Many of the reviews of Thriller in Manila (which premiered in World Documentary Competition last Friday) mention the fact that it transcends expectations for a sports documentary (it revolves around the third Ali-Frazier right in Manila in 1975).

The credit for this of course goes to director John Dower, editor Nicholas Packer, DP Stephen Sanden and the team. But it also goes to Andrew MacKenzie, the producer at UK’s Channel 4 who provided the money. At least that’s how Dower explains it with a kind of wonder in his voice, as if still can’t believe he got to make a documentary with enough money. Money that bought a precious thing: pre-production.

Actually calling it pre-production doesn’t really describe it. Dower talks about going to the north Broad Street neighborhood in Philly, with no set plan, hanging out at Frazier’s boxing gym with the fragile, ferocious and mistrustful fighter. Dower walked the streets, met the now-gray-haired friends and witnesses, interviewed the fight participants including Ali’s acerbic doctor. He moved into the story. This is of course not unheard of in documentaries—but it is rarely budgeted for. more

Somehow the tiny budget for Paper Heart paid for trips to Toronto, Paris, and about 12 states including—to the best of DP Jay Hunter’s recollection—California, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and New York, where the man shot 300 hours of Varicam footage in ten weeks. Not surprisingly he thinks Paper Heart’s lone editor Ryan Brown is a hero.

The film is in Dramatic Competition and premiered last night at the Racquet Club. Directed by Nicholas Jasenovec it tells a fictional story of Charlene Yi (the actress’/co-producer’s real name) through both a narrative thread and a documentary one. (The picture at right shows Jasenovec, Yi, and Brown). While Charlene’s story of skeptical love is fictional, her co-stars are not. Hunter says he shot the many interviews with non-actors—friends and acquaintances talking about love–in a narrative style using primes and very deliberate compositions, but that he also tried to shoot the narrative segments with the frankness of a documentary, “obeying the laws of reality.” more

John Hindman didn’t have to go the normal route of getting funding for his independent film before the acquiring the cast. Actor Jeff Daniels signed on to play the title charatcer, Arlen Faber, after reading Hindman’s script and before the money was even there. “If it weren’t for Jeff taking a chance on me–a nobody–I would just be a guy who wrote a screenplay,” he says.

Arlen Faber is the story of a reclusive writer who surfaces on the 20th anniversary his best-selling religious self-help book, and is competing in the dramatic competetion at Sundance this year. It also co-stars Lauren Graham, Olivia Thirlby, and Kat Dennings. more

Director Ryan Shiraki and I are patrolling the very gracious lobby of the Park City hotel looking for exactly what we found: two high backed Chesterfield-esque chairs in a quiet corner next to a high window near a tasteful fern. We settle in.

Shiraki is here (again) with Spring Breakdown, a “Girls Gone Wild” story with heart staring Amy Poehler, Parker Posey, and Rachel Dratch, who co-wrote with Shiraki.

Shiraki’s DP Frank DeMarco shot Hedwig and the Angry Inch a film Shiraki loved for its extravagant and pointed use of color—something he wanted for his own film. “I love the way that in certain scenes these isolated bright colors would pop out of the sea of gray and blue,” he says of DeMarco’s work on Hedwig. He explains that his movie deliberately kicks off with his three heroines singing a campy version of Cindy Lauper’s “True Colors” and that each has an hero color (Amy: yellow; Parker: red: Rachel: blue) that travels with them from morose to magnificent as they bust out with the college kids on Los Padres Island at Spring Break. more

Towards the end of our conversation at Filmmaker’s Lodge, editor Jason Stewart happened to mention that he was hyper-organized. I’d already figured that out.

Stewart cut the Robin Williams’ picture World’s Greatest Dad for Bobcat Goldthwait premiering today at the Library. Look at this photo on the right: it’s the meticulous storyboard that earned Stewart an initial look of bewildered suspicion from Goldthwait (“who wastes this kind of time?”). But Stewart says Goldthwait caught on after about five minutes and was soon converted to the Way of The Wall.

The idea is directly stolen from Walter Murch’s book “Blink of an Eye” (which Stewart read last summer), and other people do it. But as a 10-year-veteran editor it was Stewart’s first time and that’s what matters. He describes a modern twist on Murch’s process: he assembled about 350 still frames in the Avid to represent all the scenes and printed them out at Kinko’s; he built a wood and canvas frame to hold them and bought a jumbo box of bullnose clips to hang them up. When he gets to the part about using the Avid titling tool to label each still, I flash on those people who label all the stuff in their garage with P-touch machines (me). more

When I sit down with Adam Elliot and Melanie Coombs, director and producer of Sundance’s ingenious opening film Mary and Max, I want to talk about their cinematographer Gerald Thompson. Which is handy, because they do too. (Note the vignetting in the photo at right).

Much has been deservedly made of the film’s detailed claymation animation and of its dark, taboo-pushing story of two unlikely and lonely pen pals. Elliot had previously won an Academy Award (Harvie Krumpet) and found acclaim as a storyteller and animator, but for him something was missing cinematically. That something arrived in the unlikely form of motion control expert Thompson. Like Prometheus brought fire, Thompson brought camera moves. more

Peter and Vandy was adapted from a 2002 play written by and starring the film’s director, Jay DiPietro. For the movie, DiPietro cast Jason Ritter and Jess Weixler as the title couple and had to expand way beyond the production limitations of a two-character play that took place in one living room.

Cinematograpger Frank DeMarco (Short Bus, Hedwig and the Angry Inch) shot the movie on Super16 film using 35mm lenses for a gritty feel. more

Davis Guggenheim started the filmmaking process for It Might Get Loud with an inconspicuous tape recorder. Sitting in hotel rooms across from Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White, he let conversation write the first draft of his documentary, laying down a map for the shooting that would unfold over the next 18 months.

It was a technique he learned “by accident” on An Inconvenient Truth as the best way to draw out Al Gore without the distraction of lights and cameras. For a different reason, cameras inhibit rockstars who are used to creating artifice and performance. But without an audience, all three could talk articulately and intimately about their lives, music and process. And with audio tape practically free, Guggenheim could roll indefinitely.

He then cut together a radio documentary-style outline; the conversations told the filmmakers where to go—to the house in Dublin where The Edge hid out with his songwriting demons and emerged with “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” to Headley Grange where Jimmy Page performed in a hallway where he once heard John Bottom play drums. more

Often, first time films are made of longstanding dreams and memories—full of details accumulated over decades, some of them seemingly trivial, some grand and impractical. Charming example: writer/director Eran Merav sits poolside at the Park City Marriott (in the fake and balmy outdoors that reeks of chlorine) and confesses that in his imagination there was nothing so “directorial” as a dolly shot. A big one, with four people riding on the rig sweeping up his vision onto a majestic film camera. “I would do 8 takes at least,” he says.

He’s only half ironic as he says it. The reason it’s charming—apart from the obvious—is that the confession comes as he talks of childhood memories and directorial aspiration nursed over years. Both came together for his first feature Zion and His Brother, which is in World Dramatic Competition here and premiered at the Egyptian last night. more

Documentary filmmaker Ondi Timoner sat down recently for a chat with Millimeter Senior Editor Michael Goldman to discuss the decade-long odyssey she went through to produce her new documentary, We Live in Public—the story of internet pioneer Josh Harris and the late 1990’s project he spearheaded to monitor subjects voluntarily locked in a bunker for 30 days and air the results on what was then an embryonic version of the Web. The movie is competing in the 2009 Sundance documentary category.

CLICK HERE for their conversation. (Right click, Save as to download)