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Terror in Three Dimensions: Joe Dante on Making The Hole

07 Friday Oct 2011

Posted by cinepam in Interviews

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Castro Theatre, Chris Massoglia, Dial M for Murder, Gremlins, Jesse Hawthorne Ficks, Joe Dante, Matinee, Midnites for Maniacs, Nathan Gamble, Small Soldiers, Teri Polo, The Hole

“Joe Dante knows a little something about fear. The director of such movies as Gremlins, Matinee, Small Soldiers and 2009’s The Hole – which makes its U.S. theatrical debut in Digital 3D as part of Jesse Hawthorne Ficks’ Midnites for Maniacs’ series at San Francisco’s Castro Theatre on Friday, October 7 – grew up on the emotion.

“When I was a kid, I was afraid of the bomb dropping, as you can see in Matinee,” he reveals in conversation at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival where The Hole made its North American premiere. “People forget that kids in the ’50s lived with this knowledge in the back of their heads that any minute the world could end. It was just something that was carried around. We knew it like how you knew your blood worked and stuff. It was just a fact of life.”

Terror is also a fact of life for the siblings at the center of The Hole, brothers Dane (Chris Massoglia) and Lucas (Nathan Gamble). Already upset because their mother Susan (Teri Polo) has uprooted them from Brooklyn’s urban bustle to apparently sleepy Bensonville, life gets more interesting and a heck of a lot scarier when they discover a padlocked door on the floor of the basement. Like modern-day Pandoras, the boys can’t resist peeking and they inadvertently unleash their own worst fears.

Ever since 1984’s Gremlins‘ phenomenal success, Dante has been a go-to guy for producers seeking a director who is good with horror and good with kids. He admits he sometimes get frustrated with the typecasting, but he is always open to a crackerjack script.

“I wish I could say that I am attracted like a moth to the flame to these stories, but that’s not really the truth,” he says. “The truth is I get offered this kind of material, because I’ve done it in the past. And obviously, I can relate to it. I have a dictum that I operate under, which is that I will not make a movie that I wouldn’t go see.

“When I was offered this picture, part of me went, ‘Another movie with kids and special effects?’ But then another part of me went, ‘Gee, this is awfully good and I know I could do something with this.’”

One of the things that struck the director about Mark L. Smith’s screenplay was that even with all the fantasy and horror elements, there was still a core of realism to Dane and Lucas’ situation.

“I could believe this family,” he says. “I could believe the way that they talk, the way that they act. These are not movie kids. This is not a Disney channel idea of life.”

When Dante was growing up in the ’50s, he loved those movies that were the manifestations of the nuclear world that he feared, movies like Them and the other radiated monster movies. The Universal horror movies from the 1930s that he watched on television he describes as his folklore and fairy tales. But he also grew up during the first wave of 3D. With The Hole he was given a chance to use the format for himself. He thought back to those old movies as he decided just how to employ the technology in his own work.

“You can’t constantly throw things at people or else it loses its effectiveness,” Dante observes. “My favorite 3D movie is Dial M for Murder, which was one of the last 3D pictures produced then, not shown in 3D originally, and it saves its breaking the frame stuff for a couple of moments and they’re very striking because there’s not a lot of other stuff like that.

“Also, it’s a movie that’s staged – it’s like a play, really – it’s staged in depth,” he adds. “There are foreground objects that mean something. There are characters standing in front of people or behind people. To me, I think that’s what the future of 3D should be. We all know that you can throw things at people and we all know that we can do breaking-the-frame gags, but I think there’s a drama to storytelling that can be enhanced by 3D. I reject the idea that it’s just for gimmicks and just for exploitation, that it’s just for throwing eyeballs at the audience.”

He had to shoot quickly, so Dante feels he only scratched the surface of 3D’s capabilities, but he is pleased with what he was able to accomplish.

“It’s not an expensive film; we didn’t have much time to make it, but I think given the subject matter, it’s as good as we could make it,” he says.

Dante is scheduled to be on hand for the Midnites for Maniacs The Hole screening and to take part in a Q&A with Jesse Hawthorne Ficks. The Castro Theatre is the perfect venue for the movie’s theatrical premiere, its cathedral-like dimensions reflecting the 64-year-old auteur’s vision of movie going.

He says, “When the lights go down in a theater, to me it’s like going to church.” – Pam Grady

________________________________________________________________

The Hole plays Midnites for Maniacs along with The Goonies and Gremlins 2: The New Batch on Friday, October 7 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro Street, San Francisco. For further information, visit http://www.castrotheatre.com.

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Simpsons’ Vet Mike Reiss Leads a Toonful Evening

26 Tuesday Jul 2011

Posted by cinepam in News

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Castro Theatre, Mike Reiss, San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, South Park, The Family Guy, The Simpsons

There were no standing ovations for longtime The Simpsons writer/producer Mike Reiss when he stepped up to the stage of the Castro Theatre on Monday, July 26 as part of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival’s “Jews in Toons” program, compared to the three standing o’s that greeted movie star Kirk Douglas during SFJFF’s Freedom of Expression ceremony the day before. But Reiss was quick to brag that the cartoon program sold more tickets.

“Take that, Hollywood legend!” he crowed.

Reiss was the closing act for a night that began with “When You Wish Upon a Weinstein, “ a Family Guy episode made in 2000 but not shown until 2003 when the Cartoon Network aired it. Original network Fox left the episode – in which family patriarch Peter seeks a Jewish accountant and attempts to get a quickie Bar Mitzvah for his teenage son Chris – to gather dust after it deemed the episode antisemitic, despite the fact that scriptwriter Ricky Blitt is Jewish and two rabbis vetted the script. That was followed by South Park‘s “The Passion of the Jew,” in which Stan and Kenny attempt to get a refund from an addled Mel Gibson after being appalled by The Passion of the Christ while the movie inspires Cartman to emulate Hitler. Finally, in the 1991 Simpsons’ episode “Like Father, Like Clown,” Bart and Lisa attempt to reunite Crusty the Clown with his long estranged rabbi father.

It was 69 minutes of brilliant TV, but Reiss – who also made this year’s SFJFF “Queer Duck” trailer – was the star of the show, delivering a talk interspersed with clips from The Simpsons, Queer Duck, and the cult series The Critic. He was quick to point out that he is a comedy writer, not a comedian.

“It’s like the difference between phone sex and real sex,” he explained, adding, “In my case, it’s 20 bucks for four minutes either way.”

For a writer not a comedian, Reiss timing was pitch-perfect on lines like, “I’m Jewish. I would never eat a ham sandwich in a synagogue on Yom Kippur – if anyone was watching.”

He was also the master of the dish, revealing that the worst Simpsons guest star ever was a female celebrity he can’t name but whose first name is “Oprah;” his frustration over Paramount’s insistence he remove a Tom Cruise joke from Queer Duck: The Movie; and that if this veteran of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show writing staff couldn’t write comedy, he’d probably write for Jay Leno.

When “Jews in Toons” ran over, there was only time left for one question in an audience Q&A, a woman who wanted to know if Simpsons‘ bartender Moe Szyslak was modeled after Reiss.

“I get that a lot,” he crumbled, insisting Moe was based on no human at all.

“We started with an ape and we shave some fur,” he said, adding, “Chief Wiggum is a pig. Ralph Wiggum is a lamb fetus.” – Pam Grady

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Kirk Douglas Recalls Breaking a Blacklist

26 Tuesday Jul 2011

Posted by cinepam in News

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Castro Theatre, Dalton Trumbo, Kirk Douglas, San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, Spartacus

Kirk Douglas as Spartacus

Kirk Douglas took the stage of San Francisco’s Castro Theatre on Sunday, July 24 at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, to an extended standing ovation. No surprise there. The 94-year-old actor is, after all, one of the very last classic Hollywood stars still living. But the applause wasn’t just for the 87 movies, 10 plays, and nine books Douglas has to his name or for his very survival, his having survived a 1991 helicopter crash and 1996 stroke that left him with impaired speech. He is the SFJFF’s Freedom of Expression award winner this year, feted not for being a movie star, but for his pivotal role in ending the Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s when he insisted that Dalton Trumbo attach his own name to his screenplay of Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 historical epic Spartacus.

It was Douglas, who served as executive producer as well as star on the film and who is currently writing a book entitled I Am Spartacus, who optioned Howard Fast’s novel. He originally hired the author to adapt his own book, but as Douglas revealed to SFJFF Executive Director Peter Stein during an onstage Q&A, “Howard Fast wrote a terrible screenplay.”

So Douglas turned to Trumbo, a member of the Hollywood 10 who had 11 spent months in prison for contempt of Congress for his refusal to discuss his political associations with the House Un-American Activities Committee and had subsequently found himself unemployable in Hollywood – at least under his own name. Writing under pseudonyms, his scripts for 1953’s Roman Holiday and 1956’s The Brave One were both Oscar winners. “Sam Jackson” was the name that he was going to use for Spartacus, but despite being warned that his own career might suffer if Trumbo received screen credit, Douglas insisted on standing on principle.

“I think if I was 10 years older, I might not have done it,” Douglas told Stein. “When you’re young and impulsive … I just had to do it. I’m glad I did it now.

“He thanked me for giving back his name,” he remembered, adding, “Names are what give you life.”

To close out the Freedom of Expression event, the SFJFF screened Spartacus.

“I would stay, but I saw the picture,” laughed Douglas before leaving the Castro stage. “It’s good. You’ll like it.” – Pam Grady

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