Latest news with #AndyKaufman
Times
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Tom Werner: We believe there could be a billion Liverpool fans worldwide
Tom Werner tells a wonderful story about one particular encounter with a comic genius. It was the late Seventies and Werner, now the chairman of Liverpool but at the time a senior executive for the US television network ABC, was looking to hire Andy Kaufman for the role of Latka Gravas in Taxi. Werner and his colleague, Marcy Carsey, would often scour comedy clubs in a search for talent. It was how they discovered Robin Williams. One performance in Los Angeles led to the idea to cast Williams as an alien in a show called Mork & Mindy. Around the same time they also went to see Kaufman, a 'strange talent' with a character-based act, such as his 'Foreign Man' doing a quite brilliant Elvis impersonation. 'After the show we went to speak to him and asked if we could lure him into doing a television series,' Werner says. 'Andy said, 'Well, why don't you speak to my agent?' And he gave me the agent's phone number. So I called the agent, and he was going to show up at 10 o'clock on Wednesday. 'I can't remember the agent's name. I think it was Alex Morgan. But I arrive at the office and my assistant tells me my meeting is already here and in the conference room. I go in and Andy's sitting there. So I go over and say, 'Hey, how are you?' And he says, 'Hi, I don't think we've met, I'm Alex Morgan'. I said, 'Oh, great Alex, nice to meet you. Is Andy coming?' And he says, 'No, he just wants me to take the meeting'. 'So I've got two options here. I can say, 'Andy, what are you doing?' Or I can play along and assume in five minutes he's going to say, 'Well, that was funny, wasn't it?' 'But he spends the entire hour in character, playing his agent. And he ends the meeting by saying, 'Well, I think this is good, but I have to talk to Andy'. And I say, 'Good, we are keen to do something with him'. 'I then finish by telling him he will need to speak to our head of business affairs, and give him the number for George Reeves. Then I ring George and say, 'You'll be getting a call from a guy called Alex Morgan, who's Andy Kaufman. Just go along with it and see if you can make the deal'. 'Later George calls me back, and says Andy wants to do this. But then George says there's one thing that's kind of odd about it — Alex and Andy want separate parking spaces when they're at Paramount. 'I said, 'Is that it? That's the only deal point?' He said, 'Yeah'. So I said, 'Great, close the deal'. George wasn't so sure. 'Shouldn't I push back on the two parking spaces?' he says. 'I said, 'Absolutely not, because whenever I go to Paramount for a run-through I can park in Alex's space . . .' ' 'Robin would play Laurence Olivier playing a game of golf' It has taken the best part of 15 years to hear stories like that, having first tried to persuade Werner to share his knowledge and expertise not long after the Fenway Sports Group (FSG) had taken charge at Anfield. There was a meeting at the club's offices in the centre of Liverpool to discuss a more formal interview. At one stage I observed how this man of considerable wealth, a billionaire twice over, chose to wear what looked like a $40 Swatch watch. 'It tells the time like any other watch,' he said, before sliding it across the table. 'Here, have it.' I let him keep the watch, but a second meeting did not materialise. Yet here we finally are, sitting in his private box at Fenway Park, talking about the success of FSG on opposite sides of the Atlantic and, thanks to his life in entertainment, a unique perspective on the booming popularity of the Premier League in the US. Werner, now 75 and still wearing a Swatch on his wrist, is happy to discuss that. Happy, too, to talk about the global growth of Liverpool and how they have thrived despite losing the 'transformative' Jürgen Klopp. He also shares some more anecdotes from his years in TV. 'Robin had this brilliant mind, this unique ability to connect intellectual subjects,' he says of Williams. 'He'd play Laurence Olivier playing a game of golf.' But Werner also stresses how reluctant he is to talk about himself, or any role he might have played in the rejuvenation of Liverpool and the Boston Red Sox under what he calls the 'stewardship' of FSG. Here in Boston they have spent more than $400million (around £294million) redeveloping the oldest ballpark in Major League Baseball, a stunning arena enhanced by the smart-looking bars and restaurants that form its perimeter, and breaking the 'Curse of the Bambino'. The team had not won the World Series since selling Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1919, their fifth and last championship coming the previous year. Two years after John Henry and Werner led a consortium to buy the Red Sox in 2002, their sixth World Series title arrived, and there have been three more since. A summer spending spree at Liverpool that already tops £200million and includes the capture of Florian Wirtz suggests their ambition for more success very much remains. 'If we have a point of view [at FSG], it's to find the very best talent and let them do their jobs well,' he says. And as someone with an impressive track record of his own for unearthing talent, Werner can certainly appreciate the skill and good judgment required to recruit the right people. 'At Liverpool I'd like to give a lot of credit to Mike Gordon [FSG president] because we've enormously benefited from his wisdom,' Werner says. 'And we have an awesome chief executive in Billy Hogan. I don't want to diminish some of our early mistakes, but identifying Jürgen Klopp as our next manager [in 2015] was transformational. 'And then Jürgen had the opportunity to work with Michael Edwards [chief executive of football]. So when he stepped aside — and we were disappointed, obviously, but understood because it's such a gruelling job — we had all the confidence in the world that Jürgen's decision would be the right one for him and eventually the club as well. ' Arne Slot was their first choice, and it really came from the homework of Richard Hughes [sporting director] and Michael. It wasn't an obvious first choice. But if you surround yourself with good talent, you'll be successful.' 'Liverpool's global reach is by far the strongest in the Premier League' The Premier League, and what the Americans still like to call 'soccer', is gaining in popularity in the US, despite a packed sporting landscape. 'I see myself as a storyteller and I understand the power of a good story; that's the lens I look through,' Werner says. 'And the storylines in live sport, and in particular in the Premier League, are so compelling. It's why live sport is such a big part of our culture. It's unique in what it offers. 'The reason that the Premier League is so successful is because it's a display of the very best players in the world, with storylines that are skilfully delivered by networks like NBC. They've done a great job with their coverage here.' NBC has paid a vast amount of money for the broadcast rights — a six-year deal, signed in 2022, was worth $2.7billion (around $2billion). But the audience is growing, with more than 40 million Americans estimated to be watching Premier League football at some point during the season. 'The passion fans have towards soccer in the United States is really hard to articulate,' he says. 'But it's quite powerful and it's now on this trajectory that is only positive, especially with the World Cup coming in 2026. And what's happening this summer with the Club World Cup — maybe not everyone is watching at the moment, but it's still seeding interest. 'That said, I think that the Premier League is far and away the most compelling product in football. And Comcast [owners of NBC] says their interest is the Premier League, rather than the sport more broadly. 'Everybody comes to them and says, 'Hey, listen, are you interested in televising the Club World Cup, or the World Cup?' And they say, 'No, we're interested in the Premier League.' ' One imagines some of the established American sports might be concerned by this English alternative, not least after the Premier League opened an office in Manhattan. Werner does not see much conflict, though, given the time differences. 'Having Premier League games on US television on Saturday and Sunday mornings is wonderful,' he says. 'It's a bit like breakfast at Wimbledon. And the 4.30 game on a Sunday is especially attractive. It's 11.30 here on the East Coast and people head to bars and make a day of it. 'Over the next ten years I think the Premier League is going to be huge in the US. The sport is so good that people will continue to gravitate towards it. It helps that more and more kids are playing soccer. It helps that so many girls are playing.' NBC recently said 12 Premier League matches this season boasted audiences of more than a million, with English and Spanish fans across the NBC platforms consuming 17.14 billion minutes of coverage across the campaign. Liverpool are at the forefront of that growth. 'We are very aware of the global power of Liverpool,' Werner says. 'The club's reach around the world is by far the strongest in the Premier League. We're the only Premier League club to surpass 500million views on television [by March 2025 from August last season]. Last season on social media we generated 1.7 billion engagements. That's not unique engagements, but it's still a huge number. 'Many Americans still don't appreciate the global power of football. But we think there could now be as many as a billion people around the world who follow Liverpool. There is a special connection with the fans. You feel it at the games at Anfield, when they start to sing You'll Never Walk Alone. It's deep and emotional.' Werner dashes off, leaving me with the 'Green Monster' for company Werner walks to the window to look across Fenway Park. 'We spent our own money to renovate this and what we did was very similar to what happened when we acquired Liverpool,' he says. 'There was a big debate at the time about whether or not to build a new stadium, but we had the experience already of what we had done here. It's the oldest ballpark in America and we wanted to stay here. 'I credit others with having the imagination, but we have found ways to create more viewing sections and use the park more. We even now have a space where people can have weddings and Bar Mitzvahs.' Time is pressing on and Werner says he needs to dash to his next meeting. And with that he is gone, briefly leaving me alone in his box with only this vast arena, the Green Monster, for company. The next day, however, a text message lands with one more Kaufman story. 'He once did a set and invited everyone in the audience to join him afterwards for a chocolate chip cookie at a cookie store in Hollywood,' Werner writes. 'They came out of the comedy club to find buses parked there, and everyone went!'
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Andy Kaufman Is Me' Review: Solid but Unrevelatory Doc Uses Puppetry to Tackle the Iconic Comic
I've sat through enough duplicative documentaries over the years to know that there's very little harm, but also very little illumination, in viewing multiple projects about Fyre Festival or that ill-fated submarine or Woodstock '99. Just because I watched Alex Braverman's Thank You Very Much, which launched at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, doesn't mean that it's bad to rehash most of the same biographical plot points and pivotal TV appearances of the enigmatic Andy Kaufman in Clay Tweel's new documentary, Andy Kaufman Is Me, premiering at Tribeca. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Surviving Ohio State' Review: HBO's Sexual Abuse Doc Is Thorough and Persuasive, but Lacks a New Smoking Gun 'A Tree Fell in the Woods' Review: Josh Gad and Alexandra Daddario in an Uneven, Occasionally Insightful Relationship Dramedy Jim Sheridan's 'Re-creation' Puts One of Ireland's Most Troubling Murder Cases Back on Trial It happens that the two Andy Kaufman documentaries are nicely complementary texts, featuring basically no overlapping talking heads and landing on mostly different life events as pivotal to Kaufman's development, even if they exert a lot of effort in coming to the same self-evident conclusion: Because so much of Andy Kaufman's life was performance art, and because Andy Kaufman died in 1984, we may never know the real Andy Kaufman — but darned if we aren't going to attempt extremely rudimentary psychiatric analysis in our failed attempt to unravel the mystery. Andy Kaufman Is Me, which at least has a distinctive visual approach that Kaufman probably would have appreciated, is narrowly the better of the two fine documentaries. That said, I think we've hit a brick wall in this thesis on the highly influential, thoroughly unknowable icon. We can maybe wait a decade or two for our next Andy Kaufman documentary, at least until somebody has a fresher idea. Boasting the credit 'Produced in Consultation with The Estate of Andy Kaufman,' Andy Kaufman Is Me absolutely feels like the more 'authorized' documentary. Tweel — and producers including Dwayne Johnson, for whatever reason — is able to build his version of Kaufman's story around extensive interviews with siblings Michael and Carol; Kaufman's own audio journals; and a wide assortment of recorded conversations between biographer Bill Zehme and Kaufman's father Stanley as well as other key figures. The immediacy of these relations and connections contributes warmth and poignancy, but not necessarily deep insight into the man that Kaufman actually became. The Braverman documentary, with its interviews with Kaufman's longtime creative collaborator Bob Zmuda and longtime girlfriend Lynne Margulies, had much better representation from the individuals closest to Kaufman at the peak of his fame and infamy — hence my feeling that these two documentaries nestle nicely into each other, even if there's an inherent staleness to watching people attempt to solve the same riddle over and over again. It's as if Sherlock Holmes had failed to solve the crime in A Study in Scarlet and had spent the rest of his life explaining that he hadn't exactly been wrong, that it was just a really difficult case. Andy Kaufman Is Me doesn't offer much that counts as surprising, but how could it? This documentary has a better perspective, for example, on Kaufman's time at community college and how it shaped his goals, but once his career accelerates, even casual fans know the key beats. He exploded as perhaps the original alt-comedy star, with his off-putting sets that were, as several people observe, more theater than standup. He became a huge sensation thanks to Saturday Night Live and regular late-night appearances that left the various hosts as perplexed as they were amused. With Taxi, he became an even bigger deal, but not really the star he wanted to be, because he was ill-suited for scripted sitcom containment. He alienated friends and fans alike with his alter ego Tony Clifton and with his notorious incursions into the world of wrestling. Then he got cancer and either died or faked his own death, if your participation in the Andy Kaufman Memorial Complex hinges on that conspiratorial interpretation. Tweel's point of entry is Kaufman's semi-autobiographical novel The Huey Williams Story, seeds of which feature heavily in the 84 hours of personal tapes the director was able to acquire. The book was published as a work-in-progress by his brother in 1999, but Tweel treats it as a snapshot into Kaufman's brain, one that can only be captured through puppetry by the Bob Baker Marionette Theater. The use of dead-eyed versions of Kaufman and Clifton is suitably eerie and alienating, suggesting that the best way to learn the truth about Andy Kaufman might be to view him through another artificial and fictional remove. The puppetry is whimsical and creepy, connecting well with the ABC special in which Kaufman met Howdy Doody, a pure and beautiful moment that both recent documentaries correctly assess as a mid-career Rosetta Stone. It's a worthwhile aesthetic swing for Tweel to take, but I'm not sure the attempt to give Andy Kaufman Is Me a four-act structure that semi-mirrors the hero's journey in the book adds much, and it never becomes as confrontationally surreal as Kaufman's writing clearly aspired to be. It isn't like Tweel is fully committed to the puppetry and structure anyway. At some point, the documentary just pauses its forward momentum to let people like David Letterman (another executive producer here), Eric Andre and Tim Heidecker explain why Andy Kaufman was influential, which is both completely accurate and completely self-evident in this context. I will never object to spending 100 minutes remembering Kaufman's defining sketches and marveling at the ambitions that his death left unfulfilled. It's time, though, for documentarians to take a break from offering interpretations of Kaufman's life that claim to be unprecedented — at least until one truly is. 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Vancouver Sun
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vancouver Sun
NorthwestFilmFest and Rainbow Visions: A joyful Blur of Texas Chainsaws, Alberta film, Cruising and Andy Kaufman
Action — and how! Canada's oldest and ever-evolving documentary film festival NorthwestFilmFest is back with a brilliant lineup, covering just about anything you might want to point a camera at. Opening with a Blur double feature and closing on a one-two punch of Texas Chain Saw Massacre gushing love, space, ecological issues, the war in Ukraine, and cinematic portraiture, including an Andy Kaufman doc, are all on the weird and wild docket, rolling Thursday through May 15 at Metro Cinema. Then, snugged right up to the tail end, May 16 -18 is NWFF's punchy queer sibling, Rainbow Visions Film Festival , features more docs and plenty of classic narrative fiction films, like the much-lauded doc The Secret of Me, William Friedkin's Cruising and a reprise of local documentary Flashback. Get top headlines and gossip from the world of celebrity and entertainment. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Sun Spots will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. Individual tickets are available, as well as festival passes for each or a combo pass covering both — head to to find it all, including a detailed schedule with ticket links. Longtime festival director Guy Lavallee was enjoying voice-stifling laryngitis, so we had to skip our lengthy annual state-of-the-world chat. Still, he managed to enthuse and inform… Q: First up, NWFF. How many submissions for year 43 — and what else is new? A: We did a very slight re-brand this year, going from NorthwestFest — or, under its full name, the NorthwestFest International Documentary Festival — to NorthwestFilmFest. Why? We're getting more and more submissions each year, especially from Alberta-based filmmakers. But we were severely limiting our ability to program these films by restricting them to docs. By simply adding the word 'Film' to the title, it tells filmmakers and audiences what kind of festival this is. It now also has a nice rhythm with our genre festival, NorthwestFEARFest. Opening up the parameters a bit resulted in a roughly 65 per cent increase in submissions, with films submitted from 70 countries. Q: Your very global fest has an understandably wide range of topics. A: At the end of the day, our core programming is really all about films that mean something to us, and that we think will mean something to audiences. So you've got pop culture covered by showing films about the Dateline NBC news 'sting' phenomenon, To Catch a Predator with Predators and board game fanatics with The Hobby: Tales From the Tabletop. We've got films about beloved actors and performers, like gregarious leading man George Segal, brilliant and misunderstood cult comedian Andy Kaufman in Thank You Very Much, and the first and only deaf woman to ever be nominated for — and win — an Oscar with Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore. There's a whole bunch of films about some of the major issues of the day, including librarians who have become the first responders in the fight against the new book-banning trend in the United States with The Librarians; the fight to save reproductive rights in Zurawski V Texas; a look at the toll captivity takes on elephants — including one particularly well-known local one in Lucy: The Stolen Lives of Elephants. Plus, the story of the activists who have been trying for decades to Free Leonard Peltier, and the continued endangerment of resident orca whales in The Snake and the Whale. We've managed to snag a number of bona-fide crowd pleasers, including the inspirational story of astronaut Sally Ride in Sally; Speak — a peek behind the scenes of youth speech competitions; Micro Budget, an outrageous mockumentary in the vein of The Office; and the rousing Haida basketball film Saints and Warriors. Q: Does Trump's incomprehensible film tariff announcement give you concern? A: I try to keep my politics to myself when representing the film festival, because we want to make sure everyone knows they are welcome to attend. But in this case, I'm just going to be honest. Even for him, this is beyond stupid. What exactly are you proposing a tariff gets applied to? A film is not a good, it's an intellectual property. I'm convinced more and more he doesn't actually understand what a tariff is. Q: Tell us about the opening and closing-night double features. A: For opening, we were looking for something a little different, and this Blur opportunity — Blur: To the End — just fell into our laps. With this double feature, audiences will get to see an absolutely fantastic behind-the-curtain doc about one of the UK's all-time biggest bands, followed by the full concert Live at Wembley. Filmmaker Alexandre O Philippe's films have long been staples of this festival. With closing night's Chain Reactions, he takes a film that's been part of our cultural lexicon for 50 years and has other artists and filmmakers talk about how what Texas Chain Saw Massacre has meant to them — artistically, creatively, culturally — in these beautifully unhurried monologues. Stephen King, Patton Oswalt, Karyn Kusama and more discuss and dissect the film in ways you may never have thought of before. The film is an incredibly thoughtful work of art, and we're thrilled to have Philippe in attendance for the screening. And it felt borderline criminal to not then screen Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic afterwards, so we're showing it. Q: Can you talk more about the local content — Pride Vs. Prejudice, Dark Match, Stolen Lives? A: When we saw the support last year for some of the locally made films, coupled with the fact that our Alberta film submissions quadrupled this year, we knew there was an audience. I like to have a theme, and so we partnered with AMPIA to screen all three of this year's Edmonton Film Prize finalists. The ceremony itself takes place May 7, and on May 12 we'll be screening all three, complete with Q&As with the filmmakers. The following evening, we're presenting a tremendous package of Alberta Made Shorts, many of which will have the film teams in attendance. Q: What should we look for at Rainbow Visions? A: We've stolen one of our most popular features from FEARFest: the retro screening. We're ramping it up this year, with a brand new, 4K restoration of Lisa Choldenko's classic, High Art; a family-friendly screening of 2007's effervescent musical, Hairspray; a Saturday night screening of 1981's glorious camp classic, Mommie Dearest; and we revisit 1980's most controversial film, William Friedkin's gritty crime thriller, Cruising, a film once very much maligned by the gay community — even causing nationwide protests upon its release — has very much been re-examined and newly appreciated over the years, partly because 45 years later, it is such a time capsule of a very specific time, place and culture that just doesn't exist any more. For the newer films, I can't speak highly enough about Sabbath Queen or Parade, and I'm super stoked to be able to present an encore screening of Flashback, the doc about Edmonton's legendary, influential, iconic '80s nightclub. The filmmakers will be here for a Q&A, we'll have a DJ going, some makeup demos going on in the lobby. It's going to be an absolute blast! And our major headliner screening on Saturday night, an absolutely hilarious, charming, crowd-pleasing coming-of-age comedy called Griffin in Summer. With supporting turns from such heavyweights as Melanie Lynskey and Owen Teague, it's young star Everett Blunck, who absolutely steals the show with his star-making performance. I absolutely adore this movie. It's going to be an amazing year! PREVIEW NorthwestFilmFest/Rainbow Visions When May 8-15/May 16-18 Where Metro Cinema (8712 109 St.) Tickets $10-$16/show, $22/double feature; passes $99/$79-$129/combo at fgriwkowsky@ @ l Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don't miss the news you need to know — add and to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here. You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Edmonton Journal | The Edmonton Sun.
Edmonton Journal
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Edmonton Journal
NorthwestFilmFest and Rainbow Visions: A joyful Blur of Texas Chainsaws, Alberta film, Cruising and Andy Kaufman
Article content Action — and how! Canada's oldest and ever-evolving documentary film festival NorthwestFilmFest is back with a brilliant lineup, covering just about anything you might want to point a camera at. Article content Article content Opening with a Blur double feature and closing on a one-two punch of Texas Chain Saw Massacre gushing love, space, ecological issues, the war in Ukraine, and cinematic portraiture, including an Andy Kaufman doc, are all on the weird and wild docket, rolling Thursday through May 15 at Metro Cinema. Article content Then, snugged right up to the tail end, May 16 -18 is NWFF's punchy queer sibling, Rainbow Visions Film Festival, features more docs and plenty of classic narrative fiction films, like the much-lauded doc The Secret of Me, William Friedkin's Cruising and a reprise of local documentary Flashback. Individual tickets are available, as well as festival passes for each or a combo pass covering both — head to to find it all, including a detailed schedule with ticket links. Article content Longtime festival director Guy Lavallee was enjoying voice-stifling laryngitis, so we had to skip our lengthy annual state-of-the-world chat. Still, he managed to enthuse and inform… Q: First up, NWFF. How many submissions for year 43 — and what else is new? A: We did a very slight re-brand this year, going from NorthwestFest — or, under its full name, the NorthwestFest International Documentary Festival — to NorthwestFilmFest. Why? We're getting more and more submissions each year, especially from Alberta-based filmmakers. But we were severely limiting our ability to program these films by restricting them to docs. By simply adding the word 'Film' to the title, it tells filmmakers and audiences what kind of festival this is. It now also has a nice rhythm with our genre festival, NorthwestFEARFest. Article content Article content Opening up the parameters a bit resulted in a roughly 65 per cent increase in submissions, with films submitted from 70 countries. Q: Your very global fest has an understandably wide range of topics. A: At the end of the day, our core programming is really all about films that mean something to us, and that we think will mean something to audiences. So you've got pop culture covered by showing films about the Dateline NBC news 'sting' phenomenon, To Catch a Predator with Predators and board game fanatics with The Hobby: Tales From the Tabletop. We've got films about beloved actors and performers, like gregarious leading man George Segal, brilliant and misunderstood cult comedian Andy Kaufman in Thank You Very Much, and the first and only deaf woman to ever be nominated for — and win — an Oscar with Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore. There's a whole bunch of films about some of the major issues of the day, including librarians who have become the first responders in the fight against the new book-banning trend in the United States with The Librarians; the fight to save reproductive rights in Zurawski V Texas; a look at the toll captivity takes on elephants — including one particularly well-known local one in Lucy: The Stolen Lives of Elephants. Article content Plus, the story of the activists who have been trying for decades to Free Leonard Peltier, and the continued endangerment of resident orca whales in The Snake and the Whale. We've managed to snag a number of bona-fide crowd pleasers, including the inspirational story of astronaut Sally Ride in Sally; Speak — a peek behind the scenes of youth speech competitions; Micro Budget, an outrageous mockumentary in the vein of The Office; and the rousing Haida basketball film Saints and Warriors. Q: Does Trump's incomprehensible film tariff announcement give you concern? A: I try to keep my politics to myself when representing the film festival, because we want to make sure everyone knows they are welcome to attend. But in this case, I'm just going to be honest. Even for him, this is beyond stupid. What exactly are you proposing a tariff gets applied to? A film is not a good, it's an intellectual property. I'm convinced more and more he doesn't actually understand what a tariff is. Article content Q: Tell us about the opening and closing-night double features. A: For opening, we were looking for something a little different, and this Blur opportunity — Blur: To the End — just fell into our laps. With this double feature, audiences will get to see an absolutely fantastic behind-the-curtain doc about one of the UK's all-time biggest bands, followed by the full concert Live at Wembley. Filmmaker Alexandre O Philippe's films have long been staples of this festival. With closing night's Chain Reactions, he takes a film that's been part of our cultural lexicon for 50 years and has other artists and filmmakers talk about how what Texas Chain Saw Massacre has meant to them — artistically, creatively, culturally — in these beautifully unhurried monologues. Stephen King, Patton Oswalt, Karyn Kusama and more discuss and dissect the film in ways you may never have thought of before. The film is an incredibly thoughtful work of art, and we're thrilled to have Philippe in attendance for the screening. And it felt borderline criminal to not then screen Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic afterwards, so we're showing it. Q: Can you talk more about the local content — Pride Vs. Prejudice, Dark Match, Stolen Lives? A: When we saw the support last year for some of the locally made films, coupled with the fact that our Alberta film submissions quadrupled this year, we knew there was an audience. I like to have a theme, and so we partnered with AMPIA to screen all three of this year's Edmonton Film Prize finalists. The ceremony itself takes place May 7, and on May 12 we'll be screening all three, complete with Q&As with the filmmakers. The following evening, we're presenting a tremendous package of Alberta Made Shorts, many of which will have the film teams in attendance. Article content Q: What should we look for at Rainbow Visions? A: We've stolen one of our most popular features from FEARFest: the retro screening. We're ramping it up this year, with a brand new, 4K restoration of Lisa Choldenko's classic, High Art; a family-friendly screening of 2007's effervescent musical, Hairspray; a Saturday night screening of 1981's glorious camp classic, Mommie Dearest; and we revisit 1980's most controversial film, William Friedkin's gritty crime thriller, Cruising, a film once very much maligned by the gay community — even causing nationwide protests upon its release — has very much been re-examined and newly appreciated over the years, partly because 45 years later, it is such a time capsule of a very specific time, place and culture that just doesn't exist any more. For the newer films, I can't speak highly enough about Sabbath Queen or Parade, and I'm super stoked to be able to present an encore screening of Flashback, the doc about Edmonton's legendary, influential, iconic '80s nightclub. The filmmakers will be here for a Q&A, we'll have a DJ going, some makeup demos going on in the lobby. It's going to be an absolute blast! Latest National Stories
Calgary Herald
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Calgary Herald
NorthwestFilmFest and Rainbow Visions: A joyful Blur of Texas Chainsaws, Alberta film, Cruising and Andy Kaufman
Article content Action — and how! Canada's oldest and ever-evolving documentary film festival NorthwestFilmFest is back with a brilliant lineup, covering just about anything you might want to point a camera at. Article content Opening with a Blur double feature and closing on a one-two punch of Texas Chain Saw Massacre gushing love, space, ecological issues, the war in Ukraine, and cinematic portraiture, including an Andy Kaufman doc, are all on the weird and wild docket, rolling Thursday through May 15 at Metro Cinema. Article content Article content Then, snugged right up to the tail end, May 16 -18 is NWFF's punchy queer sibling, Rainbow Visions Film Festival, features more docs and plenty of classic narrative fiction films, like the much-lauded doc The Secret of Me, William Friedkin's Cruising and a reprise of local documentary Flashback. Article content Article content Longtime festival director Guy Lavallee was enjoying voice-stifling laryngitis, so we had to skip our lengthy annual state-of-the-world chat. Article content A: We did a very slight re-brand this year, going from NorthwestFest — or, under its full name, the NorthwestFest International Documentary Festival — to NorthwestFilmFest. Article content Why? We're getting more and more submissions each year, especially from Alberta-based filmmakers. But we were severely limiting our ability to program these films by restricting them to docs. By simply adding the word 'Film' to the title, it tells filmmakers and audiences what kind of festival this is. It now also has a nice rhythm with our genre festival, NorthwestFEARFest. Article content Article content Opening up the parameters a bit resulted in a roughly 65 per cent increase in submissions, with films submitted from 70 countries. Article content Article content Q: Your very global fest has an understandably wide range of topics. Article content A: At the end of the day, our core programming is really all about films that mean something to us, and that we think will mean something to audiences. Article content We've got films about beloved actors and performers, like gregarious leading man George Segal, brilliant and misunderstood cult comedian Andy Kaufman in Thank You Very Much, and the first and only deaf woman to ever be nominated for — and win — an Oscar with Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore. Article content There's a whole bunch of films about some of the major issues of the day, including librarians who have become the first responders in the fight against the new book-banning trend in the United States with The Librarians; the fight to save reproductive rights in Zurawski V Texas; a look at the toll captivity takes on elephants — including one particularly well-known local one in Lucy: The Stolen Lives of Elephants.
