Jay Leno awarded Mark Twain Prize, roasted by fellow comedians

by Teresa Jue on Oct 20, 2014
On Sunday night, Jay Leno received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center, and the event wasn’t without its share of cracks at the former Tonight Show host. According to the Associated Press, Jimmy Fallon, Jerry Seinfeld, Wanda Sykes, Garth Brooks, Kevin Eubanks, and Chelsea Handler were on hand to pay tribute to Leno, and they did not hold back on lobbing zingers about Leno.

“When I first heard that Jay was getting this Mark Twain Prize tonight, which is a huge honor, I found out it was for humor, and I was a little bit confused,” Handler said, according to the Associated Press. “I wasn’t sure what the connection was.”

Seinfeld also shared some faux bitterness against Leno, saying, “There’s no one more deserving to get this wonderful award obviously than Jay. No one—except and I really don’t want to sound bitter here—except maybe me? I mean, come on.”

As he accepted the award, Leno said he “didn’t leave (The Tonight Show) dead broke like Bill and Hillary.”

Leno will be returning to his NBC roots soon with a new show, Jay Leno’s Garage, which is inspired by his love of cars and is expected to premiere in 2015 on CNBC.

The ceremony for the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor will be televised on PBS on Nov. 23.

Snowden Film Tests Hollywood Obama Backers

By MICHAEL CIEPLY
The Documentary ‘Citizenfour’ Raises Political Questions

LOS ANGELES — Early in Laura Poitras’s documentary “Citizenfour,” Edward J. Snowden, who exposed vast electronic surveillance by the United States government, tells what pushed him to go public.

“As I saw the promise of the Obama administration betrayed, and walked away from,” says Mr. Snowden, referring to drone strikes and invasive monitoring by the National Security Agency, “it really hardened me to action.”

But do some of President Obama’s staunch Hollywood supporters share his sentiment?

Her provocative, and deeply admiring, look at Mr. Snowden — which had its premiere at the New York Film Festival on Oct. 10 — arrived here this week amid high hopes, intense curiosity and more than a few raised eyebrows over its sharp critique of Mr. Obama, a president who has enjoyed strong support in the movie world.

The intrigue is especially pitched because several of the companies behind “Citizenfour” — which takes issue with Mr. Obama’s expansion of Bush-era surveillance, and his administration’s attempt to prosecute Mr. Snowden for espionage — are led by some of the president’s close political allies.

They include Harvey Weinstein, the Weinstein Company’s co-chairman, as well as Jeff Skoll, the founder of Participant Media, and Richard Plepler, the chief executive of HBO, who all have been major contributors to Mr. Obama’s political campaigns.

“Citizenfour” has already landed high on the handicappers’ lists of prospects for a documentary features Oscar. The film also promises to jolt the award season with a dose of real-world politics, as happened in 2012, when Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” and Ben Affleck’s “Argo,” the year’s best picture, converged on Washington, with screenings, receptions and a Congressional uproar over the portrayal of torture by Americans in Ms. Bigelow’s film, which was about the hunting down of Osama bin Laden.

The role that Mr. Weinstein, whose Radius-TWC unit is backing the film (and distributed last year’s Oscar-winning documentary “Twenty Feet From Stardom”), will play in promoting “Citizenfour” remains unclear. In the past, he has not shied from using his association with Mr. Obama to promote issues-oriented movies. These include the biopic “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom,” which had a much-publicized White House screening last year, and the documentary “Bully,” which was screened for Mr. Obama in 2012, just minutes after he announced his support for a pair of anti-bullying bills.

Also in 2012, Mr. Weinstein arranged a high-profile Washington showing of his “SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden,” raising complaints that its flattering portrayal of Mr. Obama — who was edited into the film before its election-week premiere — amounted to a campaign stunt.

On Tuesday, it was the Radius-TWC co-presidents, Jason Janego and Tom Quinn, and not Mr. Weinstein, who played host as Ms. Poitras introduced “Citizenfour” to film buffs and some potential Oscar voters at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

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“The film is certainly about the danger of N.S.A. surveillance, but it’s also really about courage,” Ms. Poitras said. (The movie’s title comes from Mr. Snowden’s self-designated code name when he began communicating with Ms. Poitras.)

In a later phone interview, Mr. Quinn and Mr. Janego said they had exercised considerable autonomy in acquiring rights to “Citizenfour” after Mr. Quinn visited Ms. Poitras to discuss the unfinished film at her home in Berlin. Both stressed that Mr. Weinstein and his brother, Bob, co-chairmen of the parent company, were not a driving force in the decision to distribute the film, which is to open on Friday in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Washington.

“We did not see the actual film until very late in the process,” Mr. Quinn added.

Promotional screenings and talks are likely among the tech crowd in San Francisco and among political types in Washington, but scheduling has been hampered by that late delivery, he said.

The potential power in “Citizenfour” lies less in its revelations — though its ending points to the existence of another, as yet unidentified, government-surveillance whistle-blower — than in its intimacy and attempt to make narrative sense of the disclosures by Mr. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor.

At the film’s core are startlingly close encounters with Mr. Snowden, shot during eight days in a Hong Kong hotel room in 2013, as he began revealing secrets of the N.S.A. to the journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, and wrestled with the implications of his leaks. At one point, in nearly silent pantomime, he reshapes his beard and restyles his hair, preparing to slip from the hotel and eventually seek refuge in Russia.

The footage of Mr. Snowden is framed against shots of Mr. Obama and members of his administration, first denying the existence of domestic surveillance, then promising a review of programs, and finally insisting on Mr. Snowden’s prosecution.

In the Oscar race for best documentary, “Citizenfour” is likely to find itself up against some less volatile documentaries. Among those are “Red Army,” about Soviet hockey stars; “Life Itself,” about the film critic Roger Ebert; and “Tales of the Grim Sleeper,” about the predations of a serial killer in South Los Angeles.

But “Citizenfour” recalls a different political dynamic, in 2004, when Mr. Weinstein introduced Michael Moore’s anti-Bush “Fahrenheit 9/11” at the Beverly Hills headquarters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a personal tribute to Mr. Moore. The two received a roaring ovation from like-minded Academy members.

But “Fahrenheit 9/11” won no Oscars. It was ruled out of the race when Mr. Moore chose to air it on pay-per-view television shortly before the presidential election.

This time around, though, some key voices are quieter.

Mr. Plepler, whose top documentary executive, Sheila Nevins, is an executive producer of “Citizenfour,” has not yet seen the movie, an HBO spokesman said. Mr. Skoll, through a Participant Media spokeswoman, declined to comment when asked whether he had concerns about the film’s view of Mr. Obama. In an email, referring to Mr. Quinn and Mr. Janego, of Radius-TWC, Mr. Weinstein said: “This is Tom and Jason’s show. They have autonomy, and it’s all their call.”

Mr. Janego, on Wednesday, asserted that Ms. Poitras’s cinéma vérité approach leaves a comfort zone for both those who support Mr. Snowden and those who find his actions offensive. “You’re left to make up your own mind,” he said.

Dear Christians. . . Please Don’t Leave Us Behind

Dear Christians. . . Please Don’t Leave Us Behind

Elizabeth Peña dies at 55; actress in 'The Incredibles,' 'La Bamba'

LAUREN RAAB,Claire NolandOctober 15, 2014

Actress Elizabeth Peña, who had roles in “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” “La Bamba,” "Lone Star," “Rush Hour” and “The Incredibles,” died Tuesday in Los Angeles after a brief illness, according to her manager, Gina Rugolo. She was 55.

In addition to her film work, Peña had multiple television roles, including a starring role as a Latin American housekeeper in the 1987-88 sitcom “I Married Dora.” She had a recurring guest role on "Modern Family," playing the mother of Sofia Vergara's character, and appears regularly on the current crime drama "Matador." She also directed a few episodes of television shows and was a founding member of the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors.

Peña was born Sept. 23, 1959, in Elizabeth, N.J., and spent part of her childhood in Cuba with her family. Her father, Mario, was an actor, writer and director, and her mother, Estella Margarita, was a producer and arts administrator.

When Peña was filming “Lone Star,” the 1996 John Sayles film set on the Texas-Mexico border, she worked hard to portray her schoolteacher character properly.

"In the United States, all Spanish-speaking people are lumped into one category," Peña said in a 1996 interview with the Dallas Morning News. "But we're all so different. Argentinians are completely different from Mexicans. Mexicans are completely different from Cubans. Cubans are completely different from people from Paraguay and Uruguay."

Peña spent time on both sides of the border absorbing the atmosphere. "I recorded people's voices to get the proper inflection," she said.

"I crossed the border a whole bunch to collect a lot of history. I would sit for hours looking at the women, how they dressed. I talked to people. I hung out. I shopped at the stores to see what kind of clothing was there and what food was eaten."

In the last decade, Peña also branched out into voice acting, lending her voice to Mirage in Pixar's "The Incredibles" (2004) and to characters in the television series "Maya & Miguel," "Justice League" and "American Dad."

Peña is survived by her husband, Hans Rolla; her daughter, Fiona; and her son, Kaelan; as well as her mother and a sister.

A complete obituary will follow at www.latimes.com/obits.

Adam Carolla AFM Speech Preview: Hollywood Sucks

by Jen Yamato October 13, 2014
Last year’s American Film Market keynote speaker Adam Carolla is returning after successfully crowdfunding $1.4 million for his first film in seven years, with the semi-autobiographical comedy in post and a message to studios and financiers: “I just made a movie without you assholes, and it will be better than 92% of the shit Hollywood cranks out,” he said via phone from his Glendale headquarters. “I’m standing in my own studio – because of what? Because of CBS, because of Sony, because someone let me do this? I don’t need any of these assholes.”

Carolla admits his outspoken past and accusations of homophobia and misogyny might have turned off traditional investors. “Did the way you acted at the last party affect your invite to the next party? I can’t tell what I’ve missed out on,” he said. “I’m tired of dealing with the networks. I don’t think it’s helped, and it’s probably hurt. It’s academic because I basically have my own studio now, so it doesn’t really matter. But I never wanted to go that route anyway.”

His first film, The Hammer (produced and distributed by The Weinstein Co.), might have been his last if not for crowdfunding. “I had no intention of rattling the can by going to investors and studios. I was burnt out on that,” he said. The host of the most downloaded podcast around (The Adam Carolla Show) and a two-time NY Times best-selling author, Carolla has appeared on Dancing With The Stars, created Comedy Central hits The Man Show and Crank Yankers, and boasts more than 457,000 followers on Twitter and 119,000 more on Facebook. Tapping into a fanbase eager to see another film from him made Road Hard possible: Co-written and co-directed with longtime producer Kevin Hench, the project hit its $1 million goal on FundAnything.com in 32 days and capped at $1,449,706. 

“The last time I did this, it was demoralizing,” he confessed. “The product came out good, but it was so long in the making. I realized through podcasting and writing books, do it for yourself. Do it yourself.”



Carolla will address the AFM pros in an Industry Conversation on November 9 to discuss the crowdfunding success and distribution plans for Road Hard, one of two feature projects Carolla shot this year. The second film, a documentary chronicling the 35-year racing career of actor Paul Newman, was funded out of pocket and shot over the course of a year and a half. Neither project relies on traditional investors.


“When you make a movie with someone else’s money, they want to get their money back,” he said. “When you say, ‘We’re gonna wait six months for Sundance, or come out six months later, they’re gonna say, ‘No, you’re not.’ You entered a business agreement with these people. You can’t just say, ‘I’m an artist, I’ll do what I please’ – then you raise the money, you cut the check next time. If somebody gives you a large amount of money, whether it’s to make a movie or build a condominium project, if you say we’re not gonna break ground for a year, that’s not gonna fly, and I don’t blame them. It makes it complicated if you have investors.”

Other celebrities have capitalized on crowdfunding venues to fund passion projects, from the Veronica Mars crew to Zach Braff to Spike Lee. Carolla sees continued promise in the direct-to-fan landscape, including VOD and digital distribution.

“I think it will last just like any facet of our economy if the product is there,” he said. “If fans don’t like the product, they’re not going to pay for the next product. I believe enough people liked the last film I did, The Hammer, that enough people trusted in me. If Road Hard stinks, I think it would be a very difficult hill to climb to get money for the next film from the same people. But if people enjoy the product, I think they’d say, ‘This is the only way the film is getting made, and I paid for the last one’ – it’s like paying for a movie in advance. I wouldn’t have made this movie otherwise.”

Carolla’s Road Hard – A Comedian’s Journey From Crowdfunding To Distribution conversation will take place at 3 PM November 9 at the AFM Studio in the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel. Additional conversations and keynote speakers will be announced in the coming weeks.

Muhammad Ali health: Boxing legend misses own premiere because he is 'so ill he can barely speak'

JENN SELBY

PHOTOS BY RAY THARALDSON

Muhammad Ali’s battle with debilitating Parkinson’s disease has reached the point at which he can barely speak, his brother has revealed.
The legendary boxer, 72, was too ill to attend the premiere of a film about his life last week – or to take part in any of the production for it.

 "I have not been able to talk to my brother about this because he is sick," Rahman, 71, told the Sunday People at a screening of I Am Ali in Hollywood.

"He doesn’t speak too well. But he is proud that we are here for him. He has given this film his blessing."

"He has not seen the film yet, but I am very excited for him to see it," Ali’s 46-year-old daughter, Maryum, also said at the screening.
"He is going to love it. I know he is. He is going to cry, he is going to laugh. He will be very proud."

The documentary focuses on the family life of Ali – the three-time world heavyweight champion famed for his quick wit and lightning speed in the ring.

Director Clare Lewins pieced the feature-length together using Ali’s own audio journals, as well as oral histories from rival boxers, like Mike Tyson and George Foreman.

Muhammad’s son, Ali Jnr, said in January he believed there was "no chance" his father would survive until the end of 2014.

"I just want, hope and pray to God that this awful disease takes my dad sooner rather than later," he said.

"Take him away from all the suffering he’s in."

I Am Ali will be released  in cinemas across the UK from 28 November. Muhammad Ali will finally get to see the film himself when he is shown by his daughter Hana, 38, at his home in Arizona at the end of the month.

Top Cinematographers Offer Online Course on Filmmaking

Peter Caranicas

Deputy Editor@petercaranicas

Three major cinematographers – Janusz Kaminski (“Lincoln”), Phedon Papamichael (“Nebraska”) andWally Pfister (“The Dark Knight Rises”) – have teamed to present Advanced Filmmaking, a series of online instructional videos for aspiring filmmakers.

In addition to extensive interviews with the three d.p.’s, the course offers more than 12 hours of chats with their collaborators, including directors Alexander Payne and Wim Wenders.

“We conceived Advanced Filmmaking as a way to communicate lessons that aren’t normally covered in film school,” says Papamichael. “In our interactions with students and young filmmakers around the world, we saw a thirst for information about other topics like successful collaboration, making good career decisions and managing your personal life.”

Course modules vary in length, averaging about a half hour, and can be can be rented for one week via video sharing site Vimeo for $3.95.

The d.p. trio know one another well, having met at the beginning of their careers shooting films for low-budget indie producer Roger Corman.

Since then, Kaminski has made more than a dozen films with Steven Spielberg, earning two Oscars along the way. His credits include “Schindler’s List,” “Saving Private Ryan” and “The Diving Bell & the Butterfly.” His next project is Spielberg’s untitled Cold War thriller starring Tom Hanks, to be followed by Spielberg’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “The BFG.”

Papamichael, an Oscar nominee for Nebraska, has more than 40 narrative credits with such directors as Payne, Gore Verbinski and James Mangold. His films include “Walk the Line,” “The Descendants,” and “Sideways.”

Pfister, a four-time nominee, won the Oscar for “Inception,” the culmination of his collaboration with director Christopher Nolan, which has also yielded “Batman Begins,” The Dark Knight” and “Memento.” Pfister made his feature directorial debut last year on “Transcendence.”

“Nut-and-bolts skills are important,” says Pfister, “but we have learned so many hard-won life lessons along the way, insights I wish I’d known when I was starting out. That’s the idea behind Advanced Filmmaking.”

Course topics include Getting Started, Building Your Career, Equipment, Post-production, Collaboration and Personal Life.

A seminar highlighting the series rollout is planned for this year’s Camerimage International Festival of the Art of Cinematography, held each November in Poland. Papamichael and Kaminski are slated to attend.

(Pictured above at a taping for Advanced Filmmaking, from behind: Papamichael, Pfister and Kaminski.)

(An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Janusz Kaminski is working on the next Indiana Jones movie.)

FILED UNDER:

 

• Advanced Filmmaking
• Janusz Kaminski
• Phedon Papamichael
• Wally Pfister