A Breakthrough Filmmaker Discusses His Craft

OH BOY
11/04/12 - Chinese 4, 3:30 p.m.
11/07/12 - Chinese 6, 2:00 p.m.

By Kim Luperi

AFI FEST Now had the chance to sit down with German filmmaker Jan Ole Gerster to discuss his debut feature OH BOY, which had its North American premiere at AFI FEST.

AFN: OH BOY is featured in the Breakthrough section of AFI Fest. Can you tell me how the film was selected to be included?

Jan Ole Gerster: We sat down, looked at the festivals we loved, submitted it, and it was accepted. It’s hard to believe, because there are so many great filmmakers applying here, and it’s a great honor to be here.

AFN: What was it about this idea that interested you? Was any of it based on your personal experiences?

JG: I went through the same phase as my main character when I came to Berlin in my early 20s, and, at one point, I noticed a lot of my friends went through a similar period. This is the time when a lot of people start to question their decisions when they get older — am I on the right track? will this be what I do for the rest of my life? does it make me happy? — so I thought one or two people may relate to that story.

AFN: OH BOY is your feature debut, and you are credited as the writer and director. What was the writing process like?

JG: First of all, without thinking about shooting the script or going out with it right away, I wrote it because I had to; it all came out of intuition. I wrote scripts before but in a very analytic way — how to write a script, how to create a character, how to build dramatic conflict — all these things they teach you in school, and I was a little unsatisfied with these scripts, because I felt like I was a hypocrite and I didn’t know what I was talking about. At that point, I thought it was worth having a closer look at my personal life. They also taught that in film school — stories have to be personal but not necessarily private. It’s easy to say but hard to do.

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7 November 3 Permalink

Latest Videos from AFI FEST!

Marion Cotillard on RUST AND BONE.

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THE IMPOSSIBLE actor Ewan McGregor tells us what movies mean and have always meant to him.

6 November 1 Permalink

Doris Kearns Goodwin Loves the Movies

LINCOLN
11/08/12 - Grauman’s Chinese, 7:00 p.m. 

This interview is the Cover Story in the latest issue of American Film™, AFI’s monthly e-magazine.

Doris Kearns Goodwin is one happy historian. “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” her prize-winning, best-selling account of the Lincoln White House, has been turned in part into a film by Steven Spielberg with a script by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Tony Kushner (“Angels in America”) starring Academy Award® winner Daniel Day-Lewis (MY LEFT FOOT, THERE WILL BE BLOOD). LINCOLN will have its World Premiere at the American Film Institute’s AFI FEST in Hollywood on November 8.

Goodwin saw the nearly finished film in August. “I think it’s quite wonderful,” she said. We spoke to her about LINCOLN and movies in general on a day when her press commitments were beginning to pile up and her voice was getting raspy from a surfeit of air travel. The author was the same genial personality we’ve come to know from her many television appearances. It turns out she is a “huge movie fan.”

“We have…a big screen television that comes down to watch movies on with friends, but there’s still something special about going to the movie theater, letting the lights darken, having the M&M’s® and sitting there and watching movies,” she explained. “We live in Concord, Massachusetts, so we’ve got a theater in Lowell that has stadium seating, about 15-20 minutes away, a theater in Burlington, and then sometimes we need to go to Boston or Cambridge to watch.”

Goodwin’s favorite movie memory is GONE WITH THE WIND, “having read it at 12-years-old with my best friends on a blanket on our lawn and then finally seeing the movie when the book had meant so much,” she recalled. “I’ve loved all those old historical ones. I loved THE KING’S SPEECH last year and I loved THE ARTIST and sometimes I love just plain comedies like THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT. I like mysteries, but there aren’t that many mysteries. You know, they’re different from spy films. I like James Bond. I just love the experience of going to the movies.”

Amazingly, Goodwin isn’t the only author in her family with a major movie book deal. Her husband Richard Goodwin, who worked in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, wrote a memoir called “Remembering America,” which included his role in investigating television quiz shows in the 1950s. That chapter formed the basis of Robert Redford’s acclaimed 1994 film QUIZ SHOW, which was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Picture.

Goodwin’s relationship with Spielberg dates back to the 1990s. “He was making a film for the millennium, a documentary about the history of the 20th Century that was going to be shown at the Lincoln Memorial,“ she recalled. “We had a meeting of historians in New York and then I followed up with some notes for him and he invited me to come out to his home on Long Island to talk about the documentary more.”

While she was there, the director asked Goodwin what she was working on. When she explained she was in the middle of a book about Lincoln, he confessed that he had always wanted to make a movie about him and asked to have a first look at it. They shook on it. “And I thought, wow, that would be great and I wasn’t even done yet at that time,” said Goodwin.

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6 November 5 Permalink

Cast Your Vote, Then Come to AFI FEST!

We don’t have any Galas tonight, but our Cinema Lounge will be open to all pass- and ticket-holders beginning at 6:00 p.m. at the Roosevelt Hotel, where we’ll watch the election returns on plasma screens.  Open bar and snacks!

Also, don’t miss these highlights today:

At 7:30 p.m., a conversation with musician and director Ariana Delawari and producer Yasmine Delawari followed by a screening of their new film WE CAME HOME.

Watch the “We Came Home” music video produced for the David Lynch MC record label:

Also at 7:30 p.m., we present FINAL CUT — LADIES & GENTLEMEN, a delight for movie fans. “The product of three years in the editing room,” Variety writes, “the playful pic consists of quick cuts from more than 450 classics of world cinema, artfully collaged to tell a love story.”

6 November 4 Permalink

Weekend’s Over but AFI FEST Continues!

After a fantastic weekend wall-to-wall with exciting screenings, we’re entering the work week full speed ahead.

Our Gala tonight is RUST AND BONE, an unusual love story between a back alley boxer and a woman who has suffered a profound loss.

Grauman’s Chinese Theatre
6925 Hollywood Blvd.
Hollywood, CA 90028

Media check-in: 5:30 p.m.
Red carpet arrivals: 6:30 p.m.
Program begins: 7:30 p.m.

Expected appearances: Marion Cotillard, Matthias Schoenaerts, Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Michael Barker and Tom Bernard, Greg Araki, Katie Aselton, Susanne Bier, Frank Coraci, Michael De Luca, Patrick deWitt, Alison Dickey, Mark Duplass, Jay Duplass, Richard Grieco, Shiloh Fernandez, Cloris Leachman, Alex Lombard, Benjamin Millepied, John C. Reilly, John Savage and Hal Sparks.

5 November 1 Permalink

Election Night Results Party

Democrat, Republican or Third Party member, cast your vote on Election Day, Tuesday, November 6, and spend your evening at AFI FEST’s Election Night Results Party!

All pass- and ticket-holders are invited to our Cinema Lounge at the Roosevelt Hotel beginning at 6:00 p.m.  We’ll have plasma screen coverage of the election returns on multiple networks—plus an open bar and snacks.

5 November 3 Permalink