"Captain America: Civil War" directors Joe and Anthony Russo went from directing TV sitcome episodes to the massive Marvel movie machine; how Beyoncé and Radiohead are changing the music marketing game; Millennials are forcing film schools to make MFA programs more responsive to their needs.
How Beyoncé, Radiohead and others are changing the way albums are released
These days, musicians are hyping new albums in more and more creative ways.
Last weekend, Radiohead's Internet presence started vanishing — the band's website gradually became too opaque to read and entire social media accounts disappeared. And then, after excitement had mounted over the course of a couple days, they released a video for the new song, "Burn the Witch."
Radiohead is not the only big-name band or artist to garner headlines for an unusual marketing campaign. Beyoncé posted cryptic images to her Instagram account, only to finally reveal her newest album, "Lemonade," via an hour-long special on HBO.
Catherine Moore, a clinical associate professor of music business at NYU, joined us to talk about the growing trend of unconventional album releases, how they might further shake up the music industry, and how artists need to create multimedia experiences to fully captivate audiences.
Interview Highlights:
This is both an upside and a downside to digital media, that there's so much material out there now. How do musicians rise out of that? What do artists need to gain a lot of exposure?
A fan base. Your fan base will be your advocates, your fan base will be excited to tell other people about what you do. Because the way that music gets spread is no longer in the control of the companies that support music. This has been a frustration for a lot of those companies who used to have a lot of control over how their music got to fans.
I want to ask about this phenomenon, which some people have referred to as "leaving digital bread crumbs" for their listeners, and how it developed. In the Nicki Minaj song "Feeling Myself," Beyoncé brags that she "changed the game with her digital drop," and that she "stopped the world." Is that true? How has this trend evolved?
Yeah, the digital bread crumbs, that wonderful image which I really think is very evocative of how artists can leave their fans with enticing, mysterious, incomplete snippets. And the snippets don't necessarily have to be music — they can be video, pictures, all kinds of things.
They can be half-truths, they can be half-words, they can be made-up words, symbols, colors, or even the absence of things. We saw that with Radiohead and their recent video, when they took away some of their social media presence.
And they did that just for one song! That seems a little extreme. [laughs]
Right, because now we're going dark before we can bring something into the light.
Why is the multimedia aspect important around a song release?
One of the ways that people discover songs is through radio, but another big way is through YouTube and through the ways in which people will say to each other, Did you see this great song? Did you see this great video? Anything that is only music, anything without a visual component, is in some ways less captivating. There's less to talk about if it's only the music.
You're describing a world in which artists are the entrepreneurs over their own career, but where do record labels fit in this equation? Is it still worth it for artists to sign with labels?
Record labels have the business connections that artists don't have when they're starting out. That still has value for an artist, but the artist needs to be smart about the type of deal they sign. They should get legal representation, because they're going to negotiate a contract. But I think that labels still have a function so long as they're a good fit for an artist because of those business connections.
The Russo brothers and the challenges of directing the politically charged 'Captain America: Civil War'
Many of your favorite comic book heroes are back in the new Marvel film, “Captain America: Civil War.” Except, instead of Iron Man and Captain America fighting side-by-side, they go head-to-head.
The film is based on the 2006 Marvel comic book series, “Civil War.” A disagreement in political stances leads Captain America, Hawkeye and other superheroes to go against Iron Man, Black Widow and, yes, Spider-Man (who is actually on loan to Disney from Sony).
The brothers Anthony and Joe Russo directed the latest Marvel film. They also directed the previous Captain America movie, “The Winter Soldier,” and will direct the next Avengers movies.
The Frame's John Horn spoke with the brothers about how director Steven Soderbergh helped them get their start, the craft in the intricate fight scenes in the film, and if being siblings either hurts or helps them on set.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
Was it challenging making a big blockbuster that also tries to tell a politically themed story?
ANTHONY RUSSO: You can't get away from the political dimensions of the character, especially because these movies are global. So you can imagine the connotations that the name carries with it around the world. It's very charged. Frankly, the character was born with a political, even a propaganda, purpose: to encourage the United States to enter World War II, stop Hitler.
Through the decades, the world is in a different climate than it was during World War II. Captain America has to change through the decades as well. And one of the fun things about his story is he gets frozen in ice for 70 years. So he basically jumps from World War II to the present time, two years ago. Cap missed all those things that made our country compromise and created a gray area in terms of how we interact with the rest of the world. For Cap, he's still in that old diagram of good versus evil.
So as you're talking with your screenwriters, actors and department heads, are you referencing other superhero movies, or are you talking about political thrillers from the '70s and '80s?
JOE RUSSO: We grew up film fanatics and I think a lot of our vocabulary was developed watching movies from when we were younger. We were hyper-influenced by '70s films, but we also grew up around the corner from a cinematheque, so foreign film was a big influence on us as well.
So we tend to reference movies. And I think what makes superhero films more interesting, and more relatable to a more diverse audience, is if you take a genre and you smash into it. In "Winter Soldier," we're marrying a political thriller to a superhero movie. It's "Civil War," it's a war film meets a psychological thriller. So you're taking other genres and you're creating a hybrid, which can help create some more interesting storytelling and surprise the audience, but also allow you to reach an audience that may not be coming to the theater just for a superhero film.
Before you got hired for "Captain America," you did a lot of television. You did "Community," "Arrested Development" and the feature comedy "You, Me, and Dupree." How did that first conversation with Marvel go? What did they see that made you candidates for that job, and what did you see in yourselves that made you wonder if you were qualified to do it?
JOE RUSSO: Well we were in a very healthy place with our television careers. We were enjoying the shows we were working on at the time, "Happy Endings" and "Community." It's difficult to get to a position in the business where you have a lot of creative control, and we were at that place in television. We got a phone call from our agent one day who said, "Marvel has put together a list of directors they want to speak to and you guys are on the list." We were surprised. But of course we took a meeting — I collected comics since I was 10 years old, and the mythology of those characters was very impactful on my upbringing. We're pop culture junkies. We had a kismet on many levels with them.
We sat down with Kevin Feige. He told us he really loved our work on "Community." We'd done these paintball episodes which were action spoofs. He knew we had an ability to direct comedy, but he saw that we also liked action, and he thought, Well, these guys could be directing action movies for us.
What was the steepest part of the learning curve of going into that world? Was it what you expected it to be?
ANTHONY RUSSO: It's a great question. Joe and I have done a variety of things as filmmakers. We started as micro-budget, credit card filmmakers. We moved into small but real independent cinema. Then we went into TV. We did cable, major network, comedies, dramas, commercials. We've covered the map in terms of what you can do as a filmmaker. For us, I think it wasn't that difficult — to be honest — to step into the system.
Part of that credit goes to Marvel because they're such a well-run company. They're very well-organized; they have incredible people there. We were able to move into their infrastructure and access all these talented departments that they've already assembled. So that was a great gift. The major difference was we had to do a lot more pre-planning than we ever had before.
I want to talk about the fight scenes. What's notable is that they have a sense of humor. As you're working with Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely in planning and shooting these fight scenes, what are the things you're referencing or channeling? And how do you integrate comedy into character in a battle?
ANTHONY RUSSO: We always stay very dedicated to narrative and character. It's how we find our way through action sequences. Action is empty unless it's turning on character and the narrative is pushing you through. So that's our access point. And then, the great thing about a movie like "Civil War" is we have a variety of voices to play with. We have some characters like Captain America and Iron Man who are very deeply invested in a complicated conflict with one another. It's serious and tonally intense, but that doesn't give you a lot of room for comedy.
We have other characters, fortunately, who are coming from a place where they don't have as much emotional baggage. Ant Man, for instance. They have specific reasons for being there, but their drives don't have the same level of complication and tension. Therefore, they're able to react in a lighter, more whimsical way. I think it's the contrast between the two that gives a lot of pleasure in this movie, at least for us.
You're working with some actors, like Robert Downey Jr., who is so closely identified with Tony Stark and Iron Man that people know there's not a lot of difference between the character and the actor. As directors, what is your job when you're working with somebody like Downey, as opposed to when you're working with the young man who's playing Spiderman?
JOE RUSSO: Well. everyone has a different process. Chris Evans [who plays Captain America], for instance, is a very technically gifted actor. He'll get the script, read through it, circle some lines that he thinks could be more on-point for his character. We'll have a conversation with him, discuss them, rewrite some lines. He memorizes the script and comes to set. Again, very technically gifted. The process is very straightforward.
With Robert, it's a very different process. It's very organic. He really wants to discover what every scene is about. On a Sunday prior to the scene we'll shoot that week, we'll sit at his house for a few hours. We'll talk through the scene. He'll improvise quite a bit. We'll fish around for lines and make sure that the storytelling keeps moving forward, but he does know the character better than any of us ever will. He's been playing it for eight years. There's great magic in that with him. So it's a very collaborative process. I think he feels more emotionally connected to the material by going through that process.
ANTHONY RUSSO: It's one of the great challenges of being a director. If you want to pull the best performance out of an actor, you need to be able to speak their language. And you may have actors who speak a variety of languages, and then it becomes your job as a director to create an environment where they can all feel safe and go through their own processes. It's a big trick of the job, sometimes.
What is the secret, or the benefit, of your working together? And have you ever thought about going your separate ways in directing? What is the 1 + 1 = 3 of you directing together?
JOE RUSSO: Well, we always say that two heads are exponentially better than one. And I think when you're working on a movie of this scale, it's invaluable for us to be working as a team. These movies can get away from you very quickly. I think that because of the amount of people that you're working with, the demands on you, the amount of decisions you have to make — the fact that there are two of us allows us to vet the issue. When one of us may be exhausted, hopefully the other has still got their wits about them.
Who wins most arguments?
JOE RUSSO: Why you trying to start an argument?
ANTHONY RUSSO: Our sensibilities are very similar, obviously. But certainly we disagree. That's usually part of our process. I remember, we had a director friend sitting behind us at the monitor for a day. And at the end of the day, he said, "It's so weird listening to you guys talk to each other when you direct, because it's like the voices in my own head are all of a sudden externalized." Every artist-creator goes through a process of trying to figure out what their vision is, how they're going to realize it. It's a process that contains a lot of inner turmoil. Joe and I just get to externalize that process.
If I were that director, what would I hear?
ANTHONY RUSSO: It would be like, "You get up and talk to the actor." "No, you get up." "No, I went last time."
JOE RUSSO: "Do they have carrots at craft services?"
How millennials are making film schools work harder
It’s Thursday morning at the American Film Institute and 28 screenwriting students are hanging on every word from prolific TV writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach. But he’s not here to talk about plot or character or the three-act structure. He’s dealing with real work issues, like how you handle the social media backlash when you’ve killed off a popular lesbian character.
“What I did was I went on Tumblr, and said OK let me have it. My way of responding was I’m a little younger, a little more social media engaged, i.e. I’m a
addict, so I went on social media and decided to engaged in it fully,” he says.
There’s been a shift over the last few years in MFA programs like this one. The shift aims to help students prepare for life after film school, like explaining the finer points of working in TV writers' room, when to talk, when to shut up, how to pitch projects and how to dress for meetings.
The changes have been driven by the demands incoming millennial students.
“It was a shift from something passive to something aggressive and very direct. They were demanding it,” says Joe Petricca the Executive Vice Dean at AFI.
He says that Writing Fellows — that’s what they call students here — now have four classes geared towards career management. Directors, cinematographers and producers have them too. Pretty much everyone has an industry internship. And TV, which used to be an elective, is now required in both years because, well, that’s where the jobs are.
Trevor Smith is an AFI Producing Fellow. "Especially with my younger classmates, the expectation of the school is [it's] there to work for them,” says Smith. “That they have a certain set of expectations. I wouldn’t call it entitlement, although older generations might, but they do have this set of expectations, and I think that’s new.”
Petricca says that while there was some administrative wariness about these changes, he feels they have struck a good balance. Now if he can convince the notoriously hands-on paernts of these millennials that their kids don’t need their "helicopter parenting" in film school.
"They’re not allowed into the actual interview. There have been parents who bring applicants to the interview, parents who call beforehand to ask questions. But luckily because our applicants are all 21, we can’t talk without their permission, without getting a signed piece of paper from the students. So that’s very nice, Mr. or Mrs. Parent, but it’s the adult we’re dealing with.”
And it’s not just AFI that's dealing with this millennial shift. At UCLA's School of Film and Television, associate dean Barbara Boyle agrees the new generation has shaken things up.
“They’re driven and demanding,” says Boyle. “They know more about social media than any professor here, with three exceptions. They have so much more available than we did. They’re demanding, they’re practical, they’re concerned about their future.”
Part of the new training is managing expectations. Daisy Green Stenhouse is an AFI writing fellow. She remembers one of her first career classes when the instructor said, "Raise your hand if you think you’ll be working as a writer in the next two years." About half the class raised their hands, and he said put them down... Just because you’re graduating doesn’t mean you’re getting staffed in an instant. It’s a bit of a tough pill to swallow. As soon as you’re out of here you’re starting at the bottom again somewhere else.”
Grillo-Marxauch says his message boils down to this: Pay your dues.
“Everyone wants to be a rock star, but TV is a medium where you need to be a rhythm guitarist for ten years before you’re a rock star.”
Maybe it's simply a savvy financial moved to cater to the demands of a new generation. These days, you don’t need to attend film school to make films. And with tuition just shy of $50,000 a year at AFI and equally high at similar MFA programs, the future of these institutions may well depend on how quickly they can get their graduates to that first industry paycheck — and to that first alumni contribution.
This piece was produced by Collin Friesen.