Hollywood Confidential by Jeffrey Wells
I paid a brief visit last Friday to a seriously cool
location shoot. Cool because of the utter lack
of pretension or pomposity that you sometimes
find around a movie set. This one had the vibe
of an experimental theatre workshop in a
garage somewhere in lower Manhattan.
That’s because Time Code 2000, the all-digital
movie that director Mike Figgis is shooting in
“live,” unbroken 93-minute takes, is probably
the closest thing to a garage-theatre
experience that a major studio — SONY
Pictures, in this instance — has ever funded.
On this day, November 12, Figgis and his cast
— Salma Hayek, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Kyle
MacLachlan, Saffron Burrows, Julian Sands,
Danny Huston, Holly Hunter, Stellan
Skarsgard, Richard Edson, Steven Weber —
had been taping over and over what amounted to a live “play” in and around the
Ticketmaster building on Sunset Boulevard, the eight-story brick structure right
next to Book Soup and across the street from Tower Records.
The story has something to do with a movie called Bird Out of Louisiana being
cast inside the offices of Red Mullet productions, by a director named Lester
Moore (played by Edson). All kinds of weird stuff happens between Edson, the
actors he meets, and his staff, including a drug-copping security guard played
by Danny Huston.
There were four locations being used. The fictitious casting office for Bird Out
of Louisiana, located off the main lobby of the Ticketmaster building. Up the
street a couple of blocks is an office of a therapist, played by Laurie Metcalf.
Nearby is a house shared by Hayek and Tripplehorn, who play lesbian lovers.
And nearby also is a drug house where Huston goes to score.
Time Code 2000 was using no script — just an outline. Four digital cameras
were following the actors from location to location, with the actors — armed
with synchronized stop-watches — being careful to hit certain marks and say
certain lines at certain precise points. When the movie is finally seen, the
audience will see a widescreen image with the footage from the four cameras
shown simultaneously, in synchronized time.
Sometimes Figgis and the cast would shoot the play once; sometimes twice.
Figgis told me last weekend that he was planning to shoot at least another five
or six times this week before wrapping. “If I had my druthers we’d keep
shooting forever,” he said.
At the end of each day they gathered at the production office to look at the
day’s footage on four linked video monitors. The version that audiences will
see won’t be comprised of this and that take, from this or that camera. It will
be the single best version — the one Figgis likes the best — that happened
“live” at the same time, and was captured simultaneously by all four cameras.
Is this a cool way to make a movie or what?
I was there with my kids, Jett and Dylan, on day #7. Figgis had shot a version
that morning and was getting ready to go again. Hayek and Tripplehorn and
Skarsgard and the rest were walking around, coming back from lunch, making
cell-phone calls, etc. The atmosphere felt informal but slightly tense.
“This is the most energetic and exciting shoot I’ve ever been on,” said unit
publicist Frank Lomento, who knows Figgis from having promoted Leaving Las
Vegas when he was a publicist at MGM. “There are more actors than crew on
this shoot,” he told me. “And everyone is doing their own wardrobe and
makeup."
There are three earthquakes that happen during the film. Three aftershocks, to
be exact.
Director Paul Mazursky (Down and Out in Beverly Hills) sauntered by during
our chat. He’s not cast in the movie, as far as Lomento knew. Just a friendly
visit, probably. Aimee Graham, the sister of Heather, is in the film. Today she
was dressed in what looked like white Middle Eastern garments, with a white
turban on her head.
Figgis said in a New York Times story out today (11.19) he’d like “to have the
film released, at least in a couple of theaters, before the end of the year." The
Times’ Rick Lyman wrote that SONY — i.e., Columbia Pictures — has not
decided whether to release Time Code 2000 late this year or early next year.
"I think it would be nice to have this look at the cinema of the next century
come out in the last week of this century,” Figgis told Lyman.
Without the usual studio-shoot trappings (no Winnebagos, cable, lights,
property trucks), it looked like one of those super low-budget shoots you see
around town occasionally. But because it has "name" actors and a union
crew, and because SONY is paying, Time Code's budget is around $2 million.
C’mon, admit it — a movie like this sounds fascinating as hell. Audiences
may not find the novelty endlessly interesting, but how can it not attract the
hip and the curious at least this one time? I can’t wait, personally.
