[Editor's Note: This post appears today at The Huffington Post and at AOL-Moviefone.]

By Jason Apuzzo. He’s 89 years old, and his career is hotter than ever.

With hits like Thor, Captain America and X-Men: First Class dominating the box office in 2011, and upcoming films like The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man looking to light up the summer in 2012, you’d think that a man whose career in comic books began just prior to World War II might want to slow down.

Think again – because this 89 year-old dynamo is named Stan Lee.

This year’s Sundance Film Festival offered a smorgasbord of art-house delights, but its competitor across the street – the scrappy Slamdance Film Festival – presented one of Park City’s best events last week when it hosted comic book legend Stan Lee for a 2-hour master class associated with Slamdance’s screening of the new documentary, With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story. Just two days after receiving the Vanguard Award from the Producers Guild of America, Lee breezed into Park City to spend a special two hours with filmmakers and journalists prior to the With Great Power screening, discussing his extraordinary career as the creator of iconic characters like Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four.

And if anything was clear at the end of the master class and screening, it was this: the keys to Stan Lee’s ongoing success are his earthy humor, humanity, and incredible vitality. The man simply doesn’t know how to slow down. As Lee says in With Great Power about being the impresario of today’s comic book cinema: “I’m having fun! Don’t punish me by making me retire.”

Stan Lee at the Slamdance Film Festival.

A flinty and funny raconteur with a baritone New York accent, Lee spent much of his time at the Slamdance master class describing his colorful early days in which he was alternately a rebellious office boy for a trouser manufacturer (he made a mess of his store after being fired two days before Christmas), an obituary writer (he found the job morbid), and even a Broadway theater usher (he once tripped and fell flat on his face while escorting Eleanor Roosevelt to her seat at the Rivoli Theater in New York).

Lee finally got his big break in late 1941 when he became interim editor at Timely Comics, which would eventually evolve under his leadership into Marvel Comics. Then known as ‘Stanley Lieber’ (his name at birth, as the son of Romanian-Jewish immigrants), Lee was first given the chance to provide text filler for a May 1941 edition of Captain America Comics – and he hasn’t looked back since.

The language of "Thor" inspired by Shakespeare.

A passionate reader, Lee described in detail how literature fueled his imagination as a young person. “I read everybody when I was young – Charles Dickens, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, [Edgar Rice] Burroughs’ Tarzan. I read everything I could get my hands on.” Lee also cited Shakespeare as an influence on the style of language for Thor, drily noting that Thor “was supposed to be a Norse god – I couldn’t have him talk like a guy who was born in Brooklyn. I loved Shakespeare, and I read Shakespeare when I was young. I probably didn’t understand most of it, but I loved the sound of it.” Lee’s fascination with Shakespeare continues to this day, with Lee and 1821 Comics collaborating on the new graphic novel Romeo and Juliet: The War, a sci-fi retelling of Shakespeare’s classic love story which debuted last week.

Lee also developed an early love of the movies. When I asked Lee what movies had influenced him, he was quick to cite Errol Flynn’s adventure films of the 1930s and ’40s.

“I watched everything that was adventure – anything that Errol Flynn was in. He was my idol, I wanted to be Errol Flynn! In fact, I would leave the theater when I was about 12 years old – I’d have a crooked little smile on my face the way he [Flynn] smiled, I had an imaginary sword at my side, and I was looking for some little girl that a bully was picking on so I could protect her. I wanted to be Errol Flynn so badly. And of course I liked King Kong, Dracula, Frankenstein – any of those big movies of those days. And I also liked the ‘real’ movies with Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable.”

"The Fantastic Four" from November, 1961.

Lee’s career would take off in the 1960s, beginning with the launch of the Fantastic Four series. Lee described what was arguably his most important innovation at that time: bringing realistic psychology and more recognizably human frailties to his superhero characters. When I asked him what he’d learned over the years about creating compelling characters like Peter Parker (Spider-Man) or Dr. Bruce Banner (The Hulk), he talked about the need “to make make the character empathetic and likable as best you can.”

“When you create a character, no matter how fantastic the character is, you try to make him in some way believable – as if there could be somebody like this. And then you try to make him likable so that the reader really hopes that the character succeeds at whatever he’s trying to do. Beyond that, I don’t know how to explain it. You do whatever you can to make that character appealing to a reader or to an audience. And you do that by the way you have the character talk, by the personality you give the character. What you’re doing is creating – you’re like a sculptor, you’re creating a being. And you can either make the being dull, or you can make the being interesting.”

Since the ‘Silver Age’ of comic books in the 1960s, Lee’s most vivid characters – Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk, the Silver Surfer, Spider-Man and others – have become part of American pop-mythology, similar to creations from Walt Disney, Mark Twain, Jim Henson or George Lucas. Not surprisingly, the highly erudite Lee – who can still quote long passages from Shakespeare – associates some of this with having steeped himself in mythology as a young man. “I read Greek mythology, Norse mythology, Roman – whatever I could find. I love mythology, I love fairy tales. I love anything bigger than life and imaginative and dramatic.”

When my Libertas Film Magazine co-editor Govindini Murty asked Lee whether he believed his characters are mythological figures for today, he smiled and became philosophical. “It would be nice if some day in the future they were thought of as our mythology,” he explained. “That would be great.”

Spider-Man, one of Lee's greatest creations.

Lee’s full cultural impact is explored in the new documentary With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story, which was picked up for distribution by the EPIX channel just prior to its screening at Slamdance. With Great Power is a comprehensive and heartfelt account of Lee’s life and career from his early days growing up in the Depression to his rise as the prime mover behind Marvel Comics and today’s comic book revolution at the movies.

Over sixty interviews were conducted for With Great Power, and the film features appearances from Samuel L. Jackson, Nicolas Cage, Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and many of Lee’s colleagues. The film, a labor of love for its production team, also provides a rare, at-home glimpse into the man behind the Marvel phenomenon. With Great Power (which derives its title from a line in the original 1962 Spider-Man story: “With great power there must also come — great responsibility!”) is the result of over five years of work by a trio of directors – Terry Dougas, Will Hess, and Nikki Frakes – as well as a significant archival effort that unearthed Lee’s work on over 500 pop-culture characters.

Although Lee’s diehard fans will likely be familiar with Lee’s story from the 1960s forward, With Great Power also takes an in-depth look at many of his early challenges – including censorship battles waged against the comic book industry during the 1950s by psychiatrist Dr. Fredric Wertham. Wertham and his followers believed that comic books promoted youth ‘delinquency,’ and their lobbying and regulatory efforts nearly derailed Lee’s career before Lee mounted a major comeback in the 1960s.

Iron Man, one of Marvel's most popular characters.

With Great Power also documents Lee’s extensive efforts to give credit to his colleagues (particularly Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko) for Marvel’s success. Importantly, the film also introduces fans to Lee’s quick-witted and vivacious wife of almost 65 years, Joan Lee, and explores their touching relationship and the vital role she plays in inspiring her husband. With Great Power debuts on the EPIX channel on April 27th.

Of course, with huge successes over the past decade and a seemingly endless array of projects now in the pipeline (at the end of the master class, it took him almost 20 minutes to describe all of his current projects in development), Lee has made the full transition from promoter of ‘delinquency’ to national institution. His fans, once mostly teenagers, now include a worldwide readership of every generation, along with filmmakers, scholars and even Presidents. Indeed, With Great Power begins with Lee receiving the National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush, and during the master class Lee proudly recollected how President Reagan had been an avid reader of Spider-Man.

But Lee clearly takes his greatest pride in his many characters, the imaginative creations that form his legacy. Of his many characters, Lee singled out the Silver Surfer as possibly his favorite. “I had the Silver Surfer make what I thought were philosophical comments about man, and where we’re going, and why we’re the way we are. [...] I tried to put all the things I think of into the Silver Surfer’s dialogue, so that’s why I enjoyed him very much.” (Lee’s favorite of his villains? Dr. Doom.)

To say that Lee’s plate is full these days would be a Hulk-sized understatement. On the immediate horizon he’s launching a new line of ‘reality’ comic books, a series of children’s books, a new YouTube partnership with Michael Eisner, a live rock opera, a new website, a new slate of international superheroes (hailing from India, China and South America), and he has two TV series and four new movies in development.

And, of course, Lee is looking forward to The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man this summer, along with Marvel’s forthcoming Ghost Rider sequel. Speaking about The Avengers, the voluble Lee nearly jumped out of his chair: “Wait till you see my cameo in that one! It’s the funniest one I’ve done yet. I can’t wait to see it myself. And it’s the same with Spider-Man – it’s unusual.”

Jason Apuzzo and Govindini Murty with Stan Lee at the Slamdance Film Festival.

When it comes to advice for young writers, Lee urged his audience to first and foremost write what they themselves enjoy.

“I write stories that I think I would like to read, and I hope there are enough people who have the same taste I do. I’m not that unique – I’m adorable, but I’m not that unique,” he quips. “I just write to please myself. [...] I have to confess: I am my biggest fan. I love everything I write, because if I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t write it.”

It’s fortunate that so many generations of Stan Lee’s readers love what he writes, as well.

Posted on February 1st, 2012 at 9:42am.

Director Werner Herzog.

[Editor's Note: the post below appears today at The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. In Part I of my interview with Werner Herzog, we discussed his new movie Into the Abyss and its searing exploration of evil in human society. Now in Part II we turn to the world of nature, which Herzog sees as even more dangerous. In Les Blanks’ documentary Burden of Dreams, Herzog famously spoke out on the “obscenity” of the jungle, its “harmony of overwhelming and collective murder.” In Herzog’s documentary Encounters at the End of the World, he expressed skepticism toward “tree huggers and whale huggers,” while in Grizzly Man, he documented the fate of a man literally killed by his unhealthy obsession with wild nature. Herzog has even criticized the romanticizing of nature in Avatar, calling the film “an abomination because of its New Age schlock and bullshit.”

Obviously Werner Herzog has strong feelings about the proper relationship between humanity and nature. One sees this, for example, in Herzog’s stunning documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, released this week on DVD. Cave of Forgotten Dreams offers an extraordinary look at the 30,000 – 32,000 year-old Paleolithic cave paintings inside the Chauvet Cave in southern France – currently considered to be the oldest cave paintings in the world. As Herzog told me in Part I of our discussion on the concept of “the abyss,” “I’ve always tried to look deep inside of what we are – deep into the recesses of our existence, of our prehistory – like in Cave of Forgotten Dreams. So it is some sort of a theme that runs through quite a few of my films.”

The Paleolithic cave paintings of Chauvet.

In Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Herzog speaks eloquently of the Paleolithic cave paintings of Chauvet and their relationship to the surrounding landscape:

“These images are memories of long-forgotten dreams. Is this their heartbeat, or ours? Will we ever be able to understand the vision of the artists across such an abyss of time? [Camera shows a massive natural stone arch in the landscape.] There is an aura of melodrama in this landscape. It could be straight out of a Wagner opera or a painting of German Romanticists. Could this be our connection to them? This staging of a landscape as an operatic event does not belong to the Romanticists alone. Stone Age man might have had a similar sense of inner landscapes …”

And yet despite these poetic sentiments, Herzog vehemently denies being a Romantic; rather, he defines his approach to nature as being similar to that of the artists of the late Middle Ages.

Ultimately, if one were to search for a theme that unites Werner Herzog’s diverse body of work, it would be that respect for human life and its limits is what holds us back from the brutality of amoral nature – the abyss into which humanity’s natural instincts might otherwise plunge. As Herzog told me, he is concerned above all with civilizational breakdown – with how humanity can abandon its own heights to descend into unfathomable depths of madness and annihilation. Equally importantly though, Herzog’s love of art, of literature, of joyful exploration of the world and its peoples points to a hopeful way out of the abyss and into the light of day.

Klaus Kinski treks into the Amazon in Herzog's "Aguirre: The Wrath of God."

Thus, in Part II of this interview, we tackle such colorful subjects as Herzog’s anti-romantic views on nature, why he can’t help ranting about Avatar, his excitement over his Rogue Film School (in which he teaches such crucial skills as “lock picking” and “neutralizing bureaucracy”), and his belief that Wrestlemania and reality TV offer vital clues to understanding civilization. The interview has been edited for length.

GM: There is this sense in all of your films, whether they’re historical dramas or contemporary documentaries, that you wish to explore the extremes. You go from examining the molecular world in scenes from Encounters at the End of the World to these broad vistas of Antarctica or the desert or the Himalayas in your other documentaries. Do you feel that you’re part of what could be termed the German Romantic tradition in terms of having this approach to nature – seeing it both as a place of danger and a place of inspiration?

WH: I think that’s a common misconception [that] I had an affinity to romantic culture – no I don’t. I do not feel much affinity with it. I don’t feel at home with it. I’m much closer to poets like Heinrich von Kleist, Georg Büchner who wrote Woyzeck – in the early 1820s he wrote literature that belonged to the early 20th century, that was almost like Expressionism. Or Hölderlin the poet, and he’s not a Romantic poet either. He’s somewhere completely unique. He’s like a continent of his own – not really comparable to other Romantic writers of his time…

And when you look at how I depict nature – wild nature for example in Grizzly Man, it’s quite evident that it’s a completely anti-Romantic view. Timothy Treadwell who was protecting bears and who was killed and eaten by a grizzly bear together with his girlfriend, he has this kind of watered down Romanticism … that’s what I’m completely against. I would stop the course of the film even and in my comment I would have an ongoing argument with Treadwell: “Here I differ from Treadwell.” I do not see wild nature as something benign and beautiful and the bears fluffy like little pets. No, they are dangerous and aggressive and nature itself looks rather chaotic and hostile. You look at the universe – it’s very, very hostile out there.

For example in Les Blanks’ Burden of Dreams I deliver a speech/rant about the jungle and you’ll never see anything so clearly against Romanticism and the romanticizing of landscapes, romanticizing of wild nature. … It’s funny because being a German everyone immediately thinks yeah yeah he must have an affinity with Romantic culture. No, I don’t.

GM: I think I see multiple sides to Romanticism. It’s such a complex movement. What I was thinking of was not so much the warm, romantic with a small ‘r’ approach to nature but the approach that sees it as terrifying and overwhelming. For example, even going back into 16th century German art I think of Albrecht Altdorfer with his landscapes towering over very small figures, or of Bruegel’s Landscape With the Fall of Icarus with the human figures very small in the distance, on through Caspar David-Friedrich’s work [in the early 19th century] where you have the two extremes – you either have humanity dwarfed by nature, as in The Monk on the Seashore or you have humanity standing titanic over nature, as in The Wanderer over the Sea of Clouds. So it was in that sense I was asking about nature. Your quote was very striking [in Burden of Dreams] where you mention the jungle as being “full of obscenity … nature here is vile and base.”

From Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo": Kinski in nature.

WH: Yeah. Obscenity – that was because Kinski kept saying everything is erotic. And he would hug a tree and fornicate with it. [Laughs] Which is really against my inner convictions.

GM: But this comment about the ‘harmony of overwhelming and collective murder’ – setting aside Kinski’s comments, is that how you would see that particular jungle, or nature in general?

WH: No, you would have to be a little bit cautious. It’s a rant ‘against’ the jungle, but it came at a time of enormous strain on me – weeks and weeks and weeks where there was every single day a major disaster. And when I speak of major disaster I mean disasters like two plane crashes. Two consecutive plane crashes, and on and on and on. So, yes you have to see it in the context. But otherwise, thinking about the jungle, it’s not completely wrong what I said. But the ferocity of the rant is in a way a result of enormous pressure of disasters one after the other. … And it’s OK, I still like my rant.

GM: It’s achieved a cult status on-line. People enjoy it a great deal.

Continue reading »

Werner Herzog directs "Into the Abyss."

[Editor's Note: the post below appears today at The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. Few directors are as willing to venture into the abyss as Werner Herzog. His prolific body of work has ranged from intense dramas like Aguirre: The Wrath of God and Woyzeck that plumb the depths of the human soul to documentaries like Encounters at the End of the World and Grizzly Man that examine humanity’s fragile place in the miraculous and terrifying world of nature. The astonishing breadth of Herzog’s filmmaking conveys the humanist’s sense of wonder at the world – what he describes as the “ecstasy of observation.”

Herzog’s latest film, Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life (opening this Friday, November 11th) is a compelling look at the contentious issue of the death penalty. Producer Erik Nelson has stated that the film is intended to inform the current Republican presidential debate over the death penalty, in particular with regard to the candidacy of Texas Governor Rick Perry. Herzog himself has issued a Director’s Statement expressing his opposition to capital punishment – though in keeping with his lifelong aversion to political interpretations of his work, he has also asserted that Into the Abyss is not a political film. These apparent contradictions point to the enigma of Werner Herzog himself – on the one hand a sensitive humanist with strong moral convictions, yet on the other hand an artist who resists being defined by political activism or party ideology.

Into the Abyss embodies these contradictions. The film tells the true story of a brutal triple murder committed in Conroe, Texas. Michael Perry and Jason Burkett, intending to steal two cars owned by Sandra Stotler, killed Stotler in her home and then lured her son Adam and his friend Jeremy Richardson into the woods and executed them. Perry and Burkett subsequently went on a joy ride in the cars, before winding up in a bloody shoot-out with the police. Perry and Burkett were convicted of the murders, with Perry receiving the death penalty, and Burkett receiving a life sentence.

Herzog interviewed Michael Perry just eight days before his execution, and also interviewed Jason Burkett in prison. Other interviews include those with Burkett’s wife Melyssa Thompson-Burkett, who contacted Burkett while he was in prison and subsequently married him; Fred Allen, a prison captain who worked in the execution chamber and who assisted in over 125 executions before resigning in moral crisis; and most significantly, the relatives of the victims themselves: Lisa Stotler-Balloun, the daughter of Sandra Stotler and sister of Adam Stotler, and Charles Richardson, the brother of Jeremy Richardson. Stotler-Balloun and Richardson in particular provide the most heartbreaking testimony of the film, as Herzog does not shy away from depicting the shattering effect of the murders on their lives. As a result, Into the Abyss exists in a complex tension between Herzog’s avowed position against capital punishment and his impulse as a storyteller to depict both sides of the story and allow readers to make up their own minds.

I had the opportunity to meet with Werner Herzog in Los Angeles recently and discuss with him Into the Abyss and his extraordinary body of work. Part I of this interview appears below.

Documenting the crime.

GM: I’d like to ask you about the title of your movie, Into the Abyss, because I’ve seen you refer to the concept of ‘the abyss’ quite a few times in your work. In Woyzeck you have a line “Every man is an abyss, you get dizzy looking in,” and in Nosferatu you have a line “Time is an abyss profound as a thousand nights.” This is a concept you keep referring to – what does ‘the abyss’ mean to you?

WH: It’s a good observation, and when I came up with the title Into the Abyss – it dawned on me that it could have been the title of quite a few other films. Like Woyzeck could have had that title, or The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner or even the cave film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, because I’ve always tried to look deep inside of what we are – deep into the recesses of our existence, of our prehistory – like in Cave of Forgotten Dreams. So it is some sort of a theme that runs through quite a few of my films.

GM: I want to ask you about the relationship between humanity and the universe. There was a wonderful quote at the end of Encounters at the End of the World where Dr. Gorham asks, and I paraphrase, “are we the means through which the universe becomes conscious of itself?” This reminded me of a quote from Blaise Pascal’s Pensées:

“A reed only is man, the frailest in the world, but a reed that thinks. Unnecessary that the universe arm itself to destroy him: a breath of air, a drop of water are enough to kill him. Yet, if the All should crush him, man would still be nobler than that which destroys him: for he knows that he dies, and he knows that the universe is stronger than he; but the universe knows nothing of it.” (Trans. A.J. Krailsheimer)

This seems to apply to Into the Abyss and its depiction of human beings within this world. In the film you go driving down country roads and you show the trailer parks, the run-down stores, the boarded up gas stations, the bars. It looks like a wasteland that God is somehow absent from, and there are these people in the midst of it who are in a terrible state of pain and confusion – in an apparently indifferent universe.

WH: Let me address Pascal first. Yes, I like him very much. I even invented a quote for the film Lessons of Darkness. It starts with a Pascal quote “The collapse of the universe will occur like the creation in grandiose splendor,” and underneath it says Blaise Pascal, but I invented it – and of course Pascal couldn’t have said it better. [Laughs.]

But, it’s interesting. The wasteland, this forlorn landscape, has become fascinating for me – this lost kind of Americana. And one of the death row inmates with whom I spoke – not in this film but in another film I’m already finishing – he said to me how he saw on his very last trip forty-three miles between death row and the death house where they are being executed in Huntsville. And in this cage in the van he sees a little bit of an abandoned gas station, he sees a cow in the field, and all of a sudden for him, everything is magnificent, and he says: “It looked like Israel to me, it all looked like the Holy Land.” And I immediately grabbed my camera and I did this voyage of the forty-three miles and indeed the most forlorn landscapes all of a sudden look like the Holy Land. So I look at these forlorn landscapes all of a sudden with fresh and different eyes. Continue reading »

By Jason Apuzzo. So that you can get a feel for the man, I wanted to share with everybody some interviews that recently appeared on-line featuring my late friend and mentor Irvin Kershner. The interview above, which he did about a year ago, deals with making The Empire Strikes Back. It’s classic Kersh, in full storytelling mode. (You can see Part Two of this interview here.)

Kersh with Carrie Fisher.

One of the things I should have mentioned in my remarks about Kersh from Monday was his tremendous sense of humor, which you get a flavor of above. His humor was typically of the earthy, Jewish – and occasionally ribald – variety, and it’s what kept you hooked on the man, even if he’d just given you a verbal pounding.

I’ll never forget a time when Govindini and I had been up to his place, and Govindini had accidentally left behind a sweater, a blue cardigan. We asked Kersh later if he still had it. “No,” he said, with a wry grin. “I sold it to the Rag Man when he came by.” Classic Kersh. (With a cheeky grin, and with his typical old World courtliness, he then gently brought forth the sweater – neatly folded.)

Anyway, Kersh (born ‘Isadore’ Kershner) certainly came a long way from his youth in Philadelphia in the 1920s, when his Ukranian father supported the family selling fruits and vegetables from a street cart. It’s nice seeing him finally get his due right now in the media. It would’ve made him feel good, although – ever industrious, ever motivated – he wouldn’t have liked it distracting from his work …

Here are some of the better quotes I’ve seen about Kersh over the past few days:

George Lucas: “I considered him a mentor,” Mr. Lucas said in a statement after Mr. Kershner’s death. “Following ‘Star Wars,’ I knew one thing for sure: I didn’t want to direct the second movie myself. I needed someone I could trust, someone I really admired and whose work had maturity and humor. That was Kersh all over.”

“I didn’t want ‘Empire’ to turn into just another sequel, another episode in a series of space adventures,” he said. “I was trying to build something, and I knew Kersh was the guy to help me do it. He brought so much to the table. I am truly grateful to him.”

Francis Coppola: “We all enjoyed knowing Kersh, learning from him — and admired his creative spirit and indomitable will,” Coppola said in a statement released by Kershner’s publicists. “It was always exciting to talk with him about all aspects of cinema and life.”

Barbra Streisand: “He had the most incredible spirit, an exuberance for life. Always working, always thinking, always writing, amazingly gifted and forever curious. We met doing ‘Up The Sandbox’ in 1972 and remained friends ever since. I loved him,” she said in a statement.

Billy Dee Williams: “[A]n extraordinary mountain of a man with whom I’m proud to have shared the world of art.” “I bet he’s smiling at us right now with that wonderful impish smile,” Williams said in a statement.

Matthew Robbins: “To many, he represented the best in what American film making could do with its enviable resources and catholic traditions,” Robbins said. “He believed in emotion as the basis for all dramatic storytelling. For him, the worst cinematic crime was flatness, or lack of feeling. “Few who encountered Kershner either on the set or in the classroom will forget his almost ruthless pursuit of honesty and recognizable, complex human motivation,” Robbins said.

The interview below, conducted in his wonderful living room – full of artifacts from his many travels – is a more personal interview that deals with his youth, and his development as an artist, covering some of his early period as a painter and a photographer.

Part 2 of this interview can be seen here. I’ll be reviewing The Making of the Empire Strikes Back in coming days.

Posted December 1st, 2010 at 12:30pm.

By Jason Apuzzo. LFM’s Govindini Murty has been doing media in advance of our film Kalifornistan opening tonight’s Free Thinking Festival. The Free Thinking Film Festival is the only international festival taking place this year devoted to promoting principles of freedom as expressed through the cinema. The Free Thinking Film Festival starts tonight in Ottawa, Canada’s capitol.

Govindini, an Ottawa native, will be appearing on the CBC’s national TV show “Power & Politics” today with host Rosemary Barton; Govindini’s segment will be airing between 6-7pm/ET, and we’ll post/link to that video as soon as it becomes available. Govindini also did an interview this morning on the CBC national radio show “Ottawa Morning” with host Hallie Cotnam, and I’ve put the audio file of that interview here below:

• CLICK HERE for MP3 of Govindini Murty talking about Kalifornistan on CBC National Radio, 11/12/10

Also, this past Tuesday morning Govindini did an interview with Canada’s CFRA national radio network with host Steve Madely. Govindini wants to thank everyone at the CBC and CFRA for their courtesy and interest in Kalifornistan and in this great event.

Once again, the Free Thinking Film Festival starts tonight and some tickets for the 3-day event are still available on-line (see here), and tickets can also be purchased at the door. Special thanks to Fred Litwin and his team for hosting this extraordinary festival!

[UPDATE: Here is the video of Govindini's interview on the CBC's national TV show, "Power and Politics." The show is 2 hours long; Govindini's segment begins at the 1:48:00 mark.]

Posted on November 12th, 2010 at 1:34pm.

By Govindini Murty and Jason Apuzzo. As we recently posted here at LFM, Jason Apuzzo and I had the chance last week to visit the set of Atlas Shrugged, the highly anticipated film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s epic 1957 novel.  We interviewed the film’s director, Paul Johansson (the first interview he has given to the media about the film).  We also spent several hours watching Johansson direct a crucial scene between Atlas Shrugged‘s heroine Dagny Taggart and her antagonist, millionaire playboy Francisco d’Anconia.  We saw first hand Johansson’s close working methods with his actors (the actor playing d’Anconia compared Johansson’s hands-on directing style to that of Robert Redford) and the passion he was bringing to the production.  The location was the historic Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.  We posted Part One of our interview with Johansson on Wednesday, and now we’re pleased to post here Part Two.

Govindini Murty with Director Paul Johansson.

As a special treat for our Libertas readers, Part Two of our LFM interview with Johansson consists partially of a video we’ve created out of footage Jason shot during the interview.  Jason created the video out of our interview footage with Johansson because we felt that video better captures Johansson’s articulate enthusiasm than the printed word alone could.  So the LFM video above contains selections from Part Two of our interview with Johansson, while the article below contains other selections from Part Two of the same interview that we also thought were interesting.  The video above and the article below do not cover the same portions of the interview, so be sure to take a look at them both.

We hope you enjoy watching the Libertas video above.  It was fun to do it and we look forward to doing more such videos so that LFM readers can feel that they are there too when we visit sets, meet filmmakers, and attend special events.  Enjoy!

We pick up here our discussion with Johansson about the structure of the novel and how it relates to the film.

A large enough story for three films.

JA:  Let me ask briefly about the multi-part aspect of Atlas Shrugged.

GM:  Yes, I think you said this was going to be in three parts, or four parts?

PJ:  Well, the thing is I don’t think you could possible tell this story in one movie.  It has to be a three part movie.  And I’m glad I’m doing the first one because it’s all set up.  I mean, they don’t fly the plane into the Colorado mountains and land it in the mirage and all the other stuff – I don’t have the world crumbling in part 3 where John Galt rises from the ashes … I don’t have that … I have the set-up, which is cerebral.  Which is probably what I’m better at.

GM:  And also it’s more character-based.  When you’re working with the actors – in your approach to the drama – are you at all thinking of Stanislavsky and the Method?  [Stanislavsky was active in Russia in the early years when Rand was growing up there.]

Still influential today.

PJ:  I use him as ploys and tricks sometimes with the actors … because of the material there’s a little bit of intimidation involved.  People are afraid that this is too much, or it’s not going to work or the dialogue is this or whatever.  It does have that … 50’s film noir style to it – the way that [Rand] wrote the dialogue, because that’s the way people wrote back then and that’s what people responded to.  And that can be intimidating.

So what I do sometimes (and the actors have been terrific and have given completely of their hearts) is have them try to loosen up the dialogue by finding the contractions in the words and have them repeat the last line from another character, because it helps the flow … because a lot of the stuff doesn’t really flow as well as we’d like it to.  But again, you have to pick a style.  You have to pick a style.

GM:  And just go with it.

PJ:  And just go with it, you know?

GM:  Because that’s the way they did it back then.  I mean, Stanislavsky would stage things at the Moscow Art Theatre like Maeterlinck’s “Blue Bird” – these very symbolist plays – but [would] find a way to make it powerful and engaging to people.

PJ:  I tell you, if Stanislavsky were alive today I would have called him up and asked him to come down and help out.  I would.  [Laughs.] Continue reading »

Director Paul Johansson sits with Govindini Murty for his first interview on "Atlas Shrugged."

By Govindini Murty [Editor's note: LFM was recently invited to visit the set of an important and much-discussed new film: Atlas Shrugged. The director of the film, Paul Johansson, sat down for his very first interview about the film, conducted exclusively with Libertas Film Magazine.  Part I of that interview is below.]

Atlas Shrugged Set Interview With Director Paul Johansson, 7-12-10, L.A., Biltmore Hotel.

Filmmakers have been trying for decades to bring Ayn Rand’s epic novel Atlas Shrugged to the big screen.   The 1000 plus page novel, with its weighty philosophical themes, multiple story-lines, stylized characters, dystopian-futurist setting, and sprawling, continent-wide scope, has defied numerous attempts at cinematic adaptation.  Finally,  in this summer of 2010, a group of brave independent filmmakers – no longer content to wait for the Hollywood studio system – have taken it upon themselves (in keeping with Rand’s own self-reliant, individualist philosophy) to make the movie themselves.

Businessman John Aglialoro is financing Atlas Shrugged, and is producing it with Harmon Kaslow, and is also co-writing the script (although on Imdb the script credit goes solely to Brian O’Toole).  Atlas Shrugged is being directed by Paul Johansson (“One Tree Hill”), who has also been reported to be playing the central, mysterious figure of John Galt (more on that below).  The film stars Taylor Schilling (“Mercy”) as Dagny Taggart, Grant Bowler as Henry Reardon, and Jsu Garcia (“Che”) as Francisco d’Anconia.  Director/actor Nick Cassavetes (“The Notebook”), son of renowned independent filmmaker John Cassavetes, is also acting in the film.  The producers have announced their plans to film Atlas Shrugged in three parts, with the first film budgeted at $5 million.

It’s an ambitious undertaking to be sure, but with low-cost digital filmmaking technology and CGI effects, filming a massive novel like Atlas Shrugged on a modest budget is now something that is within the realm of possibility.  More importantly, though, the decision of these filmmakers to go ahead and shoot Atlas Shrugged themselves highlights the democratization of film that we have been discussing at length here at LFM.  Digital filmmaking technology is making it possible for filmmakers with visions that do not conform to the orthodox Hollywood system to now sweep aside the cultural gatekeepers and make films themselves.  In an ironic sense, these pro-freedom filmmakers have seized the means of production from the collectivists who run the Western filmmaking establishment – and will for the first time in decades subject them to some real competition.  That’s why I believe we have seen an explosion of films recently with refreshingly bold ideas – one thinks of new films that we’ve covered extensively on LFM like Four Lions and The Infidel that dare to satirize Islamic radicalism, or upcoming films like Red Dawn, Mao’s Last Dancer, and Farewell that fearlessly portray the evils of Communism.  This liberation of perspectives in contemporary film has everything to do with the digital filmmaking revolution – and with filmmakers finally getting fed up with Hollywood’s stultifying political orthodoxy.

For these reasons, we at LFM have been lauding the Atlas Shrugged production team’s independent-minded attitude ever since Variety announced that the production had begun shooting in June.  We were all the more delighted when the Atlas Shrugged production team contacted us and invited us onto the set of the film.  Jason and I visited the Atlas Shrugged production last week on location at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.  The grand old hotel was a perfect setting for the scene that was being shot that day – a showdown between heroine railroad executive Dagny Taggart and millionaire South American playboy Francisco d’Anconia.  In between set-ups, Jason and I had the opportunity to talk with the film’s ebullient and literate director Paul Johansson.

Johansson told us that this was the first interview he had agreed to do for Atlas Shrugged (he had refused all other requests), so we’re proud to share with our LFM readers this opportunity to hear from the director of this highly-anticipated film.  So without further ado, let’s dive into Part One of our exclusive two part interview with Atlas Shrugged director Paul Johansson.

Director Paul Johansson.

GM:  What is your approach to adapting “Atlas Shrugged” as a movie?

PJ:  You’re talking about an art form, a living breathing art form … “What is a sculpture?” … it’s everything you’ve taken away from it, and what’s left is the sculpture – that’s what a film is.

We took some of the densest material available in literature … and we’ve decided that there are certain parts of that story that cannot be told with the amount of time that we have.  We’re taking one third of the book – because this is going to be part one of three parts – or perhaps four parts depending on how they’re going to shoot it all – and we’ve taken what we think is the essential part of Part One – which is 127 pages to Wyatt’s Torch.  That’s what we’re up to.

We’ve decided that this is the pertinent part of the story and I guarantee you that the reason I have not been doing any interviews or any discussions with anybody is – first of all – everybody is going to be disappointed.  [I express surprise.] Because when you love a book like I love this book  - like I loved “The Fountainhead,” like I love “Atlas Shrugged” – I would say … well why don’t you take it and make it a $40 – $50 million dollar film?  Well, if you do you’re still going to have to cut it down and … you’re going to have to choose what part of the story is the most tellable part.  So it’s not really possible with all of the characters and all of the density of this book to make everybody happy.  It doesn’t matter what you do – you’re not going to make everyone happy.  So I decided to do what makes me happy. [Pause.]  I’m serious.

GM:  Good for you.

PJ:  Absolutely 100%.  I made the decision.

GM:  When you’re an artist that’s the only way to go.

PJ:  And so that’s why I stand by the film.  This is what I think is the most important part of the story: it’s not a story about steel, it’s not a story about railroads, and it’s not a story about oil magnates or copper mines or all the other things that you see in this.  This is a story about an ideology – about the way that you live.  You can’t say in a [movie] like this who a character is by having people stand up and say “I make metal” or “I make railroads” – you can only do it by presenting them with choices, and what choices they make define the character.  And that’s how I’m telling the story.

Govindini Murty talks with Paul Johansson.

GM:  That’s very interesting.  You think of people like Orson Welles who were so fantastic at adapting Shakespeare -

PJ:  You’re thinking of me as Orson Welles -

GM:  [Laughs.] Well, look at how Welles adapted Shakespeare – he would slash down “Macbeth” or “Julius Caesar” …

PJ:  Absolutely -

GM:  … to next to nothing – but he kept the kernel of it and made a fantastic movie or a fantastic stage production out of it – so you have to do that.

PJ:  Right.  That’s interesting you should say that.  His “Othello” was really interesting – have you seen it?

GM:  Yes, it was incredible.  Done on a low budget, but very imaginative. Continue reading »

The new Libertas Film Magazine (LFM) is almost here!  LFM is a new on-line film magazine focusing on the idea of freedom as expressed in movies and popular culture.

LFM celebrates the democratizing of film. Talented, free-thinking artists from America and around the world are currently using digital technology to make films that celebrate freedom and the individual.  LFM will feature the best of these independent and foreign films – and occasionally even Hollywood films – that promote the ideas and values vital to the future of democratic civilization.

Stayed tuned for the launch of LFM on May 19th, 2010! The independent film world will never be the same. LFM is the new voice for freedom in movies and popular culture. Join us each day … and free your mind.