Invaluable for film students, especially since, in assuming that its readers have some understanding of art, Hope can hit...
A relentlessly useful insider’s guide to independent film from a longtime practitioner.
So, why is it that in independent films—that is, films made outside the traditional studio system—the sets make Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets look like the Emerald City? That’s easy, writes Hope, the production power behind 21 Grams, American Splendor and other films made by his production company, Good Machine. The answer is that there’s no money to be had, and whatever money there is has to go into the movie itself and not, say, the marketing budget: “[S]o invariably productions are based in the ugly sections of town where the rents are cheap.” That insight alone casts new light on Ghost World, Wonderland and many other on-the-thin-dime films. Most of those films scarcely see the light of day, outside a few art houses, festivals and perhaps IFC, but when they do, it’s usually as much a surprise to the director as to everyone else. Take In the Bedroom, which, magisterial performances by Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek aside, made the jump to the big time mostly because the distributor put more money into it. “Usually, a film is worth the most when it first hits the marketplace,” notes Hope matter-of-factly, but such added money also increases a film’s shelf life. Part memoir and part textbook, the book offers a variety of insights, from the workflows involved in promoting a film via social media to the astonishingly complex politics of dealing with a nonprofit organization. Hope even has a few kind words for critics, such as this entry in the section that closes the book, “100 Opportunities for Making the American Independent Film Industry Better”: “Loss of job for newspaper based film critics reduces curatorial oversight which lessens word-of-mouth and want-to-see.”
Invaluable for film students, especially since, in assuming that its readers have some understanding of art, Hope can hit the topic of money hard.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61902-332-1
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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