Two Hearts Are Better Than One

Since I last updated this blog (my end-of-year top ten films list notwithstanding), I started two new jobs in September of last year. I was hired as a website video editor at Comedy Central for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, which has been a tremendous joy and an opportunity to work in a large, corporate edit office on a major television show. In addition, I began working as an after-school filmmaking teacher with CinemaKidz, teaching two classes on Wednesdays at Brooklyn Friends School.

Last semester, I taught alongside another great instructor, Bryn - one class comprised of elementary schoolers, the other comprised of junior high students. I was struck by the knowledge and aptitude of the students with filmmaking technology - we primarily use iPads to shoot in-class films, and the various filmmaking apps include iMovie, Filmic Pro, Green Screen and Stop Motion Pro. Many of the students were already very familiar with these apps, and it was an absolute joy to get to work with them and help cultivate their voices as filmmakers. They were particularly enamored with the green screen, which we set up before class most weeks - although for their final class films, we recommended using real locations around Brooklyn Friends School instead of relying on the green screen.

In order to focus on editing my web-series Harvey's Last Night on the Avenue this spring, I am not teaching a weekday class during this current semester, but I continue to work CinemaKidz birthday parties on the weekends. The birthday parties often consist of four-hour shoots with a large green-screen set-up in a studio, in which the birthday party attendees shoot a music video or a short film in rapid-fire speed. It's invigorating and heartening to watch young people learn about collaboration and the art of filmmaking.

You can view my online staff profile and introduction video on CinemaKidz's website, or watch the link below.


Meet Jack @ CinemaKidz from CinemaKidz on Vimeo.

My job with Comedy Central has been an incredible experience. I work four nights per week (the air dates for The Daily Show), usually coming in at 6:00 PM and leaving at 2:00 AM. It's a rather ideal schedule, actually, as I'm able to edit Harvey's Last Night on the Avenue during the daytime before work. I primarily edit the website material for The Daily Show, along with some social media content and additional editing on other Comedy Central projects. The best part of the job is the lively camaraderie among the nighttime video editors - our edit room inside the Soho Viacom building is full of energy and ideas (and, often, food). It rarely feels like a late night when I'm working there, primarily because of everyone else in the room.

Because the show regularly has dark weeks (in which The Daily Show does not air), the breaks and holidays are generous (although you can work daytime shifts during the dark weeks, too, which I have done). There are certainly perks to working with a large company. When there was a major snowstorm early last month, I was put up at the Hotel Hugo in Soho overnight after my edit shift to ensure I wasn't traveling home on dangerous roads. There's also a hoverboard in our office, to my great delight - although I'm not sure I'm very good at it.

Watching The Daily Show every night is a lot of fun, too - here's one of my favorite pieces Trevor Noah has done from the last year. We have guests in the edit room sometimes - after her interview on The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, newly elected Virginia Delegate Danica Roem visited our office - she made history with her win this past November as the first transgender person elected to a U.S. statehouse, and it was a joy to meet her.

In January, I had the opportunity to act in a Columbia University MFA film. Director Cooper Troxell found my acting reel on Columbia's casting website, and he cast me as a romantic lead, of all things, in his film Hidden Gems. The picture centers around an office party where I'm at the center of a love triangle. We shot for two days in an architecture studio in the Flatiron District, and I was mightily impressed by the efficiency and professionalism of these MFA students. I've been on too many NYU film sets to count, but this was my first experience on a Columbia set, and I had a great time. I love to act whenever I can, and here, I was teamed with a great filmmaker and a fun script (and an opportunity for some successful improvisation). I look forward to seeing the final film.

Speaking of acting, no less than a few weeks ago, my effervescent girlfriend Sophia and I wrote a short play called White Castle Valentine's Day 2018 on a whim. It takes place at a White Castle on Valentine's Day, which, let's face it, is exactly where we all want to spend that cherished day. Sophia submitted the rough draft to a few theaters in New York accepting play submissions, and Manhattan Repertory Theatre accepted the play as part of their New Works Short Play Event. In a rather fortuitous turn of events, we just performed the piece on Friday, February 16th and Saturday, February 17th at 6:30 PM - which was not only the week of Valentine's Day, but also fell on a dark week for The Daily Show. Just like that, in a matter of days, a new project emerged seemingly out of nowhere! Here's what Sophia and I wrote for the 'About' section of our play's program:

"When Sophia and Jack stumbled into a White Castle for a late-night soda less than a month ago, neither of them could imagine that they'd leave ten minutes later with a potential short play percolating in their minds. Written over the course of a single weekend and reflecting the whims and idiosyncrasies of both writers, White Castle Valentine's Day 2018 arrives near the one-year anniversary of Jack and Sophia's relationship. While this piece doesn't exactly reflect their love story in any real way, it's still a representation of their ideas and concerns, filled with generous helpings of bizarre humor and non-sequiturs. In the spirit of this holiday, you're invited to discover what it means to accept your romantic partner (flaws and all) in White Castle Valentine's Day 2018."

I directed the play, with my friend and fellow Red Dragon Player alumnus Zachary Gamble leading the cast as Vincent (a stand-in, more or less, for me). Two extremely talented actresses, Nadira Foster-Williams and Audrey Harris, play Trash Lord (a character more or less standing in for Sophia) and Gloria (an ornery White Castle cashier), respectively. Rounding out the cast is me - I played Gene, a homeless man who lives in the White Castle, who gets a nice soliloquy before falling dead mid-play. I was overjoyed by the opportunity to perform in a live theatrical piece again, and even more excited to direct theatre for the first time!

We held rehearsals the last few weeks in spaces at the University Settlement, where Sophia works. She also constructed simple but elegant set pieces, namely a bullet-proof glass window separating Gloria from the rest of White Castle. I'm used to the directorial duties when it comes to filmmaking, but I'm rather new at some of the theatrical demands - creating a lighting and sound cue list, making a master blocking document, and furnishing the set with props that can be easily placed and stricken within minutes (since we were part of a series of plays).

White Castle Valentine's Day 2018 is a mysterious, romantic riddle wrapped inside an enigma. Sophia's brother Jack made the poster, and I think it's pretty great (additional publicity images were made by Jasmin James). I encouraged everyone to come on by via our Facebook event, and I sincerely hope they were moved, exhilarated and surprised. Our wonderful guests included my roommate Bobb Barito; dear friend and fellow Red Dragon Player alumnus Cora Walters; my beloved high school English teacher Michael Blankenburg and his husband, Brandon Durham; fellow NYU alumnus Aaron Kodz; and Sophia's entire family. Backstage, I was able to do something I've always wanted to do - lead our cast in vocal warm-ups I learned from my Austin High theatre days.

In short, it was a glorious experience - the dress rehearsals, the thrill of performing live, the backstage camaraderie, the excellent after-party - it all came flooding back to me. And, of course, the opportunity to direct and act in a play I wrote with my incomparable girlfriend doesn't come along every day, and so this one meant a lot to me. Sophia and I really put our heart and souls into this piece, and I'm enormously proud of what we put together in a matter of weeks. Here was the link for tickets, which I expect will expire in the coming days as new shows move into Manhattan Rep.

But never fear! Ken Wolf, the Artistic Director of Manhattan Rep, recorded a video of both of our performances. You can see our second performance in its entirety in the video below.


White Castle Valentines Day, Performance #2 from Jack Kyser on Vimeo.

One year ago on Valentine's Day, I had one of my first dates with the amazingly talented and stunning Sophia. I can't possibly express what a joy it is to have her in my life. I was beyond honored to have collaborated on this performance.

On December 29th, Sophia visited Austin for the first time, and stayed at my house for four nights over the New Years holiday. We had a packed and thrilling three days together - on our first night, we ate at The Tavern with my mom, and then travelled down South Lamar to check out Waterloo Records (where we both made some fine purchases) and Book People.

On Saturday the 30th, we went with my mom to the house of my wonderful uncle and aunt, John and Keni Neff, and then went to The County Line to have some of the best Austin barbecue out there. Sophia and I then took a trip down to the Hike and Bike Trail, where we visited Lou Neff Point, the beautiful overlook at Town Lake (or Lady Bird Lake) named after my grandmother (my mother's mother, Lou Neff). She, along with Lady Bird Johnson, started a beautification effort in Texas to plant wildflowers all along the Texas highways in the 1960s. Here's an Austin-American Statesman article with a picture of Lou Neff Point from decades ago.

That evening, Sophia, my mom and I had tickets to an early screening of Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread in 70MM at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz in downtown Austin. This was a perfect opportunity to not only see downtown, but to take in one of Austin's best cinemas (and see the newest work from one of our finest filmmakers on glorious celluloid). We were enraptured by the film - it's an astonishing study of two people in love, told mostly through glances and gestures, each of them trying to discern what the other is thinking. Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps gave two of the best performances of last year. Anderson is such a treasure - and his taste, I might add, is so wide-ranging and unpretentious. Here is someone who clearly loves movies and doesn't play into the Film Twitter game of taking films down a peg.

After the film, we walked down Congress to the Roaring Fork and had a delicious post-movie meal. We then headed down toward the Texas State Capitol and roamed around outside the beautiful structure.

On New Year's Eve, Sophia and I had lunch at Kerbey Lane Cafe on the Drag, and then roamed around the University of Texas campus. We ended up inside the Harry Ransom Center, one of the great archives and museums in this country, and studied their display Mexico Modern: Art, Commerce, and Cultural Exchange, 1920-1945 (before inquiring about their copy of Paul Schrader's Dark, a re-cut of one of his films only available at the Ransom Center and at UCLA's film archives).

We then went out to South Congress for New Year's Eve, meeting up with Zach (who was also in town for the holiday) at Guero's Taco Bar, one of the great Mexican establishments in Austin (and also heavily featured in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof). After dinner, we headed across the street to The Continental Club, a historic Austin music venue, and saw live music by the Peterson Brothers, who were positively electric. It was a stirring way to ring in the new year - a year in which I met Sophia, made Harvey's Last Night on the Avenue, and got a few new jobs. We ended the night in the best possible way - by stopping by Magnolia Cafe and munching on late-night pie.

The next day, Sophia and I met up with Billy and Annie Dragoo, my high school theatre directors, who I consider part of my family. We looked around the Preas Theatre, the home of so many cherished memories, and then went out to lunch at Red's Porch on South Lamar. Sophia and the Dragoos clicked right off the bat, discussing their collective encyclopedic knowledge of plays and theatre. I was thrilled they had the chance to meet.

That evening, my mom, Sophia and I had a great dinner at P.F. Chang's, and then saw Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World at Westgate Cinemas. Later, back at home, we opened Christmas presents with my mom, and I was overwhelmed by my mom and Sophia's generosity. My mom gave me, in addition to numerous Blu-Rays and books, a record player for my room in Austin. I put on my favorite album, Exile on Main Street by The Rolling Stones (another Christmas gift), and it was a joyous way to end the trip before we all went to sleep. And Sophia gave me the sweetest gift imaginable - a hand-crafted book charting our relationship and the many memories we've had together. I will cherish this forever.

Austin is changing - the toy store of my childhood, Over the Rainbow, along with the Arbor Cinema and Vulcan Video North, are all being consumed by rising property taxes. It's simply not Austin without these landmarks - we simply can't let this city become another anonymous metropolis. But at least Austin now has an In-N-Out Burger - God forbid we not have one of those. I have so many wonderful memories at the Arbor, as well as the Sunshine Cinema, which just closed in New York.

Speaking of the Sunshine, I said goodbye to perhaps my favorite theater in New York in January during its last week of operation. Sophia and I paid pilgrimage the weekend before the cinema closed by seeing Scott Cooper's extraordinary Hostiles, one of the most overlooked movies of the year, with an incredible Christian Bale. And then, the following weekend, we attended the last Saturday night at the Sunshine ever, joining a large groups of friends for a midnight screening of Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon (1975). Now, the space is closed to make way for a shopping mall.

I saw more than forty films at this wonderful theater over the last eight years, and I'm understandably so sad to see this place go. I vividly remember seeing Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret (2011) there for the first time - it was the only cinema in the city, to my recollection, that even played the film during its limited run. Months later, the Sunshine held the premiere screening of the Director's Cut of Margaret. I couldn't go, as I was interning at Sikelia, but I remember Thelma Schoonmaker needed subway directions so she could be there. When I was walking home late that night on the Lower East Side (I lived on Broome Street at the time, my senior year of college), I passed by the Sunshine as folks must have been getting out of Margaret. I walked by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who was unchaining his bike and about to head off into the night.

The first time I ever went to the Sunshine was for Joel and Ethan Coen's A Serious Man (2009), which I saw on opening night with three friends from film school. This was less than a month into my first semester at NYU, and I could tell this cinema was a place I would return many times over the years. The staff threw out A Serious Man t-shirts to the audience before the film - luckily, I still have mine. Let's protect the small cinemas we still have left.

In early October, on my first dark week from Comedy Central (I had only been working for two weeks), I directed my second film of 2017, Four Play. I wrote a great deal about Four Play in my last post, but in short, it's my first film that I didn't write. Ben Krevalin, an actor and producer with whom I share mutual friends, hired me to direct his screenplay early in the summer, and the early October shoot was a great learning experience. Even when I thought I had fully considered every aspect of a scene, there was something I hadn't thought of - such is the nature of directing someone else's script. I had a chance to work with some amazingly talented actors (Justin Danforth, Lizzie Stewart, McLean Peterson and Ben), and collaborate with some friends with whom I love working on set, namely production designer Maddie Wall and script supervisor Lain Kienzie, both extremely talented artists.

During our three-day shoot, we packed in a lot of scenes, and in the months since wrapping the shoot, Ben and I have been in the edit room with our editor, Daniel Sorochkin, who has done a great job with the film. We just picture-locked this past weekend, and I'm very proud of the final movie. Once it's fully sound-designed, color-corrected and scored, we'll be sending it off into the film festival circuit.

Speaking of my films, I'm still chugging along with the edit of Harvey's Last Night on the Avenue. I've been moving slowly but consistently - although I know most people prefer to make a rough cut of the entire project early in the process, I prefer to work on each individual scene at a time pretty thoroughly, resulting in a 'first cut' that's hopefully a little more refined. I'm not terribly far from a full first cut, but considering Harvey's Last Night on the Avenue will be nearly double the length of Four Play, I think the amount of time spent in the edit room so far is well-justified.

In September and October, I saw three films at the New York Film Festival - starting with the incredible North American premiere of Nancy Buirski's The Rape of Recy Taylor. Sophia and I (as well as my friend Tommy Bernardi, who also provided voiceover work in the film) attended a pre-screening party for the film at Indie Cafe at Lincoln Center, before traveling across the street to the Walter Reade Theater to see the film on the big screen. It was a great experience, with a fantastic Q&A afterward with Nancy, Robert Corbitt (Recy Taylor's brother), Cynthia Erivo, Crystal Feimster and Danielle L. McGuire, moderated by Kent Jones. I will admit, however, that I was a bit taken out of the film when I heard my own voice - it was an odd sensation.

The Rape of Recy Taylor has received some wonderful attention in the last few months. The film was front and center of The New York Times' Holiday Movies section, listed as one of the must-see films of 2017. On Saturday, November 11th, Nancy was joined by Academy Award nominated actress Ruth Negga (Loving) for a screening of the film at the annual MoMA Contenders Series with a post-screening discussion. On Friday, December 8th, the film opened for an Oscar-qualifying run at Laemmle Monica Film Center, followed by a New York theatrical release on December 15th at the IFC Center. In late December, The New Yorker's Richard Brody listed the film as one of the best pictures of the year, alongside The Lost City of Z, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), Phantom Thread and Logan Lucky.

Recy Taylor passed away in late December at the age of ninety-seven. During last month's Golden Globes broadcast, Oprah Winfrey spoke about Ms. Taylor, which I hope shed even more light on her story and on Nancy's brilliant film. I'm extremely proud to be associated with The Rape of Recy Taylor, and I highly encourage you to seek it out.

Later during the New York Film Festival, Sophia and I saw the Closing Night screening of Woody Allen's Wonder Wheel, which I thought was Allen's best film since Blue Jasmine (2013). It has some of the most imaginative staging and blocking in any of his movies, and Vittorio Storaro's cinematography is simply beautiful. Upon a second viewing in December, I was even more struck by Kate Winslet's performance and the strength of Wonder Wheel as a whole. But just remember, Woody - I shot at Deno's Wonder Wheel Park first (see below)!

The Wheels - A Film By Jack Kyser from Jack Kyser on Vimeo.

On the last day of the festival, I was quite astonished while watching Dee Rees's Mudbound at the Walter Reade Theater. Not just by the film, which was beautiful, but by the audience, which was not. I have rarely seen as many cell phones or heard as much talking as I did at this screening. Not one, not two, but three different people in the row in front of me on their phones - and that was just one row. Was this at a multiplex, perhaps in Times Square? No. This was the Film Society of Lincoln Center, for crying out loud. The New York Film Festival. I know that no space is immune to this kind of behavior - look no further than Film Forum, which seems to thrive now on loud talkers - but I was surprised that nobody in the audience really seemed to care. Certainly not the narrator behind me. Is there not one employee who can monitor these screenings, particularly for films not yet released, and ask people to close their phones? I was dismayed. There are many good films coming out these days, but not nearly enough audiences that deserve them. At this point, this song echoes through my mind nearly every time I sit down in a cinema.

There were several great films that played the New York Film Festival that I ended up catching elsewhere, including Todd Haynes's Wonderstruck, an overwhelmingly beautiful film that was clearly too quiet, sophisticated and strange for the non-stop talkers at Village East Cinema on a Saturday afternoon. Special shout-out to the know-it-all dad who inundated his young son with useless comments the entire film. Here's my review of Wonderstruck for Austin Family Magazine (you can read all of my reviews at the website, if you'd like).

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) was one of my favorite films of last year, continuing Noah Baumbach's streak of magnificent achievements. The film features Dustin Hoffman's best performance in years, with an equally amazing Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller.

Thanks in large part to Sophia, I've seen quite a bit of theatre the last few months. Most recently, we experienced one of the best plays I've seen in a long time, Bruce Norris's The Low Road, at the Public Theater. In January, we saw Robert O'Hara's Mankind at Playwrights Horizons, which was a wild ride overflowing with ideas. The first act finish was a delight, as all men in the audience stood and performed a prayer from a pamphlet hand-out. Earlier in the fall, Sophia's dad took us to see 1984 on Broadway at the Hudson Theatre, starring Tom Sturridge and Olivia Wilde, which was a horrifying and difficult-to-watch staging of George Orwell's novel. 

I was most moved by the revival of Torch Song, which was produced by Richie Jackson, a wonderful mentor and advisor to me through his fellowship. Written by Harvey Fierstein, directed by Moises Kaufman and starring Michael Urie and Mercedes Ruehl, the show closed on December 9th (I saw it during its final few days) at the Tony Kiser (no relation) Theater on 43rd Street. However, the play is opening on Broadway this fall, with previews starting in October. Torch Song was truly one of the most imaginatively staged and beautifully acted shows I've seen in some time.

Sophia has had no shortage of her own live performances in the last year. Her play Trash Lord: Domestication was performed in January at Sidewalk NYC, directed by Keith Paul Medelis of the Upstream Artists' Collective, and she also staged her performance art piece Body Fluids last fall at the University Settlement on Eldridge Street. This came after a whirlwind 2017, in which she held a packed staged reading of her play Please, Mrs. West in January at the University Settlement; directed and starred in a production of her original play Solo: An American Choreopoem at Dixon Place in April; and produced a film adaptation (which I assistant-directed) of Please, Mrs. West in July. 

In late October, we had a very fun Halloween. The night before, we went pumpkin-carving at Zach's apartment with some of his friends. As we didn't buy a pumpkin in advance of the party, we decided to temporarily "borrow" a pumpkin from a nearby bar (which had outside pumpkin decorations). We carved it impressively at Zach's apartment, and then we promptly returned the newly enlivened pumpkin to its rightful spot near the bar, with the message 'Do Not Judge Lest Ye Be Judged!' written onto its side. I like to think we didn't steal their pumpkin - we made it even better. We then travelled over to a party at another friend's apartment.

The next night, on Halloween, Sophia and I dressed up as our favorite movie couple - Howard Hughes and Katharine Hepburn. I had my aviator goggles and a piece of paper taped to my chest reading 'The Way of the Future,' while Sophia went full Hepburn in her costume choices. And then we headed off into the night, spending time at her friend's costume party in Harlem. All in all, it was a good way to honor The Aviator (2004), which I watched (with Sophia) for the one-hundredth time early last year. You know, watching The Aviator really puts things into perspective. For instance, there is no better movie than The Aviator.

I returned to Austin for Thanksgiving, and I had a grand Thanksgiving Day with my dear friend Bolton Eckert and his family. My mom, Bolton's mom Leslie, his girlfriend Allie, grandmother Myr and other family members gathered at Leslie's house and had a great meal. Only a year prior, I had joined Bolton, Allie and the Eckert family for a celebration of the wonderful Horton Foote's centennial - but I'll write about that in a future post (where I'll go back to 2016 and fill in some gaps). Bolton had his new drone camera at Thanksgiving, so we played around with flying that thing around Austin and getting some really beautiful aerial footage. He's now started a production company in Los Angeles where he'll be a drone operator and videographer.

Over Thanksgiving, I also saw some of my favorite films of 2017, primarily at the Alamo Drafthouse. In case I wasn't clear enough in my praise last time around, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is likely my favorite American film since Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). I have been positively thrilled by the film's awards season reception this year - seven Oscar nominations in total, although Martin McDonagh's omission for Best Director is disappointing. Three Billboards won five awards at the BAFTAs, including Best Film, Actress (Frances McDormand), Supporting Actor (Sam Rockwell) and Original Screenplay. The film won the same four awards at the Golden Globes, and the Screen Actors Guild awarded the picture Best Ensemble, Actress and Supporting Actor. The film richly deserves each one of these accolades. I've been laughing a bit at the hit pieces on the film ever since it became a frontrunner this awards season - God forbid a movie not adhere strictly to the doctrine of political correctness and have a bit of a nuanced view on some complicated issues. Thankfully, there are plenty of good pieces defending the film, as well as year-end top ten lists with Three Billboards out front I can get behind (I also particularly enjoyed John Waters's top ten this year, where he included The Wizard of Lies, Wonder Wheel and Wonderstruck).

I also saw Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird while in Austin, which was so moving and true - particularly in its expression of only appreciating your hometown once you've moved away. It's a beautiful piece of personal filmmaking that deepens our understanding of Gerwig's brilliant work as an actress. Richard Linklater's Last Flag Flying and The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) rounded out my Thanksgiving viewing - both of which deserved far more recognition this awards season.

The fall in general brought about quite a few excellent films - many of which didn't quite make my end-of-year top ten list. I'll write about a few of them here. I saw a killer Alamo Drafthouse double-feature in November of Yorgos Lanthimos's The Killing of a Sacred Deer and Sean Baker's The Florida Project - as always, A24 is giving us some damn fine work. For another Alamo double-feature, Sophia and I saw James Franco's The Disaster Artist, which is a blast - one of the funniest movies in years, ending with an almost The King of Comedy-style rise to fame. We followed it with Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name, which is engaging and leisurely from start to finish. The film is a confidently directed and realized picture, with a supporting turn from the always fantastic Michael Stuhlbarg that sneaks up on you.

At our third-to-last date at the Sunshine Cinema before its closing (our first, by the way, was Jim Jarmusch's Paterson early last year), Sophia and I saw Brett Morgen's Jane, which has some of the most extraordinary, cinematic archival footage I've ever seen. The parallels between Jane Goodall's study of chimpanzee behavior and her own personal life is so well-done. The great thing about Darkest Hour is that Joe Wright's inventive and exhilarating filmmaking is every bit as good as Gary Oldman's towering lead performance. And in Craig Gillespie's I, Tonya, we get a haunting look at a life marred by abuse and scandal, with performances by Margot Robbie and Allison Janney that are among the best of the year. I, Tonya is a film that continues to linger with me, and may very well find its way into my 2017 top ten after some reconsideration. If you're looking for more writing about my favorite movies of the year (in addition to my below blog post), check out my end-of-year list for Austin Family Magazine.

In general, I've been pleased with the major awards this year (although we'll see what happens at the Academy Awards this weekend). In addition to the Three Billboards love, I was thrilled Paul Thomas Anderson and Phantom Thread received so much attention from the Academy. I was less thrilled that both Tom Hanks (The Post) and Hong Chau (Downsizing) were omitted. What does Hanks have to do to get nominated for an Oscar these days? Because apparently the answer isn't starring in five Best Picture nominees since his last nomination seventeen years ago and not being nominated for one of them. For the Golden Globes and SAG Awards, I wish Robert De Niro would have won for his incredible performance in Barry Levinson's The Wizard of Lies. In general, there has been far too little praise this entire season for Downsizing, The Lost City of Z, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) and Logan Lucky - all movies I feel certain are going to grow in esteem over the years (and are far superior to many of the nominated films).

In November, my hero Martin Scorsese turned seventy-five years old. He's currently shooting The Irishman, which is essentially my favorite film of all time in the making. There have been endless amounts of exciting updates on the film - Anna Paquin has joined the film, set photos have emerged and much more.

Here's a few assorted Scorsese links and news items, all bundled together: he wrote a great article last year about the danger of relying on Rotten Tomatoes and Cinemascore ratings when considering a film, using Darren Aronofsky's mother! as an example (by the way, congratulations to Paramount Pictures for making something as bold and audacious as mother!, which was brilliant and totally go-for-broke, and a great companion piece to Aronofsky's Noah). Here's another important (and slightly older, at this point) article, in which Scorsese and other great directors say we're getting ripped off at the cinema. Scorsese says, in particular, "... unfortunately, a few bad experiences in a movie theatre can lead to an audience ultimately deciding to stay home."

Last December 20th marked the 15-year anniversary of Scorsese's Gangs of New York (2002). I remember opening day vividly - I was twelve years old, and it was my first Scorsese film in cinemas. My ticket cost $5.00, my friend Manny Munoz and I went with our moms, and as the lights went up, I felt as if I had just seen Lawrence of Arabia (1962) on opening weekend. I am still in awe.

On September 21st of 2016, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio declared the day Martin Scorsese Day. Want more? Here's a link to a history of Scorsese's love affair with The Rolling Stones. Here's a look at the future of the movies from 1990, the year I was born, where Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas discuss with Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel where they see the movie industry headed. It's a fascinating watch. And for the 40th Anniversary of Taxi Driver (1976), here's Scorsese and his cast with an oral history of the film.

Lastly, boxer Jake La Motta, the subject of Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980), died in September at ninety-five years old - what a life. May he rest in peace.

Speaking of those we've recently lost, I'm still mourning the loss of Tom Petty. In addition to being one of the greatest musical artists of our time, Petty also made the best music videos I've seen. In particular, Into the Great Wide Open and Don't Come Around Here No More are really astonishing. If I had to make a top five Petty, it'd be: Don't Come Around Here No More, Into the Great Wide Open, I Won't Back Down, Learning to Fly and It'll All Work Out, with a bonus nod going to Handle with Care by the Traveling Wilburys. It's also worth mentioning how beautifully his music is used in the films of Cameron Crowe. We also lost one of the best actors around last year, Harry Dean Stanton, who appeared in so many great films.

Two of my all-time favorite directors passed away, as well. Curtis Hanson died in September of 2016. His films L.A. Confidential (1997) and Wonder Boys (2000) are both among my favorite one-hundred movies of all time. He was a filmmaker who could seemingly work in any genre and make true art, as evidenced by films as diverse as 8 Mile (2002) and In Her Shoes (2005). And then, last year, Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot) passed away at 77. What an extraordinary director - seeing The Deer Hunter (1978) for the first time as a child was eye-opening. Like Raging Bull, the film's power was beyond anything I had ever seen, and it remains one of my five favorite films of all time.

Last but not least, I wish to share with you what my friend Jon Annunziata, an ebullient taco of a human being, sent me in the mail in December. Arriving home after work, I found a top-secret package containing my long-lost copy of The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh, a Travis Bickle t-shirt and a letter too pure for this world (plus some Carlos Santana memorabilia for Bobb). I can only express my gratitude to Jon by quoting the Reverend Al Sharpton: "Who among us has not showered with the dishes? For you are nothing but a mafioso waiting to take my breath away, and I for one couldn't be more surprised."

Films In and Around The 51st New York Film Festival: Afternoon of a Faun, The Age of Innocence, The Immigrant, Nebraska and more

On Monday, September 30th, Nancy Buirski’s Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq had its World Premiere at the 51st New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center, the first of three sold-out screenings at the festival. I started working as an assistant for Ms. Buirski in June, and I have had the honor of assisting with this wonderful film for the past few months, leading up to its premiere at one of the world’s greatest film festivals.

It has been an amazing experience working on this movie, which is my first professional credit out of college (I am credited as a Researcher and a Production Assistant in the end credits), as well as assisting with the New York Film Festival screenings of the film. Additionally, I have helped promote Afternoon of a Faun by running its Facebook and Twitter pages, posting many of the wonderful interviews with Ms. Buirski and the incredible press surrounding the movie, including glowing reviews from Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.

The official synopsis for the film reads: Of all the great ballerinas, Tanaquil Le Clercq may have been the most transcendent. With a body unlike any before hers, she mesmerized viewers and choreographers alike - her elongated, race-horse physique became the new prototype for the great George Balanchine. Amazingly, she was the muse to not one great artist but two; both George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins loved her as a dancer and as a woman. Balanchine married her and Robbins created his famous version of Afternoon of a Faun for Tanny. Tanaquil Le Clercq was the foremost dancer of her day until it suddenly all stopped. At age 27 she was struck down by polio and paralyzed. She never danced again.(Above photograph by Misun Jun.)

The film features interviews with many of Tanny's best friends and luminaries in the dance world, including Jacques d'Amboise, Arthur Mitchell, Randy Bourscheidt and Barbara Horgan, all of whom attended the premiere (I had the opportunity to meet Mr. d'Amboise and Mr. Bourscheidt, which was very exciting). Also in attendance at the premiere were legendary filmmakers D.A. Pennebaker and Frederick Wiseman, actor Michael Stuhlbarg (who provides the voice of Jerome Robbins in the film) and author Fran Lebowitz. After the screening, Kent Jones conducted a wonderful Q&A with Ms. Buirski that you can watch here on the Film Society of Lincoln Center website. 

Not only was it very exciting to help organize the screening and the after-party, it was also a wonderful opportunity to see many of the incredible people who work at Sikelia Productions, who have always been so supportive. 

At the film's second sold-out screening at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, I was honored to receive a special thanks from Ms. Buirski in her opening remarks on the film.

The popularity of the film at the festival was amazing – a third screening was added to the final day of screenings by popular demand (in the esteemed company of Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave, no less). 

I also attended the NYFF51 Live: Spotlight on Documentary Filmmakers event at Lincoln Center, where Ms. Buirski and acclaimed documentary filmmakers Allison Berg and Francois Keraudren (The Dog) and Jehane Noujaim (The Square) spoke about their films.

Moving forward with the film, Afternoon of a Faun will be screening with UNICEF this upcoming Thursday at the United Nations on World Polio Day. There is an upcoming theatrical release planned for the picture, and it will air next year on PBS as part of the American Masters program. (Photograph to the right by Misun Jun.)

The night after the premiere of Afternoon of a Faun at the 51st New York Film Festival, Ms. Buirski won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Programming for her film The Loving Story, an amazing documentary that has won several awards over the past year, including a Peabody Award and a Gabriel Award. 

The New York Film Festival is an amazing event, and I was very lucky to get to attend a few other screenings at the festival. On Thursday, October 10th, I attended the twentieth anniversary screening of one of my favorite films, Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence, at the Walter Reade Theater, with Scorsese introducing the film beforehand with Kent Jones. It was a beautiful restoration of a heartbreaking and powerful masterpiece. You can watch Scorsese's introduction here (I was in the second row of the theater).

I want to write in depth here about three other masterful films I saw at the festival - James Gray's The Immigrant, Alexander Payne's Nebraska and Steve McQueen's 12 Years A Slave, as well as two extraordinary films I saw outside of the festival - Paul Greengrass' Captain Phillips and Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity. 

Spoiler warning for all films reviewed below.

“You Are Not Nothing.” – James Gray’s The Immigrant

The first thing that struck me about James Gray’s The Immigrant, which I saw at the Francesca Beale Theater at Lincoln Center, were the faces of the actors in the film - so many haunted, gaunt and pale faces. People looked different in 1920s New York than they do today, and this is one of many important details that lend a great authenticity to this movie. One of the most beautiful-looking films I've seen in some time (photographed by Darius Khondji), the burlesque houses, crowded tenement buildings and spectacular magic shows for Ellis Island immigrants deeply rooted me in a time and place unlike anything I’ve seen since Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (2002).

Gray, one of my favorite filmmakers, participated in a Q&A with the audience after the screening. The film is full of breathtaking, sweeping images of 1920s New York, and yet, like all of Gray's work, this is a very intimate movie. I asked Mr. Gray if, when writing the film, he was thinking about the number of large set pieces compared to the more intimate scenes with only a few actors. Gray answered that The Immigrant is the kind of film United Artists might have released back in 1978, but these days, it is, of course, very difficult to secure funding for a large-scale, dramatic period piece of this nature. So, yes, he did write thinking about the number of expansive scenes versus the intimate ones, and tried to include many of the larger set-pieces in the opening of the movie, allowing the picture to slowly grow more intimate.

As the film opens, sisters Ewa (Marion Cotillard) and Belva Cybulski, immigrants from Poland, arrive at Ellis Island. Belva is very ill from tuberculosis, and immigration officials escort her away to an infirmary. When their American aunt and uncle fail to meet them at Ellis Island, Ewa is nearly shipped back to Poland, before she crosses paths with Bruno Weiss (Joaquin Phoenix), a brothel-keeper on the Lower East Side. He offers Ewa a helping hand and a place to stay – provided that she work at his brothel and serve as a prostitute. Desperate to earn enough money to get her sister out of Ellis Island, Ewa agrees.

Ewa is referred to early on in the film as a ‘woman of low morals,’ as her behavior and promiscuity on the boat to America are called into question. Throughout the film, we watch as Ewa battles with her own sense of morality and what she feels she deserves. She tests her morality by continually engaging in behavior she feels certain will send her to hell, but in order to survive in America, she has no other choice. Late in the film, Ewa asks her aunt, “Is it a sin to want to be happy when you know you’ve done so many things wrong?” I felt myself growing an extreme distaste for Bruno, who subjects Ewa to so many awful experiences.

But in the same way that the characters in Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975) defy our expectations of who will rise to the occasion*, so, perhaps, does The Immigrant subvert our expectations of Bruno. Though both the audience and Ewa may initially revile Bruno, my heart ultimately broke for him by the end of the picture, because he is, I believe, a good man. He is truly and hopelessly in love with Ewa and is trying, in his own flawed way, to earn her love. The jealously, longing and fury in Phoenix’s performance is breathtaking; this is a great companion piece to his extraordinary performance in Gray’s masterpiece Two Lovers.

Jeremy Renner, as Orlando the Magician, enters midway through the movie and changes the dynamic entirely. Imbued with a bit of magical realism, his character shows Ewa that there’s something beyond the dreary life of prostitution. Again, though, our expectations are challenged and a harder truth sets in – while the dashing and charming Orlando appears to have all of the answers and offers Ewa a way out of this life, does he really love Ewa like Bruno loves her? And, ultimately, is he really looking out for Ewa any more than Bruno? 

There are not easy answers to these questions, and as the film goes on, the relationship between Ewa and Bruno grows more and more complex. Is Bruno taking advantage of her, or is he offering the best version of the American Dream of which he knows? Talking about the movie after the screening, Gray described the relationship between Bruno and Ewa as strangely “co-dependent." In the final scene of the movie, there is a forgiveness and understanding between these two that moved me deeply. The beautiful and haunting last shot of the film illustrates their separation and their connectedness. 

I came away from The Immigrant feeling so much for both of these characters. Joaquin Phoenix's Bruno belongs on a list with other recent characters in cinema who, for whatever reason, stay with me and earn such an unexpected amount of empathy (I think of Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha, and, further back, Ryan Gosling in Blue Valentine). After the screening, I told Mr. Gray that I think his work is incredible - between The Immigrant and Two Lovers, he has made two of the finest movies of the last decade.

*(In her review of Nashville, Pauline Kael wrote, ‘Who watching the pious Haven Hamilton sing the evangelical ‘Keep a’ Goin,’ his eyes flashing with a paranoid gleam as he keeps the audience under surveillance, would guess that the song represented his true spirit, and that when injured he would think of the audience before himself?’)

Alexander Payne's Nebraska

There seems to be a unique and unspoken sadness in the lives of many Midwesterners. Perhaps it’s their taciturnity and the dry wit that covers up any trace of sorrow – they don’t necessarily talk about their problems with each other in great detail or neurotically analyze their anxieties and fears. They make for wonderful film characters because they ask for no pity whatsoever, and yet the sadness buried beneath their eyes endears us to them. How many filmmakers besides Alexander Payne make movies about these kinds of people?

Even on its first viewing, Payne's new film Nebraska feels like an old, warm friend. Filmed in beautiful black-and-white by Payne’s cinematographer Phedon Papamichael (the film looked absolutely astonishing on the large screen at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center), Nebraska has many of the qualities that make Payne’s work so distinct and memorable (most notably, it's a road-trip movie, one of my favorite sub-genres and a Payne specialty). We are introduced to many characters who at first seem like slightly satirical Midwestern send-ups, but are revealed, with time, to have “private fortitude and sadness all their own,” as Nick Pinkerton so elegantly wrote in his 2011 Village Voice interview with Payne. 

Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) of Billings, Montana believes he has won one million dollars, after receiving a letter in the mail from a Publishers Clearing House-like company informing him of his fortune. Chided by everyone around him as crazy and senile, Woody insists on traveling to Lincoln, Nebraska to collect his money - even if it means walking there by himself. Full aware that the letter is a complete scam, his son David (Will Forte) reluctantly agrees to drive his father to Lincoln, hoping for Woody to find some kind of happiness in his final years.

It takes some time before we get a full understanding of how Woody’s family and friends marginalize and take advantage of him (although Nebraska certainly acknowledges Woody’s own faults, as well). Bruce Dern’s performance here is amazing because it slowly sneaks up on you. His most moving moments are entirely wordless; he has a kind of quiet understanding about his situation and how people perceive him, even though he is, by all accounts, decidedly deluded in his quest for his million dollars.

It’s these quiet moments – none of which ever come close to looking anything like 'acting' – that we see into Woody’s soul. We come to understand how important this money is for him and how his dignity is invested in collecting this million dollars.

I mention this because I don’t think I became entirely aware of the power of Dern’s performance until the end of the movie – this is a performance that could have simply been a man falling into incoherence and dementia. But in Woody, we see so much more – so much lost time, so many dreams deferred, so many regrets and yet that same Midwestern reticence. During the scenes in which the large pack of men in the Grant family stare at the camera as they all watch television together, even the smallest of small talk seems like a word too many.

Late in the film, when someone who works at the Publisher's Clearing House-like company in Lincoln asks David if his father suffers from dementia, David replies, “No. He just believes what people tell him.” That seems to be Woody’s weakness – he’s willing to take any and every thing at face value, and has allowed himself to be stepped on over the years.

Up until about two-thirds of the way through the film, we’ve only seen Kate (June Squibb), Woody's wife, humorously degrade and belittle her husband, and, like in many of Payne’s films, we think we have her figured out. But then Payne blindsides us. When the time comes, Kate stands up for Woody and defends him passionately to other members of his own family. In that moment, we see that she loves him deeply. The characters in this film are deeply full of love; most of the time, it's just masked and deflected by dry humor and a kind of laconic attitude. I see this in my uncles from East Texas. It makes me want to reach out and hug them tightly.

Roger Ebert once wrote that he does not "cry during sad moments in the movies, only during moments about goodness." During these moments, he experiences what he calls elevation when watching a movie - not exactly crying, but rather "the welling up of a few tears in [his] eyes, certain tightness in [his] throat, and a feeling of uplift: Yes, there is a good person, doing a good thing." There’s something to be said for the fact that nearly all of Payne’s movies, particularly About Schmidt, have this kind of effect on me. Nebraska continues the tradition. The end of this film has a moment of such genuine kindness and uplift that I struggled to keep it together. Payne knows how to end a movie. Everything I love about about Sideways, About Schmidt, The Descendants and Election is all here.

I want to acknowledge the amazing score by Mark Orton. Rarely is a director’s tone so well-served by such moving and sometimes hauntingly mournful music. It’s never an outright sad score; like Rolfe Kent’s beautiful work on About Schmidt, it just feels honest. Papamichael's work is also amazing - one of the many reasons Nebraska is so powerful is because of the visual poetry and beauty of this part of the country. And the screenplay by Bob Nelson will surely win the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Nebraska is my favorite film of the year so far.

Steve McQueen's 12 Years A Slave

I don't have much to write about Steve McQueen's powerful new film 12 Years A Slave, if only because watching the movie is such a deeply visceral experience. It has four 'long-takes,' as it were, that I thought were truly extraordinary, including two scenes, one with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Paul Giamatti, Benedict Cumberbatch and Adepero Oduye, and the other with Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong'o and Sarah Paulson, that are uniquely horrific, brilliantly staged and performed by everyone involved. The other two shots that deeply affected me (both of which are long close-up shots of Ejiofor) further illustrate why McQueen is the perfect filmmaker for this material - as he proved with Shame, he is an unflinching director.

Paul Greengrass' Captain Phillips

Of the films I've seen recently, the one that took me by the biggest surprise was Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks as Captain Richard Phillips of the MV Maersk Alabama, which was attacked by armed Somali pirates in 2009.

Though the entire film is brilliant, the ending of Captain Phillips is as emotionally and politically complex a piece of filmmaking as I’ve seen. There is a sort of doomed inevitability that hangs over the characters in the second half of this film – Phillips knows, and actively tells, his captors that the United States would rather sink their lifeboat and kill all of them than let the Somalis win by reaching the African coast. And so Phillips becomes almost a kind of pawn in the larger game of American foreign policy.

Greengrass has always been a very experiential filmmaker – he’s determined for his audience to experience exactly what something feels like, often using the immediacy of handheld camerawork to achieve that effect (he is also interested in the minutia of how a ship works and how the crew would realistically respond to an attack like this, which lends the proceedings an unnerving authenticity). I have never been more affected by his style of filmmaking than I was here (Captain Phillips rivals 2006's United 93 as Greengrass' finest film). I felt like I was in that lifeboat with Phillips and the Somali pirates, and I felt the complex moral stakes for all of them that most other filmmakers would have ignored. They were are all human beings in that lifeboat. I don’t mean to indicate that I ever sided with the pirates, but I felt an overwhelming sense of despair for them, and for Phillips, as well. They don't ever stand a chance against the American warships following them.

In the last five minutes of this film, Tom Hanks does some of the finest acting of his career. Overcome with shock, Hanks breaks down as the American medical team examines him. But it’s more than just shock. It’s an indescribable kind of sadness that creeps in whenever an experience ends so suddenly – his life had become living in that lifeboat with these four men. And in an instant, the three remaining pirates in the lifeboat are shot dead. Although Phillips is safe, he's covered in the blood of the men with whom he's spent the past few days fighting, obeying and, at some points, understanding. It’s a victory, but it’s also strangely horrifying. I’ve never felt quite like this at the end of a movie.

In those closing, cathartic minutes of the film, I was suddenly able to grasp the horror of what I had just seen over the past two hours - as if the rest of the picture were an old memory, almost too immediate and unnerving in the moment to fully comprehend.

The ending of Captain Phillips embraces all of the moral ambiguities inherent in such a story, and struck me similarly to the ending of Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty – it's a triumph for the United States, but at what cost for the film’s protagonist? Captain Phillips is one of the best films of the year. Watch Hanks and Greengrass talk about these moving final five minutes of the film here, and click here to read the amazing story of actor Barkhad Abdi, who gives a great performance.

Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity

Seven years ago, I staggered out of the theater after seeing director Alfonso Cuarón’s breathtaking film Children of Men. With his first movie since Children of Men, the awe-inspiring space opera Gravity, Cuarón has done it again. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney star as astronauts Ryan Stone and Matt Kowalski, who are stranded in outer space after an accident destroys their shuttle. 

Gravity marks the third consecutive year in which a masterful American filmmaker has used 3D as a storytelling technique and advanced the technology to new heights (Martin Scorsese’s Hugo in 2011 and Ang Lee’s Life of Pi last year are, along with Gravity, the finest uses of 3D I’ve encountered). But the technical achievements in this movie go far beyond the outstanding use of 3D.

The very concept of space in Gravity is fascinating, because Cuarón – who is famous for his long takes – essentially stages the film in a small number of unbroken shots, which not only give a fluid sense of what it must feel like to move around in outer space, but also allow for a kind of operatic beauty to every movement in the film (like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, there are many scenes in which Gravity resembles a kind of ballet). There’s an incredible majesty to nearly everything we see in this film, thanks to the camera movement (the cinematographer is the brilliant Emmanuel Lubezki, who shot Children of Men and Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life and The New World) and the exquisite choreography of the actors.

All of this would be impressive as technical achievements alone, but the real brilliance of Gravity is how camera and actor choreography are used so effectively in the service of storytelling. In order to really be immersed in a film, you have to know where you are and understand the physical geography of the space in the movie. This is a particularly tough task for a film that takes place in outer space, and yet I cannot think of a recent film that so fluidly kept me aware of where I was, and therefore connected me so deeply to what our protagonist is experiencing.

The performances here by Bullock and Clooney are amazing. Although the film has its loud moments, Gravity is also a picture that understands the power of silence. Most big-budget Hollywood entertainment is aggressively loud and oftentimes feels like an assault on the audience, but Cuarón holds us captivated as we are confronted with the eerie quiet of space. Gravity is an extraordinary film.