This was how Kate McKinnon—one of the hosts of Saturday’s 2016 Film Independent Spirit Awards—summed up the star-studded event during a mid-show sketch, planting sloppy one on the Love & Mercy nominee with a mouthful of ham. But while she was the only one who consummated this particular wish (other than perhaps Dano’s date, Zoe Kazan), there was plenty else for viewers to enjoy during this year’s show, held in its signature tent just north of the Santa Monica Pier....

Elfman, who has scored everything from Edward Scissorhands to The End of the Tour, appeared on one of the Los Angeles Film Festival’s popular Coffee Talks panels in June. The subject was film scoring. American Beauty composer Thomas Newman joined him on the panel. “This is kind of a film composer geek wet dream, isn’t it?” moderator Doreen Ringer-Ross, Vice President of Film and TV at BMI, said before jumping into the conversation....

Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath of Divide/Conquer have produced over a dozen feature films—most notably 2017’s Lucky, starring Harry Dean Stanton, which screened at SXSW); 2018’s Cam, released on Netflix, playing at the Fantasia Festival; 2018’s The Wind, which premiered at TIFF; and the upcoming remake of the cult horror film Black Christmas, from Blumhouse. Here, Adam and Greg discuss the advantages of having a producing partner, how raising money is always the hardest part of the process and how you can never underestimate the value of having the proper infrastructure and budget for post-production and delivery:...

Obviously a lot has changed since then, as three-dimensional discs have given way to online streaming and digital downloads, frequently without any sort of supplemental materials to let fans know just how exactly these fantastic films came to be. Luckily, there’s at least one place where you can still go for reliable first-person insight into the year’s best movies from today’s top auteurs: Film Independent’s Directors Close-Up. Now in its 16th year, the Directors Close-Up features a series of five weekly sessions (beginning February 1) dedicated to exploring the art and craft of filmmaking and creative collaboration—meaning you have not one, not two, but five consecutive opportunities to watch, in person, as 2016’s most accomplished and acclaimed visual storytellers delve deep into the ins-and-outs of modern moviemaking to offer up a pungent cocktail of practical career-building advice, personal anecdotes and behind-the-scenes production info....

Anomalisa’s unique journey from stage play to multiple Film Independent Spirit Award nominated tour de force was the focus of Film Independent’s second 2016 Directors Close-Up panel, held February 10 at the Landmark in Los Angeles. Moderator Jason Segel returned to the stage for his second DCU panel in as many weeks, following his turn as panelist on February 3’s discussion of The End of the Tour—read the full recap here....

For women who love indies, it’s always great to hear about a new project that’s centered around a compelling female character, and even more so when it’s got a solid team of women at the helm. So we were excited to learn that Film Independent Fellow Kate Roughan’s latest project is Day Out of Days by writer/director Zoe Cassavetes; the film is being co-produced by Gina Kwon and its DP is Denise Milford....

Day Six brought new surprises and speakers, including a special cross-cultural conversation between The Eddy producer and Film Independent Global Media Makers mentor Alan Poul and Egyptian filmmaker Amr Salama; plus, a panel of international producers from China, India, South Korea, Colombia and Lebanon talking shop and swapping stories. Keep reading for Day Six highlights. Two more days to go—be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in addition to our YouTube channel for more exclusive coverage of this year’s Forum....

Bellflower Official Synopsis Best friends Woodrow and Aiden spend all of their free time building Mad Max-inspired flamethrowers and muscle cars in preparation for a global apocalypse. But when Woodrow meets a charismatic young woman and falls hard in love, he and Aiden quickly integrate into a new group of friends, setting off on a journey of love and hate, betrayal, infidelity, and extreme violence more devastating and fiery than any of their apocalyptic fantasies....

And this one was budgeted at nearly $200 million dollars. “I went in and I took some storyboards and a little bit of work and I thought it was a good presentation,” said Cullen. “I was like, ‘They’re going to like my stuff.’” But then Disney came back saying they were “disappointed,” in him and his pitch. “I was really hard on myself because there was an opportunity and I dropped the ball....

Behind every (fill in the blank) great/glorious/funny/scary/sad story told on film is an equally great/glorious/funny/scary (yes, probably sometimes) sad story: the one about how the whole thing went from being an idea in a brain (probably many years ago) to a big screen premiere at a big-time Festival. In this Film/Maker Q/A blog series, our LA Film Fest programmers interview our LA Film Fest filmmakers to discover the stories behind the story....

The real-life camp eventually was discontinued because the youth couldn’t be kept in control. (It was the ’80s—breaking rules was totally tubular, man.) Director Benson Lee, Producer Andrea Chung, and actors Justin Chon, Tee Yeo, Jessika Van, Rosalina Leigh, Esteban Ahn, Albert Kong, and In-Pyo Cha were at the screening—and a number of cast and crew were in the audience—to discuss how the throwback film came to be. Lee revealed that he used social media to help cast the film....

There are a lot of clichés about how to succeed in Hollywood. Among them: the idea that it’s all about who you know—as if Entertainment is somehow the only workforce sector where a robust professional network might come in handy. And while there’s truth to the cliché, “who you know,” in this context, does not mean “a big-time producer whose car I once parked” or “an A-list celebrity whose office is on the same lot where I intern....

As a performer both onstage and in front of the camera, Bowie lent his innate alien charisma to a menagerie of oddballs both real and invented, from Ziggy Stardust to Nikola Tesla, imbuing each new persona with an otherworldly sense of cool and making them impossible to ignore. As a human signifier of bohemian authenticity for half a century, David Bowie’s presence in a movie was always a sign that the project was going to be unique....

Enter Murder Mystery Dinner Party. As its name implies, MMDP has taken the conventions of the standard, IRL “murder mystery party”—a favorite pastime of quirky geeks, inveterate puzzle-solvers and immersive theater enthusiasts alike—and reinvented the beloved (if niche) experience as a participatory online role-playing project utilizing such cinematic tools as pre-recorded video, acting and improve, screenwriting and creative sound design. Though Murder Mystery Dinner Party is far from the only immersive creative project to find success reimagined for our new Zoom age, it’s certainly one of the impressive, earning a glowing press mention in the New York Times despite being run by just one single person—creator and dinner party “host” Cortney Matz, an LA-based musician, writer and game designer with lots of ideas....

Maybe it was because the event, which brought series creator Jason Reitman and cast back to the LACMA stage to conjure Rob Reiner’s 1986 adventure yarn, was the second-to-last edition of the current Live Read season, or maybe the sold-out crowd was just misty-eyed from one too many pints of St. Patty’s Day cheer. Either way, the Bing Theater audience seemed primed for a double-dose of backwards-looking sentimentality—in the best way possible....

If you’ve never been to one of the Future Filmmakers programs as part of the LA Film Festival, here’s your opportunity to finally see the very best short films from young filmmakers—both high school and middle school—in its new form as a marquee standalone event, taking place at 2:00pm on Friday, August 9 at the ArcLight Culver City. The program features a curated selection of shorts written, produced and directed by young filmmakers from around the globe....

Writing—and especially screenwriting—is one of those jobs that might seem uncomplicated to civilians (“Just thinking of something and then writing it down? I can do that!”) but which is primarily internal, like a meditation practice or guessing in late-round bar trivia. It’s a skill developed with repetition and thoughtful instruction. Enter the 2022 Film Independent Screenwriting Lab, which seeks to provide the creative and career-building mentoring necessary to succeed as both writer and a professional writer in today’s film industry....

Many of this year’s Festival Class of 2016 are also, not for nothing, veterans of our myriad Film Independent Educational and Artist Development labs and programs. There’s even a fair amount of overlap with our amazing and talented Member pool, whose presence at this year’s Festival is—as we’ve noted before—similarly strong. And while prior participation in Film Independent labs and mentoring programs is by no means a guaranteed ticked to the auteur side of the LA Film Festival dais, it’s nevertheless a thrill to see so many members of our extended filmmaker family joining the illustrious ranks of our Festival lineup....

For a complete list of what to expect this year please see our announcement blog or check out our press release. You can also learn more about this year’s Directors Close-Up slate by visiting Film Independent’s Events page. Upcoming panels include discussions with filmmakers James Ponsoldt (The End of the Tour), Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson (Anomalisa), Meg Le Fauve (Inside Out), Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl), David Robert Mitchell (It Follows), Chloé Zhao (Songs My Brothers Taught Me) and Sean Baker (Tangerine....

Metropolis (1927) Fritz Lang’s dystopian masterpiece exposed wide audiences to the first robotic femme fatale: Maria. This scene showcases Maria as an emotionless, artificially intelligent sexual object, gyrating for the entertainment of a group of tuxedoed human aristocrats. Lang reveals the dangers inherent in a mechanical woman constructed for male pleasure, an alarming possibility that has been revisited in science fictions films time and time again. The Stepford Wives (1975) Despite somewhat mixed reviews upon its release, there is something so unsettling about this cult sci-fi thriller that it has remained alive in the cultural consciousness for decades, spawning several sequels and remakes....