Microcinema DVDs - Wholphin Issue One

The debut issue of Wholphin includes Spike Jonze's revealing, and never publicly screened, portrait of Al Gore, made during the election campaign of 1999; an excerpt from David O. Russell's controversial film on U.S. soldiers in Iraq; Miguel Arteta and Miranda July's beautiful short Are You The Favorite Person Of Anybody?; a bewildered Selma Blair's eventful visit to the gynecologist; a Turkish sitcom resubtitled by several notable writers; some rare 1970s Iranian animation which was smuggled out of the country; a Dutch artist singing classic rock backward; and a sudden and unexplained appearance by David Byrne.

13 films. 155 minutes.

Plus a 40-page magazine, bound into the package, with interviews from the filmmakers.
Further Information:

Liner Notes:
Al Gore Documentary

Q: Can you tell the story of being asked to make this movie?

Spike Jonze: This campaign manager named Carter Eskew called me up and asked me if I would be interested in coming up with some campaign commercials. I'd never really been involved in politics at all, but I was starting to think about politics more and was wanting to participate. But I had a hard time deciding what kind of commercial to make because I realized, like the rest of the country, I didn't really know who Al Gore was. So I suggested that what I could offer would be to simply go down and get my impressions of Al Gore. And I just went with my video camera by myself, and just tried to gather, in a small unobtrusive way, a sort of video portrait- a day in the life, just to get to know who he is.

Q: I think that no matter what party you belong to, whether you are Republican, Democrat, anything, you look at the film and you think that this is somebody who is an honorable guy, a good guy, a guy who's obviously a family man and whose family loves him. You get this really complete picture of the guy.

SJ: Yeah. As I said, I didn't know anything about him and I went in just wanting to know who he is, and by the end of the day I felt that they were a really solid family and I really liked them. I think that Al and Tipper have to be good people and good parents to have created a family that's so solid. They look out for each other, and you can feel it. I mean, it's really obvious when you're around a dysfunctional family and it's also obvious when you're around a really functional family.

Q: So you just spent one day with them? You started in Carthage, Tennessee?

SJ: Yeah, I went down there to Tennessee and it was supposed to be just an afternoon. I guess he had liked my movie Being John Malkovich and so from that hadĶ I don't know why he gave me this sort of access. It was very intimate and personal in terms of letting a cameraman into your home, but I guess that after the afternoon, they felt comfortable with me, so they invited me to go on their vacation. They were leaving that day to go to North Carolina, so in the middle of the afternoon the helicopters came and landed in the Tennessee farmhouse and we went to the army base and got on Air Force Two and flew to North Carolina.

Q: Is there any special clearance you need for Air Force Two?

SJ: No.

Q: No search, no cavity...

SJ: No, I guess the security guys were just like, "Oh, he's with the Vice President." And then we got into North Carolina in time to go swimming in the ocean and it wa incredible. It was just supposed to be a few hours but it was this whole day.

Q: You have, I think, probably the only footage anywhere of Al Gore bodysurfing. And this movie overall presents a picture of Gore that we really didn't see anywhere else. Was the movie ever shown anywhere?

SJ: It was shown at the Democratic Convention in LA I thin it was shown in the afternoon.

Q: Was it broadcast on TV? Was that part of the original plan?

SJ: It wasn't ever broadcast, no. There was some talk of broadcasting it, but that didn't get too far. Nightline asked me to come on and show it, but I didn't know if I'd be articulate talking about it.

Q: Everyone who's seen this movie thinks it humanizes Gore in precisely the way he needed to be humanized. He got tagged as being cold and robotic, and this film shows him to be warm, very genuine, passionate even. There are a lot of people who think that if this had been shown on primetime, it could have really made a difference in the election.

SJ: I wonder. I don't know, really. I like Harold and Maude.

Are You The Favorite Person Of Anybody?

Miranda July: What happened was this: I had just finished shooting Me and You, and was waiting for my editor to finish the first rough assembly so I could begin editing. In the meantime I felt like I was in so deep with this movie stuff that I was never going to write another short story ever again. But then I wrote these three dialogues, and even though they weren't too substantial, I felt relieved that I had produced something somewhat literary. I read them to Miguel, and he said, "I want to shoot it this weekend." I read them through and saw that I had indeed written something more like a script than a short story. Miguel called up Mike White and John C. Reilly, and Chuy Chavez was still in town, shooting a documentary. He lived in Mexico City and was the DP on my movie and two of Miguel's previous movies. All these casting choices were Miguel's, and I thought they were really smart. I was especially excited to see Chuy act after working so intensely with him as a DP. Miguel also cast me and I was thrilled at the prospect of just being an actress, after writing, directing, and acting in Me and You. I remember walking away from John C. Reilly at the end of my scene and wondering if I was off camera yet. But no one yelled cut and I said to myself, "I'm just an actress, I'm gonna keep on walking until someone tells me to stop." I walked practically to the next neighborhood before anyone noticed I was gone. And when my scene was done, I left, which was a great feeling. A few months later I saw the finished thing and realized that it was perhaps slightly crazy to have made a short movie during my one week off. But it turned out okay.

Q: Why do you make films?

Miguel Arteta: Because I'm a blunt person with blunt thoughts and staging actors within a frame is the only way I know to capture a little subtlety.

Q: Why did you want to make this film?

MA: I love Miranda's writing. She told me that as a girl, when strangers passed her by in the street, she would picture herself as that person and then ask herself, in that stranger's voice, "Am I someone's favorite person?" This script is gorgeous because it makes you wonder, what is your story? What is the quality of the relationships that define you? After years of having my head up my ass, due to living and working in LA these questions were a welcome gift.

Q: In Chuck and Buck You presented a beautiful, yet fairly disturbing portrait of someone (Chuck) being someone else's (Buck) favorite person. Is it a good thing to be someone's favorite person?

MA: Sure. And then usually that person wants to be with you in order to create another person that might become their next favorite. It can be just another person in themselves they are looking for, someone they hope to like better. If an actual baby comes, what are your chances of remaining number one? Sometimes even your pet can steal your title.

Q: True. Is it good to have a favorite person?

MA: Yep, but it would be better if we never said it out loud.

Q: Yeah. Who is your favorite person?

MA: My favorite person is married and lives in Brooklyn.

Q: How long did it take to set up the shoot? Did you do any rehearsals? Did you send John C. Reilly and Mike White the script or did they just wing it?

MA: Miranda wrote it on a Saturday morning and we shot it the next Tuesday. I faxed the dialogue to the actors on Sunday. They said their lines word for word, except for Mike White who kept forgetting to say "My girlfriend might like one."

Q: Miranda says that after her scene, when she walked out of frame, no one yelled cut so she just kept walking into the next neighborhood. Why didn't you yell cut?

MA: I knew this could be the last time I directed her, so I didn't want to yell cut

Q: That makes sense.

The Writer

Q: Why do you make films?

Carson Mell: For fun and profit.

Q: What? You make money from short films?

CM: There's been no money so far, but I have faith that the profit is forthcoming.

Q: Where did the inspiration for this film come from?

CM: In the case of The Writer, I wanted to draw some monsters, but not just have them sit around on my drawing board.

Q: I don't believe you.

CM: Well, things really got rolling when I found the drawing of the manlion with the sex kitten secretary in a friend's old yearbook. Trying to imagine the person that came up with something that subtly twisted was really the genesis of the character.

Q: So you were interested in wretched lives of pathetic writers as a child?

CM: Subconsciously, I believe all children are.

Q: Hmm. One thing I like about The Writer is the rhythm of the animation. Do you think about rhythm when you work? What is most important to you? The look, the sound, the rhythm? Something else?

CM: When I'm editing, rhythm is always on of my main concerns. I play with the pauses and the length of things for a long time. Often cutting gout individual words. As far as the individual elements that make up film, I think they are all of equal importance, though some are harder than others and inherently get more attention.

Q: How long did The Writer take to make? Is it easy to tackle these projects a bit at a time or do you need a big chunk of time to devote yourself exclusively to the piece?

CM: I probably put a hundred or so hours into The Writer, scattered over several months. I like working on things in big chunks of time just because film is so labor-intensive, but it's always nice to have a side project to play around with when you're burned out on the other.

Q: What's on now?

CM: My cousin, Grant Falardeau, and I just finished our first feature film and are looking for distribution. It's the first of four films about a family and it's called RODERICK: A Story in 12 Parts. Each movie tells three sequential stories, and all together they tell one epic story of the Roderick family. Aside from that I'm constantly working on a bunch of short films, cartoons, and other fun things for a DVD miniseries called Minotaur, of which I'm going to put out a couple issues a year.

Liner Notes

Miguel Arteta

Miguel Arteta (born 1965 in San Juan, Puerto Rico) is an American director of film and television, best known for his independent film Chuck & Buck (2000). Born to a Peruvian father and Spanish mother, Arteta grew up all over Latin America due to his father's itinerant existence as a Chrysler auto parts salesman. He went to high school in Costa Rica, but was expelled, and went to live with his sister in Boston, Massachusetts, where he learned filmmaking. He then attended Harvard University's documentary program, but wanted to do more than just documentaries, so he left for Wesleyan University, where he met future collaborators Matthew Greenfield and Mike White. After graduating in 1989, his student film Every Day is a Beautiful Day won a Student Academy Award, which got him a job as a second assistant camera to Jonathan Demme on Cousin Bobby. Demme then recommended him to the American Film Institute, and Arteta received his M.F.A. there in 1993. His first feature film, Star Maps, which he wrote and directed, came in 1997, making its debut at the Sundance Film Festival. It was a critical hit, receiving five Independent Spirit Award nominations, including Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay. He then turned to directing television shows, helming episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street, Freaks and Geeks, and Six Feet Under. Arteta then on to win an 2001 Independent Spirit Award for Best Feature Under 0,000 for Chuck & Buck, which teamed him up with his fellow Wesleyan alumni Greenfield (producer) and White (screenwriter and star). The trio worked together once more on 2002's The Good Girl, starring Jennifer Aniston. Miguel's current project is called Date School, a romantic comedy starring Owen Wilson, due out in 2006.

J. Lisa Chang and Newton Thomas Sigel

The Big Empty marks the first collaboration of the husband and wife directing and writing team of J. Lisa Chang and Newton Thomas Sigel. With a budget of ,000, they shot for seven days in locations around Los Angeles, including the Soap Talk set at the ABC Prospect Studios and the E.R. set on the Warner Brothers lot. The film was completed on Valentine's Day, February 14th, 2005.

Daniel Dubiecki and Jason Blumenfeld bravely took on the task of producing the film. Daniel's extensive short film credits include the award-winning films Gulp, In God We Trust and Consent. Most recently he produced the feature film Thank You For Smoking starring Aaron Eckhart, Katie Holmes, William H. Macy, Sam Elliott, and Robert Duvall. In addition to producing The Big Empty, Jason Blumenfeld served as the film's assistant director and vagina wrangler.

Section Eight, Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney's production company, executive produced the short film, although the entire budget was self-financed out of the director's pockets. George Clooney's support and enthusiasm for the project was especially instrumental in realizing the film. The directors would also like to single out executive producer Erika Armin's heroic contributions.

Brian Dewan

Brian Dewan has been making filmstrips since 1986, screening them at the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum, the Musuem of Fine Arts in Boston, the Sundance Channel, and MTV Europe. Two CDs of songs featuring electric zither, autoharp and keyboard accompaniment are in print: Brian Dewan Tells The Story and The Operating Theater. He has accompanied silent films at Lincoln Center, the Museum of the Moving Image, and the Cinema Arts Center. Visit www.dewanatron.comto view and hear hand-crafted analog electronic music instruments built by collaborating cousins Leon Dewan and Brian Dewan. Dewan has also designed artwork for Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and David Byrne's Uh-Oh.

The House in the Middle

Atomic tests at the Nevada Proving Grounds (later the Nevada Test Site) show effects on well-kept homes, homes filled with trash and combustibles, and homes painted with reflective white paint. Asserts that cleanliness is an essential part of civil defense preparedness and that it increased survivability. Selected for the 2002 National Film Registry of "artistically, culturally, and socially significant" films.

Spike Jonze

Spike Jonze is a good man.

Carson Mell

After twenty-two years in his native Arizona, Carson Mell moved to Los Angeles in 2002 to be closer to his cousin and film collaborator Grant Falardeau. He currently lives in Hollywood and shares a studio under a Chinese Restaurant in Old Town Pasadena. You can see more of his work at www.carsonmell.com

Jeroen Offerman

Jeroen Offerman is a Dutch artist working and living in London, UK and Berlin, Germany. Works are conceptual and often of a performative nature. Materials and media used range from living plants, to flies and birds, video, music, dubplates, sculpture, computers and installations. Offerman received a BA in Fine Art at Akademie St. Joost, Breda, NL and an MA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London, UK. Most notably, his video "The Stairway at St.Paul's" won several awards at International Short Film Festivals all over the world and was voted one of the best media artworks of 2003 by New York's The Village Voice.

Jack Pendarvis

Jack Pendarvis lives in Bayou La Batre, Alabama. He is a contributing author to Blue Moon Cafe and a Pushcart Prize winner. He recently released a debut collection of short stories, The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure.

Scott Prendergast

Scott Prendergast wrote for MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch for two years. He was also the host of HBO's Backpack program. Prendergast was trained as a comedy improviser and sketch writer at the Groundlings Theater in Los Angeles. His one-man, all-improv show, UNman, ran for two years in New York City.

Prendergast was raised in Portland, Oregon, attended Columbia University in New York City, and currently resides nowhere. He is an Eagle Scout, a disgraced MENSA member and heir to the Heath candy bar legacy (but not the fortune.)

Brian Reich

Brian is a comedy writer who has worked for Conan O'Brian, Just Shoot Me, and with Robert Schmigel. He recently participated in a "Yo Mamma" Joke competition and although he did not win the obviously rigged contest, feels he put up a good showing.

Rodney Rothman

Rodney Rothman: _Rodney is a former head writer for the Late Show with David Letterman, and was a writer and supervising producer for the television show Undeclared. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, the Best American Nonrequired Reading, the New Yorker, McSweeney's, and Men's Journal.

David O. Russell

David O. Russell's first feature, Spanking the Monkey, premiered at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Audience Award. The film also earned Russell Independent Spirit Awards for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay. 1996 saw the release of Russell's acclaimed comedy Flirting with Disaster, which appeared on more than 30 critics' Top Ten lists and garnered Independent Spirit Award nominations for Russell for Best Director and Best Screenplay. Three Kings was named to more than 100 critics' Top Ten lists when it was released in 1999. Amongst the many accolades received, the Boston Critics Association awarded the film Best Feature and Russell Best Director. Russell was also nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay. His most recent feature, I Heart Huckabees won best independent film at the 2005 Golden Trailer Awards.

Ali Akbar Sadeghi

Ali Akbar Sadeghi was born in Tehran in 1937. He gained admission to the College of Fine Arts, University of Tehran, in 1958 after graduating from high school. Upon his graduation from college, he was commissioned by the Center for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults to make a few animation films. He has been involved with various other artistic activities, including book illustration, poster production, graphic design and film production, but his main field has been painting.