This morning I went to an IFC brunch where there was a panel discussion about their new initiative to release films on VOD while they simultaneously premiere at film festivals. Steven Soderbergh spoke, he is amazing to listen to and such an inspiration having made films like Sex, Lies and Videotape in 1989, Traffic, Erin Brockovich and most recently, Che — the guy is ahead of his time and very smart in terms of his ability to use the system for his own way.
Joe Swanberg was also there because he is releasing his new movie Alexander the Last through IFC in this way. He is an old friend of mine from when I acted in his movie Hannah Takes the Stairs. In the picture below we are pretending to be engrossed by a DVD box.
Later in the day, Stella [Schnabel] and I went for a strange interview with artist Michael Portnoy. He acts as a “Director of Behavior,” a therapist of sorts; he saw Stella and I separately in a “session.” There was a live audience and the piece was filmed for Ovation TV. He’s all about the slippage of language so often his questions didn’t make sense and were personal almost to the point of mockery. The whole thing was a performance piece, albeit perhaps a mean spirited one as he intentionally provokes and trips up his guest to make his own performance more interesting. I do wonder what the final piece will look like though; maybe it will be funny as hell, you never know.
