Wholphin No. 4
The fourth issue of Wholphin features Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard lying to one another; the FBI mistaking an artist for a bioterrorist; Scottish 9-year-olds singing “Satan Rocks” at their country fair; an episode of the Russian “Married… with Children” re-scripted; an Academy Award nominated short; nuns; retired chimpanzees; plaster casters; and films from France, Morocco, New Zealand and the U.K.
10 films. 173 minutes.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
LINER NOTES
TWO CARS, ONE NIGHT
Written and directed by Taika Waititi
New Zealand, 2003
Q: Autobiographical?
TAIKA WAITITI: What? Oh, yes, the film is slightly autobiographical in that it was shot outside the same pub I used to sit outside when I was a kid. The place is called Te Kaha and is part of our tribal lands. They knocked it down last year and are building some nice apartments for rich people.
Q: Casting?
TW: The casting was done around the area where we shot. We went to diferent schools and talked to about 150 kids. In the end, we chose three children who all went to the same school and knew each other well. The two boys are cousins—both were eight years old—the girl was ten.
Q: Feature?
TW: Yep. Just fi nishing up a script which is like an extension of Two Cars, One Night. More cars, more nights.
Q: Idols?
TW: Anyone who has fronted a band called Queen. Oh, hang on, there’s just one. Yep, him.
Q: Hobbies?
TW: Oh, I thought you said Hobbits. I was gonna punch you. Hobbies… Yes, punching.
Q: Nightmares?
TW: Livin’ it, every day. It’s called “not being a baby anymore.”
Q: Rich?
TW: Thousandaire.
Q: Black belt?
TW: Brown belt. Leather. Studded. Needs another hole in it ’cause I’m shrinking. Or my pants are growing.
Q: Vegan?
TW: When there’s no meat or eggs in the house.
Q: Globophiliac?
TW: Had to look it up. This interview is over.
Q: Fears?
TW: World War IV. And breaking up with girls.
Q: Conspiracies?
TW: The towers aren’t really gone, the government just made them invisible.
Q: Wish?
TW: I wish Columbus sailed a little more in the opposite direction.
VS.
Q: Guitars vs. turntables?
TW: Guitars. Any day of the week, except maybe Friday nights in a large club.
Q: Sexy accents vs. perfect teeth?
TW: Sexy accents. Just don’t smile at me.
Q: Money vs. integrity?
TW: Integrity wins every time… Okay, but if I let money win just once, then I can do what I really love, right?
Q: Greenpeace vs. Japanese exotic sushi lovers?
TW: Greenpeace will smash their stupid brains in!
Q: Sperm whale vs. colossal squid?
TW: Show me this colossal squid. Show me even one tentacle, and I’ll humor you with an answer. The sperm whale laughs at you.
Q: Trapjaw ant vs. parasitic wasp?
TW: They don’t fight. They make love and have babies which are parasitic flying stripey beings called wantsps. These creatures are as big as your fist and can bite the head off a baby. They can wriggle up the end of your penis and make a nest up there. And then you become the food for the larvae. Horrific, I know.
Q: Praxis vs. poiesis?
TW: What the f*#k are you talking about?
Q: Wholphin vs. Wholphin accounting spreadsheets?
TW: Neither can survive without the other. They shouldn’t fight, they should be friends. Having said that, I suspect one is a little more boring than the other.
Q: Taika vs. Hollywood?
TW: I kill.
Directed by Andrew Zuckerman, Screenplay by Alex Vlack
U.S.A., 2007
Q: What was the inspiration for this film? Is it based on any real experiences?
ALEX VLACK & ANDREW ZUCKERMAN: It wasn’t inspired by real events or based on anything real. We wanted to explore the idea of trust and communication in a relationship, and we also didn’t want to make a bummer. So dead dogs and hand jobs seemed relatable without being too tragic.
Q: When coming up with the circumstances that drive this plot (meaning the hand job and the dead dog), what were other plot devices that you chose not to use?
AV & AZ: Dead dog came first. Andrew had been doing a photo series with animals for a while, and he thought killing an animal in the first minute of his first film would provide a nice break from his prior work.
We first thought, What if someone has an affair while his wife is pregnant? But that felt too nasty. Getting a hand job was less of an offense. It also provides a nice moral ambiguity. If you ask someone whether an affair is bad, the answer is yes. But ask someone about a hand job in a massage parlor, and the answer is more, “It’s not that bad.”
Q: We understand that this short film is the first third of a feature film that you’re working on. Could you tell us about how you see this section working on its own versus as part of the whole?
AV & AZ: If we could tell you that, we would be very happy. We’re working on it. We can confirm this, though: it’s either the beginning or the middle or the end, and it’s either the beginning or the middle or the end, and it’s either part of a larger narrative or not.
Q: While both of the characters lied, the motivations behind the transgressions that they concealed are very different. April accidentally killed the dog and Pedro intentionally got a hand job. How does this affect the moral righteousness of each character going forward into the feature film? Do you think that a lie is a lie? Or if there are degrees to deceit, how do you measure them?
AV & AZ: April’s transgression was not in killing the dog but in not telling Pedro about it. In fact, neither act is terribly important; it’s the way the characters deal with it that matters. What’s wrong with these people? Why can’t they talk to each other? Why doesn’t she call him right away? Why does he confess as a kind of revenge? We definitely believe that there are different levels of deceit. That’s what we find interesting—not a black-and-white world, but one full of complexity—a world that’s very difficult to navigate. We’re also not so sure he got a hand job in Japan. He seems like a liar. It could have been a half-truth.
Q: What is the biggest lie you have ever told? Did you get caught?
AV & AZ: We don’t lie.
Q: What was the biggest lie you told while on the set of this film?
AV & AZ: We refer you to the previous question.
Q: If an adulterous hand job is on par with killing a dog, what would the following actions be equivalent to? Snooping through your partner’s email; secretly meeting an ex-lover for lunch; throwing away your partner’s most precious belonging?
AV & AZ: We don’t think they are equivalent. What we want to know is, if you’re snooping through your partner’s email, what are you trying to discover that you can’t just ask? If you’re meeting an ex-lover for lunch, why can’t you just tell your present lover? And if you throw something away accidentally, why are you so afraid to tell? Those are the interesting questions for us.
STRANGE CULTURE
Excerpt from the feature film
Directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson
U.S.A., 2007
Q: When people obsessed with compartmentalizing things ask you what kind of film you’ve made, what do you say?
LYNN HERSHMAN LEESON: I say it’s a documentary because there is more documentary footage than anything else. In truth, though, I never think about categorizing it, and, in fact, no category
truly exists, because it’s a hybrid work made mostly from outtakes.
Q: I first saw your film at the San Francisco International Film Festival. During the Q&A, one woman (after taking about fi ve minutes to describe in detail her current life situation as an out-of-work biochemist!) suggested that no one in their right mind has a home laboratory. Now Steve, as an artist, had a home “studio,” which, due to the nature of his art, began to resemble a home “laboratory.” I wonder if you think this semantic distinction, between “studio” and “laboratory,” is part of what confused the FBI? Or were they just freaked out by the Arabic writing on the art invitation?
LHL: I think it was a combination of things, plus the anthrax scare. Some artists’ studios do look like labs, or at least they used to before this Kurtz incident.
Q: Were the reenactments more an artistic or a practical decision?
LHL: Practical. It was the only way to impart that information.
Q: What are some of the things your lawyers made you cut out of the film?
LHL: [Laughs] All the good stuff. The details about the judge, the details about what happened on May 11, the relationships between all of the people, that kind of stuff.
Q: Why finish and release the film before the trial?
LHL: This is a document of our time. It is meant to enlighten people and help Steve before the trial. It is not an after-the-fact look at what happened, and in that sense it is “live.”
Q: If the process of making this fi lm were to be plotted on a chart, what would it look like?
LHL: The structure of Conceiving Ada looked like DNA strands. This one would probably be splayed and circular, maybe like a nautilus.
Q: At what point during the making of this film did you first begin to get paranoid about being watched by the FBI?
LHL: When we didn’t get our IRS check.
Q: Did the other actors worry they would be placing themselves at odds with Big Brother by being involved with Steve’s story?
LHL: I think we all knew the risks. If we were fearful and had not acted, we would have been complicit with the tenor of this moment.
Q: Did you ever doubt him? Could he be fooling us all?
LHL: It’s always possible. John Waters asked me the same thing. But I really do think that he is honest and telling the truth.
Q: What have I forgotten to ask?
LHL: Depends on the context of your article. Much of the work was unscripted improvisation. The scripts were laying on the table in most of the scenes.
HEAVY METAL JR.
Directed by Chris Waitt
U.K., 2005
Q: How did you fi nd out about Hatred? Were you a satanic metal head? Are you now?
CHRIS WAITT: I am a metal fan, yes, but that’s not how I came across the band. I met the lead singer when I was making another film, a fictional one, and happened to be casting at his school. He was perfect for one of the roles but his hair was pretty long, which was wrong for the part, as the fi lm was set in the 1930s. I asked him if he would cut his hair for the role. He said never. I asked him why not and he explained that he was in a metal band. When he told me the band’s name I was blown away and knew I had to make a film about them.
Q: What drew you to them as a filmmaker? Were you ever in a band as a child? Did your parents allow you to rebel, or did they attempt to coopt your own efforts at rebellion in order to vicariously salvage their own failed dreams?
CW: I was in a number of useless bands when I was young, and am still in a semi-useless band now. The main thing about being in a band when you’re young is to play loud. My parents have always been very encouraging, and my dad taught me to play guitar—so actually I didn’t have to do much rebelling in that area.
Q: How long did you film?
CW: We shot for ten days, spread over the course of about three months.
Q: Did you ever get involved in the band drama? Like, did you weigh in on whether it should it be “Satan Rock” or “Satan Rocks”?
CW: I tried not to, but they asked my opinion a lot, and got me to help out with riffs and chords. My vote went for “Satan Rocks,” for sure.
Q: We found this comment online, posted by Paul McArthur on 4/3/2007: “Hey Everyone, looking back on hatred it seems so funny now lol, im now persuing my solo career, but dont worrie, i am much better than 2 years ago, watching the documentary now makes me cringe, and to think that its STILL going round the globe ha!. well add me if you want people and thanks for being so loyal to hatred heavy metal jr.” Is this true? Did the band break up? What caused the breakup, in your opinion?
CW: I’m not totally sure they actually broke up—I think they just went to different schools. But, yes, essentially, it is with great sadness that I confirm that Hatred no longer exists. By the time the documentary was finished it was clear that some of the musical differences between the band members were reaching a breaking point. As far as I know, at that time, two members of the band were sacked and Hatred renamed themselves Fusion and went down a more soft-rock/eighties-power-ballad path. I also received a disturbing and, for me, sad phone call from Paul’s mum to say that he had finally had his hair cut short.
Q: Where can we buy a Hatred CD?
CW: I’m not sure you can. Hatred were an unsigned band and so never had any offi cial releases. However, I can burn CDs of their music at a very reasonable cost to those interested.
Q: I’ve heard you’re a bit of a recluse, true? Care to talk about it?
CW: I’d like to know who said that. It’s not entirely true. In fact, I often go out—generally at night, walking the streets alone in a long cloak.
Q: Americans these days always talk about “British humor.” What is Scottish humor?
CW: I’m probably not qualified to answer that one, as I am an Englishman who happened to live in Scotland for a few years. Scotland is cool, but I’m not sure that the film is a great example of Scottish humor. I’d like to think that the eternal struggle to rock like Satan is a universal theme.
SCHASTLIVY VMESTE (“HAPPY TOGETHER” AKA
RUSSIAN “MARRIED… WITH CHILDREN”)
Rescripted by Jim Shepard, Mike Tanaka, Jack Pendarvis, Evany Thomas, and Anonymous
Russia, 2005
JIM SHEPARD AND MIKE TANAKA: This turns out to be the sort of pea-brained work that Mike and I have wondered if we were put on this earth to do, the two of us having devoted most of our developmental years to pissing away our lives indoors, watching bad television. Then Mike put in twenty years working in television, and Jim went to St. Petersburg and saw for himself for extended stretches the ongoing jaw-dropping circus that is Russian programming. So it seemed like McFate a-knocking when the offer came in to do this. But our certainty that we’d found our niche crystallized when, as we began translating the show’s opening song, we discovered that it was one of Pushkin’s most heartrending lyrics—“The Lovesick Clown Flings Aside his Flute”—virtually unchanged.
JACK PENDARVIS: This is the second time I have obliged Wholphin with humorous subtitles for an international sitcom based on an American program. Both the Russian version of Married… with Children and the Turkish version of The Jeffersons looked pretty good to me. The other night at three a.m. I saw the original Jeffersons episode upon which the Turkish show was based. I was amazed at the exact scene-for-scene similarity. It was like watching Gus Van Sant’s Psycho! Because I had seen the Turkish version first, the American one seemed like the imitation. As a subtitle writer, I noticed that there were a lot more long soliloquies in the Russian sitcom. I’m sure a smart person could explain why.
EVANY THOMAS’S MOSCOW WITH CHILDREN: “Fools Russian” When the rubles run dry, Vanye talks her way into a much- needed job and soon finds herself way in over her head. From dirty homophones to tilted uteruses, angry Swedish swans to fathers who mime, it’s all part of the seat-of-pants fun of “Fools Russian,” one of the better episodes of Moscow with Children, the hit situational comedy that has been accurately described as “just like the American Married… with Children, only in Russia.”
ANONYMOUS: While the American TV sitcom continues its global propaganda march, the ongoing tactical debate between what Ward Churchill calls the “pathology of pacifi sm” and what Saint Gregory termed “virtuous violence” is undoubtedly brewing below the din in blunt, working-class households throughout Chechnya, Moscow, and elsewhere around the globe. It seemed appropriate, then, to hijack the revolutionary mouths of Russian Bundys to explore the historical proponents of each strategy. “He who controls the tools of production…” and all that.
HEAVY METAL DRUMMER
Written and directed by Toby MacDonald and Luke Morris
U.K., 2005
We came across the story of fourteen metal heads who’d been arrested and tried in Casablanca for moral and religious crimes—essentially, wearing Metallica T-shirts and having a penchant for death metal. They’d been put in jail for a while, but there were demonstrations that embarrassed the legal system into releasing them early. We loved the idea of metal in the Arab world and went out
to Casablanca to meet some of the guys. Out in Morocco it was like West Side Story with the hip-hop kids against the metal kids. Almost all the kids were into hip-hop, and metal was still the outsider music. The metal kids were into really dark metal; it was Obituary and Morbid Angel. The heavier and darker the better. We shot the film in three days in Morocco, and cast almost all the actors from the street, often the night before shooting. Our lead, Yassine, came in to an audition we did and played an acoustic version of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters”—the lyrics to that song were the only English he knew. We cast him immediately. We found the vintage clip of superdrummer Terry Bozzio on an old instructional VHS tape but didn’t get to the point of clearing it until we were in Morocco. We’d tracked Terry down to London and I called him from the rooftop where we shot the wedding scene. I asked him if we could use the clip for an Arabic language heavy-metal short film and to his credit he said yes. We sent him a copy of the film after we’d fi nished it but never heard back from him. Maybe he didn’t like it. We asked some of the guys from Casablanca, most of whom were in bands too, to do the music for the film, so the score, which they emailed over to us, is by Moroccan metal bands The Nightmare and Clear Crisis Act. Someone described the short as a mix between Footloose, Kiarostami, and Napoleon Dynamite, but we just wanted to make a supershort teen movie in Arabic. —LUKE MORRIS
LA CHATTE ANDALOUSE
Written and directed by Gérald Hustache-Mathieu
France, 2002
Q: Is this film an adaptation? As the writer, how did it come about?
GÉRALD HUSTACHE-MATHIEU: No. It’s not an adaptation of the “Chien Andalou” by Buñuel, even if the title in French is a reference to the subversive cinema of its author. The scenario was born from the collision of two images. The first one was a photograph of a naked man posing for his female art-school students. The second one was a vision I had while I was driving on a monotonous road in Ardèche, listening to Texas (“Zero Zero,” specifi cally, from the album The Hush). I “saw” a young nun riding her motorcycle back from the market with her luggage rack full of supplies. She was going along a pine forest next to the sea. Between the trees, she sees the sun reflecting on the waves. She stops and hides her motorcycle in the shadow of the trees. She starts to undress, and walks to the sea in her underwear. Since the beach is empty, she gets completely naked and goes into the water with the waves… Something very strong emerged from this image, and I felt a movie could be made from it. I had been working on another scenario—directing an artist from the art school—and I got stuck. Then, while I was looking for some inspiration in my notebooks, I found this nun story and it clicked! The meeting of the sacred and the profane. It is like a chemical experience, the shock of two universes has provoked an interesting reaction… My goal wasn’t to oppose them and be voyeuristic or against the church, but to reach to one of the issues of the movie, love, physically and morally, the love of art and the love in art.
Q: We think that at forty-eight minutes, this film is perfect in length. However, did you ever feel any pressure to lengthen it to better conform to industry feature standards?
GHM: Not at all, because I have a very understanding producer who (almost) never exposes me to any pressure. Before going to use this “bastard format,” I only wanted to be sure that it was the right length. It was clear that I wasn’t able to shorten it, and the story didn’t need to be developed either. My producer and I agreed that it was the right format and a way to move from the short movie to the long movie with a gentle transition.
Q: Have you ever broken any moral boundaries on behalf of a friend or loved one? Or at least been confronted by this sort of situation? Please tell us about it.
GHM: Yes, often! This is my Jean-Jacques Rousseau side… To save the wild animal that we are from the iron collars of our education. I love the rules because as soon they exist, we can break them. To break the rule, it’s a creation of something poetic, artistic. “The forbidden fruit,” what a nice invention… a fruit, why not… but a forbidden fruit… We already want to bite into it, so it creates desire… But to answer your question, yes, I met a young nun at a radio show and we talked a lot about my movie… A very interesting girl, bright, cultured, and good-looking. For me it was unacceptable that she pronounces her vows. With the help of a friend, I organized her “escape.” During the night, we jumped over the convent wall and we met her in her cell. First she was very afraid of us, then she thought we were crazy, and then it
made her laugh and she agreed to follow us. We all left in an old yellow 4L car and we went to Camargue all together. Now she is an art-school student… But I’m not very sure if this story is true or not… Sometimes I confuse life with movies…
Q: Did you put out a casting call for male models? Or did people working on the fi lm contribute models?
GHM: We had a party to make all the plaster casts that we needed. Now that I think about it, we could have done a very interesting DVD extra. But I don’t feel bad because I like when movies keep their mystery. But if I make my version of La nuit Américaine, who knows?
Q: Did you make them the same way Soeur Angèle did in the film? With condoms?
GHM: Yes, I did. I had to ask myself the same questions that a plastic caster maker does. Cynthia Plaster Caster realized how to make this type of cast directly with plaster. She is famous for having molded Jimmy Hendrix’s penis, which is now stored in a bank safe in Switzerland. What interested me in this process was to find a technique that was very mechanical, which erases the erotic effect of the act, like a drawing made by an art-school student in front of his naked model. The direction of the fi rst removal of the mold was made in this direction, to make sure that the cast sex appears in a raw and bitter way. In the movie theater, at this instant, the audience formulates its surprise or its embarrassment by a mocking laugh. On the other hand, while with the second removal of the mold the movement is almost the same, and the artistic ritual is respected, the feelings should be totally different. I was hoping for a change of the audience point of view as Sister Angèle changed hers. It was one of the issues of the movie.
Q: Did people get to take their own mold back when the film was over? Or do you have a display of all of them (as seen in the fi lm) in your own home now?
GHM: The plaster casts are in boxes in my basement. The cultural
service of my city hall proposed me to make an exposition at the city museum… but I like the idea that the artwork exists only in the movie. But we never know… I might make an exposition, but in a scene in my next movie. I like the idea to link the movies between them by underground ties, which make sense to this “other world” I’m inventing… I see you seem to be very interested by this artwork, so I’m inviting you to come to see it closer. You’ll see, in real life it’s more disconcerting…
TOM’S WAR ON TERROR
Written and directed by Cameron Fay
U.S.A., 2007
Q: So what was the inspiration for this film? Have you ever been typecast, stereotyped, or discriminated against?
CAMERON FAY: I mean, “the war on terror” was the biggest inspiration. I don’t like saying the phrase war on terror because it doesn’t fully make sense to my brain. But the idea that you can go around and pick people that might be considered terrorists and jail them until you find out otherwise was the real inspiration. That idea of act first, think second. I think I’ve usually been seen as a part of the majority, middle-class white guy, so I don’t think I’ve ever been discriminated against in the sense that the woman is in the film. But I’ve seen it happen, and the great duality of this film is that I’ve even given a second look to Middle Eastern men and women before getting on a bus or a plane. I think it’s been beaten into our brains that they are the enemy. It’s really the only way the public has been able to tolerate the “war on terror” for as long as it has.
Q: How many takes, and who was the lucky girl who got to be blindsided by a two-hundred-pound man?
CF: I think Mathew Edwards, who played “Tom,” would be grossly offended by being called two hundred pounds. Actually, he’d probably just laugh, so never mind. The lucky girl we cast is Denisa Salingerova. I think we did a total of three or four takes. Two wide and two close up. She was game. I remember in the interview process (I didn’t have any of the girls audition, I just met with them) I asked her, “So you’re okay with being tackled, ’cause we can’t really afford a stunt coordinator or anything.” And she was like, “Will there be a soft thing for me to land on?” To which I replied, “Yeah, like an Aero mattress.” “Oh, then yeah, totally fine… no problems.” She actually kept telling Matt to “go for it! Really tackle me.” So I’d just be like, “Yeah, Matt, really just tackle her, man.” He actually didn’t end up going all out, which is a good thing. We trimmed a few frames in post
to speed it up, and added some intense sound effects to make it seem worse than it was.
Q: Are you working on other future scenarios?
CF: That’s the most common question I get at film festivals. I haven’t had much time, but I’d like to eventually. You know, this thing kind of just came to me one morning, and I thought, Why not, let’s just shoot it one day with the extra can of 16mm I have in the fridge. I wasn’t even sure if anyone would ever see it. People have given me suggestions, but nothing that has really made me laugh. Matt, Kandis, and I might sit down one day and come up with a few other scenarios, but as of now, I got nothing.
Q: Do you have a favorite political film?
CF: I don’t have one favorite, but I love All the President’s Men and The Manchurian Candidate. JFK is one of the most well-put- together films of all time. Shot by shot… it’s just mind blowing.
Q: Do you have a (personal) “war on” anything?
CF: War on kitchen appliances. No, I’m kidding, I don’t think I have a personal war on anything. I might be too lazy for that. I might dislike certain things and situations but to wage an actual war on them costs too much energy for me.
Q: Are you at all worried that the long arm of the law might someday come down on you for this fi lm and label you a terrorist for “making art that challenges the government?”
CF: Ha! No, I’m not worried. I’d assume they’d have bigger fish to fry. I think one of the best things about this country is freedom of
speech. I can’t imagine too many people would side with the government if they were to ever start regulating free speech and art.
However, the more I think about it… yes. Yes, I am worried.
Q: Why does Tom say his name after realizing his mistake?
CF: Because he’s polite.
Q: How will this film be perceived in twenty years?
CF: I’m not sure. That’s a tough question. Actually, that’s an impossible question. My guess is it’ll be the highest-grossing film of all time. Ever. No, um, I’d say it will probably still be relevant, because I don’t see this war, or war in general, going away anytime soon. I think it’ll stick with us for a long while, and unfortunately, so will this film.
Q: UFOs?
CF: Love ’em… riding around in them, just hangin’… No, I can’t really imagine that in this vast universe humans are the only intelligent life. That’s a funny question, though. I’m going to use that at bars to hit on girls. “Excuse me, UFOs?” I’m single. And it’ll probably stay that way for quite some time.
Q: What’s up next for you?
CF: I’m directing a fi lm for Universal called Unnatural Selection, which is a script I wrote as well. I just turned in the first rewrite and soon we’ll be going out to cast. It’s a comedy about an average guy who purposely becomes best friends with women that are way out of his league in order to sleep with them. Basically, it’s autobiographical…
CHEETA
Original Wholphin Short
U.S.A., 2007
The acronym CHEETA stands for Creative Habitats and Enrichment for Endangered and Threatened Apes. Dan Westfall adopted Cheeta the Chimp in 1992 from his uncle Tony Gentry, an animal trainer who worked in Hollywood and obtained Cheeta from Africa in the 1930s. Inspired by primate researcher Jane Goodall, Dan started a desert sanctuary to provide residence, care, and rehabilitation for homeless or unwanted ex-show-business primates. There are chimpanzees, orangutans, and monkeys at his desert refuge.
Q: What year did Cheeta retire from acting?
DAN WESTFALL: His last picture, which was Doctor Dolittle with Rex Harrison, was in 1967.
Q: So what did he do after that?
DW: Well, my uncle, his trainer, was getting old and he was afraid
that Cheeta would be mistreated, so he stated in his will that Cheeta should be put to sleep when he died. It took two years to talk him out of it. But I was able to assure him that I would take care of Cheeta myself.
Q: How old was he then?
DW: Cheeta? Oh, in his late fifties.
Q: So you got custody of him. That’s great. What have his hobbies been besides painting?
DW: Well, he loves to go for rides in the car. And he loves to go for walks. There’s a building across the street, and we walk through it into the desert. He loves that. But I think he loves car rides best.
Q: Where to?
DW: Oh, just around. We go get a Coke and a hamburger or something. You know, things you do with your best friend.
Q: Is he in good health?
DW: Yeah. Well, he’s a diabetic. He’s been diabetic for about seven years now. So I take his blood and give him his insulin every day.
Q: Do you take him to the local veterinarian?
DW: Oh no, that’s too dangerous. Most vets can’t, and won’t, handle him, so I do it myself. My vet’s in St. Louis—and we do it over the phone. If anything dramatic were to happen, we’d have to knock Cheeta out before anybody else could touch him.
Q: Yeah, even at seventy-fi ve, he probably still gets cranky, huh?
DW: Oh, he’s four times my strength! Five times, even! Very powerful. He’s not a domesticated animal. He’s still a wild animal and therefore still a dangerous animal.
Q: So what’s the most fun you’ve ever had with him?
DW: Oh, just hanging out together. Just monkeying around. We go for rides; we talk; we watch TV; we eat our meals together. All of it. He’s my best buddy. He’s part of my family.
Q: So what’s his personality like?
DW: Well, they’re all different, but he’s got a real great personality. That said, anything can set him off. He gets very stubborn. If he wants something out of the refrigerator I have to cut him off at the path. Change his train of thought. Because there’s no way I can grab him and just take him away from there. He’d pull me through the wall. His strength is unbelievable.
Q: Does he know you’re the boss, though? Like a dog knows its master?
DW: Yeah, well, he knows I’m his partner and his caretaker. I’m the one who feeds him and gives him love and stuff.
Q: It seems like it’d be fun to hang out here. Do you have parties on Sunday afternoons?
DW: Well, I never bring Cheeta out when there are people here. It would be too dangerous. You can’t trust people. You know, you say don’t touch him but then you turn your back and they go ahead and touch him anyways. That’s when accidents happen. It’s not like petting a dog. You can trust the chimp, but you can’t trust the people.
Q: But we’re always seeing Jane Goodall holding chimps on nature shows…
DW: Well, those are babies. They’re not seventy-five-year-old chimps. Once a chimp reaches puberty, around seven years old, they become a one-person animal.
Q: Jane Goodall suggested that you take on some of the other animals. Are you involved in any other ways with other sorts of groups, like any sorts of conventions for donations or promotional foundations?
DW: Well, Dr. Jane, she sells Cheeta’s paintings and donates the money to animal projects around the world. And we donate a lot of his artwork to different causes, like cancer associations and AIDS associations. All kinds of things. Not just for animals, but for mankind as well.
For more on Cheeta, and how you can help, visit cheetathechimp.org.
site specific_LAS VEGAS 05
Directed by Olivo Barbieri
Italy, 2005
Interview conducted with film theoretician Sean Uyehara.
Q: Everyone is going to think this is fake CGI or something. But it’s not, right?
SEAN UYEHARA: Yeah, each film in Olivo Barbieri’s “site specifi c” series features aerial views of a single city and are shot on 35mm or high-definition video. The films do not incorporate computergenerated imagery or digital effects of any kind.
Q: I don’t believe you. It’s too surreal. It makes me insane.
SU: Barbieri’s work is not digital, but it seems connected to some form of digital media, such as 3-D “previsualization.” And in that way the “site specifi c” fi lms prod viewers to use competencies and strategies of understanding that might lead them down a labyrinthine path. Or not.
Q: So explain what he’s doing.
SU: Like in his still photography series “Virtual Truths,” Barbieri uses a tilt-shift camera lens, which allows him to finely control the area and range of focus within the image. From moment to moment one feels that one is viewing, on one hand, panoramic aerial views of a real city, and on the other hand, macroscopic photography of hyperdetailed miniatures of said city.
FILMMAKER BIOS
Olivo Barbieri, born in Italy in 1954, started the “site specific” photograph and film project in 2003. The project involves several cities: Rome, Turin, Montreal, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Amman, and, most recently, Seville. Barbieri’s photographs may be viewed in museums, collections, and universities in Italy and abroad. He has an exhibit opening at the San Francisco MOMA in the fall of 2007.
Cameron Fay is a native Washingtonian of Irish and Persian descent. He began filmmaking at the age of twelve, using a home-video camera, and friends from his soccer team as actors. This hobby fell into a desperate obsession, one that he brought with him to the prestigious Kanbar Institute of Film and Television at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. While at NYU, he broadened his sexual horizons while still managing to write and direct a plethora of short films, which have won awards at various film festivals worldwide. He is currently writing and is set to direct Unnatural Selection for Universal Pictures and is repped by UTA and Mosaic Media Group.
Gerald Hustache-Mathieu was born in 1968 in Grenoble, France. He made his first movies on Super 8. His first short film, Peau de vache was selected by about fifty different film festivals and won around thirty prizes. The film was nominated for the 2002 San Francisco Golden Gate Award and the 2001 European Film Award, and won the 2003 César Award for Best Short Film. Shot in 2002, his medium-length movie, La Chatte Andalouse, has also met with strong success in the festivals, and was nominated for a César in 2004. His first long movie, Avril, was released in France in June 2006. Variety called it “a pleasingly peculiar blend of sacred and profane that’s quite unlike the vast majority of contempo French films.”
Lynn Hershman Leeson has worked extensively in photography, video, installation, and interactive and internet-based media. She is an award-winning artist whose work is held in numerous collections,
including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the National Gallery of Canada, and DG Bank (Frankfurt). She was the first woman to receive a tribute and retrospective at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Hershman Leeson is Emeritus Professor of Digital Art at the University of California, Davis, A.D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University, Artist in Residence at the Stanford Humanities Institute, and Chair of the Film Department at the San Francisco Art
Institute.
Toby MacDonald started as a runner at the age of seventeen. His first short film, Je t’Aime John Wayne, was nominated for a BAFTA, chosen for the Cannes Film Festival, and won the EFA European Academy Award for Best Short Film. He codirected the short film Heavy Metal Drummer with Luke Morris, earning him a second BAFTA nomination.
Luke Morris
Luke Morris is a twice-BAFTA-nominated independent producer and also runs London-based short film label Cinema16 (cinema16.org), which has released classic, cult, and award-winning shorts from directors including Mike Leigh, Chris Nolan, Gus Van Sant, Jean-Luc Godard,
and Todd Solondz.
Taika Waititi is of Te-Whanau-a-Apanui descent and hails from the Raukokore region of the east coast of New Zealand. Two Cars, One Night is Taika’s first professional filmmaking effort, for which he received a 2005 Academy Award nomination. After completing Two Cars, One Night, Taika went on to make his second short film, Tama Tu, as well as his first feature film, Eagle vs. Shark, which opened to rave reviews at Sundance in 2007. Taika recently attended the Sundance Writers Lab with Volcano, a feature film loosely based on Two Cars, One Night.
Chris Waitt is a prolific writer, director, actor, animator, and puppeteer. Chris’s work ranges from cartoons to live-action documentary. He has a background in comedy as a writer for Sacha Baron Cohen (Ali G), as a performer, and as an author of hundreds of extremely poor greeting-card jokes. He won a Golden Rose of Montreux in 2004 for his outrageous adult puppet comedy, Fur TV. Next up from Chris is a feature-length documentary.
Jim Shephard is the author of six novels, including, most recently, Project X (Knopf, 2004), and three story collections, including, most recently, Love and Hydrogen (Vintage, 2004) and Like You’d Understand Anyway (Knopf, 2007). In person he seems an odd combination of the listless and the oblique.
Mike Tanaka is a television writer and producer whose credits include Good Morning America, The Oprah Winfrey Show, MSNBC, and National Geographic Explorer. He met Jim Shepard at Brown University, where they regularly rewrote sitcom scripts while they watched, strictly for their own amusement. This is their first public collaboration.
Jack Pendarvis’s most recent short-story collection is Your Body Is Changing. His first novel, titled Awesome, will be published next year.
Evany Thomas is the author of The Secret Language of Sleep: A Couple’s Guide to the Thirty-Nine Positions, along with lots of little things for a variety of publications, including Television Without Pity, The Morning News, and American Girl Magazine. She lives in Oakland with her extratoed cat, her vertical-jumping dog, her tan boyfriend, Marco, and the meanest turtle that ever was.
In 2006, Andrew Zuckerman and Alex Vlack started a company called Late Night and Weekends, and one of the things it does is act as a creative agency. Andrew’s background is in photography and commercial directing, and Alex’s is in writing and producing. The company serves as a creative place where Vlack and Zuckerman can do their commercial work as well as projects that they’re personally passionate about. The first project that they worked on was High Falls. Along with the film, they also published a book (Late Night Press) of a series of photographs Andrew made of the actors, in character, but not within the time of the film itself. They are currently producing a pilot for a children’s show about environmentalism and a feature-length documentary about Bill Withers, while continually developing the feature-length High Falls.