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HUNDREDS GATHER TO PAY TRIBUTE TO THE LATE MAKO IWAMATSU IN CAGES!
Wed, 14 Nov 2007
A SPECIAL TRIBUTE SCREENING OF MAKO!
Tue, 16 Oct 2007
Perles Acquires Cages Distribution!
Wed, 01 Aug 2007
"CAGES" RUNS 4TH WEEK IN THEATRES!
Fri, 13 Apr 2007
IT'S MY TURN TO FLY!
Mon, 09 Apr 2007
"CAGES" SURPRISES MANY AS IT ENTERS THIRD WEEKEND IN THEATRES!
Fri, 06 Apr 2007
"CAGES" ENTERS THIRD WEEK IN THEATRES!
Tue, 03 Apr 2007
LOYAL FOLLOWING TO THANK, AS "CAGES" ENTERS THIRD WEEK IN THEATRES!
Mon, 02 Apr 2007
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Matt Holland on the Making of Cages: PART ONE
08/08/04
When Graham Streeter (now Graham Streeter, director) approached me with a pitch for a movie he wanted to shoot in Singapore, I listened as respectfully as any friend would. I was prepared to give him the same unwavering encouragement that I give to my six year-old developmentally and profoundly learning disabled niece when she emphatically announces, depending on the week, that she wants to be, alternatively, an astronaut, a ballerina or the President of the United States.
"What's the storyline?" I asked.
Graham replied, and I'm paraphrasing – this was a good three years ago: “It's a tender story of hope, reconciliation and the power of love. A young girl who was abandoned by her father has a series of abusive relationships. Twenty years later, she is forced to live with her father again, who reluctantly takes her in, and they proceed to work out their relationship. And she has a blind son.”
I looked at my tennis shoes.
"Does it have any… I don't know… car chases or explosions? Or how about a boat chase scene through a rocky waterway, like in that James Bond movie? Oh, wait. That was Thailand."
Graham ignored me.
"It's really about the healing power of love. The theme is a universal one. I'd like to showcase the natural beauty of Singapore. What do you think? Do you think we can get Mark Wahlberg to play the abusive boyfriend?"
"Is there any excessive violence or gratuitous nudity? Hey, I'm only trying to help here."
Graham knew I was kidding. Well, half kidding.
"I want it to be an art house piece. Visually rich coupled with cool cinematography. Like that movie Three Seasons That did very well on the festival circuit and got a commercial release here in the States.''
And was seen by about three people I thought. Graham continued with his business plan. "I thought that if we could get a bankable star to play the female lead from Hong Kong that we would have both a built in audience for Hong Kong and Singapore. There aren't a lot of features being shot in Singapore. Then, if it does well on the festival circuit, we could probably sell it all over the world."
It was always a wonder to me that people could be talented in both the right and left brain, having grown up as someone who had neither skill. For that matter, it was a mystery that people create long term plans of any kind and see them through. That seemed about as likely to me as splitting an atom or decoding DNA. It was a wonder I had found both my keys and my shoes that morning.
The biggest mystery is why people consistently come to me for advice on this subject. It's true that I occasionally rub elbows with A-list movers and shakers, but only because I've lived here twenty years. I hardly felt that my socializing with anyone in Hollywood gave me any "juice". Being a gadfly is, at best, just slightly more influential than being craft services and slightly less influential than, say, working in costumes or props. I saw my past and now long abandoned career as an entertainment lawyer as more of a liability than a help. The last movie-related case I worked on had to do with Twilight Zone: the movie and my recollection is that that went quite badly. In fact, people died.
It is true, and no new news, that if one were to associate a place with a thing or an industry, LA is the place for movies. Just as it seems in New York that the most common cocktail banter, and usually thinly-veiled, concerns what you do, earn or where do you fit in in the social pecking order and in Mobile, Alabama it's how much you love the Lord, here in LA it is without question: Who do you know who can help me get my movie made. It's in evidence in every Starbuck's around town where people are pecking out screenplays on their laptops. I saw a short documentary film once, where people were interviewed randomly in a supermarket parking lot. Eleven of the twelve were either currently writing or had recently written a screenplay.
I put the odds of actually having one's screenplay made and given a theatrical release at somewhere between winning lotto and getting struck by lightning. In my estimation, the degree of determination that is required to sustain oneself through that process requires both the zeal of a religious convert and a sufficiently strong degree of delusional thinking to qualify for a diagnosis under the DSM-IV of schizophrenia. Were it not a mass culturally shared delusion in this town, I'm certain there wouldn't be enough thorazine and psychiatric attendants and rooms with tranquil views of duck ponds to go around.
I'm a big fan of Graham's talent. He has an impeccable eye for design, which is evident from both his house and landscaping. I was impressed, but not surprised, when he showed me his fine art – mostly paintings of Hollywood street signs. Whenever he would come to my house, he would, it seem involuntarily, begin rearranging large rocks in the garden.
"You don't mind, do you?" He'd say, wrestling with a boulder.
"No, Graham," I'd always reply, "I have complete faith in your artistic integrity."
I know that Graham's day job, when he wasn't drinking coffee with me on his deck, had something to do with filming NASCAR. While I've never seen NASCAR, I'm certain it was as artistic as was possible for the subject matter.
I wanted to help Graham in any way I could, short of ruining my own chances to film my yet unwritten script. (No, that's not true. While I say I'm a writer and a humorist, I have no interest in acting or making a movie. For me, either aspiration would be as fraught with humiliation and doomed to career failure as appearing as a contestant on Elimidate.) But, realistically, my best career "credits" were in the nature of flying on someone else's private jet to a wrap party where I had been hanging around the set because I was somebody's friend or date. In my estimation, that was more of a badge of shame if I would try to parlay that into successfully pitching Graham's movie, and I certainly wasn't above that. I promised Graham that, after I saw the script, I would exert whatever limited influence I had to get it before someone who could actually help him. In fact, I would do anything short of mortgaging my house. I may be delusional like the rest of my LA friends, but I'm not crazy.
Matthew Holland
Next: Writing (and rewriting) the Script
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