Steven Soderbergh‘s new film, The Girlfriend Experience, is a testament to his abilities as a Director. The film is not necessarily a “good” film, but it is absolutely fascinating. Starring adult entertainment actress Sasha Gray, the film is unlike anything viewers are used to seeing in the theaters. It shows that a great Director can make a film worthwhile, without any stars, story, blocked scenes, or any of the other usual film-making conventions. Although the film walks the line of becoming an art project, it is entertaining and thought provoking, much like Soderbergh himself is in real life.

The press conference in which I interviewed him at, was rather odd. Aside from the fact that it was mixed with adult entertainment writers and us boring film journalists, there were only three people who were willing to ask Soderbergh questions (apparently they all just wanted to talk to Sasha). I on the other hand, was there for him, and was lucky enough to get to pick his brain for 45 minutes

Check out what he had to say below….

***Note: Most interviews at 15-20 minutes. This one was 45 minutes, which  is a VERY long interview to read. What you see below is a shortened version which assumes that you either have no interest in the film or will see the film and don’t need certain things explained for you. The full interview will be posted in an MP3 next week.

What compelled you to make The Girlfriend Experience?

Steven: I should learn how to answer this better, in general, because it’s a question that everybody wants to know, about every film. It really is akin to asking, “Why do you like this person?” Mostly because I don’t have any rules about what I’ll make or what I won’t make, and I try to be open to anything that will engage me. There must be some through-line to these things, but fortunately I don’t have to figure out what it is. In this case, I think it was just an opportunity to explore some ideas about how we define pleasure. That’s always interesting. The idea of money is really interesting to me, when you begin to think about how that started. Who was the first person to figure out that you could ascribe a value to something like a piece of zinc or gold or a diamond? Who was the first person to look at something and decide, “That has a value, and the way I’m going to ascribe value to it is to get somebody to do something for me, and then I’m going to give them that thing, and then they can use that thing to get somebody else to do something for them, or to purchase something”? That is a very weird idea to me, and I’m fascinated that somebody came up with it. The whole thing is very odd to me. This was an opportunity to play with those ideas about value. How do we ascribe value to certain things? And, in this case, why does kissing require an incredible surcharge, in the sex industry? What is that about? That’s the thing that GFE’s do that prostitutes don’t. You’re not allowed to kiss. That’s a whole different thing. Here, you’re paying top-dollar to be able to make-out, and I think that’s interesting.

Why did you choose to cast Sasha Grey in this film?

Steven: I saw the article in Los Angeles Magazine about her, which was published in summer of ‘06. And, the way she talked about herself, her reasons for getting into the adult industry, and the way that she planned to navigate the adult industry didn’t seem typical to me. I’d never really heard anybody like her talk about the business that way. She said, “Here are my reasons for going into it, and this is how I want to work within it.” I had just never heard anybody talk like that. She had a plan, and I’d never heard anybody in that business talk about having a plan. There are similarities to escorts who work at this level. The ones that we interviewed are similar, in the sense that they all had plans. They all either had another business that they were working in, at the same time, or they had real good jobs that they were working, at the same time. They all talked about how much money they’d put away and what they planned to do with that money and how much longer they planned to do this. Again, it’s not typical in the sex work industry for somebody to take a macro view of the business and use it very deliberately as a means to get somewhere else. I guess, in my mind, those two things connected. And, obviously, I also wanted someone who, in sexual situations, was going to feel in control and in command and comfortable. I think that’s hard to fake. Honestly, that just comes from being in a lot of situations in which you feel you’re in control. She’s obviously fearless. I didn’t ask her to do anything that was very extreme, but at least I knew, in the back of my mind, that there probably wasn’t anything I could think of where she would go, “No, I’m not doing that.”

When did you first meet Sasha?

Steven: I read about Sasha, and then contacted her and asked if she would come in to talk. I wanted to talk to her to see if she would be up for this. The good news is that she watches a lot of movies. In the first movie, I said, “I really want you to watch this Goddard film, My Life to Live,” and she said, “Oh, I love that movie. It’s one of my favorite movies.” So, I thought, “Okay, that saves me a couple of hours.” She has a lot of different interests and she’s ambitious, and she’s had a lot of unusual experiences, so it’s going to be interesting to see what she ends up making with all of these influences and experiences. It could be something unlike anything you’ve seen. She’s only 21. She’ll be making features before I was making features.

Because of the nudity involved in this movie, was it easier to have an adult performer, instead of a mainstream actress?

Steven: Oh, yeah, no question.

Did you deliberately decide not to include a sex scene in the film?

Steven: I didn’t care which way it went. If you want to compare the lives of a high-end escort in the GFE strata and the person who’s working the street, the first thing you have to do is eliminate what’s common to them. Then, what is left are the things that are not common. My attitude was that the sex act itself was irrelevant to me because that’s something that’s common to the GFE, the mid-level person who works through an agency, and the person that’s working the street. The actual sex act, however long that takes, is identical in all those situations. What’s not identical is everything else. So, I decided to pull out the thing that’s common to all of them and just focus on what’s left. What’s left is this fantasy that you are in an actual relationship for those two hours, or for that night. What’s interesting about that is that it pushes you back on yourself and makes you analyze, “What does that mean, exactly?”

Why did you choose to work with non-actors, and what were some of the challenges of that?

Steven: I’m really interested in it. I’ve been playing around with it for awhile. So far, all of the six films that I’m supposed to do for 2929 Entertainment, under this deal, are planned to be done in this way, where you write a story and detail the outline, and then cast real people and use these controlled improvisations. It’s interesting because they don’t act like actors. And, that’s not a slam on actors, but they’re not trying to do anything. They don’t have goals, the way actors have goals. You need to give them a goal. You need to tell them what the scene is about.

What are you hoping that audiences will take from this type of film?

Steven: This is not new. This is something that Robert Bresson did, his entire career. It’s very similar. He set up these stories and he cast non-professionals, to great effect. I’m trying to take that idea and push it even further, and use even more complex stories and ask more of them, and push them and have them have to do things that are even more demanding. A lot of the performances in the Bresson films are very passive, and they’re not very big. You don’t see people monologue-ing the way we have people doing it, in this film. And so, I guess I’m just trying to get at something that’s entertaining, but that feels a little more lifelike. But, that really depends on the movie. We’re trying to get this Liberace movie off the ground, and we’ve got Michael Douglas playing Liberace and Matt Damon playing this young man that he gets involved with. And, Richard LaGravenese wrote the script. That’s not a situation where I’m going to be sitting around improvising. It’s already there. But, the goal of that movie is very different because of what it’s about and the period that it’s set in. It’s set in the entertainment business and it needs to have a different vibe. And so, a more obvious construct is fine, in that world, but in the world of Bubble or GFE, I felt like it has to feel more organic.

Did you have any technical advisors for this?

Steven: We interviewed a lot of escorts. When we first wrote the outline, in the Spring of 2006, we interviewed eight escorts. And then, just before we started shooting, we did one more round of interviews, and the character of the hobbyist is something that came up in that last round of interviews. That wasn’t in the original outline. Even in the two and a half years since we’d worked on the story, that issue had become bigger for them. They felt like these people that run these sites and run these reviews was becoming a problem. They were being blackmailed, in a way, because if they didn’t cooperate, then these guys would figure out a way to get their reviews to skew in a certain direction, so that turned out to be an interesting thing to use, to puncture her armor a little bit. And, the johns in the film, almost to a person, work in the industries that they work in, within the world of the film. Most of the men that use these kinds of escorts are in the financial business because they have that kind of money to spare.

Is $2,000 an hour an accurate figure?

Steven: Yep.

And, is that the top?

Steven: Yeah. It was last October. I don’t know what it is now.

Has that been affected by the recession?

Steven: My understanding is that the very, very high-end people, in this area, haven’t been hurt, but the middle is getting slammed. So, the middle has basically moved down. The mid-level agency girls are getting hit because the guys are moving down and going back to the street.

How much of this film was actually structured? And, was the non-linear narrative something that was preconceived?

Steven: The structure is very, very detailed. You not only had the scenes, but also what the scenes were about. It was bullet points to give the performers. I’d say to them, “At some point, you’ve got to cover these three subjects. I don’t care how you do it, but you’ve gotta do it.” It’s best, in this situation, to shoot chronologically because it’s helpful for the actors, but I knew, when we were shooting it, that I was going to play it out in a non-linear way. I was very conscious, every time I was doing a scene, to cull abstract footage that I could use as markers and keystones, that would be cycled and then pay off later. I would just make sure I’d gathered enough material to build a mosaic, even though I didn’t tell anybody that.

Is there anything that you would change about the film? Are you 100% happy with the final product?

Steven: It doesn’t matter to me, in the sense that, if you look at the way that I’ve worked and the number of films that I’ve made, my rule is to work quickly and not to agonize over things. I have a certain amount of money and a certain amount of time. I’ve never gone over budget and I’ve never gone over schedule. And so, when the films are done, they’re done. I’ll do anything that I can to improve them until I’m supposed to deliver them, and then I deliver them and I don’t look at them again. So, my judgement of it really doesn’t have a lot to do with the piece itself. It has to do with the experience of making it ‘cause that was months or years out of my life. I look back on this fondly because I had a lot of fun making it. Ten or 15 years from now, maybe I’ll look at it and determine if I did the best job possible of making it. You contrast that with something like Che, which was not fun to make. It will take me a long time to be able to look at that objectively ‘cause it was just not fun. I like to have fun, if I can.

Is there something fundamentally different about the whoring that Sasha’s character does versus the whoring that everybody else in the film does, or does capitalism make whores of everyone?

Steven: It depends on how you define whore and how you define capitalism. Do I personally see any difference between what she does and what I do for Warner Bros.? No, I don’t. But, that gets to this issue of money, and the fact that the world cannot function unless something like the idea of money exists. We cannot all live on a farm and generate enough food to feed everyone we know. It’s not physically possible. So, this idea has to exist, and what we’re continually arguing about is how it should work. What it ultimately comes down to is, what is fair? And, a lot of that fairness has to do with what we attribute value to. What’s fascinating about economics is how clean it is and how clear an expression it is of any culture’s values. What’s great about economics is that it isn’t an expression of the way we want things to be or the way we wish things to be or the way we would choose for them to be. It is an expression of the way things are, period. That’s what’s fascinating about it, to me. Personally, I’m not someone who thinks that how somebody pleasures themself should be legislated by me. That’s just the way I feel. I don’t want somebody telling me that, and I don’t want to tell somebody else that. That’s why nobody is encouraging me to run for office. I think there’s such a thing as theft, and I think there’s such a thing as assault. And then, after that, it’s wide open, to me. What you want to do is what you want to do. I think the typical definition of whore is doing something that you would not ordinarily do for money. The problem is that 95% of the people in this world are not doing something that they want to do to make money. That’s just a fact.

Is King of the Hill ever going to come out on DVD?

Steven: They’ve been waiting on me to do a commentary, and my rule is that I won’t do them alone, and I haven’t been able to find anybody to do it with me. To be fair, I haven’t tried. It will come out, eventually. Everything does.

The biggest problem I had when formulating questions to ask him, is that if you pay attention to his film, he answers all the questions for you. Why would you hire Sasha? Because she’s intriguing! Why did you hide the camera in some scenes? To make it feel as if we’re sneaking a peek on their lives. That being said, he did give further insight into some of his decisions, although to really understand it, you have to see the film.

Check out Director Steven Soderbergh’s film, The Girlfriend Experience, in select theaters now.

Related Posts

• Sasha Grey Interview for The Girlfriend Experience (10)
• The Girlfriend Experience Trailer and Response (0)
• Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Magic Mike’ Trailer Features Channing Tatum In Male Stripper Dramedy (0)
• Who Should Replace Gary Ross As Director Of ‘Catching Fire’? (6)
• Interview: Jason Biggs and Alyson Hannigan on ‘American Reunion’ (0)
• Interview: Eugene Levy and Jennifer Coolidge on ‘American Reunion’ (0)
• Interview: Directors Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg on ‘American Reunion’ (0)

This week, the movie world has a little bit for everyone from the big blockbuster Terminator Salvation to family comedy Night at Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. If you are in the mood for something different and more edgy there is director Steven Soderberg’s The Girlfriend Experience, which follows the life of a call-girl, played by real life porn star Sasha Gray. My personal favorite has to be Easy Virtue starring Jessica Biel, Kristin Scott Thomas and Colin Firth. It’s the story of a young Englishman who takes his new American Bride to meet his family in England. It is the classic mother-in-law against new daughter-in-law storyline.

Here are the movie releases for the week of May 22:

• Terminator Salvation | Interviews: McG, Christian Bale, Sam Worthington | Tickets and Showtimes
• Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian | Tickets and Showtimes
• The Girlfriend Experience | Interview: Sasha Gray | Tickets and Showtimes
• Easy Virtue | Tickets and Showtimes

Watch the trailers…

Terminator Salvation

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

The Girlfriend Experience

Easy Virtue

Which movie do you want to see?

Related Posts

• Box Office Predictions: Night at the Museum Vs. Terminator (1)
• Tribeca Film Festival: Movies to See and Topics to Discuss (0)
• The Top 10 Most Berserk Computers In Film (2)
• Justin Lin Bails On Directing Two Upcoming Terminator Sequels (0)
• Arnold Schwarzenegger is Back in Movies, Is Terminator Next? (2)
• Animated Terminator 3000 Will Have Less Violence (0)
• Movie Releases: Sex and the City 2, Prince of Persia, Survival of the Dead (0)

I’m pretty sure, everyone was wondering the the same thing after watching The Girlfriend Experience, is Sasha Grey really like that? Was she acting or is she really THAT cold. In fact, I was fascinated with this idea for some time after I saw the film. One has to wonder about a girl who threw herself at the adult entertainment industry on her 18th birthday with a business plan to dominate the business. Is she cold and calculated or is she simply someone who enjoys sex and power? She wouldn’t be the first, although she might be the first to make a successful cross over from porn star to mainstream actress. Having your first film be a starring role in Steven Soderbergh film is never a bad place to start.

So what is she like? I found her rather somewhat guarded but for the most part rather light-hearted. She surely wasn’t intimidated by what any of us had to ask her. She even laughed off a number of questions related to her porn life and then continued to talk about her work in the industry and seemed completely confident that she will be the woman to make a successful cross-over.

So let’s see what she had top say…

What did you know about Steven Soderbergh, before you started shooting this movie?

Sasha: I knew I was a big fan. I’m not 14 anymore, so I don’t necessarily know every little detail about the people I admire.

How was your first meeting with him?

Sasha: My first meeting was still really exciting, and I felt like a bumbling little kid. It was just a 45-minute meeting at the Warner Bros. office. It wasn’t a traditional audition or casting session, or anything like that. We just talked about The Girlfriend Experience and where he wanted to go with it, and that was pretty much it.

Did you have a chance to talk to any high-end escorts, prior to filming?

Sasha: Steven and the writers met about eight women, and I met two. But, interestingly enough, the real-life tendencies of the two women that I met, heavily played into the film. One of the women we met really does screen her clients with personology books. The fact that Christine, or Chelsea, buys pre-paid phones came from one of these women, who was very, very paranoid. The whole thing about writing in a diary about what the date came from one of the women. Her whole idea behind that was that, if she’s really supposed to care about these guys, but she has a long list of them, she has to remember what their dogs’ names are and what their favorite color is because those are the little things that your girlfriend would know.

What did the script for this actually look like? Because it wasn’t a traditional script, what were you given to work with?

Sasha: It was a 15-page outline that I got the day before we started shooting. I would say each scene was there, but it was really just described. It might say, “Sex scene with Client B,” but there’s no sex in the film. We would get to set, look at that outline and sometimes, we would pick up the daily newspaper and, if there was something that jumped out to us, especially because we started shooting, literally the day before the economy crashed, we would pick things from current events that we felt related to our characters. Or, sometimes Steven would say something to one person, and then tell the other character in the scene the exact opposite.

Working on a film like this, how much of what you did was just a total surprise to you?

Sasha: For me, it was that struggle of trying to create a character with a limited amount of information. I would go to my hotel room every night and think, “Okay, there’s these 10 probabilities, and it’s going to be one of these,” and I’d prepare in my head, “This is what I’ll do. This is what I’ll say. This is how I’ll react.” And then, you’d get to set and Steven would come up with the 11th probability that you wouldn’t have thought of, in a million years. He’s like a mad genius, and he’s just so methodical in what he does. You could see the wheels spinning inside of his head, on the set. So, it was a surprise, every day. It was a struggle, creating this character and also giving those honest reactions.

With this film, are you going to transition out of the porn industry and concentrate on mainstream?

Sasha: Right now, I want to do both. I think it’s unprecedented that a woman from the adult industry has been able to really juggle both at the same time, and play a non-eponymous character, in more than just one film. I think the climate is right, and I think that, if people enjoy what I do outside of adult films, there is room for growth and opportunity. I’m locked to shoot a film in August, where I have the lead role and I don’t play a sex worker. I also have two other scripts I was just offered. They’re not in pre-production yet, but they’re looking for casting. They’re in the very, very beginning stages. Again, they’re both very challenging, different roles, which I’m really excited about. That’s the next obvious, evolutional step.

What’s going on with your script?

Sasha: I am shooting my directorial debut, inside of the adult world, in a week and a half, so I’m finishing that up right now. It’s called The F@%k Junkie, but I can’t tell you what it’s about.

Are you looking to do both mainstream and adult with your production company?

Sasha: I’d like to do both. It really hasn’t been done, to the fullest potential. I enjoy the challenge of people saying no to me and me proving people wrong. That’s just my natural personality. So, if I continue to get opportunities, like the one Steven gave me, to not just be Sasha Grey and have a cameo in a film, then that will be a wonderful thing.

Has it been hard for you to cross over, or are you finding people to be accepting of it?

Sasha: I’ve been taking it in baby steps, right now. My manager and I agreed that we should wait for the film to actually come out before we go knocking on people’s doors, so that process will start very soon. But, from a level of people just offering me stuff, I think people have been very accepting of it, just because they hear Sasha Grey alongside Steven Soderbergh. They’re like, “Okay, if he took this chance on her, then maybe we can.” But, I’m sure that’s out there, and I don’t think I’ll be cast as Zac Efron’s girlfriend in his next movie. I’m not going to be in a teen movie, and I’m okay with that.

Being a big film fan, what is your cinematic background?

Sasha: I studied acting from the age of 12 to 18, and one of my most influential theater teachers said, “You should be watching one film per week, minimum.” I said, “Okay, what film am I supposed to watch, fuckin’ Street Fighter?” And, he said, “No, that’s not gonna build your character or hone your craft, as an actor.” I was like, “Well, you’re telling me to watch these films, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.” So, he gave me a list of films and I had to go and hunt those down.

So, which directors do you admire, and which ones would you like to work with one day?

Sasha: Obviously, Jean-Luc Godard, but everybody knows that. I really like John Cassavetes. I don’t know if I’d like to work with Godard. Sometimes, the mystery is better than the truth. In the case of Steven, it was all good, so I was lucky to get that opportunity. Out of all people, and this is kind of left field, but I have a weird obsession with John Carpenter. I think it would be really fun to work with him. And, David Gordon Green.

It’s surprising that there isn’t a sex scene in this movie. Was that something that was intentional? Were you opposed to that? And, were you relieved to not have to do that, in this film?

Sasha: Steven never really said whether there would be a sex scene or not, but in the outline I think it did say, for three different scenes, “Sex Scene with Chris,” “Sex Scene with Client B,” “Sex Scene with the Hobbyist.” I never really knew. But, by the fifth day of shooting, I was like, “I really don’t think there’s gonna be sex in this ‘cause I think, if there was, it would have happened by now.” But, if there was to be one, I trusted Steven, so I knew he would do it so the sex scene itself would be in context of the story. It wouldn’t just be sex for the sake of sex.

Was I relieved that there wasn’t one? Yes and no. Again, because it was Steven, it would have been done well. If somebody would have approached me that doesn’t have his resume and said, “You’re going to play an escort in this movie, and you’re going to have five sex scenes,” I probably would have said no.

How did you feel about getting to play a lead role that was emotionally demanding?

Sasha: It goes back to the whole notion of, do I want to just stay in adult, or do I want to do both, and I go back to the fact that there’s been very few women to do both, at the same time. They usually quit and say, “I’m a redeemed sinner. It’s okay that I hate porn now. You can all accept me.” I think that’s bullshit.

Do you have any further comments about your 2007 appearance on The Tyra Banks Show (watch now) and how the show portrayed you?

Sasha: That little video I did (watch now) was kind of a joke within itself. Obviously, there were a million things I had wrong with that show. It’s just funny how people still don’t get how the media works. It’s like, “No, they have five cameras and they edit? No! They changed your clothes? Then why did you do it?” They wanted to use me, and I wanted to use them, and I was okay with that. I was still pissed off, but I got what I wanted out of it. Did Tyra run up to her producers and ask what to say because she was stumped by an 18-year-old? Yeah. I did have somebody from AVN, which is our trade magazine in the adult industry, with me who told it how it was. But, had I known, in the green room, they had a live feed on the TV, so I could have brought a video camera and taped what really happened. I kind of kicked myself in the ass for not knowing that, but what can you do?

Did it feel good to have Tyra running to her producers?

Sasha: Yeah!

Do you think your role in this movie is going to bring adult more into the mainstream, being that you are the lead?

Sasha: I don’t think it’s just this role. The mainstream, or the media, is very fascinated by the adult industry. So, whether it’s because I got a legitimate role, or because putting a porn star on a talk show gets ratings, people want to see it. We don’t want to talk about it, but we want to see it and listen and spy and vilify it. So, it’s not just this. It’s just the plain and simple fact that people are fascinated by the adult industry.

The Girlfriend Experience is now available on HDNet Ultra VOD and opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, May 22, 2009.

To see the film through Video On Demand online ahead of time, head on over to Amazon.com and watch it now.

Related Posts

• Interview with Steven Soderbergh (0)
• The Girlfriend Experience Trailer and Response (0)
• Interview: Jason Biggs and Alyson Hannigan on ‘American Reunion’ (0)
• Interview: Eugene Levy and Jennifer Coolidge on ‘American Reunion’ (0)
• Interview: Directors Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg on ‘American Reunion’ (0)
• Interview: Rowan Atkinson and Director Oliver Parker on Johnny English Reborn (0)
• 1-1 Interview: Scot Armstrong on writing The Hangover Part II (0)

I just got out of a screening for Oscar winning Director Steven Soderbergh’s latest film The Girlfriend Experience and the trailer appeared online! How perfect. The film is about the life of a high class escort played by adult-entertainment star Sasha Grey.

Thanks to Soderbergh and writers Brian Koppelman and David Levien this was one of the most thought provoking films I’ve seen in a long time. Without using a “real actor” as the focus of the film, Soderbergh is able to evoke a more realistic perspective on a world where people are trying to live their fantasies. The film allows the audience to connect to the characters through a great story, a fascinating source material, interesting shots, and crafty edits, not because of the acting like we are used to.

Grey, is obviously not an actress, and yet she is absolutely mesmerizing in the film for her progressive and yet extremely walled up perspective on life, money, love, and the world around her.

Check out the trailer below…

Between the interesting story and the honesty in Grey’s performance, you can see how this film is unlike many others we see. It’s not a film, but a glimpse into someone’s life. Sometimes someone just being truthful, without actually acting, creates one of the more realistic movie-going experience then what we are used to.

Grey doesn’t talk much in this trailer most likely because dialogue is not her strongest skill. But what she lacks in words she makes up for in intrigue and heart.

What do you think? Are you enticed?

Related Posts

• Interview with Steven Soderbergh (0)
• Sasha Grey Interview for The Girlfriend Experience (10)
• Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Magic Mike’ Trailer Features Channing Tatum In Male Stripper Dramedy (0)
• Who Should Replace Gary Ross As Director Of ‘Catching Fire’? (6)
• Interview: Steven Soderbergh, Matt Damon and Laurence Fishburne on Contagion (0)
• Contagion: Movie Review (0)
• 1-1 Interview: Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns on Contagion (0)

The Tribeca Film Festival was created in 2002 by Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro to help the economy of New York and to help draw attention to filmmakers in New York. Well, it is about to enter it’s eighth year and it is still going strong. The amount of things to do during the festival is incredible, but what is even better is that it is open to the public. There are almost 200 movie screenings during the week, a street fair, a drive-in theater, and events for kids. The admission price of the movie tickets range from $8-15, and the discussion panels cost $25.

For those of you who are attending, here are some movies that sound interesting. For everybody else, these movies are worth checking out in the future. Some of the documentaries look really interesting. I am pretty curious myself.

Check them out…

Movies:

Features:

• Black Dynamite - All you suckas gather round. This glorious ’70s blaxploitation throwback is a fistful of chase scenes, gunfights, kung fu, pimps, and hos. Michael Jai White plays Black Dynamite, the smoothest, baddest mother to ever pick up a pair of nunchucks. When the CIA gives back his license to kill, Black Dynamite makes it his mission to keep smack out of orphanages at any cost. Can you dig it?
• Pandora’s Box - Yesim Ustaoglu’s (Journey to the Sun) latest is a gorgeous, expertly developed cross-generational dramedy. When an aging matriarch (90-year-old Tsilla Chelton) starts showing signs of dementia, her dysfunctional family in Istanbul must navigate a minefield of unresolved issues to care for her. Pandora’s Box took the top prize and Chelton was named best actress at the San Sebastián International Film Festival.
• The Girlfriend Experience - Director Steven Soderbergh follows five days in the life of a $2,000-an-hour Manhattan call girl (adult film star Sasha Grey) who thinks she has her life totally under control. She even has a devoted boyfriend who accepts her lifestyle. But when you’re in the business of meeting people, you never know who you’re going to meet next.
• Departures - Winner of the Academy Award® for best foreign language film, Departures is the eccentric, lushly scored, movingly funny tale of a cellist who returns to his picturesque rural hometown with his adoring wife following the breakup of his Tokyo orchestra. A cryptic classified ad for work in “Departures” leads him into an unexpected but strangely rewarding new job as an undertaker.
  
• Easy Virtue - Kristin Scott Thomas, Colin Firth, Jessica Biel, and Ben Barnes (Prince Caspian) star in the comical tale of a young Englishman who brings his glamorous American bride home to meet his stuffy British parents. Based on the Noel Coward play. Always sublime, Scott Thomas scored nominations from the British Independent Film Awards and the London Critics Circle.
• Rudo y Cursi – Stars Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna and producers Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy), and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel) present a splendid, riotous film about a pair of thickheaded stepbrothers whose rivalry takes them from their jobs on a small-town banana ranch to star spots on opposing soccer teams.
  

Documentaries:

• Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi - In 2007, the Taliban kidnapped 24-year-old Ajmal Naqshbandi and an Italian journalist. Naqshbandi was one of Afghanistan’s best “fixers”—someone hired by foreign journalists to facilitate, translate, and gain access for their stories. This gripping, tragic story is a behind-the-scenes look into the dangerous and unseen world that happens before we get the news.
• Poliwood - In this fascinating documentary, legendary Academy Award®-winning director Barry Levinson sets out to explore the collision and collusion between politics and Hollywood. The film gives the viewer a front-row seat and backroom access to the most significant presidential campaign of the 21st century. Featuring interviews with high-profile celebrities and powerful political figures, Poliwood looks at the influence Hollywood has over today’s political process as we discover the thin line between politician and actor, news and entertainment, policy and tabloid.
• Playground - Executive produced by George Clooney, Grant Heslov, and Steven Soderbergh, this astonishing doc travels to the dark heart of one of the world’s most sinister industries—the child sex trade. Beginning her journey infiltrating brothels in South Korea and Thailand, director Libby Spears soon discovers that the United States is a major player in the human trafficking racket and turns her attention to the homeland. Featuring original artwork by Yoshitomo Nara.
  
• Transcendent Man - Some hail him as a modern-day Nostradamus, others dismiss him as a crackpot. Futurist and famed inventor Ray Kurzweil is the preeminent theorist on the pending fusion of humans and super-intelligent machines as the next phase of evolution, a “singularity” he predicts will occur within 30 years. This fascinating (and at times terrifying) doc explores the personal ideals behind his controversial ideas.

Drive-In Theater:

• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Discussion Panels:

Industry:

• The Future of Independents | May 1 | 5:00 pm | Directors Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, TFF ’07), Rose Troche (The L Word, Go Fish), Raymond De Felitta (City Island, TFF ’09), and Gary Winick (Bride Wars, Tadpole) will discuss some of the challenges ahead for independent directors with David Carr of The New York Times.
• Industry | Various Times | Free | Various topics that affect filmmakers are discussed, including, alternative marketing, marketing 2.0, and digital workflow.

Post-movie Discussions:

• Poliwood | May 1 | 6:00 pm | Following the screening, Emmy Award®-winning writer/producer and MSNBC political analyst Lawrence O’Donnell will lead a discussion about this convergence of politics and Hollywood with director Barry Levinson and actors Josh Lucas, Rachael Leigh Cook, Tim Daly, Lynn Whitfield, Tony Goldwyn, Robert Davi and Matthew Modine, who appear in the film.
• Passing Strange | May 2 | 7:00 pm | After the movie there is a conversation with director Spike Lee, creator and star Stew, and co-composer and band member Heidi Rodewald, focusing on the themes of race, culture, nationality, and adolescence raised in Stew’s semi-autobiographical show, while also exploring the difficulties of translating a staged piece of theater to the big screen. This is a special event exclusively for American Express® Cardmembers.

Check out the full list of movies and discussion panels and other things to do at the Tribeca Film Festival

Are any of you attending the festival? Do any of the movies or documentaries sound interesting? Would you like to see any of them?

Related Posts

• Movie Releases: Terminator, Night At The Museum 2, Easy Virtue… (0)
• Tribeca Film Festival 2012 Winners! (0)
• Tribeca Film Fest 2012: All In – Movie Review (0)
• Tribeca Film Fest 2012: Any Day Now – Movie Review (1)
• Tribeca Film Fest 2012: Searching for Sugar Man – Movie Review (0)
• Tribeca Film Fest 2012: Take This Waltz – Movie Review (1)
• Tribeca Film Fest 2012: Burn – Movie Review (0)