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Helen Rose: Designer for the Stars
by: Michelle Rick
Which fashion designer created wedding dresses for Grace Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor and garnered ten nominations with two Academy Awards for Best Costume Design? That would be Helen Rose, who designed many gowns that have gone on to become iconic. Among the starlets she designed for, both on and off camera, are Lucille Ball, Shirley MacLaine, Ann Margret, Natalie Wood, Judy Garland, Lauren Bacall, Doris Day and Marilyn Monroe in addition to Kelly and Taylor.
Helen Rose at the Academy Awards
At the mere age of 15 Rose was designing costumes for vaudeville shows and nightclubs. Her next career move was the traveling ice show Ice Follies. Rose took the place of Adrian Greenburg (the costume designer responsible for Dorothy’s ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz).
Among her most popular films were On the Town, Annie Get Your Gun, Father of the Bride, The Last Time I Saw Paris, High Society, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. IMDB lists 117 film credits in her name.
Rose was so popular with her clientele that she designed the wedding dresses of Debbie Reynolds, Jane Powell and Pier Angeli. She dressed Taylor for two weddings: the first, for her fictional marriage in Father of the Bride and the second, months later, for her real-life marriage to Conrad Hilton, Jr. Rose described her dresses for Taylor as simple and dramatic.
She told the actress, “If you have a magnificent jewel, you put it in a simple setting – you don’t distract from it with a lot of detail.”
Of course, the crowning glory of her career was the wedding dress Grace Kelly wore when she married Prince Rainier III of Monaco and became a real-life princess in 1956. The dress was the most expensive one Rose ever made, and the lace was over a century old.
Prince Rainier and Princess Grace Kelly, 1956
Rose spent 25 years at MGM Studios and was fondly referred to by the formidable Louis B. Mayer as “my sweetheart Rose.” Her designs were so exquisite and admired that questions were hardly raised over the fact that her period pieces were very often historically inaccurate.
Her Academy Award wins were for the films The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955).
As her dresses gained exposure through feature films, her ready-to-wear clothing line took off. Exclusive department stores and specialty boutiques across the country sold her creations at hefty prices. Before Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’s release, the white chiffon cocktail dress Elizabeth Taylor wore in the film only sold 50 orders. After the public saw the dress on Taylor, Rose was able to sell reproductions of the dress for three seasons in a row.
Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 1958 | © MGM
The final film she worked on was How Sweet It Is with Debbie Reynolds and James Garner in 1968. She established the House of Helen Rose and continued to sell clothing into the 1970s. In 1976 she published her autobiography, entitled Just Make Them Beautiful: The Many Worlds of a Designing Woman.
Rose died in 1985 at the age of 81. It goes without saying that the cultural reverberations of her most popular gowns have and will continue to eclipse the world’s biggest fashion houses.
Comic-Con 2012: Will you be there?
Written by: Michelle Rick
Even though Comic-Con is still a few months away, it’s never too early to start geeking out in preparation! This year’s convention is set to make waves after selling out in just 90 minutes.
Comic-Con has come to play an important part in the industry of blockbuster films since its start in 1970 – its attendees are often the first to know about upcoming films (this year’s Avenger’s was announced at Comic-Con 2010) and the first to see exclusive footage before the rest of the world (Read about it here.).
Although many of the summer’s upcoming action film slate will release before Comic-Con (Battleship, Men in Black III, Prometheus, The Amazing Spider-Man, GI Joe: Realation, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Avengers, Snow White and the Huntsman), the event is sure to build buzz around films such as The Dark Knight Rises, The Expendables 2, The Bourne Legacy and Total Recall.
As any moviegoer knows, today’s comic book is often next year’s big action flick so the comic book unveilings are of equal importance. Last year Comic-Con goers got an exclusive look at the new Aquaman relaunch. Does this mean Adrien Grenier could be starring in the big screen adaptation for real?’
© DC Comics
What you can expect
There’s not much word yet on which upcoming films will be leaking footage this year, but last year’s panels included spotlights on The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man. Tron and the Twilight series are among the films that have screened sneak peek footage in the past.
Cult shows like True Blood, Glee and Game of Thrones also hosted panels last year. Around the time of Comic-Con 2011 Peter Jackson said that his upcoming adaptation of The Hobbit wasn’t at a stage to release footage – with a little bit of luck this year may have Middle Earth fanatics singing a happier tune (Read more here.) “Hate to disappoint anyone. But something tells me we will be there in force next year,” Jackson wrote on his Facebook page last year.
Jackson was around to screen footage from The Adventures of Tin-Tin with Steven Spielberg last year.
As Comic-Con is, at the heart of all things, centered around comic books, comic book titans like Frank Miller have been in past attendance.
©Columbia Pictures
How to stay in the loop
Last year’s live streams will likely return for 2012 (call it Couchi-Con). Entertainment Weekly partnered with NowLive to produce a live stream of all three days, along with panel videos, photos and other breaking news (Read about it here.).SiriusXM radio launched a channel called Comic-Con radio that allowed listeners to hear breaking news, interviews and panels.
Writers, directors, producers and actors alike have been known to speak at Comic-Con panels. Of course, in 2009 Quentin Tarantino dispensed some predictable advice to the Comic-Con crowd: “Make a f***in’ kickass movie.”
Comic-Con will have a preview night on July 11. The convention itself will take place July 12-15, 2012.
Mark your calendars – Free screening of Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance on Friday, May 4th!
Taking inspiration from the novel, In The Time Of The Butterflies, students from creative writing and drama classes at Gunn High School worked with renowned author and actor Betsy Franco and filmmaker Vin Misra. Together, they collaborated to develop a collection of original monologues that they then interwove into a short film, Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance. The screening of Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance will take place May 4th, 2012, 7:00pm at the Palo Alto Children’s Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto.
Representatives from the Palo Alto Int’l Film Festival will facilitate the talkback.
You can read more about Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance by reading PAIFF’s interviews with Gunn High School actors and writers, Ethan Fry, Fiona Lynn, Clodagh Hynes, Elena Cabot, filmmaker Vin Misra, and Author, Actor, and Director of Teen Monologues inspired by In the Time of the Butterflies, Betsy Franco.
We hope to see you there!
The Phantom of the Silver Screen
Written by: Michelle Rick
You’ve heard of Natalie Wood, Marilyn Monroe, and Audrey Hepburn. You’ve seen An Affair to Remember, West Side Story, and Alice in Wonderland. But you may not know the name of the woman whose voice lit up these films – Marni Nixon.
Her first onscreen appearance was as a nun in The Sound of Music, but her first major film credit was Cinderella fifteen years prior, when she was a soloist in the film’s main title song. She followed up that role by providing the voice for the singing flowers in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland before moving into the realm of dubbing for live actresses – in this case, for Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Nixon sung the high notes for the song Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.
Her next turn was to sing in place for Deborah Kerr in The King and I. Nixon actually nabbed that gig by stepping in when the actress who was supposed to dub Kerr died unexpectedly in a car accident. She again dubbed Kerr in An Affair to Remember.
“Whenever there was a song to be sung in a scene, I would get up and stand next to her and watch her while she sang and she would watch me while I sang,” Nixon told National Public Radio. “After we recorded that song, she would have to go to the filming of it and mouth to that performance.”
Twentieth Century Fox requested that Nixon sign a confidentiality agreement to keep the dubbing a secret, though Kerr herself broke the story to the press by crediting Nixon with the singing performance.
Nixon dubbed all of Natalie Wood’s songs as Maria in West Side Story in addition to Rita Moreno (Anita) in the song Tonight [Read about it here.] The producers of the film denied her loyalty request, but composer Leonard Bernstein later donated a quarter of a percent of his royalties to her [Read about it here.].
In 1964 she stepped in to provide vocals for Eliza Doolittle when it was determined that Audrey Hepburn’s voice was too soft in My Fair Lady. Hepburn’s own voice had been heard three years earlier when she sang the memorable cinema classic Moon River in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
The following year Nixon finally made it onto the screen in The Sound of Music, where you can see her singing How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria. She also voiced the singing geese in Mary Poppins and Mulan’s grandmother in Disney’s Mulan.
Time magazine once described Nixon as “the ghostess with the mostest” due to the rarity of her onscreen appearances. In 2006 she wrote a memoir about her experiences, entitled I Could Have Sung All Night: My Story.
Despite her dearth of proper renown, her voice remains encapsulated within Hollywood’s most beloved films for older generations to reminisce about and younger generations to discover.
Youth Spotlight – Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance, An Interview with Actor, Writer, and Student Ethan Fry
Taking inspiration from the novel, In The Time Of The Butterflies, students from creative writing and drama classes at Gunn High School worked with renowned author and actor Betsy Franco and filmmaker Vin Misra. Together, they collaborated to develop a collection of original monologues that they then interwove into a short film, Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance. The screening of Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance will take place May 4th, 2012, 7:00pm at the Palo Alto Children’s Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. Representatives from the Palo Alto Int’l Film Festival will facilitate the talkback.
PAIFF recently interviewed actor, writer, and student Ethan Fry to discover more about his experience working with Program Director Betsy Franco and Filmmaker Vin Misra.
PAIFF: How did you become involved with The Big Read?
Ethan: When Betsy Franco talked about this whole project about the book and performing and stuff [in my English class], I thought I would be stupid not to have this opportunity. So I went to the meeting… I have been really passionate about acting and I hope to achieve a lot with it in the future. There’s something about writing your own piece that’s really special. I have this problem with performing when I put my own lingo and language in my pieces. It never occurs to me that someone could have done it any other way. But when you’re doing a monologue it’s all about you. I really liked analyzing pieces, and really liked performing and acting.
PAIFF: Can you tell us about your monologue?
Ethan: My monologue was from the perspective of Trujillo, who was the dictator and ruler of the Dominican Republic. And I just kind of wrote, and I tried to understand him. I’m sure countless of historians have done this already. Trujillo liked power, he felt very confident with it. He felt partially it was his right, and that he was doing the right thing. He was a very charming person, he wooed a lot of ladies, and I guess he could argue that most of that wooing was force and tension. I did research a little bit, a brief history of Domican Republic, and I mention a little bit about it in my monologue… As I wrote, I tried to imagine the scenario where he was looking down, this guy, his ego is off the charts. And I thought, it was fun to be able to imagine what it would be like to be able to condemn the clouds.
PAIFF: Can you tell us about the film Faceoff?
Ethan: It’s just based off pretty much what the book is based off, In The Time of the Butterflies, the three sisters who died but rose against this evil man in this poor country. Not poor in culture and history, but poor in people. The people are constantly put down and oppressed and diluted and manipulated, all for one man’s will.
PAIFF: What are you most excited for audience members to see during Faceoff?
Ethan: I’m most excited for them to kind of hear about the story. I honestly didn’t know that much about the Domincan Republican before and how evil a person can possibly exist. It seemed that this guy who was so brutal and so unheard of by most of the american audience, I think that it’s an exciting time to watch them.
PAIFF: What message do you hope audience members will leave after watching Faceoff?
Ethan: Stand up against what you know is wrong.
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Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance is a program of The Big Read, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to revitalize the role of literacy reading in American popular culture. (Click here to learn more about The Big Read and the Children’s Theatre’s platform for student responses, Voices United: Bay Area.)
Youth Spotlight – Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance, An Interview with Actor, Writer, and Student Fiona Flynn
Taking inspiration from the novel, In The Time Of The Butterflies, students from creative writing and drama classes at Gunn High School worked with renowned author and actor Betsy Franco and filmmaker Vin Misra. Together, they collaborated to develop a collection of original monologues that they then interwove into a short film, Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance. The screening of Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance will take place May 4th, 2012, 7:00pm at the Palo Alto Children’s Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. Representatives from the Palo Alto Int’l Film Festival will facilitate the talkback.
PAIFF recently interviewed actor, writer, and student Fiona Flynn to discover more about her experience working with Program Director Betsy Franco and Filmmaker Vin Misra.
PAIFF: How did you become involved with the Big Reads project?
Fiona: I’ve been a student of theater for the past 6 years, in my middle school and my high school, and I really enjoyed it. In the classes we do some monologues where we do a lot of different monologues, mostly Shakespeare and some classical and contemporary pieces. I also do some volunteer work at the Children’s Theatre, so last year I actually had the opportunity through the Children’s Theatre to be the stage manager for the play that Betsy Franco wrote last year, Metamorphosis Junior Year. So I got to work pretty closely with her, the director. It was a ton of fun, and I really loved getting to work with Betsy, and she’s a published author and I’m also really into English. So I really found it valuable to be able to work with her, who has written a lot. So I jumped to the chance to get to work with her again. And I’d never really written monologues before, so I read the book and I was just really inspired by this one character so I wrote it up, and she workshopped it with all of us and I got some really good feedback. I got to improve my writing skills, and I feel like I improved my performing kills a lot and it was a really great opportunity.
PAIFF: Can you tell us about your experience writing and performing the monologue for In The Time of the Butterflies?
Fiona: In English classes at school we get to do a lot of analytical writing, which I find very useful, but I think writing a monologue is a whole different way of analyzing the literature work in a whole new and creative way. I think it was really great for me to be able to, respond to and wrestle with a great piece of literature like In The Time of the Butterflies but in a dramatic way that I found really engaging. And when I was writing it, it’s kind of scary to have to write something where you really have to find the inspiration for it. But I just sat down with the book and was reading through it, and I saw this one character and thoughtm that’s what I want to write about, what would this character say if she had the chance? I wonder what she thinks about? The characters in the novel are so multidimensional and dynamic, there’s so much that you can think about and talk about with them, so I really enjoyed being able to go deeper with the characters that were hinted at in the novel.
PAIFF: Which character from In The Time of the Butterflies did you write and perform about?
Fiona: I wrote a monologue from the point of view of Lina Lovaton, who was somewhat a minor character in the book; she’s one of Trujillo’s girlfriends and he takes her away from her boarding school when she is seventeen years old to be his mistress. In the book, she’s in love with him. I thought it was interesting for someone to be able to really love someone who a lot of these people hate, and how meaningless her relationship with Trujillo is for him, but how intense it is for her. She takes away everything from her high school, so she’s naive in some ways, Just her journey is so remarkable from start to finish, how she is desperately in love with him but at the same time she’s being abandoned by him.
PAIFF: Where did you find inspiration for your monologue?
Fiona: Well I definitely drew from other literary works I read, especially Half a Mango Tree. I really liked the novel, and I felt that there’s a character in there, who also is sort of abandoned, who is married off really young, so I kept thinking of that. As well as that, Betsy was coaching us, and helping us improve our performing skills — one of the pieces of advice she gave us was to draw on something real while you’re acting, so you have to think of a real world experience, or something that draws back to you to make the performance really personal, so you can really connect to whatever you wrote and what’s in the book. So that’s something that we thought of a lot. A feeling of abandonment is something that’s universal so when I performed my piece, I wanted the audience to feel the loneliness and the abandonment.
PAIFF: Can you tell us about the film Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance?
Fiona: It was really cool. Betsy has a friend who is a filmmaker at Stanford, and she actually got one of my best friends also in on the project who is going to study film next year… We were all really excited to be able to work with them. So we came and met up, and he gave us a little direction to film. We performed our monologues and he filmed us, it was all very professional. He edited it and put it together and everything. There was actually one student who composed music for the book, she was really inspired by the theme, and she put that in there too.
PAIFF: Did you find a difference in performing in front of a camera as opposed to an audience?
Fiona: I’ve taken a lot of theatre classes so I’m very used to performing in front of an audience, but I took a semester of video class well. Performing on film is a very different thing, especially since you finish your monologue and you’re waiting for the audience to clap but you realize there’s no audience. It was just you know very different, and Vin gave us some direction about it, since he knows we’re not used to it, of where we should look and how we should fit and everything. It was a really cool chance to get experience working on film because, since any respectable actor needs to have a well rounded experience, and most actors are working in film nowadays, so I thought it was a great experience to have.
PAIFF: What are you most excited for audience members to see during Faceoff?
Fiona: I’m mostly excited for people who have read the book or know about that historical time period, for them to be able to make connections between the book and the film, and think “Oh I remember that character,” I want them to think, “Wow, these are some teenagers who read this great piece of literature and just were inspired to make art and do what they do, for them to see what we’ve been working on, expressing our creativity.” I think it’s something that teens don’t get to do a lot, to create something and to be inspired by the heart. And showing other people what we’re doing. So [during the film] people will get to see what we’re doing and what we’re creating, all that artistic stuff that we’re doing.
PAIFF: What message do you hope audience members will leave after watching Faceoff?
Fiona: It will reflect different with different people. I hope that they get that teens can create art on a really sophisticated level if they get the chance because sometimes [teenagers] feel like people sort of talk down to them, or think that I’m not as capable as an adult. I just want people to be able to recognize how incredibly talented and hardworking my peers and I are, and how they are just really able to create something with inspiration and what we do with the stuff that we’re given with.
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Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance is a program of The Big Read, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to revitalize the role of literacy reading in American popular culture. (Click here to learn more about The Big Read and the Children’s Theatre’s platform for student responses, Voices United: Bay Area.)
Youth Spotlight – Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance, An Interview with Writer and Student Clodagh Hynes
Taking inspiration from the novel, In The Time Of The Butterflies, students from creative writing and drama classes at Gunn High School worked with renowned author and actor Betsy Franco and filmmaker Vin Misra. Together, they collaborated to develop a collection of original monologues that they then interwove into a short film, Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance. The screening of Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance will take place May 4th, 2012, 7:00pm at the Palo Alto Children’s Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. Representatives from the Palo Alto Int’l Film Festival will facilitate the talkback.
PAIFF recently interviewed writer and student Clodagh Hynes to discover more about her experience working with Program Director Betsy Franco and Filmmaker Vin Misra.
PAIFF: How did you become involved with the Big Read project?
Clodagh: Betsy Franco came to speak to our writing class and she told us about the project and the book [In The Time of the Butterflies.] I hadn’t worked with monologues before, but I’d been in the writing class, and she was really encouraging that we just give it a try, and if we didn’t like it to we wouldn’t have to continue with it.
PAIFF: Can you tell us about the monologue that you wrote?
Clodagh: We read the novel, I liked the book and I didn’t really have any one connection with any character, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to write it on any of those and I decided to write it in my own perspective.
I wrote mine and another girl acted it. I just moved to the United States about seven months ago from Ireland.
So I wrote about this one time, we were supposed to speak Irish all the time at school, but one day I was speaking English and I got in trouble. I was annoyed, and it seemed so unfair, to slip back and forth between different languages. So I wrote about my school there because the theme was kind of like oppression and dictators. But I kind of went on a lighter tone than the other ones.
PAIFF: Tell me about your experience writing the monologue for In The Time of the Butterfly. What was challenging?
Clodagh: When I first started, it was a lot longer than what we were supposed to have. I had to cut about 200 words. Other than that, it was pretty easy to write.
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Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance is a program of The Big Read, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to revitalize the role of literacy reading in American popular culture. (Click here to learn more about The Big Read and the Children’s Theatre’s platform for student responses, Voices United: Bay Area.)
Youth Spotlight – Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance, An Interview with Actor and Student Elena Cabot
Taking inspiration from the novel, In The Time Of The Butterflies, students from creative writing and drama classes at Gunn High School worked with renowned author and actor Betsy Franco and filmmaker Vin Misra. Together, they collaborated to develop a collection of original monologues that they then interwove into a short film, Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance. The screening of Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance will take place May 4th, 2012, 7:00pm at the Palo Alto Children’s Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. Representatives from the Palo Alto Int’l Film Festival will facilitate the talkback.
PAIFF recently interviewed actor and student Elena Cabot to discover more about her experience working with Program Director Betsy Franco and Filmmaker Vin Misra.
PAIFF: Can you tell us how you came to participate with the Big Read project?
Elena: I took the Theatre II class at Gunn High school, and we spent the entire first semester working on monologues. We would choose one monologue for two weeks, perform them, and get feedback. And we wrote one as well. For the Big Reads project she came to my class this year and she said, “I need writers and actors and we’ll take it from there. I want people to write monologues from this book.” And I thought this would be a good opportunity.
PAIFF: How was your experience performing monologues for In The Time of the Butterflies different from your other experiences?
Elena: The thing that was different was that they [the monologues] were based on the book [In The Time of the Butterflies]. In my other class, when I had worked on monologues before, they were chosen randomly and I would make the character myself. For this one, we had the structure of the book to help with character development and we would decide how to play with the emotions. I had a lot of fun, it was quick because we only met a couple times and I worked on it at home a lot. I thought it was fun.
PAIFF: Tell me about your experience writing and performing the monologue for In The Time of The Butterflies?
Elena: I performed [a monologue] written by Dennis. I think it might have been harder confidence wise doing one of my own pieces, because I just feel that I’m less good as a writer. It was kind of nerve wrecking knowing that he would see the result. I think it’s interesting for the writers because they write it in their own frame of mind and then the actors perform it in their own perception. It’s kind of fun to work on it and see what comes up, and see what different emotions to use, and stuff like that.
PAIFF: Can you tell us about the piece you performed?
Elena: I was speaking as the character of Lina Lovaton and the monologue was about not as she was presented in the book, but it was what she might have said, if she had the means to do so, if she had known a little more about Trujillo’s evil. So it was the writer’s idea of how she would react. I just went for the power… because it starts off a little bit more relaxed. It has an arc in the middle of my monologue. My character, she really loves Trujillo but at the same time she’s finding out about Trujillo; she’s rallying a crowd almost, the way she’s presented. I definitely showed a bit of anger and confidence. It was just very on the spot type of emotion, if my character had found out all this stuff. And she gets really riled up about it.
PAIFF: Did you base your monologue on personal experience?
Elena: No, I didn’t think of a specific experience. But I definitely tried to picture time and place, how many people she was talking to, I tried to imagine as if I was in her shoes.
PAIFF: Can you tell us about the film Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance?
Elena: It has music composed from one of the students at my school, and it’s all of the monologues that was performed, filmed. Everyone filmed against a black background.
PAIFF: Did you notice a difference in performing in front of the camera, instead of an audience?
Elena: It was really strange. When I’m in the theater, I have to impress the audience, impress the audience. In front of film, I have to focus more about staying in character, but it’s harder because you don’t have the live audience there. In front of the character it’s harder not to focus on the little details. It was fun, I’d never done that before. It was kind of scary but it was really fast and quick.
PAIFF: What are you most excited for audience members to see during Faceoff?
Elena: I’m excited for them to see what students at Gunn has to offer in the drama department, especially in the writing in the monologues, what the students can do. It turned out really well. I hope that people like it. I think it’s a good way for adults to see how younger people interpret that type of situation of what was shown in, In The Time of the Butterflies.
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Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance is a program of The Big Read, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to revitalize the role of literacy reading in American popular culture. (Click here to learn more about The Big Read and the Children’s Theatre’s platform for student responses, Voices United: Bay Area.)
Youth Spotlight – Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance, An Interview with Filmmaker Vin Misra
Taking inspiration from the novel, In The Time Of The Butterflies, students from creative writing and drama classes at Gunn High School worked with renowned author and actor Betsy Franco and filmmaker Vin Misra. Together, they collaborated to develop a collection of original monologues that they then interwove into a short film, Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance. The screening of Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance will take place May 4th, 2012, 7:00pm at the Palo Alto Children’s Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. Representatives from the Palo Alto Int’l Film Festival will facilitate the talkback.
PAIFF recently interviewed filmmaker Vin Misra to discover more about their experience working with the students at Gunn High School and their decision to produce a film.
PAIFF: Vin, you were the filmmaker for Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance? What is the film about?
Vin: It’s about people on both sides of the Trujillo dictatorship and how their own lives were affected by the events and by the dictatorship, and how they reacted to it in surprisingly different ways, that all of us can identify with. There’s evil and there’s goodness everywhere.
PAIFF: What inspired you to work with Betsy, the Children’s Theatre and Gunn High School to produce a film about the monologues?
Vin: I actually directed Betsy in a short film that I was making. And she had told me that she was working on this project with Gunn High School students, and the more I heard about it, the more I was intrigued, because I’d worked with younger actors in the past, and my experience had been that when they have a personal connection to the material, their performances can be significantly more powerful than when it’s something that’s pre-written or something they can’t connect with them that much. So the fact that they were writing their own monologues, it was really powerful.
PAIFF: Why did you decide to film the monologues? Why not just perform it?
Vin: A few of the monologues, they work really really well on stage, they’re very expressive and the students wrote their heart on their sleeves. A few of them for instance, like Fiona’s or Timothy’s, they have a much more subtle quality to them. And they’re really naturalistic, the writing is surprisingly subtle and delicate. A lot of that doesn’t come across from the back row of the audience so much if it’s a live performance. When you have that close up on film, it’s just so incredibly powerful. The ability to whisper, for instance which is something you can’t do on stage. It’s powerful.
If [audience members] have read the book, it’ll put a human face on it. I think just seeing young actors portraying somebody’s role is really touching, stimulating. If you they have not read the book, it’s even more obvious that this whole series of events in history in addition to watching some fantastic and moving monologues. I think people will be surprised.
PAIFF: How was your experience working with the students?
Vin: It was great, most of them didn’t have a lot of film experience coming in. They had obviously done theatre, they knew what they were doing. They took to film surprisingly well, the transition from stage to film – there’s a higher emphasis on realism vs. naturalism when you’re on film. My camera could tell a lie more easily than an audience could tell a lie. And they realized that immediately.
I was actually surprised at how smoothly it went, because my experience is that when you’re filming anything, the one thing that you can count on is that everything will wrong. But the kids were so on top of their monologues, even when being off book, they really internalized their roles, it was all so natural for them.
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Faceoff: Tyranny vs. Resistance is a program of The Big Read, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to revitalize the role of literacy reading in American popular culture. (Click here to learn more about The Big Read and the Children’s Theatre’s platform for student responses, Voices United: Bay Area.)
