A Brief History of Dynamite: 1866 —Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel invents dynamite by mixing kieselguhr with nitroglycerine. 1983 —Dennis Hopper surrounds himself with seventeen sticks of dynamite and lights the fuse.
Q: Fifteen years later, do you feel Mono No Aware “melancholy at the fleeting nature of things”—more or less strongly? ALEXANDER PAYNE: I feel it more strongly—how could I not?—but the increased sensation is now accompanied by increased acceptance of it, and of death. I think in my twenties, when I made this film—and stole the term from discussions of Ozu’s work—I was looking at it more than feeling it. What I was feeling more at the time was something I feel less of today—the jealousy and rage and insecurity that can follow in the wake of first love, if you can call it love. The film served as a way for me to try to gain distance from all that by turning it into a comedy. A couple of my closest friends still prefer Martin to my feature films so far because, despite its primitiveness or perhaps because of it, they feel I am more naked here. Q: Fifty minutes is an uncommon length for a film. Did you ever feel pressure to lengthen Martin or shorten it? Do you ever wish you could release a forty-minute feature? AP: While I was making The Passion of Martin at UCLA Film School, I was very aware that it would be probably the only time in my life I would be completely free as a filmmaker and have no imposed guidelines of any sort. The film’s odd length is a result of that. I wanted the film to be exactly the length it wanted to be. Later of course, I found that its duration—too short for a feature, too long for a short—hindered its being accepted into certain festivals, and more than a few times I was encouraged either to cut the film down or shoot additional scenes. But that was out of the question—what steps would you take if your child was too short or too tall? As for commercial feature films, well, I do wish we still had B pictures that could be around sixty-two minutes like in the old days. Films are best when they are exactly the length they want to be, and I dislike prejudice against either short films or long films based solely u
A Stranger in Her Own City follows Nejmia, a thirteen year old girl, who flouts custom by not wearing a veil, by playing in the streets with boys her age, by riding a bicycle, a scooter, and generally by doing whatever she likes. She is cursed, ridiculed and threatened, but, buoyed by a truly indomitable spirit, she perseveres with incredible good humor and sense of perspective. Below, an interview with the director, Khadija Al-Salami. Q: First and foremost—a year later—how and where is Nejmia? Do you keep in touch with her? What is she like now? What has been the effect of this documentary on Nejmia? On the town? KHADIJA AL-SALAMI: Seven months after shooting the film, Nejmia’s father stopped her from going to school and ordered her to wear the veil. A year later, this film won first prize at the Beirut Film Festival. The president of Yemen was visiting France at that time and heard about the prize. He asked me to show him the film. I thought he would not like it because it shows society looking down on women, but I was wrong. He was drawn by Nejmia’s personality, and at the end of the film he asked me to tell Nejmia’s family that he would like to pay for her education. I was very happy to hear that and thought that was the best prize I could ever get for the film. Now, Nejmia is back at school. I think it is the most important element for a better and independent future. The more a woman is educated, the more she knows her rights and is able to defend them, the more useful she will be to her family and to society as a whole. The film was not screened on Yemeni TV because they are not accustomed to such controversial subject matter. Q: Were you ever worried for Nejmia’s—or your own—safety, while filming? KS: This film was shot without any preparation. One day I was walking around the old city of Sanaa with a group of French journalists I had brought with me to Yemen to promote my country as part of my job at the embassy. Suddenly I saw t
This is the second in a series developed by Bob Odenkirk, noted writer, director and co-star of the late and beloved Mr. Show. In Wholphin No. 2, we showed The Pity Card, the pilot of Derek and Simon. In The Bee and the Cigarette, Derek and Simon meet two young women on the beach, and seem to be having impossibly good luck wooing them, until an encounter with a bee illuminates why our heroes have so little success with women.
Q: How did the collaboration between your co-directors work? Did each of you take a section or did you all work on all sections? Ishii (I): We are all doing whatever we like. Especially Aniki is the one doing what pleases him the most. ANIKI (A): No way, not just me, everyone is doing what we darn well please. I: We did not split our jobs or anything did we? Miki (M): We all did whatever we wanted to do, and then gave it consistency to it afterwards. We talked about how we would combine the stories afterwards. The reason why we started this was because we wanted to do something that we liked; however if it was just that, the film would be just a compilation of shorts films. So we still wanted to do whatever we wanted to do the most, but at the same time make it into one connected film. I: If we make rules such as limiting the piece down to certain amount of minutes, it becomes producer driven. Even if we are told that the piece should be 20 min., the piece that you want to make might not be 20 min., so it was like, who cares about stuff like that! That was our mentality. M: The overall impression was that we want to give it some compassion, human warmth throughout the whole entire film. I: Humanity = Downtown Neighborhood sitcomish (From Ai: Downtown Tokyo is often depicted as story with a human touch, do you know the Tora-san series? If you can find the right word to explain it please change it) that’s what I was aiming for. M: Dance & Music was Aniki’s theme. And the kind of grotesque gags and jokes are mine. I: The ones you want to grunt “Woo, gross…” on a physiological level are usually yours. M: The characters appear and interwine through out all the stories, so it might be confusing, but that would be the basic distinction among us. Q: The visual effects are astounding. How did you achieve the “small-headed bloodsucker” effect? A: Thank you very much. The Tamotsu Yamada effects was made possible by first creati
Q. How many interviews did you conduct in total? JONAS ODELL: Benjamin, who did the interviews for the film, conducted around thirty interviews. I selected ten that he then went back and interviewed according to my instructions. I edited seven interviews and out of those I chose the four that are in the film. All the thirty stories were of course worth telling; the selection was more about which ones I thought I could do justice on film, and also which four would work together as a film. Q: Did you know the people you asked? JO: He started with people he knew and worked his way out toward friends of friends, neighbors, etc., and eventually to people he hadn’t met before. Q: BBC News reports that “nearly a third of sixteen- to twenty-four-year-olds lost their virginity below the age of consent (sixteen).” How old were you when you lost your virginity? JO: I think I was just over the age of consent. Q: What was your experience like, and how would you draw it? Black and white? Cut-outs? Finger painting? JO: It was quite matter-of-fact. Since it ended in a tent on a beach it might be done in sand animation, I guess. It wouldn’t make a very good film, though, I’m afraid. Q: There’s talk nowadays about revirginization. One year of celibacy equals born-again virgin. There’s even “hymen restoration” surgery, in which the thin membrane is reconstructed. If you had the chance to lose it all over again, what would you do differently? JO: I guess “revirginization” would be pointless unless you erased all memory of previous experiences. After all it’s not about membranes; it’s about the experience of doing something for the first time. So, I guess if I had no recollections of whatever mistakes I made before, I would be more than happy to make them again. Q: Did you learn anything from this experience? JO: What I thought was the biggest challenge for me was working with documentary material for the first time, and I thi
Q: The obligatory question first: How many crustaceans died during the making of this film? At the afterparty? Do you eat meat? ALICE WINOCOUR: We used thirty lobsters in the making of this film. They were usually resting in their “caravan,” which was a huge aquarium where we fed them. None died, but one committed suicide on camera. We buried him with a lot of respect. Acting is a tough job. Another one was nicknamed Leonardo, like DiCaprio. He was the best. The afterparty was very calm. I do eat meat, but I don’t eat actors. Q: Did you know that Whole Foods—a conscientious and very expensive U.S. grocery store—has stopped selling live lobsters on the grounds that it’s inhumane, and instead have overseen the development of a giant, supposedly close-to-painless lobster-killing machine that immediately pressurizes the little fellas right out of their shells? Other companies sell a little lobster electric chair called the Crustastun. Which would you choose? AW: Had I been a Texan lobster, I would have had no choice: the electric chair. But being a French lobster, I think I would prefer the “killing machine” by Whole Foods. As Françoise Sagan said, “It’s better to cry in a limousine than on the subway.” Q: I read that Caribbean spiny lobsters can detect the disease PaV1 in passing lobsters, even if the other lobster shows no detectable signs of sickness. What was the most vicious illness you’ve endured? AW: I’m a hypochondriac, so I have a lot of vicious illnesses: imaginary and real ones. The worst illness was a chagrin d’amour, which was the break-up that inspired Kitchen. Q: Have you heard of the Robo-Lobster? It’s a two-foot-long, seven-pound crustacean made out of industrial-strength plastic, which the U.S. Navy plans to employ to detect and destroy mines buried under the surf zone. What is your favorite possession? AW: My favorite possession is my boyfriend’s body. I’ve never heard of the Robo-Lobster. Q:
While the Society To Save Pluto as a Planet was battling the International Astronomical Union over the semantics of roundness, there was another scientific throw-down brewing in Berkeley, one that could only be solved with a $60,000 video camera shooting 100,000 frames per second. The contenders were the Myrmecologists versus the Stomatophore Researchers, and when it was over, there was a new world record for the fastest predatory strike in the animal kingdom and a film that, if we meditated, we’d meditate to. The results: the fastest predatory strike in the animal kingdom is no longer the brutal claw punch of the peacock mantis shrimp (Odontodactylus scyllarus). The peacock mantis can punch its raptorial appendage at over sixty miles an hour, producing a force one thousand times greater than its body mass, capable of shattering snail shells, pâté-ing small fish, and creating a cavitation wave known to crack aquarium glass three feet away. But the mandibles of Odontomachus bauri, a.k.a. the trap-jaw ant, are faster. The trap-jaw ant has a pair of jagged scythes growing from its head that, when triggered by tiny hairs, can smash down at 145 cricket-decapitating miles an hour. The motion pushes the boundaries of physics, and often causes the ants to do a thing not unlike flying.* WHO’S WHO Brian Fisher, the man at the ant frontier, brought with him the little box of ants. Andy Suarez, trap-jaw visionary, made the journey from east-central Illinois. Joe Baio, the chemist turned biologist turned ant-filmmaker did the hardest work for the least salary. Sheila Patek, fast animal movement guru, made sure the team worked hard in her lab and collected enough data to publish something. In Patek’s high tech UC Berkeley laboratory, Dr. Fisher wielded the pooter (yes, the term for the state-of-the-art ant retriever suction device used by ant biologists in the know), Prof. Suarez flourished jump-inducing ant tools, Mr. Baio set up the shots, and Prof. Patek re
A human-rights lawyer told us we probably wouldn’t get within a mile of the wall. Even if we did, she said, it would likely be double or triple-fenced with razor wire, not to mention patrolled by trigger-happy Neanderthals. The carload full of players we’d recruited to share this historic moment got a late start and, after discussing the likelihood of being tagged in the head by a rubber bullet and/or arrested, bailed. We’d heard that sending anything across international borders without clearing customs could result in a felony charge, which meant that after three hits of the ball we’d all be subject to mandatory life imprisonment under California’s three-strikes law. At the border we held up our volleyball and called out the Tijuanans we could see through the slats in the unfinished wall: “Pelota?” Before we could remember the world for “play,” a kid on the other side said, “Yeah yeah, we speak perfect English. Just serve.” And so, as six half-curious members of the border patrol watched through binoculars from the hill above, we did. –Brent Hoff