icymi

May came in with a bang. Our best guess is that you couldn't keep up this first week because we barely did! To insure that you read everything - a requirement by law - here are things you might have missed in this very busy week: The podcast returned and we learned that Anne Marie has feelings for Michelle Rodriguez's biceps and Joe Reid really loves watching superheroes fight together; The first wave of Oscar predictions finally wrapped with Supporting Actress and Lead Actress discussions; Orson Welles turned 100 years old and, aside from the Best Shot Mid-Season Finale, Alexa (of 'Curio' fame) got a collage piece accepted for a centennial show in Illinois which you should check out if you live there!; Mysterious Skin turned 10; Nathaniel attended the Marvel Marathon and reviewed The Age of Ultron and also gawked at Penny Dreadful's NSFW premiere episode; Posed with Yoda, Manuel did, for a Star Wars Day photoset while Jason asked you to choose between the Dark Side and the uh... Skywalker side; Mad Men continued knocking it out of the park in its final episodes; David Lynch sold coffee; and The Lovely Laura Linney sold her soul to the devil Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

whew

Oh and we had a very special guest blogger...

THANK YOU, DAVID!
Longtime TFE readers surely had already clocked that we enjoy David Dastmalchian's work and have been waiting for him to bust out so that people can learn his name. Over the years he earned two nominations in our annual awards ceremony (both in the limited or cameo category) for The Dark Knight (2008) and Prisoners (2013). We assume he won't be haunting that category much longer as his career expands. He was kind enough to say yes when we asked him to guest blog for what should surely be his breakout summer given that the film he wrote and headlines Animals, riding critical darling status out of SXSW, opens on May 15th and two months later he gets to play with Paul Rudd in Ant-Man, joining the Marvel Universe. That's an interesting move, given that he first gained notice for a DC movie, The Dark Knight. ET Online recently asked him about the switcheroo. (Click on that photo if you'd like to see that red carpet moment. It's not embedded here because it's an automatic play):

Here's what he wrote for you:
David What? - His origin story & how to pronounce his name
What I Learned From Paul Rudd - On comic improv with Paul Rudd, Melissa Leo staying in character, and an idol of his Malcolm McDowell
What I Saw / Where I Saw It - four of his formative films growing up
The Making of Animals things looked bleak until magically it came together 
Soundtrack of My Life - Have you ever imagined your life in movie trailer form?
... You should follow him on Twitter & Instagram !

We sincerely hope the experience was more pleasant for him that that time he met Jake Gyllenhaal...

Are you enjoying May thus far?

 

The Soundtrack of My Life

David Dastmalchian concludes his guest blog takeover with this playlist (which we've helpfully collated on Spotify for you) - you should follow him on Twitter & Instagram ! - Editor

Photograph by Braden Moran

Soundtrack of My Life
-by David Dastmalchian

I read once that memory is like film editing.  We cut and paste the sequences together in a way that make our past fit into the context of our present.  I have this strange kind of daydream that feels like a movie trailer and I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.  I look at a time in my life – or my life as a whole – and imagine it with few words but with a great deal of music.  I change the songs often and the points of focus shift from day-to-day but I will share just a few of the predominant soundtrack jams from the life and mind of, well, you know – me. 

1.  Shine on You Crazy Diamond – Pink Floyd 
My parents used to shoot super 8 films of us as kids in Kansas and my dad had them all edited together onto a DVD a few years back.  There’s no audio so you’re just sitting there watching us all blowing out candles or learning how to swim in silence. Actually, I think there was some bad Vince Guaraldi rip-off jazz that the Costco or wherever people had dubbed in.   I just popped in my Wish You Were Here and listened and watched.  Perfect music to sum up so much.

 2.  The Rainbow Connection – Jim Henson
The Muppet Movie and its effect on my life are no small secret.  I first took to a stage when I was 6 years old in Kansas so that I could strum a ukulele in my overalls and sing this song which says EVERYTHING you need to say about love and imagination.  Beautiful, man.

3. Come Together and Let it Flow – Spiritualized
These anthems of my late teens and early twenties sum up the tracking shot of a dude with blasted pupils, sitting wayyyyy back on a couch in a poster-lined apartment in Chicago and watching the wax slowly melt off the candles.  I believe that I was really trying to find some way to link up with the people around me and only inadvertently succeeded in isolating myself from them all.

4.  Goodnight, Irene – Leadbelly
And old pal of mine used to do a bang-up version of this song when he would play around Chicago – but it really strikes up an image for me of driving across the long expanse of endless highway across my Kansas homeland.   Those early memories of sitting in the back of my parents station wagon and rolling through the wheat-lined roads of the Midwest are some of my most cinematic mental images.

5. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes – The Platters
My mother had a “Golden Collection” of the Platters (one of those record sets you’d order off TV that came with special liner notes and fancy packaging) and I loved it.  We would listen to the records on the old Motorola console in our living room and I would slow dance with an imaginary woman of my dreams – I think at that time it was probably Kristy McNichol or Justine Bateman.  Or Lita Ford. 

6.  Simple Twist of Fate – Bob Dylan AND Joan Baez have versions of this classic jam that sum up the quick cuts of my early 20’s when I was hitch-hiking and riding Greyhound busses from Seattle to Asheville and trying to find my way back to Alaska while riding out the decade-long trip of simpleadventure and recklessness that was starting to ramp up in speed and severity, which leads to…. 

7.   Stuck on You (Failure)
One of those songs that plays perfectly in the long, spiraling overhead crane shot as it comes down to face a guy who thought he knew what he was getting into and didn’t realize until it was too late that he was in way, way, way too deep over his head.

8.  Some transition jams -  Drowning in the Sea of Love (Joe Simon),  Twin Cinema (New Pornographers), Wraith Pinned to the Mist (Of Montreal), Wave of Mutilation (Pixies) and the rising climax leads us to the beautiful moment of finding true love and a family and dancing in the grass to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (Neutral Milk Hotel).

9.  Which leads to that final deathbed moment.  It’s a beautiful song but sad – but shouldn’t it be sad?  It’s okay for deathbeds to be somber.  I don’t want a marching band playing “Oh When the Saints” – I want all my loved ones crying and lamenting that we won’t be having any more adventures… for a while at least.   Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd) Yes, that IS two Pink Floyd songs on my trailer track list – so sue me.  It’s my guest blog and I can do what I want. 

And now I leave you with this – the trailer for our upcoming release, ANIMALS, which will be in theaters and on VOD on 5.15.15.  For details on where you can see the film, please visit www.animalsthefilm.com   And if you love the song as much as we do, it’s from a band called “Lavendar Diamond”.  Go find and buy all of their beautiful music here:  www.lavenderdiamond.net 

Thanks for reading and THANKS to Nathaniel for letting me sit in the driver’s seat for a day.  It was a lot of fun and I hope you didn’t get too many unsubscribes during my brief tenure.  Now… back to your regularly scheduled programming!

Previously
David What?, What I Learned From Paul Rudd, Films I Love, and Inefficient Filmmakers Guide 

The Inefficient Filmmakers Guide to Making a Movie in Six Years

One of "Animal"'s incredibly evocative posters.

"Or, How to Have the Most Fun While Having a Nervous Breakdown"
-by David Dastmalchian 

[ICYMI -the rising actor David Dastmalchian is guest blogging today! -ed.]

I have said this in jest many times – and will probably continue to joke about it again and again – but the truth of the matter is that I came dangerously close to having a severe nervous breakdown in the weeks that led up to the filming of Animals.  For the uninitiated, Animals is a feature film that I wrote, acted in and produced.  My close friend and Midwest compatriot, Collin Schiffli, directed the film about a homeless couple who struggle between the reality of their addiction to heroin (and one another) and the fantasy life that they imagine for themselves.  

Although it’s not a “biopic” by any means, the film was definitely influenced by my own personal battles with the same demons as my characters. More...

Click to read more ...

What I Saw | Where I Saw It | Why I Loved It

One of our favorite rising actors, David Dastmalchian, is Guest Blogging! Learn his name. He's working with great people -Editor

Photo by Evelyn Leigh"What I Saw..."
-by David Dastmalchian

There are so many films that have a special place in my memory and their impact on my life was made all the more powerful by how and where I saw them.  My earliest memories of film-going are the Kansas City drive-in’s where I caught second-run screenings from the back of my folks old station wagon of Grease, James Bond flicks like View from a Kill and Moonraker, and being in my mom’s arms at the back of the theater at a matinee with my family of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  I thought the tarantulas in the opening sequence were climbing the walls of the theater… Here are a few spectacular memories that I will always treasure: 

What I Saw: THE MUPPET MOVIE
Where I Saw It: The Oak Park Mall Cinemas (KS)

This will remain one of the most profound movie-going experiences of my life.  The characters, colors, sounds, music, performances all exploded in front of my little face on the big screen as I sat enraptured beside my childhood buddy, Brian Bishop and his wonderful mother, Kathy.  We went to a matinee at the local cinema and this was one of my first ventures into an actual movie theater.  At that point in my development, the whole “suspension of disbelief” in my imagination was so strong that I believed wholeheartedly that ‘Sweetums’ the monster Muppet actually crashed through the screen in our theater auditorium at the end of the film.  For years I would proudly boast that I had seen the film in a theater where a REAL Muppet made an appearance.  The “Rainbow Connection” became my first on-stage performance in a preschool talent show and my wife even chose the song for her processional at our wedding.   The effect of this film on my life continues to this day.  Several times a year (especially in moments of disillusionment with the entertainment industry), I will watch the final five minutes of the film – from the moment that Orson Welles offers Kermit “The Rich and Famous Contract” through the end.  Go do this now.  Bring the Kleenex.  You’re welcome. 

Continue for three more favorite films

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What I Learned From Paul Rudd (& Other Cool People)

At the premiere of Avengers: Age of UltronThe Film Experience welcomes rising actor David Dastmalchian (Ant-Man, Animals, Prisoners) who has taken over the blog for a day! -Editor

-by David Dastmalchian

The following are some rad people that I had the chance to work with or work near or at least stand across the street from – and the cool stuff that I learned while watching them.    I’ve kind of fashioned my entire life that way: honing in on the people who are really good at what they do and, well, trying to copy-cat them.

PAUL RUDD.  
LESSON: ‘Keep the scene rolling until they yell ‘cut’.  And be nice to everyone. And always carry cash’. 

It’s very intimidating to work on scenes with an actor who can continue to improvise past the text until every single person within a hundred feet is laughing out loud.  I had the opportunity to work with Paul on his upcoming Ant-Man for Marvel Studios directed by Peyton Reed.  Paul had an extreme amount of physical work to do with his preparation, as well as re-writing the project and he was incredibly focused.  He came to work each day prepared to make the most out of the scripted text – while being simultaneously open to improvisation as soon as the director gave him the green light.  It was amazing.  He is an endless well of ideas and he’s also very generous, so he would turn to me sometimes when he was on a riff and toss me a golden line.  I dropped as few as possible.

More Paul and other cool people after the jump...

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