RAISING KANE

Archive Interviews: Frank Darabont

 

As someone who practically learned to read by inhaling the Stephen King hardbacks my parents had lying around the house, interviewing long-time King collaborator (and respected filmmaker in his own right) Frank Darabont for The Mist in 2007 was one of the most fun experiences I've had on the job. Darabont was very gracious with his time and unguarded in a way that few filmmakers are, and we talked about the many pitfalls of adapting a beloved King story, as well as the overall partnership that Darabont and King have cultivated in order to continue bringing high-quality adaptations of the maestro's best books to the big screen. Darabont's time in Hollywood is already so storied that I couldn't possibly ask everything I wanted, but for an under-30-minutes interview, it's not bad.

Viewing Log: Eyes of a Stranger (1981)

 

Logline: A semi-bubbleheaded Miami TV news anchor begins to suspect that she knows the identity of the serial killer whose exploits she breathlessly reports on each night. Does she have the investigative chops to catch him? And is it worth putting her blind/deaf sister at risk?

The premise above could be fodder for a good or bad movie in almost any era; what arguably dooms Eyes of a Stranger apart from its gauzy, shot-through-a-wine-glass production values and affectless acting is that it's a serial killer movie made at the apex of the slasher era, instead of, say, in the 90s at which point the serial killer genre would have been well-trodden enough to accommodate its story naturally.

Miramax: An Oral History

 

It's been said that if you listen to Kevin Smith talk long enough, you'll eventually hear something interesting. Case in point: the soon-to-be-ex-filmmaker recently let it slip that once his screening-slash-speaking-slash-merch-hawking tour of Red State is complete, he intends to add a new regular podcast to his burgeoning Smodcast audio empire in which he'll relate the entire history of Miramax Films along with co-host Jon Gordon, a former Harvey Weinstein assistant-turned studio chief-turned independent producer. Smith's own words, culled from the river of his never-ending twitter feed:

"After the tour, Jon and I kick off a new show called The Harvey Boys. The Harvey Boys podcast will be Jon Gordon and I telling our first-person history of Miramax Films, circa '92 to 2008. We'll drive the story, but we've also talked to our friends who've worked at the 'Max about guesting turns. Our list thus far is long, as you'd expect. The idea is to create a comprehensive oral history of the grand ol' dame of indie cinema from people who worked there, in front of and behind the cameras."

Considering that most of the books about Miramax thus far have come from journalists with limited access and an often skewed perspective (Down and Dirty Pictures, Looking for Harvey Weinstein, Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes), an honestly-presented oral history of the seminal indie studio from two people with intimate, first-hand experiences to relate could prove to be of real value. This kind of thinking bodes well for Smith's ongoing transition from active filmmaker to full-time storyteller/personality/human figurine dispenser.

Archive Interviews: Rosamund Pike



As mentioned in the post below, I want to archive some of the pieces I've enjoyed doing over the years, and to a large degree that means interviews conducted for various film outlets. A good place to start, I think, is an unpublished interview that has lived only on my desktop since it was conducted. In September 2007 I did a semi-long 1.1 with Rosamund Pike, one of my favorite actresses, at the Toronto Film Festival. This was for the Holocaust guilt film Fugitive Pieces, and as I recall I had a hard time selling the piece because everyone lost interest after the film had trouble picking up distribution. The interview naturally covers Pieces, as well as Pike's partially self-stoked reputation as a neo-Hitchcockian blonde and her ambitions for the future.

Wipeout and Renewal

 

It was recently brought to my attention that the short-lived, but robust Premiere.com website has been obliterated from the universe by its Francophone owners, along with every bit of content created for it by various writers and editors since the former print film magazine was fully digitized in 2008. So, whoa, brah. A simple courtesy would have prevented writers such as myself losing all of their clips, but such a thing is too much to ask in this day and age. Although copies may yet exist on a back-up disc in some cluttered Parisian office, I have neither the energy or inclination to go on a NOC list hunt for said disc.

The loss of a sizeable chunk of my output for the past five years has led me to the spur-of-the-moment decision to create a low-flame blog where I can house back-up copies of pieces I remember fondly, lest such a thing happen again at another twitchy online concern. (I'm looking at you, redacted.) Naturally, I will also update it with whatever musings happen to strike me on a daily or semi-daily basis.