When watching Martin Scorsese’s new film Hugo, it’s as if my love for Scorsese has come full circle. I first fell in love with him – in obsession with him, really – when I was eleven years old, when I watched VHS copies of Raging Bull (1980), Goodfellas (1990) and Taxi Driver (1976) almost back-to-back. On a visceral and emotional level, I had never seen anything like these pictures. These first encounters with Scorsese occurred only a few months after the death of my father, and in a way, the events are forever linked in my mind. My eyes were opened to a different kind of world – a place where pain, obsession and guilt were always present, and the only way to express this pain was through cinema. 
And it is in this way that I looked to Scorsese, really, as a sort of father figure – as a filmmaker who spoke to the fears and obsessions I harbored at a very young age, but also as a filmmaker who understood the excitement and thrilling rush of living. His films are experiential in a way that other movies are not, and I think I recognized early on that no other filmmaker was capable of communicating “an intensity onscreen that matches what [one] perceives/suffers in real life,” as eloquently stated by Chris Hodenfield in his article “You’ve Got to Love Something Enough to Kill It: The Art of Noncompromise.”
On December 20th, 2002, I was a twelve year-old boy sitting bright-eyed, entranced, exhilarated and moved by Gangs of New York on its opening day at the AMC Barton Creek Cinema in Austin, Texas – my first Scorsese film in theaters and a life-changing – yes, an absolutely life-changing – experience. And so with Hugo has Scorsese finally made a film about a twelve year-old boy enveloped by the cinema. And not just a twelve year-old boy, mind you, but a boy with a recently deceased father who seeks emotional satisfaction through the imagination and power of cinema. If there was ever a Scorsese film made just for me, surely this is the one.
My anticipation for a new Scorsese picture is unmatched; I await a new Scorsese movie the same way some anticipate a sort of religious experience. I don’t know if it's truly possible to count the ways Scorsese has influenced every single part of my everyday life, down to the music I listen to daily (The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison) to my beliefs about people, down to the way I experience things, every blink, cut and interpretation of events – not to mention my choice to attend New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Scorsese’s alma mater. His work is such a fundamentally important part of my life that there are times when I don’t know how much I originally found similarities between my personal demons and Scorsese’s work, and how much Scorsese’s work ultimately influenced my behavior.
“Movies are the memories of our lifetime. We need to keep them alive.” - Martin Scorsese
Although every one of Scorsese’s pictures is extremely personal – after all, that’s what’s so effective about his films – Hugo may be Scorsese’s most personal film of all. Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), a young boy living in the walls of a Parisian train station in the 1930s, discovers that an automaton left for him by his recently deceased father (Jude Law) may unlock the mystery behind George Méliès (Ben Kingsley), an unhappy elderly man who owns a toy shop in the train station. What Hugo and his newfound friend Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), Méliès’ goddaughter, gradually discover is that Méliès is one of the original pioneers of cinema, the director of over five hundred pictures and a revolutionary filmmaker. However, most of his films are believed to have been destroyed and melted at the rise of World War I, and Méliès, a broken machine without a purpose, resigns from life and fades into obscurity – until Hugo, who understands the pain of having one’s hopes and dreams disintegrate into flames – sets out to restore Méliès’ work.
Ah, film preservation – Scorsese’s most passionate cause, and the real subject of Hugo. The film is all about time, cruel time that batters away at celluloid. As the clocks tick-tock away in Hugo, the memories of our lives are slowly dying, the celluloid burning into ash and the preservation of our past decaying. But how can we let time destroy the magic and power of the cinema, of our memories?
The film gets you caught up in the magic of moviemaking, to the point where the audience gasps in astonishment at the beautiful remaining print of Méliès’ film A Trip to the Moon (1902), screened by film scholar Rene Tabard (Michael Stuhlbarg), who worships Méliès, but, like many, believes him to be dead – until Hugo and Isabelle prove otherwise. Watching Hugo with an audience, there were further gasps of awe when Méliès – in one of the most visually arresting and beautiful flashback sequences I have ever seen – splices together a cut in one of his early films. It had never occurred to me that so many people would not have known the process behind film editing, but there you go.
To say that Hugo is the finest use of 3D technology that I’ve ever seen doesn’t do justice to what Scorsese and cinematographer Robert Richardson achieve with this picture. I don’t particularly like 3D, and yet the visual bravura of Hugo has convinced me that, when utilized by a master filmmaker and treated as an artistic device, it is a major cinematic innovation, on par with the innovations of Méliès and the Lumière Brothers.
This movie is so rich – not just visually, but emotionally – that even after two viewings I am still overwhelmed by it. The performances, from the brilliant and hilarious physical comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Station Inspector, to Kingsley’s nuanced, powerful portrayal of Méliès, are superb. The editing, by the wonderful and loyal Scorsese collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker, is as crisp and exciting as ever.
But in the end, if Scorsese is Hugo, the film preservationist – the boy who restores the magic in a broken machine – then Méliès can be seen as a stand-in for any one of Scorsese’s filmmaking influences whose work he has restored through his Film Foundation, including Michael Powell, Elia Kazan, Luchino Visconti and, of course, Méliès himself. But surely Scorsese knows that, by the end of Hugo, when Méliès takes the stage and tearfully acknowledges Hugo before a screening of his restored work, that it’s impossible for someone like me to look at Méliès, the great innovator of cinema, without thinking of Scorsese, the wise master of filmmaking who influenced me.
This is the work of a master at the height of his cinematic powers. People who truly love film have, picture after picture, said this exact same thing about Scorsese many times. We said it when The Aviator (2004) soared as the most ambitious, energetic and entertaining Hollywood biopic in years. We said it when The Departed (2006) was no less than the great American tragedy of the 2000s, a masterful return to the gangster picture that held us captivated in our seats. And we’re saying it again for Hugo, a movie that has been surrounded by so much negativity from the first announcement that Scorsese would direct a 3D picture – as if the world’s finest filmmaker, who has never made anything short of a great film, wouldn’t find a way to discover the art in 3D technology and take it to an entirely new level – and not only that, but do it with his most passionate cause as his subject material.
My loyalty to Scorsese is boundless, and I’ve suffered through the lows – throwing things at the television when he unfairly lost Best Director Academy Awards for Gangs of New York and The Aviator to inferior films, listening to pseudo-intellectual hipsters knock on the brilliance of Shutter Island (2010) – and I’ve been with him through the highs. And let me tell you, there is nothing that feels as wonderful as watching the artist you love and defend your entire life receive the praise and admiration he so richly deserves, squashing the cynicism of those who feel his time has past. This is his time. George Méliès, step aside for another master of cinema. Martin Scorsese, take a bow.
For my Intermediate Narrative film at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, I wrote and directed The Wheels, a very personal story about an alcoholic father and his young son, and a study of their strained relationship over the course of a long day at an amusement park. In order to raise money for this production, I created an IndieGoGo campaign in early September, where I received extremely kind contributions from friends, family and coworkers. In less than twenty-six days, the campaign raised $1,331.00, almost double the amount of my initial $750.00 goal. I sent the following update to the wonderful contributors after our first day of shooting on Monday, October 3rd. In a series of upcoming posts, I will detail the extensive pre-production process for this picture, as well as other adventures from this great semester. Here is 
Dear Contributers,
Of course, none of this would have been accomplishable without your generosity, which made it possible to feed the cast and crew, transport cast/crew members to Coney Island and back to Manhattan, pay for a Budget Van rental for the movement of equipment, purchase film equipment and account for additional production costs.
Our second day of shooting will be on October 23rd, and we are currently preparing for that shooting date. Thank you so much for your help with this film – I assure you that we are making an excellent, powerful project that I hope you will enjoy.
I wrote in length about my immense love for Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life and Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris in earlier posts - two films that I have no doubt will place very highly on my year-end top ten list (I'll add a third to that list - Mike Mills' wonderful Beginners, with Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer and Melanie Laurent giving memorable performances in a moving love story). In particular, The Tree of Life is a movie that continues to live with me - I mean it sincerely when I say that, watching the film, I felt inspired to someday attempt to make something as personal and philosophical as Malick's movie - that is, of course, if I have the benefit of being a filmmaker many years from now. The Tree of Life is such an artful piece of personal filmmaking, and it's the kind of movie that gives me the hope that, one day, I can make a film that furiously and passionately grasps at the lingering questions from my childhood, the death of my father and the story of my youth. Just don't expect a fraction of the cinematic poetry and grace that Malick brings to The Tree of Life.
In January, my roommate Bobb Barito and I saw Tennessee Williams' The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore starring Olympia Dukakis on Broadway. This incredible production was directed by Michael Wilson, who, along with Tony-nominated actress Hallie Foote (daughter of the late playwright Horton Foote), will hopefully be speaking about the actor-director relationship at one of Tisch New Theatre's Master Classes in the fall (I have had the pleasure of getting to know Mrs. Foote over the years through my friend Bolton Eckert, starting back in 2006, when I attended Mr. Foote's 90th birthday party with Bolton and his family in New York City).
The past few months - both in New York and in Austin - I've been able to watch some great new releases worth seeking out in cinemas, including Kelly Reichardt's 
Since I've been in Austin, I've been catching up on re-watching some old favorites and some films I've overlooked through the years, including Niehls Mueller's 
There were also, of course, the artistic reasons for making the film. I love writing about loners. I love stories about outsiders and people who are trying very hard to be a part of a social group. 
I finished writing the screenplay for With Love, Marty shortly before my Spring Break, and during my break I reached out to my friends and classmates who I had worked with in the past to see if they would be interested in making this outside-of-class project. My cinematographer, the incredible Benjamin Dewey, was my loyal collaborator from the very beginning. Shortly after I returned from Spring Break, he and I met constantly to draw storyboards and make shot lists for every scene in the script (sometimes during our Monday night shifts at the Post-Production Center, where we both work as Teaching Assistants). He assisted me in purchasing the appropriate lighting equipment, and he also provided the EX1 camera, tripod and sound equipment necessary to shoot this film. My roommate Bobb Barito was also on board the project from the very beginning, both starring in the movie (as a character modeled on him, named Bobb) and agreeing to serve as Sound Mixer and Sound Editor for the film. During the shoot, there were scenes where Bobb was acting and therefore could not do sound, and my friends Andrew Griego, Adam Boese and Jeremy Keller graciously offered their sound-mixing and booming skills during that time.
For the opening interior apartment scene, I wanted to use the apartment of my good friend Mike Cheslik, whose apartment on 2nd Street and 2nd Avenue has become a sort of permanent film-set this past semester (it's almost a rite-of-passage to shoot something in his apartment at this point). Not only did I want to use his apartment, but I wanted to cast him in the film, along with our friends Jon Annunziata and Justin Levine, as versions of themselves (the characters are named Mike, Jon and Justin). They were all incredibly willing participants, bringing so many ideas to the table and showing off some incredible acting talent. Long before shooting the opening scene of the film - in which Bobb, Mike, Jon, Justin and I riff and make lewd jokes in the apartment - the five of us gathered together to go through the script and re-write that opening scene, essentially, with our improvisations. You can imagine that these were very fun screenwriting sessions - everybody was trying to be as hilarious as possible, and I included the funniest, most relevant bits in the final screenplay. I cannot thank Mike, Bobb, Jon and Justin enough for their hilarious work in both forming that scene in the final script, and for their eventually hilarious performances on set.
My producer, Erica Rose, was so incredibly helpful in getting this project off the ground, and not only did she keep me focused, help cast the film and set up auditions with actors, organize cast and crew members with daily call-sheets, gather extras for a large party scene and help me find filming locations, she also served as my Assistant Director on set, always keeping me on schedule (she acts in the film, too, in the small role of Rose). Erica recommended that I have an Art Director for the film, and the wonderful Madeline Wall came on board to help us. Madeline is responsible for all of the art, make-up and much of the costuming in the movie, particularly the interior scenes. She sent out specific instructions to our party extras on how to dress for the hipster party scene at Columbia University (her work with glitter and face paint stands out in this section of the film). She was present at all times during the shoot, also working as a Boom Operator, Gaffer and any other position we needed.
After having some production meetings with Erica and Ben - where we made shooting schedules, divided up responsibilities among the crew and assembled necessary equipment - it was time for me to cast and subsequently rehearse with my actors. The scenes featuring Bobb, Mike, Jon, Justin and me were easily rehearsed, not only because we are all good friends, but mainly because my character in the scene is mostly silent as everybody else is fraternizing, and so it was easier for me to forget about my performance in rehearsal and really focus on directing my friends. However, the more serious scenes in the picture - particularly the ones where my character is the most emotionally vulnerable - required a different kind of rehearsal. 
Erica suggested that I audition an actress named Alexis Gay for the role of Kellie in the film, and from the moment she walked into the audition room, I knew she was perfect for the role. I rehearsed with her privately twice, and we discussed the complicated interaction in the film between Kellie and Marty. Our final scene together in the film - the most important part of the movie, really - is such a painful and discomforting scene that it was a difficult task for me to direct her and simultaneously perform in the scene as this anguished, slightly delusional character. Thankfully, Alexis was so naturally receptive to my direction and understood her character so well that it made the process considerably easier for me. 
I had another separate, private rehearsal with Karen McFarlane, an actress who auditioned for the role of the elderly Lucille. Karen was brilliant. Lucille's scene in the movie is relatively short - she's only onscreen for about a minute and a half - but her role is critical. I'll admit, I was worried that Erica and I would not find a fantastic older actress who fit the part, even though Erica posted a casting call online weeks in advance. But when Erica brought Karen into the audition room and I read through the scene with her, I knew she was perfect. She was incredibly flexible with her schedule, too - we were scheduled to shoot her scene at 10:30 PM on the evening of April 24th at a bus stop near Union Square, and it started pouring down raining shortly before our call time. We had to reschedule to another date, and she could not have been more understanding (we ended up shooting the scene at 11:30 PM on a Friday night - and I'll tell you, we had to fight against some rowdy late-night crowds). It was a joy to work with Karen, and I think she's terrific in the picture.
An exact shooting schedule went something like this - on the evening of Saturday, April 23rd, we shot the Columbia hipster party scene in Erica's dorm room at Gramercy (doubling for the interior of a Columbia dorm room). Lee Gold and Jon Annunziata were on hand as Gaffers for the evening, and we had a great group of party extras who were extremely patient. The shoot took about three-and-a-half hours, mainly because Ben and I had planned a complicated tracking shot following Marty into the party and through the dancing crowd of hipsters. One of Ben's most beautiful shots is in this scene - a medium shot of Alexis, in full party attire, with her back to a window overlooking the nighttime traffic on Third Avenue. 
The second night of filming involved shooting the scene between Karen and me at the bus stop, which ultimately took about two hours to capture. This was a difficult scene for Bobb (as the Sound Mixer), because the bus stop by Union Square was certainly not quiet at 11:30 PM on a Friday night. It certainly didn't help matters that we had, more or less, taken over a public bus stop in one of the most popular spots in Manhattan. Later that night, Ben and I wandered around the West Village and picked up some beautiful exterior shots.
The final day of shooting was the pressure cooker - we had to shoot about seventy-five percent of the movie in one day. We shot day-for-night in Mike's apartment from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM, which included the opening scene of the film, the last scene of the film and a critical scene between Bobb and me that sets the story in motion. Then, after a short break, my crew and I met at Columbia University around 7:00 PM to shoot the scenes between Alexis and me, as well as all exterior Columbia University shots. The exterior Columbia scenes look absolutely beautiful, thanks to Ben's outstanding cinematography and a little help from C0lumbia's stunning campus. After that, we were more or less wrapped with the production, aside from a few smaller shots that required fewer people on set. It was an exhausting and rewarding day thanks to the incredible work of Ben, Bobb, Erica, Madeline, Alexis, Mike, Jon, Justin, Andrew and Jeremy - I could not have possibly asked for a better production experience or a better creative team.
For the post-production process, I edited the film using Final Cut Pro in the editing laboratories at Tisch during the last few weeks of the semester, seeking input constantly from other students. Shortly before he left to return to Colorado for the summer, Ben color-corrected my picture-locked cut of the movie in a suite at Tisch, and the movie looks incredible because of his talent and hard work. I have since handed over the picture-locked cut to Bobb, who is currently working on the sound design. My good friend Jonah Greenstein offered to write an original musical score for the movie, and I couldn't have been more thankful for his offer. I know he will do brilliant work. 
The joy of this film is discovering all of this for yourself, and so I’ll refrain from saying anything else, except that Allen’s work with the Surrealists (including Adrien Brody as Salvador Dali) is brilliantly absurd. With the playful and fantastical premise, Allen is free to wrestle with large ideas in a very funny manner (not dissimilar to his work in 1985’s wonderful The Purple Rose of Cairo).
