Directors: February 2007 Archives

I interviewed director Maria Maggenti for the current issue of LA's Frontiers Magazine. If you live in LA, I encourage you to pick up a copy and check out that and other articles in the magazine which has been greatly improved over the past year under editor Alex Cho.
Since many of you are not in LA, I've done and cut-and-paste of the article for you to enjoy:

Sexual Revolution
Men? Women? Both? With Puccini for Beginners writer-director Maria Maggenti, it’s all fair game
BY GREG HERNANDEZ

Maria Maggenti hasn’t lost her flair for romance.
The writer-director of the queer classic The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love has had to wait more than a decade to have her second movie completed and released. But the long wait is over now that Puccini for Beginners is opening in theaters Feb. 2.
Puccini—which takes place in Manhattan and stars Elizabeth Reaser, Gretchen Mol, and Justin Kirk—is a sophisticated screwball sex comedy revolving around Allegra (Reaser), a woman with a fluid sexuality who is struggling to make a commitment.
“I have a lot of affection for the characters, but they are crazily self-absorbed,� the 44-year-old Maggenti says. “The movie is a rather romantic portrayal of the world. It’s about what happens when a woman ends up seeing two people at the same time who are ex-lovers. I take the position that my movie is about an ideal world in which your sexuality is OK. Nothing bad will happen to you if [a gay man] sleeps with women and a lesbian sleeps with a man.�
Maggenti knows a thing or two about that fluidity, since she has been in relationships with women and is now currently involved with a man. As a result, the filmmaker has been put in the position of having to debate over whether someone can be truly bisexual.
“I know from personal experience that to cross boundaries, whoever you are, can be very threatening to the people around you,� she says. “In the movie I try and honor that, and also make fun of it. Years ago I did defend myself. But the world has changed around me. Things are far less rigid than when I came out in the mid-’80s. If I am at all successful, what I hope to accomplish with Puccini is a distillation of those conversations that have existed, and take them on with affection and humor.�
The movie was shot in a mere 18 days on a budget of less than $1 million. Kirk and Mol signed on immediately after getting the script, but up until a week before filming was set to begin, Maggenti still did not have a leading lady.
But the problem was solved at the eleventh hour when Reaser was brought in to audition for the key role of Allegra, a writer who is involved with both Kirk’s and Mol’s characters.
“The part is really difficult,� Maggenti explains. “It had to be someone who had to be an intellectual, but she also has to be emotional and visceral and be funny. She has a lot to deal with. It was definitely a hard part to cast. Elizabeth turned out to be perfect.�
The film’s box-office chances could be improved by the good fortune of its cast members since Puccini wrapped. Reaser has since gone on to star in the TNT series Saved opposite Tom Everett Scott, while Kirk is now in his second season of the Showtime series Weeds—a show that recently earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination.
“For me, the preproduction casting was sheer hell and I was thrown into self-doubt,� Maggenti admits. “Then we got into production and it all fell together.�
Even though it’s been 12 years between feature film releases for Maggenti, she has hardly been idle. She’s found steady work in episodic television, including three years spent writing for the CBS crime drama Without a Trace. But she’d love to have the opportunity to make more of her own movies and take them on the film festival circuit.
“I’m the gregarious type and I’ll go anywhere where the light shines in my direction for a few minutes,� she says. “One of the great things about making a movie is that you get to interact and meet other filmmakers and see other people’s films. I am more seasoned now and I don’t take things as personally, and am more relaxed than I was the first time around.�
Prior to the 1995 release of Two Girls, Maggenti cut her teeth directing the documentary Doctors, Liars and Women as well as the short films The Love Monster, Waiting for War, Name Day, and La Donna è mobile. She also wrote the screenplay for the 1999 romantic comedy The Love Letter that starred Kate Capshaw, Tom Selleck, and Ellen DeGeneres, among others.
It’s now been a year since Puccini had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. It then went on to be the opening-night selection at last summer’s Outfest in Los Angeles, among other stops along the way. Now its creator is eagerly awaiting the public’s reaction to her labor of love.
“This is always the weirdest time for a filmmaker,� Maggenti says. “You make a movie then you have a long downtime and feel like ‘Now what?’�

I had such a long and busy day Saturday between the DGA Awards at night and the DGA directors symposium in the morning. But it was the kinda day well-spent because you get to meet brilliant and talented people and celebrate their work. One such person, and a real highlight for me, was talking to Paris Barclay who was honored with the 2007 Robert B. Aldrich Award for his service to the guild. He was the only high-profile person who called for the firing of Isaiah Washington after his use of gay slurs.
We didn't talk about Washington on this night. Here is some of my red carpet chat with the immensely talented Barclay who has won a slew of awards as a director of various television shows (NYPD Blue, Law & Order, CSI, The West Wing, Dirt, Cold Case, House) and has accomplished it all as an out and proud gay man.
GREG: Has being an openly gay director made it harder or easier for you?
PARIS: It used to be harder, now it's gotten easier. It was harder when I cared about what people thought of me. Now I figure, everybody got to know I'm gay and if they don't want to work with me, they won't call and if they do want to work with me they will call and if they don't care they will call. So I'll end up with the best people and the best company and that's exactly what's happened.
GREG: With your proven track record, does it matter less anyway?
PARIS: It seems to matter less. I seem to get more chick things which I like because they figure a gay person can deal with the chicks better. [laughs]. I'm also just working with people who I love like ["West Wing" Producer] John Wells who gave me my first job in television. I've done five shows with him because he's totally not about that. He's all about the talent and if everyone was like him in Hollywood, it would be a very different place."
GREG: Do you want to see more actors come out?
PARIS: Oh boy, do I ever. I think it would help us all if more actors came out. I'm not gonna name names, but there is a very big star I'm thinking of right now, if he were [out] it would change the whole face of what people believe is a gay person. It would have an enormous impact and I hope he will come to that conclusion without Perez Hilton helping him along."

Spent about three hours today listening to some top-flight directors like Martin Scorsese, Bill Condon and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu talking about their craft...
...You know, just another day at the office...
Ha! It was a very special day at the office where I spent the morning at the Directors Guild of America theater in West Hollywood for the 16th annual symposium of the nominees for the DGA Awards which take place tonight. Thought I'd write a little bit about it for you all before I get into my tux and head on over to Century City for the gala event. My friend James is here from out of town and rented a red convertible something so at least we'll get there in style.
I wanted to share a little bit of what Bill Condon said about the casting process for "Dreamgirls": "Effie is 90 percent of casting that movie. On-stage it had a legendary performance from Jennifer Holiday and, of course, she still thinks she should be in the movie. But, it's 25 years later. I went to New York and auditioned [Jennifer Hudson] and you are working with someone who hasn't acted before. It was a real old-fashionjed Hollywood screen test."
Condon said he "felt a real spark and I felt excited by her" but that didn't come through in the test so he kept on looking at the 12 other girls who screen tested. But, he eventually went back to Hudson and the rest is Hollywood history. She has gone on to deliver one of the most stunning movie debuts since Barbra Streisand in "Funny Girl" and Bette Midler in "The Rose." Hudson is the front-runner for the best supporting actress Oscar and has already won the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards aming a slew of other honors.
"If you didn't have an Effie to anchor this," said the openly-gay Condon, "then you'd be dead in the water."
"Getting Beyonce to play Deena was a surprise because we thought all those girls would be unknown.
So we are in the elevator on our way into the theater and bumped into Fred Savage! You may know him as Kevin from "wonder Years" but he is now in his early 30s and a respected television director. He is nominated for a DGA award tonight in the children's programming category. I've interviewed him three different times for three different publications when he was playing a gay man on the sadly short-lived - but wonderful - ABC comedy "Crumbs."
"It never really got a chance to catch on," he told me this morning.
Then less than a minute later, I bump into Paris Barclay, the respected television director ("CSI," "Dirt") who is receiving an honorary DGA award tonight. Parclay, who is openly gay, was the highest-ranking Hollywood type to call Isaiah Washington out on his use of the homophobic slurs refering to T.R. Knight. Barclay said Washington should be fired and he stands by the opinion. Maybe he'll have more to say about it tonight.
Stay tuned!

Gay director Francoise Ozon ("Water Drop on Burning Rocks," "8 Women" and "Under the Sand" has been tapped to premiere his film "Angel" as the closing night film at next week’s Berlin Film Festival. The film stars Charlotte Rampling as an author who climbs to the upper echelons of British society The delicious Rampling and the superhot Ozon have previously worked together on "Sand" as well as "Swimming Pool."
I don't see my paper sending me to Berlin to interview Ozon but I do hope to meet him sometime down the film festival road.
Berlin is the first major European film festival of 2007, its program blends major Hollywood names with productions large and small from around the world. It runs Feb. 8-18. The 22 movies competing for the top Golden Bear award include De Niro's "The Good Shepherd," starring Matt Damon as an agent in the early days of the CIA, and Soderbergh's "The Good German," with George Clooney as an American journalist lured into a murder mystery in post-World War II Berlin.