Featured Film
The Sleeper
Justin Russell's horror film The Sleeper debuted in 2012. The '80s-inspired slasher film was shot in Springfield, Ohio, over 13 days in February 2011. Dread Central's Steve Barton says The Sleeper "stands as the best homage to early '80s filmmaking since Ti West's amazing The House of the Devil." You can watch it now on Prime Video.
The Pitch
Every accolade, every award show, all at once
This Sunday, the Academy Awards will unspool on our televisions for the 95th time. It's the only awards show I care about in any capacity - and that capacity is about as spiritually and fundamentally important to me as my daily horoscope. Entertaining like a Saturday matinee, occasionally moving, but otherwise frivolous and a little too self-congratulatory.
Some of my attitude toward the Awards is bittersweet.
When I was in my senior year at Ohio University, deep into a film and video production curriculum and fresh off an internship with Haft/Nasatir Productions on the 20th Century Fox lot, I felt confident I would one day accept an Oscar - or at least be nominated. Or, honestly, at least get invited.
Now, a week away from moving deeper into my 50s, the Oscars are annual proof that I haven't moved my filmmaking dreams forward much in the last 30 years. So much so that I don't think I've watched the entire show, front to back, in 10 or 15 years.
This year is different.
It's different because the Everything Everywhere All At Once bandwagon came bouncing by, and I hopped right on. Hell, I even asked to sit up front and shift the gears.
I remember watching the trailer for Everything Everywhere All At Once (EEAAO) with thought of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension flitting through my mind. That's another wild ride with a cult following a good reviews that you will not find nominated for any awards that I know of.
EEAAO is was different, though. All the praise heaped on it is well deserved. It's a little movie - comparatively - with a lot of word of mouth. It's sweet, sarcastic, insane, funny, dramatic, intense, quiet, warm, cold, totally Boomer, totally Gen X, totally Millennial. It is, in fact, everything everywhere all at once.
Cleveland connection
And it got made in part because of Cleveland's own Anthony and Joe Russo. The Russo's production company, AGBO Films, is one of EEAAO's producers, along with Ley Line Entertainment and IAC Films.
That hometown connection makes what is now one of my all-time favorite films all that much more.
And it makes watching this year's Academy Awards worth it once more.
Here's to Everything Everywhere All At Once. I hope (and I know) it will when all the shiny gold men the Academy has to offer.
Dailies
'Escaping Ohio' director Jessica Michael Davis and co-star Collin Kelly-Sordelet on making the nostalgic teen drama
Escaping Ohio director, star, and co-writer Jessica Michael Davis was 10 when she wrote a letter to Richard Linklater. She had an idea for a sequel to one of his films.
“The first script that I ever wrote was for School of Rock 2,” she tells MovieMaker magazine (no affiliation to Midwest Movie Maker). “I actually wrote a cover letter casting myself in the film, and I mailed it to Richard Linklater, who to this day is still my favorite director.”
A native of Akron, Ohio, where the movie is based, Davis infused Escaping Ohio not only with her hometown’s spirit, but with all the tropes of classic teen movies: the “yup, that’s me” voiceover; the will-they-won’t-they best-friend dynamic; the pop song montages; the heart wrenching airport scene.
But Escaping Ohio subverts the genre in at least one major way: It isn’t focused on the happily ever after.
So what is it focused on?
New production deal means George Clooney has more firepower for documentaries like his OSU scandal/Jim Jordan film
Smokehouse Pictures, the production company actor/director/producer George Clooney owns with producer Grant Heslov, has entered into multi-year deal with 101 Studios, the company behind Paramount+ streaming hits like Yellowstone and Mayor of Kingstown. Deadline reports that the deal is for both scripted and unscripted content.
Smokehouse and 101 already have been working together on a documentary about the Ohio State University sexual abuse scandal that ran rampant from 1978-1998. Richard Strauss, who was Ohio State’s team physician at the time, allegedly abused members of the wrestling team, for which now-Rep. Jim Jordan was an assistant coach.
Several former Ohio State athletes have said that Jordan knew about the alleged abuse. Jordan has denied their claims.
The documentary, which also is being produced by Sports Illustrated Studios and is based on an October 2020 Sports Illustrated story by Jon Wertheim, has not yet been released, but HBO owns the distribution rights to it.
‘Art imitating life’: East Palestine resident was extra in train disaster film made in Ohio
One resident of East Palestine now sees an eerie similarity to the Noah Baumbach-directed White Noise, which came out last year but was filmed all over Northeast Ohio in 2021, and what recently took place in his town.
“Talk about art imitating life,” Ben Ratner told People magazine, recalling the time he was an extra in the Adam Driver-starring movie, playing an evacuee.
Ratner told People his family has returned, but it’s hard to get back to a normal life. He said he has no interest in watching White Noise anymore, saying it’s not “something I want to be entertained by because for us, it’s a real-life situation.”
Behind the Scenes
Why QAnon targeted Columbus-native Franklin Leonard, the creator of Hollywood’s ‘Black List’
Couple of things. Before this article, I knew of the Black List, but nothing about Franklin Leonard. Discovering more about Leonard and the wild take QAnon had on the man was a revelation.
From Rolling Stone:
On October 18, 2018, film executive Franklin Leonard’s phone started vibrating and would not stop. His eyes grew wide as his screen filled up with Twitter alerts from strangers hurling vicious, baffling insults at him, hundreds of tweets at a time. He was a rent boy for billionaire Democratic donor George Soros, they said, or he ran the Muslim Brotherhood alongside Huma Abedin. Some said they were eager to see him killed.
Leonard was no stranger to threats: in 2005, he launched “The Black List,” an annual publication highlighting Hollywood’s most popular unproduced scripts. It drew attention to the then little-known screenplays that would become Oscar-winning movies like Spotlight, Argo, and Slumdog Millionaire. As his profile as a Hollywood tastemaker grew, Leonard periodically faced down a few furious screenwriters who felt he had snubbed their work, but he always got an apology in the end.
Leonard had never experienced anything like this Twitter storm before, though. It seemed this time, through no fault of his own, a large group of people on the internet had decided to try to destroy his life. But these weren’t failed screenwriters coming for him. Leonard had no idea at all why they had chosen him as their target.
Film School
Cleveland students at the heart of two community-produced films
Flying across the court, East Technical High School basketball star Terrance Grant Jr. makes the winning shot. But his joy is short-lived when his father, the Cleveland mayor, steals his spotlight.
With his father’s high profile and high expectations, Terrance struggles to balance his own mental health. He finds an outlet in his new artistic talent, which he discovers in a vacant-home-turned-art-studio run by his best friend’s uncle.
This is the plot of the heartfelt film Time Out, which began as a two-page story written by Jalen Cater last spring, when he was a 7th grader at Harvey Rice Elementary School in Cleveland.
He was part of a writing program called Art of Me, where teachers and staff prompt students to write a narrative story about change they’d like to see in the world.
As this year’s winner, Cater got to workshop his story into a feature-length film with the help of professional screenwriters, filmmakers, and even some mental health experts. They worked with Cater to develop the characters and write realistic dialogue. After about six months, his two-page story turned into a 60-page script.
Photo, from left, Jalen Cater and Carl Walton II
'Everything Everywhere All At Once' put a Russo Brothers theory to the test
With their time in the MCU at an end (for now), the Russo Brothers have kept busy with their ABGO production company. Not only had they released their films through ABGO, like their smaller scale Cherry and the globe-trotting action thriller The Gray Man, but they also helped get lesser-known projects off the ground.
The Russos were given a similar opportunity when they got started, having been mentored by filmmaker Steven Soderbergh after he saw their 1997 directorial debut Pieces.
The Daniels, the filmmaker duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, are two filmmakers the Russos have helped bolster through ABGO. Following the release of Swiss Army Man, the Daniels found producers for their next big film through the Russos production company, allowing Everything Everywhere All At Once to be true to the directors' ambitious multiversal vision.
The film wasn't just proof of the Daniels' filmmaking prowess but also helped to test a theory the Russo brothers had when structuring their own stories.