THE RUMPUS MINI INTERVIEW #107: SISSY SPACEK

Sissy Spacek still radiates youth and innocence when she enters a room.

In May, Spacek’s Bloodline, a well-received Netflix drama, wrapped up after three seasons. She’s now filming Castle Rock, Hulu’s ten-episode series based on the characters of Stephen King.

I met Spacek at last year’s Florida Film Festival, which she’d attended on the occasion of a screening of Badlands. Spacek reflected on working with “real” artists from Malick to Lynch to Altman, and also looked back on the one long learning experience that’s been her career.

To read my (long-awaited) interview visit The Rumpus.

Grappling with Qualms over A Gray State Before Moderating a Festival Q&A

As a film critic who also serves as a festival programmer I sometimes find myself in awkward positions. Such was the case recently at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in October, where A Gray State screened, along with the film’s director Erik Nelson and its executive producer Werner Herzog in attendance. Though I’d seen the film on screener, I didn’t have a strong opinion about it one way or another (and as I was only helping out with the international features this year my indifference didn’t much matter).

Of course, asked to moderate the post-screening Q&A I jumped at the chance. What cinephile passes up the opportunity to probe the mind of Herzog? (Albeit in a very public setting, and with the fest’s honorary chair, Kathleen Turner, sitting in the front row. Things tend to get a bit surreal in Hot Springs.)

To read the rest visit Filmmaker magazine.

A Conversation with Camille Thoman (NEVER HERE)

“I want to entertain and titillate, but also ask questions of the viewer“ – Camille Thoman on Never Here

Premiering at this year’s LA Film Festival, Never Here marks the narrative debut of writer-director (and performance artist and editor and doc-maker) Camille Thoman. It also marks the last screen performance of the late Sam Shepard, who is unsurprisingly riveting alongside Mireille Enos (The Killing) in the starring role of Miranda Fall, an installation artist whose art dealer and secret lover Paul Stark (Shepard) witnesses a violent assault from her apartment window. Which leads to Miranda giving Stark’s account to the police – while lying about being the primary witness – in order to simultaneously nab the perpetrator while keeping her lover’s identity concealed. Thus begins a detective story, that turns into a psychological thriller, that soon becomes a mood-induced meditation on voyeurism, identity, morality – and ultimately reality itself.

I spoke with Never Here’s unconventional director for Hammer to Nail prior to the film’s Oct. 20th theatrical release.

Doc Star of the Month: Jane Goodall, 'Jane'

"Going to Africa, living with animals—that's all I ever thought about," Jane Goodall discloses in Oscar-nominated director Brett Morgen’s latest doc, Jane, which employs over 100 hours of never-before-seen footage (recently discovered in 2014) shot in Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park half a century ago. Back then, the 20-something female scientist, whose main qualification seemed to be her love of animals over the comforts of human civilization, was at the very beginning of realizing her lifelong dream come true. So it seems nearly preordained that the cameraman that National Geographic would send to document the young Goodall's astonishing interactions with a community of chimpanzees, Hugo van Lawick, would end up falling in love with the extraordinary woman in front of his lens.

Documentary had the privilege of speaking with one of nature's true protectors about these early days and more right after the release of the film that bears her name.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

Burnsided: Why I Can’t Watch The Vietnam War

I’m a longtime doc aficionado, and yet I’ve never understood the appeal of Ken Burns. The limelight-loving director – most recently of the encyclopedic PBS series The Vietnam War (alongside his spotlight-sidelined yet frequent co-director Lynn Novick) – has at this stage in his long (too long?) career become the Norman Rockwell of nonfiction filmmaking, a treasure of cinema Americana. (Albeit working in the factory mode of Andy Warhol, churning out Burns-branded content with various teams.)

To read the rest (and discuss!) visit Hammer to Nail.

Sterlin Harjo on the Dos and Don'ts of Filming in Indian Country

“If I had a dollar every time a white guy asked me to b a 'producer' on their standing rock doc I'd be able to fund my own standing rock doc"


That quote is a tweet from veteran indie filmmaker (and one of the founders of Native comedy troupe The 1491s) Sterlin Harjo, a member of the Seminole Tribe with Muskogee heritage, who has been asked a lot of Indian questions lately. He's been asked to produce three or four docs on Standing Rock, and to suggest Native casts for two current TV shows, but not once to write or direct—even though his résumé from the past decade includes three narrative features and one doc, all of which were acclaimed Sundance premieres. So it's with heartfelt gratitude — and a bit of trepidation — that I reached out to him to ask just a few more.

To read the interview visit Documentary magazine.