The new American Masters documentary on Johnny Carson debuted last night and it reminded me of a story that I was told by the late, great Charles Nelson Reilly. It was 2004, and Johnny was still alive. We were filming a documentary on CNR and some of us who were working on the film were hanging out at CNR’s house in Beverly Hills, discussing the film.

Charles liked to tell Johnny Carson stories.  He loved the man. In fact, a significant scene in the film, The Life of Reilly, revolved around Charles appearing on the Tonight Show doing the “To be or not to be” scene from Hamlet:

When Charles told stories, you have to realize that he always put the story first… even if it involved a bit of a… let’s just say, evolution of the truth.  One time he would say he had been on the show 103 times.  The next time he would say 105 times.  We settled on 104 times for the movie, but as best we could tell, it was actually 99 times.  I guess he thought 100-plus something had a better ring to it.

Charles lived near the NBC studio, he told us, and he had a tux hanging in his closet standing by just in case Johnny called.  When a guest was a no-show, Johnny called Charles and he came right over.  The conversation was genuine and funny. Johnny would always ask about Charles mother. The clips are a riot.  The loose, rambling, improvisational comedy seems very different than today’s late night world.

But the story Charles told us that night in his house came to mind when I was reading about the American Master film — the complication that was Johnny Carson. We asked Charles why he hadn’t appeared on the show for the last couple of years that Johnny was on the air.  Johnny, Charles explained, had banned him from the show.

The reason?  Charles had gotten a call from his good friend Joan Rivers, asking him to appear on her new show.  He did so. And that was it for Charles on The Tonight Show.

I asked Charles if he ever saw or heard from Carson again?  He had not.  It was the late night death penalty.  Charles didn’t seem upset about it. It was just show biz. Charles mixed us up another Manhattan and went on to tell some pretty good Joan Rivers stories.  ”My Joanie” he called her.

But when it came to making the film, we contacted Carson Productions to ask for clips to use in the movie.  Their reply was swift and gracious.  ”We love Charles.  Anything we can do to help.”

They sent over several great clips, free for us to use, although the one Charles talks about in the movie was gone… part of an NBC snafu where they bulk erased video copies of several years worth of material.

In the end we barely used the clips in the film, but several can be found on YouTube.  They remind me of good times with Charles Nelson Reilly — a great and complicated talent himself. And his friend, the great and complicated Johnny Carson.

We miss them both.

Jeff, a truly unique take on Jeffrey Dahmer, will be making its premiere at the prestigious and super-fun SXSW Film Festival this March in Austin, Texas.  If you’re down there, come out and see AboutFace director Chris James Thompson’s fearless Dahmer film.  Then grab a bite and a drink in one of the world’s most delicious and rocking cities.

Read more about the film via Duane Dudek and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

This is an interesting article from the Columbia Journalism Review about documentary filmmakers working in Reality TV… and getting paid for it?!  Unreal!

(Note: They get paid when they work for us, too.)

AboutFace Chief Storyteller, Peter O'Brien

AboutFace‘s Chief Storyteller, Peter O’Brien is fresh off his work on Halo: Reach & The Chancelor Manuscript is finding solace from the studios once again.  Warner Brothers recently hired O’Brien for a new action film titled “Line of Sight” about “an elite commando squad transporting cargo while dealing with a global threat”

Read the full text of the press release here.

The Late Reilly on Stage in 2004

“The Life of Reilly”, Directed by AboutFace’s own Barry Poltermann and Frank Anderson featuring Charles Nelson Reilly.  (Yeah, that Charles Nelson Reilly) is finally available streaming on Netflix.

The film is “Certified Fresh” and remains among the best reviewed films of 2007, but CNR’s words ring true today more than ever.  Check it out!

Of course you can still…
Buy the DVD on Amazon.
Buy the Bluray on Amazon.
Buy on Itunes.

& connect with Charles on..
Facebook
Twitter
Youtube

Manny Marquez on the set of PsychoPath

Creating independent film is a thankless job.  It’s truly a labor of love, it often takes years of hard work, an unreasonable amount of money for very little return on investment.  Enter Manny Marquez.  For the past 5+ years he’s left the comforts of the northwest every autumn to travel to rural Oklahoma, capturing a touching story near and dear to his heart.  It’s a story about the American Dream about doing what you love even when no one else believes in you.

From the PsychoPath Kickstarter Page:

“Victor Marquez is a garbage man in rural Oklahoma. His entire life he’s wanted to be involved with special FX make-up, and work in movies. His plan was halted when he met Suezette. She was a beautiful blonde, with a fire red Trans Am and an 8-Track cassette player always blasting Heart. The only catch was, Suezette was his high school gym teacher. They eventually got married and raised a family, and Victor put his Hollywood dreams on hold.

25 years later, we find Victor is running a successful garbage route in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area. He plans on taking the money he’s saved from the garbage route, and wants to build a haunted house theme park attraction in the woods called PSYCHOPATH. He believes he’ll be able to do special effects, build animatronics, and live his lifelong dream of scaring people with his art. This all seems quite harmless, except the people that live around the proposed theme park are not happy. Some threaten to kill him, others threaten to burn the park down, and when the threats don’t work they take him to zoning court. Victor is granted 5 years to prove to the community that the park will follow all the rules, and not cause any disruptions.”

The parallels between Manny’s story and Victor’s are probably more similar than even Manny realizes.  Both are doing what they love up against tremendous adversity.  For Manny it’s this film, for Victor it’s a “haunted attraction”.  Their perseverance, sacrifice and persistence is inspiring.

From the time of this publication Manny is just over $2,000 short with only 9 days remaining till he makes his annual pilgrimage to the woods of Oklahoma.  You can be a part of this project with as little as a $1 donation, every penny helps.  So far there’s been 50 people who have pledged to the project.  With 50 more grass roots donations we can make this film and Manny’s dream a reality.  You can contribute here.

It's prestigious AND rectangular!

We were honored to win the 2010 Partners In Progress award from Sears Holdings Corporation.  Out of more than 40,000 suppliers and hundreds of entries, we were chosen for our innovative work with Sears-owned Kmart, on the Kmart Design initiative.  Other companies that have taken the award home?  How about Omniture, Wipro, and GE (four years running).  So we’re in good company, obviously.

Less obvious, though, may be what we did to win that award…

According to a Sears press release, “The Partners In Progress program recognizes suppliers for product or service quality, innovation, diversity, and overall market performance.”  Very cool, right?

Yet I still constantly have people saying, “So what do you guys do, again?”

Well… I guess you don’t win awards for innovation when everyone already knows exactly what you’re doing.  Remember the first time you heard about a tweet?

So here I’m going to try to make it very obvious – here’s what we do, period.

AboutFace Media is a content marketing agency. So what does that mean?  Well, here’s our step-by-step, here’s what we do:

1. We make documentary-style video content.  (Check out one of the Kmart Design videos we did with the lovely and iconic Jaclyn Smith here.)

2. We optimize that content and distribute it out across the web and through social media.  (Check out the Kmart Design YouTube channel here.)

3. We keep the message vibrant by keeping the conversation going all over the social landscape.  (Kmart Design Twitter account here, Facebook page here.)

4. We measure the impact and report back to our clients.  (I can’t show you our reports because they’re just for our clients, but suffice to say our clients really like them and that’s REALLY why they give us awards.)

So, in a nutshell, that’s what we do.  I’ve oversimplified it a bit here, but you get the idea.

We work with our clients to understand who they are and what they want to achieve.

Then we go lights, camera, action to capture their stories in a genuine, authentic way – so that consumers out there in web 2.0 won’t smell an ad and run away, but actually embrace the honesty behind the videos and want to watch.

Once we’ve got the videos locked and loaded, we place them everywhere we can, not just on a corporate website, but “out there” in the distributed web.

Next, we keep the building momentum going by adding fuel to the conversational fire – we interact with users in social media, we send videos to influential bloggers, and lots more.

And, finally, we report the results back to our clients, everything from the quantitative (video plays, traffic stats, keyword trending, blog impressions, etc.) to the qualitative (conversation shifts, sample Twitter interactions, etc.).

So, is that innovative?  Are we doing it better than anyone else out there?  Is it award worthy?

I don’t want to brag, but I guess Sears thinks so.

One of the things I constantly strive for at AboutFace is bringing better images into our production workflow. AboutFace and documentary filmmakers alike, have long been fans of Panasonic products. Their small form and ease of use have been most attractive. One of the drawbacks to these cameras have been lack of DOF options. Traditionally to obtain this look, one would have to use film, use a bulky adaptor, or use other very costly digital cinema cameras. Recently we have been using Cannon’s 7D camera to augment the b-role on our shoots. We have found that having a few more tricks in the bag have been quite helpful. Today while doing my normal morning blog perusal, I came across one of the camera’s that I have been most excited about. I give you the Panasonic AG-AF100.

Here is the gizmodo post. More to come on this camera. However, first looks are very promising.

Yes, there is a pig in that race car.

AboutFace Executive Producer John Lyons Murphy had his directorial debut, documentary Moonshine To The Finish Line: The Unofficial Beginnings Of NASCAR,  premiere at the 2010 Palm Beach International Film Festival last month.  The documentary features legendary drivers such as Bobby Allison, “Tiger” Tom Pistone, and Junior Johnson, and chronicles the wild early bootlegging days of American stock car racing and how the dynamic times and personalities snowballed into the billion dollar business now known as NASCAR.

“When Palm Beach came up, we knew Burt Reynolds was being honored there this year, and I had hung out with Burt at his house when we were doing some cool extra features for Barry [Poltermann] and Frank [Anderson]‘s The Life Of Reilly,” Murphy said.  “So, with Burt being there, and the great reputation of the festival, and of course the weather being pretty enticing didn’t hurt, it kind of just felt like the right time to show the movie…even though we aren’t technically totally finished with the film.”

Moonshine played to great fanfare, reportedly coming in second place, one vote shy of first, for the best documentary feature award.  “Everybody had fun, the crowd reaction was awesome, and we feel like we got the buzz train rolling along here, so we’re not too worried about awards or no awards” Murphy said.  The filmmakers’ next step is approaching distributors in hopes to get the story seen by audiences all over.

“The movie isn’t about NASCAR, per se,” Murphy told us.  “The sport is the setting, but the real story is the people.  Junior running illegal whiskey to feed the family and going to prison for it.  Curtis Turner drunkenly stealing police cars and driving them into hotel pools.  Tiny Lund putting a cheetah in another driver’s motel bed while the guy is out so he’ll get home and find a cheetah in his bed…  It’s stuff like that, not necessarily ‘a history of a sport’ that interested me.  It’s the people, you know?”

The Palm Beach version of the trailer is online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ7zsVMpxCI

Mark your calenders for June 15!

Just a week after it’s release on iTunes, the DVD release of the critically acclaimed film ‘Collapse’ is set to be released this summer.  Amazon.com is now accepting preorders for the DVD loaded with extra features including Michael Ruppert’s earth shattering predictions for 2010 and beyond.

Thank you to all whom purchased the film on iTunes already.  We’re currently ranked #3 on the top documentaries on the iTunes store.

Chris Smith‘s terrifying documentary ‘Collapse’ edited by AboutFace‘s own Barry Poltermann is now available on iTunes.

Fans of the movie have been waiting for this moment for months utilizing social media channels to endlessly debate and prepare for the end of the world, trade sustainable farming tips and bond over general paranoia on the movie’s Facebook Page.

While the movie is still being shown theatrically in a handful of cities, you can expect an announcement regarding the DVD release mid April.

You can purchase the film on iTunes here.

You’ve been warned.

THE POOL Editor Barry Poltermann and Director Chris Smith in 2009. Photo by Jeffrey Wells.

FilmandFestivals.com just announced the UK release of THE POOL.  The film was directed by Chris Smith and edited by our own Barry Poltermann:

The Pool received the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and was selected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York as one of the Best Films of the Year alongside The Dark Knight, Slumdog Millionaire, Milk, Iron Man and Wall-E.

“We shot the film for the big screen – shooting on 35mm and choosing to use many wide shots that allow you to take in the rich environment,” elaborates Smith. “I’m thrilled that The Pool is releasing theatrically in the UK. It connects with audiences and I am delighted that they will be able to see it on the big screen. We’ve had extended runs in the US and Canada theatrically and it has been great working with Mara Pictures to bring it to a new theatrical home.”

The January 25th, 2010 issue of Time Magazine showcases Collapse, on its weekly short list of recommendations in arts and entertainment.

Collapse in Time Magazine January 25th, 2010

This acclaimed film was directed by Chris Smith, and edited at About Face by our CEO, Barry Poltermann.

The film is currently in theatrical release and is available on Video On Demand.

Variety is reporting that About Face Media‘s Chief Storyteller, Peter O’Brien has been brought aboard at Paramount Pictures to adapt the Robert Ludlum Thriller, “The Chancellor Manuscript.”

Marc Forster, who most recently directed the James Bond film, ‘Quantum of Solace’, will direct and Leonardo Dicaprio is attached to star in the film.

Peter is a great asset to all of our projects, and is always instrumental in maintaining the integrity of story in all of our content. We’re fortunate to extend this level of talent to the message and marketing of our client’s stories, and we’re excited to see this movie take shape as it develops.

Stay tuned for more updates on the movie.

Videostatic just raved about the latest music video from Manny Marquez, one of our favorite AboutFace documentarians who moonlights as a music video director:

“Director Manny Marquez captures the propulsive qualities of the track with this b&w ode mash-up of French New Wave and A Hard Days Night, letting Little Fish singer Juju break the fourth wall and kick some bloody ass all over town.”

The band is Little Fish. The song is “Darling Dear”.

From Manny:

“Music video for Oxford based Little Fish. The video was shot on a Canon 5D as a series of one shot takes. The takes were then cut together in order to utilize the forward motion of the one shot, but take advantage of the displacement of being in a slightly different spot in each take at that point of the song we cut to. Shot in London, England UK”

Directed by Manny Marquez.
DP’s: Paul Street & Lester Dunton
Produced by: Streetlight Films (www.streetlightfilms.co.uk)
Label: Custard / Universal Motown

Later on tonight is the NY Premiere of COLLAPSE, the latest documentary I edited with Chris Smith.  When I saw the first raw footage that Chris was shooting in Los Angeles I knew it would be a polarizing film.  If we did our jobs well the reception would be wildly unpredictable, from both the left and the right.  And the reviews would be either great or awful or, more likely, both.

Well, it seems we got our wish.

To be honest I don’t know what to make of this… A’s and four or five star reviews on the one hand… and terrible lambastings on the other.  The weirdest one is the NYTimes, which seems to dislike the film, but then has it as a “Critic’s Pick”.  Hmmmm.

Check out the polarized reaction on this awesome site Chris just sent me a link to:  MovieReviewIntelligence.  Eat your heart out, Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes.  Yikes.  Looks like we won’t be winning the NY Film Critics Award this year.

I guess “Collapse” is destined to be one of those “you decide for yourself” type of films… which, after all, is exactly what we hoped it would be.

The real question is… will anyone show up tonight at the Angelika?  Fingers crossed.

If you haven’t seen the trailer, here you go…

XX

Sarah Price’s latest film project is the recently released “I Bring What I Love” featuring Youssou Ndour.  Sarah was the co-producer.

Senegalese pop sensation Youssou Ndour has spent the last 20 years in the spotlight as a world-renowned musician and the iconic representative “voice of Africa.”

At the height of his career, Youssou became frustrated by the negative perception of his Muslim faith and composed Egypt, a deeply spiritual album dedicated to a more tolerant view of Islam. The album’s brave musical message was wholeheartedly embraced by Western audiences but ignited serious religious controversy in his homeland of Senegal.

The film chronicles the difficult journey Youssou must undertake to assume his true calling.

The film is playing across American now.  Catch it in your city.

More great press coming in for Collapse.  Did I mention About Face CEO Barry Poltermann was the editor?  He was.

And yes, I see a clown in this mushroom cloud as well, weird.

Our own Pat Buckley recently produced and co-directed “William Shatner’s Gonzo Ballet.”  Here is a clip:

Produced by our friends at Special Entertainment, the film features Shatner, Ben Folds, Henry Rollins and Joe Jackson and is described on the Special Entertainment site as:

“… a documentary about legendary Tony Award-winning choreographer Margo Sappington’s quest to create a ballet set to the music of William Shatner’s critically acclaimed album Has Been (produced and co-written with Ben Folds).

The film explores the genesis of this unique artistic collaboration by fusing the music, poetry, and dance of the finished ballet, Common People, with interviews of William Shatner, Ben Folds, Margo Sappington, and Henry Rollins.

The World Premiere took place at the 40th Anniversary of the Nashville International Film Festival. The sold-out show received a standing ovation and extremely positive reviews from local and national media, as well as winning the 2009 NaFF President’s Impact Award.  Shatner, his wife Elizabeth, Ben Folds, and Sheryl Crow were all on hand for the premiere.

William Shatner’s Gonzo Ballet recently screened at the Marbella International Film Festival in Spain, where it won the award for Best Documentary.

Some early reviews:

“A surprisingly revealing doc that suggests the full depths of Shatner’s self-awareness and — no kidding — artistic aspirations.”  — Joe Leydon, Variety

“When the lights went up, there were cheers. Shatner comes across as a true original.”  — Mark Rabinowitz, indieWIRE

“Despite the jaunty nature of the title, William Shatner’s Gonzo Ballet is a profoundly bittersweet work.”  — Richard Ouzounian, The Toronto Star