Diary of An Aspiring Filmmaker

With Art Car: The Movie set to premiere Sunday, the final push (to stayawake...and coherent) is on

Editor's note: For more than a year, Ford Gunter has periodically chronicled his journey in making his first film, Art Car: The Movie. In his latest column, he looks to the world premiere at Cinema Arts Festival Houston Sunday night at Miller Outdoor Theatre.

Full disclosure: I am rough.

Everything about me at this point is rough. Our movie premieres in 52 hours as I write this, many fewer by the time you read it. As I type, my co-director is upstairs putting the finishing touches on the audio. I just finished the closing credits, which was my last duty on the film. Until we realized I spelled something wrong and have to redo them. We added the last color-corrected shots earlier today. We're not sleeping much, showering less.

My mom just informed me I have a divot out of my beard that can only come from shaving while comatose. Good thing I went on TV this morning.

It's weird to be almost done with something that's taken you almost two years to complete. It's weird to have a badge with your name on it. It's weird to have people at a party want to talk to you, want to make sure you meet other people at the party.

The ability to consistently carry on coherent conversations was gone about three weeks ago. The desire to do so followed suit shortly after. But now that the Cinema Arts Festival has ramped up in full, and we're giving all our spare moments to making appearances (gratefully so, mind you) for the festival, the ability to carry on a coherent conversation is exactly what I need at this point.

Fortunately they understand. They've all been through it at this point, I said to myself, as I sat on a stage among total badasses this morning in the PBS studio.

Braden just got back from Sundance, where his latest film was nominated for the Grand Jury prize. He won something in Berlin that looked very important. Lots of initials. Oh, and his was the first American feature ever shot in Armenia.

Mahmoud's latest documentary has been to something like 39 festivals and 53 cities. He's won more awards in the past three months than I did in six years of Little League, though, to be fair, that was back when "Most Improved" was the only honor bestowed on a shitty kid, and if your team lost every game you certainly didn't get a trophy.

At the far end of the stage, Peter is using words I've only read and never knew how to properly pronounce. Oeuvre is one of them. He's done a documentary on an artist I'd never heard of because these are not the circles I'm used to inhabiting. In an hour, while Peter selflessly advises me on the film festival circuit over cold cuts and potato chips, I mispronounce his artist's name twice. Somewhere, I'm finding the place to put a "k" in "Trimpin."

Next to him, Lynn is here to talk about her documentary that took 46 years to complete. Best I can tell it's on women using art as empowerment during the feminist movement.

An impressive group, which I impressively impressed by spacing out toward the end of the taping, having to ask the host to repeat the question. Oh, by the way, my movie's about people who glue stuff to their cars.

But somehow they either know about it or can pretend to fairly convincingly. Maybe because we somehow wound up with top billing on the poster, before even Ethan Hawke. This is when it starts to sink in. This is weird.

These feelings of discomfort are usually things I keep bottled up, underneath a laid-back exterior and indifferent beard. Too bad I signed up for a column about an inside look at first-time filmmaking. And to make up for my total lack of productivity at CultureMap lately (two straight months of 14-hour days can do that to you), my latest (last?) column will be my most honest one.

So I'm telling you, this shit is weird. All of it.

It's weird to be almost done with something that's taken you almost two years to complete. It's weird to see a photo you took in a brochure. It's weird to have a badge with your name on it. It's weird to be on TV. It's weird to have people at a party want to talk to you, want to make sure you meet other people at the party. It's weird to be listed first on a poster, especially in front of the name a long-respected actor who is clearly the top commercial draw in this whole deal. I wonder what he thought when he first saw the poster. Who the fuck are they? That's pretty much what we're thinking.

There's a line in our movie where one of the artists is talking about how, if you have the guts to decorate your car, you are accepted into the art car world. There's an instant respect, from everyone. It doesn't matter if you're talking to a professional artist whose last piece sold for $60,000 or a second grade teacher whose class makes a car in two weeks. It doesn't matter if your car is a work of staggering beauty or if it sucks. There's an instant acceptance.

"You're crazy enough and passionate enough and stupid enough to do this... nice. Welcome."

And that's what it's been like so far.

Mahmoud said he was excited to see our movie. He even said our bios were hilarious. Peter said he was looking forward to Sunday. Someone else said they were hoping to make it. All this to ears surrounding a brain that never thought any of these people would have noticed our movie on the agenda, much less wanted to see it. And that's all nice.

Badass filmmakers want to see your movie.

Right alongside your family and friends, and the artists you're representing in your film. All expecting something. Expecting to be entertained. Expecting to be bored. Expecting a movie about this instead of that. Expecting to be accurately protrayed; expecting to see themselves on screen. Expecting hilarity, expecting awkward silences. Expecting to sneak out early if it sucks, expecting to be a part of the afterparty if it doesn't. Expecting to have to pretend to have loved it the next time they see you. Expecting a son to make his parents proud. Expecting the best, expecting the worst, or anything in between. Add your peers to that list.

Starts to get weird again, doesn't it?

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Movie Review

Safe cracking takes center stage in new heist movie Tuner

Photo courtesy of Black Bear

Leo Woodall in Tuner.

Of all the ways that movies depict people trying to steal money and other valuables, safe cracking is among the least exciting. By design, it’s a laborious process that only those with a very certain set of skills can do. While clever editing and the right music can enhance scenes of safes being cracked, there’s a reason that the method is among the least used in heist films.

In the new film Tuner, Niki (Leo Woodall) has a job and a condition that just happens to lend itself well to committing that specific crime. He works as an apprentice piano tuner for Harry (Dustin Hoffman), usually doing the hard work while Harry schmoozes the client. Niki is well-suited for the job because he has a rare condition called hyperacusis, which makes him both sensitive to loud noises and able to hear subtle things that others cannot.

When he runs across a trio of criminals trying to break open a safe at a house where he’s tuning a piano, he helps them more out of frustration than avarice. But when Harry goes into the hospital and racks up huge bills, Niki decides to join the group to make some quick money. They soon want more than he’s willing to give, and he must find a way to extricate himself from them without losing himself completely.

Written and directed by documentary filmmaker Daniel Roher (making his narrative feature debut) and co-written by Robert Ramsey, the film has a nice pace to it despite there being relatively little action. Roher and Ramsey spend the first third or so establishing Niki, Harry, and Harry’s wife Marla (Tovah Feldshuh) as characters, letting the audience understand their relationships and how they interact with each other.

The time they devote to the personal storytelling pays dividends when Niki starts to descend into crime, as his divided loyalties — not to mention the danger of the thefts — insert tension into the plot. That stress is heightened even more when Niki starts a relationship with piano student Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), as getting closer to her necessitates a series of lies.

There comes a point, though, where the plot stagnates to a degree. Niki’s end goal, if he has one, is never clear, and it’s obvious that it’s only a matter of time before things start to fall apart. After starting strong in their character development, Roher and Ramsey take shortcuts as the film rushes toward its conclusion. This is most notable in a weird argument scene between Niki and Ruthie that comes out of nowhere and seems to serve no purpose in the story.

Woodall, who had a memorable turn in season 2 of The White Lotus, is on the cusp of breaking out, and this understated-but-compelling lead role should help him become an even bigger name in Hollywood. Hoffman has a small role, but he remains as interesting as ever despite the lack of screentime. Liu (Bottoms) is also an up-and-coming actor who should become a star with more roles like this one.

Tuner is a low-key thriller that succeeds because of the way the filmmakers approach the under-used method of robbery. Even if it doesn’t quite reach its potential, the film maintains a high quality throughout thanks to its storytelling and acting.

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Tuner is now playing in theaters.

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