It's Still the Santa Barbara International Film Festival
#SBIFF Part II
Surprise new feature, part Deux! Last week’s brief Youthquake schedule pause is due to happily covering the notable Santa Barbara International Film Festival. As an avid cinephile and film lover, covering any film festival is a huge honor for an underemployed and underrepresented writer like myself. So thank you for supporting my newly independent journey; if you’re new, happy to have you, and enjoy!
Day 6 of the 36th Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival presented by UGG® continued with a presentation panel with the recipients of the Variety Artisans Award, an honor that celebrates those essential to the filmmaking process and who have exhibited the most exciting and innovative work of the year in their respective fields. The panel included discussed their work, their influence and offered advice to the younger generation with dreams of breaking into the industry with Variety’s Senior Artisans Editor Jazz Tangcay.
Nicolas Becker, Sound of Metal.
Joshua James Richards, Nomadland.
Donald Graham Burt and Jan Pascale, Mank.
Alexandra Byrne, Emma.
Alan Baumgarten, Trial of Chicago 7.
Mia Neal, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
Sean Faden, Mulan.
Leslie Odom, Jr. and Sam Ashworth, One Night in Miami.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Mank.
Following the conversation, David Wasco and Sandy Reynolds-Wasco presented the award to the artisans. Some of the highlights from the conversation included:
💣 Leslie Odom, Jr. on singing Sam Cooke’s A Change is Gonna Come: “You get to that point in the script and actors are weird because there's one part of you that's like, ‘Oh, I can't wait to do that’ and the other part of you is like, ‘but no time soon though’ like ‘I don't want to do that for a long time!’ You’re terrified and also very excited for the chance to honor Sam, to sing that masterpiece. Thank god I had all of the support on set I needed to do my best.”
💣 Mia Neal on the research she did before starting work on Ma’s hair and makeup: “Ma is a very interesting character. If you think about it, you know, this was a woman of color during the 1920s, probably the first generation born free from enslavement in her family to leave the rural south and to start to travel and be a blues singer, and her lyrics very racy for the time. She had a husband and a wife. She didn’t follow the rules. She just set the tone. There aren’t many photos of Ma. I think there’s a total of 7 that exist in the world. A lot of our decisions were just based off of descriptions that other people gave of her and then thinking about the psychology of her, just her life and where she came from and how she really recreated herself. Of course, I followed the leadership of Ann Roth, our costume designer, who through her research discovered that Ma Rainey wore horsehair wigs so we kept that authentic. Putting her in a fur coat in the summertime, that was like ‘okay, this woman follows absolutely no rules and social norms.’ Her clothing alone— whatever store that would’ve sold that clothing, they would not have allowed blacks in at that time, but she still had it. It’s nice to have been challenged in that way where I didn’t have the photos. I really got to play more with this psychologically than normal.”
💣 Trent Reznor on how their experience with Watchman helped their experience working on Mank: “From the timeline of things, we were deep in the world of Watchman when we knew Mank was coming out. Soul was also lingering around. We had quite a bit of time before we actually started working on these projects to deeply think about them and feel tremendous anxiety about them. We thought it [Mank] would require us, and it did, to move into a different lane that we’re not that accustomed to, in this case, every note being played by other musicians in an orchestral setting, in a different style, with the added challenge of it happening during a pandemic. An opportunity came up during Watchman where we needed the exact same thing [as we needed here with Mank] so it was a good test run to see if we could pull it off, and it worked out great, and I think that experience gave us the confidence that we can pull off the unique to us challenges. We can adapt to this new canvas. It greatly influenced how we approached the score writing for Mank.”
💣 Atticus Ross on recording during the pandemic: “The challenge was there is no other option. We were lucky we had a very good team on this who helped put the musicians together, phenomenal musicians, probably the only bonus of the pandemic. There wasn’t a lot of music being recorded, so we had incredible musicians at our disposal. Every part was recorded separately at home by the musician; our engineer would supply us with mics that would be transported from one place to another, sanitized, with instructions on how they should be set up to record. The sheet music obviously, and then we basically just prayed to God that it would work out.”
💣 Sean Faden on creating the epic battle scene: “We visited the Valley in the south of New Zealand in helicopters. We found a location that would work great for the open space. We knew if we added special effects steam. We ended up having 80 real soldiers for the imperial side, and we had at most 67 horseman riders, but in the end, it had to look like at least 500 on each side Sony Pictures Imageworks did that work. We started by creating soldier assets, so we could replicate the soldiers. We built horses; we also needed to create the mountain that was going to be around it. I just used my iPad to sketch where the mountain would be. The reason why that sequence works well is because it was conceived as an epic battle that was not going to be gory. We used layers of steam to hide some of the violence, so it was almost just suggested.”
💣 Alan Baumgarten on his editing process: “I had the great gift of a wonderful script and great performances from our incredible ensemble cast. It’s just a matter of working my way through. Building it for the script and then finding the unexpected moments where we can explore and diverge from what was there on the page. I let the performances lead me. I find that when I'm working on a scene, I really concentrate on that, and I let the acting and the performance tell me which shot selection I want to be in and where I want to be for the emotional moments.”
💣 Alexandra Byrne on changing Emma’s color palette changing with the seasons throughout the film: “I was talking to Autumn, and we felt that because the story goes over a calendar year, we could use Emma as the central character to tell that story. By making her the pivotal role and locating her palette in a seasonal palette, we could then really put the other characters in her context, which is how she viewed the world and that everything was orbital to her existence. It just helped us contain what could’ve gotten out of control.”
On films that influenced and inspired them:
💣 “My parents thought it was really important to take us to see Spike Lee movies on the weekends that they came out. I do remember Malcolm X being a high watermark for Spike as a filmmaker at that time. I think because I had a context for the filmmaker too, I knew a little of Spike, I knew a little of Denzel, so just to see them achieve new heights had a profound impact on me, and I don’t think I’ve ever shaken that.” - Leslie Odom, Jr.
💣 “I got hold of that Michael Jackson Thriller box set. It had the behind-the-scenes of Thriller. The other big one was Charlie Chaplin. The idea of the iconic always fascinated me.” - Joshua James Richard
💣 “Raiders of the Lost Ark. Blown away by the world that was created. It inspired me, and I didn’t know I was going to get into visual effects or anything like that at the time, but I knew there was a world for being creative.” - Sean Faden
💣 “Lawrence of Arabia. I was just astounded that this world existed. I’d never seen anything like it.” - Alexandra Bryne
💣 “I was really into horror films growing up. It was something about that burnt face on Freddy Krueger. I was always fascinated, like ‘how do they do that?.’ The first film that really transformed me was Little Women, that movie made me feel different about this industry.” - Mia Neal
💣 “I have to go back to the movies with the soundtracks that impacted me the most, which would be Good Will Hunting and Magnolia. The entire Magnolia soundtrack probably planted the seed that I’d want to make music for movies one day.” - Sam Ashworth
💣 “Bladerunner. I think for me, the most important is the real life. My favorite film is life.”- Nicolas Becker
💣 “Birdman. It blew my mind. It was an eye-opener.” - Jan Pascale
💣 “In Cold Blood which scared me to death. When I went to college, I remember seeing a movie called Eraserhead, and I think that was the movie that made me turn the corner there.” - Donald Graham Burt.
As I previously mentioned in part one of #SBIFF coverage, continuing Day 6 of the 36th Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival, presented by UGG®, featured a tribute to Carey Mulligan, who received the Cinema Vanguard Award.
Mulligan virtually sat down with Deadline’s awards columnist Pete Hammond for an in-depth discussion about her exceptional career film, television, and on the stage. Her most recent performance in Focus Features’ dark comedy Promising Young Woman, written, produced, and directed by Emerald Fennell (Killing Eve, The Crown). Mulligan’s powerhouse performance is nothing less than what I expect from her; I mean, she’s truly fantastic in An Education (as fate would have it, Mulligan was also honored at SBIFF just eleven years ago). Mulligan’s performance in Fennell’s directorial has garnered a significant of well-deserved recognition and awareness, including Best Actress from the National Board of Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and over 20 national and regional critics groups around the country. She’s also received Best Actress from the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild®, and the Critics’ Choice Association. We love to see it! Here are the highlights from the conversation:
💣 On taking on such a well-known character like Daisy in The Great Gatsby: “I think I was lucky in that I’m not American, so it’s not the school required reading when you’re a teenager in England. So in that way, I think I was a little bit protected, and I deliberately didn’t watch any other versions of it, for free of just copying people. But I think I was so fascinated by who Daisy was based. The era was fascinating, and this relationship. She was just such a curious character, and I wanted to figure her out. I found the part just absolutely fascinating. Someone who’s a flawed individual and trying to figure her out and figure out this obsession with the past.”
💣 On working with Leonardo DiCaprio: “The thing about Leo, particularly as my scene partner a lot of the time, is that I think a great actor is great on-screen and he is a true star and a brilliant actor but what he does that he doesn’t need to is amazing, like every time the camera is off him and it’s on someone else [Leo] is as committed and as brilliant as he is when the camera is on him, and that just gives you so much as an actor to play with. When Leonardo DiCaprio is off-camera, and he is incredible, it raises your game. It was a complete dream come true working with him.”
💣 On having to cook onstage for a role on Broadway: “I have not had bolognese since. I really haven’t. The second time I did the play, we did it in London, and then we did it on Broadway for 12 weeks, and I was like four months pregnant by the time we started the run and having eaten and to make the bolognese on stage every night - it just finished it for me. I can’t ever again; I don’t cook either, so that’s the most cooking I’ve done in years.”
💣 On fighting to be in Shame: “I made sure that Steve [McQueen] knew how passionate I was about it and was very very keen and eager in our meeting to the point where I sort of jumped in a taxi with him to SoHo, just because he sort of kept trying to end the meeting, he was like ‘Well, it was really nice to meet you,’ and I was like, ‘Well, where are you going? What are you doing now?’ and he was like, ‘Well, I’ve got to go to SoHo for a meeting, and I was like ‘Me too, let’s go! I’ll come with you!’ and in the cab ride, I was like, ‘Well, here’s the reason. I know that you might not expect me to do this part, but’ and I just wouldn’t leave him alone, and I think he sort of eventually tired of me badgering him.”
💣 On filming the drunk scene in Wildlife: “It’s definitely the thing you read in the script and think like ‘oh no,’ you know because it could just turn out so badly. Paul Dano is just such an incredible director. He gave me so much freedom in that scene, and I was kind of beating myself up. I was cutting myself a lot, which is the worst habit ever. I kept getting halfway through a scene and saying, ‘Cut! Cut!’ When it came to the drunk stuff, we shot all at night, it really was like two in the morning, and the stuff that’s going on in the scene for her is just so sad. It’s like you say she’s not a bad mother; everyone’s allowed to sort of fall off the rails a little bit. Paul created a set that where you could do anything and there was no judgment, and that’s what he’s so brilliant at.”
Following Mulligan’s discussion with Hammond, the ever-so radiant Laverne Cox presented her with the Cinema Vanguard Award.
💣 Laverne opened her remarks by saying: “Carey’s work has always been so subtle and understated, dialed in and deeply committed to the truth. Moment to moment work exposing the complicated humanity of every character she plays. Getting to witness that process up close was so incredibly rewarding. I love actors that can find subtleties and nuances in just a look, and Carey does just that. Carey is known as a dramatic actress, but she’s also adept at comedy; there was so much levity on set. Carey’s range is infinite, and perhaps the greatest testament to the impact of art is how the public responds. The empathy and humanity at the core of Carey’s performance providing catharsis and healing all over the world who see their stories in Cassie.”
💣 Upon accepting her award, Mulligan said to Laverne: “Laverne, thank you so much for presenting me with this. It means a huge amount, not only because I’m just an enormous admirer of your work as an actress but also because of the way that you stand for things that matter to you within your work and in your life.”
Day 7 of the 36th Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival presented by UGG featured a tribute to this year’s recipients of the Year Award’s Outstanding Directors, sponsored by The Hollywood Reporter.
The four featured directors received their awards during the live virtual event. They discussed their work with The Hollywood Reporter’s longtime awards columnist and host of its popular Awards Chatter podcast, as well as a professor at Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, Scott Feinberg.
Some of the highlights from the conversation included:
💣 Chloé Zhao on connecting with Francis McDormand: “She’s so authentically herself and tries to live a life that’s authentic to herself. And she brings that with her to whichever character she plays. When we first met, we both took off our shoes and sat on the floor. That was pretty telling. We all know that she is an incredible actress, but for me, it was most important for her ability to be vulnerable and to not always know the character at the moment, to not always know what’s going to happen and yet be completely present.”
When speaking about the film The Searchers, Zhao noted, “If there is a modern-day John Wayne, it is Francis McDormand.”
💣 David Fincher on Mank and the script written by his father: “My father was sort of raised in movie theaters. He was a latch key kid during the depression in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and had a fairly difficult relationship with his father, who drank a lot. My grandfather’s idea of taking care of little Jack was to leave him in a movie theater for the 11 o’clock, 1 o’clock, and 3 o’clock, so he saw the dream factor of Hollywood as very much a safe place to sort of nestle in and spend one’s afternoons. Mank was a film that began with sort of a quest for a challenge. He was retiring and decided that he wanted to take a swing at writing a screenplay. He was the kind of person and writer who very much had a great deal of respect and almost awe for how screenplays were constructed. I mean that not in a highest-minded way, but he loved entertainment; he saw movies very much in the same way people who now love television shows. So, for him, it was a way to go out into the world and to sort of experience anything else that was happening in Tulsa.”
💣 Lee Isaac Chung’s objective of making Minari for his daughter: “I came to a point in my work where I wasn’t sure of what I was doing if what I was doing was really what I wanted to do, especially once my daughter came. I started to think more about the long term. What would it be that she’s watching based on work that I’ve made, that question stayed with me and haunted me quite a lot. Naturally, I ended up coming to this point where I just started to want to make a film that she could have in the future. She was the age that the character of Alan [Kim] is in the story, and that helped me kind of figure out how to write a story that’s told from her perspective and also captures a little bit of what I see in her.”
💣 Thomas Vinterberg on filming Another Round during a personally challenging time: “As you know, I lost my precious daughter while making this movie, and it has made this whole situation very different from anything I’ve ever tried and hopefully anything I’ll ever try again. It made this film precious to me as we decided to make this movie for her. She died four days into shooting this film. She was supposed to be in it; she loved it dearly; she loved the whole project. Making this movie, I guess, kept me from insanity. The whole thing is inseparable from what we experienced with my daughter. All these people, including Madds, knew my daughter since she was born, and we were all in grief, of course, particularly myself and my family, and we still are, and they carried me through the actors and the crew of this film. There was so much love on the set, there was so much embracement, and I hope you can see that on the screen.”
The honorees came together at the end of the discussion and spoke about what it’s been like meeting each other for the first time during this year’s award season and participated in a rapid-fire list of questions from Feinberg. Here are the top things we learned:
💣 On their "Must Watch Film" this season:
Chloé Zhao – Ramin Bahrani’s The White Tiger.
Lee Isaac Chung – Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always.
Thomas Vinterberg – Sofia Coppola’s On the Rocks.
💣 The one question they never want to be asked again about their current film: 💣
David Fincher – “Did the film have to be in black & white?”
Chloé Zhao – “Why isn’t this a documentary?”
Lee Isaac Chung – “Did I really feed my grandmother pee?”
Thomas Vinterberg – “Were the actors drunk on set?”
💣 On the first thing to do post-pandemic:
David Fincher – “To go back to movie theaters and fly.”
Chloé Zhao “International travel, going back to China and eating the food I can digest.”
Lee Isaac Chung – “Drinking together again.”
Thomas Vinterberg - “To sleep a full night.”
Day 8 of the 36th Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival presented by UGG featured a tribute to Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and Golden Globe-winning actor Sacha Baron Cohen, who received the Outstanding Performer of the Year Award for his critically acclaimed work in both Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7from Netflix and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm from Amazon Studios.
Baron-Cohen virtually sat down with The Hollywood Reporter’s aforementioned, Scott Feinberg, for an in-depth discussion about his film career.
💣 On what made Sacha decide to bring back Borat: “I had the same feelings of anger of what was going on in America, you know this dismantling of democracy and encouraging of racism basically and what ‘Who is America’ has shown was that we could have a bit of an effect. Jason Spencer, who was a state senator in Georgia, lost his job for screaming the “N” word on Who is America, and it was just after the midterm elections, I’d done a tiny bit on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, so I knew it was possible to do Borat in the real world and I sat down with my two collaborators that day, Dan Swimer, and Anthony Hines, and I said, “is there a movie that we could come out with that could be released just before the election, that might possibly get some of the fans to go out and vote?” Cohen continued, “Within half an hour, we came up with this concept of Borat giving [his daughter] to the Vice President.”
💣 On casting Maria Bakalova: “It was a challenge, we interviewed hundreds of actors around the world, many brilliant comedians in America who could speak a second language and often what we found was that we’d put one of the parts of the audition process was they’d sit in a room with a real person for an hour and try and deliver some of the jokes we had written. And within a few minutes and they’d delivered the first joke, the real person would go “you’re an actor” or “this isn’t real.” We needed someone who was a brilliant actor who could blend in these jokes seamlessly into a complete persona. We went around the world and looked throughout Eastern Europe. She is a phenomenon; she’s a one-off. She’s incredibly courageous, and she’s in real situations, sometimes dangerous situations. She is very, very funny, hilarious. She’s an incredible improviser, and fundamentally she’s a deeply emotional actor.” He continued, “We said, if you do this scene, you’re getting nominated for an Oscar.”
💣 On the evolution of Sacha’s association of The Trial of the Chicago 7: “When I was a student, I studied Abbie Hoffman, amongst others, and his role in the Black Civil Rights Movement. Cut to 13 years ago, I found out that Steven Speilberg is directing The Trial of the Chicago 7, Abbie of course, is in it. I call up Steven Speilberg, and I say can I audition? I had done Borat at that point, and Sweeny Todd hadn’t come out. He said, listen, I’m a bit worried about the accent; it’s a really tricky accent. He said I’m going to give you my main dialect coach, and you’re going to work with her for two weeks, and after two weeks, I want a recording of this speech. Every night for two weeks, I recorded three versions of this two-minute speech. At the end, we had about 30 takes and gave the recording to Steven. I met up with him at his mother’s restaurant on Pico Blvd, called Milk and Honey, and he said, you’ve got the role. Unfortunately then, two members of the cast passed away, Heath Ledger and later Philip Seymour Hoffman. Then there was the writer’s strike, Aaron Sorkin was still the writer, and then the movie went through a bunch of directors until eventually, I heard that Aaron was going to direct it.”
Following Baron Cohen’s conversation with Feinberg, Aaron Sorkin presented him with the Year's Outstanding Performer. Aaron opened his remarks by saying: “Though the making of The Trial of the Chicago 7 was a long one, Sacha Baron Cohen was cast as Abbie Hoffman 13 years ago and by a different director, a man named Spielberg. 13 years and 32 drafts of the screenplay later, when Sacha heard that the film was happening and that now I was the director, he got in touch with me and said I still want to play the part. He said more after that, but I didn’t really hear it. All I heard was that Sacha Baron Cohen wanted to play Abbie Hoffman. I don’t think I ever said the word yes, just hallelujah. It would be reasonable to assume that both Steven and I wanted Sacha to play Abbie because Sacha himself is America’s, Britain’s, and the world’s preeminent provocateur and a fearless activist in his own right. But he was cast for a much simpler reason; he is a phenomenally gifted dramatic actor who would bring dimension to both the clown and the intellect of Hoffman, Abbie’s spirit and the spirit of the 8 members of the Chicago 7 endured today. From the streets of Kenosha to Hong Kong to Echo Park, where just this week protesters are standing up for people who can’t stand up for themselves, I admire this man for using his voice.”
💣 Upon accepting his award, Baron-Cohen said: “Thank you, Aaron, for those incredibly gracious words. That was beautiful—maybe your best writing ever! I just felt it could have been a bit longer. But really, Aaron Sorkin is a true master of his craft--our greatest living screenwriter and a director who brings that writing to life as only he can.” Cohen continued, “In many ways, of course, Chicago 7 and Borat could not be more different. Abbie was Jewish—one of the many courageous Jews who risked their lives for civil rights in the American South. Borat is a raging anti-Semite. Abbie stood up for democracy and against racism and injustice. Borat admires Donald Trump. On the set of Chicago 7, I got a trailer and craft services. On Borat, I was running away from the police. Still, even in these two very different movies, we see a common truth—the danger of lies and tyranny. In the Chicago 7, it was lies about the Vietnam War that cost so many Americans and Vietnamese lives. In Borat, it’s the lies of Trump—about COVID and the election—and the threat of Trumpism—white nationalism and the targeting of ethnic minorities. That’s why I felt so compelled to make Borat—and to have it released before the election when maybe, just maybe, it could make a difference. Through it all, when I was being hustled out of Mike Pence’s speech at CPAC and questioned by the Secret Service. Or when that angry crowd at a gun rally chased me off the stage, I was inspired by Abbie Hoffman and the lesson of his life: That in the face of lies and tyranny, we cannot be bystanders. We cannot be silent. It’s why I believe that if Abbie Hoffman were alive today, he too would have refused to be silent. He, too, would have taken action—and used his humor—to try to prevent another Trump term that could have spelled the end of American democracy. So I want to dedicate this award to the life and legacy of Abbie Hoffman—may his memory be a blessing and an inspiration. And I dedicate this to everyone who refuses to be a bystander, who bravely uses the power of peaceful protest. When Black Lives are ripped away in America, or when democracy is ripped away in Moscow, Myanmar, or Hong Kong. To these extraordinary people around the world – thank you for showing that we can all stand up for equality and justice—with bravery, tenacity, and, sometimes, even a bit of absurdity.”
Today’s special edition of Youthquake is part two of my #SBIFF coverage; keep your eyes out for part three, including reviews, coming Wednesday. Also, more award recipients like Delroy Lindo (tonight) and Amanda Seyfried (tomorrow evening). Don’t miss a single moment of #SBIFF. You can get your tickets right here.
