A Film that Hollywood dared not do

Leslie Harris is the writer; producer and director of the independent film Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. In this film, Chantel Mitchell is a young black female who resides and attends high school in Brooklyn, New York. She is smart-mouthed and equally as book smart, where she earns mostly A’s and B’s and plans on pursuing future education. Harris told the Washington Post that she saw the film “as a chance to undo stereotypes about the inner city and African American Teenage girls. It was a chance to give young women identity.”

Harris was raised with two older brothers in the inner city, and was the first person in her family to graduate from college, in result of both of her brothers dropping out after one year. Her perseverance to overcome the racial challenges and sexist stereotypes that faced her were unquestionably the motivation for the development of the main character, Chantel. This is exemplified throughout the entire film, where Chantel is determined, focused and striving to reach her goal to become a doctor, despite the odds. The unexpected plot twist in the end actually comes in result of Chantel becoming a statistic or Just Another girl on the I.R.T. when she discovers she is pregnant. In contrast to Harris’s life, a black woman who beat the odds, graduated college and became successful, Chantel on the other hand is doomed to remain in the inner city, raising a child while her hopes and dreams are positively set back a couple years.

New York Times 21 Feb. 1993: 17. New York Times. New York Times. Print
Washington Post 2 Apr. 1993: G-1-D-1. Print

Good Will Hunting: How it all started

Good Will Hunting was written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. The two of them grew up together in Chambride, Ma  and took drama classes with one another. Once college came around they went their separate ways. Matt Damon went to Harvard University, and Ben Affleck attended Occidental College in Califorina. The film first started to be written in Matt Damon’s fifth year at Harvard. Damon was in a play writing class and one project was to write a one act play but Damon decided to write and turn in a movie that was 40 pages long instead . Damon showed Ben the script he had wrote for his class and asked if he would help write it.  The was the two came up with a some scenes is pretty interesting. Allfleck states ” We would improvise and drink like six or twelve beers or whatever and record it with a tape recorder.”  The duo wrote a fantastic script that was finished in 1994. They hand over the script to an agent Patrick Whitesell who reluctantly took it because “Usually when you get a script from actors you don’t have high expectations”. Whitesell read the script and was blow away by it. The film was then picked up by director Gus Van Stant and producer Chris Moore. Good Will Hunting made its premiere in 1997 and the film has gotten nothing but fantastic reviews. After almost two decades Affleck’s and Damon’s story will continue to entertain audiences everywhere.

 

Here’s an interview with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck explaining how the movie came together.

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2013/01/good-will-hunting-oral-history/3/

“Tim Burton, at Home in His Own Head”

An interview such as this can explain a lot when looking at Tim Burton’s style when it comes to films. In Edward Scissorhands specifically, it’s a movie about accepting someone for the qualities and not by their appearance, and letting their creative talent shine. Scissorhands could have very well been a metaphor for Burton’s own personal childhood. One quote I’m looking at in particular from the article above:

 “I felt like an outcast. At the same time I felt quite normal. I think a lot of kids feel alone and slightly isolated and in their own world. I don’t believe the feelings I had were unique. You can sit in a classroom and feel like no one understands you, and you’re Vincent Price in “House of Usher.” I would imagine, if you talk to every single kid, most of them probably felt similarly. But I felt very tortured as a teenager. That’s where “Edward Scissorhands” came from. I was probably clinically depressed and didn’t know it.”

You can definitely feel these themes when watching a lot of Tim Burton’s movies. He was a loner; an artistic type when he was young. It probably didn’t sit well with his classmates, so he was pushed to the outside. This is reflected in his dark but darkly humorous movies. coupled with the dull color palettes and general plot themes of isolation, acceptance, and creativeness.

Tim Burton: About the Director

Having grown up watching Tim Burton films such as The Nightmare Before Christmas and Beetlejuice, I always knew enough about Tim Burton and his movies to know that stylistically, he stands different from many film makers. “His style is strongly visual, darkly comic and morbidly fixated” (Itzkoff). His films tend to have a darker side to them while still appealing to a broad audience. He accomplishes this I believe through his animation style and skill. Upon further research, I found Burton attended school for animation and got his start in film and animation by working for Disney studios. His skill in animation combined with his truly unique style of story writing gives his films a feel of their own and make them easily recognizable as Burton films. He discusses how he has an overarching feeling of “being out of place” or “being foreign” and this definitely stands out to me as true. His films such as Edward Scissor Hands portray that feeling of being “out of place”. To see that feeling he has shine through in his work to me is really cool and I think that emphasizes his skill as a writer, director and story-teller. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/movies/tim-burton-at-home-in-his-own-head.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Itzkoff, Dave. “Tim Burton, at Home in His Own Head.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 22 Sept. 2012. Web. 24 Apr. 2014.

 

About the Writers: Good Will Hunting

When Good Will Hunting was released in 1998, the film exceeded expectations and grossed in a booming $226 million worldwide.  Screenwriters, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, now bona fide actors, grew up as childhood friends in Cambridge, Ma.  After attending high school at Ringe and Latin School in Cambridge, the two childhood friends took their own paths, Damon attending Harvard, and Affleck attending Occidental College in California.  It wasn’t until Damon’s fifth year at Harvard, where his writing skills were publicized.  Damon only had a few electives left, and he decided to take a play-writing class.  The final project included writing a final one-act play, and Damon decided to write a 40-page movie script instead.

Damon only had a few months left of school when he decided to visit Affleck in California and present him with the script to Good Will Hunting.  Damon asked Affleck to help him with the script and the two shared ideas and started editing the script.  The two friends became intrigued by the script, writing about a young brilliant kid and his town friends in Boston.  The main character, later played by Damon, was made up to be a troubled but genious kid  who worked at MIT as a custodian.  They wrote a great script that was completed in 1994.  It was then that the two approached agent Pat Whitesell and began their attempt shop it around.  When the movie finally ended up in the hands of producer Chris Moore, and director Gus Van Stant, it made it’s debut in 1997.  20 years later, Good Will Hunting, is looked at as a Hollywood classic, and the two child-hood friends, Affleck and Damon, are amongst the list of highest paid actors.

 

 

Family Affair

The Virgin Suicides is the first full length film from director Sofia Coppola. Post Virgin Suicides, Coppola wrote and directed Oscar-winning Lost in Translation, biopic Marie Antoinette, Somewhere and her most recent film, The Bling Ring. While Coppola is a successful writer/director in her own right, she comes from one of the famous families of film; the Coppola’s. It all started with her father, an all-time great director Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather Trilogy, Apocalypse Now, Rumble Fish). Her late brother Gian-Carlo, was a producer before his untimely death by speedboat accident. Her other brother Roman is a writer who frequently collaborates with director Wes Anderson. Other famous family members of Sophia Copolla include; aunt Talia Shire (Godfather trilogy, Rocky series), cousin Jason Schwartzmann (Rushmore, Grand Budapest Hotel) and the greatest actor who lived, Nicolas Cage (Adaptation, National Treasure). In her early career in film, Coppola was acting in many of her fathers films as background characters. This was up until the third and final Godfather. Here, Coppola took on a larger role and was ultimately criticized for her performance. This was the final movie she acted in and was the last step into thrusting her into directing. Without the help of her father, (who produces her films) and the rest of her family, we wouldn’t have such a distinct talent like Sofia Coppola.

 

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001068/?ref_=fn_al_nm_2

Director Sofia Coppola of The Virgin Suicides

In looking up the biography of Sofia Coppola, director of The Virgin Suicides (1999), I found some interesting things. For information about Coppola herself, she was an actress before becoming a director. Casting in The Godfather III as Mary Corleone (1990), The Outsiders as Little Girl (1983) and a few others, Coppola understood the dynamics of film making. To test the waters of directing, she made two shorts, Bed, Bath and Beyond (1996), and Lick the Star (1998). Finding security in making these shorts, she went on to direct The Virgin Suicides (1999). In creating the film, Coppola created the script herself. Stating in an interview, “…it’s part of making a film: dreaming up in your mind the movie you want to make”.

Looking at the biography IMDb.com gives, there is a section called “Trade Mark” which lists what each director is most known for. For Coppola in The Virgin Suicides, sun being filmed through leaves and introduction scene focusing on the main character during an unidentified point in time, shown to express their loneliness, are two marks that stick out. There are plenty of scenes where the sun is shining through leaves. For the introduction, the youngest sister, Cecilia, is shown being taken to the hospital and has a very dull expression on her face while at the hospital and being evaluated by the psychologist.

Coppola put time and effort into making this film. As The Virgin Suicides depicts the life of five girls, Coppola makes that known and creates a world where the audience also cares for the girls and what happens to them.

http://www.timeout.com/newyork/film/q-a-sofia-coppola-on-the-virgin-suicides

Sofia Coppola and The Virgin Suicides

Sofia Coppola is the director and writer of The Virgin Suicides. After watching and interview with her, I learned about how she initially had no intention to be a director or screen play writer. She had read the book titled The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenid and loved it so much that she was inspired to write a film for it. After doing some research she was found out that somebody else had the rights to the film and worried that they wouldn’t live up to her standards which was partly why she was so determined to write her own version. Lucky for her those rights expired and she was able to create the film herself. She was told by one of her producers (who also happened to be her father) not to get her hopes up because even though she could write a script, she doesn’t known the rights to the book so she wouldn’t be able to make it anyways. However, she ended up showing her producer the script and he agreed it was one of the best scripts he had seen in a long time. In turn, she took the script to the studios that owned the rights to it and they agreed. 

After watching a behind the scenes video I found it interesting how much of Sofia’s family was involved in the production of the film. Her father helped produce it and her brother also helped direct it. She even allowed him to direct while she wasn’t there. She claimed that he knew her so well that he would make sure all the shots were portrayed exactly as she would have wanted them to. Further more, one of her cousins acted in it. He played Paul Baldino, which was the kid who seemed to smooth talk people and claimed he could access everybody’s house on the block. Her other cousin helped to be and acting coach.

I just find it very interesting how Sofia was able to create such a successful film by using her skills and resources so well. She simply had a passion and followed it as best as she could and eventually was able to produce a very successful film.

Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xszf3TvSnaA

Behind the Scenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E514EA_l-Do

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck Interview

In an interview with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, the Oscar winning duo give insight into their creative process while writing Good Will Hunting. The 1997 drama follows young Will Hunting and the struggles he faces discovering who he is. Having won the academy award for best original screenplay, Affleck and Damon share with the audience when and where they wrote this amazing script. The two wrote the film in a small Los Angeles apartment in 1992. Struggling actors at the time, with little work and too much time on their hands, the two friends wrote the film. Simply writing the film for themselves, the two had no major studio or director connected to the project. After finishing the script, it took another five years to get the ball rolling. Still relatively unknown in Hollywood at the time, the two friends needed to build up more credibility before they could make the film.

Pairing up with well-known independent film director Gus Van Sant, and with help from major movie studio Miramax, Affleck and Damon were able to complete their masterpiece. Good Will Hunting, being on of the most highly praised films of the late nineties, shows the struggles one young man has while facing adversity. Interestingly, similar to Will Hunting, Damon at the time was discovering who he was an artist. Revealing that they had little money while writing the script, I wondered if Will’s impeccable gift was Damon and Affleck symbolizing their own talent. Although a fictional story, the details about when the film was written raises a question if the entire film is a metaphor for these two’s celebrities rise into stardom.

Sofia Coppola and The Virgin Suicides

Sofia Coppola, director of The Virgin Suicides, was born in May of 1971 in New York City and grew up in Northern California. She is currently married to Thomas Mars and has two children, Romy and Cosima. Her husband is the lead singer of the band Phoenix. She is the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola who is most famous for his Godfather films. She played roles in each of The Godfather movies. Her first film, Lick the Star, was followed by The Virgin Suicides which was her first feature film with her own screenplay. The movie brought her attention and acclaim; she won a Young Hollywood Award for Best Director and a MTV award for Best New Filmmaker. Since her success with The Virgin Suicides Coppola produced and directed Lost in Translation for which she won a Golden Globe for her screenplay and the Lina Mangiacapre Award at the Venice Film Festival. In 2006 she wrote and directed Marie Antoinette which she won a Cinema Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Her most recent film, The Bling Ring, was released in 2013 and is based on the true story of a group of teenage girls who robbed the Hollywood mansions of celebrities. She has also directed several advertisements for Christian Dior, Marc Jacobs, and H&M.

http://www.biography.com/people/sofia-coppola-10434307#awesm=~oBfAyLFszep2is