Talking About Passion and the Films of Stephen Cone

by Glenn Dunks

In some ways, Stephen Cone is an unlikely name to warrant a retrospective. And yet in other ways, he’s a perfect choice. Those who already know this writer-director likely typify him, not incorrectly, by the way he infuses queer-leaning narratives with themes of religion and faith. But considering Cone’s films – of which he is likely best known for Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party from 2015 – have rarely ventured out of the queer film festival circuit and his earlier works remain virtually unseen, Talk About the Passion: Stephen Cone’s First Act is actually a well-timed way to learn about a filmmaker who is clearly doing enough right to stick around for a little while yet.

His debut as a feature direct after several short and medium-length titles was In Memoriam, a film that sits rather out of place among Cone’s filmography. Following a man who becomes curiously obsessed with the story of a couple who fell from their roof while drunk and who decides to make his own movie about their love, it plays very much like a low-budget stereotypical first film full of artistic flourishes and awkward narrative beats. It’s not a bad film, but it is also hard to decipher exactly what it was that Cone was attempting to say beyond a very basic reading that everybody’s story deserves to be taken seriously.

He followed that one quite quickly with The Wise Kids, released in the same year. This was the first time his own life as the son of a Baptist minister came into play on a feature (many of his shorts dealt with religious themes) and mixed with what I assume is his experiences of growing up gay (correct me if I am wrong). While it is certainly not averse to some of the same directorial greenness that he showed in In Memoriam, The Wise Kids proves a significant step up...

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Linkbug

Before we get to the links please click on this photo to your left, the teaser poster for Yorgos Lanthimos's The Killing of a Sacred Deer. (Lanthimos last brought us the incredible The Lobster so we hope he's on a roll.) The poster is so beautiful we don't even mind that Nicole Kidman isn't on it! That's high praise if you haven't been paying attention.

Links 
Los Angeles Times Jimmy Kimmel will return to host the Oscars again in March. Same team this year, producers too.
Interview Ethan Hawke talks to his friend Alessandro Nivola (easily one of the best stars among the under-famous and under-celebrated division) about his current hot streak
Fathom Events will broadcast the current London production of Angels in America to select US movie theaters in late July. Click there for ticket sales in your area
Awards Daily keeping Oscar buzz alive all year for Cannes contenders is a tricky feat - I agree with most of this but disagree with the example of Midnight in Paris. I'd argue it wasn't the Cannes launch that made that film an instant Oscar contender but its big box office at home (for Woody) the month after the festival --another reminder that it can be really advantageous to strike while the iron is hot though few films dare and instead let their Cannes hype dwindle into nothingness before theater launches half a year or longer later. 
Playbill ABC will air a live Little Mermaid special on October 3rd which combines the 1989 classic with live celebrity performances with "cutting edge technology." What the what now? This sounds potentially awful and disastrous but also, because of that, a 'must see'

Script Notes, a writing podcast, talks to Chris McQuarrie about moving from being a writer to a writer-director and the difficulties of moving from indies to tentpoles
Criterion Corner David Hudson aunched his new column "The Daily" which I will surely be stealing links from at some point for these roundups unless I got to them first. Let's start now with these two...
Reverse Shot has a new series called Executive Order which takes a deep dive into the individual  T****'s EOs and fuses them with a film that is in conversation with those ostensible ideas or power plays. This link is about the Muslim ban and segueways into a discussion of the fine gay drama Henry Gamble's Birthday Party
NYT how action roles have changed for women (with Theron, Jovovich, Yeoh & Rodriguez)

I object!
/Film "Why Marvel Can't Fail" I'm linking this piece not because I like it but because I have to take issue with it. There has literally never been a long-running franchise or a single studio that has never failed. James Bond had flops. Tarzan had flops. Disney was once dying! Superman eventually fell out of the sky (though he's flying again). Marvel and Pixar, the current studios who inspire this type of article/argument, will not change that. It is an impossibility to always succeed. It's wiser to understand this because one of the quickest ways to insure failure is to assume infallibility. (Also I take issue with the use of "stickiness" here. Sticky as a concept in business may be morphing but it didn't mean 'traps you into brand loyalty' originally. I know because I bought a whole book on the concept when "sticky" became a thing ten years ago.

TV
New York Magazine (classic link since Roseanne is topical again) Roseanne Barr on the addiction of fame, her eponymous show, Hollywood sexism and Charlie Sheen
Esquire Corey Atad ranks every episode of Twin Peaks. This brought back so many memories and it's true that the show's quality varied wildly
Coming Soon Netflix is adapting the fantasy novels The Witchers Saga to series 

Off Screen
The Atlantic "My Family's Slave" incredible long read about slavery, shame, family demons, cultural norms, and more

A New Awards Group? Yup, Another One for the Indies

Over the years I realize that The Film Experience has been a bit of a killjoy in terms of one very specific development that other awards sites fawn on: the explosion of film award groups. It's just that over the years its been ridiculous to see the numbers explode but not see any correlative expansion of ideas or discussion about what constitutes great cinema. If all awards groups do is rubber stamp each other and watch the same 20 movies, we should just stick to the 3 or 4 original groups and be done with it! 

This preamble is a way of saying that when I heard there was a new Independent Film Award organization I initially rolled my eyes and shrugged it off with a tweet. Weren't The Gothams and the Spirits enough? But I've had a bit of a change of heart and am keeping an open mind after further investigation. If you're going to create a new film award, you need a purpose. And the American Independent Film Awards seems to have one. In fact, it looks like they're planning to do exactly what the Independent Spirit awards originally set out to do but have long since wandered away from as they've become a mainstream big publicity party for the mini-majors and their Oscar campaigns. The AIFA will focus on movies with budgets of $1 million or less. In other words, true indies as studios don't make films that size...  

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