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Screen Scene

On Location in Petaluma

When making films at my scale, which is to say “human scale,” shooting on location is the only affordable way to do it. And by “location” I mean as close to home as possible. My new #indiefilm mantra is: “My hometown is my backlot.” And, as it happens, my hometown, Petaluma, CA, is also everyone…

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Screen Scene

We’re On the Spectrum Between Ed Wood and Orson Welles

Great piece by Andrew Bloom at Consequence of Sound that expresses  a notion I’ve been mulling since I first saw Tim Burton’s Ed Wood. Bloom drills down into the scene between Johnny Depp’s titular character and Vincent D’Onofrio as Orson Welles as the filmmakers discuss keeping to one’s artistic vision: Burton and his collaborators sketch an…

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The Voice of Pod

Burning Down the Art House, Part Three

The third and final installment of the mini-series “Burning Down the Art House” focuses on Tom Schiller’s hat tip to Fellini, “La Dolce Gilda,” starring Gilda Radner and evoking a nostalgia trip for your host.

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The Voice of Pod

Burning Down the Art House, Part Two

Still in pursuit of the elusive art film, I find my way to Ingmar Bergman through the portal of parody and pubescent thanatos.

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Culture Screen Scene

A Girl, a Gun and an iPhone: All You Need to Make a Movie

Summer movie season is upon us. Well, it’s technically been here since May because, like climate change, Hollywood can adjust the seasons seemingly at will. At your local cinemas, iron-clad playboys flex computer-enhanced muscles whilst spaceships go where no man has gone before – again. It’s a dizzying display of predictable imagineering, so pixel-perfect that…

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Culture

American Zoetrope: 827 Folsom, San Francisco

I’ve developed an interest in spaces where a shit ton of creativity went down – then poof! – they’re gone. Maybe they moved, maybe the money ran dry or the place was overrun by cossacks, or hipsters or something. In the Bay Area there were hundreds of such places around the dot-com boom/bust, however, none…