September 2005

Ryan Gosling brought me flowers when we met for this interview on a hot Sunday in July. Our earlier scheduled meeting had gone awry, and he was feeling badly for his part in the miscommunication. I don’t mind saying that I loved the gesture or that I’m a huge fan of Gosling’s work—even before he brought the flowers.

Will Keenan has done some crazy things to promote movies. He’s been hit by a car, threatened self-immolation, and climbed a water tower only to get busted on the 6 o’clock news. Keenan even once dove from a third-floor balcony into a pool. But what he’s doing these days to promote movies is, by his standards, far scarier than any rapidly approaching front bumper or a 50-foot free fall. These days, it’s all about spreadsheets, managing interns, and getting to the office by 9 am.

I’m the director of the low-budget psychological thriller Room (2005), which premiered at Sundance and had its international debut in the Directors Fortnight at Cannes in May. Room was produced by The 7th Floor along with Jim McKay and Michael Stipe’s C-Hundred Film Corp. Our four-week, twenty-four-day production was equally divided between two weeks in Texas and two weeks in New York City. The film centers on the mid-life crisis of a bingo hall employee and mother of two in her late 40s who leaves her family to follow migraine-induced, debilitating visions.

Everything you need to know about Bob Berney’s taste in movies can be summed up by one simple fact: growing up, his favorite film was Stanley Kubrick’s seminal sci-fi head-trip 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Of course, like most of us, he also had a soft spot for more, let’s say, lowbrow fare.

Dear Doc Doctor:

How can I calculate how much archival footage I’ll need for my film, and how much it will cost?

For a documentary, Deadline (2004) was, by all accounts, a big success. The film, which profiled Illinois Governor George Ryan and his decision to condemn the death penalty in Illinois, toured the festival circuit to rave reviews and was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2004.

It’s Sunday night in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—the reigning annex of lower east side hipsterdom. Live jazz floats from the open windows of a Tiki bar, sidewalk cafes overflow with 20-somethings, and scads of the tragically hip mill around street corners as the summer sun retires. All the while, a dedicated audience heavy with filmmakers sits in a dark room watching short films with hopes of honing its craft.