Latest news with #WaldoSaltScreenwritingAward
Los Angeles Times
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
A ‘Tombstone' tribute to Val Kilmer, plus the week's best movies in L.A.
Hello! I'm Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies. Opening this weekend and winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival, 'Sorry, Baby' is the feature film debut for writer, director and actor Eva Victor. Personally, it's among my favorite films of the year for its complex mix of comedy and drama, offbeat whimsy and deep vulnerability. (I'd previously called it 'fresh, inventive and invigorating' and that still feels right to me.) The story tells some five years in the life of Agnes (Victor), a teacher at a small East Coast college attempting to move forward following a traumatic event. In her review for the paper, Katie Walsh called the film 'a movie that lingers,' attributing that to 'the profound and nuanced honesty Victor extracts from each moment.' I spoke to Victor about the process of making the film. The story is rooted in Victor's own experiences, so every stage, from writing to production to bringing it to audiences, has had its own nuances and contours. 'It's a very personal film for a lot of people and there's a sadness to that because it's a community of people who have experienced things that they shouldn't have had to,' says Victor. 'It's life-affirming for me to know that I wrote the film in a leap-of-faith way to be like: 'Is anyone else feeling like this?' And it's nice to know that there are people who are understanding what that is.' On Saturday, the Academy Museum will screen the world premiere of a 4K restoration of 1993's 'Tombstone' as a tribute to actor Val Kilmer. Directed by George P. Cosmatos, the film tells the legendary story of the shootout at the O.K. Corral, which has become one of the foundational myths of the American western. Kilmer stars as Doc Holliday, who comes to the aid of his friend, retired lawman Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell). The cast also includes Bill Paxton, Sam Elliott, Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, Charlton Heston, Jason Priestley and Dana Delany. The role was a special one for Kilmer, who titled his memoir 'I'm Your Huckleberry' after a line in the movie. In his original review of the film, Peter Rainer declared the film the latest of the then-in-vogue 'designer Westerns' and highlighted Kilmer's turn, writing, 'Val Kilmer's Holliday is classic camp performance, although it may not have started out that way. His Southern drawl sounds like a languorous cross between early Brando and Mr. Blackwell. Stricken with tuberculosis, his eyes red-rimmed, Doc coughs delicately and matches Ringo line for line in Latin. He also shoots straighter than anyone else in the movie — his powers of recuperation make Rasputin seem like a pushover.' The film will also be playing on July 26 at Vidiots. Winner of three prizes at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, 'Familiar Touch' is the narrative feature debut of writer-director Sarah Friedland. The sensitive and compassionate story follows Ruth (Kathleen Chalfant), an 80-something retired cook, as she settles into an assisted-living facility while grappling with memory loss. Friedland and Chalfant will be at select showings throughout the weekend for Q&As. In his review of the movie, Robert Abele wrote, 'The mystery of Ruth's mindfulness — which ebbs and flows — is at the core of Chalfant's brilliant, award-worthy performance. Hers is a virtuosity that doesn't ask for pity or applause or even link arms with the stricken-but-defiant disease-playing headliners who have gone before her. Chalfant's Ruth is merely, momentously human: an older woman in need, but no less expressive of life's fullness because of it.' Esther Zuckerman spoke to Friedland about shooting the film at Pasadena's Villa Gardens retirement community in collaboration with staff and residents. The production held a five-week filmmaking workshop, involving the residents as background actors and production assistants. 'It came a lot from the anti-ageist ideas of the project,' Friedland says. 'If we're going to make this film the character study of an older woman that sees older adults as valuable and talented and capacious, let's engage their capaciousness and their creativity on all sides of production.' Tsui Hark's 'Shanghai Blues' in 4K Though he is best known to American audiences for his action movies, Hong Kong director Tsui Hark has been versatile in many other genres. Now getting a new 4K restoration from the original negative for its 40th anniversary is Tsui's 1984 screwball romantic comedy 'Shanghai Blues.' Opening in 1937 Shanghai, the story concerns an aspiring musician, Do-Re-Mi (Kenny Bee), and a woman, Shu-Shu (Sylvia Chang), who, after a chance encounter, vow to meet again in the same spot after the war. Leaping forward to peacetime a decade later, the two find themselves living in the same building without realizing it, as he becomes involved with her roommate (Sally Yeh). The film will be playing at the American Cinematheque at the Los Feliz 3 on Fri., Tues. and Sat., July 5. It will also play multiple Laemmle locations on Weds. And expect more on Hong Kong cinema later this summer when Beyond Fest launches a series of new restorations of such classics as 'Hard Boiled,' 'The Killer' and Hark's 1986 'Peking Opera Blues.' 'Much Ado About Nothing' On Monday, Vidiots will screen Kenneth Branagh's 1993 adaptation of Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing.' About a bunch of incredibly good-looking people having a great time in the Italian countryside, the film stars Branagh, Emma Thompson, Kate Beckinsale, Michael Keaton, Robert Sean Leonard, Keanu Reeves and Denzel Washington. Branagh and Thompson were married in real life at the time, and in his original review of the film, Kenneth Turan wrote, 'Actors as well as athletes have a prime of life, a time when everything they touch seems a miracle. And the crowning pleasure of watching Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh in this rollicking version of 'Much Ado About Nothing' is the way it allows us to share in that state of special grace, to watch the English-speaking world's reigning acting couple perform at the top of their game. … Seeing them beautifully play off each other is an enormous pleasure for lovers of the romance of language as well as fanciers of romantic love.' 'The Spirit of '76' live commentary On Thursday, July 3, as part of the 7th House screening series at the Philosophical Research Society, there will be a screening of 1990's 'The Spirit of '76' featuring a live commentary by stars Jeff and Steven McDonald of the band Redd Kross. The film is something of a singular object: a loving satire of the 1970s made from the perspective of the burgeoning '90s, written and directed by Lucas Reiner, with a co-story credit to Roman Coppola, costumes designed by Sofia Coppola and a cast that includes David Cassidy, Leif Garrett, Olivia d'Abo, Don Novello, Rob Reiner, Carl Reiner and Devo. From the extremely drab future of 2176, three adventurers are sent back in time to July 4, 1776 but mistakenly land in the year 1976. They meet two teenagers (the McDonald brothers) who help them navigate the present and find their way back to their own time. In his original review of the film, Kevin Thomas did not catch the vibes, as he wrote, 'Movies do not get more inane than 'The Spirit of '76' … You have to wonder how this film ever got made, let alone released.' Jerry Bruckheimer is still revved up Among the big releases this weekend is Joseph Kosinski's racing drama 'F1,' starring Brad Pitt and Damson Idris. The film reunited Kosinski with screenwriter Ehren Kruger and producer Jerry Bruckheimer following their huge success with 'Top Gun: Maverick.' Josh Rottenberg spoke to the 81-year-old Bruckheimer about his legendary career working on movies such as 'Beverly Hills Cop,' 'Bad Boys,' 'Armageddon' and countless more, making sleek commercial pictures that have been defining the Hollywood blockbuster for decades. 'It's changed a lot,' Bruckheimer says of the movie business. 'Streaming hit a lot of places hard. They spent too much money and now they've got problems with that. Some of the studios aren't healthy. But the business, if you do it right, is healthy.' Bruckheimer is not one of the doomsayers foretelling the end of movies. 'I've been doing this over 50 years and that doom has been there every time a new technology shows up,' he says. 'And yet, look at what's happened. Look at 'Minecraft.' Look at 'Sinners.' Look at 'Lilo & Stitch.' If you do it right, people show up.'
Los Angeles Times
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
In ‘Sorry, Baby,' a young professor harbors private pain and a new voice emerges
Agnes (Eva Victor) has the face of a classical Hollywood movie star but she dresses like an old fisherman. Her expressions are inscrutable; you never know what's going to come out of her mouth or how. When asked on a written questionnaire how her friends would describe her, she puts down 'smart,' crosses it out, then replaces it with 'tall.' She is all of those things: tall, smart, striking, endearingly awkward, hard to read. And she is an utterly captivating, entirely unique cinematic presence, the planet around which orbits 'Sorry, Baby,' the debut feature of Victor, who not only stars but writes and directs. Agnes' backstory, revealed in time, is a distressingly common one of sexual assault, recounted with bursts of wild honesty, searing insight and unexpected humor. Victor's screenplay earned her the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival this year, where the film had its premiere. As a writer and performer, Victor allows Agnes to relay what happened in her own way while keeping the most intimate horrors protected. Set in the frigid environs of the English department at a rural Massachusetts university, 'Sorry, Baby' carries a literary quality, emphasized by nonchronological titled chapters (e.g., 'The Year With the Baby,' 'The Year With the Bad Thing,') carefully establishing our protagonist, the world she inhabits and a few nagging questions. Agnes is a professor of English at the university where she completed her graduate studies, but we first meet her as the best friend of Lydie (Naomi Ackie), who arrives for a winter weekend visit. Two codependent besties reunited, they snuggle on the couch and laugh about sex. Lydie delights at the mystery man who turns up on her friend's doorstep — a friendly, familiar neighbor named Gavin (Lucas Hedges). But Lydie's quiet concern for her friend is also palpable. When she reveals her pregnancy to Agnes, she says, 'There's something I need to tell you about my body,' as if Agnes is a child who needs gentle explanation. And in a strange way, Agnes seems to take to this childlike role with her friend. Lydie carefully probes her about her office and its previous occupant. She presses her about remaining in this town. Isn't it 'a lot'? 'It's a lot to be wherever,' Agnes replies. Lydie requests of her, 'Don't die' and Agnes reassures her she would have already killed herself if she was going to. It's cold comfort, a phrase that could capably describe the entire vibe of 'Sorry, Baby.' Victor then flips back to an earlier chapter, before their graduation, to a time when Agnes seems less calcified in her idiosyncrasies. Their thesis advisor, Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi), handsome and harried, tells Agnes her work is 'extraordinary' and reschedules a meeting due to a child-care emergency. They both end up at his home, where dusk turns to night. What ensues is what you expect and dread, though we only hear about it when Agnes recounts the excruciating details of the incident to Lydie later that night. The fallout renders Agnes emotionally stunted, running alternately on autopilot and impulse. Lydie fiercely protects (and enables) her friend until she has to move on with her life, leaving Agnes frozen in amber in that house, that office, that town, that night. There's an architectural quality to Victor's style in the film's structure and thoughtful editing, and in the lingering shots of buildings standing starkly against an icy sky, glowing windows beckoning or concealing from within: a representation of a singular kind of brittle, poignant New England stoicism. Victor captures Agnes the same way. Thanks to the profound and nuanced honesty Victor extracts from each moment, 'Sorry, Baby' is a movie that lingers. Even when Agnes does something outlandish or implausible — turning up on foot at Gavin's door in a tizzy is one of her curious quirks — it feels true to the character. But Agnes is a mystery even to herself, it seems, tamping down her feelings until they come tumbling out in strange ways. She goes about her daily life in a never-ending cycle of repression and explosion, cracking until she shatters completely. Her most important journey is to find a place to be soft again. The only catharsis or healing to be found in the film comes from the titular apology, more a rueful word of caution than anything else. We can never be fully protected from what life has in store for us, nor from the acts of selfishness or cruelty that cause us to harden and retreat into the protective cocoon of a huge jacket, a small town, an empty house. Life — and the people in it — will break us sometimes. But there are still kittens and warm baths and best friends and really good sandwiches. There are still artists like Victor who share stories like this with such detailed emotion. Sometimes that's enough to glue us back together, at least for a little while.
Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Sorry, Baby' was a way for Eva Victor to heal. The director is finding a lot of company
There is a simple tattoo of a windowpane on the middle finger of Eva Victor's right hand. When I ask about it, the filmmaker launches into a story that involves miscommunication with an Italian tattoo artist while on a trip to Paris. 'I drew this really intricate fine-line tattoo of a window with all these curtains and little things in it,' explains Victor. 'And I went to the woman and she was like, 'I cannot do that.' And I was like, 'OK, what can you do?' And she drew a box with lines in it and I was like, 'OK, let's do that.' And she did it.' With a little distance and perspective, what could have been a permanent disaster now means something else. 'It seriously is a really rough tattoo,' Victor adds with a lighthearted laugh. 'But, you know, life is life. And that's my tattoo and I have it on my hand every day of my life.' Much like 'Sorry, Baby,' the debut feature that Victor wrote, directed and starred in, the tattoo story is one that begins in odd whimsy but takes an unexpected turn toward something deeper, a personal journey. 'I have a lot of tattoos that are day-of tattoos,' Victor, 31, says. 'Sometimes with big decisions I find it's easier to just do it. It matters more to me that I'm doing this than what it is. Seeing it every day, the little window is a reminder of another life. 'It is definitely like a memory of a person I was who would do something like that,' she adds. 'Sorry, Baby' premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and was picked up for distribution by indie powerhouse A24. The film more recently played at Cannes and opens in limited release this week. Told via a literary-inspired chapter structure across five years, the story follows Agnes (Victor), a professor at the small East Coast liberal arts college where she was also a grad student, as she tenuously recovers from the free fall following a sexual assault by one of her instructors. Naomi Ackie (also recently seen in 'Blink Twice' and 'Mickey 17') brings an openhearted allegiance to Agnes' best friend Lydie, who, over the course of the film, comes out as gay, marries a woman and has a baby, while Lucas Hedges plays a sympathetic neighbor. It's a recent quiet Monday morning at a West Hollywood vegetarian restaurant where we meet and Victor, who uses they/she pronouns and identifies as queer, peruses the menu with a mix of curiosity and enthusiasm. Victor is a self-described pescatarian but will make the odd exception for a slider at a fancy party or a bite of the pork and green chile stew at Dunsmoor in Glassell Park, a favorite. Having moved to Los Angeles a little over a year ago to work on the editing of 'Sorry, Baby,' Victor has settled into living in Silver Lake with their cat, Clyde. 'I love it — I do,' Victor says with quiet conviction. 'It's very comforting. I have all my little things I get when I'm home, but it's been a while since I've been home for a bit. So I'm looking forward to being able to rest at home soon.' After breakfast, Victor will head to the airport to go shoot a small acting part in an unnamed project and by the end of the week will make a talk show debut with an appearance on the 'The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.' 'It's been very intense for me,' Victor says of the period following Sundance. 'I'm very interested in my privacy and also in routine of the day. I really like having things I do every day. It's weird to go from making a movie for four years, basically, that nobody knows about. And then it premieres at Sundance and that's how people find out about it and everyone finds out about it in the same night. That is a very bizarre experience for the body.' Victor adds, 'It does feel like there are a lot of layers between me and the film at this point.' There's an unusual, angular physicality to Victor's performance in 'Sorry, Baby,' as Agnes struggles to reengage with her own body following the assault, mostly referred to in the film as 'the bad thing.' 'I keep hearing, 'Oh, Agnes is so awkward.' I'm like, 'What the hell?'' says Victor, protectively. 'I'm very humbled by people's reactions to how bizarre they think that character is because I'm like: 'Oh, I thought she was acting legitimately normal, but OK.'' Victor, grew up in San Francisco and studied playwriting and acting at Northwestern University, moving to New York City after graduation with ambitions to work as a staffer on a late-night talk show. She got a job writing for the satirical website Reductress and began making short online videos of herself, many of which became offbeat viral comedy hits for the way they jabbed at contemporary culture, including 'me explaining to my boyfriend why we're going to straight pride' and 'me when I def did not murder my husband,' and 'the girl from the movie who doesn't believe in love.' She also appeared as a performer on the final three seasons of the series 'Billions.' The character sketches of those videos only hinted at the nuance and complexity of which Victor was capable. Throughout 'Sorry, Baby' there is a care and delicacy to how the most sensitive and vulnerable moments are handled. In the film, the sexual assault itself occurs offscreen — we don't see it or hear it — as a shot of the facade of the teacher's house depicts the passage of time from day to night. Later, Agnes sits in the bath as she describes to Lydie what happened, a moment made all the more disarming for the tinges of humor that Victor still manages to bring. 'At the end of the day, I really wanted to make a film about trying to heal,' Victor says. 'And about love getting you through really hard times. And so the violence is not depicted in the film and not structurally the big plot point of the film. The big plot point of the film in my opinion is Agnes telling Lydie what happened and her holding it very well. That to me is sort of what we're building to in the film — these moments in friendship over time and the loneliness of a person in between those moments.' The relationship between Agnes and Lydie forms much of the core of 'Sorry, Baby,' with the chemistry between Victor and Ackie giving off a rare warmth and understanding. The connection between the two actors as performers happened straight away. 'The script was so incredible that, to be honest with you, I already felt like I knew them,' says Ackie on a Zoom call from New York City. 'There was something about the rhythm of how the writing was that made me feel like we might have something in common. When I was reading it to myself, it felt so natural in my mouth. And then we finally met and it was like all of the humor and the heart and the tragedy of the script was suddenly in a person. There was a sense of ease in the way we were talking and openness and a joyfulness and an excitedness that was kind of instantaneous.' The film is the product of an unusual development process spurred by producers Barry Jenkins, Adele Romanski and Mark Ceryak. Based on their fandom of Victor's online videos, Jenkins reached out through DMs and set up a meeting, setting in motion the process that would eventually lead to a screenplay for 'Sorry, Baby.' 'When Ava sent the first draft of 'Sorry, Baby,' it arrived in the way that the most special things have for me, which is fully formed,' says Romanski. 'Not to say that we didn't then go back and continue to refine it, but it just arrived so clear and so emotional. It hit from the first draft. So it felt like it would be such a shame not to figure out how to put that into a visual form that other people could experience what we were able to experience just from reading it.' From there, the team set about making Victor feel comfortable and confident as both a filmmaker and a performer. Having already had experience working with first-time feature directors such as Charlotte Wells on 'Aftersun' and Raven Jackson on 'All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt,' the producing trio knew the process would require extra care and attention. 'Part of the reason this challenge felt possible is how much work we've done in how best to support a director in that debut space,' says Romanski. 'There was a lot of confidence and assuredness around how to be that producer for that first-time filmmaker.' The team arranged something of an unofficial directing fellowship, allowing Victor to shoot a few scenes from the script and then sit down with an editor to discuss how to improve on the footage. Victor made shot lists after watching Jenkins' 'Moonlight' and Kelly Reichardt's 'Certain Women,' leaning further into the mechanics of how to visually construct scenes. Victor also shadowed filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun during production for last year's acclaimed 'I Saw the TV Glow.' 'There was no prescriptive timeline to the course that it took,' explains Romanski. 'It was just kind of, we'll keep finding things to help you fortify and put on directorial muscle mass until you tell us, 'I'm ready.' And then when you say, 'I'm ready,' we'll pivot to putting the movie together. There's no blueprint for this, at least not for us. We haven't done it quite like this before, but that's also what's exciting about it.' Without ever sharing specifics, the story is rooted in Victor's personal experience. Going back to some of their earliest press around 2018, Victor would self-describe as a sexual assault survivor. There was material about it in a stand-up comedy routine. ('It didn't work,' Victor notes, dryly, adding that they longer do stand-up.) The experience of making the movie and putting it out into the world has been one of potentially being continually retriggered, sent back to emotions and feelings Victor has worked hard to move forward from. Yet the process of making the film began to provide its own rewards. 'The thing about this kind of trauma is it is someone deciding where your body goes without your permission,' Victor says. 'And that is surreal and absurd and very difficult. It's very difficult to make sense of the world after something like that happens.' The 'Sorry, Baby' shoot in Massachusetts last year was a turning point, says Victor, one of validation. 'The experience of directing myself as an actor is an experience of saying: This is where my body's going right now,' says Victor. 'And a crew of 60 people being like, 'Yes.' It's this really special experience of being like, 'I am saying where my body goes' and everyone agrees. In the making of the film, that was very powerful to me.' Even with the success of 'Sorry, Baby' and the way it has launched Victor to a new level of attention and acclaim, there is a tinge of melancholy to discovering just how many people are connecting to the film because it speaks to their own experiences. 'It's a very personal film for a lot of people and there's a sadness to that because it's a community of people who have experienced things that they shouldn't have had to,' says Victor. 'It's life-affirming for me to know that I wrote the film in a leap-of-faith way to be like: 'Is anyone else feeling like this?' And it's nice to know that there are people who are understanding what that is.' While recently back in France, Victor got another tattoo, this time on her foot, where she doesn't see it as often. 'Maybe there's a dash of mental illness in it,' says Victor. 'But I think with tattoos, it's such a good one, because it's not going to hurt you but it is intense and permanent. So it is risk-taking.' That attention to a small shift in personal perspective, a change in action and how one approaches the world, is part of what makes 'Sorry, Baby' such a powerful experience. And as it now continues to make its way out to more audiences, Victor's experience with it continues to evolve as well. 'There is a process that's happening right now where it's like an exhale. I'm like, whatever will be will be,' Victor says. 'Putting something out into the world is a process of letting go of it. And I had my time with it and I got to make it what I wanted it to be. And now it will over time not be mine.' The experience of making 'Sorry, Baby' has pushed Victor forward both professionally and personally, finding catharsis in creativity and community. 'I guess that is the deal,' Victor offers. 'That is part of the journey of releasing something. I mean it's legitimately called a release.'
The Herald Scotland
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
What is EIFF's selling point now in a world of film festivals?
Sorry, Baby arrives in Edinburgh on August 14 following an acclaimed world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, where Ms Victor won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. She's in good company there: previous winners include Christopher Nolan, Jesse Eisenberg and Noah Baumbach. Her film will also screen later this month as part of the Cannes Film Festival's prestigious Director's Fortnight strand. Just as important, Sorry, Baby has been picked up for distribution by muscular indie A24, the people who brought us quirky and offbeat hits such as Uncut Gems, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Civil War, Lady Bird and Moonlight. The Oscar-winning director of that last film, Barry Jenkins, serves as co-producer on Sorry, Baby. Will he make the trip to Auld Reekie? With the Edinburgh Festival in full flow at the time, he just might. But the EIFF is still finding its feet following the – how shall I put it? – organisational misadventures which nearly snuffed it out, so we should offer only cautious applause at this first glimpse of the 2025 programme. The wider question which has faced the festival for many years – what is its exact USP in a world where film festivals proliferate? – remains unanswered. Crowd-pleasing American indies, albeit edgy ones from exciting talents, are not enough to differentiate Edinburgh from the rest. Close scrutiny of the full programme when it is revealed will better show the direction of travel. Kneecap recapped I love learning a new phrase. The latest is 'outrage archaeology', which is the practice of combing through people's social media posts looking for anything controversial which could engender a headline. You do it with a mouse rather than a toothbrush, though in common with the more traditional and honourable form of archaeology I'd say you still do it in trench – only this one is an offensive position in the culture wars. Which brings us to fiery Belfast rap group Kneecap, to whom the eyes of the outrage archaeologists have turned following political statements made by them in visuals accompanying their appearance at US rock festival Coachella. These turned on the issue of Palestine, and specifically on a US-assisted campaign by Israel which is viewed by many (not just the three members of Kneecap) as genocidal. Lo and behold, two days later came news reports of comments made by the band which did certainly cross a line. Cue outrage, some valid, some less so. Herald writers Dani Garavelli and Derek McArthur have both written on the issue and I commend their columns to you, especially as the stramash has moved closer to home with calls from some quarters to have Kneecap removed from the line-up of TRNSMT, the music festival to be held on Glasgow Green over the weekend of July 11 to 13. And finally The Herald's critics have been out and about, with Teddy Jamieson heading to Stirling's Albert Halls to watch Mercury Prize-nominated alt-folk singer King Creosote run through a selection of work new and old – but mostly new, and mostly delivered on a battery of modular synths which are his latest obsession. There are others, though, as Teddy relays in an entertaining review of what seems to have been an eventful evening, one in which the Fife-based musician aired his views on everything from fluoride in the water to 15 minute cities. 'Was he being ironic?' was the question one concertgoer asked of her companion afterwards. The chances are he was not. I interviewed Mr Anderson ahead of the release of his most recent album and he told me then that his current concerns were with 'the sort of stuff that gets censored. It's like you can have an opinion these days but it has to be a very certain [one]. It's very narrow. If you agree with this, it's fine, you can say what you like. But if you don't, it's nu-uh.' Still with music, Keith Bruce was at the City Halls in Glasgow to hear the Scottish Chamber Orchestra perform new work by its Associate Composer, rising Scottish star Jay Capperauld. The piece was Carmina Gadelica, a five movement suite performed by 10 wind instruments – or a dectet, if you prefer – with added foot stomping at the end. Also in the programme were works by Mozart and Schubert. No foot stomping required there. Elsewhere theatre critic Neil Cooper was at The Studio in Edinburgh to take in a sobering and moving portrayal of dementia in Matthew Seager's play In Other Words, and at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow for Studio 3, a 'bitesize showcase' of works originally produced for Òran Mór's A Play, A Pie And A Pint season. Finally dance critic Mary Brennan was at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh for Scottish Ballet's revival of its well-received 2019 production The Crucible, based on Arthur Miller's 1953 play (in turn a riff on McCarthyism) but choreographed by Helen Pickett. An electrifying watch worthy of its five star review, The Crucible arrives at Glasgow's Theatre Royal on May 22.
Los Angeles Times
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Why the 2008 Latino cyberpunk film ‘Sleep Dealer' is more relevant than ever
Militarized water sources. Robot farmworkers. Commercialized memories. Everything is for sale in Alex Rivera's 2008 sci-fi feature 'Sleep Dealer,' in which young, expendable workers from the Global South plug into machines that power the international economy. Although 17 years have passed since the Latin American cyberpunk film debuted at Sundance — where it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and the Alfred P. Sloan Prize — its political relevance has not waned. In 'Sleep Dealer,' the international borders are closed, but U.S. corporations continue to privatize natural resources and exploit workers in Mexico, where we find our protagonist, a Tijuana robot operator named Memo Cruz. In an America where immigrants are heavily relied upon for labor, yet increasingly surveilled, targeted and deported expeditiously without due process, the dystopian realm of 'Sleep Dealer' feels closer to our current reality than ever before. 'There's a sadness in the reason the film is surviving, because its warnings and its insights about the strangeness of techno-capitalism are becoming more relevant over time,' says Rivera. 'But I'm also happy that the film is standing the test of time and being used and spoken about.' As a Peruvian American filmmaker born in New York City, Rivera derived his fictional world-building from his real-life experience documenting the harrowing stories of migrants in the United States. Since the 2008 release of his feature film, Rivera has stayed busy: winning a MacArthur Genius Grant and cultivating the next generation of Latino filmmakers by launching Borderland Studios at the Sidney Poitier New American Film School. And all the while, Rivera said, the audience for 'Sleep Dealer' has continued to grow year after year. The movie recently screened in 35mm to a packed house at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, as part of its 'Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema' series. When Rivera and I connected via Zoom call, it felt like we were living our own dystopian reality in Los Angeles; I had just finished reporting on the Los Angeles wildfires and Rivera had returned to his home in Pasadena after evacuating from the Eaton fire. In our latest interview, Rivera discusses the lasting relevance of his film and what he hopes to inspire in viewers today. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. I'm not Mexican American, but I was deeply touched as someone who exists as a part of a diaspora. What was your intention behind making this film primarily in Spanish? At the beginning of this process, there was this aspiration to make something that had this pop culture pulse, but post-colonial politics ... A lot of the pleasure and the point of 'Sleep Dealer' was to invert preconceptions about the future. And one of those is the idea that the future is English, and that the English-speaking world is where the future is being built and written. That is not true. We see it more every year now ... the future is going to be multi-lingual. And so the idea of doing science fiction in Spanish was very exciting, to say that this language is not something of the past, but it's a component of the future. In your film, people no longer do physical labor, but they mechanically operate a lot of what we see in the world. In 'Sleep Dealer,' the main character, Memo Cruz, operates this robot remotely from Tijuana to construct a building in San Diego. How do you think that added layer of technology in 'Sleep Dealer' exemplifies the dehumanization of migrant labor in today's economic workforce? The argument from both liberals and conservatives around immigrant labor is that we should legalize this group of people because they provide labor to our country. I start with the basic notion of the alienation of labor that surrounds us every day. The labor that goes into producing food that we consume, clothes that we wear and the buildings that we live in — it's rendered invisible. The idea of a worker in another region, in another country, remotely controlling a machine that's acting and doing things here is an exaggeration or a heightening of that basic dynamic that surrounds us. The systems of technology that are now connecting the planet allow for these extraordinarily extreme and heightened forms of transmission and capture. There's always a ghost in the machine, no matter what a corporation wants to present their product as a transcendental object. I want to touch on the idea of technology as a form of connection and disconnection. We see Memo trying to get the nodes in his skin so that he can be connected to this global economy. Installing technology under our skin isn't commonplace (yet), but I see a lot of parallels between how Memo experiences digital apartheid in his world and ours. Just like if you don't have internet in your town, then you are shut out of this global economy. There are ways that technology can exacerbate existing inequalities. Memo's family is from Oaxaca, where a huge corporation has militarized a dam upstream. All of the natural resources are being guarded heavily because of climate-induced scarcity. As you were making this film, how were you thinking about climate change? Those ideas all came from a simple thesis: that capitalism is amoral and will gobble up anything it's allowed to gobble up. In this world, capitalism has run wild, captured everything, even the water, and packaged it to sell it back to people from whom it was taken. But then that kind of thinking rolled out and applied to things like our memories. Could our memories be bottled like water and sold? What about our friendships? Our relationships, our time, etc. So this kind of logic of capture, enclosure and commodification is the rationale that binds together all of the world-building of 'Sleep Dealer.' We also see Rudy Ramirez, a fighter drone pilot, rebelling against his directives. He is Mexican American, but he is also an arm of the violence on people who look like him. How do you make sense of that as we consider the limitations of identity politics today? I find identity politics broadly to be the only way to make sense of American history. You can't really understand the United States, its past and its present, without looking at the way that race has been structured and formed in this country and deployed to create friction and competition among the working class. It is true that Black and brown people get swept up in the imperial core and become the enforcers of the regime that perpetuates their exclusion and inequality. Rudy is depicted as an agent of the empire, but there's a fault line in his being. We see that in our own families of color, who join the police and the armed forces of color and are often dispatched to lands that have suffered violence. So the Latino family uprooted because of the U.S. and CIA-backed civil war in El Salvador, coming here, giving birth to a son or a daughter, who then joins the armed forces and is dispatched back to the Global South. These kinds of circles, we see them in our families. It's a reality that's rich and complicated, because identity is not abstract. In the movie you have 'coyoteks,' a futuristic version of coyotes who smuggle people across the border to become migrant laborers in the U.S. These coyoteks are also facilitating a transfer of labor by illegally implanting these nodes under their skin. Can you talk a little bit more about your inspiration? [Melvin Kranzberg] once said, 'Technology is not good. Technology is not bad. It's also not neutral.' Technology is a shape or a form that enables certain things and disables others, and there's room to navigate, but there are also constraints. That was the philosophy of 'Sleep Dealer.' These technologies, when released into capitalism, are immediately deployed to create forms of alienation, extraction and hyper-profit to create conditions in which corporations and capitalists can move with ease and accelerate their work. But those forces aren't the only ones that surround these technologies. Other impulses surround them: the impulse to not be alone, to hear a loved one's voice, to connect with other people who share your identity group and political commonalities. When I was developing 'Sleep Dealer,' I was very aware of how the Pentagon and corporations were using technology ... but also how the Zapatistas used it, how the World Social Forum used it and how I was using it every day in my life. So the depiction of technology in the film is meant to be one of technology as a kind of battlefield with a powerful tendency towards alienation and extraction. But the story is not over. There is space in which to hack, to struggle and to create alternatives and strip these technologies out of the capitalist cradle where they were born, to use them for other things.
