The eight-day festival is set to return to Kings County on Oct. 17 with a frightening slate of films and events, all hosted at Nitehawk Cinema’s theaters in Williamsburg and Prospect Park.
The festival is bookended with a pair of chilling new movies. Indie comedy-horror “Dead Mail” will make its New York debut on opening night, and “The Rule of Jenny Pen,” starring period drama favorites John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush, will close the festival out.
But the thrills will continue all week long. The lineup is packed with new films like Tiago Teixeira’s “Custom,” Sasha Rainbow’s “Grafted,” and Phillip Escott and Sarah Appleton’s new documentary “Generation Terror,” all making their North American debuts.
Comedy-horror ‘Dead Mail’ makes its New York premiere on opening night. Photo courtesy of the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival
Another three horror flicks will make their world premieres at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival: “House of Ashes,” the first feature by director Izzy Lee; “Lilly Lives Alone,” an atmospheric ghost story; “Psychonaut,” a queer science fiction romp.
What’s old is new again as the festival celebrates an old scary movie favorite: vampires. The 1970s vampire classics “Vampyres” and “The Blood Spattered Bride” will be screened in 35mm, but perhaps the highlight of vampire programming is the Spanish version of “Dracula” with a live score by The Flushing Remonstrance. Stepping away from film, The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies will present a lecture by Dr. Leah Richards titled “Queer Vampires, Queer Liberation, Queer Futurity.”
Other festival highlights include the Turkish revenge flick “Sayara,” a screening of several episodes from the new horror anthology series “Tales from the Void,” and and a special presentation of prolific horror director Larry Fessenden’s 1995 vampire film “Habit,” followed by the presentation of the festival’s Leviathan Award and a Q&A with Fessenden and Jenn Wexler.
The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival runs from Oct. 17-24 in Williamsburg and South Slope. The full lineup and schedule of events is available online.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Few of the vegetables grown in the 21st century are in their original wild form. Many are the result of crossbreeding carried out by humans. The intention is to increase the nutritional value of the food, boost its yield, improve its resistance to insect predators, and help it survive weather extremes. I invite you to apply the metaphor of crossbreeding to your life in the coming months. You will place yourself in maximum alignment with cosmic rhythms if you conjure up new blends. So be a mix master, Aries. Favor amalgamations and collaborations. Transform jumbles and hodgepodges into graceful composites. Make “alloy” and “hybrid” your words of power.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): “All I ask is the chance to prove that money can’t make me happy,” quipped comedian Spike Milligan. I propose we make that your running joke for the next eight months. If there was ever a time when you could get rich more quickly, it would be between now and mid-2025. And the chances of that happening may be enhanced considerably if you optimize your relationship with work. What can you do now to help ensure you will be working at a well-paying job you like for years to come?
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The World Health Organization says that 3.5 billion people in the world don’t have access to safe toilets; 2.2 billion live without safe drinking water; 2 billion don’t have facilities in their homes to wash their hands with soap and water. But it’s almost certain that you don’t suffer from these basic privations. Most likely, you get all the water you require to be secure and healthy. You have what you need to cook food and make drinks. You can take baths or showers whenever you want. You wash your clothes easily. Maybe you water a garden. I bring this to your attention because now is an excellent time to celebrate the water in your life. It’s also a favorable time to be extra fluid and flowing and juicy. Here’s a fun riddle for you: What could you do to make your inner life wetter and better lubricated?
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Cancerian rapper and actor Jaden Smith has won a few mid-level awards and has been nominated for a Grammy. But I was surprised that he said, “I don’t think I’m as revolutionary as Galileo, but I don’t think I’m not as revolutionary as Galileo.” If I’m interpreting his sly brag correctly, Jaden is suggesting that maybe he is indeed pretty damn revolutionary. I’m thrilled he said it because I love to see you Cancerians overcome your natural inclination to be overly humble and self-effacing. It’s OK with me if you sometimes push too far. In the coming weeks, I am giving you a license to wander into the frontiers of braggadocio.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Research by psychologists at Queen’s University in Canada concluded that the average human has about 6,200 thoughts every day. Other studies suggest that 75% of our thoughts are negative, and 95% are repetitive. But here’s the good news, Leo: My astrological analysis suggests that the amount of your negative and repetitive thoughts could diminish in the coming weeks. You might even get those percentages down to 35% and 50%, respectively. Just imagine how refreshed you will feel. With all that rejuvenating energy coursing through your brain, you may generate positive, unique thoughts at an astounding rate. Take maximum advantage, please!
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): You have probably heard the platitude, “Be cautious about what you wish for. You might get it.” The implied warning is that if your big desires are fulfilled, your life may change in unpredictable ways that require major adjustments. That’s useful advice. However, I have often found that the “major adjustments” necessary are often interesting and healing — strenuous, perhaps, but ultimately enlivening. In my vision of your future, Virgo, the consequences of your completed goal will fit that description. You will be mostly pleased with the adaptations you must undertake in response to your success.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): The bird known as the gray-headed albatross makes long, continuous flights without touching down on the ground. I propose we nominate this robust traveler to be one of your inspirational animals in the coming months. I suspect that you, too, will be capable of prolonged, vigorous quests that unleash interesting changes in your life. I don’t necessarily mean your quests will involve literal long-distance travel. They may, but they might also take the form of vast and deep explorations of your inner terrain. Or maybe you will engage in bold efforts to investigate mysteries that will dramatically open your mind and heart.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): You are in a good position and frame of mind to go hunting for a novel problem or two. I’m half-joking, but I’m also very serious. I believe you are primed to track down interesting dilemmas that will bring out the best in you and attract the educational experiences you need. These provocative riddles will ensure that boring old riddles and paltry hassles won’t bother you. Bonus prediction: You are also likely to dream up an original new “sin” that will stir up lucky fun.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Your spinning and weaving abilities will be strong in the coming weeks. I predict that your knack for creating sturdy, beautiful webs will catch the resources and influences you require. Like a spider, you must simply prepare the scenarios to attract what you need, then patiently relax while it all comes to you. Refining the metaphor further, I will tell you that you have symbolic resemblances to the spiders known as cross orbweavers. They produce seven different kinds of silk, each useful in its own way — and in a sense, so can you. Your versatility will help you succeed in interesting ways.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Capricorn basketball player JamesOn Curry had the briefest career of anyone who ever played in America’s top professional league. Around his birthday in 2010, while a member of the Los Angeles Clippers, he appeared on the court for 3.9 seconds — and never returned. Such a short-lived effort is unusual for the Capricorn tribe — and will not characterize your destiny in the coming months. I predict you will generate an intense outpouring of your sign’s more typical expressions: durability, diligence, persistence, tenacity, resilience, determination, resolve, and steadfastness. Ready to get underway in earnest?
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): It’s a good time for you to embrace the serpent, metaphorically speaking. You may even enjoy riding and playing with and learning from the serpent. The coming weeks will also be a favorable phase for you to kiss the wind and consult with the ancestors and wrestle with the most fascinating questions you know. So get a wild look in your eyes, dear Aquarius. Dare to shed mediocre pleasures so you can better pursue spectacular pleasures. Experiment only with smart gambles and high-integrity temptations, and flee the other kinds. P.S.: If you challenge the past to a duel (a prospect I approve of), be well-armed with the future.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Panda bears don’t seem to enjoy having sex. The typical length of their mating encounters is from 30 seconds to two minutes. There was a dramatic exception to the rule in 2015, however. Lu Lu and Zhen Zhen, pandas living at the Sichuan Giant Panda Research Center in China, snuggled and embraced for 18 minutes. It was unprecedented. I encourage you, too, to break your previous records for tender cuddling and erotic play in the coming weeks. The longer and slower you go, the more likely it is you will generate spiritual epiphanies and awakenings.
Homework: What can you do to boost your ability to have fun?
On the subject of money and ownership. Earlier this year, following the cancellation of several Black TV shows, you wrote, “studios and streamers no longer care about loyalty or enduring legacy.” Why does Hollywood, in 2024, still have such a difficult time aligning its legacy with its business?
Well, here’s the thing, the legacy business, they feel as if that work is behind them.
But isn’t that what Hollywood is built on?
Yes, but to create new legacy and new inroads, to them, that is less important than extracting every possible dollar from existing IP. It’s more expensive, quote-unquote, to create something than it is to rest on existing laurels. The beginning of the end of this, to me, was when Warner Brothers and UPN merged into The CW. Now, 20 years later, the CW is a shell of itself. In mergers, you’re no longer competing with someone to make the best content. With the merger of Warner Brothers and Discovery, they own, what, one fourth of TV? That competition era of television—it’s over.
Which has a direct impact on the creative side.
The legacy-driven model only happens now in vanity. So a lot of stars are using their own distribution or first-look deals to produce things. And these are the majority of people who are allowed to create. So what does Hollywood mean when the only people who are given freedom are people who have already done the taxing work—if they have at all—to become stars? Hollywood is not in the business of guarantee. Everything must be proven before it’s even created.
And if that’s the case, so many people get left out.
The fight for nostalgia as currency comes in a moment where some of the highest rated things are non-white. That’s not an accident. It’s as if television, media, and filmmaking are becoming manifest destiny in the wrong ways. And there’s nothing sadder.
Perhaps we need better frameworks.
People have upended industries to chase Netflix. And no one has caught up. Everything has fallen in this chase. What’s happening now is, people are only duplicating the best and the most watched. There is no diversity in how things are being delivered.
You once described “post-2020 Black media as akin to a modern day blaxploitation boom.” It got me thinking about platforms like Tubi and AllBlk, which are sometimes mocked as being a kind of streaming ghetto, but those same streamers have also given opportunities to young creators.
Blaxploitation, as I was saying, makes way for Spike Lee, it makes way for the ‘80s independent Black movement that, of course, shapes everything we know about modern Black film and modern Black media. At every valley, there is a peak. It’s the nature of life. So what do I think is a head? We should be thinking about independent models that have existed before our current era. There are many ways to make media. With pilot season essentially dying, as the studios have announced, what are some ways that Black creators can forge together to make what they desire?
I mean, I don’t know if I have the answers, but I do have the curiosity. And oftentimes curiosity and care—and leading with them—can transform how we understand history and the future.
Finding your way as a teenager can be brutal. A whirlwind of big emotions and desires is tough to make sense of, let alone communicate. The need for social acceptance can feel intensely urgent, even if it means being untrue to yourself. And the adults raising you never seem to get it. What’s a kid to do?
Filmmaker Sean Wang dives deep into these growing pains in his debut feature Dìdi, a heartfelt follow-up to his Oscar-nominated short documentary Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó. Wang’s coming-of-age tale, now in theaters, centers the inner world of Chris (Izaac Wang), a 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy growing up in the Bay Area suburb of Fremont in the late 2000s. Chris regularly bickers with his older sister, lives with two doting matriarchs—his mother, Chungsing (Joan Chen), and his Nǎi Nai (paternal grandmother, played by Chang Li Hua), both of whom immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan. His free time includes recording the neighborhood shenanigans that he and his friends get into for his YouTube channel. But he also yearns to belong; the film beautifully captures the nuances of navigating being a first-generation kid fluent in a culture that the adults raising him are not.
Joan Chen as Chungsing Wang and Izaac Wang as Chris Wang in Dìdi.
Courtesy of Focus Features
The script began to materialize when Wang was 22, though he credits an “existential crisis” at 26 for getting his creative wheels turning. “That was the [age] both of my parents immigrated to America. For the first time, I had a direct connection to what my parents’ experience was,” he says. “They didn’t speak the language and didn’t have any friends and hoped for the best. It felt wild and made me empathize with the experience they had—and while trying to raise two more-or-less American children in America. As we get older, the gap becomes wider and wider.”
But Wang’s hope for what comes next is clear: that Dìdi unlocks inspiration in a new generation of storytellers. “Hopefully 10, 20 years from now, this movie won’t be unique and there’s a bunch of coming-of-age movies about Asian American kids and the different kinds of experiences that they live.” And, Wang adds, “shoutout to my mom.”
W caught up with the director about seeing his parents through a more empathetic lens, bringing the AOL era back to life onscreen, and his advice to budding filmmakers ready to tell their own coming-of-age tale.
Fremont is a big part of the movie. Have your feelings about your hometown changed as an adult compared to when you were a kid?
Yes, absolutely. So much of what I thought was a negative—like growing up in what I considered at the time to be a boring, mundane suburb—is what made it so fun. My friends and I would meet up and go do whatever, create our own fun.
Courtesy of Focus Features
The Bay Area is diverse, but Fremont especially is a deeply rooted immigrant community. I’d go to my best friend’s house and eat home-cooked Korean food, and then have a really amazing home-cooked Pakistani dinner at my other best friend’s house. I didn’t realize how special and unique it is to grow up in such a multicultural community until I got older. I’m really appreciative of it now.
So much of Dìdi feels anchored in teenage angst and the dynamic between Chris and his mother. There’s a specific grief and sense of isolation I think a lot of first-gen kids don’t recognize or process about their parents’ experience in a new country until adulthood. Did those sort of themes and meditations come up for you when working on Dìdi?
Definitely. There was a lot of life informing art with this movie. Growing up, you only know what you know. You’re not growing up like, oh my immigrant parents…that’s just the world you’re born into. Then you start thinking, what is my context and what is the context of the generations before me?
Mahaela Park plays Madi, Chris’s love interest.
Courtesy of Focus Features
It was cool to experience the early 2000s nostalgia in Dìdi, like seeing a character scoping out an old-school Myspace profile of a crush, having your feelings hurt by a friend’s Top 8, and hearing the AIM messenger sound.
The movie takes place in 2008 because I was 13 that year. The Internet was such a big part of our lives, but it wasn’t our whole lives. I thought about the movies I loved like Stand By Me and The Sandlot and I was doing that with my friends during that time—just running around outside and hanging out until the sun sets. But it was fun to integrate all of that Internet language into our movie in a way that felt not gimmicky and just a part of the story.
Many Asian people from different walks of life, and especially Asian boys and men, have shared how seen they felt watching Dìdi. Do you have any advice for upcoming filmmakers who might feel inspired to tell their own story after watching the film?
I would say look inward. There’s so much noise out in the world now with Instagram, the Internet, and everything coming at you all at once. The exercise I had to keep doing for myself on this movie was trying to make it more personal. I get a lot of people asking me what advice do you have for Asian American filmmakers…but you’re also a filmmaker, you’re not just an Asian American filmmaker. A lot of people were like, how did you nail the Asian elements of this movie? Just think of your own life experience. The things that are closest to home for you are the things that you know the most intimately. All of that is a resource as a director and a filmmaker.
Courtesy of Focus Features
Bringing a movie to the big screen is a huge feat. What’s one aspect of this experience that makes you especially proud?
I’m really proud of the number of people who worked on this movie, for whom it was also their first feature experience. My producers Carlos López Estrada and Valerie Bush, it was their first movie as producers. It was my first movie as a writer-director. My cinematographer, who I’ve worked with for ten years, it was his first narrative feature film. My editor, who edited the movie Missing which takes place almost completely online, it was her first live-action narrative. It was the casting director’s first time casting a feature.
People would maybe advise against that, but I felt so strongly in my gut that these people were right for the job. We weren’t hiring them based on their résumés. And a lot of that energy and excitement of having never made a feature before seeped into this movie—not necessarily knowing the “right” way to do it because we’d never done it before, but trusting when it felt right to us. That sort of naivete worked for the better.
Young and Robinson weren’t planning on entering the exhibition space back when they were touring their movies, but those experiences did end up planting seeds for Big Bad later on. “The napkin scribbles were really our experiences with Kay [Lynch] at Salem Horror Fest and Mitch [Harrod] at Soho Horror,” Robinson says. “They’ve been really great resources for us in terms of how to put together a semi-home grown festival.”
Group Chat
Besides being the ultimate in communal cinematic experiences, another way action movies mirror scary ones is the infinite shareability of bite-size nuggets pulled from their choicest scenes. A standalone clip of a fight scene or even just a GIF of a single, eye-popping kick to the face can be thrilling enough to draw people into watching a whole movie so they can catch that one moment. This makes Twitter, where you have the speed of a scroll to grab someone’s attention, fertile ground for action movie fandom. Sometimes, entire conversations are built around fans just saying names back and forth to each other with awesome media attached.
Boyka! *GIF of spinning kick through the air* Fist of the Condor?! *clip of Marko Zoror destroying a guy* CYNTHIA ROTHROCK! *still of her with Michelle Yeoh in Yes, Madam!*
Dropping into the right Action Twitter thread can feel like falling into a greatest hits playlist of the coolest looking movies you’ve never heard of. You can either sink your teeth in and go the deeply technical route with accounts like Shogun Supreme, an Action Twitter megamind known for their granular color grade and audio comparisons across the various physical media releases for a single film. Or you can just punch in and have a ball with handles like Exploding Helicopter, which truly exists to document every time a helicopter has ever exploded in a movie.
Young says that account expanded his personal watch list by “hundreds” of titles when he first wandered into Action Twitter, and it was one of the feeds he got hooked on back in the days when everyone was living almost exclusively online: the 2020 Covid lockdown. “I was waking up very early and throwing on the El Rey Network,” says Young, referencing the genre-heavy cable channel. “From five in the morning to 10 in the morning all they played was Shaw Brothers films, and I got obsessed with them and started looking for people to talk about them.”
From there Young started following writers on Twitter like Brandon Streussnig, who spearheads the now-annual Vulture Stunt awards; Priscilla Page, who does rigorous close reads into movies like Top Gun: Maverick and Mad Max: Fury Road; and Outlaw Vern, a veteran of Ain’t It Cool News and independent critic who has written books on the movies of Steven Seagal and Bruce Willis. Young discovered accounts like One Perfect Headshot that were spreading the gospel of things like Chinese DTV action movies. He started learning about how those Shaw Brothers classics he was mainlining “go hand-in-hand with the Scott Adkins and Isaac Florentines of the world.”
We’re Gonna Need a Montage
Twitter was teaching Young the language of action beyond what gets the most showtimes at your local AMC theater, and even though Big Bad Film Fest wouldn’t go live until 2023, it was those terrible, halcyon days of pre-Elon Twitter that spawned the idea of a festival made just for action fans. A prompt went around on the platform at one point for people to create their own month of dream programming at Quentin Tarantino’s famous L.A. repertory theater, the New Beverly Cinema. Young’s slate ended up being almost entirely action movies, and that got him thinking enough to message Robinson about it.
“Patrick just texted me one day. I feel like all of our collaboration has been the drunken theme of talking to your buddy and you’re like, ‘We should start a bar!’ Except we do it dead sober and go ‘We should start a film festival!’” But unlike most bros who dream of opening a bar, the longtime creative partners started doing the leg work to figure out actual logistics: which theater to set up at (one they live close to!), getting DCPs (Digital Cinema Package files that play on projectors) made of movies so they weren’t just putting Blu-rays up on a screen; and corralling enough filmmakers to say yes to their unknown, untested festival to build out a whole weekend of programming.
Filmmaker Alex Garland was joined by his long-time collaborator and producer Andrew Macdonald in Edinburgh to ponder their career-spanning relationship, favorite projects andupcoming 28 Days zombie trilogy.
The duo, who have teamed up on titles such as The Beach (2000), 28 Days Later (2002), Ex Machina(2014), and most recently, Civil War(2024), spoke at an Edinburgh International Film Festival event on Sunday to a jam-packed room of industry professionals (who were hanging onto every word).
Garland and Macdonald discussed how they came to work together, as well as a few rows they’ve had over the years. Garland, who began his career as a novelist with The Beach before pivoting into screenwriting and, eventually, directing, admitted that while he doesn’t particularly enjoy directing, there is one film – his debut directorial feature – that he considers his top pick from an impressive resume.
“I never wanted to be a director,” Garland says, before prompting audience laughter with: “I wanted to stop directors from changing things and the only way to do that was by occupying that position [of director].”
“I enjoyed Ex Machina very much… It was an easy film to make. It was logistically easy, and that helped. We had four weeks in [London studio] Pinewood on a sound stage, two weeks in Norway on location. We had a very small cast.”
Ex Machina stars Domnhall Gleeson as a young programmer who becomes part of a bizarre experiment at the house of a genius scientist (Oscar Isaac) where he forms a relationship with a female robot (Alicia Vikander).
“The cast were young and very hard-working and very committed,” Garland continued. “We had a very friendly crew that believed in the project and was working as hard as they could. There was a good vibe, and everyone was pulling together. It was friendly.”
Garland elaborated on some “toxic” movies he and Macdonald have worked on, drenched in “bitching” and “fallings out,” and why Ex Machina came at just the right time. “Speaking for myself, but I always speak for Andrew too,” he said, “we had just done a sequence of toxic movies and toxic film sets are extraordinarily unpleasant places to be. You cannot escape the bitching, the factionalization, the departments falling out with each other. They’re just terrible. And I think Ex Machina came as an antidote to that. It was the precise opposite.”
The iconic scene where Isaac and his robot break out into dance, memorialized in “gif” form, came about from his own critique of Never Let Me Go, Garland explained, where Garland had learned that a film requires a “disruption of tone.”
Garland and Macdonald also spoke about the upcoming trilogy of films following on from apocalyptic thrillers 28 Days Later and 28 WeeksLater. In 2025, 28 Years Later, with a budget of around $75 million, will mark the start of a set of three films from Boyle, Garland and Macdonald. “We’re making, hopefully three more 28 films with the first one called 28 Years Later that Alex has written, and Danny has directed, and has finished shooting,” Macdonald said. “Then we’re just about to start, tomorrow morning, actually, part two. And then we hope there’s gonna be a third part and it’s a trilogy.”
Macdonald said the films will be a British sci-fi trilogy with an all-British cast set in the north of England, specifically Northumberland and Yorkshire.
Garland and Macdonald separately touched on the difficulties of making the recently-released Civil War, set in a dystopian future America where a team of military-embedded journalists are attempting to reach Washington D.C. before rebel factions get to the White House.
“We literally couldn’t go to America,” Macdonald said of the COVID pandemic complications. “We had to wait and then we had to get special visas to go. And we made it just at the tail end of COVID. We made it with the backing of A24, who, from a producer point of view, were just amazing, because they backed what Alex wanted to do with one of the biggest budgets they had ever spent at that time.”
When asked about the political nature of the film and claims that Civil War “doesn’t pick a side,” Garland let loose. “I’m in my mid 50s and I’m a centrist,” he said. “That’s where I am politically. I’m a centrist. I’m left-wing centrist. So I write and I think and I talk and I move through the world in a centrist position. The idea that centrism is not a political position is idiotic. It is a political position. It is a political position against extremism. It’s actually specifically against the extreme right, I would say, because that’s the greatest danger that democracies tend to encounter, and they do encounter.”
He continued, “If you take that danger seriously, then centrism is a position you can take. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right one. It’s my one. The idea that centrism is apolitical is just stupid.”
Civil War, written and directed by Garland, has grossed over $122 million worldwide.
Edinburgh International Film Festival runs until Aug. 21.
Gena Rowlands, the singular actress whose career in Hollywood spanned nearly 60 years, died on Wednesday, August 14, at the age of 94. Earlier this year, her family announced that she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. While many remembrances will focus on her performance as the older version of Rachel McAdams’s character in The Notebook—perhaps her most popular work of this century—Rowlands was in many ways America’s first true independent film star. Rowlands and her husband, the actor and director John Cassavetes, took roles in more lucrative mainstream films in order to fund their passion projects paving the way for American independent film as we know it.
The old crack about The Velvet Underground is that while few people originally bought their debut album, everyone who did formed a band. Something similar could be said about Rowlands. Her work in Cassavetes’s films, little seen at first, went on to be a major influence on acclaimed stars like Laura Linney and Sarah Paulson. Chloë Sevigny recently went viral for raving about Rowlands in front of Kim Kardashian. Though, perhaps Hollywood has no greater Rowlands acolyte than Cate Blanchett.
“When I see the work of Gena Rowlands, the intense authenticity and the immediacy of her acting seems to me to be the closest that anyone has ever come to capturing on film that special quality, that presence, of a live stage performance,” Blanchett said while presenting Rowlands with an honorary Oscar in 2015. “There is quite simply no membrane between Gena and her audience. She makes me forget entirely that she’s not actually inside my brain.”
P. Shirley/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Rowlands was born in Cambria, Wisconsin to a homemaker mother and a politician father, a member of the Progressive Party. She studied acting in New York and performed throughout much of the ’50s on both stage and the small screen. She married Cassavetes in 1954, and the pair often appeared opposite each other in film and television. Rowlands’s film career took off in the ’60s with supporting roles in films fronted by the likes of Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, and Rock Hudson. But her star rose in 1968 with the release of Faces. Directed and independently financed by Cassavetes, the film is now considered a landmark in American independent cinema. Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman acknowledged its influence, and a young Steven Spielberg famously worked on the film as an unpaid runner. Rowlands had a supporting role as a high-end sex worker, and in a review at the time, Roger Ebert praised her for “[avoiding] the heart-of-gold cliches,” instead portraying a character who “has her own problems and a deep reservoir of human sympathy as well.” A young Paul Schrader, then working as a movie critic, noted that Rowlands seemed to truly come alive in the film in comparison to her other Hollywood work.
United Archives/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Rowlands would take the lead in Cassavetes’s 1974 film A Woman Under the Influence. Originally written for the stage, Rowlands decided there was no way she could play her character, a working-class mother struggling with alcoholism and mental illness, eight times a week. It almost wasn’t made until Peter Falk, best known as TV’s Columbo, took a co-starring role and provided $500,000 in funding.
Cassavetes gave Rowlands wide leeway to interpret the role as she pleased.
“He said Gena, I wrote this with you in mind …and you said that you wanted to do it, well then do it,” Rowlands recalled in 2015. “It was the most wonderful feeling of freedom. The part belongs to you …It’s freed me up in many things since so that when I hear the word ‘action,’ it’s not any pressure. It’s mine to do with what I think is right.”
Rowlands turned in an uncompromising, confrontational, often upsetting, and yet fully human performance that left critics at the time struggling to find anything else to compare it to. The film originally struggled to find distribution. Cassavetes called up art house cinemas himself to get it booked. But a rave review from Richard Dreyfus on national television provided a boost of influence. “I went crazy. I went home and vomited,” he exclaimed on The Mike Douglas Show. Rowlands was nominated for an Oscar for her performance and also picked up a Golden Globe.
Rowlands and husband John Cassavetes at the 47th Academy Awards.
Michael Ochs Archives/Moviepix/Getty Images
“It is the most compelling, unexpected, unpredictable ten minutes of film that I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen acting like that,” Falk told Rowlands in a reunion years later of her performance of the film’s climatic breakdown scene. “You’re going to watch this scene of this lady here, it is going to get you. I don’t care if it’s 100 years from now. It will always be powerful.”
Rowlands with James Garner in The Notebook.
Melissa Moseley/New Line/Kobal/Shutterstock
Rowlands continued to make films with Cassavetes (most notably Gloria and Opening Night) until his death in 1989. She maintained a long career in television films, winning three Emmys, including for her starring role in The Betty Ford Story and a supporting role opposite Uma Thurman in Hysterical Blindness. She also appeared in Strangers, opposite her own on-screen icon, Bette Davis. Rowlands continued to find roles in Hollywood pictures throughout her life, including in Hope Floats, Something To Talk About, The Skeleton Key, and, most notably, The Notebook, directed by her son Nick Cassavetes. Though, her true legacy remains in her profound impact on independent film.
“It’s a tricky life,” Rowlands once said of her and Cassavetes’s juggling act of using their Hollywood paychecks to finance their own films. “But it was so exciting and wonderful because you were doing what you really wanted to do.”
Stars of “The Sopranos” speak with Anthony Mason about the hit show celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Then, Luke Burbank learns about breakdancing, the latest Olympic sport. “Here Comes the Sun” is a closer look at some of the people, places and things we bring you every week on “CBS Sunday Morning.”
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During a presentation yesterday at a D23 fan event in Anaheim, California, Disney announced that Trent Reznor’s groundbreaking group, Nine Inch Nails, will handle the score for Tron: Ares, the third installment of the cyber-futuristic science fiction film series, set for release in October 2025.
The core members of the band, Reznor and Atticus Ross, have scored more than a dozen films, from 2010’s The Social Network to this year’s Challengers, but the new Tron movie will be the first score attributed to Nine Inch Nails. It will also feature new original songs from the band, its first since the fifth and sixth installments of the Ghosts series, released in 2020.
Directed by Joachim Rønning and starring Jared Leto, Jeff Bridges, and Greta Lee, Tron: Ares is the follow-up to 2010’s Tron: Legacy, which was scored by Daft Punk, who also made a cameo. It is unknown whether Reznor or other members of the band will appear in the new movie. At D23, the announcement was preceded by a trailer, not yet made public, that featured the band’s 1989 song “Something I Can Never Have.”
It’s International Cat Day, and in the spirit of dogs being man’s best friend and cats being man’s apathetic roommate, get out of your cat’s fur for a little bit this week and check out our best bets. This week, we’ve got a classic movie musical from 1978, Houston’s largest horror convention, and a classic adventure tale. Keep reading, and don’t worry – your cat will still love you when you get home.
Grease is still the word for generations of fans, including apparently the Prince and Princess of Wales. According to a new biography, Prince William and Kate Middleton took to the floor at their Buckingham Palace wedding reception and lip-synced along to “You’re the One That I Want,” which “brought the house down.” On Thursday, August 8, at 8 p.m., you too can sing along with the Pink Ladies and T-Birds when Movies Under the Stars at Market Square Park screens the 1978 musical Grease, starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. Bring a blanket or lawn chair to be comfy as you watch a good girl and greaser try to keep their summer love going once back in the reality of their 1950s high school. The screening is free, and you can register for it here.
We’ve still got a little more than 80 days left until Halloween, but you can get your horror fix this weekend when the Houston Horror Film Fest, H-Town’s largest horror film festival and expo, returns on Friday, August 9, from 5 to 10 p.m. at the Houston Marriott of Westchase. The horror con promises more than 100 vendors and over 70 screenings, special Q&A panels, and, of course, celebrity meet and greets with actors from franchises like Child’s Play, Halloween, and Twilight. The fest continues on Saturday, August 10, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday, August 11, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets can still be purchased at the door, with single-day passes available for $50 and three-day passes for $60. Children 12 and under are free with an adult ticket.
Creative Movement Practices will bring Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure classic Treasure Island, about a kid who finds a treasure map and clashes with pirates, to the MATCH on Friday, August 9 at 7:30 p.m. Though CMP’s founding artistic director, Sarah Sneesby, has adapted the story for adults, the show is still all-ages-welcome and family-friendly. Performances will continue through Sunday, August 25, at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Monday, August 19; 3 p.m. Sundays and Saturday, August 17, and Saturday, August 24; with a special sensory-friendly performance on Saturday, August 17, at 11 a.m. Tickets are available here for $15 to $30, with lap children aged two and under free, and pay-what-you-can performances on Monday and Thursday nights.
Experience the avant-garde work of women making films between 1920 and 1970 during Framing Abstraction, a short film program that will be presented over at The Menil Collection on Friday, August 9, at 8 p.m. The program will feature film works from women like Germaine Dulac and Carolee Schneemann, as well as Texas-born Mary Ellen Bute, a pioneer in visual music; Marie Menken, who not only made a name for herself via experimental filmmaking but inspired (along with her husband Willard Maas) Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf; and Maya Deren, who “nearly single-handedly put experimental cinema on the American cultural map” and “became the name of avant-garde cinema by becoming its face.” As always, programs at the Menil are free and open to the public.
And finally – Monday, August 12, marks the return of Houston Theater Week. For the third year, the tradition returns to give you one week (through August 18) to take advantage of a pretty good offer: Buy one, get one free tickets to stage productions, dance works, operas, and musical performances from companies and organizations all across the city. One thing for sure is that this is your chance to lock in tickets to see the shows that are certain to make this very list in the coming months.
She answered questions not just from Reitman but also from the actor playing her, as did some of her former castmates. Garrett Morris bonded with Lamorne Morris, who’d actually been claiming to know Garrett since he was a kid. “Obviously we had the same last name, so I used to tell people that he was my dad, as a joke,” says the actor, who’s best known for Fargo and New Girl. Now that they’re friends, the 87-year-old Garrett is running with the gag. “He called me and said something about owing my mom a call because he’s not convinced that he’s not my dad,” Lamorne says. He feels there’s a genuine connection creatively: “Subconsciously, you are picking up cues from those before you. No matter what I do, at some point, it probably came from Flip Wilson, Garrett Morris, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy.”
In the movie, Morris feels adrift and uncertain about this new endeavor. “Obviously, race plays a little bit of a factor in it, especially during those times when folks didn’t necessarily know if this was Lorne just trying to fill a quota,” Lamorne says. Also, Garrett was about a decade older than his costars, so there was a distance there as well. Lamorne notes that his predecessor was a Broadway singer and a playwright, among other talents: “His journey is, ‘Hey man, I got all these skills. I’ve been a part of the Civil Rights Movement. I’ve helped desegregate the acting unions. All of these things have happened to me, and here I am with all these kids telling dick and fart jokes.’ It’s like, ‘What am I doing here?’”
Actor, director and producer Kevin Costner sits down with Tracy Smith to discuss his four-part film series, “Horizon: An American Saga.” Then, Lee Cowan meets a man on a mission to find his biological father. “Here Comes the Sun” is a closer look at some of the people, places and things we bring you every week on “CBS Sunday Morning.”
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Britney Spears is getting the biopic treatment: The pop star has announced that her recent memoir, The Woman in Me, will be adapted into a feature film by Universal Pictures, with director Jon M. Chu (Wicked) and producer Marc Platt (La La Land) attached to develop. Spears shared the news on X (formerly Twitter) to announce the film, writing, “Excited to share with my fans that I’ve been working on a secret project with Marc Platt. He’s always made my favorite movies … stay tuned.”
Back in November 2021, Spears’ conservatorship was terminated after a lengthy, highly publicized trial. Since then, she shared the best-selling The Woman in Me chronicling her life and the conservatorship (released alongside an audiobook version read by actor Michelle Williams) and put out two songs: the Elton John collaboration “Hold Me Closer,” which re-worked his hit “Tiny Dancer,” and “Mind Your Business” with Will.i.am. Spears’ last album was 2016’s Glory.
FREMONT – What a difference one Fremont summer makes, particularly in the bustling life and career of in-demand filmmaker Sean Wang.
Roughly about this time last year, the Fremont native, along with a cast and crew that encompassed friends, relatives, Wang’s former orthodontist and even one friend’s dad (who portrayed, rather convincingly, a gruff security guard) scurried throughout this East Bay city while filming the coming-of-age dramedy “Didi.”
It was one busy shoot.
“They say try to keep it contained (for a first indie feature),” Wang recalls while in the back of a stretch car bound for the high school he attended. “I thought I wrote a small film, and I wrote like a different location every single day. … We were all over Fremont.”
Fast forward to summer 2024.
The 29-year-old filmmaker who’s already been nominated for an Oscar — for an adorable short about his two gregarious grandmothers, “Nai Nai & Wài Pó” — has returned to Fremont to screen his award-winning, critically praised feature-length film “Dídi” (younger brother) to an eager hometown crowd. Some in the audience had even chipped in to help fund the film, a Sundance Film Festival dual award winner for U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble Cast.
For the charismatic Wang, it’s an indelible moment in what has turned into a pinch-me-I’m-dreaming year.
The semi-autobiographical, R-rated “Dídi” (for language and drug-taking antics) zooms in on 13-year-old Taiwanese American skateboarder/budding videographer Chris (Izaac Wang), a child of immigrant parents in Fremont. The film, set in 2008, captures Chris’ adolescent escapades — the fumbles, first kisses (one of the film’s most priceless sequences), a first inhale and his many squabbles with his mom (Joan Chen) and older sis (Shirley Chen). Wang dedicates the film to his mom.
“Dídi” opened last week in New York and Los Angeles, and kickflips its wayinto Bay Area theaters Friday.
Wang this week returned to his roots and met up with friends and even revisited a few formative haunts from his youth — including Irvington High School (where he tried out in vain for a stage production of “Beauty and the Beast”) and the Pacific Commons Shopping Center theater where he and his friends often congregated.
“It feels like a homecoming in a way,” Wang said before the film screened twice for engaged, enthusiastic crowds full of friends, family and community members, including Fremont Mayor Lily Mei, who presented Wang with a certificate of appreciation for thrusting Fremont again into the movie spotlight.
“It also felt like that when we screened at SFFILM (San Francisco Film Festival) because a lot of my hometown friends did go to that premiere too.”
But bringing his debut to Fremont, dubbed the happiest place in America, is next level in a meta way. You could feel that anticipation bubbling up in the community — even over at the bubble tea store Mr. Sun Tea where Wang’ polished off a few interviews.
He suspects the close friends he grew up with who are in the audience will be playing a guessing game of “where the real life inspirations end and the movie begins,” he said.
Earlier in the year, Wang admitted what a surreal whirlwind 2024’s been, with an Oscar nominated documentary short and a debut film that collected two Sundance honors and landed a highly-regarded distributor. It currently boats a 96 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
“It’s insane,” he said in March. “It’s amazing. It’s … I clearly don’t have the words.”
But Wang’s been building toward this exceptional streak for awhile, catching the notice of others with a string of shorts made in the wake of a slew of YouTube skateboarding-themed videos. (You can view those on his YouTube channel.)
Some of his documentary shorts touch on themes he’d return to in his films. In “H.A.G.S. (Have a Good Summer),” Wang scans his Horner Middle School yearbook and checks in on his former classmates. These encounters raise topics that foreshadow “Didi,” including how friends would compliment Wang — and in the film, Chris — for being a “cool Asian.”
“I think people would say to me you’re the coolest Asian or stuff like that,” he recalls. “I think in my 20s, I was like OK, well, you don’t really hear that. If you’re the only Asian, you’d have to grow up around a lot of Asians to be the coolest Asian. Like back then it was kind of a net positive. They meant it as a compliment. I took it as a compliment. There was nothing insidious about it. But then you kind of grow up and you kind of break it down. You’re like: OK, what they’re saying is if I’m cool for an Asian then already you’re the best of the lesser tier.”
Wang hadn’t seen a theme like that addressed before in American movies.
“There’s something maybe a little bit more subtle and nuanced,” he said. “Like what does it feel like when everyone kind of looks and talks like you but the culture in the world at large doesn’t reflect you at all? … And every time there was a representation of an Asian in American media, we were, like, not cool. So there’s a divide of the world you are in. And what does that do to your sense of self?”
“Dídi” resonated with Fremont Mayor Lily Mei, who stayed for the Monday screening and noticed how the audience responded to the film with a range of emotions. She reflected about her experience seeing the landmark 1993 film “The Joy Luck Club” — one of the few major American releases with an Asian-fronted cast.
Izaac Wang (center) plays an awkward 13-year-old Fremont boy in the deeply affecting “Didi,” opening in Bay Area theaters this week. (Focus Features)
“Dídi,” entirely shot in Fremont, adds another chapter to the city’s impressive film history. Early on, Fremont’s community of Niles served as a launching pad for silent films; and other noteworthy movies have been shot here, including “Terminator” and the iconic race car scene in “American Graffiti.” Last year saw the black-and-white indie “Fremont” — about an Afghan refugee and translator for the U.S. army relocating to the city. It, too, debuted at Sundance.
Mei appreciates seeing Fremont appearing in the mainstream (it even popped up in an “SNL” episode) and appreciates how “Dídi” reflects a more nuanced depiction of the city and Asian Americans.
“I always have concerns that even though I was born in Chicago or grew up here that people see us as potential foreigners or also the idea of a model minority,” she said. “’Dídi’ opens a wider lens than that.”
Mei presented a certificate to Wang to express “how proud we are to be highlighted and featured as a location” and how his film shared a piece of the city and offered a unique perspective on it.
Wang will be busy as the film fans out in a wider release. He’ll also be taking the film to Taiwan, and after that plans to eventually return to New York where he’ll revisit a screenplay he wrote that preceded “Dídi,” but was put on the back burner since it warranted a bigger production, not exactly fodder for a first feature. Rest assured, though, he says he has no intentions of hopping aboard a franchise.
What also seems like a certainty is that a 2021 lament he expressed in his short “H.A.G.S.” probably can now be put to rest.
Wang, in a voice over in that short, says: “I have these dreams and ambitions, but there’s always a little bit of fear that I’m always like…what if it doesn’t work out?”
It’s worked out well for Sean Wang. Very, very well.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): One meaning of the word “palette” is a flat board on which painters place a variety of pigments to apply to their canvas. What would be a metaphorical equivalent to a palette in your life? Maybe it’s a diary or journal where you lay out the feelings and ideas you use to craft your fate. Perhaps it’s an inner sanctuary where you retreat to organize your thoughts and meditate on upcoming decisions. Or it could be a group of allies with whom you commune and collaborate to enhance each other’s destinies. However you define your palette, Aries, I believe the time is right to enlarge its size and increase the range of pigments you can choose from.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The star that Westerners call Arcturus has a different name for Indigenous Australians: Marpeankurrk. In their part of the world, it begins to rise before dawn in August. For the Boorong people of northwest Victoria, this was once a sign to hunt for the larvae of wood ants, which comprised a staple food for months. I bring this up, Taurus, because heavenly omens are telling me you should be on the lookout for new sources of sustenance and fuel. What’s your metaphorical equivalent of wood ant larvae?
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Seventy percent of the world’s macadamia nuts have a single ancestor: a particular tree in Queensland, Australia. In 1896, two Hawaiian brothers took seeds from this tree and brought them back to their homestead in Oahu. From that small beginning, Hawaiian macadamia nuts have come to dominate the world’s production. I foresee you soon having resemblances to that original tree, Gemini. What you launch in the coming weeks and months could have tremendous staying power and reach far beyond its original inspiration.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Ketchup flows at about 0.03 miles per hour. In 35 hours, it could travel about a mile. I think you should move at a similar speed in the coming days. The slower you go, the better you will feel. The more deeply focused you are on each event, and the more you allow the rich details to unfold in their own sweet time, the more successful you will be at the art of living. Your words of power will be incremental, gradual, and cumulative.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Astrologer Chris Zydel says every sign has superpowers. In honor of your birthday season, I’ll tell you about those she attributes to you Leos. When you are at your best, you are a beacon of “joyful magnetism” who naturally exudes “irrepressible charisma.” You “shine like a thousand suns” and “strut your stuff with unabashed audacity.” All who are lucky enough to be in your sphere benefit from your “radiant spontaneity, bold, dramatic play, and whoo-hoo celebration of your creative genius.” I will add that of course you can’t always be a perfect embodiment of all these superpowers. But I suspect you are cruising through a phase when you are the next best thing to perfect.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Virgo-born Friedrich August Kekule (1829–1896) transformed organic chemistry with his crucial discovery of the structure of carbon-based compounds. He had studied the problem for years. But his breakthrough realization didn’t arrive until he had a key dream while dozing. There’s not enough room here to describe it at length, but the image that solved the riddle was a snake biting its own tail. I bring this story to your attention, Virgo, because I suspect you could have practical and revelatory dreams yourself in the coming weeks. Daydream visions, too. Pay attention! What might be your equivalent to a snake biting its own tail?
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Please don’t succumb to numbness or apathy in the coming weeks. It’s crucial that you don’t. You should also take extreme measures to avoid boredom and cynicism. At the particular juncture in your amazing life, you need to feel deeply and care profoundly. You must find ways to be excited about as many things as possible, and you must vividly remember why your magnificent goals are so magnificent. Have you ruminated recently about which influences provide you with the spiritual and emotional riches that sustain you? I encourage you to become even more intimately interwoven with them. It’s time for you to be epic, mythic, even heroic.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Historically, August has brought many outbreaks of empowerment. In August 1920, American women gained the right to vote. In August 1947, India and Pakistan wrested their independence from the British Empire’s long oppression. In August 1789, French revolutionaries issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a document that dramatically influenced the development of democracy and liberty in the Western world. In 1994, the United Nations established August 9 as the time to celebrate International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. In 2024, I am officially naming August to be Scorpio Power Spot Month. It will be an excellent time to claim and/or boost your command of the niche that will nurture your authority and confidence for years to come.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): August is Save Our Stereotypes Month for you Sagittarians. I hope you will celebrate by rising up strong and bold to defend our precious natural treasures. Remember that without cliches, platitudes, pigeonholes, conventional wisdom, and hackneyed ideas, life would be nearly impossible. JUST KIDDING! Everything I just said was a dirty lie. Here’s the truth. August is Scour Away Stereotypes Month for you Sagittarians. Please be an agent of original thinking and fertile freshness. Wage a brazen crusade against cliches, platitudes, pigeonholes, conventional wisdom, and hackneyed ideas.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): You’re never too old or wise or jaded to jump up in the air with glee when offered a free gift. Right? So I hope you won’t be so bent on maintaining your dignity and composure that you remain poker-faced when given the chance to grab the equivalent of a free gift. I confess I am worried you might be unreceptive to the sweet, rich things coming your way. I’m concerned you might be closed to unexpected possibilities. I will ask you, therefore, to pry open your attitude so you will be alert to the looming blessings, even when they are in disguise.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): A friend of a friend told me this story: One summer day, a guy he knew woke up at 5 a.m., meditated for a while, and made breakfast. As he gazed out his kitchen window, enjoying his coffee, he became alarmed. In the distance, at the top of a hill, a brush fire was burning. He called emergency services to alert firefighters. A few minutes later, though, he realized he had made an error. The brush fire was in fact the rising sun lighting up the horizon with its fiery rays. Use this as a teaching story in the coming days, Aquarius. Double-check your initial impressions to make sure they are true. Most importantly, be aware that you may initially respond with worry to events that are actually wonderful or interesting.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): At least a million ships lie at the bottom of the world’s oceans, lakes, and rivers. Some crashed because of storms, and others due to battles, collisions, or human error. A shipwreck hunter named Sean Fisher estimates that those remains hold over $60 billion worth of treasure. Among the most valuable are the old Spanish vessels that sank while carrying gold, silver, and other loot plundered from the Americas. If you have the slightest inkling to launch adventures in search of those riches, I predict the coming months will be an excellent tine. Alternately, you are likely to generate good fortune for yourself through any version of diving into the depths in quest of wealth in all of its many forms.
Homework: What message would you like to send your 12-year-old self?
A Chinese automotive glass maker says it was not the target of a federal investigation that temporarily shut down production last week at its Ohio plant, the subject of the Oscar-winning Netflix film “American Factory”.
The investigation was focused on money laundering, potential human smuggling, labor exploitation and financial crimes, Homeland Security agent Jared Murphey said Friday.
Fuyao Glass America said it was told by authorities that a third-party employment company was at the center of the criminal investigation, according to a filing with the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
Agents with the Department of Homeland Security, FBI and Internal Revenue Service, along with local authorities, carried out federal search warrants Friday at the Fuyao plant in Moraine and nearly 30 other locations in the Dayton area.
“The company intends to cooperate fully with the investigation,” Lei Shi, Fuyao Glass America community relations manager, said in a statement to the Dayton Daily News. Messages seeking comment were left with the company on Monday.
Production was stopped temporarily Friday, but operations resumed near the end of the day, the statement said.
Fuyao took over a shuttered General Motors factory a decade ago and hired more than 2,000 workers to make glass for the automotive industry. The company said the Ohio plant was the world’s largest auto glass production facility.
In 2019, a production company backed by Barack and Michelle Obama released “American Factory.” The film, which won a 2020 Oscar for best feature-length documentary, looked at issues including the rights of workers, globalization and automation.
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The disturbing story of a serial squatter who tormented a Chestnut Hill woman once he moved into her condo will be turned into a movie based on an episode of Netflix’s hit series “Worst Roommate Ever.”
The upcoming project, led by “Bridesmaids” director Paul Feig, will dramatize the menacing saga of Elkins Park native Jamison Bachman. His story first drew national attention with William Brennan’s 2018 New York Magazine article detailing the twisted schemes Bachman used to plant himself in homes with a series of roommates. They all struggled to get rid of him after his abusive streak — well-hidden at first — quickly became apparent and tested their sanity.
Feig’s movie will draw inspiration from the story of Alex Miller, who sublet a room to Bachman at her place in Chestnut Hill in 2017. Bachman introduced himself to Miller as a lawyer named Jed Creek. He endeared himself to her with his charming looks and put ink to paper after a walk at the park with their two dogs.
But when Bachman moved in, he brought a cat with him despite Miller’s allergies. He began moving around her furniture without asking. He became aggressive and erratic. He refused to pay bills, relying on his strict rights as a tenant to bully Miller into accepting his invasion. Miller’s mom did some digging online and learned Bachman’s true identity, including a history of squatting cases up and down the East Coast.
Miller tells her story in an episode of the first season of “Worst Roommate Ever,” detailing how Bachman became violent and increasingly unhinged as she used her own tactics to get under his skin. Bachman went to jail after slashing Miller’s thigh with a knife, and then got sent back to jail when he violated a protection from abuse order.
The story came to a tragic end in November 2017 when Bachman killed his older brother, Harry, who had bailed him out of jail but refused to let Jamison stay at his home in Elkins Park. Jamison then took his own life in prison before a preliminary hearing that December.
The untitled movie is expected to focus on the story of a newly single woman who finds a “seemingly perfect gentleman” to sublet a room in her home, Variety reported. The woman soon realizes the mistake she made and that she had let a serial squatter into her home.
The film will be produced by Blumhouse, the same production company that made “Worst Roommate Ever” and is known for horror films like “Get Out” and “Paranormal Activity.” Feig is best-known for comedies, including “Spy,” “Last Christmas” and the short-lived but beloved TV series “Freaks and Geeks.”
“‘Worst Roommate Ever’ resonates so much because as the internet has connected so many of us, it also makes it easier than ever to lie about who you are,” Blumhouse CEO and founder Jason Blum told Variety. “But then the story is jaw-dropping and keeps you on the edge of your seat. Paul is the perfect director for this because his work always manages to strike a balance between the dark and the light, and I’m very excited to see everything he will bring to this story.”
Actor Josh Hartnett is known for his roles in popular movies like “The Virgin Suicides,” “Black Hawk Down” and “Oppenheimer.” Now, he’s starring in the new thriller, “Trap,” where he plays a seemingly loving father who takes his daughter to a concert. His character quickly realizes the concert is an elaborate setup for police to catch a serial killer. The twist is Hartnett’s character is the serial killer, or at least appears to be.
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