The actor plays a homeless man in "Time Out of Mind," which he also produced; Aretha Franklin's objection to the screening of the documentary "Amazing Grace" has now affected the Toronto and Chicago film festivals; In our latest installment of "Song Exploder," Hrishikesh Hirway breaks down "Feeling OK" with the band Best Coast.
Song Exploder: Breaking down the Cali vibes of 'Feeling OK' by Best Coast
Have you ever listened to a song and wondered how it really came together? Hrishikesh Hirway is a Los Angeles-based musician who takes a song apart piece-by-piece and then brings the artists on his podcast, Song Exploder, to talk about how they put it all together.
Adapted for The Frame, Hirway recently chatted with Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno of Best Coast, plus producer Wally Gagel, about "Feeling OK," the lead track off the band's most recent album, "California Nights." The three talked about their writing process and how they work together in the studio to make everything sound way simpler than it really is.
The future of Aretha Franklin's 'Amazing Grace' could see more lawsuits
“Amazing Grace” is Aretha Franklin’s biggest-selling album in her long career. The live album was recorded in 1972 at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in L.A. and is also the subject of a documentary directed by the late Sydney Pollack, who made “Toostie” and “Out of Africa.” But as of now, you may never be able to see the film.
A federal judge in Denver ordered that the music documentary not be shown at the Telluride Film Festival just moments before it was scheduled to premiere on Sept. 4. Franklin’s lawyers claimed the producer of the film, Alan Elliott, did not get her permission to use the footage in the documentary.
The release of "Amazing Grace" has been a long and ongoing battle — more than 40 years to be exact. But a number of attorneys say the decision by a U.S. District Judge sets a horrible precedent in First Amendment law.
The Frame's John Horn spoke with Eriq Gardner, a senior editor at The Hollywood Reporter, about the details of the lawsuit and the future of the film:
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
This movie was banned from playing at the Telluride Film Festival, but what is happening in Toronto?
The Toronto Film Festival got some cold feet. They didn't want to be subject to a lawsuit. And the film was also pulled from the Chicago Film Festival. I think everyone is a little bit scared and a little bit shocked at what happened in Denver on the precipices of the Telluride Film Festival.
We should make clear that the lawsuit was not against the producer, Alan Elliott. It was against the Telluride Film Festival. So what exactly was Aretha Franklin arguing about the film?
She was arguing [that] in order for the film to come out, she needed to give her consent, [and because] the film used her likeness and her name, that it would be a violation of her publicity rights for the film to be shown. Honestly, I've never seen anything like that. I've seen lots of lawsuits like this, but I've never seen an injunction be issued over a claim of this nature.
Is this incredibly rare in the film world — that a filmmaker and a film festival would be banned at the very last minute from showing a film to an audience?
Not only is it rare, but this is basically the only time it's ever happened. What I understand, there was even a push to get Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to get involved over the weekend.
So if Justice Sotomayor does not jump in, what happens to the movie? What's its future?
Well, there's two potential paths. The first is that there's a settlement between Aretha Franklin and the producer where they agree on some sort of compensation package. Right now, Aretha Franklin's attorneys believe that this film is going to make $2 million, so they're asking for half of it. And the producer thinks that's outrageous. If that doesn't happen, all hell is going to break loose. I think there are going to be more lawsuits filed, including against Aretha Franklin, for interfering with all these film festivals.
Richard Gere goes against type, playing a homeless man in 'Time Out Of Mind'
In his new film, “Time Out of Mind,” Richard Gere plays a homeless man who struggles to navigate personal — and bureaucratic — hurdles after he is evicted from his New York City apartment.
Gere is a true movie star most recognized for his portrayal of a wealthy attorney in “Pretty Woman.” For his latest film he chose to play the sort of person who is often overlooked — if not completely ignored — in public life.
But playing a homeless man was more than just another role for Gere. He’s also the producer of the movie. In fact, he bought the script some 15 years ago.
Gere recently spoke with The Frame’s John Horn.
Interview Highlights
On the film’s script
It was a spec script that was written by an English writer in 1988, on this subject. It’s almost unrecognizable from what we ended up with. But there’s something there that I thought was incredibly powerful. And, in the end, I don’t even think it was about homelessness ... I was looking for something that spoke to the yearning that we all have for our place, for being thought of as precious, for our tribe, our family, our community — something that we belong to and cares for us as we care for it in the deepest possible sense. And how big is that community? Are we all in this together or not? I wanted to deal with those things, which had nothing to do with plot. They had to do with the human heart at its deepest level.
You didn’t have a lot of money to make this movie. Is that because people wouldn’t fund it? There was no other way to make it?
Well, you’ve seen the film. It’s not a normal movie. It’s not a genre movie in any way whatsoever. Our intention was to make something very special and only make a movie that would please us. And hopefully there would be other people that were pleased by it. But it wasn’t going to fit a category. And I didn’t think it was appropriate for us to make a $50 million movie about a homeless guy and a community of homeless people. It should feel like something we found on the ground and noticed for the first time. There were three, actually four, investors who stuck with it. And right up to the last day we weren’t actually sure that was going to come through. It was a very precarious production.
What does that say about moviemaking in general? You are talking about an epidemic [of homelessness] in the United States and around the world. This is a movie that is looking at the victims of this epidemic. And yet people didn’t think it was an important movie because it wasn’t commercial? Is that ultimately what it comes down to?
Well, I don’t have a problem with that. We made it for under $5 million and that got us 21 days of shooting. But we had top people working on this, top to bottom. No one got paid, but it was top talent all around because they responded to it. From the craft people to the camera to actors, etc., it was all there. We made it with the budget that we have and that was the appropriate budget. Filmmaking has radically changed. And maybe just not filmmaking, but many of the creative arts have changed... In the ‘70s, when I started making movies, this might have been made by a studio. The system that makes commercial movies now doesn’t allow for these. It’s just not how it’s done. But even with that system, the independent way, this was like in the fringe of independent movies. We were aiming for something special.
I want to talk about a scene toward the end of the film. There’s a very long shot that your director, Oren Moverman, and your cinematographer, Bobby Bukowski, do, where you’re panhandling. You are saying, “Spare change? Help me out.” You have a wool cap pulled over your eyes. And I suspect I, like a lot of other people, would have walked right past you. Can you talk about shooting that scene and what you saw in the people who looked at you and didn’t see you during that scene?
We shot down in Astor Place, which is a very busy place in New York. New York is New York — any shot in this movie is as it is. People are not aware that they’re being [filmed]. And I didn’t know if this was going to work. Oren didn’t know. We were hoping we could get 30-second or maybe one minute takes before I got recognized and the shots were ruined. So I remember this was a very fragile, anxious day when I came out to Astor Place and stood there. I fairly quickly realized that no one was paying attention to me. And my first impulse was, well, I was invisible. No one was making eye contact. And then as I relaxed into it and was feeling the situation, I realized I wasn’t invisible, I was actually a black hole. And everyone around me, from blocks away, I could feel was terrified of being sucked into this black hole of despair and failure. And beyond that, I think in a very subconscious way, people feeling how tenuous their own sense of well being is — how close we all are to losing it, mentally, psychologically, physically. We’re living on a razor’s edge, all of us.
Did the making of this movie change you as a person, in the way you saw the world and the way you saw your place in it?
Yeah, I think there were a couple of things. The shot you were asking me about before, not only for me, but for Bobby Bukowski who was shooting it, Oren Moverman, our writer-director. As we were doing that shot — and we were shooting digitally so we could do long takes — we shot for 45 minutes with no one paying any attention to me. On a block that, as Richard Gere, there’s no way I would be standing on that corner. Circumstances and projections are 99.9 percent of our experience in the world. We’re living in a total echo chamber of our own minds. I mean, I was the same guy you want to have an interview with today. I’m on a red carpet and people want to take my picture and talk to me. I’m the same guy that was on that corner. The only difference was I had a bad haircut, I had the clothes of someone on the street. Now is that how we deal with reality all the time? Based on those superficial things? How extraordinary. Now, I knew that intellectually, but maybe this is one of the first times that I so profoundly felt that deep in the marrow of my bones.