Work In Progress is the name of the local production services company in Belgrade who have been wonderfully hosting our stay and wrangling the shooting of our film "Therese" here.
It is also an apt description of the comic book I have been scribbling in my few rare moments of rest and relaxation away from the set. I thought I'd share this work-in-progress with you here.
Enjoy!
william
In any new place I travel, I enjoy seeking out not only the differences that make it cuturally unique and authentic, but also the things that we have in common as children of the 20th century.
Often I will track down the local flea market, and rummage around in the detritus of the pop culture of a place; I especially enjoy finding old comic books and paperbacks and pulp magazines.
Here are a few choice samples culled from the street vendors of Belgrade:
My handy translator Nadezda decoded this one as Final For Two Revolvers, but said in meaning it could also be called "The Last Gunfight" or "The Final Shoot Out."
Dej Kin seems like a pretty cool name for a crime fiction writer. I couldn't find out anything about him or his work on line, but I will investigate further.
The building in the cover painting looks a bit like Marina City towers in Chicago, which is perhaps why I was attracted to it.
The publisher Duga (rainbow) apparantly put out different editions and this one is the Green Edition (zeleni dodatak).
"The Girls of the Wharf # 13" is quite a handsome cover painting of quite a handsome trio of girls. Wharves were always such great settings for crime fiction stories.
I love the title of this one: The Stars Have Gone Dark.
Spijunski roman means "spy novel". Pretty apocalyptic. I wish I could read it.
Enjoy!
william
Let's all join in wishing my wonderful wife a HUGE birthday greeting!
Here's one all the way from Belgrade, Serbia!
XOXO
Enjoy!
william
I always thought that Matt Drake's original screenplay "The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman" had one of the freshest voices I had ever read when my producing partners Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa first brought it to me.
Which is probably why it has taken six years and a series of false starts and heartbreaking stops to finally make its way to the floor. Originality is not the most precious coin in the Hollywood realm these days. It's genre-defying blend of aching love story, comedy, edgy violence and trippy surrealism in a pitch-perfect tone of black absurdism that mirrors the sensibility of its Eastern European setting had many studios and financiers flirting with the project but ulitmately shying away in this risk adverse era of more formulaic and easily pigeon-holed fare.
You can see the surprised look on Matt's face as he finds himself sitting in the breakfast room of the Bucharest Marriott with director Fredrik Bond five weeks out from shooting and putting the finishing touches on the production polish of the script.
I hadn't been back to Bucharest in almost ten years, since the completion of principal photography of "Cold Mountain", Anthony Minghella's epic Civil War story which was mostly filmed in the mountains of Transylvania.
But as that film was rural and period, Charlie is contemporary and very urban, and the Bucharest I returned to was mostly unrecognizable to me from ten years ago.
Bond is one of the top commercial directors working in the world today and he is making his feature film debut on "Charlie". His uncanny eye and good taste have found some great locations for the film that capture in architecture and landscape the incongruous juxtaposition of romantic idealism and old world cynicism at the heart of Matt's fable.
This looks like the world's tiniest bar, but these gentlemen seem to be enjoying the intimacy of the space.
Shia LaBeouf and Evan Rachel Wood and Mads Mikkelson are starring the film, but they hadn't arrived yet on this cold and rather inclement day of scouting.
But things will heat up soon in every way as the circus comes to town and Fredrik Bond and Matt Drake and their whole team of artists and technicians assemble in Romania to try to capture the anarchistic spirit of Bucharest and film the necessary death that will finally let "Charlie" live!
Enjoy!
william
"There is Paramount Paris and Metro Paris and of course the real Paris.
Paramount's is the most Parisian of all." - Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch was possibly the wittiest of 20th century filmmakers, but even he probably couldn't have imagined adding to the list of his famous aphorism "Paris, Serbia" - the recreation of 19th century Paris springing to life on the stages of Pink Studios outside of Belgrade in April 2012 for the production of Emile Zola's classic tragic love story "Therese Raquin".
I don't know if this production will be the most Parisian of all, but if it is it will be thanks to the efforts of our very talented and not-French production designer, Uli Hanisch from Cologne, with whom I had the pleasure of working twelve years ago in Italy on the production of Tom Tykwer's "Heaven" and have happily reunited on this show.
Uli is the wizardly alchemist who makes this:
into this:
Which when all the last nails are hammered will conjure up the illusions for our cameras that will turn Serbia into this:
and this:
Does every great production designer grow up reading Sir Walter Scott's verse:
"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!"
As Ernst Lubistch knew, our celluloid dreams are made of just such deceptions.
Enjoy!
william
A rare trip home and an even rarer Easter excursion with the family to the Rose Bowl flea market yielded a few precious vernacular photographs fished out of a plastic bin for their period charm, color palette and otherworldly nostalgia.
Some serious looking military naval hardware looming overhead makes this colorful on deck outing seem like a Cold War cover story. Is that Kevin Spacey hiding behind those shades?
Viola Davis' wardrobe from The Help might have been inspired by this old Kodachrome. I love the double-exposure on the already extra-wide lapels!
These two lettermen look like they could be standing on a movie set from an Irwin Allen-style Land of the Giants television series specially built to perspective to emphasize their size!
Happy Easter!
Enjoy!
william
More adventures from that wacky comic duo that we love!
Enjoy!
william
I was thinking about the kids the other day, missing them from so far away over here, and yet with the benefit of distance, amazed by each of them, and by the special relationship they have invented with each other.
The result was this:
Those guys really know how to have fun, each according to their interests.
Maybe it will be the first in a series?
Enjoy!
william
My new neighborhood in Belgrade is called Dorćol.
It is not far from the Danube and it has a kind of "On The Waterfront" quality of old streets and industrial warehouses common to riverside living.
This is my street. What, can't read the cyrillic street sign?
Here's my apartment building. It has a wrought iron gated entrance and the stairway looks a bit industrial/spartan but the place is really nice and light and airy.
This is my corner store of the Mom and Pop variety featured worldwide. Nelson Algren could have written about Lefty Bicek going there to get a "Bottle Of Milk For Mother".
Some buildings remind me of Old Havana with their crumbling facades and interesting architectural details.
There is a green market a few blocks away. It must be radish season as the place was a riot of endless bunches of red radishes. I hear some people like radishes. I am not one of them. But I was glad to wander this farmer's market and find some fresh produce for healthy eating in the new pad.
More importantly, I was glad to discover that my new neighborhood also featured a bookie joint and a strip bar, just in case I was getting too Mr. Natural for what is, after all, Eastern Europe.
At first glance Striptis sounded like a throat lozenge brand, until I was able to translate its neon sign to "striptease".
Back in the '90's NATO bombs fell here, but now there is evidence everywhere of a different kind of "bomber" - the graffiti artists who are tagging the old city. I liked this woman's portrait and the urban landscape it graces.
Today was my first day to wander around after the 24/7 rigors of preparing the movie the last few weeks since I arrived. I feel like I have only barely scratched the surface of my new neighborhood, but so far it reminds me of certain parts of Chicago back in the old days, maybe in the back streets around Goose Island!
No coincidence that Chicago is said to have the second largest Serbian population outside of Belgrade!
Enjoy!
william
I have been to Rome many times.
At the turn of the last century, I was involved in making three movies there over the course of a few years - (now that was a fun sentence to write!) But this weekend, thanks to my old friend and co-worker on The Talented Mr. Ripley, Laura Luchetti, I got to visit another side of Rome that I had not seen before, the neighborhood of Pigneto, once made famous by Pier Paulo Pasolini in films like Accattone!, always literally and figuratively the other side of the tracks, and now a slowly emerging gentrifying area of artists and cafes and bohemian vibrations.
The long walk from Rome's Termini Station to Pigneto was hard on the old still-suffering foot, but it was a fascinating landscape unlike a typical touristic view of the city. I had not been back to Rome for a number of years, but this street felt more like the existential landscape that Antonioni favored back in the '60's.
The Piazza di Pigneto is across the train tracks that give the area a natural border or boundary, and it definitely felt like crossing over into another world, a neighborhood that has had a more violent recent past, like Venice Beach back in the '80's, or certain areas of the Chicago I grew up in.
Pasolini's Accattone!
Hidden away on the Via Fanfulla da Lodi, which was not on the map and quite hard to locate with my incredibly rusty and limited Italian, was this nice outdoor cafe from 1924, Trattoria Necci, which is a kind of nexus of the artistic life of the area, and a place that Pasolini himself used to frequent (before his own violent and untimely demise, murdered by being run over by his own car in Ostia in 1975, a case that is still unsolved as to the actual perpetrators and motive.)
It was such a pleasant afternoon that our conversation and thoughts strayed far away from any Pasolini-esque quality of our experience, but I left motivated to rewatch and rediscover this artist, poet, journalist and filmmaker and his own view of the other side of Rome.
Enjoy!
william
