On his way into screening PoliWood for a packed house at MICA's Brown Center, Barry Levinson (right, following the post-film Q&A) answered three more questions, this time about attending the White House Correspondents Association's dinner Saturday night:

Q: Just what was the event like?

A: I was there once before, and it's an interesting night. Everyone tries to make it into a big story, "More celebrities than ever, Hollywood in Washington, who's controlling what." When you're there, it's Washington, and we're just voyeurs. We're not going to be changing policy. We're [saying to ourselves], "Oh, this is nice, this is a big room. This is pretty good."

I couldn't get over the hallways where all these various little parties were being held beforehand. If someone from the Fire Marshal's came, this would be impossible, because you couldn't move -- you could not move.

But it was exciting, fun; after all, this is a potentially interesting time. Obama got some huge laughs, he had some very good jokes, and Wanda Sykes had some great lines. She's getting controversy about her one line about Rush Limbaugh being a drug addict, but no one's saying that he was a drug addict. We're so overly sensitive to lines at time it's ridiculous. They're supposed to be having some fun...some of the reaction was nonsense.

Q: Did pundits always talk about the correspondents and politicians and celebrities all getting too close the way pundits are talking about it this year?

A: Didn't seem to, and now it comes up. Celebrities are always associated with Democrats, so that becomes an issue, even if celebrities were always coming to these things. Now it's part of the cultural wars that have been created, incorrectly. We've tried to turn this into, like football and everything else, something with two teams. And that's unfortunate because we have more in common than we don't and you see it in the polls. 80 per cent say this is where we have to go, there's a hardcore 20 per cent [that resist], and by the nature of the times we're in, those 20 per cent can make a lot of noise.

Q: Were you relaxed to be without your camera, or did you wish you were still shooting PoliWood?

A: I kept thinking, "Gee, I could have added another section with this." 

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For the sixth year, Sunday morning at the MFF belonged to the three-piece Alloy Orchestra, as they used their musical talents to breathe delightful new life into a silent classic. This year's lucky movie was Dziga Vertov's 1929 Man With a Movie Camera, a wondrous, almost playful look (in a decidedly Soviet way) at life in the Soviet Union. Streetcars hurtled down the track, orchestra musicians played their instruments, a baby was born...all to the pounding, propulsive beat provided by the keyboard and percussion of the Alloy. If, every year, the festival did no more than bring these guys to Baltimore, it would be enough.

After their performance, percussionist Terry Donahue took a few minutes to answer questions about how three guys, an electronic keyboard, some cymbals, a bass drum and a bunch of unlikely melodic objects -- including a bedpan -- make silent films seem downright cool. (By the way, Donahue prefers the term "junk percussionist." OK by me.)

How do you decide which films to compose scores for?

It's a rather complicated process. For the last 20 years now, we've been working with the Telluride Film Festival. They know so many people that have ideas about what we should do. We collaborate with them, and everybody throws us ideas. But ultimately, it's what will work for audiences. Not just film-festival audiences; it can't be so obscure as to just play film festivals, and it can't be so well-known as to just play general audiences. It's hard to find that line.

And then we want something that has a really good print, either a recently restored or really sharp-looking print. People at film festivals demand that sort of thing.

And then, ultimately, it's access. Can we get ahold of and rent this film and take it on tour and be able to use it for the next five to 10 years? All those things come into play when deciding on what we're going to do.

Photo by Chris Kaltenbach

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Zachary Levy's Strongman is a startlingly, emotionally intimate study of the relationship between Stanley "Stanless Steel" Pleskun, who bills himself as the strongest man in the world and proves it by traveling the auto-show circuit lifting pickups with his legs and bending pennies, and his girlfriend, Barb, who really wants to understand him and his ambitions, but doesn't always succeed.

Equal parts character study, rumination on artistic purity and Greek tragedy, Strongman, which Levy (left, during the post-film Q&A) worked on for nine years, won the Grand Jury Prize as Best Documentary at this year's Slamdance Film Festival. It was partly financed through its director's 2003 creation of "Bush Cards," playing cards featuring members of the George W. Bush administration.

Did you feel, at times, that you were imposing somehow, or that you were not where you should have been? Watching this film, it must have been very uncomfortable for you at times.

No. I came to make a film. I was there, and I wasn't going to go away. I was sort-of staking my place in their world. I don't think there were too many times when I felt I was witnessing something that I shouldn't have been, or that I was exploiting them or their situation in any way.

There were hard things for me to film. I empathized with Stan a lot in different places, so if I saw him going through something, it was not fun necessarily to watch it through the lens, or to watch him in pain through the lens. But at the same time, I'm there to make a film, to sdtay in it and to keep doing it.

Of course, the age-old question in cinema verite, going back to the Maysles, is how much does your presence influence events? How do you deal with that?

I don't think it does. Having been there, and having done a film that is very much of that tradition of 1960s-style verite, I don't think it does. I think what happens with the camera is that it amplifies what's already there. It definitely has an effect, but I think it's basically just to turn up the volume in a way, so that things that are latent on the surface begin to happen. It's not changing it, per se, it's just pushing some of these things to be seen.

What happens to Strongman next?

Ideally, my hope would be that it gets theatrical distribution, to release it like it was a traditional 1975 movie, where you have a theatrical release, and then television, and then a DVD, and then all these other things. Worst-case, I figure if I can't get an outsider or a big company behind it, I'll figure out a way to do it myself.

Photo by Chris Kaltenbach

 

 

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Maryland's own Eduardo Sanchez (right), co-writer and co-director (with Daniel Myrick) of 1999's The Blair Witch Project, is back with Seventh Moon, which screened at the festival Friday night. The China-set horror thriller stars Amy Smart and Tim Chiou as newlyweds who run afoul of some nasty demons that only get to roam the Earth when there's a full moon during the seventh lunar month. Despite some technical glitches that left ticket buyers watching a promotional DVD (complete with a watermark that ran across the bottom of the frame throughout the entire film), the Charles Theatre audience seemed appropriately chilled when finally let out onto the streets of Baltimore just before midnight. 

What should audiences familiar with Blair Witch expect from Seventh Moon?

It's a little Blair Witch-y, very hand-held and shaky, documentary-looking at times. It's a creepy film, the story's very simple. It's kind-of a chase film, it's got some very creepy moments. I think the creatures look really great, and Amy Smart is unbelievable in it.

Has Blair Witch been a cross that you've had to bear, in some ways?

Absolutely. Every time you make a movie, it's like, 'Hey, these guys did Blair Witch.' Blair Witch was like an explosion, we had no idea what it was. It's very hard to come back and make a normal film that doesn't change (everyone's) life, that doesn't come back and scare the crap out of everyone, like Blair Witch did. It's very difficult to keep the expectations of everybody realistic.

I've done two films now, and both films have been very well received. So now I've just got to keep going and see what happens.

But I wouldn't have a career without Blair Witch, so whatever cross I have to bear, I will gladly bear it.

What's next?

I'm in development of three films right now, and whichever one gets financed first is the one we're going with. There's a huge family film called Freaps, which will actually be the first film I made that I'll be able to show my kid. And then, we just optioned a really good horror script called The Last Inmate, which we're re-writing and already has a lot of interest. And then we are talking about possibly another Blair Witch movie somewhere down the pike.

The Last Inmate will probably be my next film; it's a smaller budget than the family film. But we're really excited about the family film. It's basically Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but with kids.

Photo by Chris Kaltenbach 

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Q: How important is the Maryland Film Festival to the overall goals of your office and filmmaking in Maryland?

A: It exposes Maryland to the visiting filmmakers who are here with their films. Maryland has always had a film-friendly reputation. This way they can experience Maryland locations AND hospitality first-hand.

Q: That's how it affects the visitors. How do you hope it will affect Marylanders?

A: It exposes filmmaking to the general public and gets everyone excited abut film. That makes it easier when we're out scouting locations and interacting with the public.

Q: What are YOU looking forward to seeing this weekend?

A: Certainly John Waters' pick, haven't missed a one yet. And this year we're hosting the panel series in the Tent Village so we're looking forward to creating communication and dialogue among visiting filmmakers, festivalgoers, local filmmakers and filmmaking students.

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Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait, a repentant no-show when a bad back forced him to cancel an appearance at the 2007 festival in support of his second feature as a director, Sleeping Dogs Lie, is making amends. Saturday night at 7:30, he'll host a screening of his new film, World's Greatest Dad, starring Robin Williams as a father whose teenage son thinks he is anything but.

Q: Sleeping Dogs Lie tended to give reviewers fits, as they had to contort their words in all sorts of weird ways, so they could talk about the film's plot in a family newspaper without getting fired. And yet, it was a surprisingly sweet film. What should people expect from World's Greatest Dad?

A: It's very similar in tone. The one thing I want to stress is that it's an indie comedy. I just hope that the folks I made this movie for will come out to see it. You know, with the combination of my name and Robin's, I think people might think it's another kind of comedy than what it really is. I sometimes wish I could promote it without my name attached.

I know that people really like Robin's performance, he's gotten some of the nicest reviews he's gotten in a long time. I don't know how to plug this movie. People say it's dark. But I just think that most comedies are too goddamned light.

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On the phone talking about his documentary essay PoliWood in anticipation of its festival showing Sunday at 5 p.m. at MICA Brown Center, Barry Levinson riffed on why arts guys and ecologists can't get what we want.

Q: Why, as you point out in the film, do art and education get the short end of the stick?

A. Because of this need, in the video age, for politics and social issues to be entertaining. You say "arts and education" to people and their eyes glaze over. Mention it on a broadcast and viewers will flip the channel so the anchors go to something else. There's no easy visual component to an issue like public funding of arts in education. So it's as if the issue does not exist!

Q: And that applies to all sorts of issues ...

A. Yes! The destruction of the Chesapeake Bay -- 40 percent of the bay is basically dead. It affects the economic situation and the health and the recreation and the quality of life of millions of people, but relatively few people have responded to it.

Q: What if people were literally falling over dead?

A: Put that on TV, you'd have something comparable to the Manhattan Project convened to resuscitate the Chesapeake Bay. Or of a celebrity took it up as a cause. Because if a celebrity backs a cause, whether it's better mental health care or other issues, people do pay attention for a minute.  

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