Western Stars quite a bit this year, too. Bruce Springsteen and Thom Zimny’s film companion piece from last year speaks to me now as much as it did one year ago - where I am in life, the baggage I’ve accrued, and my ability to make sense of it. I was, quite literally, the only person in the cinema when I saw the film last year in New York - and while I wish more folks flocked to the picture, I’ll admit it was a profoundly meditative experience watching it completely alone in a big auditorium. Kudos to Warner Bros. for giving this film a proper theatrical release (not so much for everything they’ve done since then, but that’s a different topic altogether).
If I had to pick one song from Western Stars, it’d be Stones, the tenth song on the album. Watching Springsteen and Patti Scialfa sing this song together is electrifying - you can feel the love, hurt and triumph of their entire relationship communicated in that piece. There’s a wonderful line, somewhere around this performance, about how we’re sometimes unable to hold onto love, but we can sure hold onto hurt. I feel that.
Just as last year's The Irishman (which opened around the same time as Western Stars, thus the connection in my mind) worked as a reflection and assessment of the lives and careers of its makers, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, Western Stars similarly feels like a cinematic self-reckoning for Springsteen. I am so moved to see my favorite artists pondering and expanding upon their legacies, and giving us these heartfelt meditations on their lives in the form of cinema and music.
There were a number of other albums that helped me through the year – all of them older titles, naturally. If my three primary picks are Rough and Rowdy Ways, Letter To You and Western Stars, then I’ll add seven more to make it an even ten: Gordon Lightfoot’s Gord’s Gold, Elton John’s Tumbleweed Connection, Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love and Nebraska, Dylan’s The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: The Rolling Thunder Revue, Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells a Story, and the original motion picture soundtrack to Once Upon A Time… in Hollywood.
Since I last updated this blog, I have finally picture-locked the film that has consumed much of the last three years of my life, Harvey's Last Night on the Avenue. Production on the film wrapped two years ago, but various commitments - my job at Comedy Central, another (since-finished) film I directed for hire, development on a feature screenplay (see more details below) - have made for a lengthy post-production period. But no more! The film is edited and, once the color-correction and sound design are completed this summer, it will be a finished film - and I'm incredibly excited to share it with the world.
Last summer, I released the first trailer for the film. Here it is below, showcasing the work of the immensely talented ensemble cast. If you enjoy it, please feel free to share it far and wide!
Where do I even begin with the folks who made this movie possible? Mike Wesolowski (who also co-wrote the film) leads an amazing cast which includes Justin Danforth, Allison Frasca, Max Pava, Taylor Marie Frey, Aubrey Elenz, Michael Galligan, Jamie Wolfe, Matt Davis, Connor Delves, Justine Magnusson, Matt Borruso and Zachary Gamble. Watch out for brilliant cinematography by Kevin Dynia, the impeccable sound design of Bobb Barito and the astonishing color stylings of Ben Dewey! And I can't begin to thank the rest of our crew - producer Alex Fofonoff, assistant director Matthew James Reilly, script supervisor Lain Kienzle, production sound mixer Nick Chirumbolo and so many more - for their hard work.
Last December, the other film I directed, Four Play, won the Audience Award at the Iron Mule Comedy Film Festival at New York City's Alamo Drafthouse. It was a great screening of comedy shorts, and honestly a bit surreal to see something I directed in the same cinema where I frequently watch first-run films. The film's writer, producer and star, Ben Krevalin, was also on hand to speak. On a side note, I have no idea who wrote my bio in the program, but bless them for including all of these great things I haven't done (see above).
Last fall, I started taking Advanced Scene Study classes at HB Studio in Manhattan, under the direction of Austin Pendleton. It's been a great way to keep active as a performer and work with a wide array of scene partners (since the fall, I've done scenes from Uncle Vanya, Hurlyburly, Days of Wine and Roses, American Buffalo and Summer and Smoke, among others). In particular, it's been a pleasure studying under Mr. Pendleton, whose career as an actor and director, both in film and theatre, is unparalleled (he was most recently on Broadway in this year's Tony-winning Choir Boy, which I saw in January).
All the while, I'm continuing to work on a feature screenplay with my dear friend Lucas Loredo about our experiences in high school theatre. We spent a week together last year in Austin, in a self-imposed writing "residency," outlining and structuring the screenplay (I wrote about our process in a blog post from last year). We made an extraordinary amount of headway last fall, when Lucas workshopped our script in his MFA screenwriting course at UT's Michener Center for Writers (Lucas just graduated in May from the prestigious three-year program). We held weekly phone conversations, in which Lucas relayed excellent notes from his class and professor, and passed drafts back and forth by email. The screenplay has come a long way, and it's my sincere belief that I'll be making this film in the near future.
I'm eager to cover more ground from the last several months, but I'll finish here with two highlights. In late September, Sophia and I spent a great weekend in Boston with some of the best folks I know. My college friends Jon Annunziata and Emma Viles were married in Danvers, Massachusetts at Glen Magna Farms, and the wedding was a delightful film school reunion. We stayed at a hotel in nearby Wakefield, and before the wedding, we toured the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, a colonial house and museum (Nurse was executed during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692). I also had a chance to eat at the equally historic Wahlburgers (a burger joint owned by Mark Wahlberg and his brothers) in a shopping center near our hotel.
The wedding itself was magnificent, featuring a live band (to my great delight, they played I'm Shipping Up to Boston) on a beautiful estate, and I was surrounded by a group of truly amazing people. The morning after the wedding, we attended a brunch at Emma's parents' house, and then Sophia and I headed into the city of Boston - to meet another one of the finest married couples in human history, Austin and Grace Kingsbery. Austin is one of my best friends from high school (we were in a number of plays together as Red Dragon Players at Austin High), and I was overjoyed to attend his wedding six years ago with Lucas and Cora in Milwaukee (a wedding that very, very loosely inspired my film Jack and Lucas Go To A Wedding). He and Grace now live in Winthrop, and Sophia and I stayed with them on Sunday evening in their lovely home. We also met their newborn baby, Elias, who was adorable. Austin gave us a walking tour through the heart of Boston in the afternoon (Sophia had never been to the city before), and then we met Grace and Elias for a lovely dinner in Winthrop.
The other highlight comes from exactly one year ago today, when Sophia and I were able to see Springsteen on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre. As soon as it was announced Bruce Springsteen was holding a residency on Broadway, I had desperately been seeking tickets. It wasn't until the show was extended for a second time that I was finally able to secure seats, and we saw a glorious performance on Friday, July 13th, 2018.
The show was a near-religious experience – even from the back row, you could feel the power and resonance of Springsteen's every word. Songs I’ve known for what feels like my entire life are given new meaning and context, with added insight into the role they play in Springsteen’s life. I was hearing My Hometown, Thunder Road, My Father's House, Tenth Avenue Freeze Out and so many others in a whole new way - I was really listening to those lyrics like never before. The sections on his mother and father brought tears to my eyes - both his father’s quiet desperation and his mother’s strength and vitality spoke to me so strongly.
He also spoke to the fact that his most popular songs so rarely stemmed from his direct experience (he’s never stepped into a factory in his life, he says), but rather from observation and studying folks like his parents.
Springsteen on Broadway is a self-biography concerned not with accomplishments, accolades and hit records, but with fleeting and powerful memories amassed over a lifetime. And with each new chapter of his life, I felt like I was there – the details and imagery in each story are as evocative as the song that accompanies them. This man has shaped the way I think, feel and relate, and his words and music will never leave me.
Before I depart, I'd love to mention a new film made by two of my friends, Ryland Brickson Cole Tews and Mike Cheslik. They're currently on the film festival circuit with Lake Michigan Monster, which is an explosion of creativity, some kind of cross between a Guy
Maddin fever dream and Tews and Cheslik’s animated web-series L.I.P.S. (in which I admittedly appear as a relaxed man living inside an alien's eyeball)– and yet neither comparison
does justice to this picture. There are sequences both hilarious and haunting,
and an underwater third act that achieves a kind of poetic power in its
abstraction and imagination.
Tews, as the erratic Captain Seafield, is a living and
breathing cartoon (in the best possible sense of the word) – he supports the
film’s manic energy from his very first entrance, inviting us along for the fun
as he aims to avenge his father’s death by hunting down a mysterious sea
creature. Cheslik’s effects work in this film is masterful – every
frame is packed with extraordinary helpings of visual information, sight gags,
and images both otherworldly and flat-out absurd.
You can feel when a film is made with love, and Lake Michigan Monster, with its
immensely creative use of Milwaukee locales and a cast of amazing Wisconsin
talent, practically brims with heart and soul. For all of its inspired lunacy
(which had me in stitches for eighty minutes straight), I truly felt as if I
had experienced some ancient Midwestern lore by the film’s end, as I hummed
along to the elegiac original song “Dear Old Captain Seafield.” I am deeply,
deeply proud to know the folks who made this film.
It's been a little while since my last blog entry, but I'm back! Near the end of last year, I made an acting reel, mainly comprised of footage from Alex Fofonoff's Blood and Thunder (in which I starred) and my films Jack and Lucas Go To A Wedding, Jake the Cinephile and With Love, Marty. Take a look below if you're interested, and please share - I'd love to get more acting work (if anyone needs a Jack-like character in their movie, I'm your man!) Look for memorable appearances by excellent acting partners like Desi Domo, Alexis Gay, Bethany McHugh and Lucas Loredo. Thank you to Bobb Barito for his sound design and to Alex for so much great footage from Blood and Thunder.
Speaking of Blood and Thunder, we had a great first screening of the film back in December. It was truly an honor to share Alex's film on a big screen with a group of friends and collaborators. We're still in the process of getting the movie out there and submitting it to festivals, and I'm very excited for more people to see it.
My friend Marissa Rutka has a great new web series titled Coffee Catch-Ups that's online now, and it was a lot of fun to be a part of the production (and a subject in the series). You can find the two episodes where I'm featured before - in the first, Morgan Ingari and I recount the eye-watering events of Hurricane Sandy, and in the second, I go into Jake the Cinephile mode and offer out my rather obsessive-compulsive idea of perfection. Keep watching the series for more memorable guests and friends, like Charlotte Arnoux, Adam Boese, Nick Tanis and Emmy-winning guest star Jon Annunziata. The series was also nominated in the Documentary & Factual category of T.O. Webfest and will play at their festival later this month, so that's exciting!
In other news, my movie Jake the Cinephile is now available to watch online on Vimeo! I had a lot of fun screening this film at NewFilmmakers New York and The Beacon Film Festival (Freeze Frame) a few years ago, and I can't thank all of my extraordinary collaborators on the film enough. Here it is:
My senior thesis film You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory is winding down its festival run after screening at a number of festivals last year. We were proud to be nominated as a Finalist for Best Student Film at the Blow Up-Chicago International Arthouse Film Festival in December. And earlier, on Saturday, November 21st, I was thrilled to screen You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory at the Katra Film Series with some other great films. After the film screenings at Katra, there was a Q&A with the other filmmakers, where I was joined by my great lead actor Mike Wesolowski.
On Friday, April 22nd, By Sidney Lumet, the wonderful documentary on which I was an associate producer and assistant editor, had a special free screening at the Tribeca Film Festival at the SVA Theatre, followed by a lively Q&A with panelists Jonathan Demme, Treat Williams, Amy Ryan and Jenny Lumet moderated by director Nancy Buirski. It was a particularly exciting day because, before the screening, I was part of the production team on an excellent interview with Mr. Williams, where he discussed shooting Lumet's masterpiece Prince of the City (1981). From both that interview and the post-screening talkback, I learned so much great New York City filmmaking history in the span of a few hours.
The trailer for By Sidney Lumet is also now available for the world to see - you can watch it here. Earlier this year, the film screened at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham. But, for me, the most exciting screening of By Sidney Lumet was at the Austin Film Festival last October, where it played at the historic Paramount Theatre. It was a great afternoon screening, and a good number of my friends and family members were able to come see the picture on the big screen. Nancy held an excellent Q&A after the film was over onstage (I was also able to see a number of other films at the festival, including Youth, Brooklyn, Legend and Coming Through the Rye, and meet one of my favorite actors, Chris Cooper, for the second time).
By Sidney Lumet spans Lumet's entire career, from 12 Angry Men (1957) to Dog Day Afternoon (1975) to Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), and it's really been great to see the film and Lumet's work so justly celebrated over the last year.
Meanwhile, Loving, the narrative film adaptation of Nancy's first film, The Loving Story (2011), wrapped production last fall, and earlier this year Focus Features bought the film to release in the fall. Directed by the astounding Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Mud, Midnight Special) and starring Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga and Michael Shannon, Loving recently made its world premiere at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and it was the talk of the festival. Loving is shaping up to be the second masterful film by Nichols this year (after Midnight Special, which I'll discuss below), and it's a very exciting time for Nancy's career.
The Cannes line-up this year, by the way, was particularly exciting - in addition to Loving, there were new films from Sean Penn (The Last Face), Woody Allen (Cafe Society), Paul Schrader (Dog Eat Dog, starring Nicolas Cage) and Jim Jarmusch (Paterson), along with a special screening of Jonathan Jakubowicz's Hands of Stone to honor star Robert De Niro, who is supposed to give another great performance in the film. And in the absolute best news of the festival, STX bought the international rights for Martin Scorsese's The Irishman, starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, which is the movie I've been waiting for my entire life. If The Irishman is indeed moving forward, it's the best news of the century.
By the way, I suspect Penn's The Last Face (which was received poorly) is a good film, and critics are simply making it difficult for the movie to find a distributor. Meanwhile, most studio crap gets a pass - I'll have a bit more to say on critics dismissing interesting cinema while giving bloated, uninteresting superhero films way too much leeway a little later.
On Saturday, April 23rd, ten years after the best concert of my life (seeing The Rolling Stones in Zilker Park in Austin), I went to the only concert that can ever top it - finally, after waiting for so long, I saw Bruce Springsteen in concert. That's right, I went down to The River to worship at the altar of The Boss. His two performances at Brooklyn's Barclays Center marked the end of The River Tour 2016, in which Springsteen and the E Street Band performed the entirety of their 1980 album The River (along with a large number of other Springsteen songs). As you might expect, I rocked out. From the homemade Springsteen t-shirts worn by fans congregating at the nearby Shake Shack to the power and majesty of the music itself, this concert was three and a half hours of joy. The River is such a beautiful, haunting album (here's a link to some of the videos I took on my phone during the concert).
And his live performances of these classic songs were as full of exuberance and passion as I've heard (though I feel quite familiar with his live work, having watched recordings of his concerts for years now). There was simply so much energy in songs like Tenth Avenue Freeze Out, Born to Run, Badlands, Out in the Street, I'm A Rocker, Cadillac Ranch, Crush On You, Two Hearts and You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch). He crowd-surfed, he threw multiple guitars off-stage (toward someone waiting to catch them), he got a married couple onstage to slow-dance, he danced like a madman, he busted through the crowd like The Boss.
And then there were the songs that nearly moved me to tears. He opened with Purple Rain, as this was two days after the tragic passing of Prince. And then The River stand-outs Fade Away, Stolen Car, The River and Independence Day broke my heart, along with two of his most emotional and triumphant songs, Lonesome Day and The Rising.
Earlier this year, my roommate Bobb got a vinyl record player for our apartment, and my used copy of The River I purchased from Other Music (which is unfortunately closing in June) has received more play than almost any other record in our collection. It's just a masterpiece, and as someone who considers Bruce Springsteen my favorite musician, I'm embarrassed I hadn't explored it and appreciated it the same way I have with Born to Run, Born in the U.S.A., The Rising, Magic, Darkness on the Edge of Town, Devils and Dust and so many other seminal Springsteen albums until this year.
April 29th was the fourteen year anniversary of my dear dad John Kyser leaving this earth - what a fun, loving man he was. He is deeply missed. To the right, you'll see some pictures taken by my great mom Gretchen Kyser.
Earlier in March, we held the Second Annual Lip Sync Battle Contest at my apartment, where friends attended and took turns performing sections (or the entirety of) songs that they chose (and rehearsed) before the competition. To commemorate the one year anniversary of our first party, I edited together a trailer of our performances from last year's inaugural contest. Take a look here and marvel at the talent on display.
Congratulations to our outrageously talented winners Mo Faramawy, Marissa Rutka, Taylor Frey and Alex Schaefer, as well as our Special Jury Prize winners Jon Annunziata and Emma Viles (traveling all the way from Boston!). There were magical performances by everyone and excellent judging all around.
We're not even half-way through the year, but there have already been several outstanding new film releases - although it's sometimes disturbingly difficult to find them when so many screens are devoted to the latest superhero monstrosity. In all seriousness, any self-proclaimed lover of film owes it to himself or herself to actively go out and see the new films from Richard Linklater, Terrence Malick, Jeff Nichols and Joel and Ethan Coen in a movie theater. It is more important than ever to support great cinema and choose wisely, particularly when nearly every screen in the city is dedicated to garbage (even when the garbage is supposedly "good," I simply find myself bored, desperately wanting to watch a real movie). Many, many worthy films open every Friday, and they're often lucky to survive even for two weeks in New York. I shudder to think how many films like Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret (2011) I've missed and have flown under the radar - and I'm someone who keeps up regularly with what's out there.
In my last post, I wrote in detail about my love for Linklater's flat-out amazing Everybody Wants Some!! Instead of making a top ten list this year, I might just list the ten best uses of music in the film. Linklater's new movie deserved a wide release, but Paramount Pictures didn't let that happen. Anyone who has seen the movie has fallen in love with it, but the studio simply didn't give the picture the chance it deserved and allow word-of-mouth to spread. Linklater is a national treasure, and actor Glen Powell delivers a star-making performance here (plus, my friend Jenna Marie Sab plays the mud wrestling champ, and Bernie Tiede served as the set cat wrangler).
It's a miracle that a movie as contemplative as Malick's Knight of Cups exists in this day and age. Richard Brody wrote a great piece on the film for The New Yorker (it's worth noting that Brody is one of the only film critics who actually seems to appreciate daring filmmaking anymore - some of the reviews for Knight of Cups would lead you to believe your money would be better spent seeing Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice).
Malick finds real beauty in the decadence of Los Angeles, with locations as evocative as anything in his filmography (production designer Jack Fisk does amazing work, as always). Malick also benefits from having an incredibly strong, emotive lead actor in Christian Bale, who is fascinating to watch in every quiet moment of this film. He seems to relish Malick's style of filmmaking, inviting us to share his character's very real struggle without having anything close to a traditional scene of dialogue.
The scenes with Bale's father (Brian Dennehy) and his brother (Wes Bentley) are some of the best in the film. Cate Blanchett makes a memorable impression as Bale's ex-wife, in a sequence in which we come to understand so much about his character through his reactions to her work as a nurse.
It's interesting to see Malick film the modern-day emptiness of a heavily materialistic culture, partially because I'm so used to seeing the natural world represented in his films. This is only Malick's second non-period piece (after To the Wonder), and I love seeing him capture our world in a way that emphasizes both the beauty and the trappings of a decadent wasteland.
Structuring the film in sections named after tarot cards fits so well with this story of a man on a quest to find meaning in his life and world. The experience of a hard-partying Hollywood player has never been put onscreen quite like this before, with so much contemplation as to what it all means and what role he's playing. There's a very memorable scene in which Bale's apartment is robbed and he's held at gunpoint. One of the burglars asks why there isn't anything of value in his home, and Bale doesn't have an answer.
As always with Malick, I found myself lost in Knight of Cups in a beautiful way, and I was made a little less aware of the current time and space around me. There's no way in his pictures to really know where we are structurally in the story, and so our minds are free to wander and take in the beauty of each moment. We simply exist in the space of the movie, and that is a wonderful thing.
Midnight Special is really, really special. The films of Jeff Nichols take place in cheap roadside motels, gas stations, backwoods areas and on dark highways. The locations alone have more character than most other studio films out there. All of his films are about parental concern in some way or another, and about a kind of anxiety and longing at the heart of modern southern men.
Interestingly, both Mud (2013) and Midnight Special feature powerful late scenes that help unearth the themes of the film, followed immediately by a rousing shootout. These critical scenes – in Mud, the titular character giving our young protagonist advice on love, and in Midnight Special, a child comforting his parents about to lose him – have a beautiful romanticism to them. And then Nichols leaps immediately into the thick of an adventure. It’s exhilarating filmmaking.
I love how dark Nichols and cinematographer Adam Stone allow some of these scenes to get – we actually feel like nighttime is upon us. And the darkness only helps conceal the mystery, along with the beautiful score from David Wingo, who also scored Mud, Take Shelter (2011) and the films of David Gordon Green.
Edgerton is silent and strong, providing a subtle, effective presence in each scene, while Shannon is riveting as a father willing to do anything for his son.
Midnight Special is an emotional story about parents protecting and eventually letting go of their child, and how others along the way are deeply affected by the child's vision. Nichols is so good at making movies that are about so much more than they seem, and they always sneak up on you and reveal themselves in profound ways. The combination of supernatural imagery with ordinary life is even more prevalent here than in Take Shelter, but Nichols uses special effects only when necessary, and only in the interest of enhancing the story.
With these last few films, Nichols has created a new American South that feels real and heartfelt. Here, he embraces his inner Spielberg and makes a film full of haunting images, quiet characters whose inner lives speak volumes, and an atmosphere that lingers long after the credits are finished.
In February, Joel and Ethan Coen released their latest masterpiece, Hail Caesar! Josh Brolin, in his third collaboration with the Coens, leads a hilarious ensemble cast, and the picture is a treat for anyone who loves classic cinema. The Coens have a great time paying homage to classic studio films from the 1950s. They're also two of the only major American filmmakers to deal seriously with religion in their films. Hail, Caesar!, which begins and ends with Eddie Mannix (Brolin) in confessional, is fascinating when you consider the minor sins for which he atones, as opposed to the things he doesn't confess. He doesn't give a second thought to anything slightly immoral that involves running Capitol Pictures more effectively, whereas smaller things, like having an occasional cigarette, weigh on him heavily. This is a dense film, and worth seeing multiple times. Every film from the Coens is like a puzzle, and as you're watching it, you know the pieces are going to add up to something brilliant, but part of the fun is trying to determine how seemingly throwaway scenes contribute to the overall picture.
If you want brilliantly-written, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang-style fun, run to see Shane Black's The Nice Guys, in which Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling make a hilarious pair of private eyes. This is precisely the kind of movie that deserves to be making loads of money - if only America wasn't so simultaneously force-fed and obsessed with superhero atrocities. Jodie Foster's Money Monster is also a great, tight thriller reminiscent of Sidney Lumet's work - and features a fantastic supporting performance from my friend and NYU peer Grant Rosenmeyer! He plays Tech Dave, who spends a great deal of time in the control room and later in a van with Julia Roberts.
A24 continues to release the most memorable films out there - The Lobster is amazingly inspired and strong, with an extraordinary performance by Colin Farrell. And earlier this year, The Witch unsettled me deeply. Talk about a production company on a winning streak - in the last year, they've released While We're Young, Ex Machina, Amy, The End of the Tour, Room and Green Room, in addition to the above titles. If I see their logo attached to a movie trailer, I'm seeing the movie without a doubt.
I was a little late to the game in seeing it (after it won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film), but Son of Saul by László Nemes is a work of art. In short, it's important to go out there and see the original films. So please go support The Nice Guys, Money Monster, The Lobster, A Bigger Splash, Weiner, Maggie's Plan, Elvis and Nixon, Miles Ahead, The Family Fang, Green Room and - if it's still playing near you - Everybody Wants Some!!
Earlier this February, I attended the first screening of the Blackhat Director's Cut at BAM, with Michael Mann, one of my favorite directors of all time, introducing the film. I was a fan of this movie when it first opened a year ago, and I love this restructured version even more.
In this cut, the romance between Chris Hemsworth and Tang Wei's characters is much stronger, and the characters overall are more fully defined. You know you're watching the work of a master visual stylist when you can practically feel the locations while watching the picture, and Blackhat has no shortage of incredibly memorable set pieces.
The sheer urgency and immediacy of the shootouts are as gripping as anything in Mann's filmography. The hacking scenes are beautifully filmed and visualized, and Mann's hyper-digital aesthetic has rarely felt more appropriate and essential, given the subject material. It's hacker versus hacker at the end of this picture. The film feels like it takes place in two worlds - one made up of sprawling and confusing physical geography, the other an unknowable and far advanced world that leaves the physical one muddled in chaos. On a side note, I was thrilled to be quoted in an IndieWire story about the Blackhat screening.
In April, I saw the current revival of Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway, which was an incredible production. I hadn't seen the musical since the 1990s, when I went with my parents to a production at Austin's Paramount Theatre.
As for this year's Academy Awards, I thought the winners themselves were right on the money. The final three Oscars went to exactly the people who deserved them - they got it right. Let's finally say it - Academy Award Winner Leonardo DiCaprio. We all know it should have been Oscar #4, as he should have won for Martin Scorsese's The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), but no matter. The Academy awarded a magnificent actor and a truly kind person (from the few times I met him on The Wolf of Wall Street), not to mention an extraordinary performance.
In fact, I made the t-shirt to the right two years ago in the spirit of a possible DiCaprio win for The Wolf of Wall Street. That didn't happen. But I brought it back this year, and it happened.
The Best Director win for Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu and Best Picture win for Spotlight are, again, precisely the choices I would have made - not just among the nominees, but for the entire year, period. I loved whatever it was Michael Keaton mouthed when Spotlight won - that's two Best Picture winners in a row for Keaton, baby (and you can bet he's coming back for more this year with his excellent-looking performance in The Founder). The awards were enough to start a hashtag like #OscarsSoRight.
I was a little sad about Sylvester Stallone's loss for Creed, though my two picks for Best Supporting Actor (Harvey Keitel for Youth and Keaton for Spotlight) weren't even nominated. But it's cool that, before Lincoln (2012), Steven Spielberg had never directed an Oscar-winning performance - and now, with Mark Rylance's brilliant performance in Bridge of Spies, he's directed two. I was hoping to see the Best Song Oscar go to Youth, the actual best song nominated, by an artist apparently not famous enough to perform (don't even get me started on the exclusion of Brian Wilson's song from Love & Mercy).
To be honest, I hadn't been so excited for the Oscars since The Departed (2007) won it all nine years ago, mainly because of the prospect of a DiCaprio win. And the other winners were largely excellent (Ennio Morricone for The Hateful Eight! Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer for Spotlight! Brie Larson for Room! Adam McKay and Charles Randolph for The Big Short!). Still, the tone of the evening oftentimes left a bad taste in my mouth - there's a way to critique the politics of the entertainment industry without disrespecting the films and people who are nominated.
It was a good awards season, for the most part, as well - with The Revenantbecoming a worldwide hit, winning the major BAFTA awards and Alejandro González Iñárritu winning the DGA for the second year in a row - he could not be more deserving. Spotlight, meanwhile, won the WGA award. Here's a great Rolling Stone article on Iñárritu, which includes Scorsese's thoughts on The Revenant (he calls it a masterpiece).
There have been some tragic deaths since I last wrote here, including musical legends Glenn Frey, David Bowie and Prince; Gary Shandling, who gave us masterful comedy with The Larry Sanders Show; Kathryn Altman, who so lovingly kept her late husband Robert Altman's legacy alive and well, particularly with the magnificent book on his career; and brilliant author Harper Lee. I had the honor of briefly meeting Harper Lee ten years ago with my friend Bolton Eckert at Horton Foote's ninetieth birthday party - she was an extraordinary person, and her work and legacy will live on forever.
