Indie Film

You may have never heard of the Cacophony Society, but chances are you’ve heard of events created by the group or its members, such as SantaCon, Burning Man, and the Urban Idiotarod. Chuck Palahniuk was a member, and the group’s antics provided the inspiration for Project Mayhem in his book Fight Club. The society, which was founded in California in the mid 1980s, had a profound cultural impact that went far beyond the local art scene – they still hold SantaCon every year in Tokyo, fer crissakes.

So when this fishie headed down to Santa Ana this past Saturday for the screening of Jon Alloway‘s new documentary film, Into The Zone: The Story of the Cacophony Society, and corresponding art exhibit, we expected to see the plenty of press covering the event. But no.

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Some extremely sad news has been shared by the San Francisco Film Society. The organization’s recently appointed 57-year-old executive director Bingham Ray, a beloved titan of the independent film world, passed away this morning at a Utah hospital following a second recent stroke suffered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival last Friday. He leaves behind a wife and three children.

From today’s heartfelt SFFS website announcement:

“The board of directors and staff of the Film Society are stunned and deeply saddened by the untimely death of our executive director. We at the Film Society and the entire film community have lost far too early an energetic and visionary impact player who has helped shape the independent film industry for decades in so many important and valuable ways,” said Pat McBaine, SFFS board president. “He shall be dearly missed. Our deepest sympathies and condolences go out to Bingham’s family and his legions of friends and colleagues all over the world who loved and respected him.”

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Film Independent, which puts together the LA Film Festival as well as the annual Spirit Awards, announced today they were taking the usual step of naming two presidents of their organization. Film Independent senior director Sean McManus and director of artist development Josh Welsh were both promoted and will help run the organization jointly. The pair are taking over for Dawn Hudson, who left Film Independent in June to become the CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

McManus has been with Film Independent since 1998, as has worked as senior director for the past six years. Welsh, meanwhile, has been running the organization’s various labs and development programs for the past decade. He also, according to the press release, moonlights in an alt-country band called Meatyard. They have an artsy video featuring sad mannequins if you’re curious.

Never mind that West Hollywood journalist Cary Harrison, the person at the center of a recent Patch item about 2007 indie film Star Trek: Of Gods and Men, lives in an apartment once occupied by Marilyn Monroe. In the case of this article’s slant, Google could have turned out to be the reporter’s best friend.

Patch contributor James F. Mills frames Harrison’s upcoming January 9 free Internet stream of the film, and planned accompanying interviews on his radio show, as a newsworthy event. But in the article comments, long-time sci-fi journalist Michael Hinman clarifies that the movie–featuring Nichelle Nichols and Walter Koenig–is anything but “rarely seen:”

I think it’s great to see some interest put into this production, which I thought was pretty top-notch, to be honest. But I think the story is a bit misleading to suggest that the only way you can see this film is at a Star Trek convention, or through this gentleman’s website.

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This qualifies as an extremely smart organic move. Sophia Savage, a staff writer for Anne Thompson‘s TOH! Indiewire blog, is readying her directorial debut with a little help from Kickstarter. Her dramatic short will be filmed this coming January at a gorgeous Topanga Canyon location, and currently gets tipped on the fundraising site with an impressive eight-minute video.

Inspired by real events, Empyrean will tell the story of a daughter who returns home to help care for her terminally cancer-stricken father. Dual resident Chayse Irvin, a Vancouver native, will handle the cinematography chores, while the paternal role of Jimmy will be played by veteran actor Sonny King.

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The paths of Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken famously crossed in 1981 and have collided once again this fall, thanks to the re-opening of the police investigation into the drowning death of Natalie Wood. But did you know that the two also worked together in 2001?

NYU grad Tony Vitale‘s comedy Life’s a Beach (also known as Club Jungle Juice) is the only time Walken and Wagner signed on for the same film project. Among the movie’s producers are Paul Kessler and Diana Derycz-Kessler, the husband-and-wife couple that today own and manage the LA Film School. The comedy is set in a Club Med type resort and was shot on the island of Provinciales in Turks and Caicos.

A (very) belated October 2010 premiere is listed for the film, which seems to have never been released because of bankruptcy-related complications. While cynics will no doubt make untoward jokes about the original title and poster art (pictured), FishbowlLA prefers to focus on this IMDb discussion board comment:

I was the captain of the sailboat and never saw the movie… I would like to know how to get it as well

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LA Weekly film critic Karina Longworth has treated Elvis Mitchell to the cover story he deserves, a long, full-bodied look at a controversial career trajectory littered with catty, jealous colleagues.

After setting the scene of her mid-October lunch with Mitchell at LACMA’s restaurant Ray’s, Longworth does the same for the day in mid-June when his appointment as the museum’s new film programmer was announced by Film Independent. FishbowlLA was at the cocktail soiree in question, and we well remember the mood she describes:

It was hours before the Los Angeles Film Festival’s opening-night, open-bar party. Mitchell’s hiring quickly became a hot topic within a crowd thick with film journalists, curators and festival programmers–some of whom had applied for the job. Wagers were laid on how long Mitchell would last at the position. One friend joked that the hiring might be [LACMA director Michael] Govan’s attempt to take a page from The Producers–engineering a program destined to fail, so that he could kill off Film at LACMA once and for all.

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AFI Fest was not the only film action in town this weekend. Per an inspiring write-up in the National Catholic Reporter, there was also a memorable screening of the new Emilio Estevez-Martin Sheen drama The Way on Saturday atop the Chalon campus of Mount St. Mary’s College.

As Sister Rose Pacatte reports, a number of celebrities were among the 350-person audience. There was also this amazing post-screening Q&A tidbit, offered up by Reverend Scott Young, executive director of UCLA’s University Religious Conference:

Young shared that the day before, he had been at a restaurant in Seal Beach near a beauty salon where in October a gunman opened fire, killing eight people. Young began chatting with some ladies who were dining at the next table and found that they were close friends of the stylists who were killed.

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Talk about your unexpected indie movie twist!  Just hours after we reported yesterday’s news of Laemmle Theatres’ plans to shut down the Sunset 5 by the end of November, LA Times reporter Nicole Sperling blogged word of a most welcome and logical rescuer: Robert Redford.

The Sundance Institute has offices in Beverly Hills and just hired a new media relations director (Sarah Eaton) to be stationed there. So it makes a lot of sense for the Sundance Cinemas end of things to give the Sunset 5 location a go as its new LA beachhead next spring, following some on-site renovations:

“Ever since the Arclight and the Grove opened, we lost some attendance,” said Greg Laemmle, president of Laemmle Theatres…

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When’s the last time Life magazine broke news that did not involve photos of Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne or some other iconic, dearly departed Hollywood celebrity? We honestly can’t remember.

Fittingly perhaps, their new scoop* is about how Johnny Depp and his The Rum Diary director Bruce Robinson came within a Hunter S. Thompson smidgin’ of joining the dearly departed club. We are taking a humorous tone here, because that’s how Depp approached it in his Life article interview, describing what happened when the engines of his LA-bound private jet went dead:

“Bruce and I were looking at each other and I think I said, ‘Is this it?’ It was like this weird extended moment when you’re just floating for a second and you could feel this unpleasant descent.”

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