Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
In a turn of events that could have a potentially chilling effect on arts organizations and movie theaters around the country, this week the mayor of Miami Beach, Fla., Steven Meiner, proposed to rescind the lease of a theater operating on city-owned property for screening the recent Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land.”
Made by a collective of two Israeli and two Palestinian filmmakers, the film captures the struggles of daily life in an area of the West Bank known as Masafer Yatta, where Israeli settlers and soldiers attempt to force locals from their homes and land. The film also explores the budding friendship between two of the filmmakers, Basel Adra, a Palestinian, and Yuval Abraham, an Israeli.
From left, “No Other Land” co-directors Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal and Yuval Abraham at the 97th Academy Awards.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Meiner, who said he has watched the film, declared it “egregiously antisemitic” and “a one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people that is not consistent with the values of our City and residents.”
On Wednesday, the city commission will vote on Meiner’s motion to revoke the lease and stop grant funding for the O Cinema.
Responding in a statement, filmmaker Abraham said, “When the mayor uses the word antisemitism to silence Palestinians and Israelis who proudly oppose occupation and apartheid together, fighting for justice and equality, he is emptying it out of meaning. I find that to be very dangerous.
“Censorship is always wrong,” Abraham’s statement continued. “We made this film to reach U.S. audiences from a wide variety of political views. I believe that once you see the harsh reality of occupation in Masafer Yatta in the West Bank, it becomes impossible to justify it, and that’s why the mayor is so afraid of ‘No Other Land.’ It won’t work. Banning a film only makes people more determined to see it.”
Author Marya E. Gates on ‘Gas Food Lodging’
From left, Ione Skye, Fairuza Balk and Brooke Adams in the movie “Gas, Food Lodging,”
(Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)
Film critic and writer Marya E. Gates recently published the book “Cinema Her Way: Visionary Female Directors in Their Own Words,” which includes career-spanning interviews with some 20 filmmakers including Allison Anders, Jane Campion, Martha Coolidge, Julie Dash, Josephine Decker, Cheryl Dunye, Marielle Heller, Miranda July, Karyn Kusama, Mira Nair, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Isabel Sandoval and Susan Seidelman.
On the 19th, the Academy Museum will host a 35-mm screening of Anders’ “Gas Food Lodging,” with a conversation between Anders and Gates. On the 20th, Gates and Kusama will appear with a screening of “Destroyer” at the Frida Cinema, and on the 21st, Gates and July will speak after a screening of “Me and You and Everyone We Know” at Vidiots. Gates will also be on hand for book signing at these events.
Gates answered a few questions about her book via email, including one on “Gas Food Lodging,” starring Ione Skye and Fairuza Balk, about which Michael Wilmington’s original 1992 review said, “It jumps right into life, faces it with careless affection, clarity and courage.”
As you were doing interviews for the book, did you find you were hearing variations of the same stories over and over again?
There was definitely some overlap in the kinds of hurdles these filmmakers encounter and often it’s the same hurdle any filmmaker encounters regardless of gender. It’s just really hard to make a movie, to secure financing, etc. But several of the filmmakers discussed screenplays they had written that were perhaps too feminist or too much about subject matters regarding gender that were met with resistance. There are some great unmade projects I learned about — like a body-horror [film] from Karyn Kusama — that I hope maybe will still get made someday.
Do you feel the conditions for women filmmakers are changing? Hopefully for the better?
I think it’s definitely easier for white women to sell stories centered on white women than it was 50 years ago. But there is still an extra hurdle for women of color. That said, there is one filmmaker who started working in the 1970s and one who started working in the 2010s who shared very similar stories about what it’s like to navigate the film industry, and that was very eye-opening to hear such similar stories so many decades apart. It seems as much as things have changed, some aspects have, unfortunately, stayed the same.
James Brolin in a scene from the movie “Gas Food Lodging.”
(Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)
Can you talk a little about Allison Anders specifically? She has always struck me as someone who should have a much larger body of work. What, for you, makes “Gas Food Lodging” stand out?
Allison has been a dear friend for about 15 years now, and she is always so inspiring! I saw her film “Grace of My Heart” when I was in college and it was the first time I ever remember seeing a woman lactate on-screen. It had a big impact on me. All of her films are rooted in such specific details about cis women’s lives, whether it is the lactation scene or discussions of menstruation, like in “Gas Food Lodging.” I think she also was one of the first filmmakers I became aware of who really let her female characters be messy and flawed in a way that felt real, rather than quirky or designed to be unlikable. The sisters in “Gas Food Lodging” have a sibling antagonism that feels a lot more authentic to my experience than I often see in films where sisters always get along. I love that the girls in “Mi Vida Loca” fight even when they are best friends. I definitely had my biggest fights as a teenager with my best friend. I think Allison really loves her characters and wants to ensure that she puts fully realized women and girls on-screen, then she crafts a super stylish, rock ’n’ roll infused cinematic world for them to live in. There’s nothing like her films.
Points of interest
‘The Good Girl’
Jennifer Aniston in the movie “The Good Girl.”
(Fox Searchlight Pictures)
On Tuesday, Vidiots will be screening 2002’s “The Good Girl,” directed by Miguel Arteta and written by Mike White in his pre-“White Lotus” years. The film stars Jennifer Aniston, then at the height of her “Friends”-era fame, as a woman desperate to break free of the small-town life that has become suffocating to her. The cast also includes Jake Gyllenhaal, Zooey Deschanel and John C. Reilly. Arteta is scheduled to appear at the screening along with Deschanel and Reilly.
In his review, Kevin Thomas wrote, “This film, which is about how the relentless dullness of the ordinary can grind a person down, has a corrosive, comically satirical tone yet never condescends to its people, who are all the more soul-shriveling for being so real. … White and Arteta are breathtakingly aware of how people talk and behave, yet the hilarious absurdity of so much of what they observe refreshingly inspires in them compassion rather than contempt. While Arteta directs with a relaxed grace, White comes up with one painfully funny line after another, some laugh-out-loud funny, others more ironic or reflective.”
‘Starting Over’ and ‘Semi-Tough’
Burt Reynolds and Jill Clayburgh on the set of “Semi-Tough” in 1977.
(Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)
On Wednesday and Thursday, the New Beverly will show a double bill of Alan J. Pakula’s “Starting Over” (1979) and Michael Ritchie’s “Semi-Tough” (1977), both starring the perhaps unlikely duo of Burt Reynolds and Jill Clayburgh.
“Starting Over,” written and produced by James L. Brooks, stars Reynolds as a man attempting to rebuild his life after his wife (Candice Bergen) abruptly leaves him. Clayburgh plays a woman he begins a new relationship with.
In a set report from the film’s production, Charles Champlin wrote, “It’s an unusually interesting assemblage of talents and for Reynolds in particular it is a departure, significant rather than revolutionary, from the kinds of roles that have brought him his greatest successes. … The role in fact sounds close to the Reynolds as revealed on the Johnny Carson and other talk shows, funny in a quiet and self-kidding way, and also thoughtful and perceptive, and with the ability and the drive to do more than drive cars through improbable stunts.”
“Semi-Tough” stars Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson as pro football players who share an apartment with the daughter (Clayburgh) of their team’s owner and find their mutually platonic feelings toward her taking a turn for the romantic. The film also dedicates a fair amount of its story to a skewering of self-actualization seminars.
In his review of the film, Champlin said, “The gal — and she makes all the difference — is Jill Clayburgh, and it is hard to think of another current actress who could swear like a stevedore or a street urchin and collect divorces like bracelets and yet preserve a luminous and untouched innocence. … She is resilient rather than tough, a free-spirited woman who has simply not previously found the right cosigner to her particular declaration of independence.”
‘Losing Ground’
Seret Scott in the movie “Losing Ground.”
(Kino Lorber)
Any chance to see Kathleen Collins’ “Losing Ground” is worth noting, and the film will be screening at Vidiots on Thursday the 20th. Originally from 1982, the film at the time did not have a theatrical release outside the festival circuit and remained largely unseen until a 2015 restoration brought it to broader attention, allowing the movie and Collins to fully claim their proper place as part of the canon of Black independent filmmaking.
With delicate, wonderful performances by Seret Scott and Bill Gunn, “Losing Ground” is a portrait of artists and academics — and a woman on a path of self-discovery — over an eventful summer.
In other news
Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Black Bag’
Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender in the movie “Black Bag.”
(Claudette Barius / Focus Features)
The latest from director Steven Soderbergh is “Black Bag,” from a script by his recent collaborator David Koepp following their recent collaborations on “Kimi” and “Presence.” The new film stars Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender as a married couple who also happen to work for the British intelligence service, which creates a particularly complicated work-life balance. The marital thriller also stars Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, Tom Burke, Marisa Abela and Pierce Brosnan.
In her review, Amy Nicholson wrote of Soderbergh’s style, “His core goal is to flirt with the audience, to remind adults that his movies are committed to entertaining them. And he’s turning himself on as he does it, embracing whatever gets him excited to shoot a scene, from the energetic nightclub tracking shot that opens the film to pizzicato close-ups of Blanchett and Fassbender’s eyeballs that feel like his own Sergio Leone kink. When you’ve got his energy, why keep it in your pants?”
Emily Zemler spoke to Blanchett, Fassbender, Soderbergh and Koepp about the film. Koepp said the inspiration for the film came from research he did talking to CIA agents for the first “Mission: Impossible” film.
“I was struck that many of them felt like it’s really hard to maintain a relationship when you lie for a living,” Koepp recalls. “I carried that in the back of my mind for quite some time. Marriage is the ultimate trust institution. Those of us who are in long-term marriages feel like: This is settled and this is safe. I wanted to do something where there was suspicion and unease but not about whether the person is cheating or not. It’s about whether they are betraying their country or not.”
SXSW wraps up
Chase Sui Wonders, Catherine O’Hara, Seth Rogen, Kathryn Hahn, Evan Goldberg and Ike Barinholtz co-star in “The Studio.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
We were very busy this past week in Austin, Texas, covering the South by Southwest Film and TV Festival, starting with the opening-night premiere of Paul Feig’s “Another Simple Favor,” starring Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick.
Christina House took an astonishing number of portraits over just a few days, including cast members from “The Last of Us,” “The Accountant 2,” “The Studio” and other projects.
There were also video interviews with the creative teams behind projects such as “Slanted,” “Fantasy Life,” “The Baltimorons,” “The Dutchman,” “The Threesome” and many more.
