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feverdeang
Sent to private art school every Saturday from fourth grade to senior in HS.
Got 8mm camera for B-day in fourth grade. Started making movies. Sci-fi and horror.
Attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn NYC for graphic design and painting.
School didn't hold my interest, dropped out at end of sophomore year.
Knocked around east coast, Boston, Amherst started working in restaurants.
Moved to Philadelphia in 1991-2 to get serious with my art. Joined SUBCULTURE GALLERY and quickly became board member.
Organized AIDS benefit for gallery member who died, Clifford Rawlins. Worked with Phila's largest AIDS charity FROM ALL WALKS OF LIFE.
Opened second SUBCULTURE GALLERY in OLD CITY the Phila gallery district. Gallery concentrated on solo shows of new artists. I began SPECIAL PROJECTS focus bringing dance companies, theatrical productions, orchestral, jazz and experimental music into gallery for weekend shows to generate a larger/ diversified audience and revenue.
At the same time I bought in to the restaurant I was head chef at and became a partner. Garnered good reviews and loyal customers. Fun concept, fabulous fifties diner with formica tables, plates with meat/ potato /veggie sections in them and waitresses in poodle skirts. Named MOMI.
Closed both galleries in 1997 and moved SUBCULTURE to NYC in Soho between Mott & Mulberry on Broome.
Hired away by CPOP gallery in Detroit MI to take a mom & pop operation(35,000$ annual) to a 2.5 million dollar expansion working for Tom Thewes the heir to the Compuware fortune. Tom wants to dominate the art world so we build a state of the art facility and try to recruit or steal all the top artists from LA to NYC. CPOP grand opening September 1999. I departed soon after to return to Albany and plot next move.
Started writing movie in 1996, started writing script with writing partner, actor producer David Girard in fall of 99. Took us a year of every Friday night 8pm til 4am to complete.
Went to Sundance in 2000 and was underwhelmed. After 48 hrs could have left and started making own film. In Albany met friend Exec Producer Igor Broos who was working at a local university and wanted to get involved in my art process. The summer was approaching and the Univ wouldn't be using their miniDigital Video equipment, sound and lighting rigs soooooo..... I started pre-production, casting and budgeting.
The movie started from all the bad experiences me and fellow artists had with clients, press and public. Every profession has it's horror stories but because art is so esoteric to start with the stories are just plain weird. People have a reverse reaction to art they DON'T WANT TO UNDERSTAND they think it makes them look snotty or nerdy or smart. I had been reading a lot of comic books and seeing alot of films and was frustrated with my own art. I wanted an art that really made people pay attention to the message and it seemed that by embracing time and duration writing and film could really hold people in place, hold their attention. The breakthrough was when i realized that my frustrations with the medium could be the characters problems as well and that the metaphor for getting peoples attention (terrorism) could be the plot. After that it was pretty easy to come up with the details of the plot. Performance artists do very extreme things, get buried alive, crucified and even shot so I just let my characters imagination run wild and wrote whatever any artist would do to get noticed and make a point. The film may be a little extreme but it's important to note I've given it a self imposed "R" rating. It's an adult theme and I believe art is for adults, it helps society explore the edges of morality in a context where no one can get hurt by exploring something that may be dangerous.
Reviews
Interview with the Assassin (2002)
Minamalist Masterpiece
Why aren't there more comments and viewers for this disturbing little gem? The best conspiracy movie(JFK, PI or otherwise) in may a year hits all the right notes technically and plot wise. Filmmed digitally (SONY PD-150) with such skill that you'll be checking your TV/DVD resolution in the first five minutes, the filmmakers use every advantage and disadvatage of the digital format to their benefit. The camera work begins static, rigid local TV news style then slowly takes on a subtle impressionistic style that blurs the line between docudrama and fiction. Viewers not interested in film as a meta-(self referential) text need not apply. After starting with the formal aspects of the JFK mystery, camera angles, do pictures lie, tampered
evidence and conflicting witnesses the film then seems to turn on the viewer so that we are put in the position of one of those unlucky witnesses who were
bribed, intimidated, bullied, framed or killed for seeing just a little too much. The performances are uniformly great, starting with the ballistics man who plays his part so straight I had to mentally check and remind myself this wasn't a
documentary. The ex-wife was brilliant. All the actors were just realistic to the point of surrealism. I'm now babbling, SEE THIS MOVIE
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
Really Bad
Hey... It's not all bad but it's that kind of bad that you shouldn't pay to see, rent or own. It might warrant watching on TV if it's on for free and you don't get too bored. I'm an artist, a filmmaker, comics and literature fan and this movie fails on so many levels it's barely worth looking. The production design, costumes, sets and SPFX are all top notch. Peta Wilson and Stuart Townsend seem to be in another movie; one closer to the comic
book, that allows them to act, show feelings, character development and
subtlety. Sean Connery is wasted and as Executive Producer he should have
fired Norrington and the screen writer as soon as he saw the first week of
daillies. The problem is the script is leaden and is so full of illogical plot holes only very little kids won't notice. Director Norrington is so lost he can't even put together a fight scene with continuity let alone a world spanning quest movie. A final comment on the comic book to screen translation. Why would you throw out a perfectly good, well reviewed, easily adaptable book? With the current
level of SPFX technology combined with the modern movie audience's
increasing level of tolerance for long films, it was possible to do justice to Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neil's brilliant work. Once again Hollywood thinks all the
viewers want is the surface explosions when what makes the classics (Raiders
of the Lost Ark, The Three Musketeers, The Great Escape, Kelly's Heroes) great is the character's individual strength's and weaknesses combining to give the audience something to identify with. This movie's faux father and son symbolism was shallow and insulting to the intelligence.
Scotland, PA (2001)
comedic take on macbeth a sundance hit!!!!!
the funniest movie at Sundance 2001 Scotland PA brought the house down. Maura Tierny and James Legross like a modern Morticia and Gomez Adams can't keep their hands off each other or any one in the way of their fast food takeover bid. Done in high seventies style with amazing detail( roach clips, polyester everything, muscle cars and Pabst Blue Ribbon)the film is faithful to Shakespeare and to fans of over the top satire. Toss in Andy Dick as the leader of the witches and you've got a crowd pleasing, gut busting , high-brow comedy.
Manic (2001)
raw drama, digital filmmaking, sundance hit
my favorite drama in the 2001 Sundance festival ,Manic was a frightening look at teenagers out of control and how the world forces them to desparate measures. Set in a juvenile mental institution it tells the story of Lyle ( Joseph Gordon Levitt, in an amazing, breakout dramatic performance) put under lock and key for assaulting another boy with a baseball bat. He rejects the system, it's diagnosis and it's blindness to the real problems he and the other kids are facing. Brutally honest and inspiring (without any schlockly-hokey feel good crap) shot in DV and improv-ed and made with the help of REAL kids in this terrible situation, Manic was an example of what a film festival should support. Also I would be doing a great disservice if I didn't mention the quiet commanding presence of young actor Cody Lightning (only 14 years old!!!!!)See this film!
Lift (2001)
lyrical, slick, tense and real
A popular hit at this years Sundance Film Fest, Lift showed how love and money, family and friends can become confused in the search for status. Niecy works at a ritzy department store which covers for her real job as a steal to order shoplifter. All her friends love her as long as she delivers the goods. Even her mother pressures her for extravagant presents. Her boyfriend smokes pot, dreams of being a rap producer and looks down on her shoplifting "business" while hypocritically Nicey looks down on him for smoking pot! When she has to join forces with a gang leader to lift an especially expensive gift for her mother the pressure and fate conspire and her world crumbles. Filmed in Boston with an almost completely African- American cast, Lift doesn't take the easy cliched way out, but explores the well drawn characters emotions and their limitations. A solid, well crafted drama.
Cast Away (2000)
zemekis IS the filmmaker shpielberg wants to be
Just saw the film (and I think it's a FILM not just a movie) and it was well written ,acted ,directed , everything is right on the mark. I am SUPER critical of emotional string pulling and manipulation. Once again director Zemekis shows hollyWOOD the meaning of SUBTLE. Tom Hanks is a very honest and truthful actor when handled correctly. Compare this to how ham-fisted Shpielberg "uses" Hanks' simplicity and economy of expression in the inferior "Private Ryan". Had S.S. directed this we would have had to SEE the wedding ring reappear, Kelly's picture would have slowly faded etc... Now the only problem is that S.S. has gotten his hands on Kubrick's last project "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" and already produced a schmaltzy trailer with the silhouette of a little boy right out of his schmaltzy Dreamworks logo(you KNOW he designed that cutesy / pukey image).GREAT FILM.
Schindler's List (1993)
spielberg is a MOVIE maker NOT a filmmaker
I think IMDB was invented for me to get this off my chest, S. Speilberg is not a FILMmaker as in film as art. SS is a movie maker,a talented hack who's success has gone to his head. Jurrassic Park, great escapist fantasy,Raiders, handed to him on a platter by Lucas, Jaws, brilliant horror,Close Encounters, a virtuoso UFO riff. In Schindlers List and Amistad we see two oppressed groups, the Jews and the African slaves are unable to help themselves without help from the oppressive white man who is subjugating them to begin with! Wouldn't a story about the Holocaust or Slavery be more satisfying if it showed how the oppressed helped themselves instead of implying that THE STORY to tell about this particular period of history makes the victims unimportant, interchangable, of NO consequence except to motivate the "HERO"?? Also who is reading these scripts? Isn't the little girl in the red coat the SAME plot device( I don't even know what to call it, motif, ornament, twist??) as having Tom Hank's character release the german soldier that ultimately kills him.?!? In short I think SS should stick to the kid stuff. There is a terrible rumor that he wants the rights to Kubrick's last project "AI"!!!PS I hated E. T.
Pi (1998)
thrilling thriller, but don't read too much into it
i've just joined imdb and i'm confused by the criteria people use to rate films. PI is by no means the greatest movie ever but it is imaginative, truly mysterious and original. don't compare apples and oranges ( HK cinema and hollywood CGI no plot epics etc.) PI has a hard boiled detective, metaphysical sci-fi' conspiracy flavor that anyone can enjoy. the performances are great,sets imaginative, the camera work shows atechno world built on garbage. the film isn't about technology but the weakness of people who want an ANSWER for the worlds problems. well worth a rental.
Mission: Impossible II (2000)
let me preface this by saying i don't get the allure of tom cruise
i'm a guy ,i think cruise is an enviably good looking, but i think i'm a good judge of charisma and tommy doesn't have any that i can see. i had to pay for two tom cruise movies this year(something i swore i'd NEVER do ) Eyes Wide Shut( i'm a big Kubrick fan, don't get me started, i don't know what happened there) and MI2. it appears the marketing and styling (production design) in this movie were agonized over to the point where MI2 has no teeth, it's like an action movie directed by a fashion designer stuck in the late 80's. i enjoy john woo's work so i'm blaming this on tommy. however when cruise takes the gloves off and really acts (MAGNOLIA) he's great. i don't get it.