Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Some innovators try to devise a gadget that changes the world. Others hope to solve a global social ill. Sarah Sherman is eager to bring fake vomit on “Saturday Night Live” into the modern age.
30.10.2023 - 15:27 / deadline.com
Leading Tamil filmmaker Mani Ratnam shared deep insights and filmmaking secrets from his illustrious 40-year career in a master class at Mumbai Film Festival, moderated by self-confessed fan and Hindi film director Imtiaz Ali.
In a standing room only session that lasted nearly two hours, the celebrated filmmaker started by talking about how he was working as a management consultant when the films of masters such as Akira Kurosawa, Guru Dutt and Bimal Roy inspired him to seek a career in cinema.
“At that time, the only way you could become a director was to work as an assistant director with some big filmmaker – that would be a period of some seven or eight years and I was not patient enough for that,” Ratnam remembers.
“So I thought I’ll write a script, convince a director and learn everything about filmmaking that way. But when I finished writing, I thought I’d direct myself even though I had no clue how to do it. And the only thing I learned very fast is that when you’re shooting, you have to pretend that you know.”
Joking that he also suffers from imposter syndrome, Ali led Ratnam into talking about his first films in the early 1980s (which included one of Anil Kapoor’s first films, Kannada-language Pallavi Anu Pallavi) and an early encounter with leading Tamil actor-producer Kamal Haasan. “I pitched my first film story to Kamal and he listened politely and then told me three stories,” Ratnam recalled.
“He also told me something fairly significant – he said, ‘don’t aim at the heart, aim at the gut until you make it’. In a sense, he was telling me to make something that a lot of people could identify with, don’t speak in a language they don’t understand.”
Ratnam reinvented Tamil cinema throughout the 1980s, with
Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Some innovators try to devise a gadget that changes the world. Others hope to solve a global social ill. Sarah Sherman is eager to bring fake vomit on “Saturday Night Live” into the modern age.
Will Tizard Contributor Robbie Ryan says “becoming a diplomat and a bit of a politician” was one of the key skills he learned while filming “Poor Things,” the surrealist Frankenstein-esque adventure by Yorgos Lanthimos, starring Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe. The film screened at the Camerimage cinematography festival in Torun, Poland, where director of photography Ryan and Dafoe presented it to a packed screening hall on the fest’s opening night.
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After 25 years of writing in Hollywood, David Hemingson is having a moment. A writer and producer on television shows such as “Just Shoot Me!,” “American Dad,” the cult favorite “Don’t Trust the B—- in Apt.
Jennifer Esposito, who accumulated around 70 credits as an actress in movies and series before making her debut as writer and director of Fresh Kills, has signed with Echo Lake Entertainment. The management company is tasked with helping her forge a new career path. When you have mortgaged your house to make her first film as Esposito did, it stands to reason you would not be happy thinking you got that out of your system, and go back to waiting for the phone to ring with acting jobs.
Hello, and welcome to the Scene 2 Seen Podcast. I am Valerie Complex Associate editor and film writer at Deadline!
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The Fantastic Beasts movies are essentially done, at least for now.
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