Do you remember when you were a little kid and the circus came to town? For months you would nag your parents to buy you tickets — tickets to the elephants and tigers, clowns and monkeys, everything that held your attention before the onset of puberty. A film premiere is the adult version of that experience. Months and months go by and if feels like it will never come. But of course, the circus will always eventually come.
Summertime has been a long journey. Maybe too long of a journey. What started as a Charlie Parker song has blossomed into a genuine piece of art, a thing that you can look at again and again and get a new meaning out of it. You have to take a step back to see it, but it’s waiting for you when you do.
In the time it has taken me to finish this film, I have left New York City to attend the American Film Institute as a directing fellow in Hollywood, CA.
Summertime is honored to have its World Premiere at Bel-Air Film Festival following an excerpt screening at SXSW 2011.
The screening will be held on October 16th, 2011 at 6pm.
James Bridges Theater
UCLA,
302 E Meinitz
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Tickets can be purchased here.
http://baff.festivalgenius.com/2011/films/summertime_maxweissberg_baff2011
We were blessed to have 4 screenings of Room 4 Rent at SXSW, which was paired with a feature called, “Fuck My Life” directed by Nicolas Lopez, who is from Chile. Interestingly, Fuck My Life had digital ads inserted into the film in post which paid for the entire production. What a clever idea… The movie billed itself as a ‘Facebook Film’ as it was a love story that featured a lot of 21st century communicating — texting, facebooking, and even intercoming (if that’s a word). “What about stalking?” I asked myself at the end of the film.
By all accounts, the audience loved “Room 4 Rent,” which is a 7 minute excerpt of Summertime. People also were taking the condoms with the film’s logo by the fistful. If they looked prudish, I told them, “This is chewing gum. Guaranteed to protect your mouth from pregnancy.” At the last screening, a distributor and a sales agent from LA jumped out of the audience and fought for my attention. I’ve never felt so important. I told them to have their people to call my people.
There were several reviews:
cnn.com
filmthreat
Inside Pulse
Suite 101
Film Festival Secrets
Playback
Sound On Sight
Oddly enough, on the last day I was watching a group of Medium shorts (20 – 30 minutes) and I noticed in the credits that my ex-girlfriend (Jo Coombes) was the producer of one of the films, ‘Join the Dots’ by Jessica Lux. We dated some 4 years ago and she moved back to England where, unbeknownst to me, she got into film producing. Apparently I had missed my ex at SXSW as she already flew out of Austin, but I spent a good hour or so talking to the director Jessica Lux who will be attending NYU film school in the fall.
SXSW is known for a lot of things: music, film, interactive, and endless bbq fun. I can say that I enjoyed all 4 in Austin, TX, and I’ve seen more films in the last week than probably in the last six months. The first day I arrived I caught the World Premiere of Green, a film about a woman’s jealousy, which was written and directed by Sophia Takal. The film went on to win the Chicken and Egg Pictures prize. Wendy Ettinger, who produced Hotel Gramercy Park with me, is one of the driving forces behind Chicken & Egg Pictures — so I’m sure that Sophia will be well guided in her film pursuits as was I.
Other films I caught were: ‘Dish and the Spoon’, directed by Alison Bagnell, ‘No Matter What’ directed by Cherie Saulter, ‘Kevin’ a doc directed by Jay Duplass, ‘Sound of My Voice’ directed by Zal Batmanglij, ‘Natural Selection’ directed by Robbie Pickering (which won best narrative feature), ‘Dragonslayer’ directed by Tristan Patterson (which won best doc feature), ‘Silver Bullets’ directed by Joe Swanberg, and a many others. Though all were really great, my favorite was ‘Sound of My Voice,’ (a film about 2 doc filmmakers who infiltrate a cult), which left me craving more. At the screening of Silver Bullets, H.R. Britton, one of the actors in my film ‘Room 4 Rent’, leaned over to me and said, “That actress used to date my roommate.” The actress turned out to be Amy Seimetz, who is in 3 films at SXSW this year. How incestuous… After the screening we hung out with the actors in the film as well as two directors who are heroes of mine, Jay Duplass and Joe Swanberg. They are my heroes because they were among the first to prove that a good story can beat any budget. I handed them both Summertime condoms and then Joe invited us to an after party for the film Bellflower. The party turned out to be a drunken campfire fest that featured fried donuts, keg stands, and live cricket eating. Yummy.
The State and Paramount Theaters on Congress Blvd.
So I guess when I said Summertime was “done” in June of 2010, I meant that only in a relative sense. At that time the film was 95 minutes, and following the completion of the film, I decided to have a mini-screening for cast and crew at the National Arts Club where some of the scenes for the film were also shot (thank you, Aldon James!). Following the screening, however, I decided that the film could use some shortening and I edited and edited until it was 87 minutes, which is the length it is now. I have even made changes to the film as recently as last week — but now with my HDCAM tape completed, the film is set in stone, so-to-speak.
In the midst of this re-editing, I decided to make a 7:30 minute short out of one sequence in Summertime which I titled “Room 4 Rent.” The short is the part of the film where Anna rents a room from Max (played by Olivia Horton and H.R. Britton respectively). Praise the Lord, South by Southwest invited the film to screen! The festival, aka SXSW, will be held from March 11th – March 19th and is widely considered to be the top festival for independent films in the US behind Sundance. Room 4 Rent will screen at these times:
Sunday, March 13th at 6:15pm at Alamo Lamar B Theatre,
Monday March 14th at 4pm at Arbor Theatre
Wednesday, March 16th at 4:15pm at Alamo Lamar A Theatre
and Thursday, March 17th at 8pm at Alamo Lamar B Theatre
The film is being paired with a Chilean feature film called “Fuck My Life” which is having its US Premiere at the festival. As far as I can tell, “Room 4 Rent” is one of the only shorts, if not the only short, that is being screened 4 times at the festival — a good sign indeed.
So I have been close to the finish line for some time. And when you’re close you can kind of feel it coming. The last few days have been spent in the darkness of a Silver Sound, a studio run by Cory Choy and Robin Shore. Summertime is beginning to feel like a “real” film (which is a term I don’t use). What people mean when they say this is a film where the sound is consistent and warm, the picture is good, and you can sit back and enjoy the film without any distractions.
I emerged out of the studio on the 7th day having finished Summertime, and returned home. Shortly before I was to go to sleep my watch fell off my hand and landed on the floor. The front did not crack but the watch stopped – it was broken. So I took it to my Russian repair guy on Delancey street who always fixes my watch. But he was unable to fix it. It has stopped working permanently. Summertime is done and time has stopped.
The director Jean-Luc Godard once said that all you need to make a film is a woman and a gun. My motto was the same for making Summertime, but I have recently amended to be: “All you need to make a film is a woman, a gun, and Kickstarter.”
Kickstarter was founded only a year ago and is one of the most exciting things that has happened recently on the internet. People with projects, like me, can make pitch videos and offer rewards for donations, so called “crowd funding.” The catch is that the project makers set their own monetary goal, e.g., $5,000, and if they don’t reach that goal, they get nothing. This makes it so that funders only pay if enough money is actually there to complete the project. Some people have raised tens of thousands of dollars using this website.
Summertime is a bit late in the game to be funding on Kickstarter, nevertheless we still need money for a sound mix. So using my trusty DVX100 camera, Rob Hollander (who plays the director in the film) and I shot a few scenes of me in Tompkins park begging for money. To emphasize my current financial need, I pulled utility bills out of my hat. Then I pointed to the snow – which meant a lot of time in post production for a film about the summer. I also gave a tour of my apartment, which has Soviet posters on the walls and a picture of Putin in the bathroom. No fancy living here. You can see the tour at:
Summertime on Kickstarter
The video raised me over 4 thousand dollars.
I have been running on fumes the last few weeks, beginning to wonder how the film is going to get finished and when approximately that might happen. People have been asking me about Summertime. “When is it coming out?” “2 more weeks.” I say invariably. It’s been 2 more weeks for the last 3 months. I don’t know if I’m lying or just naïvely imaging things.
I knew that one thing that needed to be done was a ton of ADR. With input from Xax, one of the cinematographers, I created a long list of dialogue to re-record. So the past week I’ve been recording with the actors: Eric Yves Garcia, Lethia Nall, Michael Karp, Rob Hollander, Olivia Horton, James Eason, Noa Bronshtein, which is a ton of people. The main reason for re-recording is the sound, but performance is also the reason in some cases. As a responsible director, I cannot divulge whose acting needed some polishing in the studio. Craig Slon, our sound guy, set his apartment up for the occasion with excellent results – it’s amazing what you can do with bedsheets, foam, and a staple gun. The price is also right. Unfortunately the actors have changed a bit. Lethia Nall is several months pregnant (and sounds completely different). Rob Hollander had a stroke. And some of the scenes involved improvisation which is very hard to re-do in a studio. Of course, I was not going to let reality get in the way. And 8 days of recording later I was again mentally and physically exhausted. There are now in scenes in Summertime in which I know every breath, emotion, pause, and ‘s’ sound.
So it is now mid December. The film has come a long way. New endings, scenes cut. Scenes added back in. I have come to the realization that a few scenes need to be cut which will cut actors from the film who I know personally.
Last night I had the second test screening. The location was again the Gramercy Park Hotel, and 40 of my closest friends were there, including many of the actors. I got up and explained that if they were watching and the sound went bad, they should think, “that’s the temp sound.” And if they’re watching the film and color is bad, they should think, “temp color.” And if they’re watching it and if the film is bad, they can say “temp film.”
But the response was great. 40 people on the edge of their seats. Did she do it? Did Julia kill Richard? The question was tattooed on their minds by the final credits. I was immediately happy – the film has come a long way. My dad didn’t even mind getting cut.
The next step is to send the drives to Austria for the color correction.
Feeling that I had made steady progress over a two-month period, I decided to hold a test screening at the Gramercy Park Hotel at the beginning of October. There were about 20 people in attendance, mainly editors and a few friends. The verdict: much more work is needed. The following week I interviewed about a dozen people, all of whom had edited feature films. Some of the editors were very impressive. One told me he knew the key to “fixing the story” in the editing room, but he wouldn’t tell me unless I hired him (I didn’t – but not because I wasn’t interested in what he had to say). Another woman told me she was blacklisted at Walt Disney for arguing too much with the management. After taking a phone call in the middle of the interview, she told me she could edit my film in her spare time and would be “brutal” (I was offering a salaried job). In the end, I decided to hire two editors as consultants, Ross Byron and Russell Costanzo. To Ross I gave a quicktime file of the film. Russell received all the footage and the project file.
Russell and Ross are two very different people. Russell is young, married, and, dressed like Elvis Costello, would be called by most people as a hipster. Russell recently directed and edited his first feature film, the Tested. It’s about a kid who joins a gang after his brother is mistakenly killed by a cop. I saw i during IFP week and it was very impressive.
Ross is more of a hippy. Ross’ business card says that he also is a songwriter and website designer. That is how luftmenschen make a living – it’s not uncommon for one to have seven jobs. He reminds me a little of Christopher Llyod’s character in Back to the Future.
Both Ross and Russell are interesting people, and I both let them have a go simultaneously. Both come back with very useful suggestions. Among other things: go back and forth more between the two actress characters, and to use title cards between the segments.
After watching some cuts I decided to take the editing back into my hands. I wanted to keep Summertime to be an entirely new film, with a narrative structure that is different than anything out there – but yet is still hilarious. And so, armed with the insight of Ross and Russell, I broke the old rule and edited the rest of my movie.
So I have now hit the first stage of post-production, the point when you debate whether or not to take a vacation or jump into the material. Unfortunately I don’t have the money to take a vacation and my longtime gig, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, has asked that I be re-evaluated for the tours I give, a process which takes time. Which all means I jumped into the material. It took one full week to resync the footage. Another week to make an assembly cut.
The assembly cut came in at 2 hours, much longer than I expected with a 84 page script. I guess that’s what happens when you reserve 6 days to shoot b-roll. Editing is a lot of work, especially when its August and its 90 degrees outside. Like fellow luftmenschen in sweatshops a hundred years ago, I worked half naked, saving money for the film by not using air conditioning. At the beginning of September I was back to giving tours at the Tenement Museum. Now I am only sporadically editing the flick, a bit indecisive on what I should cut.
