The beautiful Armageddon Time trailer is here; how a microbudget film found a YouTube audience of 13 million; the Don’t Worry Darling drama keeps coming. Plus: Jeremy Strong responds to that New Yorker profile. All in today’s Movie News Rundown.
Walter Hill on Gun Violence: Walter Hill, director of 48 Hrs, The Warriors and the new Western Dead for a Dollar, was asked at a Venice news conference how he thinks about gun violence in film, in light of all the gun violence in real life. Hill answered that while no one wants mass shootings, guns do, for all their faults, occasionally do good things, like killing Nazis and slaveholders.
How to Get 13 Million Views on YouTube: For years, indie writer-director-actor Jim Cummings has urged fellow moviemakers to skip the traditional theatrical-and/or-streaming release strategy and just give their films away on YouTube. Raffaello Degruttola did exactly that with his new micro-budget film Transference: A Love Story, earning an astonishing 13 million views. Here he is discussing the film with MovieMaker‘s Margeaux Sippell ,and explaining how he thinks he caught people’s attention:
Why Would You Give Your Movie Away? Because with a large enough audience, you can monetize the film through YouTube advertising.
Where Can I Watch Transference: A Love Story for Free? Right here, via 1091’s FREE MOVIES channel on YouTube.
Worried: Is Don’t Worry Darling an actual movie, or a flawless mechanism for generating headlines and memes? Caleb Hammond, who is covering the Venice Film Festival for MovieMaker, confirms that he has spoken to people who have seen it, though he himself has not. Still, it does appear to exist: There were many images on Twitter yesterday of Harry Styles and Nick Kroll, who are both in the film, kissing after its Venice premiere, amid rapturous applause. Even those of us who have only heard whispers of the film can confirm that it is reported to be a source of drama between director-star Olivia Wilde and star Florence Pugh, as well as Shia LaBoeuf, who Styles replaced. Wilde did not address said drama at a news conference yesterday for the film, which Pugh appears to have breezily blown off.
Armageddon Time: The new trailer for the latest, very personal film from James Gray is out today. I’ve seen it, and loved it, and it moved to tears at one point — thanks as always, Anthony Hopkins. I’d say more but the trailer does a pretty great job of encapsulating the ideas of the film, so let me get out of the way.
P.S. James Gray is going to be a very big part of our fall print issue, out next month. If you haven’t subscribed, we hope you will.
P.P.S.: At the :55-second mark, that’s Jessica Chastain as Maryanne Trump, sister of the future president and daughter of Fred Trump, played in the film by John Diehl.
Jeremy Strong: The actor, who is also great in Armageddon Time, was asked by Vanity Fair about a New Yorker profile that portrayed him as obsessed with acting to the point of silliness. “What do I say about it? It was something that, for me, felt like a pretty profound betrayal of trust,” he told Vanity Fair. “The noise and the fog after it: I think it’s something that, I guess, what I care about ultimately is trying to feel as free as possible as an actor,” he said. “Part of that is trying to insulate yourself from all of that, and what people might say about you or think about you. You have to free yourself from that. It was painful. I felt foolish. As an actor, one of the most vital secret weapons that you can have is the ability to tolerate feeling foolish.”
Main image: Michael Banks Repeta as Paul Graff and Anthony Hopkins as Grandpa Aaron Rabinowitz in Armageddon Time, from director James Gray. Photo courtesy of Anne Joyce / Focus Features.
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