SBIFF
Source: SBIFF
Producers Panel
Day 4 of the 36th Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival presented by UGG began with the Producers panel conversation on Saturday morning. Cinephiles tuned in to watch Oscar nominated producers Josey McNamara (Promising Young Woman), Dan Janvey (Nomadland), Christina Oh (Minari), Shaka King (Judas and the Black Messiah), David Parfitt (The Father), Sacha Ben Harroche (Sound of Metal), Marc Platt (The Trial of the Chicago 7) and Ceán Chaffin (Mank) participated in a virtual conversation led by Los Angeles Times writer Glenn Whipp.
Some of the highlights from the conversation included:
Shaka King on wanting to see Judas and the Black Messiah with an audience: “It’s a movie that can be a bit dense so it’s good that people watched it on HBO Max and were able to watch it one, two, three times and get something different from it. There were some upsides, but I think just selfishly I miss out on the fact that we didn’t have a communal theater going experience.”
Christina Oh on watching Minari with her parents: “It was a very memorable screening, it was the first time we screened it for a big audience, all of our parents were there; Steven’s, Isaac’s – we were all super nervous because the majority of them hadn’t seen it yet. This was a film that, I don’t want to say we made it for them, but it was a huge part of why we wanted to do it and it was a huge part of our story and also examining the lives of our parents is always a daunting thing. I have this memory of hoping that I wouldn’t be sat next to my parents and of course I get to my seat and I’m right next to my mom the whole movie and just like freaking out the whole time. And then hearing and watching it, Shaka I hope you get to experience it with a room full of people some day, safely of course, but it was an incredible experience to be in an audience of people and sitting there hearing and feeling them respond to something. Some people say in watching the film, they “finally felt seen” whether it’s through Alan’s character of David or the parents’ character. A lot of people talk about how it’s helped bridge their own gap between parents and children especially children of immigrants like myself who grew up, and there’s this natural divide that occurs as you get older sort of this cultural thing that happens between your parents and yourself because like you maybe stop speaking the same language, it’s harder to convey those deep emotional things with them so this was sort of a love letter for us to be like ‘I think we get it, did we get it?’ Our parents are super proud.”
Ceán Chaffin on seeing movies in theaters: “Maybe there is a silver lining in COVID in that we all realize that we all love the big screens still and that experience, not just us but I mean the community who bode the audience.”
Writers Panel
In the afternoon, the festival continued with the Writers panel conversation with Chloé Zhao (Nomadland), Kemp Powers (Soul and One Night in Miami), Lee Isaac Chung (Minari), Darius Marder (Sound of Metal), Kenny and Keith Lucas (Judas and the Black Messiah), Peter Baynham (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm), Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman), Florian Zeller (The Father), Ramin Bahrani (The White Tiger) and Aaron Sorkin (The Trial of the Chicago 7). The conversation was led by Indiewire Editor-at-Large Anne Thompson.
Some of the highlights from the conversation included:
Darius Marder on making Sound of Metal: “The industry isn’t light up, like you say ‘I’m going to make a movie about the deaf community,’ the industry isn’t throwing money at you. There’s 3 actors on the planet that you could put in your movie that are going to finance your movie and if it’s your first movie, and you’re me, that ain’t happening. I wanted to make the movie the way I wanted to make the movie. I take some of that responsibility where I said no to various versions of the movie that could have been financed cause they didn’t feel exciting to me and I had to take it on the chin year after year and it wasn’t really until I met Riz [Ahmed] that I felt like we had like this thing where we were crazy enough to make this movie.”
Aaron Sorkin on approaching filming of The Trial of the Chicago 7: “I need to give credit to someone, Paul Greengrass. At one point Paul Greengrass was thinking about directing the movie, Spielberg had decided he should produce the movie and that there was a more appropriate director for it. I was sent over to London to meet with Paul Greengrass, and we had dinner. At the dinner there were some producers and executives and at one point in the dinner Paul just wanted to talk to me alone, so he asked me to go out to the sidewalk with him at which point he said, ‘tell me the story’ and I’m glad he did. That can be very helpful when you’re writing something. If you tried telling someone your story out loud, you’ll sort of, see where ‘I have to go through this part, that’s not solid yet’ and you’ll also see where ‘obviously this part means a lot to me.’ Anyway, while telling him the story I kind of casually referred to Tom Hayden and Abbie Hoffman, and I said ‘there are these two guys who are like brothers, who are on the same side except they plainly can’t stand each other and they each think the other is doing harm to the cause.’ And he let me finish this oral recitation of what this story was, and he just patted me on the shoulder as he walked back in the restaurant and said, ‘write about the brothers.’ So, the film organized itself into three stories that I was going to tell at once; the courtroom drama, the evolution of the riot, how did what was supposed to be a peaceful protest evolve into such a violent one with the police and law enforcement, and then finally the personal story between Tom Hayden and Abbie Hoffman.”
Chloé Zhao on how she turned Jessica Bruder’s book Nomadland into a film: “For me when I was looking at Jessica’s book, it really was a collage. She really went far and wide in capturing a time in this country and so my challenge was to look at that collage and go ‘what is the heart of it’ and for me personally behind every word and sentence the feeling of collective loss and grief and for an entire generation of people their way of life in this country, or what they believed was the dream and that wasn’t anymore. And so I wanted to create a fictional character that could tell that story in a very intimate and universal way that everyone can understand and at the same time have that strong enough emotional arch that could take us through this wonderful collage that Jessica had laid out in her book.”
Virtuosos Award
The evening concluded with the presentation of and interviews with the recipients of the Virtuosos Award, an honor created to recognize a select group of talent whose noteworthy performances in film have elevated them into the national cinematic dialogue. Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal), Maria Bakalova (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm), Kingsley Ben-Adir (One Night in Miami), Andra Day (The United States vs. Billie Holiday), Sidney Flanigan (Never Rarely Sometimes Always), Vanessa Kirby (Pieces of a Woman), Tahar Rahim (The Mauritanian), and Zendaya (Malcolm & Marie) discussed their work with Turner Classic Movies host and IMDb special correspondent host Dave Karger, who joined the conversation for his 11th year.
Some of the highlights from the conversation included:
Riz Ahmed on his realistic expectations for Sound of Metal: “With regards to a film like Sound of Metal, you’re working with a first time writer director, a very low budget, a very tight schedule, you know your main hope is to finish the film, that the film gets made. We had a very long and arduous prep process as well. We were living in the characters and learning the very skills so just getting to the first day of the shoot was a big hurdle to jump over. We lost financing on the eve of starting shooting and when you finish it, you hope that people will see it. So honestly, I’m just really glad there’s a spotlight on the film, spotlight on all the incredible talent particularly our deaf actors, a lot of new faces that we need to see a lot more of and of course Paul Raci as well whose been giving the opportunity after 40 years as a stage career to show what he can do on film. So really it is beautiful to get the encouragement from your peers on a personal level, but when you see your creative family getting nominated, editing, sound and all that, it’s like Christmas. It’s beautiful.”
Vanessa Kirby on the opening scene of Pieces of a Woman: “The birth was written as 30-pages, it wasn’t in the script that it was going to be one take, but as soon as I met Kornél, I felt a bit persistent to meet him just to say I really love it and I just wanted him to know that in person, in a way. He mentioned it and I think I went through an array of probably six different feelings like ‘shit, I’m not a mother, I’ve never given birth’ that means that if you can’t edit…the scene is I think 25 minutes and I thought that if I get a second of it off, then the majority of the population of anyone that might watch it would know and then the film would be ruined. So I was terrified and then I thought actually, it started to dawn on me that maybe…because it would be I guess a play and there’s something so terrifying but so freeing about walking out of the wings like dreading it and then getting out there as since there’s an audience you can’t stop, you have to keep going, you don’t have a minute to judge yourself.”
Zendaya’s experience on filming Malcom & Marie: “It’s been pretty crazy, it’s an indie in every sense of the word. I think we just wanted to work within the confines, we wanted to make sure that everybody was safe and work within the structure of what would be the safest way to shoot this film, so we knew we could only be in one space, it was only going to be me and John David. We were already working within that, we just mostly put our own money into it, I did my hair and make up and would bring extra clothes to throw around for set decoration. We didn’t have any AD or anything, we were all just figuring it out ourselves. It was like ‘what are we going to shoot today? I guess we just start from the beginning’ and then we would go all night and just see how far we go and if we were all happy we would look at each other and go ‘well, that’s a wrap, the sun’s up, I’ll see you guys in a few hours.’ We kind of lived in this bubble together and did this thing really as a family, we kind of brought back a skeleton crew of about 22 people, all who had worked on Euphoria with us, because they – also due to the pandemic…were literally going into season 2 of Euphoria and that got cancelled so our family also was out of work. And if there was any way that we could be creative, make something together that we’d be proud of, put all of our heart and experiences and love into.”
Upcoming live conversations and tributes will include presentations to Carey Mulligan, Sacha Baron Cohen, Amanda Seyfried, Delroy Lindo and many more. All films are available online now and a schedule of films at the drive-in, as well as a full schedule of events including where fans can purchase 10-day festival passes now through April 10 can be found by visiting www.sbiff.org.
