Snow Angels

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

[modage]

mmmm.... The National AND horn-rimmed glasses girl!  if i hadn't already seen this, i would be convinced.

[MacGuffin]

[MacGuffin]

David Gordon Green, mainstream director?
Though he's being feted by the American Cinematheque, David Gordon Green is still young -- and busy.
By Brooke Hauser, Special to The Times

AFTER years of cutting his teeth in independent film, David Gordon Green is one of the big boys now. The youthful 32-year-old writer and director, who still happens to wear braces, says he no longer gets carded at bars. But his newfound maturity pales in comparison to the thrill of being invited to host his own three-night film retrospective this week at American Cinematheque's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.

"My reaction? I would use the word 'flabbergasted,' " says Green, adding that the tribute "seems a little bizarre and backward, but it's quite an honor."

Audiences might not immediately recognize the wispy, shaggy-haired Southerner as the budding film legend they've come to see, when his latest effort, "Snow Angels," a bleak small-town drama featuring Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell, premieres Thursday night. Beckinsale, who plays a single mother struggling to keep her life on track after her daughter disappears, recalls that before she met Green, "I was warned that I might think he was the production assistant because he looks 13 years old."

Despite his unassuming air, Green has carved out a niche for himself in Hollywood as a master raconteur with an ear for lyrical dialogue and an eye for authentically American milieus. "If you can categorize filmmakers in a music way, David is a folk director," says Beckinsale, one of his biggest fans. "He's a magpie, but he doesn't go for the shiny things -- he goes for the busted tin can and the three-legged dog. I describe him as being like one of those Simon and Garfunkel songs that has all these little odd, interesting, quirky objects and details set to this amazing tune."

Green made his debut in 2000 with " George Washington," a critically hailed coming-of-age story about a black boy in the rural South who dreams of greatness while trying to blot out the stain of a summer tragedy. Next came 2003's "All the Real Girls," a naturalistic high-school love story. Green's idol Terrence Malick produced his third directorial effort, 2004's "Undertow," a backwoods thriller with hints of Huckleberry Finn.

Shot in Canada, "Snow Angels" marks a departure for the director, who also adapted the screenplay from Stewart O'Nan's novel of the same name. In addition to a bigger budget (twice that of the bare-bones "Undertow"), it features marquee names. Time will tell if the critically hailed movie, which played at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, will find an audience. By the director's own admission, none of his films has earned more than half a million dollars domestically.

"I guess I've been blessed with a lack of success in financial terms; I've been lucky to maintain an appetite," Green says, with a slight Texan twang. "I think that once a filmmaker or an artist or anyone who's building something doesn't have a hunger -- they're doing it for a paycheck -- they might as well go back to the factory."

Odd jobs

Green should know, having done his fair share of factory work and other odd jobs to help collect the $50,000 he needed to direct his first feature. In addition to working at a doorknob factory, the Arkansas native has been a janitor at a mental institution, a concierge at a casino and a clown at a children's hospital. "I'm a sucker for experience," he says.

According to his family, Green first fell in love with movies at 2 weeks old when his parents brought him to a showing of "Young Frankenstein" and he watched the screen without crying. Growing up outside Dallas, Texas, he dabbled in different pursuits, playing soccer (well, he was benched most of the time) and making art. To this day, he begins his writing process by drawing exploding brains and screaming faces in his sketchbook.

Despite his early efforts, Green always came away feeling like he was "half-assed at everything," he says. In high school, he was the guy at the senior talent show who decided to make peanut-butter sandwiches and throw them into the crowd, while his friends played in a band. "That was a transitional moment," Green recalls. "I thought, 'What a cool opportunity to either make my own strange, absurd artistic statement or get the attention of the pretty girl who I had a crush on.' " He laughs. "I got my midlife crisis out of the way when I was 16."

Eventually, the director realized that his greatest gift might be his ability to surround himself with other talented people. He relies on a tightly knit creative team including producer Lisa Muskat and cinematographer Tim Orr, whom he met while studying film at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem.

He also gets a thrill out of discovering talent. For "George Washington," Green handpicked a cast of mostly first-time actors from churches and YMCA casting calls around North Carolina. In terms of acting experience, he says he looks for "people who are either full-grown or have just been born." It's the recent acting school graduates who have just learned how to eliminate their regional accents that he tries to avoid.

Even with her real-life experience as a single mother of a little girl, Beckinsale initially worried that Green might not want her for "Snow Angels." "I was pretty sensitive: 'Oh, he's going to think I'm just this action chick,' " she recalls. But after a brief meeting, the director became convinced of her ability to inhabit the role of a mother who would do anything to protect her young daughter.

The scenes she shared with Rockwell, who plays her disturbed husband, were "some of the most exciting, interesting, risky moments I've ever had in my career," says Beckinsale, who appreciated it when her director provided some much-needed levity. "He was always threatening to take a picture wearing just his underpants and moon boots in the snow, meanwhile creating the most beautiful, profoundly emotional movie."

Stoners and witches

Audiences will get to see a lot more of Green's silly streak in "The Pineapple Express," his much-anticipated stoner comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco, produced by Judd Apatow, that hits theaters this summer. "Don't read anything about it. Just go see it. It's weird," says Green, who first read the script while visiting friends on the set of Apatow's "Knocked Up."

Having lived with "Snow Angels" for so long, "I was looking to add a little sunshine to my day and use some comedic and action sensibilities I had," he continues. "Nobody had opened the door or considered me for any comedic project, and now hopefully with some good word of mouth, I can have more options and career moves that I can still keep my fingerprints on."

Currently, Green is working on a slew of projects, including an adaptation of the John Grisham novel "The Innocent Man," for which he visited death row in an Oklahoma prison. He's also remaking Dario Argento's "Suspiria," a horror film about a coven of witches at a ballet school in Germany. It's all part of Green's plan to branch out into new territory.

But he's also heeding some sage advice from Malick. "He said to have a healthy film life, you need a real life, and you need to be protective of that," says Green, who lives in New Orleans when he's not traveling around the world with his films or mountain climbing in Colorado. "The way I've taken it to heart is to make sure your stories are coming from a true place."

[MacGuffin]

'Snow Angels' To 'Pineapple Express': The Year Of David Gordon Green
The indie filmmaker explains why he took a left turn from his dramatic fare into Judd Apatow/ Seth Rogen territory.
By Larry Carroll; MTV

BEVERLY HILLS, California — There was Stanley Kubrick, who flexed his masterful adversity by giving us the hilarious "Dr. Strangelove" and the trippy outer-space meditation "2001: A Space Odyssey" back-to-back. There's also Steven Spielberg, who released sci-fi "War of the Worlds" and heavy "Munich" one after the other — in the same year! You could also mention Billy Wilder, Steven Soderbergh and the Coen brothers in the pantheon of directors who have made seamless transitions between movies of wildly different genres.

But has there ever been a director brave enough to attempt the back-to-back movie dexterity currently being navigated by David Gordon Green?

"It's lovely to see someone use all of himself," marveled Kate Beckinsale, who stars as a small-town waitress in a troubled marriage in Green's heavier-than-a-brick drama "Snow Angels." "And he hasn't even started; it's great to see him do that."

Beckinsale's "that" refers to the other film the 32-year-old auteur is finishing up these days: A crude stoner comedy called "Pineapple Express," for which he teams up with red-hot pun purveyors Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow.

"It was like, 'How do I spend a year of my life in an editing room laughing my ass off, rather than trying to find the emotional truth woven into a story [like "Snow Angels"]?' " Green said of his boundary-breaking 2008 gigs. "['Pineapple'] was something to let loose, shake ['Angels'] off and shoot in an environment that was warm and where I could learn how to film a car chase, and blow up stuff and have shootouts. [I want] to exercise the 12-year-old boy and the movie buff in myself."

Sadly, that's a statement you rarely hear from filmmakers, who've become increasingly content with the categories of action (Michael Bay), drama (Lasse Halström) and comedy (Shawn Levy) that keep them happily employed churning out variations on the same emotional notes. While the move may be surprising, the fact that it's coming from an indie maverick like Green is not.

"I got my start when I went to a college, a film school in North Carolina, and met a bunch of guys who had similar sensibilities," Green said of his early days, which yielded the low-budget, eye-popping cult dramas "George Washington," "All the Real Girls" and "Undertow." "It's been a fun road of taking professional steps with these guys and making professional transitions and throwing some stories together. Sometimes experimentally, sometimes more commercially, and seeing what we can do to entertain people and maybe inspire the next guy to come make a movie."

Michael Angarano, who plays a high school kid with a crush on Beckinsale's character in "Angels," witnessed Green's close-knit team in action. "When we were making 'Snow Angels,' he said that ['Pineapple'] is the biggest-budget movie he had ever done, with a crew that wasn't composed of all of his friends," laughed the 20-year-old "Sky High" star. "Green went to film college, and he basically met his production designer, who is his friend [Richard A. Wright]; his cinematographer, who is his friend [Tim Orr]; his sound guy, who is his friend [David Wingo]; and his producer [Lisa Muskat]."

"They've formed a really nice little niche for themselves," marveled "Juno" actress Olivia Thirlby, who plays a teen who helps Angarano's character after a heartbreaking death tears their small town apart in "Angels." "He spent a lot of time on 'Snow Angels.' ... He examines interactions, and he examines the nuances of relationships, and it does remain incredibly truthful to real life."

With that North Carolina School of the Arts team in place, Green has carved out the powerful reputation of an acclaimed filmmaker as independent as they come. His films haven't made a lot of money, but it seems like everyone in Hollywood knows them by heart.

"I liked 'All the Real Girls,' " Beckinsale said of her favorite Green film, a 2003 drama starring Zooey Deschanel. "I haven't seen a movie like that in a long time. The performances were so good, and it felt kind of poetic."

"Don't expect any fast-paced, plot-driven films; his films are always about people and circumstance," explained Thirlby. "His films are very quiet and moody. He is often very influenced by the climate and environment in which he stages his films. And they're subtle."

Angarano chimed in with additional descriptions that would make most filmmakers run for cover. "He's very interested in the details of everything — a lot of specific details of many things," he said. "So you might see one of his movies and go, 'Well, that sticks out. That's odd.' ... He is an old-school filmmaker — he's like Terrence Malick."

Yeah, but even the Oscar-nominated "Badlands" director wasn't crazy enough to take on a Cheech & Chong movie.

"I visited the 'Knocked Up' set right after I finished 'Snow Angels,' " remembered Green. "That's what really drew me to it — the common sensibility [people like Apatow, Rogen, Bill Hader and James Franco] had. The loyalty they had of their crew base, the freedom they give their actors and the risks that the director was encouraging everyone to take as a team. So, we blended the Apatow camp and the North Carolina mafia, and came up with something I think is pretty interesting."

"Pineapple Express" is a "Blues Brothers"-meets-"Harold & Kumar" comedy about two dimwitted potheads (Rogen and Franco) who run afoul of cops, dealers and henchmen after witnessing a murder. Green laughed at the recent perceived "leak" of an R-rated clip, which showed the main characters smoking up, and confessed that Apatow and his gang have once again begun leaking the goodies and confidently building the same demand they did for "Superbad" and "Knocked Up."

Rogen observed that, like Apatow, Green gives his actors room to improvise, but the latter emphasizes performance over line delivery. "Judd is very quick to give out new lines, different things to say, different jokes," Rogen said. "Dave, his direction is a lot more attitude-based, and he doesn't worry about changing the lines that much. But he'll give you a direction: 'Say it like a robot. Say it like a drunk robot. Now say it like you've got ear wax in your mouth.' He's much more a performance-based director."

"I've been privy to some of the [Apatow] rehearsal processes, and David has an ear for what is real too," Thirlby insisted. "When you improv with him, he has a good sense of how to let you simultaneously be free and knows how to guide you strongly in certain directions. Just as well, he knows what is heart-wrenching, and what is sad, and he knows what is funny."

Like its two central characters, "Pineapple" already has a huge buzz. And with "Snow Angels" garnering awards talk for Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell and the director, 2008 could very well become the year of David Gordon Green.

"I like when people say dramatic things in a funny tone, or when they're laughing while they're crying," he said of the real-life balance between comedy and drama that so few filmmakers can capture. "I'm into all those very fragile, vulnerable human moments. And you can make outrageous comedies out of those, or you can make intimate dramas out of those. You could make an epic war movie out of those. And all those possibilities, those cinematic scenarios, are what make me want to get up in the morning and go make a movie."

[soixante]

I really liked this movie.  Saw it in L.A. a few weeks back.  The release and publicity have been horrible.  I found out it was playing almost by accident.  It has disappeared from theaters, hopefully it will find a following on DVD and cable.

In any event, I enjoyed Green's previous films, but I think he's reached new heights with Snow Angels.  This is a great character-based drama, in the wintry vein of Affliction.  Very depressing, very uncompromising -- but great.  Why does everything have to be upbeat.  This film is about human weakness, and Sam Rockwell gives a brave performance.  It is hard to play someone who is weak, like Nolte in Afflictino, but Rockwell does a great job.  All of the acting is great, the atmosphere is great.  I have the feeling that years from now this will be regarded as a classic.  It all makes me hearken back 30 years ago, when I saw Straight Time, a film that was reviled by critics and ignored by audiences.  Now Straight Time is considered a classic.  Time will do that.  I'm sure Snow Angels will follow the same trajectory.

[Stefen]

I liked this alot. For the record, I never read the book. It really kept it's momentum. Usually movies that have intersecting storyline's always tend to have at least one storyline that I couldn't give a shit about, but I was thoroughly interested in all of them here. My favorite was definitely the teenage love story in the middle, if you can call it that. It's a pretty heartbreaking film and really hits you as it's winding down. It starts out real nice and sweet and eases you into things before it goes full speed ahead. Tim Orr is in fine form here. It's got a great cast.

Everyone should check it out when it comes out on video.

[MacGuffin]

Excellent film.  Sam Rockwell's performance is astounding. Like Stefen said, each storyline is separate, yet all connected in terms of theme, done so with an accomplished craft of editing that gives each storyline and actor their time to shine. And I too, like mod, was smitten by Thirby.

[Stefen]

Thirbly reminds me of that chick we all lost our viriginity to in high school. She's not hot, but she's got a certain something about her that makes you attracted to her.

[pete]

watching it, I realized the kid in this is the young william miller in almost famous!  I loved that kid!

[OrHowILearnedTo]

I loved this. It's weird watching this after seeing Pineapple Express because this really showed a new level of maturity in DGG's filmmaking. He pretty much ditches all of his usual stylistic techniques. The pacing is pretty much perfect, the editing is great, and the characters feel so real (and i know its a cliche but) i sometimes forget i'm watching a film. The title is fucking stupid though.




spoilers

I thought it was a stroke of genius when Sam Rockwell cries out for the rabbit just before he shoots himself. I was on the verge of tears.