filmmaker • teacher at Austin Film Society
Austin
Joined September 2012
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Stephen Ohl retweeted
We don't realize how fascinating of a cinematic time we are currently witnessing.
Two of the greatest filmmakers of our generation have actually come together to make a film.
This is the modern equivalent of Alfred Hitchcock directing a screenplay written by Orson Welles.
Or, Stanley Kubrick stepping in to direct a Billy Wilder script. It is a legendary crossover of cinematic royalty that feels completely surreal.
With Quentin Tarantino providing the text and David Fincher commanding the camera, The Further Mis-adventures of Cliff Booth is a historic anomaly.
We are living in a rare moment where absolute mastery meets absolute trust, and we shouldn't take this pairing for granted.
Stephen Ohl retweeted
10 important facts about Digger that YOU missed:
1. Digger is a deliberate 'f*ck you to the audience' kind of film.
2. Digger is not a comfortable crowd-pleaser; it is high-art hostility.
3. Digger is not designed to be enjoyed.
4. Digger is engineered to be an antagonistic mirror.
5. Dig or die, the film embraces its own chaos.
6. Digger is not being laughed at; it is laughing at you.
7. Digger doesn't want your 5-star review. It wants you to be angry.
8. Digger is original because you asked for originality, and now you can't handle it.
9. Digger didn't miss the point. You are the point.
10. You wanted Tom Cruise the action hero, but Iñárritu gave you Tom Cruise the existential crisis. A psychological reality check.
Stephen Ohl retweeted
George Clooney says “the director is the painter and everything else is the paint” while delivering a masterclass at the Venice Film Festival:
“An actor only affects [a film] as much as the director decides. I can change any actor’s performance as a director.”
Clooney recalled filming “The Thin Red Line” with director Terrence Malick in Australia for months, only to be “completely cut out beside the last scene.”
Create the loneliness epidemic with Social Media. Capitalize on it with positive sycophantic AI companions.
Stephen Ohl retweeted
"It's a shallow, worthless era soured by money. We no longer film with a moving camera but a digital thing stuck on the end of your fist. No one gives a shit about anything any more."
- Alain Delon
Stephen Ohl retweeted
“Orson Welles lists Citizen Kane as his best film, Alfred Hitchcock opts for Shadow of a Doubt, and Sir Carol Reed chose The Third Man — and I’m in all of them.”
— Joseph Cotten
Stephen Ohl retweeted
"Just don’t be afraid of anything and don’t be afraid of anyone. Never quit. Never give up."
- John Cassavetes
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Stephen Ohl retweeted
William Friedkin on the most important part of directing a movie:
"It changes at different points in the making of the film. Initially, the most important decision you make is to decide what story you're going to tell. There's no decision more important than that. Because the commercial cinema, in which I work, is a storytelling medium.
It's not necessarily a medium for... well, it isn't at all a medium for documentary purposes, for educational purposes, for experimental purposes. It's strictly a medium of entertainment. And the other aspects of it, if there are any, come as a kind of by-product of the audience experiencing the story. So, the most important decision I make as a filmmaker is to decide what story I'm going to do. There's nothing more important than that...ever.
Once the story is decided, it then becomes a matter of translating the story into details; it becomes a matter of how I'm going to tell it. And the next most important elements are the casting and the people who are going to work on the film."
(William Friedkin's interview with Gerald R. Barrett, 1975)
Clip from:
Sorcerer (1977)
Director: William Friedkin
Stephen Ohl retweeted
Zach Galifianakis dropping some truth bombs on AI…
Could he be a closet conservative/moderate?
🤔
Stephen Ohl retweeted
"A long-playing full shot is what always separates the men from the boys. Anybody can make movies with a pair of scissors and a two-inch lens."
- Orson Welles
With Rita Hayworth
Stephen Ohl retweeted
"I've always been able to work with anybody that doesn't want success. Jazz musicians don't want success... They have these little tin weapons - they don't shoot. They don't go anywhere. The jazz musician doesn't deal with the structured life - he just wants that night, like a kid."
- John Cassavetes
With Ben Gazzara .. .
Stephen Ohl retweeted
"My movies are kind of made by hand. They're not polished -- they're sort of built in the garage."
- Jim Jarmusch
Stephen Ohl retweeted
“I make films to fill my time. If I had the strength to do nothing, I would do nothing. It is only because I haven’t the strength to do nothing that I make films. For no other reason.”
- Marguerite Duras
Duras here with Antonioni....
Stephen Ohl retweeted
“All film directors, whether famous or obscure, regard themselves as misunderstood or underrated. Because of that, they all lie.”
- Francois Truffaut
Stephen Ohl retweeted
“A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the mind of a poet.”
- Orson Welles
Stephen Ohl retweeted
“To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world and the shrink from it desertion, art and craft, good housekeeping, living.”
Happy birthday Samuel Beckett! 🎂
Stephen Ohl retweeted
James Cameron is the mind behind the movie The Terminator. He says what’s taking place with AI is scarier than his movie script
“AGI will not emerge from a government funded program. It will emerge from one of the tech giants currently funding this multi-billion dollar research, so then you'll be living in a world that you didn't agree to, didn't vote for that you are co-inhabiting with a super intelligent alien species that answers to the goals and rules of a corporation.
An entity which has access to the comms beliefs, everything you ever said, and the whereabouts of every person in the country via your personal data.
Surveillance capitalism can toggle pretty quickly into digital totalitarianism. At best, these tech giants become the self-appointed arbiters of human good, which is the fox guarding the hen house. They would never, ever think of using that power against us and strip mining us for our last drop of cash.
That's a scarier scenario than what I presented in the Terminator 40 years ago. If for no other reason, then it's no longer science fiction.”
