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kottke.org posts about movies

Martin Scorsese Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films

This is a treat: almost 25 minutes of legendary director Martin Scorsese talking about how he made his most iconic movies, from Mean Streets and Raging Bull to Gangs of New York and The Irishman. You have to laugh at the number of times he says, “Well, I didn’t want to make this film, but…” From an accompanying profile/interview with Scorsese (which is quite good as well):

It is a peculiar fact about Martin Scorsese that he does not enjoy actually making movies. “I don’t mean to be funny,” he said, “but, the thing is, you get up real early.” And Scorsese has never been a morning person. For most of his life, he recalled, “I’d stay up late watching movies on TV or reading late, or doing homework late, or trying to write scripts late. I lived at night and the streets were dark, and I never saw the light. It took me many years to understand where the sun set and where the sun rose. I didn’t know. I’m not kidding. I learned it in LA. When you’re going on Sunset Boulevard and you hit the Pacific Coast Highway and it’s seven o’clock and the sun is setting β€” it’s right there.”

He likes to borrow a complaint from Kubrick. “They said, ‘What’s the hardest thing about directing?’ He said, ‘Getting out of the car.’ Because once you get out of the car, the questions start.” Now, when Scorsese gets out of the car in the morning, he looks at his AD and says, “What can’t I have today?”


Movies That Began As Short Films

Deadline’s Robert Lang compiled a bunch of short films (that you can watch for free online) that were later developed into feature-length films like Reservoir Dogs, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Boogie Nights, Bottle Rocket, Napoleon Dynamite, and District 9.

For instance, here’s Quentin Tarantino’s original Reservoir Dogs:

Wes Anderson’s original Bottle Rocket:

The original short version of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On:

Peluca, upon which Napoleon Dynamite was based:

The Dirk Diggler Story, the short film by PT Anderson on which Boogie Nights was based:


Psycho and the End of the Continuously Showing Movie

a movie poster for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho that states that on one will be admitted to the theater after the movie had started

Going to the movies used to be a somewhat different experience than it is today: people wandered into a theater at any point in a film and would just watch until it looped back around when they came in. From a piece in the Hollywood Reporter:

Throughout the classical Hollywood era, moviegoers dropped in on a film screening whenever they felt like it, heedless of the progress of the narrative. In the usual formulation, a couple go to the movies, enter midway into the feature film, sit through to the end of the movie, watch the newsreel, cartoon, and comedy short at the top of the program, and then sit through the feature film until they recognize the scene they walked in on. At this point, one moviegoer whispers to their partner, “This is where we came in,” and they exit the theater.

This began to change in the 40s and 50s for a variety of reasons β€” theater owners and movie studios didn’t like it, movies were getting more complex, the rise of TV, etc. β€” but the real shift occurred with the premiere of Psycho in 1960. The studio put out a promotional blitz before it’s release stating that no one would be allowed entrance to the theater after the start of the film.

On June 16, 1960, after a saturation campaign giving fair warning, the DeMille and Baronet theaters in New York premiered Psycho with the see-it-from-the-beginning edict in place. In a practice later to be known as “fill and spill,” exhibitors hustled audiences in and out with military efficiency (the staggered showtimes β€” every two-hours for the 109-minute film β€” made for a tight squeeze). Uniformed Pinkerton guards were on hand to enforce the policy.

Here’s a video of Hitchcock laying out the policy for moviegoers (via open culture):

Psycho didn’t singlehandedly stop the practice, but Hitchcock’s stand was an important part in shifting moviegoing practices to the set start times we have today.


The Life Cycle Of Superhero Storytelling

In this short video essay, Evan Puschak explores the typical life cycle of superhero storytelling, where things move from standalone stories to crossovers and interconnections, the stakes continually rise, and things get so complicated that entertainment becomes homework. Marvel in particular is in the later stages of this cycle,1 where casual fans are dropping off because they haven’t watched increasingly mediocre movies and full seasons of shows to keep up to date on what’s to come.

  1. Star Wars is getting there too, and Star Trek seems like they’re trying their hardest to catch up.


The Trailer for The Boy and the Heron, Hayao Miyazaki’s Final Film

It is with the appropriate feelings of melancholy and excitement that I share with you the teaser trailer for The Boy and the Heron, the legendary Hayao Miyazaki’s final animated feature film for Studio Ghibli.

A young boy named Mahito, yearning for his mother, ventures into a world shared by the living and the dead.

There, death comes to an end, and life finds a new beginning.

A semi-autobiographical fantasy about life, death, and creation, in tribute to friendship, from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki.

Miyazaki had previously retired after 2013’s The Wind Rises but according to Studio Ghibli co-founder Toshio Suzuki, he had good reason to come back for one more film:

Miyazaki is making the new film for his grandson. It’s his way of saying, ‘Grandpa is moving on to the next world, but he’s leaving behind this film.’

The Boy and the Heron opens on December 8 in the US. (via waxy)


368 Broadway: the NYC Building That Nurtured the Film Careers of Greta Gerwig, Lena Dunham, the Safdie Brothers, and More

Somehow I’d never heard of this before watching this video (nor it seems, had much of anyone else outside of the participants), but the building located at 368 Broadway in Manhattan was, in the years after 9/11, the creative home for a surprising number of filmmakers: Greta Gerwig, Lena Dunham, the Safdie brothers (Josh & Benny), the Neistat brothers (Casey & Van), the Schulman brothers (Ariel & Nev), and Henry Joost.

Here’s a clip of Van Neistat talking about those days (starting at 19:50):

Brian Eno had a word for places like 368 Broadway and the people who gather together to create: scenius. Austin Kleon elaborated on scenius in his book Show Your Work:

There’s a healthier way of thinking about creativity that the musician Brian Eno refers to as “scenius.” Under this model, great ideas are often birthed by a group of creative individuals β€” artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers β€” who make up an “ecology of talent.” If you look back closely at history, many of the people who we think of as lone geniuses were actually part of “a whole scene of people who were supporting each other, looking at each other’s work, copying from each other, stealing ideas, and contributing ideas.” Scenius doesn’t take away from the achievements of those great individuals: it just acknowledges that good work isn’t created in a vacuum, and that creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the result of a mind connected to other minds.


The Tenderness of Marshawn Lynch

For the role of a teacher/coach in her new film Bottoms (about a pair of queer girls who start a fight club in their high school in order to get laid), director Emma Seligman made the unorthodox decision to cast former NFL player Marshawn Lynch. It turned out to be an inspired choice β€” according to an interview with Seligman, he was a natural.

He was one of the best improvisers I’ve ever worked with. I’m not overstating that. He improvised most of his stuff in the movie that ended up in the final cut! We couldn’t ever write something that would be as funny as what he gave us. He’d spew out the most brilliant jokes ever. I kept on encouraging him to do more improv. He’d be like, “Ugh, that stuff’s easy! I wanna get your words right!” I told him that it was so much better than anything we could have written and he was like, “I don’t care about this. I want to honor your work.” I’m so glad I got to talk about him this much.

Here’s a short clip of Lynch doing his thing as Mr. G, “an air-headed high school teacher”:

Lynch also used the film as an opportunity to make some amends for how he reacted when his sister came out as queer:

This was a good opportunity for me because when I was in high school, my sister had came out as being a lesbian or gay β€” I did not handle it right. You feel me, as a 16-year-old boy, I didn’t handle it the way that I feel like I probably should have. So I told [Seligman] it was giving me an opportunity to correct my wrongs, to rewrite one of my mistakes.

From that interview with Seligman again:

In our first conversation, he told me that his sister is queer and when they were in high school, he didn’t necessarily handle it super well. He felt like this movie coming into his hands was the universe giving him a chance to right his wrongs. That’s what he said. He walked her down the aisle. He felt like they were all good, you know? But his sister thought it’d be really cool if he did this.

If you have never seen this old interview with Lynch about the value of persistence, buckle up because you’re in for a treat:


The Trailer for Michael Mann’s Ferrari

Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari β€” a little too on the nose? Michael Mann hasn’t made a film since 2015’s Blackhat and hasn’t made an award-winning film since 2004’s Collateral, so it’s nice to see him back in the director’s chair. The film is based on Brock Yates’ 1991 book Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine.

Next to the Pope, Ferrari was the most revered man in Italy. But was he the benign padrone portrayed by an adoring world press at the time, or was he a ruthless despot, who drove his staff to the edge of madness, and his racing drivers even further?

Brock Yates’s definitive biography penetrated Ferrari’s elaborately constructed veneer and uncovered the truth behind Ferrari’s bizarre relationships, his work with Mussolini’s fascists, and his fanatical obsession with speed.

Ferrari just premiered at the Venice Film Festival and early reviews are mostly positive but not overwhelmingly so. The film opens on Dec 25 in the US.


Trailer for Errol Morris’s The Pigeon Tunnel

Oh yay, I had been wondering just the other day what Errol Morris has been up to and it turns out to be a project with Apple TV+ called The Pigeon Tunnel, which is billed as the final interview with espionage novelist John le CarrΓ© (born David Cornwell).

It’s terribly difficult to recruit for a secret service. You’re looking for somebody who’s a bit bad, but at the same time, loyal. There’s a type. And I fit it perfectly.

The movie has the same title and covers some of the same ground as le CarrΓ©’s 2016 memoir, probably with more of an emphasis on Morris’s general obsession with what constitutes truth. More info on the film from the Toronto International Film Festival, where the movie is premiering on Sept 11:

Cornwell once worked for the British spy agencies MI5 and MI6. He sparingly gave interviews, but accepted Morris’ invitation because he saw it “as something definitive.” He had already begun a process of opening up in his memoir The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life.

Crucial to the narrative is the author’s relationship to his father Ronnie, an inveterate gambler and con artist. Cornwell’s mother disappeared when he was five, so his main frame of reference was the world of his father, who was endlessly on the run from the mob or the police. The title The Pigeon Tunnel comes from Cornwell’s experience as a child going to Monte Carlo with Ronnie. Imprinted on his memory was a shooting range on the top of a cliff. Beneath the grass was a tunnel from which trapped pigeons were ejected over the sea as targets.

The Pigeon Tunnel will be out on Apple TV+ on Oct 20, 2023.


Teaser Trailer for David Fincher’s The Killer

Ahh, it seems like only yesterday that I read the news about David Fincher’s upcoming film The Killer. And it was. So now here’s the teaser trailer β€” interest piqued. What will tomorrow bring?

The Killer stars Michael Fassbender and will make its premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Sept 3, then a limited release in theaters, and then will be streaming on Netflix on Nov 10. As a refresher, here’s what Fincher has been up to lately-ish: directed Mank (2020) & Mindhunter (2017-2019), executive produced Voir and Love, Death & Robots (also directed one episode). Fun Fincher Facts: he was apparently an assistant cameraman for Return of the Jedi and did “matte photography” for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.


McDonald’s at the Movies and on TV

A McDonald’s restaurant apparently appears in season two of Loki on Disney+ and to mark the occasion, the fast food giant made a commercial featuring a number of other appearances by the brand in movies and TV, including The Office, The Fifth Element, Coming to America (“They’re McDonald’s. I’m McDowell’s.”), and Seinfeld. (Perhaps the most famous McDonald’s reference in cinema history, Jules’ Royale with Cheese bit in Pulp Fiction, is conspicuously missing.)

The ad was created to introduce their As Featured In Meal promotion, which seems to consist of 1100-calorie meals from their usual menu paired with a packet of Sweet ‘N Sour Sauce with the Loki logo on it. I thought the commercial was fun and clever but that promotion is a bit Sad Meal.


Very Minimalist Movie Posters

movie poster for Superman featuring a red streak over a blue background

movie poster for Return of the Jedi featuring two colored lines representing light sabers

movie poster for The Hunt for Red October featuring a red circular display that looks like sonar

movie poster for Back to the Future that features two streaks that look like flaming tire tracks

There’s minimalism and then there’s these classic movie posters from Michal Krasnopolski. Each poster is based on a simple grid of a circle, a square, and four intersecting lines. It would be a challenge to come up with a poster for every movie in this style, but the ones he picked work really well. (via moss & fog)


Oppenheimer: More Science and More Heist Please

Craig Mod has my favorite take to date on Oppenheimer: that it should have been more like Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb:

My ideal version of this film would have begun in the 1900s or ’10s, with flashes of Relativity and then the steps of Quantum Mechanics with Planck, Bohr, and Heisenberg. Quantum tunneling with Gamow and Gurney. The nuclear shell model with Maria Goeppert Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen. Chadwick’s discovery of the neutron. Anderson’s positron unveiling. Hold the camera longer on Lawrence and his cyclotron. What’s going on there? (I mean, ya got Josh Hartnett’s pretty head, plaster it up!) Shoot in high-grade mega-IMAX-bokeh the oddly simple experimental setups, the beakers, the blips, the radiation tick-tick-ticks, the iterations, the step-by-step expansion of understanding the fabric of everything around us. Give us an hour of this, this arguably greatest moment of human insight. You can still call the film Oppenheimer. Let the man loom, weave him between it all as he makes his way through Europe, sets up at Berkeley, is selected to lead Los Alamos. Ramp up the Nazi threat. Show the diaspora of brilliance more clearly. Believe the audience is willing to sit through more than just “Is it a wave … or is it particle?” Oh! There is so much excitement, so much incredible science to be mined, and Nolan mined so little.

Mod and I both share a love for that masterpiece of a book and I would watch the hell out of an 10-part HBO series (in the vein of Chernobyl) based on it, American Prometheus, and John Hersey’s Hiroshima.


Copa 71 β€” the First Unofficial Women’s World Cup

Produced by Venus & Serena Williams and US soccer star Alex Morgan and directed by Rachel Ramsay & James Erskine, Copa 71 is a forthcoming documentary about a women’s soccer tournament that took place in Mexico City in 1971 that was the first, albeit unofficial, Women’s World Cup. A short teaser trailer is above. From a piece in Variety about the film:

In August 1971, more than 100,000 football fans packed Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium for a historic tournament. Teams from England, France, Denmark, Argentina and Italy flew in for 21 days of matches alongside Mexico’s national team, while eager sponsors lined up for a piece of the action. The players, who received a hero’s welcome wherever they went, might as well have been the Rolling Stones.

They were, in fact, a group of around 100 women β€” many of them teenagers β€” taking part in a pioneering unofficial Women’s World Cup. And just as quickly as they tasted fame, it was snatched away as the tournament was all but erased from football history.

Many of the competitors were just teenagers β€” from Wikipedia:

England’s team included 13-year-old Leah Caleb, 14-year-old Gill Sayell, and 15-year-old Chris Lockwood; their captain was 19-year-old Carol Wilson and they were accompanied by referee Pat Dunn as a chaperone and trainer. 15-year-old Susanne Augustesen scored a hat-trick for Denmark as they beat Mexico 3-0 in the final.

Copa 71 is premiering at the Toronto Film Festival in September and then hopefully will find its way into theaters and onto streaming. (thx, meg)


Wonder Is Steven Spielberg’s Blockbuster Secret Ingredient

Starting with Jaws, his first big blockbuster movie that defined the genre, Steven Spielberg has filled the audiences of his films with a sense of wonder, that alchemical mix of fear and astonishment of the unknown. No other director does it better and this video essay explores how he does it.


How Streaming Caused the Writers Strike

Vox talked to four television writers about how streaming and prestige TV have changed the financial picture for writers over the past 15 years, contributing to the writers strike that’s been going on since early May.

Companies like Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV+, and more have given consumers an unprecedented array of films and TV shows and opened the door to new voices that don’t have to adhere to mainstream network formats. On the other hand, streaming has also changed how television gets produced, the role writers play, and how they get paid. We interviewed four television writers and showrunners about how streaming has changed how they work, how their incomes have taken a hit, and why it has become harder than ever to build a career.


My Recent Media Diet, Barbenheimer Edition

Hey folks. I’m trying to get into the habit of doing these media diet posts more frequently than every six months so they’re actually, you know, somewhat relevant. Here’s what I’ve been watching, reading, listening to, and experiencing over the last two months.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. One of the most visually stunning movies I’ve ever seen. A worthy sequel to the first film. (A)

On Being with Krista Tippett: Isabel Wilkerson. I will take any opportunity to listen to Isabel Wilkerson talk about her work. (A)

Deep Space Archives. Been listening to this album by A.L.I.S.O.N on heavy rotation while working recently. (A-)

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. Bleak and powerful, science fiction at its finest. (A)

Asteroid City. I liked Wes Anderson’s latest effort quite a bit. Not quite as much as The French Dispatch but more than many other folks. (A-)

Dunkirk. Rewatched for the 5th time. For my money, this is Nolan’s best movie. (A+)

Beef. I wanted to like this but I only lasted two episodes. Not for me, YMMV. (C)

Antidepressants. It took a bit to home in on the right one, but even my relatively low dose has helped me out of a particularly low point over the last few months. (A)

The Diplomat (season one). Burned through this one in just a few days β€” an entertaining political thriller that doesn’t take itself too seriously. (B+)

Ooni Volt 12. Ooni was kind enough to send me this electric pizza oven to test out, so take this with a grain of salt, but I’ve been having a lot of fun making no-fuss pizza. Need to work on my dough game tho. (A-)

Silo. This hooked me right away and didn’t let go, although it got a little bit ridiculous in places. I’m eager to see where things go in season two. (B+)

Interstellar. Watched this with the kids and we all enjoyed it. The musical score does a lot of heavy lifting in all of Nolan’s films but in this one especially. (A-)

The Age of Pleasure. My only complaint about this album from Janelle MonΓ‘e is that it’s too short. (A-)

Barr Hill Gin & Tonic. The best canned cocktail I’ve had. And it’s turned me into a G&T fan. (A)

VanMoof S3. *sigh* Figures that I finally pull the trigger on getting an e-bike and the company that produces it files for bankruptcy. No matter: this thing is fun as hell and has flattened all the hills out around here. (A)

Átta. You always know what you’re going to get with Sigur RΓ³s: atmospheric, ambient, abundant crescendos, ethereal vocals. (B+)

Air. Ben Affleck has a bit of a mixed record as a director, but this Air Jordan origin story is really solid and entertaining. Viola Davis is great as Michael Jordan’s mother Deloris. (A-)

The Bear (season two). There are aspects of The Bear that I don’t like (the intensity seems forced sometimes, almost cheesy) but the highs are pretty high. Forks was a fantastic episode. More Sydney and Ayo Edebiri in season three please. (A-)

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Solid Indy adventure and I love Phoebe Waller-Bridge as the sidekick/partner. I know some folks didn’t like the climax but seeing Jones get what he’s always wanted was satisfying. (B+)

Rebranding beloved brands. Max? X? No. So dumb. (F)

65. Oh dear. Adam Driver needs to choose his projects more wisely. Interesting premise but the rest was pretty lifeless. (C+)

Pizzeria Ida. The pizza is expensive (esp for Vermont), the ingredients top-notch, and the service rude (if you believe the reviews). We had a great time and this is probably the best pizza you can get in VT; it wouldn’t be out of place in NYC. (A)

Oppenheimer. Epic. Almost overwhelming at times. Don’t see this on anything but a big screen if you can help it. Perhaps not Nolan’s best but it still packs a wallop. (A-)

Barbie. I enjoyed this very much but found it uneven in spots. And no more Will Ferrell please. But it was great seeing people dressed up for the occasion β€” Barbenheimer felt like the first time since before the pandemic that you could feel the buzz in the audience, an excitement for what we were about to experience together. (B+)

Currently I’m reading American Prometheus (on which Oppenheimer is based) and Wool (on which Silo is based), so I’ll have those reviews for you next time hopefully. I don’t have a TV series going right now and nothing’s really catching my eye. Maybe I’ll dig into season three of (the underrated) The Great β€” I’ve heard it’s back to top form after a s02 dip.

Past installments of my media diet are available here.


Wes Anderson Talks Up Some of His Favorite Movies in a Parisian Video Store

When you think of directors that have influenced Wes Anderson, you typically think of Truffaut, Godard, Scorcese, and Ashby. But as you’ll see in this video of Anderson pulling out some recommended films from this Paris video store, his taste in movies is broad. There’s Drunken Angel (Kurosawa), A Streetcar Named Desire (Kazan), Vagabond (Varda), Birth (Glazer), Bridge of Spies (Spielberg), and Witness (Weir).

Of Spielberg, Anderson says:

If you make movies, if you direct movies, this is somebody who can help you. You looked at his movies for solutions. He usually found a way to do it right. He’s one of my favorites.

(via open culture)


The Final Plunge of the Titanic in Movies & TV

This is a supercut of the final moments of the Titanic as represented in various films and TV shows, from 1912’s La Hantise to a 2012 British TV series written by Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes. It also doubles as a demonstration of the increasing capabilities and aspirations of filmmakers and their special effects teams throughout the years, although in terms of budget and effort, James Cameron’s effort in 1997 marks the high point.


Greta Gerwig’s Barbie Influences

Greta Gerwig takes us on a whirlwind tour through 33 films that influenced the Barbie movie, visually, thematically, and in terms of plot/content. The influences include The Wizard of Oz, Rear Window, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Singin’ in the Rain, The Godfather, Oklahoma!, 2001, and Saturday Night Fever.

Then, Saturday Night Fever, I always had a sense of wanting this to be a movie with an amazing soundtrack. Saturday Night Fever obviously has this incredible soundtrack by the Bee Gees. There’s a documentary about the Bee Gees, and I’d seen it and was so touched by the Bee Gees, and I thought Barbie seemed so disco to me in her heart, because Barbie’s sort of β€” and I will say this as a lover of Barbie and disco β€” a little bit dorky in the best way. Saturday Night Fever was a movie that was driven by music, but not a musical. I guess we’re half of a musical.


Barbenheimer

mashup movie poster for Barbenheimer (Barbie + Oppenheimer)

Barbenheimer poster by Sean Longmore. Perfect, 10/10, no notes.


The Trailer for Ridley Scott’s Napoleon

Well, this looks good: Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby star as Napoleon and Josephine Bonaparte in Ridley Scott’s forthcoming film about the French dictator. The film will be out in theaters on November 22 and on Apple+ sometime after that.


The Full Trailer for Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon

Oh boy. I thought the teaser trailer was good, but the full trailer for Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon just dropped and I am. So. Excited. To. SEE. THIS!

At the turn of the 20th century, oil brought a fortune to the Osage Nation, who became some of the richest people in the world overnight. The wealth of these Native Americans immediately attracted white interlopers, who manipulated, extorted, and stole as much Osage money as they could before resorting to murder.

Once again, it’s based on David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, which I highly recommend. Grann + Scorsese appears to be a potent combination β€” the latter is already signed on to adapt Grann’s latest bestseller, The Wager.


Wes Anderson’s Imperfect Moments

Precise. Symmetric. Stylized. Controlled (often bright) color palette. Slow-motion. Lateral tracking. These are all hallmarks of Wes Anderson’s films. But as this short video from LuΓ­s Azevedo shows, there are plenty of imperfect moments in his movies as well. Anderson is a canny filmmaker and it’s the contrast between the controlled worlds he constructs and these more frenetic, off-kilter, imperfect moments that gives them their weight and impact.


The Missing Bill Murray Scene From Asteroid City

Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman in a fake promo for Asteroid City

Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman in a fake promo for Asteroid City

So, ever since I’d heard that Bill Murray had to drop out of filming Asteroid City, I’ve wondered which role he’d meant to play. After seeing the movie, I thought it was either the grandfather (played by Tom Hanks) or the hotel manager (Steve Carell) and it was Carell’s role:

Murray was originally cast as a motel manager in the desert town where the movie is set, in 1955. “Normally, I don’t think it’s such a nice idea to tell everyone the person who didn’t end up in the movie,” Anderson said recently. “But Bill got covid in Ireland, and it was four days before he was supposed to work.” Murray was in Ireland for a family trip (“And usually golf has something to do with it,” Anderson said), en route to Spain, where “Asteroid City” was shooting. With Murray in quarantine, Anderson scrambled to recast the part. “The movie was a jigsaw puzzle of actors’ schedules, so we couldn’t wait,” he recalled. “We were extremely lucky that Steve Carell said yes β€” and was perfect in the part.”

Murray showed up to the set anyway after he recovered and he and Anderson filmed tongue-so-firmly-in-cheek-I-don’t-even-have-the-right-metaphor-for-it promo for the film that perfectly complements the film’s meta structure.

Then, the day after the movie wrapped, Anderson and Murray concocted an idea: in a metatheatrical curlicue, Murray would play a character who was cut from the film. Anderson corralled Schwartzman, who plays a war photographer (and the actor playing the war photographer), and they shot a short scene in the style of a retro promotional trailer for a Hollywood film, in which a director or a studio executive would give a stilted pitch for an exciting new picture. Think of the Paramount head Robert Evans boosting “Love Story” and “The Godfather,” or Cecil B. DeMille hyping his 1934 production of “Cleopatra.” Anderson recalled, “We made this very peculiar thing that is just a spontaneous creation before the set was going to be struck down. It was the last thing we did. And then we put all our things in the golf cart and drove off into the sunset.”

[I know, this is a lot of Asteroid City stuff β€” maybe you don’t care about this quite so much? He gets like this about stuff he likes. It’s ok, he’ll grow tired of it in a few days and the site will go back to being about *checks notes* everything else in this whole wide world. -ed]


Behind the Scenes of Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City

The other day I posted about how contemporary filmmakers, Wes Anderson in particular, use miniatures in their films. The model/prop maker featured, Simon Weisse, has worked with Anderson on several films, including his latest, Asteroid City. Weisse has been posting behind-the-scenes shots of his studio’s work on Asteroid City to his under-followed Instagram account and I thought a separate post highlighting some of those props and miniatures would be fun.

a model train in the desert

a vending machine that dispenses martinis

three asteroids of different sizes in cages

a model of an asteroid impact crater next to two model makers

a model maker inspects a model alien spaceship

This video shows a bunch more of the miniatures used in the movie:

I also ran across a few behind-the-scenes videos of the production if you’re in the mood to deep-dive (as I appear to be):

If you’re lucky enough to be in London in the next week and a half, you can go and see some of these props and sets and even eat at the diner at 180 Studios. Very. Jealous.


How Wes Anderson Uses Miniatures to Create His Distinctive Worlds

Vox talks to prop & model maker Simon Weisse, who made miniatures for Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, about the perhaps surprising popularity of miniatures in contemporary filmmaking, when the technique works and when it doesn’t (e.g. when unscalable elements like rain or fire/explosions are involved), and why certain directors use it instead of CGI.

Miniatures in movies are way more common than you may realize, and one of the most stylish filmmakers keeping them alive is Wes Anderson. In this video we spoke to Simon Weisse, prop maker and model marker for some of Wes Anderson’s recent projects, like The Grand Budapest Hotel, The French Dispatch, and Asteroid City.

Older movies, like 1977’s Star Wars: Episode IV β€” A New Hope, had no choice but to use miniatures to make their worlds feel real. But even in the modern day of CGI, filmmakers are still using minis β€” just look at projects like The Mandalorian, Blade Runner 2049, Harry Potter, and The Dark Knight series. In those movies, miniatures are used for expansive sets that establish the world of a film, otherworldly vehicles like spaceships, and more.

It’s perfect for Anderson’s storybook aesthetic, of course…it looks great in Asteroid City (which I really enjoyed overall).


Lego Stop-Motion Recreation of Iconic Scenes From The Shining

The creepy twins. Jack feverish at the typewriter. Danny riding his Big Wheel through carpeted hallways. The elevators of blood. These familiar scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic The Shining (and several more) have been recreated in this Lego stop-motion animation. The video took 50-60 hours over a three-week period to make and was an exercise in constraints:

“Mostly, it came down to choosing the right pieces,” he says. “I made this movie only with pieces I already had in my collection, so I had to do with just what I had laying around. For instance, the famous carpet pattern in the hallway could have been more realistic, but with the pieces I had, it became a little more abstract. I went with clay for the bloody elevator scene also because I do not have thousands of red translucent pieces.”

(via boing boing)


1968 Howard Johnson’s Kids Menu Featuring 2001: A Space Odyssey

In the 60s and 70s, Howard Johnson’s was the largest restaurant chain in the US β€” the restaurants and their associated hotels were ubiquitous while travelling America’s roadways. So it made sense that when Stanley Kubrick needed a hospitality brand for the Earthlight Room on the space station circling Earth in 2001: A Space Odyssey, he reached for HoJo’s.

And of course, even in 1968, you had to do some sort of cross-promotion and, bizarrely, what Howard Johnson’s came up with was a 2001-themed children’s menu.

1968 Howard Johnson's Kids Menu Featuring 2001: A Space Odyssey

Even more weirdly, the menu is not about the movie itself, it’s about a family that goes to see the movie. The whole opening sequence with the apes is omitted entirely, as is the HAL 9000 (arguably the film’s main character) β€” I suspect the HoJo’s people didn’t get to see the entire movie while putting this together (as evidenced by the “preview edition” graphic in the bottom right corner of the menu’s cover).

1968 Howard Johnson's Kids Menu Featuring 2001: A Space Odyssey

It’s cool to see scenes from the movie rendered in comics form:

1968 Howard Johnson's Kids Menu Featuring 2001: A Space Odyssey

1968 Howard Johnson's Kids Menu Featuring 2001: A Space Odyssey

You can see the entire menu here, including the activity page β€” just click on one of the images to enter slideshow mode. (via meanwhile)

Update: Fun fact: The food on the 2001-themed kids menu would likely have been developed by Jacques PΓ©pin and Pierre Franey, who were the head chefs at Howard Johnson’s. (via @EineKleine)


The Spider-Verse Lego Scene Was Created By a 14-Year-Old Animator

After 14-year-old Preston Mutanga’s Lego version of the trailer for Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (embedded above) went viral, the team hired him to animate a short Lego sequence for the actual film.

In the brief scene, we see a Lego version of Peter Parker as he observes a dimensional anomaly and sneaks off to the Daily Bugle’s bathroom to alert another Spider-Man about the issue. While the scene is short, it killed in my theater and it also looked as good as anything in the recent Lego films. After seeing it, a few friends of mine even commented that it must have been the same team that animated it. But nope! It was a lone teenager, actually.

You can check out more of Mutanga’s work on his YouTube channel.