Goodbye, Tribeca Film Festival

The Eight Percent had a great run at the Tribeca Film Festival. After winning the Delta Fly-In Movies Competition the film had four sold out screenings in the shorts program 'Mixed Feelings.' It was great to meet the  other filmmakers and to see such awesome work. The parties weren't so bad either of course and it was good to meet the big guy. Of course I'm a little sad that my filmmaker badge will no longer get me into movies for free and get me drinks but then again I'm not sure I can drink any more Heineken or Stoli for a long long time. Anyway, I'm busy revising a feature script that I'm hoping to get into production soon and working on the twenty other scripts that I need to get done. Time for the next thing. 

Interview in Quiet Color

Here's an interview I did in Quiet Color an online magazine that covers indie film, music and art (www.quietcolor.com).

QC INTERVIEW: TFF FILMMAKER ALEXANDER POE

by Steph Berland

I met Filmmaker Alexander Poe at the Babelgum Film Festival Awards last Monday night.  He seemed like a really cool guy and had told me that he was the winner of the Delta-Fly-In movie competition, and that I should Google it if I didn’t believe him. As soon as I got home, I turned my computer on and typed his name into my search bar, where a bunch of results showed me that not only had he won the Delta competition, but that he had also made a slew of other short movies and plays. With Tribeca Film Festival upon us, I decided I’d uncover the roots and future prospects of this up and coming filmmaker.  So filled with the spirit, I caught up with him at a small cafe in the west village.

Quiet Color: I went to your Web site, your production company’s Web site, and I think its really cool that you do both theatre and film, so tell me a little bit about how you started Redux Productions.

Alexander Poe: I started Redux with Joe Varca and Ben Correale, two friends from Middlebury. We’re all actor/directors so we kind of started a company at the end of my freshman year when I found this Paul Auster book called City of Glass that I wanted to make into a play and just approached Joe and said why don’t we do this as a play and start a company where we do plays every semester instead of acting in other people’s stuff.  So we did a play a semester up at Middlebury and then after college we did a few plays here in the Fringe Festival.

QC: How did you get your plays into the Fringe festival?

AP: I just submitted the scripts so I first did a play that was an adaptation of this Kafka novel called 'Amerika,' it was a very loose interpretation, Kafka himself was the main character.  So that won best ensemble. The Fringe is a very weird place, you have to have the right title or the right subject to really get an audience, its very pop culture, kitschy a little bit, so 'Amerika' wasn’t a big hit or anything, we did pretty well, it was good to win an award, but its not like people were flocking to see the Kafka play.  So I decided that if we were going to do it again I should think of a title that had like some ticket appeal, so the next one was I Was Tom Cruise, even though it wasn't really kitch, it was more of a sad absurd comedy about the notion of celebrity. It was kind of like Faust but with Tom Cruise. So we won the best play award that year. That was fun.

QC: So then you made your experience of doing I Was Tom Cruise into a short film, or shows I guess, episodes.

AP: Webisodes I guss. Yeah well I shot a half hour pilot for a show called 'Theatre is Dead' which was inspired by the experience of putting on the play, but then broke it down into little mini web-episodes to try and get a web series going on. It was fun but we didn't really have the financing to continue making the show so when we were hoping the pilot would get some interest at the New York Television Festival but when it didn't get in the project kind of faded and we moved on to other projects. We just didn’t have any more money to keep doing this series, we had a vodka company sponsor the pilot but then after that, ya know.

QC: Yeah, then not so much?

AP: Yeah, its hard to find somebody to pay for web stuff unless its just dirt cheap, I mean it was pretty dirt cheap but it wasn’t free.  We kind of want to do more of that, but its tricky to find the right way to make it.

QC: Now, that wasn’t the first film sort of thing you did, so what sort of transition was there between doing theatre and film.

AP: Well I worked at the Williamstown Theatre Festival for a while and while I was there I made a short film of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock with another friend, Jeff Miller. It wasn't really a straight forward adaptation, it was more like an absurd slapstick comedy version of T.S. Eliot. It was like a really cool experience.  You know that movie Maria Full of Grace? So the director of that film, Josh Marston, just happened to be there trying out theatre directing for the summer and he helped edit our movie and pointed out all of the technical mistakes that we had made, breaking time code on every shot because Jeff and I were both in the film and directing at the same time so we'd set up a shot on a tripod, hit play, then run in front of the camera and do the scene and then run back, hit stop and then rewind to watch the take and apparently if you do that and break the running time code on the tape your editor will hate you. Anyway, this was before he had really made his big movie so we all had fun staying up late and trying to figure out what the hell we were doing with him and the other editor Michael Natter.

QC: So that was the first movie you had ever made?

AP: That’s the first movie.  And then I made another one at Williamstown with Joe a year later about waiters in a Thai restaurant in Williamstown called Far From Thailand.  We just cast all the people that worked in the restaurant, and shot it a Thai language film.

QC: I wanted to ask you about that because Far From Thailand and Please Forget I Exist are both in foreign languages.  Did you write the script in a foreign language?

AP: No, I wrote both scripts in English, I mean, I don’t speak any Thai and I don’t speak any Japanese, then the actors just translated it.  The owner’s daughter, Nam, who is the girl in the movie spoke both English and Thai. The main actor, Pom, didn’t really speak any English, so that was interesting, like all the directions were just communicated in hand gestures like 'do it faster.' It was very weird, but I mean it wasn't a big stretch for him to play a waiter and I think in the end there's a nice natural quality about the way the acting is in the film. 

QC: What inspired you to do them in a foreign language, as opposed to just doing it in English.

AP: Well the main guy didn't really speak any English and I just thought it was interesting that there was this group of Thai people living in the middle of nowhere in Williamstown, Massachusetts where they’re the only Thai people in a one hundred mile radius. I just thought that was an interesting story, plus I was watching a lot of Wong Kar Wai movies so sad longing with voiceover was kind of what I was into at the time.

QC: What was the next film you did?

AP: After that I made another film at Middlebury called February my last semester of school there. I guess it was kind of like a standard college kind of movie, you know, college kids trying to find love and connection etc etc, three different stories that unfold over the course of one night.  I acted in one of them while Joe directed, I directed while Joe acted and then Joe and I co-directed the third story. We had a cinematographer film student who kind of wanted to be the director so he would always be making things difficult trying to tell us how he would make the film and he was the guy with the camera and the lights so it was a bit of a tricky situation. Plus there was some other film student making a movie at the same time and there was only one light kit that we had to share so we were usually shooting with about one light which made it interesting. Anyway, it was a learning experience. Joe and I co-directed a few more films after that and then we decided it would be better to just divide up jobs and have one person direct and one produce, it's easier, but we're still very collaborative. 

QC: A lot of your movies had time limits, in terms of making them.

AP: We got into this whole cycle of entering film competitions that were either 48 hours or 24 hours, those were just the opportunities around to try and get some exposure for our work and to find an audience while getting some practice. We entered this competition where we had two weeks to make a film with a given genre and subject so we had to make a horror story about an imaginary friend but I think it's one of my best films, I really enjoy that one because of the constraints, we lit the whole thing by candle which was kind of a challenge but gives it kind of a gothic ghost story feel. Deadlines are helpful sometimes for your creative process. We shot that movie in a night. We wasted a week and a half and then I was like “ohh I have to write a script,” and we had to get it done so we just shot it that day.  It did well, it got second place, lost to a mockumentary about a garage sale, and that was really annoying.  Then we did the New York 48 Hour Film Festival where we won Best Film. And then based on that we were commissioned to make a 48 hour movie for Visa. We didn’t win that, it was another thing where you include some pre-given elements and we were like, “Ok you’re gonna give us some cool elements” but the only element we had to use was a Visa card and the line “Life Takes…” So we though “Ok you want a commercial...” A lot of these competitions with sponsors say they don’t want a commercial but basically they just want a clever commercial, so we made them a film that had a bit of a commercial feel and I think it turned out well. But then another film ended up winning that wasn't like a commercial at all, it barely even featured the Visa card or the line so I guess it goes to show that you should never guess what people want to see, you should just do what you want. Even though it didn't win they did fly us out to San Francisco for the screening though so that was still good. 

QC: I watched Valerie, which is really kind of dark.  Most of your stuff is really kind of light, so which do you like better?  The dark, sort of horror-y ones or the light and fluffy ones?

AP: Well you have to mix it up. I like the dark stuff as long as it still has some sense of humor.  That one is definitely a bit disturbing.  It's funny, there are a good portion of my movies that involve bad dates that turn out to be comic and then other bad date movies where people end up dead. That was fun to explore something darker. That was a challenge as well, we had only two nights to shoot because you’re always trying to race against how much money you don’t have and the actor’s schedules.  But it was fun, it was a total experiment.

QC: Let’s talk about the Tribeca Film Festival.  This isn’t your first time at Tribeca right?

AP: Well I had a movie that was part of this MTV student filmmaker award competition a few years ago where there was a big online voting thing starting with 100 filmmakers narrowed down to 25 and then the top 5 filmmakers screened their work at Tribeca at a special MTV event.  And then the winner won the award live at the MTV movie awards. But I didn’t end up winning, I lost to another damn mockumentary. It was great to get responses from a totally different audience that I wouldn't have reached otherwise.

QC: How about The Eight Percent, how did you get involved in that?

AP: Well this one I wrote as part of another time limit thing for a playwriting competition where you go to the Reanimation Library in Brooklyn which is this cool place with really old and out of date science books basically.  The deal was that that you went into the library blindfolded, picked out a book and then you have to write a ten minute play that’s somehow related to the book. So I somehow picked Biology of Every Man, and I just had no idea what to write about about biology.  So the title of the first chapter was 'What Life Means' and I figured that would be a pretty good theme to write about so I started thinking about that and then I remembered a story that I had heard a while back at a dinner party about bees and it seemed like it would work out.  And also I ran into an ex-girlfriend and had a very awkward conversation. So the confluence of those events just meshed into that script and eventually I decided that it would be interesting to make it into a short film. I was developing this feature script with Ben McKenzie at the time and were talking about a project we could shoot while I was still writing and this one made the most sense. 

QC: What was it like to know that thousands of people were watching your movie?

AP: Its nice, I mean, I don’t know, I’ve never met them personally.  Its cool, you get a lot of emails from Germany, just like “hey I really like your movie,” apparently Ben is really loved in Germany.  I definitely went after the Ben McKenzie fan sites and they were really cool actually about getting out and supporting the movie and getting the word out.  They were really nice and had questions about the movie and were very friendly. I haven’t seen in on the plane.  Its weird, you get random emails from people you went to grade school with when they see your movie randomly on a place, that's kind of exciting.

QC: How has it been the past week or so, with Tribeca?

AP: I feel like I’ve just been to an endless string of screenings and parties, it’s been really fun but it's been like a whirlwind.  Everyone at the festival is really cool, all very helpful and the other filmmakers are really cool, it’s cool to get to meet the other filmmakers, see some good movies.  You know, hang out with Bobby DeNiro.  What do you say to him, you know?  You don't want to seem like some star struck fan, but I mean, what is there really to say? 'Hi, you're Robert De Niro.' 

QC: Which city do you like better, LA or New York?

AP: I like New York, LA is fun in its own way, but I kind of like walking around and not having to drive.  Also, it’s more of a late night city and I'm a night owl.  I’ve spent six years in New York and only one in LA. I have family out there so it's nice to visit and do some work out there but I like New York. LA's not as bad as people say I guess, its alright.  It’s easier to shoot out there, in some ways.

QC: It’s easier to shoot in LA?

AP: I don’t know actually, well New York is much more guerilla, you kind of just go out into the street and film until someone tells you to stop.  But in LA, you really have to have everything lined up with permits and all that or else you just can't shoot.  At least on this one we had a much bigger crew which was a new process for me. Usually in my other films it's just three guys and a camera, I've never looked at the shots on a monitor before, usually I'm just watching the actors and asking the cameraman if we got the shot. It was good to get to play around with slightly bigger production values. 

QC: So are you working on something now that you want to do?

AP: Yeah, I’m working on a feature script, trying to wrap that up. I'm basically working with the same team. So that’ll be the next project I'll direct, I think its time to move on to features. I’ve been in grad school working on short films for a while and now the producers who made The Eight Percent have developed a production company where they have a slate of low budget independent features they’re getting ready to do.

QC: Do you find that your movies have changed since being in grad school, and studying film?

AP: I think they’re all kind of naturally evolving, but you know, it’s never a direct path of movies getting better. Its more like, well this one kind of worked, this part worked about that, but this other part didn’t work out so well, it's always an experiment. Its been a good experience to work with some professors that I connected with but really you learn the most from looking at your work and thinking about how to do it better the next film, you get better just by making things over and over and making a lot of mistakes, and then hopefully making better mistakes on the next film, it's not like you ever reach some point of being a perfect filmmaker, you always have to be experimenting and trying new things that push your range. 

QC: Which do you like better, theatre or film?

AP: They are totally different.  I like theatre because you can do a lot of visual, inventive, imaginative things that you can’t really do with the realism of film or at least not the type of film that I do. But then again, film lets you play around with elements that you aren’t able to with theatre. I like doing both but recently I’ve been doing a lot more film.

QC: What is your favorite thing you’ve ever done, both plays and film?

AP: I think the Japanese movie is maybe my best. Please Forget I Exist, and I Was Tom Cruise. I really like those projects.  It’s really like a sad Tom Cruise play, its not really kitschy and pop. Its kind of like Face Off but with Tom Cruise, he trades faces, its kind of a Prince and the Pauper Faustian bargain type thing. I’d say those two are the things I’m most pleased with.

QC: Do you know if Tom Cruise heard about the play?

AP: It was written up in Variety but I don’t know if he checks, someone in his camp must read Variety.  I was kind of expecting to be sued or something, but I didn’t even make it to that status level, I feel a little bit rejected. Sounds like all for the best though.

QC: When you were 17 you wanted to be an actor, did you ever see yourself being a filmmaker?

AP: Well my grandfather was a screenwriter, so the film world was always present a little bit when I would visit LA.  Everyone I know in LA through my grandmother is sort of “old school” Hollywood.  So, having those people around kind of made film look not so bad.  I didn’t initially plan on writing and directing but its going okay so far so I might as well stick with it.  I don’t have any other practical skills so I might as well. 

Interview in ASMALLMAGAZINE

Alexander Poe on The Eight Percent

by Serena Merriman

Actor, writer and director Alexander Poe put Tribeca on hold to tellASMALLMAGAZINE a little bit about his short film The Eight Percent, which won the 2009 Delta Fly-In Movies National Film Competition

What is The Eight Percent about? How did you come up with the idea for this film?

The film is about two high school exes who meet up ten years later on an awkward date. The idea came to me because I ran into an old girlfriend and had a totally awkward conversation. We realised that we had gone different ways in our lives but were still kind of the same. We talked about getting a drink but never did. I made this movie instead.

Did you enjoy working with Ben McKenzie (star of “The O.C.” and “Southland”)?

Ben is great to work with; I directed him in a play a few years ago at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, so it was good to get to do a project together again. We had been working on developing this feature script together and it seemed like getting out and shooting a short would be a good way to get some momentum going on that.

What has your Tribeca 2009 experience been like?

Tribeca has been great. It’s been fun to connect with other filmmakers and see some good films. I’m just glad to be part of the festival and to have people watching my film.

What filmmakers inspire you?

Woody Allen and Wong Kar Wai

As a writer, director and actor, do you see yourself working equally on all three for the rest of your career? Is there one medium you prefer/want to concentrate on?

I’m more focused on writing and directing. I like acting when the right project comes along, but I like being behind the camera and being able to really tell the story the way that I see it.

What do you love about New York?

The fact that it always presents something new. You never know what will happen. There’s always something unexpected that totally changes your day: you run into someone you haven't seen in ten years, you meet someone new, or maybe you just find a good coffee place you didn’t know about—that’s pretty good too.

Premiere night

Last night was the big Tribeca Film Festival premiere for 'Eight Percent.' The film screened to a sold out house along with 5 other short films in a shorts program titled 'Mixed Feelings,' one of which turned to be directed by Kate Hudson. Yeah, that Kate Hudson. A good time was had by all and several drinks ensued and an after-party at Bowlmor Lanes where I re-discovered that I have absolutely so skills in that sport. I think I'm gong to stick to the filmmaking instead of going on the bowling pro tour. 

There are three more screenings on Weds the 30th at 10:30pm, Saturday the 2nd at 12:15pm and Sunday the 3rd at 8:45pm. Wednesday and Saturday are at the AMC on 3rd avenue and 11th and Sunday night's screening is at Tribeca Cinemas. All of the screenings are sold out but a lot of people got in on the rush line so just come half an hour early and it's likely that you'll get in, come down and check it out.  

We won!

Thursday night was the big Delta Announcement party at the Tribeca Film Festival and our little film 'The Eight Percent' won Best Film. The films producers, Annie Armstrong (right) and Shannon Riggs (left) were there for the event and a good time was had by all. So now the film will be screening in the Tribeca Film Festival shorts program titled 'Mixed Feelings' down at the AMC Village VII on 3rd avenue and 11th street. 

Here are the showtimes: Sunday April 26 at 7pm, Wednesday April 30th at 10:30pm, Saturday May 2nd at 12:15pm and Sunday May 3rd at 8:45pm (the last show on May 3rd is at Tribeca Cinemas). 

Thanks to  everyone who voted for the film, it's really great to screen it at the festival. Also I now have two business elite international tickets to fly anywhere in the world. Now I just need to get the film into a festival in Tokyo!

In-Flight Entertainment

Voting for the Tribeca Film Festival's Delta Fly-In Movies Competition ends on April 12th so get over to www.delta.com/flyinmovies and keep it up. It's been great to get so many people to see the film, the results are announced at an event on April 23rd and if 'The Eight Percent' wins it'll play from April 26th - May 3rd in the festival. 

JustJared.com and the Daily Pop Culture Fix

It was great to see a posting about 'The Eight Percent' on JustJared.com today. Apparently the Hollywood gossip site reaches a wide audience because my sister noticed it before I did. Next time I need to know what's up in the world of celebrities I'll know where to turn. Here's the post: 

Ben McKenzie prepares for a scene in the 8-minute film The Eight Percent, about two high school exes who meet up ten years later on an awkward date.

The short is one of five films that were selected to screen onDelta.com/flyinmovies - the film with the highest number of audience votes gets a special screening at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Watch the film at Delta.com and then support the film on Facebook or on director Alexander Poe’s blog.

30+ pictures inside of Eight Percent ofBen McKenzie…

http://justjared.buzznet.com/2009/03/11/eight-percent-of-ben-mckenzie/

Also, it's been good to get some more questions about the film, this one from a fan of Ashley's:

Q: What can you tell us about Ashley Williams and how did she become a part of this project?

A: I met Ashley Williams at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2001, the same year I met Ben. We were actually all in a play together called 'The Blue Bird.' Ben and I had tiny roles and Ashley was the lead. Since then she starred on this show 'Good Morning Miami' and has been on 'How I Met Your Mother' and 'Huff.' 

Ben was on-board the film from the beginning but casting Laura was really difficult, I wanted someone who had kind of a quirky but endearing Annie Hall type quality. We were planning on shooting the film in NYC (because the whole thing was supposed take place in winter in NYC and it was January at the time) and I had a great NYC based actress lined up that I was really excited about but then she went through a nasty break-up and decided to leave town, then I cast another actress who was totally into the project but then she developed a scheduling conflict with another project and had to leave town. So then I cast a third actress who ended up developing yet another schedule conflict and by that time it was spring and there was no snow left in NYC and it seemed like I might have more luck in LA so it seemed to make the most sense to just move the production there and re-write the script. 

So I had a film that was ready to go but I still didn't have an actress. Finally my producer, Annie Armstrong (yet another Williamstowner) brought up Ashley who was an old friend of hers and who she thought would be perfect for the role. Anyway, I hadn't seen Ashley in forever so it was funny to see her 7 years after we had done this play together, but she and Ben had a really interesting dynamic when they read together. It's a little different from the typical romantic comedy set-up where two people meet and fall in love because these two characters have already had their relationship and broken up so there needed to be a sense that these two people had some history together, that they had good memories and bad memories about each other and also that since last seeing each other they've both gone through some tough times and set backs in their lives that they'd had to deal with. So there needed to be moments of awkwardness, moments of confrontation, some light and funny moments and then some moments where you see the possibility of these two people really connecting, it's a bit all over the place, it's not like a fairy tale where they just see each other and magically fall back in love, I wanted it to have all the awkwardness and a little bit of the pain that the situation would really have. And so Ashley and Ben had a really interesting dynamic when they read together that kind of hit on some of those notes and added a kind of uncertainty and vulnerability to the film that makes it a little unique. Anyway, it was fun to work with both of them, they're both very strong actors and great to work with on set.

Thanks to Just Jared and everyone on the McKenzie fan sites for being so supportive of the film. Keep clicking over to www.delta.com/flyinmovies to vote for the film!