ISSUE #41
BEAM FROM THE BOOTH | GRAND RAPIDS FILM SOCIETY
[EDITED BY: GRIFFIN SHERIDAN]
Hello and welcome back to an all-new installment of BEAM FROM THE BOOTH brought to you by GRAND RAPIDS FILM SOCIETY!
A big thanks to everyone who joined us for our small list of events we hosted this past week, but especially our second FILM SOCIETY PITCH NIGHT this past Thursday, and our Saturday night screening of THE SHINING. It’s easy to take a masterpiece like Kubrick’s 1980 tension-filled film for granted, but watching it on the big screen in a packed auditorium makes one truly appreciate it.
Don’t forget: TONIGHT (1/22) is our very first GENERAL ASSEMBLY MEETING. It’s a free event, open to the public. The GRFS Board wants to hear from YOU, Grand Rapids. How can we best serve the GR film community? Let us know tonight at 6:00pm, right at Wealthy Theatre.
And later this week we’re thrilled to once again host the ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL’S TOURING EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAM on THURSDAY (1/25). ONE (FREE) ticket gets you into TWO programs filled with some of the best experimental shorts the AAFF has to offer (arrive early to learn how to make your own 16mm film loops! materials will be provided).
We hope you can join us for these last couple events in our packed January lineup.
GUEST CONTRIBUTOR
FRIENDS & FILM: SCREENING WALTER, GRACE & THE SUBMARINE
[BY: NOAH BASHORE]
This will come as a shock to absolutely nobody, but making a squishy, personal, independent feature-length film on a micro-budget level with minimal prior directing/writing experience is a really hard thing to do. There is no guarantee that any of it will work out ot that the final product will be halfway decent. It’s all on you, the calvary isn’t coming, and the only thing that’ll keep you going is having an absurd amount of big/optimistic/doofus energy the whole way through.
“Leeroy Jenkins,” if you will.
The alternative is letting feelings of inadequacy and the fear of what others might think of you weigh you down and transform yourself into your own anchor. I could list a bunch of different obvious factors, but at the end of the day, I don’t exactly know where those feelings come from or how to shut them off. I doubt they’ll ever fully go away, but I’m currently subscribing to big/optimistic/doofus energy and am hopeful it will overshadow them.
Although I did help create a feature-length film and am nearly on the other side of that creative/business process, I have big honkin’ imposter syndrome — and writing whatever this essay is only fuels it. But! I also have this locally specific experience that not a lot of people get to have: screening a movie at Wealthy Theater in Grand Rapids.
At 8:00pm on December 7th, 2023, Walter, Grace & The Submarine played at Wealthy Theater for a private donors, friends, family, and crew event. As part of our Seed & Spark crowdfunding campaign, we pledged to show our supporters the finished movie. So, after a lengthy post-production process and YouTubing how to make a DCP, we finally made good on that pledge.
Before the screening, never once had I ever experienced showcasing a film of mine in front of a large audience of people, let alone in a f*cking movie theater. I’m a college dropout, so the closest comparable thing was creating cringe-y student films within student organizations and sharing them in classrooms (not to mention the last time I had done any kind of real public speaking was in high school theater).
I was up until probably 3am the night before with racing, anxiety-driven thoughts about the WGATS event; all of the hypothetical ways the screening could have gone wrong, the specific people who may-or-may-not come, and what some of those people might’ve thought of my micro-budget, diary-entry-esque film. That anxiety subsided for a while, was replaced by camp counselor energy as we scooted around the lobby for a bit, and then promptly reemerged as soon as my introduction for the film was over. Instead of hurdling my body amongst the crowd of friends and peers, I zeroed in on one of my oldest and closest friends — Rylee Gross, who was sitting off to the side — and proceeded to cower next to her for the next 1hr & 40mins.
In many interviews, one of my filmmaking heroes, Jim Cummings, talks about screening his actual, unreleased first feature that he made in his 20s and how he could “feel it in the room” that it wasn’t working at all. Just as a baseline, my hope was to not have a similar experience...and I think I succeeded. As the movie progressed, we got bigger and bigger laughs, a good chunk of people cried, and I gradually stopped cowering. Being the writer/director/editor, you kind of live with the project in a much different way than everyone else involved with the process. Over time, you get desensitized to the humor and emotion of your own story, so it becomes especially surprising to see what specifically resonates with an audience.
Out of context, I think the moments I loved experiencing with everyone at Wealthy Theater the most were: Feed Ted Cruz To A Bear, the edibles scene, the goldfish scene, and the ending of the film.
The aspect of watching WGATS in a theater that I loved the most, however, was getting to listen to our composer Ings’ score. Ever since I was a kid, I always dreamed of what it would be like to collaborate with a musician on a movie score. So as you can imagine, getting to experience music from one of your favorite indie artists, before anyone else, was something pretty special to me. For a long time, the music only existed on my computer and phone and only shared with a handful of friends. Finally getting the chance to have other people hear it at Wealthy was a dream come true.
Originally, Walter, Grace & The Submarine was written as a love letter/comfort movie for a photographer friend of mine who moved away from Michigan to build a better life for herself. But as more people got involved with the making of WGATS, the film evolved beyond that original intention, took on a life of its own, and now holds a lot of meaning for different folks. There are specific people in my life who deeply resonated with the character of Grace so much that, as far as I’m concerned, the film completely belongs to them now. I’m glad I got to share WGATS with them at Wealthy, and I hope it is a film they can return to and both be reminded of their bravery and feel a little less alone.
That night was a surreal whirlwind of reuniting old and new friends, taking photos, hugging as many folks as humanly possible, signing posters, reading a speech from my phone, answering audience questions, getting drunk at The Meanwhile, and surrendering to the big wave of love that washed over me on Wealthy Street.
Through this experience, I’ve made a lot of friends and connections that I know will last a lifetime. At the end of the day, I hope everyone who was able to come out last month enjoyed the film we all worked so hard to create. This event was the true kickoff of our film festival run for WGATS and hopefully the first of many screenings and Q&As. There’s no one true definition for success with indie films of this size, but if I could provide one for WGATS it would be:
A. everyone who worked on it is proud of it
B. they may perhaps get better opportunities as a result of WGATS existing
C. WGATS existing leads to a secondary, slightly bigger feature film
Filmmaking is a team sport, and being the writer/director/editor in a lot of ways requires you to surrender to the weird process of it all as you’re trying to shape and mold whatever it is you’re making. In my experience, the whole thing has been somewhat similar to what Richard Dreyfuss’ character goes through in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Channeling your big/optimistic/doofus energy as a first-time writer/director, you mess up a house or two in an attempt to build a big, scrappy art project. Like Dreyfuss, you insist that “This means something! This is important! This is gonna be a good movie! There are definitely aliens! I promise!” Some people might believe in you; some people might not. But in the end, you and everyone else eventually realize that it’s not just Devil's Tower: it’s Wealthy Street Theater and your finished movie is inside.
THE SHINING AFTERWORD
[BY: BREANA MALLOY]
The Shining (Kubrick, 1980) is a film that has special meaning to me. When I saw this film for the first time, I realized that film is more than just entertainment, it’s an art form — something that can have so many meanings. It was the beginning of my discovery that film can be transformative. This isn’t to say I think this movie is perfect, but it was the perfect movie to open my eyes to film. I could spend hours talking about everything happening in the film, as it is meticulously made, but I will focus on a few things that always come to the forefront of my mind when thinking about the film.
CAMERA MOVEMENT
When watching a film for the first time, the average viewer is so engulfed by the story that they don’t pay attention to all the tiny details a filmmaker puts into their films — especially camera movement. With Kubrick, you could watch The Shining a dozen times and still notice something new that you hadn’t before. One of my favorite examples is the camera moves that occur when Danny is both riding his tricycle in the halls of the hotel, and when he is running from Jack in the maze. Kubrick used a Steadicam for these shots, and he lets the camera almost hover above the ground with ease, making the camera feel like it is its own separate entity. With both of these shots, the walls are accelerated at the edges of the frame yet the camera is still floating behind Danny. This helps create the feeling that you could almost be absorbed into the hotel, which is something that is hinted at continuously throughout the film. While this is happening, the tension is growing as we turn corner after corner with Danny until the camera lets him get to the vanishing point in the frame...and the camera holds back for a moment. This hold builds the tension and anticipation for whatever is right around that corner. The camera holding makes it feel as if it itself is afraid and hesitant to see what’s around the corner. Although these shots don’t encapsulate a large amount of screen time, they create an atmosphere and feeling in viewers that stays with you throughout the film. These scenes also help to further animate the hotel as its own entity.
THEME/MOTIF
In terms of what the film is saying, you could argue an endless number of things; Kubrick himself never confirmed nor denied these ideas, as he allows us to interpret the film as we wish. For me, I see a commentary about how the insanity and horror endured will come back again and again. This is most notably represented through Jack. He states early on in the film that as soon as he stepped into the hotel he felt good about it and at home, almost already tied to it. However, he had never step foot in the hotel before that winter. As they settle in, Jack is seemingly unbothered by the unannounced decor changes and the appearance of people who couldn’t logically be in the hotel. It almost seems as if he is used to it, like he has done it all before. It is as if he is a reincarnation of the hotel in some way. This ties into the photograph seen at the end of the movie as well. Jack, who was not in the picture before the end of the film, is now a part of the photo. This suggests that the violence will be reincarnated just like Jack has been — the hotel wants blood, violence will ensue, and another Jack will come.
BEHIND-THE-SCENES
The last thing I want to touch on is Stanley Kubrick’s treatment of Shelley Duvall during production. It doesn’t necessarily fit in with my other points, but it is something that I think about when watching the film. As I said, The Shining is special to me, and I adore the film, but I did struggle with how I thought of Kubrick for a while when I discovered that he mentally manipulated Duvall (who plays Wendy) on set. He had her crying for 12 hours straight while shooting the baseball bat scene. They did it 127 times!! He continuously told the crew to not sympathize with her, he always talked to her in a dismissive manner, and he was quite cold to her. This was supposed to simply be a technique to get the best performance out of Duvall — to make her feel as her character should — but I find it unnerving. Directors should make their actors comfortable and safe on set. Duvall was losing hair and completely paranoid and losing it on set. What lets me separate this act from the film itself is that Kubrick himself apologized for the acts and, overall, was a respectful filmmaker with his actors outside of this instance. I find that separating a filmmaker from the film can be hard (or even impossible for some), but just appreciating the film and knowing the price people paid to make it so amazing is what’s most important.
As a filmmaker, Kubrick is seemingly unmatched, and The Shining is just one example of that. Every part of the film has meaning and purpose in making the message(s) of the film clear. Although it is now 40 years old, it is still an amazing work that even people who haven’t seen it know about.
ECHOES
[BY: SPENCER EVERHART]
Echoes is an exclusively-visual column based on the MUBI Notebook series of the same name - a fun way to find the repetitions, reverberations, and recapitulations in images throughout cinema history.
Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
Jauja (Lisandro Alonso, 2014)
UPCOMING EVENTS
WHAT: We want to hear from YOU, Grand Rapids! Do you have an idea for us? A recommendation for a film you'd like to see on the big screen? Are you interested in volunteering at our events, etc.? If so, please join us!
WHEN: Monday, January 22nd, 6:00pm
WHERE: The Wealthy Theatre
AAFF 61: TOURING EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL
WHAT: Two programs featuring the best experimental works from last year’s Ann Arbor Film Festival.
WHEN: Thursday, January 25th, 7:00pm
WHERE: The Wealthy Theatre
And so we’ve arrived at the end of another BEAM FROM THE BOOTH! We appreciate you taking the time to read it and truly hope you’ll continue to do so. Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to get each issue in your inbox every MONDAY, and stay up-to-date on all things GRFS.
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Look for ISSUE #42 in your inbox on NEXT MONDAY, 01/29!
Until then, friends...
