Thought du jour - 30 August 2011

“The TV business is soul crashing, talent destroying, and human being destroying. These men in their black towers don’t know what they are doing. It’s slave labour. There is no elegance left in anybody. They have no taste. Movies are being financed by conglomerates, which take a write-off if they don’t work. The only people who fight for what the public deserves are artists.” - Olivia de Havilland

Filmmaking 101, Vol. II

"Technical skill counts for nothing if it is used only to manufacture films which have little to do with humanity." - Edward Dmytryk

Thought du jour - 4 August 2011

"Most people don’t know what they want or feel. And for everyone, myself included, it’s very difficult to say what you mean when what you mean is painful. The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to. As an artist, I feel that we must try many things – but above all, we must dare to fail. You must have the courage to be bad – to be willing to risk everything to really express it all." - John Cassavetes

That's about as true a statement for an artist, regardless of the medium, as you can get. Of course, I think it's also true about all professions, and life in general, but it's in the arts that the principle is put into practice in the most public of ways.

Paul Kimball

Orson Welles interview

A fascinating and very personal interview with Orson Welles, perhaps the greatest filmmaker of all-time (and one of the great iconoclasts of the 20th century). Welles remains one of my two or three favourite filmmakers, and a great influence on my own work, or at least my method. I absolutely agree with his statement (in the third segment) that there's no point in watching your own movies once they've been made, because it's locked in time, and there's nothing you can change about it.

Of course, as a filmmaker you never get to see your film fresh for the first time on the screen anyway, because you've seen bits and pieces of it so many times in post production. A premiere of a film is a wedding for everyone in the theatre but the filmmaker himself, for whom it is a divorce.

But that's fine, because a filmmaker has seen the film long before anyone else - the first time it plays is in your head, and it is there that the only true version of it will ever exist. The challenge of filmmaking is to make as much of it come to life as possible for everyone else; the secret of being a filmmaker is that you always keep a bit of that original film out of the finished production, so that there will always remain that one special part of the film that will be yours, and yours alone.

Paul Kimball

Film: The American Astronaut

The American Astronaut is a modern surrealist masterpiece directed by actor / filmmaker Cory McAbee. My good friend Greg Bishop introduced me to this film, and now I introduce it to you. Seek this one out, and enjoy!

Paul Kimball

Films: The Corridor

The Corridor is a thought-provoking science fiction thriller, made here in Nova Scotia and written by Josh MacDonald, an old friend of mine. You can catch it on July 21st and 25th at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal.

Paul Kimball

Films: Small Town Murder Songs

I highly recommend this gem from Canada. A dark and moody character study of a desperate man at the end of his proverbial rope.

Paul Kimball