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From Stephen Elliott
To be accepted, to be relevant, he would need to become someone else. He would spend the next half-century creating that person and then, at age 60, decide that it was time to reveal his true self, in Father Goose.
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A short movie based on the Mr. Gracie character from Happy Baby, starring James Urbaniak:
...moreHave you been following The Happy Baby movie kickstarter? Because we’ve added some interesting rewards, like The Dominatrix Package, The Essay Transformation Package, and The Big Fat Box of Books. More information here.
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To be a doctor in Cuba is to live inside the swirl of history and politics that whooshes around the small Communist island at all times.
...moreJill Sobule singing San Francisco onstage with Lorelei Lee, Stephen Elliott, and Isaac Fitzgerald at the Happy Baby movie kickstarter launch party.
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A new reward has been added for the Happy Baby movie kickstarter. A first edition hardcover personalized and autographed by Dave Eggers and Stephen Elliott.
From the comfort of his own home, Stephen Elliott gives an update on the newly launched Happy Baby Movie Kickstarter Campaign.
“We raised over $8,000 in our first 24 hours. The question we’re facing now is, Where will the next $8,000 come from?”
...moreSome pics we turned up from the shooting of About Cherry, just for fun.
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I’m writing to you, Kenneth, because your review and my behavior at the Rialto Cinema are integral parts of the problem in Israel/Palestine. It’s why we both felt so scared and embarrassed: Tears of Gaza implicates us.
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Jake Adelstein possesses an obsessive, infectious energy, coupled with an immense generosity and an ability to be, when necessary, stringently ruthless. This combination serves him well in the line of work that he half-chose, half-stumbled into: Adelstein is the guy who keeps the yakuza honest.
...moreAt The Paris Review, Rumpus Funny Women editor, Elissa Bassist recounts how watching every horror movie on Netflix and Dear Sugar saved her from Brooklyn-induced depression.
“‘How do I reach the page when I can’t lift my face off the bed?
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Short film has traditionally never had the gift of longevity. Cinema gave short film a mosquito-span life and while DVD gave them an extension, they were ultimately relegated to wallow alongside commentary, storyboards and outtakes.
...moreThe first Rumpus produced movie, Happy Baby, is launching its fundraising efforts November 8. To be reminded of the launch, receive other updates, and notices for Happy Baby related events, consider joining the Happy Baby email group:
...moreThough cinemas and movie-making were made illegal in the 1970s after religious conservatives declared many cultural activities sinful, it has not stopped Saudi Arabians from making and showing films that undermine SA’s puritanism today.
A few renegade film makers in Saudi Arabia called Red Wax have created an underground movie group that shows films on taboo political and social issues, like women’s rights and migrant workers.
...moreBerlin & Beyond Film Festival in San Francisco has entered its 17th year. They kicked off the festivities at the brilliant Castro Theatre, still my favorite place to watch a film.
The live organ performance, a staple of the film going experience at The Castro, always makes my heart melt a wee bit.
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The response to the AIDS epidemic that ripped through the gay community starting in the early years of the Reagan administration can be best characterized by how most health and social issues are dealt with in contemporary politics today, with a marked lack of empathy.
...moreFriend of The Rumpus, Richard Parks, needs you to vote for his short doc in order to get a festival screening at the ArcLight Hollywood where a prize of $10,000 is being awarded. Hook a Rumpus Brother up.
Just head over to YouTube where you can watch the video and click like.
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In Anderson’s hands, we are always on a journey into the troubled minds and hearts of men at war with themselves; to the intersection of primitive impulses and intellectual aspiration; and, never more than in The Master, through hubris, half-blind seeking, and love that destroys itself.
...moreHere’s the script to the short movie I’m shooting next Wednesday in Los Angeles. We’re hoping to use the short when fundraising for Happy Baby, the feature Rumpus Films is shooting in Detroit this March.
...moreLast week, Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott spoke with Fox News about his debut film, About Cherry.
If you missed it live, you can watch the segment to hear details on plot, filming in the Armory, casting, and more.
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I’m going to go ahead and spoil the entire plot of Bart Layton’s documentary The Imposter, but only because the film does in its first opening minutes. Why? Because the plot, as balls-out-crazy as it is, is not even the most compelling aspect of this film.
...moreThe San Francisco Weekly has an interview with Lorelei Lee and Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott about the movie they wrote together, that Elliott directed, About Cherry.
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There’s a special screening of About Cherry this Tuesday, 7:30pm in Manhattan in advance of the movie’s release September 21.
We have twenty tickets to give away. If you’d like one send an email to cherry@therumpus.net.
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Andrew McCarthy, likely best known to you as a member of the iconic Brat Pack, with his roles in Pretty in Pink and St. Elmo’s Fire, has forged a second career as a travel writer. Out with a new memoir, The Longest Way Home, about traveling as a way to settle down, McCarthy touches on issues of fatherhood and commitment.
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About Cherry, the feature film directed by Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott, will be premiering September 21 in San Francisco, Portland, and New York.
In San Francisco the movie is being shown only twice at the Castro theater on September 21 at 7:00 and 9:30pm.
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Spring Breakers is capital A Art and Argo is a MOVIE. Argo is so good that it’s also smart, and you’re thrilled but you also learn a little something. It’s entertainment that tickles your brain. And it’s also art, just no capital a, I guess.
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The skillfully understated filmmaker Kelly Reichardt joins up again with screenwriter Jon Raymond to give us Meek’s Cutoff — a portrait of the Oregon Trail as both a place and an idea, back when the west was an uncharted strange land off in the distance, waiting to be found.
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Fast-forward all the way to the epilogue: a 2012 documentary, Searching for Sugar Man. The film is the story of what happened to Rodriguez’s music after his ostensible failures.
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Francis Ford Coppola hardly needs an introduction.
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Sometimes you get to interview a celebrity so iconic, a figure who played such an indelible role in your life, that your journalistic training flies out the window.
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