Tag Archives: Film Independent

ANDRÉ LEON TALLEY AT LACMA

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“The late seventies, when André Leon Talley came into his own, is the period when designers like Yves Saint Laurent and Halston produced the clothes that Talley covered at the beginning of his career at WWD, clothes often described as glamorous. It is the period referred to in the clothes being produced now by designers like Marc Jacobs and Anna Sui. ‘It was a time when I could take Diana Vreeland and Lee Radziwill to a LaBelle concert at the Beacon and it wouldn’t look like I was about to mug them,” Talley says.

“Daniela Morera, a correspondent for Italian Vogue, has a different recollection. ‘André was privileged because he was a close friend of Mrs. Vreeland’s,’ she says. ‘Black people were as segregated in the industry as they are now… André enjoyed a lot of attention from whites because he was ambitious and amusing. He says it wasn’t bad because he didn’t know how bad it was for other blacks in the business. He was successful because he wasn’t a threat. He’ll never be an editor-in-chief… No matter that André’s been the greatest crossover act in the industry for quite some time. Like forever.’ ” — Hilton Als, 1994*

Talley—Anna Wintour’s legendary right hand man—has been captured on film in Kate Novack’s new documentary THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ANDRÉ, presented this week by Film Independent at LACMA. The director and her subject will be on hand for a conversation after the screening.

 

ANDRÉ LEON TALLEY and KATE NOVACK—

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ANDRÉ

Thursday, May 10, at 7:30.

LACMA, Bing Theater

5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.

* Hilton Als, “The Only One,” The New Yorker, November 7, 1994, 110. (Reprinted in Als’ White Girls, 2013.)

Top: André Leon Talley and Yves Saint Laurent. Image credit: Getty.

Middle: Talley and Diana Ross dancing at Studio 54, circa 1979. Photograph by Sonia Moskowitz/Getty Images.

Below: Diana Vreeland and André Leon Talley working at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The model is Marlene Dietrich in the show Romantic and Glamorous Hollywood Design, 1974. Photograph by Bill Cunningham.

SALLY POTTER’S PARTY

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“There’s a kind of sweet nectar of laughter, en masse, and it’s something we need in troubling times.” — Sally Potter*

Potter—the brilliant, self-taught writer/director of Orlando (1992), Yes (2004), and Ginger and Rosa (2012), among others—began making movies in 1963, at age fourteen. This year she returns to the big screen with THE PARTY, a drinks-and-dinner gathering of friends turned Labour Party circular firing squad. This trenchant physical comedy of bad manners, politics, and betrayal stars Kristin Scott Thomas, Patricia Clarkson, Cherry Jones, Emily Mortimer, Bruno Ganz, Cillian Murphy, and Timothy Spall.

 

THE PARTY, now playing.

LANDMARK, 10850 West Pico Boulevard, Rancho Park, Los Angeles.

landmarktheatres.com/the-party

Opens February 23:

PLAYHOUSE, 673 East Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena.

laemmle.com/films

* Sally Potter and Elvis Mitchell, discussing the communal film-going experience, at the Film Independent post-screening Q & A at LACMA, February 15, 2018.

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Sally Potter at LACMA at the Film Independent screening of The Party, February 15, 2018.

Sally Potter on set in London, The Party. Image credit: Roadside Attractions.

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Sally Potter on the set of *The Party.*

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I, TONYA

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“All of the characters are rebellious and wrong-headed, and I wanted the screenplay to be that, too.” — Steven Rogers, screenwriter of I, TONYA, at the Film Independent screening at LACMA, December 8.

I, TONYA—director Craig Gillespie’s biopic of the infamous Tonya Harding and cohort—is a complicated film of multiple subjectivities. Wildly entertaining on one hand, yet occasionally squirm-making in its depiction of parental and spousal sadism as a component of a laugh-riot mockumentary.

“This never happened,” a gun-wielding Tonya (Margot Robbie) says as she glares into the camera, just before giving chase to her violent joke of a husband (Sebastian Stan) and blowing a hole through a kitchen cabinet. It’s one of the few times Tonya gets her own back during her three years with Jeff Gillooly, whom she married in order to escape the years of abuse dished out by her grenade-launching-helicopter-mom-from-hell (Allison Janney, peerless).

Tonya’s solace was figure skating, the one thing she truly excelled at. But—according to the panels who judged her performances and the media that covered them—excellence wasn’t enough. Tonya had the bad taste to be born poor, and all the choices that followed—the homemade outfits, the blue eye shadow, the crass corporate rock playlist that accompanied her out on the ice—prevented her from getting the scores she deserved in a sport where success is predicated on image as much as skill.

 

I, TONYA, now playing.

ARCLIGHT HOLLYWOOD, 6360 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles.

arclightcinemas.com/movie/i-tonya

arclightcinemas.com/en/news/itonya

LANDMARK, 10850 West Pico Boulevard, Rancho Park, Los Angeles.

landmarktheatres.com/los-angeles/i-tonya

I, Tonya editor Tatiana S. Riegel, screenwriter Steven Rogers, and Film Independent curator Elvis Mitchell at the I, Tonya at LACMA, December 7, 2017. Images courtesy of WireImage and Film Independent.

Tatiana S. Riegel, Steven Rogers, Elvis Mitchell, MS Stage

GRETA GERWIG’S LADY BIRD

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Elvis Mitchell: “Tell us about your first day as a director.”

Greta Gerwig: “I prepared and I over-prepared. Film is weird—it’s a timed art. For everything you’re doing [on set], that’s something else you’re not able to do. But I was ready. It’s a mix of being totally in control and totally out of control. It’s thrilling.”*

Actor-screenwriter Gerwig grew up in Sacramento, went to a Catholic high school, attended Barnard, and wanted to be a dancer.

The last part of that story provided the basis for Frances Ha (2012), her screenplay collaboration with her work and life partner Noah Baumbach.

For LADY BIRD, Gerwig took over the directing reins for the first time, and the completed work—a roughly autobiographical coming-of-age tale about the Sacramento years, starring Saoirse Ronan in the title role and Laurie Metcalf as her mother—is one of the standout films of 2017.

 

LADY BIRD, now playing.

LAEMMLE NOHO, 5240 Lankershim Boulevard, North Hollywood.

laemmle.com/film

ARCLIGHT HOLLYWOOD, 6360 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles.

ARCLIGHT PASADENA, 300 East Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena.

ARCLIGHT SHERMAN OAKS, 15301 Ventura Boulevard, Sherman Oaks.

arclightcinemas.com/movie/lady-bird

*Greta Gerwig and Elvis Mitchell at the Film Independent screening of Lady Bird (2017), LACMA, November 2, 2017.

Image courtesy of WireImage and Film Independent.

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BAUMBACH’S STORIES

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Elvis Mitchell: “You’ve made a film where art has replaced religion… The artist, played by Dustin Hoffman, feels patronized by the world. [Through his dialogue] he’s a narcissist writing history as it happens, as if no one around him is living it at the same time.”

Noah Baumbach: “Dustin told me that his lines were hard to remember because they referenced nothing external, but were all self-referential self-assessments… The best compliment I ever got was from Mike Nichols…”

Mitchell: “Well… ” [laughs]

Baumbach: “Nichols said, ‘You realize how embarrassed we all are.’ ”

(Conversation from the October 12 LACMA screening of Baumbach’s THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED), which was followed by a Q & A with Mitchell, curator of Film Independent at the museum.)

Embarrassment—recognized and shared—is always a delight in a room full of fellow movie-goers watching a new comedy by Noah Baumbach. And while Baumbach is happy for his current Netflix association, he’d prefer that you see his work in a cinema.

 

THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED), through October 26.

LANDMARK, 10850 West Pico Boulevard, Rancho Park, Los Angeles.

landmarktheatres.com/los-angeles/the-landmark/film-info/the-meyerowitz-stories

LAEMMLE NOHO, 5240 Lankershim Boulevard, North Hollywood.

laemmle.com/films/42922

Opening Friday, October 27:

LAEMMLE MONICA FILM CENTER, 1332 2nd Street, Santa Monica.

TOWN CENTER, 17200 Ventura Boulevard, Encino.

THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES (NEW AND SELECTED), now streaming on Netflix.

netflix.com/title/80174434

Noah Baumbach (left) and Elvis Mitchell at LACMA, October 12, 2017. Image courtesy of WireImage and Film Independent.

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