(If you haven’t already, please be sure to check out Filmmaker Reflections - The 2000s: Vol. 1 for a series explanation and to read the first batch of reflections.)

Filmmaker Reflections - The 2000s: Vol. 3

I went to the movie Chuck & Buck blind and by myself and it changed my life. The movie came out in 2000. It was a time when I was fed up with show business and hated my life. But this movie was a joy. It was funny, sweet, honest and awkward and it felt like something that was personal to the filmmakers. It felt like it had to be made instead of something that someone was making to make them rich or help their careers. It inspired me to make my own small movie Sleeping Dogs Lie (aka Stay). Now it might have been a horrible experience for the director Miguel Arteta and writer and star Mike White, I don’t know. What I do know is that it is why I make movies today. (My detractors may want to take a time machine back to 2000 and talk them out of making the movie.) I have met Mike White a few times and gushed to him about Chuck & Buck and what it means to me. I think he thinks I’m weird. When I talk to him it’s always awkward and uncomfortable. And you know what? I wouldn’t want it any other way. — Bobcat Goldthwait (World’s Greatest Dad, Sleeping Dogs Lie)

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Before Sunset is one of my favorite films, and I’ve probably seen it more often than any other (its svelte 80-minute running time always passes by in what seems more like 15 or so). It’s also probably screwed me up more than any other movie.

In a past, ill-fated relationship, a shared love of Before Sunset was one of the things that first brought us together. The film was a constant underlying theme and reference point throughout the relationship, and we would have incredibly lame conversations (pretty much always spearheaded by me) about how similar I was to Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and she to Celine (Julie Delpy). These embarrassing talks were one factor, amongst others, that had me naively imagining we were meant to be. However, if I’d been seeing things more clearly, I would’ve received an early warning that this probably wasn’t the case when, during one of these conversations, I mentioned how amazing the song at the end of the movie is, referring of course to the one Celine sings to Jesse that reveals everything she had been hiding from him the entire film, a scene that floors me every time I see it. To which she responded, “Oh yeah, you mean the Nina Simone one?”

But more than any specific example (and this is where I lose whatever slight manly credibility I had left), this film contains ideas that are very dangerous for me. For far too long, I had almost impossible-to-meet standards in dating partners, and seeing Before Sunset was like one giant confirmation. I’d often never make it beyond a first date, giving up if things weren’t great right off the bat or didn’t immediately have some of that Jesse-Celine magic. Weekly viewings of the film would only further encourage me that I was on the right path. It was a pathetic time, and one that I would hope I’m past now. But then again, who knows—it’s been quite a while since I’ve popped in that DVD… — Nat Sanders (Humpday, Medicine For Melancholy)

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Dawn of the Dead (2004) — After a Kips Bay matinee screening of what I expected to be pure blasphemy, I had the following revelation: Big studio remakes of sacred horror films are not all cruddy. Sometimes they fucking dominate. — Jeremy Saulnier (Murder Party, Hamilton)

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A friend recommended The Staircase, the Sundance Channel doc series from the director of Murder on a Sunday Morning a few years ago, so I added it to the bottom of my Netflix queue and forgot all about it. When it finally arrived over a year later (yes, it takes me that long to work through my epic queue!), I had no idea what it was about. I started watching episode one, and it blew my mind… I watched four episodes in a row that night! I don’t want to say too much—just Netflix it, you won’t regret it…. — Amanda Micheli (La Corona, Thin, Double Dare)

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Let’s talk about Scott Wilson. If you have to ask who he is, well, you and I probably shouldn’t go to the movies together. We’d just end up arguing about stupid crap, I’d throw some popcorn at you and then we’d break up. Scott Wilson is an American treasure, friend. An underrated, underused master craftsman. And one need look no further than two of this decade’s most wonderfully eclectic films, The Way of the Gun and Junebug, to see full evidence of his thespianic glory on display for all.

Don’t get me wrong. These are both superb films that stand tall on their own and whose merits are numerous, but neither would be as powerful and enduring without the skillful supporting work of Mister Wilson. Hale Chidduck, the badass so-and-so with the sharp suit and the hot young wife, is Wilson’s contribution to Christopher McQuarrie’s seering, hilarious, Sarah-Silverman-ass-kicking shootout flick, The Way of the Gun. Stinking rich, capable of everything he threatens (and then some), and not afraid to put a forearm to your throat and pin you against the wall (“Baltimore!”), he is menace personified. Seething and physical, he couldn’t be more different than Eugene Johnsten, the passive, soft-spoken father who stands in the corner (or retires to his basement workshop) as the chaos of his family buzzes around him in Phil Morrison and Angus MacLachlan’s sublime snapshot of Southern suburbia, Junebug. One need only watch his final scene, wherein he slips a wooden duck into his pocket, shy and faltering like a schoolboy, to bear witness to this actor’s stone cold genius. It’s a heartbreaking moment, with not a false note or manufactured emotion in sight. It’s the real deal, buddy; it’s a master class in subtlety.

I could go on and on. (I haven’t even mentioned his riveting, soul-shattering single scene in Monster.) I was honored to be able to give Hal Holbrook a chance this year to have his first solo lead in a film at age eighty-four. Here’s hoping Scott Wilson is given the same opportunity, and soon. He’s sixty-seven now, so he’s got a few years to go before we’re in Holbrook territory—but then again, there’s no time like the present. — Scott Teems, (That Evening Sun)

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ALSO READ:

Filmmaker Reflections - The 2000s: Vol. 1
Filmmaker Reflections - The 2000s: Vol. 2
Filmmaker Reflections - The 2000s: Vol. 4
Filmmaker Reflections - The 2000s: Vol. 5

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