MOVIE MAKING NIGHT #827

NEOE

Despite the Ice Storm of the Millennium, a few hardy souls slithered down the street to join the discussion of film making with Rafael Zielinski founding partner of Neo Modern [NEOE] Productions, an independent film company before his return to Los Angeles. Raphael is planning to come to Montreal, this summer [1998], to complete his current production "Bohemia" which stars Troy Garity, Jane Fonda's son.

David opened the discussion by showing a montage of clips of Rafael's films including "Hey Babe" and "Fun". Shot in eight days, the latter film is an extraordinarily gripping and disturbing docu-drama based on the true story of a pair of teenage girls whose one-day quest for "fun" leads to the random murder of an elderly woman. Rafael stated that this low budget, underground film which received several awards at the Sundance and other festivals was made partly to exorcise his own demons. After making a number of films including low budget or "B" films, thrillers and commercial efforts for Hollywood, he had wanted to do his own film with his own money, treating a subject which fascinated him.

In response to a question about the relationship between the two young actresses, he noted that they were complete strangers and despite the deep empathy they exuded on screen, they developed no off-screen friendship. The creative process included a dry-run shot on video, 17 days of revision.

Discussion followed of the lessons learned from this exercise; the need to develop effective relationships with distributors, promotional efforts were not adequate, but there is hope for eventual cost recovery through foreign distribution and video rights.

Rafael's next project is a rather charming cross-cultural love story which is to be filmed in Prague.

A comment was made concerning the soundtrack of "Hey, Babe" and the coincidence of Sonny Bono's recent death. Rafael said that they had been unable to obtain the rights to the Sony and Cher version of "I Got You Babe", so had gone with another one.

Rafael then talked about his plans for an IPO for a production company to make low budget films and others made suggestions concerning seed stock offerings, cautioning that film making is a very tough business despite the strong market for low-budget films in the U.S. and particularly overseas.

In view of the severe weather conditions, the evening ended early with the suggestion that Rafael should investigate the possibilities of "Ice Storm II - The Northern Version".

Reported by Michael Judson, Edited by Diana Thébaud Nicholson

Tony Deutsch was with us, to elucidate the opinions on exchange rates he so freely expressed on CTV (every 15 minutes!). Mayor Peter was back from his travels with a fresh perspective on the looming problems between the Quebec Government and the municipal workers who, expectedly, are not happy with proposed salary cutting to off-set the downloading on municipalities. On Tax!? Also And Trent on the guitar.