Timecode

Timecode directed by Mike Figgis. Starring Stellan Skarsgard, Salma Hayek and digital photography.

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SPEAKER_01 0:01

This movie is fucking rad. This movie is you know how good this movie is? Sometimes they have to bisect the screen so they can show you more images. One screen can't contain the nine movie split screen, baby. Austin shot two whole movie split screen. Split it four ways. Let's mic figus this shit. Make it the time code of action movie.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to Screen Generation. And yes, we are going to Mike Figus this shit. Screen Generation is my show about the movies distributed by Sony under the label Screen Gems. I'm your host, Devin Hughes, and today we have a good one. Today we have something unique. This is a truly experimental film by a brilliant director and by a cast that embraced the new possibilities with digital filmmaking. Last week was like the warning Ian Malcolm makes in Jurassic Park. Your scientists, or filmmakers in this case, were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think of if they should. This is different. It has almost as impressive a cast, but these this is a cast of actors, which is an improvement. It also is heavily improvised, but manages to execute four intertwined narratives successfully. Timecode ends with a message that reads, Timecode was filmed in four continuous takes beginning at 3 p.m. on Friday, November 19, 1999. All of the cast improvised around a predetermined structure. And that doesn't mean it was done in one go. The actors and camera crews practiced for 15 takes over three weeks, pacing the story and rehearsing it like a play without a stage. After every rehearsal, they watched the takes on four TVs and took notes for the next shoot. It would be infinitely easier to shoot this today, because it's almost emulating modern reality television. The real housewives shows, love and hip hop, TMZ, therapy long format shows like in treatment. But now, when they shoot things, we have Video Village. When in this case, they shot these 30-minute takes and could only see how it looked afterwards. And it's 1999. These are four like wheeled school AV carts with projection TVs. Bring the mic, bring the mic, show what's going on. Oh okay, okay, just it was a short one. We're okay. We made it. Okay, put it back. Folks, for those of you not catching the movie but frequenting the podcast, let me explain. With four cameras running, you need a shared experience for all shots to prove continuity. Q earthquakes. And despite this movie having a lot of cocaine in it, it's not a Coke movie. The Blues Brothers is a cocaine movie. Altman's Popeye, that's a cocaine movie. Any John Claude Van Damme film is brought to you by cocaine. Also, this movie looks horrible. I mean, all early digital video looks orange and grainy, which works for like 28 days later because it's effective in simulating a documentary style, but this looks like early jackass. Helping, and I'm not being sarcastic, in the low resolution video is the split screen. And it's a little off-putting watching a movie in split screen. It reminds me of playing a video game with too many people. I can think of a few movies that do this well for montages, but the only one I can cite that does it for the full running time is Conversations with Other Women, which I'm certain certain was a quick shoot and only had two cameras, but if there's a movie to compare it to, it's that. As far as being a single take, this is a unique club to be in. I remember Robert Osborne giving an introduction to Hitchcock's rope on Turner Classic Movies one night, and he said the film, short as it is, was only composed of ten unbroken segments. At the time, technology limits the production, but being it's a single location, they hide all the cables and learn how to move the walls to let the camera follow the talent. And when I say technology limited them, there was a limit to how long you could record on film, and the camera is huge. This is solved with digital videotape and the small new camcorders. And it's still film. Digital film. This film is like 93 minutes because that's what you could fit on DV film. Then they transferred it to a digital format to be stacked in a split screen, then transferred it to 35mm film to project it. It's still a lot of work. But since shooting leaving in Las Vegas, Figgus has started what would become Robert Zemeca's Steven Soderbergh and Danny Boyle's obsession, that with the smaller form factor, you need less people and are less of a public presence. You get away with things, even experimental things like this. And everyone is currently obsessed with winners and invisible cuts nowadays. People could really appreciate this movie. Something like 1917 cuts together, but you can tell with the practical explosions and visual composition that it took much longer than it's runtime to shoot. If we're looking for something that actually is the complete movie shot at like once, and the best example I can pull from memory's Boiling Point, which uh came out in 2021. It's a cooking drama starring Stephen Graham, who must have liked the challenge because a few years later, uh he's the star, writer, and producer of Adolescence, winning a bunch of Emmys, making us hate Netflix a little less, and wowing the audiences with single takes. In two weeks, we're gonna talk about Graham again because he plays Tommy and Snatch. Hello everyone. Uh I'm uh probably changing format a little bit just to add a little bit uh because I recorded this a while back, and being that it's gonna be coming out tomorrow, I wanted to add a little bit more like research that I did on Figus. Um, Figus most recently came out with Megadoc, a documentary about Francis Forti Coppola making Megalopolis, which is a brilliant move because Hearts of Darkness is an amazing doc about Boclips now getting out of control. I mean, it's also by the same director, and we know how Megalopolis turns out. So um also I'd like to say I forgot to mention that in my conversation with Rob Santos last week, um, Brett Ratner, who just showed up in black and white, directed the Melania documentary covering the two weeks before the first lady moved back into the White House. And I know that sounds real exciting, but he's also cool with the president because he's all over the Epstein files. Just want to say, two directors we've watched for 26 years, one is good and the other is garbage. I want to think that the Figis agency in that season of Archer is a homage to Mike with Stormy Monday and internal affairs, but I think it's reductive to put him in that genre alone. I think he's a jazz player who can read the room. Figus can play trumpet, guitar, and keyboard professionally. He faked his way through music school, being unable to read notes. A man with that range who loves to learn and broaden their horizons. When he has a pick of any of these creative avenues as an occupation, he chooses film. And I think that's like the charismatic jock doing theater. Whereas normally filmmakers love hanging out with musicians, I think Figis might like to hang out with filmmakers. Because when I look into his filmography, you know what I don't see? Music videos. Also, he's been a professor of film in Switzerland for about two decades. He's written books on screenwriting and digital filmmaking. It's kind of cool how much he gives back. Speaking of his book, here's him explaining how technology changed film. Now that I think of it, the word amateur isn't used very much anymore. Nowadays, everyone's a filmmaker. There's an interesting reason for this. Back in the day, there were two very big factors that separated the amateur from the pro: money and technology. An amateur filmmaker shot on Super 8, a pro shot on 16 or 35mm. The difference in equipment and cost was huge. The price of a pro camera was prohibitive, and the cost of processing and post-production was so high that the only the very rich or the professionals could afford it. But that world is now vanished, and along with the label amateur. I suppose I moved from amateur to pro status when I made my first film in 16mm. Then I began using 35mm. Then I began working in Hollywood. And I began to really understand how films were made by professionals. I have to say, I wasn't very impressed. Talking about coming up with the idea, Figus said Sony executive offered him a budget of $4 million and he had expected way less money. With the production budget being so small, the rest could be spent on to recruit a solid cast of actors for what would be a quick shoot. In 2007, Figus wrote, Now there's no reason to prevent anyone from making a film. The technology exists. The equipment is much cheaper than it was. The post-production facilities are on a laptop computer. The entire equipment to make a film can go in a couple of cases and be carried as hand luggage on a plane. There were so many rumors about Figis shooting, leaving Las Vegas in a guerrilla style with Nick Cage and character, getting in trouble. It kind of made him notorious for problem solving. And in Roger Ebert's review of this movie, he recalled his last interview with Figis. I remember the gleam in Mike Figis' eyes when he talked about filming Leaving Las Vegas in cheaper, faster 16mm instead of the standard 35mm. We didn't have to get a permit from the city or rip off the streets, he said. We just jumped out of the car, set up the camera, and started shooting. Yes, the result was the best film of 1995. Now he has directed a production where he didn't even have to set up the camera. Timecode was shot entirely with digital cameras, handheld in real time. The screen is split into four segments, and each one is a single take, about 93 minutes long. Why does this film work? How can it? I think it's because the movie is like a jazz quartet. You have four players, but one element would be should be prominent, and the other three views give you like a live way to survey the geography of the shoot. It's like the rhythm players keep you informed, and then the solo changes to a different element. So when I called this in black and white experimental, black and white is like a poorly sampled hip-hop beat, and time coat is like jazz. After the official release, there were screenings where Figus would change the audio mix to demonstrate to the audience that the sound teaches you where to look on the screen, and by not being too heavy-handed, it gives the audience a chance to edit the film themselves. From his interviews, I know Figus believes these to be four independent real-time films, but there's no way to view and appreciate them independently. If you're focused on one section, you might miss a third of the cast because some stories don't interact at all. It's also fun to track musicians that become filmmakers, filmmakers that become musicians, and music video guys. Forgive the gendering, but far more men are arrogant enough to get the opportunity to be multi-format artists. Not Googling just from the front line of my mind, it's Rob Zombie, Fred Durst, and the RISA, who uh we talked about a lot last week, despite him not being in the movie. They're not the best filmmakers, but nothing's stopping them. And uh like, how about directors to musicians? Landman himself, Billy Bomb, Thornton.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Would I explain why it's not a hobby?

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Are you reacting to the fact that I said that? I am, I am, since you're instructed not to talk about shit like that. Yeah, I am reacting to that. Yeah. Maybe Kevin Costner. Um let's end on a good one. Um John Carpenter, whose last film we're not far away from discussing on this show. Oh man, it's another one. Oh shit, do you feel that? Yeah, I feel it. Oh shit, get under the table again. Bring the mic, bring the mic. This is why I didn't want to build our studio on a fault line. You know it was cheaper, dude. Ugh, if we make it, I swear I'm gonna kill you. I'm gonna kill you more. Wait, was that it? Oh man, I'm sorry, man. I mean, I'm just getting a little stressed. This is like the second time it's ruined this recording. And I control earthquakes? It's not this is not a long show. I I I know it's not a long show. You're not very good at it. Dude, I'm sorry. I I'll I'll try to be better. One sec. This is a good cast, and I'm gonna cover where you've seen them before, but I did establish the concept of Londoning last episode. We have another situation with time code because both Stellan Skarsgard and Saffron Burrows were eaten by sharks the year before in Renley Harlan's Deep Blue Sea. That was a famously troubled shoot, and I would immediately sign up for something like artsy and easy to do like this. The biggest names in this movie have the smallest parts. I'm talking Danny Houston, Holly Hunter, Kyle McLaughlin. Small parts in a small movie, and the character actors that have the bigger parts are like a who's who of my favorite people. I mean, Xander Berkeley, the Michael Mann favorite, and John Connor's foster dad in T2, Richard Edson, who I had no idea but was the original drummer from Sonic Youth, and he's in a ton, but I love him as the parking attendant that steals the Ferrari and Ferris Bueller.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Uh, you fellas I'm not gonna worry about. I'm a professional.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Professional what? Then we have Julian Sands, who sadly has passed away. Um he's great in this movie. Sands, Berkeley, and Houston all working with Figus again after shooting and leaving Las Vegas. So I think it must be a pleasant experience to work with him. Uh the plot of this movie I do find interesting, but it's predictable. The actors were given short story beats, but were expected to improvise. And when there isn't a script, actors tend to improvise about what they know. Acting, their careers, the industry. When you don't have sets, you tend to use what you have. So we'll use the production offices or the limousine, and uh let's just start walking around outside. Actually, let's break down the narratives because I afford a cover and uh I'm gonna go quick. Salma Hayek's character seems to be an up-and-coming Starlic. In a romantic relationship with her agent, who is Gene Triplehorn. Their relationship is very Selena coded, and of course, Salma needs to sleep with Stellan Skarsgard to secure a role in his new movie. It's a situation where art is imitating life with fewer degrees of separation than I'd like. Director's dating acting talent is a tale as old as time, and it's a power dynamic that benefits women's careers during the relationship and often afterwards ends them. With that said, Saffron Burroughs was dating Mike Figis at the time this movie was made. Previously, she also starred in One Night Stand in 97 and Lost of Sexual Innocence in 99, which were both directed by Figis. Their relationships seem to have ended cleanly, but I'm wary of filmmakers that have muses. It's creepy, and I'm allowed to have things that gross me out. I'll give an example that's not problematic at all. I just don't like it. Uh I talked early in the episode about conversations with other women. In that movie, I think Helena Bottom Carter is fantastic. I think she's an amazing actress in plenty of things. But for like a dozen years, when she was with Tim Burton, and so little of that rolled doll hot topic bullshit they threw together is salvageable. Later in the show, we're gonna need to cover Underworld and Resident Evil. Both franchises have the heroine marrying the directors. Mia Jovovich to Paul W.S. Anderson in a good example, and Kate Beckinsale and Len Wiseman in a trickier example. But we'll get there when we get there. Back to this movie, Time Code. Because Triple Horn is jealous and suspecting her girlfriend is not being honest, she, like a psychopath, bugs her purse and spends the next hour and 13 minutes overhearing the story from inside the limo. Meanwhile, Saffron Burrows is trying to get Stellan's attention, and he's like, I must make my film, woman. So she leaves and goes to a therapy session where she decides if whether or not she's gonna stay with him. All the while, our character actors are gossiping, auditioning, and pitching projects. It's a fast-paced environment that contrasts the dark, quiet limo, and editing bay, which is where Stellan's kind of hiding. Let's jump a little bit, but everyone so like everyone's doing cocaine. Stellan and Salma get down to lovemaking, and then Saffron Burroughs and Leslie Mann meet and begin to make out. Uh this movie is kind of hot. I didn't expect to see that. Also, uh, during the scene, the lovely Argentine actress Mia Maestro pitches the premise of something similar to this movie. But instead, Triple Horn brings a gun into the office and smokes Scar Scar. So I I was surprised how hard this movie was to find. Uh I decided to buy everything on DVD after the Arlington Road experience, but I don't think you can stream this anywhere. I was looking for a 2000 DVD release because it supposedly has the cast's first take included in the special features, but that wasn't happening. I um I found this in a Salma Hayek four-pack of early films in a career, including Living It Up, Lonely Hearts, and The Velocity of Gary. And I was like, it was really hard not to put a fake one in there, but I promise all of those are real. So, how are we gonna come down on this movie? I consider this an accomplishment of cinematography and editing. The four films play a shot without need for non-linear editing, but the sound mix directs your attention. This movie is getting an eight out of ten for me. It's going in my collection along with three other Selma Hayek movies, apparently. This movie's like The Phantom Menace. It's cutting edge, maybe ahead of its time, but that's how visionary directors roll. Hey, you just listened to Screen Generation. It's a podcast about the films released by Sony under the Screen Gems label. I'm your host, Evan Hughes, and next week, a star is born in the boxing ring. Play the girl fight trailer.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

You and Joel again.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

This is your fourth fight this semester.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

You look like a loser in there.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

You might want to find someone who can help you deal with this.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

Hey. Take it easy. I want to train with you. I want to be a boxer. Wait out of a row box. Am I talking to you? There's plenty of things you could do better with your life than a box. Prove it. I'll train you. You don't sweat from me. You're out of my life. 100% man in the army. And how would you know what it's supposed to be? Oh, that's good. That's what it takes to be a boss. Don't be sorry! Don't ever be sorry!