Hot in awards season, BEHIND THE LENS, continues to look at the best and brightest in cinema, in films both big and small. And this week it doesn’t get much bigger than Academy Award nominee GRETA GERWIG. But filmmakers all start somewhere and also joining the show this week are JAY DOCKENDORF and KENNY SULEIMANAGICH who are headed to Sundance Film Festival for the first time. If you missed #BTLRadioShow live, you definitely want to catch up now!
Joining us live in the top half of the show, take a listen as we welcome Oscar nominee and writer/director GRETA GERWIG talking LITTLE WOMEN, which picked up six Oscar nominations this year!! The first time I interviewed Greta was for the Duplass Brothers film, “Baghead”, and it has been a joy to follow her trajectory and catch up with her on various projects over the past decade-plus as she moved from acting into writing and directing. There’s a reason LITTLE WOMEN nabbed six Oscar nominations this year – Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Score, Best Costume Design, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture – and that reason is Greta and her vision. She is thoughtful, thorough, and meticulous at every level of production, as you’ll hear during our conversation. And it is the sum of all the parts that is what led the film to its Best Picture nomination. Listen as we talk about the winning storytelling triumvirate of Jacqueline Durran and her costuming, Jess Gonchor’s production design, and Y0rick Le Saux’s telling and beautiful cinematography, plus Alexandre Desplat’s exquisite score. But we don’t stop there. While much attention this season has been paid to the lead actors of LITTLE WOMEN, how about the strength of story for supporting characters Aunt March, Mr. Lawrence, and publisher Dashwood, and their acting counterparts, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, and Tracey Letts? We dig into that aspect of the film as well. And, perhaps one of my personal faves about this film, Greta chose to shoot on film. Her considerations for shooting on film, and her own personal experiences as an actor working with film and digital, leads to great insight into Greta as a filmmaker.
On the heels of our conversation with Greta, writer/director JAY DOCKENDORF and cinematographer KENNY SULEIMANAGICH join us talking about their new short film making its World Premiere at Sundance this month, THREE DEATHS. Adapted by Jay from Tolstoy’s acclaimed 1859 short story of the same name and its rumination on life and death, like “Little Women”, THREE DEATHS is shot on film. Listen as Jay talks about the appeal of Tolstoy 160 years after publication and his approach to adapting the written word for celluloid, while Jay and Kenny talk about color palette, structure, handheld camera vs sticks, sound design and the beauty of silence, their filmmaking collaboration, and why they chose to also shoot on film over digital. It’s interesting to hear the perspectives of Jay and Kenny with their approach to their short film in comparison to Greta’s considerations for her feature.
