Spotlight by Dean Treadway: 8 Must-See Narrative Features at the 2015 ATLFF

Even though I've only caught a little over 50% of the forty narrative films selected to be part of this year's Atlanta Film Festival, at this halfway point I inevitably have to arrive at a list of favorites. If you consider yourself an adventurous moviegoer forever on a quest for the new and different, here are eight choices you can rely on to provide you with just those hard-won qualities:

A DESPEDIDA (FAREWELL) (Marcelo Galvao, Brazil, 90m) My favorite film thus far at this year's ATLFF is this heartbreaking but never overdone examination of one person's final crack at dignity. In a performance of supreme bravery and athleticism, Nelson Xavier plays the Admiral, a once vital man whose 92 years have finally caught up with him. Rising slowly on a particularly good morning, he dresses and cleans up with fierce and treacherous difficulty, resolving to have one last day all to himself minus the doting of worried kids and caretakers. Marcelo Galvao's assured direction keeps things tense in a fast-moving city bustle that blurs past the Admiral's achingly slow, score-settling trudge towards that one final liaison with his much younger "brown sugar" (a devastatingly lovely and caring Juliana Paes). Consistently engrossing despite its measured pace, and completely fearless as it portrays the inevitable decay of the human body and the occasionally resultant rise of the spirit, A Despedida is something of a miracle: rarely have I seen a movie that bares the humility and wisdom of old age as does this extremely bittersweet and honest painting. It's definitely one of the masterpieces at this year's festival. In Portuguese with subtitles. A Despedida (Farewell) plays at the Woodruff Arts Center's Rich Theater on Saturday, March 21 at 4 pm; tickets can be purchased online here.

WILDLIKE (Frank Hall Green, USA (Alaska), 104m) In another of my absolute favorites of this year's ATLFF crop, writer/director Frank Hall Green follows the nervous path walked by 14-year-old Mackenzie (Ella Purnell in a compelling debut performance) as she takes up residence with her suspicious uncle (Brian Geraghty) in his Juneau, Alaska home. Quickly finding he's not to be trusted, she ankles it into the chilly wilderness, searching for a connection to anybody with which she can feel a modicum of safety. This leads her to an older man, Rene Bartlett (played with quiet power by a superb Bruce Greenwood), whom she finds hiking the mountainous trails as he attempts to escape his own dark past. Shadowing his steps, she strikes up a cautious, needy friendship—one with irritations that Bartlett often wishes he wasn't being saddled with. Cinematographer Hillary Spera perfectly captures the snow-capped yet utterly green beauty of Alaska while she also contributes piercing close-ups of characters whose deep hurts are dramatically in need of some healing time. Meanwhile, composers Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans provide the film with an alternately tense and tunefully evocative score. Still, it's the confident cast (which includes Ann Dowd, star of 2012 AFF entry Compliance), backed by Green's searing and always authentic screenplay, that one walks away remembering most thankfully. WildLike plays at the Plaza Theater's main auditorium on Saturday, March 21 at 5 pm; tickets can be purchased online here.

KRISHA (Trey Edward Shults, USA (Texas), 82m) Both monstrous and pathetic, with a mesmerizing command of the camera, Krisha Fairchild delivers a blistering performance as "heartbreak incarnate" in writer/director Shults' feature-length adaptation of his acclaimed short film. In it, the 60-ish Krisha is returning home after being estranged from her family for decades. It is Thanksgiving, and as the typical family mainstays are staged--the frantic cooking, the overly-competitive games, the ardent arguing and  soul-baring--Krisha past misdoings come slowly back to haunt both her and her family. Shults films this disaster in a dynamic slow-burn fashion, with a constantly moving camera shuttling between vividly lit tableaus, making this one of the most striking visual experiences of the festival. Highly emotional and even at times stunningly harsh, and with a terrific ensemble cast that's perfectly game, Krisha is a movie that staunchly rattles us with more than a few unsettling conclusions. Krisha plays at the Plaza Theater's upstairs auditorium on Saturday, March 28 at 4:45 pm; tickets can be purchased online here.

GOD BLESS THE CHILD (Robert Machoian and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck, USA, 92m) Deftly walking the tightrope between documentary and narrative filmmaking, this challenging work very simply chronicles one day in the life of the Graham family. In it, we follow an often overwhelmed teenager (Harper Graham) as she tends to the needs of her four younger brothers, all of whom spend the day battling each other in games of strength and burgeoning masculinity. All the while, Harper is searching and waiting impatiently for the parent who is missing in action. Superbly shot in low light and long takes that keenly place us in this poverty-stricken world, God Bless the Child gives us an often uncomfortably real sense of the joys, and the burdens, of raising a family with little support financially or emotionally. It's a plotless movie that some might find difficult, yet I felt it was constantly engaging and even sometimes wondrous in its daring, transporting abilities. God Bless the Child plays at the Plaza Theater's upstairs auditorium on Wednesday, March 25 at 7:15 pm; tickets can be purchased online here.

CHRISTMAS, AGAIN (Charles Poekel, USA (Brooklyn NY), 84m) Kentucker Audley delivers a superbly low-key performance in writer/director Poekel's wonderfully well-observed narrative filmmaking debut. In it, Audley plays Noel, the depressed night man at a Brooklyn Christmas tree lot whose drab routine is goosed up after he rescues a young girl (Hannah Gross) he finds passed out on a freezing park bench. Scored with a lively source music soundtrack and filled with the sort of alternately annoying and benign characters anyone who's worked retail could easily recognize, Poekel's film successfully transmits both a sense of the Christmas blahs and of holiday hope without ever obscuring the story's humanity with maudlin sentimentality. Christmas, Again plays at the Plaza Theater's upstairs auditorium on Sunday, March 22 at 6:30 pm; tickets can be purchased online here.

L'ANNEE PROCHAINE (NEXT YEAR) (Vania Leturcq, Belgium/France, 103m) Clotilde and Aude are high school best friends who make plans to enroll at the Sorbonne in Paris the following year. Writer/director Leturcq, in her first feature, follows these young women as they each struggle to discover their unique voice in their chosen fields, while also stumbling their way through romantic entanglements and family obligations. Along the way, the women find their search for knowledge is uncovering an ever-widening rift in their relationship—one that may be irreparable. Anchored surely by precocious lead performances from Constance Rousseau and Jenna Thiam, NEXT YEAR, while examining a friendship undone by competition and suspicion, confidently portrays those tentative steps taken when first venturing out into adulthood. In French with subtitles. L'annee Prochaine (Next Year) plays at the Plaza Theater's upstairs auditorium on Saturday, March 28 at 2:15 pm; tickets can be purchased online here.

POS ESO (POSSESSED) (Sam, Spain, 81m) Even as it ticks off homages to a litany of popular genre movies, I can say--without fear of reproach--that I've never seen anything like Spanish director Sam's expertly crafted stop-motion animated horror story. Watching it is like seeing Wallace and Gromit being split open and gutted before our terrified yet somehow bemused eyes. The film follows a faith-challenged priest and his inevitable clash with Damien, the devil-possessed child of Spain's most famous bullfighter and his Flamenco-dancing superstar wife. Genre fans will have fun spotting the references, most obviously to William Friedkin's The Exorcist, but also to films like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Gremlins, The Evil Dead, Alien, and even well-loved horror obscurities like The Beast Within and The Gate. Though this is definitely not a film for kids, with its nudity and shocking plasticine gore, Possessed smartly navigates the rarely tread line between the animation and horror genres. For fans of both, this one's not to be missed. In Spanish with subtitles. Pos Eso (Possessed) plays at the Plaza Theater's upstairs auditorium on Friday, March 20 at 9:45 pm; tickets can be purchased online here.

APARTMENT TROUBLES (Jess Weixler and Jennifer Prediger, USA (Brooklyn, NY and Los Angeles, CA), 77m) Frothy but with the sharp edge of desperation, Apartment Troubles is the impressive feature debut of writer/directors Weixler and Prediger who star as Olivia and Nicole, two struggling Brooklyn artists trying to keep up with the ever-escalating rent being imposed on them by their stern landlord (Jeffery Tambor). When the pressure becomes too much for them, they mount an escape to Los Angeles, where they take up with Nicole's rich and famous aunt (a lively Megan Mullally) and discover that their friendship is at a point where it could either be deepened or destroyed. With notable appearances by Will Forte, Christopher “Kid” Reid and Lance Bass, this breezy yet slyly emotional comedy provides a terrific platform for the talents of these newly-minted filmmakers. Apartment Troubles plays at the Plaza Theater's main auditorium on Sunday, March 29 at 2:15 pm; tickets can be purchased online here.

Atlanta native Dean Treadway is the Co-Host of Movie Geeks United, the internet's #1 weekly podcast devoted entirely to movies, with 750 industry guests and four million listeners worldwide. His blog, filmicability, has over 500 articles obsessing over films present and past and is approaching 1 million hits.

Spotlight by Dean Treadway: "Frances Ha" and Greta Gerwig

Among the finest features of the 2015 Atlanta Film Festival is Growing Up Baumbach, the retrospective of one of this year's honored filmmakers, Noah Baumbach, who's repped at the fest with one of his two new films, While We're Young (starring Naomi Watts and Greenberg collaborator Ben Stiller, playing Wednesday, March 25th, 7 pm at the Plaza Theater). The retrospective has already covered his 1995 debut, a look at post-collegiate aimlessness called Kicking and Screaming, and his Oscar-nominated 2005 film The Squid and the Whale, about a dissolving family of New York intellectuals. Yet I think they've possibly saved the best for last with Baumbach's 2012 teaming with star/co-writer Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha (playing Wednesday, March 18th at 7 pm at the Plaza Theater). I still think it's Baumbach's most visually resplendent movie, and as such, it's primed to be seen on the big screen where we can better enjoy its wily black-and-white gorgeousness.

Baumbach's second 2015 film, Mistress America, will be released later in the year, which is particularly exciting because it features his third collaboration with Gerwig (who broke through to widespread acclaim  in 2010 with her superb supporting performance in Greenberg). From the look of things, their work together is shaping up to be among the most fruitful director/actor collaborations currently hitting screens, and certainly Frances Ha bears this out with its sympathetic, energetic peer into the life of a scrambled artist who's let her rambling youth intercede too far into her adulthood. Gerwig plays a dancer--one without particular talent or drive--who slowly sees the connections around her falling by the wayside. Her relationship with her boyfriend self-destructs in the very first scene, and things keep getting worse for Frances as the film moves on. Her once vital friendship with roommate Sophie (an excellent Mickey Sumner) hits a harsh roadblock, and this sends Frances spiraling into a frantic and hilarious search for her place in the world (literally). Instantly in the pantheon of great New York films (stylistically extremely indebted to Woody Allen's Manhattan, though transplanted to hipstery Brooklyn), Frances Ha is constantly funny, beautiful to behold (with cinematographer Sam Levy's amazing B&W images and a clever source music score featuring David Bowie and French New Wave composer Georges Delarue), and it's the utterly perfect vehicle for Gerwig who, with her articulate eyes and inquisitive mind, continues on her path to being among the most treasured actors on the indie scene.

I've been a fan of Gerwig's ever since being astonished by her work in both Greenberg and Nights and Weekends, her 2008 directorial debut with Joe Swanberg. As the co-host of Movie Geeks United, I had long been angling to get an interview with her for the show, and in 2012, I was successful in landing a 40-minute talk with her about her work on Frances Ha (she was extremely generous, as we had initially only been given 25 minutes together). So I thought I'd include that here as a special bonus. It's a captivating conversation, as I hope you will agree. See you at Frances Ha on Wednesday, March 18th at the Plaza Theater!

In this interview from the Movie Geeks United podcast, actress Greta Gerwig (Arthur, No Strings Attached, Greenberg, Damsels in Distress) discusses her impressive career, including her new film 'Frances Ha'. For more information on Movie Geeks United, and to access our archive of over 700 filmmaker interviews, visit http://www.moviegeeksunited.net.

Atlanta native Dean Treadway is the Co-Host of Movie Geeks United, the internet's #1 weekly podcast devoted entirely to movies, with 750 industry guests and four million listeners worldwide. His blog, filmicability, has over 500 articles obsessing over films present and past and is approaching 1 million hits.

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Spotlight by Dean Treadway: "Dante's Down the Hatch"

Any native Atlantan will be able to tell you about their first visit to Dante's Down The Hatch, once the city's most revered jazz club and fondue palace. With its warmly detailed nautical decor (complete with an alligator-filled moat), this magical spot ruled Atlanta nightlife for 43 years before being closed in July 2013. But, luckily, through Jef Bredemeier's bittersweet new documentary, we can revisit the hallowed decks of this Atlanta institution, even if we're also treated to the sad sight of its demolition as part of the bargain. Bredemeier, a longtime employee of The Hatch, gets unfettered access to the restaurant's busy final days, while drawing a candid portrait of its idiosyncratic mastermind Dante Stephensen (who cuts a memorable swath onscreen with his smoking pipe and his southern gentlemanly looks). The film finds time to ruminate on the restaurant's design and operation, as well as on the "straight ahead" jazz sounds heard wafting through the restaurant's air each night. Stepping into the establishment itself was like traveling back to a more hep era of craft and class, and so acts Dante's Down the Hatch in similar fashion: it's a genial time capsule of a recently passed era, and as such it's essential viewing for those interested in Atlanta's quickly evaporating history. It's also a road map for anyone seeking to learn how to run a business infused with heart, imagination and intelligence. Dante's Down the Hatch will premiere at the 2015 Atlanta Film Festival on the Plaza Theatre's main screen on Sunday, March 29th at 4:30 pm, with an encore showing at 7 pm.

We talked to director Jef Bredemeier about his experiences filming the final days of Dante's Down The Hatch:

I'm curious what your previous filmmaking experience is.

This is my first film and it's all basically very new to me. I had experimented somewhat with video work on a photo shoot out in LA. I did an interview and followed this musical duo around for a week and, when I came back to Atlanta, I had a friend help me edit a little short segment on them. Now when I decided to do the documentary on Dante's, there was a whole world I had to learn in order to pull it off. I opened up Premiere Pro account while filming and just started watching every tutorial I could get my hands on. If I needed to do something, I had to look it up or reach out to friends with questions. I wanted this film to look good--Dante's is a place that is over the top and mind-blowing and this would be the only memory left of it. 

That seems like a tremendous responsibility to take on, especially given your debut status and the legions of fans of this establishment. But your love of The Hatch sings through in every moment of the film. When did you definitely decide that you needed to record these moments in time?

Dante pulled the team together one night in November and told us that we would be closing our doors forever. Every jaw was on the floor because we never thought he would do it. I had worked there for over 13 years at that point and that's longer than I had lived in any house growing up. That's when I thought someone should be filming this--this whole thing, everything. The place means a lot to the people who've dined there but that's nothing compared to the people who had lived there for ten, twenty, FORTY years. Over the years I can safely say that I got sick of waiting tables but I never got sick of The Hatch. I always loved the way everything looked and felt.

How long was your filming schedule, and did you run into any roadblocks along the way?

I started with New Year's Eve 2012 and continued filming into 2014 after the tear-down, doing interviews and follow ups with Dante. Other than that, there was no schedule. I was waiting tables five nights a week but I always had my camera rig hidden behind the bar so I could cover my tables and start recording. I came in on my days off or I came in early before my shift and stayed late. After waiting on 70 to 80 customers, I'd grab a beer and head up to the office where Dante and I would just sit and talk with the camera on a tripod. There were hundreds of old employees coming into town for one last meal so I was ready for anything. The difficulty was the amount of running around without a shot list or a script or even the experience of knowing what to do. It was months of chaos. Shooting in a jazz nightclub was also difficult because, if you caught something great while "Eleanor Rigby" was playing in the background, you might as well delete it because getting the rights is next to impossible. 

Wow, I bet that WAS tough, dealing with all the music issues! As I'm sure you realize, your subject, Dante Stephensen, is a real treasure, and I sense he had a lot of respect for you as an employee and as a filmmaker. What is it that you think set him apart from other employers or restaurant owners?

Dante put his people first. He made sure that he had a crew that could work well together and had a personal investment in the place. This was his family and he wanted us to be happy so that we could give the people of Atlanta an amazing experience. The restaurants motto is "Where the employees give a damn" and you can ask anybody how hard it is to work for someone else after you've had the experience of working at Dante's Down the Hatch. It was a well-oiled machine. He gave yearly bonuses for good performance and he'd call meetings just to read a bunch of positive letters from customers. At many other restaurants sometimes the only exchange you'd ever have with the boss is when you're doing something wrong. That was NOT Dante. That style of managing people is driven out of fear that somewhere down the line it might be a problem and they end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. My favorite part of making this film is the long talks we'd have about the industry as a whole and why we excelled in so many areas. This was how he and I always spoke to each other so as a boss he is very approachable and truly enjoys talking to people. That is the side of Dante that I really wanted to show in this film. 

You get the feeling, as one interview subject says, that the flame of the restaurant was burning very brightly before it went out. Do you think all the activity before the restaurant's closing helped Dante and his employees keep their mind off the inevitable final day?

Honestly, I think it was a good and bad that we were so busy. The massive reaction of the city that came out for one last dinner with us was amazing and record-breaking. That crew worked themselves to the bone with three times the amount of business than they had ever seen. Those of us that stayed to the bitter end received a severance package from Dante on top of the great money they were making, so that helped a lot in the transition of losing our jobs. I will say that the only sad element was that a lot of us didn't have time to process what was going on, up until the very last day. We were all sort of speechless when we left that last night. You're standing in a parking lot with around fifty of your close friends that you won't be seeing on a daily basis anymore and you just went through what felt like war with these people. Dante's started with a bang and it finished with one as well and I don't think we'd have it any other way.

The auctioning of all the ephemera in this beautiful place and then the dismantling of the restaurant is some of the most powerful stuff in the film. Those must have been incredibly rough days to shoot, given your personal involvement in the place. What was your own emotional state during all of this?

It was hard for a lot of us to watch our home be picked to pieces and stripped to an empty shell. It's difficult to not compare it to vultures in the desert, but when you really stopped to think about it, the place was not going up in flames or being trashed. The people that were coming in to this place were gathering parts and pieces of Dante's that could live on somewhere else. As Richard Sorenson says in the movie "It''s like a 43-year-old dandelion that has cast its seeds to the wind." As the filmmaker I was listening to everyone's emotions not only over the course of the dismantle but during the year of editing as well, so at times it was very tough to keep reliving the experience. I think the hardest moment for me was filming Allen Murphy, who has past away since the closing, singing "Now that I know what loneliness is" on the very last day. That was the song for a lot of us that rang true to what we were feeling about starting a new life and moving on. As soon as he started singing I could feel my eyes filling up and the camera started to get blurry. I just held the frame and hoped he was still in it. It was difficult. 

Allen's performance is definitely one of your movie's emotional highlights, so you're to be commended for keeping a few tears out of your eyes long enough to shoot it all. In the end, what did you take away from your experience first as an employee of Dante's and then as the maker of the documentary?

What I've learned now. over the past 15 years in service of this man. is to follow your gut--follow your dreams, even while walking around people that think you're crazy for doing it. He dug a hole out of the mud in Underground Atlanta to put in it a pirate ship with a jazz band, crocodiles and fondue. Everyone thought he was out of his mind. Working there taught me how to think for myself and spend less time trying to get away with stuff and more time not disappointing those around me. At the start of this project, I was a painter, primarily, and I had no business making a movie. But I had an amazing story to tell and I had to step up to the plate to tell it. I had a lot of doubts around me but nothing compared to the self-doubt that plagued me of messing up this important piece of history. I loved Dante's Down the Hatch and I loved creating the long goodbye that it deserves.

I think it's amazing that, despite your lack of experience, you just said "Screw it" and went on ahead. And you were right to do so, as you've provided people--particularly Atlanta natives, but also fans of the restaurant from around the world--a lasting document to this unusual labor of love that Dante Stephensen created so long ago. I should say, I love movies made by people who've never made movies before, and you've made a whopper of one here, one filled with heart and soul. Do you see anything now presently in Atlanta that approaches the experience of Dante's, or do you think that it's just an impossible thing to ever approach or recreate?

This type of place is a dying breed. Opening up a restaurant is a risky operation, even one without a 500 gallon moat of water in it. I'm sure in the future something will compare but it's hard to say. The timing of everything, even back in the 70's, fits into how this place came into existence. The appreciation of live jazz is even falling by the wayside. It's my hope that this film will teach people what is possible and if I was someone looking to open a restaurant on any scale, I'd want to get the advice of someone who did it well. I'd talk to Dante and the staff of amazing managers and really look at what's important when it comes to creating something for the long haul.

I think that's good advise--he's someone who obviously did it right, to the nth degree. Okay, so, finally, we come to my standard closing question, since I'm such a movie geek: name five movies you love, or that you think inform your filmmaking style?

I've always been in love with movies that move me. The first film that actually got me into painting on a serious level was Basquiat. The flow of that film just takes you through a whirlwind of that man's life. I was completely blown away by it and I choke up ever time it ends. For some of the same reasons I can't say enough about Dead Poet's Society. With living in the art world for so long you can't help but relate to the character of Neil. The antagonist is not necessarily Neil's father but the world that his father comes from, and that is sometimes the fiercest bad guy in an artists life, the fear of going against the grain. I love movies like Cast Away that stay with the character, and stay with the shot. There's a part in my documentary that focuses on Dante's face as he watches the last Fourth of July firework display and I want you to be there with him and feel what he's going through. Pride and Prejudice is, I think, an amazing display of human nature and all the grinding thoughts and assumptions that we have about the world that attempt to protect us but sometime are the things that cause us our own grief. She was a character born with a natural ability to speak her mind regardless of what the times told her she shouldn't be saying. Lastly, I'd have to say that a film like Inception would be an amazing example of creating a movie that was not based in "give them what they want" but more so in "give them something to reach for." It was a puzzle that was not afraid to be difficult to solve. It was a piece of artwork that really pushed you to understand it while being wildly entertaining and visually dynamic.

Author Dean Treadway is the Co-Host of Movie Geeks United, the internet's #1 weekly podcast devoted entirely to movies, with over 700 industry guests and four million listeners worldwide. His blog, filmicability, has over 500 articles obsessing over films present and past and is approaching 1 million hits.

Sunday, March 29, 2015 at 7:00 PM — The Plaza Theatre, Main Theatre

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Spotlight by Dean Treadway: "Janey Makes a Play"

Already one of the 2015 Atlanta Film Festival's most charming offerings, Jared Callahan's debut feature documentary Janey Makes a Play moves like the fastest circus train that's ever rumbled through town. It tells the story of a 90-year-old firecracker of a lady whose penchant for community theater invigorates the little California community of Rio Vista. Janey (the filmmaker's grandmother, though this fact is never revealed in the film) is the generous and energetic star of the show, though she and Callahan's movie willingly give up the stage to a large and wild cast of amateurs, making this into sort of a Waiting for Guffman with heart (Callahan's movie doesn't mock its participants as does Christopher Guest's comedy, but it doesn't pretend either that Janey's productions are of Broadway or even off-off-off-Broadway quality; this is a fun movie, but it isn't mean). In a speedy, well-edited 80 minutes, Callahan's cameras capture the riotous weeks leading up to Janey's 18th stage production, one that she fears might be her first flop. The high school football star can't remember his lines, the ingenue hardly shows up for rehearsal and can barely stand locking eyes with her romantic lead, the complex sets--including a popcorn cannon--aren't working out as planned, and the town's downward economic turn is squeezing the life out of some of the supporting cast. Still, the community's more creative types turn out for Janey and her plays, simply because they lead many of these kids and adults to greater realizations about their abilities and to higher ambitions for the future. Callahan's film stands as a testament to a woman with fiery spirit and a bottomless creative drive, yes, but it also serves as an ultimately touching ode to the adrenaline-pumping joys to be had in simply putting on a show. It's remarkably assured, sweet-natured stuff and not to be missed. Janey Makes a Play (whose trailer can be seen here) has its World Premiere at the Atlanta Film Festival on the Plaza Theater screen Sunday March 29th at 2:30pm.

We talked with the film's director Jared Callahan recently about the process of constructing Janey Makes a Play:

How long have you had this idea to do this film about your grandmother?  

I got the idea while visiting home for Christmas in 2011. Janey was at my parents’ house and we were chatting about the play they just finished. When she started describing her ideas for the 18th original musical melodrama, the whole movie instantly formed in my head. We got called in for dinner, and I wrote "Janey Makes a Play" on a note in my phone. I didn’t think anything would come of it, as typically one idea actually materializes for every 200 or so that I write!  The next month the idea wouldn’t leave my mind, so I began fleshing it out with potential plot and character arcs. I convinced myself this was something that might be worth filming. When Janey and the group in Rio Vista gave us permission, we were ready to begin principal photography in August of 2012.

What are your memories of her growing up? Do you feel like she's influenced your own creativity?

I was really into basketball growing up. For my birthday one year a package arrived that was perfectly basketball shaped. When my birthday came I tore into the round-shaped present from Janey...and it was a globe of the moon, a moon globe. Haha! That’s Janey. She moves to the beat of her own drum, always has been such a free spirit. Theater, dance, and music have been a part of her life for so long, it is who she is. Something that doesn’t come across in the movie is her drawing. Janey draws the most amazing pictures, and when we would ask her about it she just dodges the questions! That’s how amazing she is, that she doesn’t even see what she is creating as unique. It is just her way of life. And I didn’t realize how much Janey had influenced my creativity until making this movie. It was wonderful to be learning things about my own family and myself as she told stories. At a test screening someone said, “Wow, Jared, I understand you a lot more now.” I was totally caught off guard; it hadn’t even dawned on me until then, but now I see it. She inspired a whole family of performers and creatives. The way I think and view the world have totally been influenced by Janey’s creativity

Has she ever asked you to be in one of her plays?

I would have loved to be in one of her plays! She started making the plays the year I moved away for college. The plays have involved so many of my aunts, uncles, and cousins that they truly are a family affair!  So I would always hear about what they were doing, but was never a part of them. Janey bounces story and plot ideas off of me when she is writing the plays, but I’ve never acted on her stage. We have joked about trying to do a play where the whole family gets to act together; it’d be a riot.

It looks like you got pretty unfettered access to the town of Rio Vista and its people. Did you encounter anyone who didn't want to be part of the film's production?

Janey introduced us to everyone as, “This is my grandson and his friends, they are going to make a movie about us.” Everyone received us really openly, but I also don’t think they knew the size of the project. One couple Googled us and watched our other films online. They gave me a knowing nod the next time we saw them, as to say that they knew what we were about, but that was it. Everyone was on board. People love Janey so much that they were more than willing to help us. Pretty much the moment we finished shooting people were asking to see the film. People outside the film industry have very little concept of how long it takes to finish a film. I eventually put up a teaser just to try and show the scope of the movie. I think we did over 65 interviews for the film. Once people in town saw the teaser I think they grasped the scope of the project, and we were given more grace to finish the film well.

Yeah, your film has a dauntingly large cast of characters, but you found time in 80 minutes to give them all distinct personalities. I'm wondering about your process in the editing room. What was your ratio of footage used to footage discarded, how long was the shoot, and how complicated was the post-production schedule?

Post-production felt crazy on this film. We had full characters and plot lines that got cut from the film just due to space. We shot for 21 days across the three months they were making the play. We edited the film for over a year to get to the rough cut. We had three different editors quit the film due to a combination of having so much footage and having very little money to pay them. It was a huge job. The movie began to take form when Brad Kester joined on as editor. He and I worked together to figure out what we actually had filmed. Sometimes you think you have a very strong storyline, but then when you see the footage, it isn’t as strong as you think. Having multiple voices in the edit helped us sharpen those parts.

We were hugely blessed to have Toy Gun Films see the rough cut and come on board to help finish post-production. We did test screenings through the Fall of 2014, and received really helpful feedback. I had gotten so close to the characters I didn’t realize there were some very basic plot questions that we were not answering. We did 3 days of reshoots, mainly interviews to fill in some gaps. The film was just finalized the first week in March. Making a movie feels like running three marathons in a row; production, post, and now we are beginning the third marathon: trying to get people to see the film!

In the end, the goal was to let the characters who embodied the town and the theater troupe have the most voice. I think that you get a true sense of who these people are and why they do what they do. It is extraordinary that everyone in town makes these plays as a part of their regular life. I hope seeing this film allows them to see how transformational their plays have been for so many in town. I hope the story we captured in this film allows their inspiration to travel far beyond their own small town.

I feel like the film is just as much about the joys of being creative as it is a portrait of Janey. Do you feel this is accurate?

Making a film about Janey is making a film about creativity. I think the film is about the creative process and community more than anything else. All these people are giving so much of their lives to these community theater shows, and the only way they can explain it is by saying they love it. The only resistance I got to anything was from Janey over the title of the film. She hated the idea that she would get any credit, let alone the title role. To me the title has layers because as you watch the movie it is obvious that she, at 90 years old, is the motor behind the whole production. Yet, no one person can “make” a play, it takes a small army. The heart of the film is that the townspeople care about each other enough to create a safe place for storytelling and vulnerability to thrive.

I know you did this film while working on Destin Cretton's films Short Term 12 (which is rightfully highly acclaimed) and I Am Not a Hipster. What was your role in the making of those films, and what kind of support did you get from from your collaborators on those projects?

I owe a lot to Destin and the creative family from San Diego. Many of us attended the same small liberal arts college, Point Loma Nazarene University. A community formed who would all crew each others’ projects. Someone would write a script for a short film, call everyone, and say, “I wrote a script about a guy who has a watermelon for a head, you want to make it?” So all I knew was everyone doing everything to pull off a short film. So when Destin asked everyone to crew his short film entitled Short Term 12, everyone snapped into our regular roles. That film ended up winning the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Short Filmmaking in 2009. From there Destin’s projects got bigger, and we all got invited back for I Am Not a Hipster. When I help on projects my natural skill set leads me to be 1st Assistant Director. I can be loud and organized, which helps with crowd control. That same creative family ended up doing a lot on Janey Makes a Play. They helped with filming, editing, doing the original score, and advising the post production process. They are an invaluable friend group, and have definitely helped shape who I am as a storyteller.

You're a recent transplant to Atlanta, I know. What led you to move here rather than stay in California?

I moved to Atlanta in September of last year, then pretty much locked myself in my house to finish the edit! I am excited about the thriving creative communities here, as well as the cheap cost of living. I couldn’t have completed this film working in California because I couldn’t afford to pay rent, while not getting paid to edit. I helped organize the student film program with the San Diego Film Festival, and was quick to try and get plugged in with the ATLFF. The people and programming at the ATLFF have blown me away! So many amazing things happening here. I cannot wait to be at this year’s festival. If you see me there, please introduce yourself! I need to meet people here!

I certainly will! You'll know me when you see this big bald guy wandering around all over the place. Okay, so, finally, my standard final question: name five movies that you love or that have influenced your filmmaking style.

• Amelie because it gave me permission to make films about daydreamers.

• Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums because they have stylized and solid storytelling. So intentional.

• Fight Club, Seven and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Fincher because his use of detail and lighting is inspiring. Every frame matters and is worth fighting for--if you don’t believe that then don’t make movies.

• American Movie, Billy the Kid, and every other documentary where someone picked up a camera and pointed it at someone interesting, because without them, my movie wouldn’t exist.

Author Dean Treadway is the Co-Host of Movie Geeks United, the internet's #1 weekly podcast devoted entirely to movies, with over 700 industry guests and four million listeners worldwide. His blog, filmicability, has more than 500 articles obsessing over films present and past and is approaching 1 million hits.

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Spotlight by Dean Treadway: "Good Grief Suicide Hotline"

Atlanta director Sam Carter and his co-screenwriter Evan Fowler ring up some pretty dark laughs, as one might expect, in their new comedy Good Grief Suicide Hotline. This raucous farce has Dane Davenport starring as innocent soul Mark Reynolds who guiltily offers his services to the titular hotline after a personal tragedy leaves him searching for answers. Immediately, though, he starts to regret this outreach, especially after meeting the very near suicidal nuts working at this drab, dreary outpost of humanity. Carter's film is consistently funny in its near offensiveness, and this is particularly due to its superb ensemble cast, including the hilarious George Faughnan as the hotline's feckless leader, Hannah Fierman (from former ATLFF fest entries V/H/S and The Unwanted) as a drug-addled pixie nightmare girl, Evan Fowler as the hotline's resident slimeball, Ben Owen as its stress-ball squeezing closer, and Theodore Abner as a high-strung co-conspirator named Clairmont.  Good Grief Suicide Hotline has its premiere screening as part of the 2015 Atlanta Film Festival at the Plaza Theater on March 23rd at 9:30 pm.

We talked to director/co-writer Sam Carter about the process of making Good Grief Suicide Hotline in Atlanta:

I feel like the ensemble really performs well together in your film, so I'm curious about the casting process. Were the parts written with these actors in mind, or were there open auditions? 

A bit of both, actually. Cooper was written for Evan and Adam was written for George. We knew we wanted Matt Pharr (Gary Spidoni) involved, but originally considered him for a different role. Other characters, like Doug (Ron Ogden), were written with a short list in mind. Spencer and Shirley were our biggest question marks, because though they are supporting characters, their roles play such a vital part to the comedy of the film. But, Ben Owen and Casey Holloway both just destroyed their auditions and made the selection process much easier. 

Their rapport was so sharp, I'm also led to ask if there was a rehearsal period?

A little, but not as much as I would have liked. We did a couple of table reads with the cast, and Dane Davenport (Mark) and Hannah Fierman (Lizzy) and I set aside some time to work on their scenes, but really a lot of that was just naturally occurring or was manufactured in the editing room. I try to cultivate a very relaxed set to keep my actors comfortable. Comedy's tough enough without adding any additional stress on top of it. 

The script you and Evan Fowler wrote, it's got a lot of risky laughs in it. Obviously, you're not worried about offending people, poking fun at such delicate subjects. We're all too offended these days anyway, wouldn't you agree?

Well, here's the funny thing about that. Believe it or not, we set out to make a dark, but not necessarily a controversial film. We wrote the script in 2011 and shot it in early 2012. You know what happened AFTER we shot it? The Aurora movie theater, Sandy Hook, Isla Villa, and a bunch of other mass shootings. The rate of mass shootings in the US has literally tripled since we shot the film. Beyond that, before such a beloved iconic figure as Robin Williams killed himself, suicide wasn't nearly as risqué a topic as it has since become. There was a suicidal character played for laughs on Scrubs--SCRUBS for god sakes! So, while I'm a firm believer that we should be able to make fun of anything because otherwise we give it far too much power, I've had to stand back during post and watch as my film has become increasingly offensive. At the end of the day, my movie isn't about making fun of depressed people or about the selfishness of suicide. Good Grief is about making fun of narcissistic people and the selfishness of doing good in the world for the sole purpose of being praised by others. 

I think that definitely comes through in the film. You landed a lot of great locations for the shoot, including Atlanta institutions Star Bar and Java Monkey. How did the shooting go in these locations and what strings did you have to pull to land them? Any guerilla filmmaking on the streets here? 

Good Grief has deep roots in the world of Atlanta stand up comedy. We got the Star Bar because we cast half of their Monday Night Comedy line up and because Rotknee Leete was able to pull some strings. The Java Monkey was a similar situation in that a couple of our crew members knew the owners. But yes, there's a ton of permitless guerrilla filmmaking throughout the movie.

You used narration in an unusual and creative fashion, too. Was it difficult striking a balance regarding this element of the movie?

I'm a huge fan of Arrested Development and always loved the function that Ron Howard's narration served on that show. There are so many moments throughout that series that would fall flat without the narration. There probably are moments in Good Grief in which we overuse the narration. But, by and large, I feel that its effectiveness benefits the film.

What do you find is the #1 benefit of filming features in Atlanta? 

Atlanta has a wonderfully close knit indie film scene. There are a lot of very supportive and very talented people here. It's my hope that with all of the studio productions here in town, the opportunities afforded to the actors and crew will continue to grow. It's great when our people get camera assistant gigs, but it will be better when we start getting cinematographer gigs.

Finally, my standard closing question: Name five movies you love, or that you feel influence your own filmic style. 

1) The Big Lebowski

2) Groundhog Day

3) A Face in the Crowd

4) The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

5) Shaun of the Dead

Author Dean Treadway is the Co-Host of Movie Geeks United, the internet's #1 weekly podcast devoted entirely to movies, with over 700 industry guests and four million listeners worldwide. His blog, filmicability, has over 500 articles obsessing over films present and past and is approaching 1 million hits.

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