Happy New Year!
Who do you want to hear from in 2024?
Happy New Year, everyone!
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little relieved to be done with 2023. Though there were some bright spots, on the whole it’s been a rough year, both personally and (obviously) globally. One of said personal bright spots was putting together this newsletter. I’ve enjoyed hearing from up-and-coming filmmakers, veteran distributors, superlative publishers—and, yes, also indulging myself by detailing the process of making my own short film.
For Nothing Bogus, the past five weeks have been something of a test run. I’m still experimenting with the form and content of the newsletter. And as we break out the new calendars, I’d love feedback. What have you liked? What could I be doing better? And most importantly, what should I be covering this coming year?
Please, tell me about a filmmaker—or someone involved in filmmaking—who you’d like to hear from in 2024. Maybe it’s someone who has a cool project coming out. Maybe it’s someone who put something out ages ago that hasn’t gotten the love it deserves. Or maybe there’s someone you’d like to hear discuss something very specific (lighting! research! story structure!). The only person you should not recommend is yourself. Email nothingbogus1@gmail.com.
There were no listings today. But if you would like to list in a future issue, either A) post in the Nothing Bogus chat thread, or B) email nothingbogus1@gmail.com with the subject “Listing.” (It’s FREE!) Include your email and all relevant details (price, dates, etc.).
Emerald Fennell, who did PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN and SALTBURN, might be worth talking to, as would Greta Gerwig of BARBIE fame—both have beaten the odds as Academy Award-winning female filmmakers after (or in Fennell's case, during) careers as actors.
While we're on the subject of women directors, how about Ana DuVernay, a Black Woman filmmaker who was nominated for an Oscar, then handed a big-budget project based on a classic of explicitly-Christian (and very VERY White!) Young Adult fiction...and I suspect told to make it more "Multicultural". For that matter, Chloé Zhao won Best Director and Best Picture for NOMADLAND, Marvel handed her THE ETERNALS—and while I can see her hand in it if I squint (in the same way I can see Sam Raimi's hand in SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME!), the Mighty Marvel Movie Machine kind of ground up what makes her work distinctive and we ended up with a movie that had too many characters for its runtime.
Then we get to the guys—the Daniels, who swept the Oscars with EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, which is a triumph of invention and visual effects over a budget that would, at best, pay for Zack Snyder's Starbucks tab. And let's not forget Gareth Edwards, another filmmaker who makes Special Effects-heavy movies on lower budgets than you would suspect—even if THE CREATOR didn't exactly set the box office on fire, the fact he made a "mid-budget" (by today's standards!) movie heavy on the effects is genuinely impressive.
And finally, how about interviews with Neveldine/Taylor and Lord & Miller, teams that do pretty great work on their own, but once they work inside the studio system or for a franchise they didn't create everything just...doesn't work, somehow? Same goes for Andrew Stanton, who's made some of the most beloved Pixar movies ever, and faceplanted so spectacularly with JOHN CARTER that somebody wrote a book about it?