Documentary goes around the world, following Kevin Spacey and company as they stage contemporary version of RICHARD III
NOW: IN THE WINGS ON A WORLD STAGE (Jeremy Whelehan, 2014)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
May 2-8
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.kevinspacey.com
Now: In the Wings on a World Stage, the marvelous new documentary that follows a transatlantic company as it performs Richard III around the globe, did not get its name only because it’s the first word of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy — “Now is the winter of our discontent” — nor simply because it takes place in modern times in modern dress with nods to modern technology, but also because it’s a spine-tingling celebration of the immediacy of live theater. In 2009, Sam Mendes’s Neal Street Productions, the Old Vic under the leadership of Kevin Spacey, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, led by Joseph Melillo, formed a partnership in which British and American actors would present five classic plays over three years. Dubbed the Bridge Project, the wildly successful venture concluded in 2012 with Spacey, an American living and working in London, starring in Richard III, directed by Mendes, a Brit living and working in America. It was the first time they had teamed up since 1999’s American Beauty, the Best Picture Oscar winner that also nabbed Academy Awards for Mendes (Best Director) and Spacey (Best Actor). Spacey hired first-time feature filmmaker Jeremy Whelehan, an assistant director at the Old Vic, to go behind the scenes of Richard III, following the cast and crew as they rehearse, then travel to such locations as Doha, Beijing, Istanbul, Sydney, Epidaurus, Naples, and Hong Kong before wrapping things up in Brooklyn.
Kevin Spacey gets ready to take the stage as Shakespeare’s most treacherous villain
Whelehan and editor Will Znidaric let the plot of the play unfold in chronological order over the course of the epic tour, which ranges from the Epidaurus Amphitheatre, the fourth-century BCE architectural wonder that seats fourteen thousand and has breathtaking acoustics, to dazzlingly modern venues in Qatar and China. In each city, the participants — which also include Gemma Jones as Queen Margaret, Haydn Gwynne as Queen Elizabeth, Chuk Iwuji as Buckingham, Jeremy Bobb as Sir William Catesby and the second murderer, Simon Lee Phillips as Norfolk, Jack Ellis as Hastings, and Annabel Scholey as Lady Anne — discuss their approach to their roles, how audiences react differently in different countries, and what it’s like to be on this theatrical journey. Whelehan shows them experimenting with different methods, applying their own makeup, joking around backstage, and enjoying some of the local culture: boating in Italy, walking along the Great Wall of China, and rolling down sand dunes in the desert. But what shines through it all is their intense love of theater, of taking this splendid production around the world, growing richer as actors and as people, forming a unique kind of special family, with Spacey as the central father figure. Spacey, who played Buckingham in Al Pacino’s 1996 documentary, Looking for Richard — and employs Richard’s style of directly addressing the audience in his hit Netflix show, House of Cards — is clearly having a blast, and his insurmountable joy and dedication are infectious. Theater is notoriously difficult to bring to the big screen, but Whelehan captures the moment, with no discontent, making viewers feel like they are onstage with the actors yet also jealous of the deep bonds they have formed. Now, which had its world premiere last month at the Tribeca Film Festival and opens at the IFC Center on May 2, will have you salivating to see — or perhaps even get involved in — live theater, which ultimately is Spacey’s goal, one that he majestically achieves. Spacey, who also is the executive producer of the film, will be at the IFC Center opening night for Q&As after the 7:00 and 7:30 shows and to introduce the 9:15 screening.
“I need to be kind of weird to photograph people all the time without permission, because it’s very aggressive, and I have to do it,” street photographer Matt Weber says at the beginning of Dan Wechsler’s fun documentary More Than the Rainbow, adding, “And you have to be kind of a psycho.” Wechsler — a filmmaker and rare bookseller who, with George Koppelman, has just claimed to have discovered William Shakespeare’s annotated dictionary — follows Weber around New York, primarily in the subways and Coney Island, as the former taxi driver tries to capture the spirit of the city on film, looking for unique shots that can come and go in a flash. Wechsler speaks with such other photographers as Ralph Gibson, who waxes poetic about the art form, sometimes in French; Dave Beckerman, who gave up a successful business career to shoot on the streets; Philadelphia’s Zoe Strauss, whose “10 Years” exhibition was recently at ICP; Jeff Mermelstein, a street photographer who shoots mostly in color; critic and photographer Ben Lifson, who passed away last year; Cuban-born photographer Julio Mitchel; and, most curiously, San Francisco–based fetish photographer Erik Kroll, who doesn’t care for Weber’s work. Weber, who has been photographing the city since 1978, is also shown collaborating with Todd Oldham, who is designing a book on Weber’s subway series. All of the photographers discuss the relative merits of color versus black-and-white, whether they ask people for permission before taking their pictures, and the inherent differences between analog and digital. The film often strays too far from its main subject, Weber, losing sight of itself in its effort to cover too much in a mere eighty-three minutes, but it usually gets back on track, particularly with lovely 35mm interstitial trips through the city, in color and black-and-white, set to the music of Thelonius Monk and Keith Gurland, courtesy of John Rosenberg, who edited the film and music and shot the documentary with Arlene Muller. Especially in an age when everyone thinks he or she is a photographer, snapping photos with camera phones and posting them on social media sites, More Than a Rainbow shows how it’s really done. The film opens at the Quad on May 2, with Wechsler and Weber participating in Q&As following the 8:30 screenings on Friday and Saturday.
For thirteen straight summers, Timothy Treadwell ventured into the wilds of Katmai National Park in Alaska, where he lived among grizzly bears. For the last five of those years, he brought along a video camera and detailed his life with them and his battle to protect the bears (all of which he named) from poachers. “I have no idea if there’s a God, but if there’s a God, God would be very, very pleased with me,” Treadwell says into his camera in Werner Herzog’s brilliant documentary Grizzly Man, “because he can just watch me, how much I love them, how much I adore them, how respectful I am of them, how I am one of them. . . . Be warned: I will die for these animals, I will die for these animals, I will die for these animals. Thank you so much for letting me do this. Thank you so much to these animals for giving me a life. I had no life. Now I have a life.” In October 2003, Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were brutally killed and eaten by one of the bears. Herzog, who knows a little something about filming in treacherous locations (Fitzcarraldo, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Aguirre, the Wrath of God), made Grizzly Man from more than one hundred hours of tape, supplementing that with interviews with Treadwell’s friends and family. They all talk about a much-loved but troubled man who was desperate to be famous. His life with the bears got him onto television with Rosie O’Donnell and David Letterman, but it also got him killed, which some people think was what he deserved for crossing the line and thinking he could survive living with grizzlies. But Herzog shows him to be a thoughtful, compassionate man who just might have found his true purpose in life. (To find out more about Treadwell, check out The Grizzly Man Diaries 