Lifelong baseball lover Eugene Corr’s inspiring documentary  how  follows the lives of an inner city youth baseball team in Oakland, Calif. and their coach, Roscoe Bryant. As a way to provide hope and mentorship to the children in his violent neighborhood of Ghost Town, Bryant founded the Oakland Royals team in 2005. Over in Havana, Cuba, another coach, Nicolas Reyes, has been grooming a team of his own. The two coaches organize a game between the two teams to take place in Cuba and worlds collide as the American youths learn to adapt to Cuban culture. Close friendships are made and life lessons are learned, though Corr’s film also covers the long, hard road coach Roscoa had to getting his team to Cuba.

I spoke to Eugene and Roscoe in San Francisco, where they were promoting the film and its screening tonight at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. For more info on how to watch and support the film, visit ghosttowntohavana.com

Richmond is a Bay Area city that hasn’t gotten almost any big screen time before. I like that you delve a little bit into its history. I had no idea.
Eugene: There’s such a rich history and we just barely touch on it. There’s another film right now, Romeo Is Bleeding, that drills down even deeper into the history of Richmond. But there is a rich history with my father and the baseball team he coached for many years.

Talk about the transformation of Richmond from the ’50s to the ’80s.
Eugene: When I was a kid in the ’50s and into the ’60s, even into the ’70s, Richmond and Oakland were still booming industrial centers. They were labor towns, they were tough towns. I was a factory worker, forklift driver, steel worker, auto worker, crane operator. Around ’73 was when the city was really starting to decline, and I transitioned into film. Most people in the Bay Area don’t know the history of Richmond. It wasn’t like the Bay Area of today.

In those days, baseball was king. From Richmond to Oakland, so many great baseball players came from there—Curt Flood, Vada Pinson, Frank Robinson. They were great ballplayers, Hall of Fame ballplayers. Frank Robinson was the first black manager. They transformed the face of the game. There’s a whole East Bay history here that, with the decline of industry, faded away. I don’t know how many teams Oakland has now, but they used to have scores of youth baseball teams. Levels of participation for inner-city kids back then were much greater than they are now.

Oakland and San Francisco have been going through some pretty drastic transformations over the past few years.
Roscoe: I’m not happy with the changes. West Oakland has become gentrification central. I’ve seen a lot of long-term residents leave the community. There’s a housing crisis right now, and nobody’s really making a lot of noise about it. Out goes the old and in comes the new. In the last ten years, I’ve seen my neighborhood change dramatically. Houses that couldn’t be sold before because they’re in a drug zone are going like hotcakes right now. Ten years ago, the dogs in our neighborhood were pit bulls—now you see a lot of chihuahuas. [laughs] A lot of families that have been there for generations are leaving now. It’s breaking my heart.

Like is said in the movie, Roscoe’s work may not create a lot of jobs, but it gives people hope, which to me is more important than anything during this city transformation.
Roscoe: I enjoy what I do. I really enjoy working with these kids. Sometimes when I’m working I don’t realize that I’m giving these kids hope and building them into better human beings. I just enjoy it. We have our ups and downs—some days you just shake your head, others your heart explodes with joy. I had a kid who went 0-80 the entire season. He couldn’t hit nothin’. We get into our first playoff game, we’re down one run, there are two outs, and guess who comes to bat? Every kid on the team, the parents, they all went, “Oh no!” People started putting stuff in their bags, ready to leave. The kid gets a double, and we win the game. I live for this. He’ll carry that one occasion for the rest of his life.

Eugene: So many of the kids have been surrounded by death and hardship and enormous losses. That kid is never going to remember the 0-80. He’s going to remember that one double.

There were two moments in the movie that sort of stopped my heart. One was when Roscoe talks about a bullet getting lodged in his son’s mattress.
Roscoe: Shootings in my neighborhood were very common. Most of the houses had gotten shot up, but they never shot us up. The bullet in the mattress came from a shooting a block away. It traveled a whole block, came through my house, whizzed by my daughter’s head. If my son had been standing up, the bullet would have got him. It whizzed over his head and lodged into the mattress. We’re not gang bangers. We’re not involved in any drug trade, none of that. We just live in this community. It taught me how quickly our lives can be taken. You don’t have to be in the game to be a victim of it. I’m just glad nothing happened. We got rid of that mattress after we filmed that scene.

Eugene: His house got shot up half a dozen times while we were shooting. Just bullets flying in the neighborhood. His car got hit, the front of his house got hit.

Roscoe: It happens so much, you just put it in the back of your mind.

The second moment that got me is when you’re talking to one of the boys, Chris, a couple of years after the Cuba game. He’s getting straight A’s, and he says he’s doing it for his little sister to be a good role model. That’s amazing to me because it shows that Roscoe is molding these kids to be mentors themselves.
Eugene: That’s a deep bond he feels toward his little sister. I love it. He was a victim of all this stuff, and you see him begin to take agency and control his life. He’s doing good things.

Roscoe: I saw him just recently. He’ll come down to Ghost Town every now and then. It’s beautiful to watch Chris grow. You can see when some of these kids, because of the way they’re growing up, are going down that same road. I’m glad Chris played baseball for me, but I’m also glad his mom moved him out of Ghost Town. He was definitely on-track to be gang banging or following the steps of others he knew. He was definitely going down that path. To watch him grow and be this mentor to his sister meant a lot to me too. Me and Chris knocked heads a couple times, but he’s a wonderful kid.

Baseball coaches, in addition to the kids’ mentors and parents, are really ushering these boys into manhood via this sport everyone loves so much.
Eugene: I think baseball is a slow game, and to learn it requires a relationship with a coach. If it’s a good, positive coach like Roscoe who encourages effort, the kid learns that, if he keeps trying, he gets better. Roscoe’s strong and respected, which I think is essential to these kids. Not anybody could be a coach to these kids. It’s valuable that he’s somebody from the neighborhood who can relate. But baseball is such a joyous game. It’s not over in 60 minutes. There’s a promise of immortality—if you keep hitting, you could play forever. There’s an open-ended nature to it that’s quite beautiful.

Roscoe: I think baseball sets kids up for life. It gives them so many life skills. It’s a slow game, so you need to learn patience and perseverance. You also need social skills. If you want to be productive, you have to get along with each other. Baseball’s also a game of failure. If you hit three out of ten times, that’s a 300 hitter, which actually makes you a stud. But you failed the other seven times. I can’t go to my job and do three out of ten things well. [laughs] I won’t have a job much longer. Baseball teaches you to keep trying, how to deal with failure.

It’s a short-but-sweet episode this week as Bernard chats with filmmaker Anthony Lucero about his indie crowd-pleaser, East Side Sushi. Plus, listen in to find out why Bernard had to cut this week’s episode short and record under the influence of some yummy, mind-numbing drugs.

Subscribe to the Way Too Indiecast

• Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes
• Subscribe on Stitcher

Jeremy Ambers’ directorial debut, Impossible Light, chronicles the conception, design, and construction of The Bay Lights, the world’s most massive light sculpture. Ben Davis, the founder of Illuminate the Arts and the man who dreamed up the gargantuan project, teamed with artist Leo Villareal and a group of dedicated workers to string LED lights up and down the suspension cables of San Francisco’s utilitarian Bay Bridge, creating a giant, abstract, illuminated canvas for randomly generated light patterns to dance across.

The road to completion for The Bay Lights was fraught with challenges, however, from acquiring permits, to raising money, to battling the elements, and Ambers encountered roadblocks himself while capturing remarkable affair, filming the process and funding the film all by himself. (You can’t get much more indie than that!) Impossible Light is an inspiring story of an impossible dream made real through passion and perseverance.

In our video interview below, Ambers and Davis share their thoughts on why San Francisco is the perfect city for The Bay Lights, Leo Villareal’s expressionistic style, making decisions based on love, how the documentary itself helped the project to succeed, how the lights have affected the San Francisco community, and more.

Impossible Light screens May 5th (Exploratorium at Pier 15), May 7th (New People Cinema) as a part of SFIFF57, the Roxie Theater on May 8th for a one-night screening, and a weeklong run at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland starting May 9, with three screenings per night.

Video by Adam Clay

If You Build It, by Patrick Creadon, follows activist-designers Emily Pilloton and Matthew Miller as they set up Studio H–an innovative shop class engineered to teach students the fundamentals and virtues of humanitarian design–in Bertie County, the poorest county in North Carolina. Check out our chat with Pilloton about the film here.

Pilloton and Miller’s radical approach to education back in 2010 has now evolved into Project H, a non-profit currently partnered with REALM Charter School in Berkeley, California, where the Studio H program is taught to over 200 students (there were only ten in the first class in Bertie).

When the 108 eighth grade students at REALM were asked what they wanted to build for their senior project, they decided on building a school library, since they don’t have one. The library will house over 3,000 books and use stackable X-shaped shelves they designed themselves called “STAX”. They’ve chosen the name “X-Space” for the library (awesome), and have launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the project. It’s earned over $55,000 of its $75,000 goal in just a few days.

This past Saturday night at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, California, Joan Lubamersky presented Pilloton with a Certificate of Recognition from State Assemblyman Marc Levine’s office following a screening of If You Build It. Pilloton, a native of the area, was clearly touched. “I’ve been crying for the past 15 minutes,” she said with a proud smile, wiping tears away.

“I love architecture,” Pilloton said. “In my mind, there’s this venn diagram of math, social studies, history, reading…whatever. Architecture, for me, is the thing in the middle that makes everything else relevant. You can learn any of those subjects through beautiful architecture.”

For more information about Project H and the film, visit projecthdesign.org and ifyoubuilditmovie.com

“My biggest fear is for my mind to control me and not the other way around,”Chilean filmmaker Sebastian Silva told us at FilmHouse in San Francisco, when asked about the inspiration behind his 2013 psychological creeper Magic Magic, starring Juno Temple and Michael Cera. We spoke with him at the beginning of his tenure as the San Francisco Film Society’s 2014 artist in residence, which runs through the end of the week. Including student lectures, a screening of Magic Magic, an intimate artist talk, and filmmaker networking events, the residency program is an opportunity for emerging filmmakers to spread their knowledge across the Bay Area filmmaking community.

In Magic Magic, Temple plays Alicia, an American who travels to Chile to visit her cousin Sarah (Emily Browning). During her stay, Alicia’s mind begins to crack when her interactions with Sarah’s friends turn adversarial. The film also stars Silva’s brother, Agustin, Cera, and Catalina Sandino Moreno. Magic Magic is one of two collaborations Silva had with Cera last year, the other being kooky road trip movie Crystal Fairy, based on a real-life experience Silva had in with a girl named Crystal Fairy (played by Gaby Hoffmann).

During our chat we talked about Silva reconnecting with the real Crystal Fairy, the gift of spontaneity, his residence in San Francisco, questioning his craft, Juno Temple’s tortured acting style, and more.

For More info about Silva’s residence, visit sffs.org.

When I spoke to you last year at the San Francisco International Film Festival, you were hoping that the real Crystal Fairy was going to show up to the film’s screening that night, as you were led to believe she lived in the area.

Sebastian: She didn’t show up at that screening, but we eventually heard from her. Gaby emailed me that she had contacted the real Crystal Fairy and that she was living in Vermont. She sent me her number, and I was petrified. I wasn’t ready to talk to her, you know? I had no idea whether she liked the movie or not. I told Michael [Cera] that I had her number, and he said, “Let’s call her!” We called her on speakerphone, and she said she loved the movie. She freaked the fuck out.

She had no idea you made this movie about her, right?

Sebastian: No! I lost contact with her 13 years ago, but now she’s in my phone.

What I enjoy about this pair of movies you’ve made is that they depict Chile so differently.

Sebastian: One is “feel-good”, and one is “feel-bad”. Crystal Fairy is handheld, improvised, and Magic Magic is the most expensive movie I’ve made, with a rockstar DP, precious photography, artificial lighting…they were very different processes. They do share a lot of similarities; a girl comes to Chile in search of herself, and Michael plays an antagonist to them. There are a lot of similarities, but the movies make you feel very different.

You made Crystal Fairy fairly quickly, and filmed Magic Magic shortly thereafter. Do you think that, because the two processes were so disparate, you felt refreshed going into Magic Magic and that it helped that film?

Sebastian: Definitely. Crystal Fairy was the first movie where I explored improvisation so deeply. We had an outline, but we didn’t have a screenplay. I had to be so much more aware of my surroundings. I was making it on the go. You just feel so much more alive, and it was very challenging. That formula helped me to be more loose and open to change things in Magic Magic, which had a very rigid screenplay and shooting plan. Having shot Crystal Fairy so recently, it made me work more loosely. I’d delete entire scenes, shoot scenes on the front porch instead of the dining room. That spontaneity was a gift from Crystal Fairy, and I’m treasuring it.

I love the chemistry Michael has with Gaby and Juno, but I actually particularly enjoy the dynamic between he and your brother, Agustin.

Sebastian: It’s a great dynamic. He’s a good kid. Such a natural. He and Michael are great friends.

Gaby and Juno both give very intense performances, with Gaby’s character being an extremely positive person and Juno’s being a deeply tortured soul. 

Sebastian: Gaby’s a bit older than Juno, and Juno seems to be a more sensitive, fragile creature. For her, I think this character was a little bit of a spiritual burden, and she was sometimes overwhelmed by it. I’d give her directions to cry, act scared, act insecure, and it would bring her spirit down. Gaby’s character was ridiculous. She was preaching shit that she wasn’t doing herself, a forgivable hypocrite. They are very different women doing very different roles. It’s hard to compare them, in that sense. Gaby is one of those actresses who does a character. She doesn’t become Crystal Fairy. She’s doing a job. On the other hand, Juno started suffering like her character Alicia. When I asked her to cry, she couldn’t stop crying afterwards. She’d go to places that weren’t very healthy to get the emotions I was asking for.

You’re going to be here in San Francisco for a while as the SFFS artist in residence. You have a lot of activities lined up, including lectures for students. Have you ever spoken to students in this kind of forum before?

Sebastian: No, never. But I’ve done a lot of Q&A’s and press. It’s kind of the same. I didn’t prepare or anything. I wouldn’t know how to start a lecture. I’d rather go “Crystal Fairy” on them and improvise the lectures.

Would a younger you have enjoyed having access to a filmmaker like this?

Sebastian: It would have been nice to hear about stuff that isn’t easy, for instance. Tips I know are very useful for if you’re making your first feature, or writing your first script.

Do you think that watching a lot of movies keeps your filmmaking skills sharp?

Sebastian: I don’t really watch a lot of movies. I’m not a cinephile. I even question my craft every day. “What am I doing? Should I just paint?” It’s become my life and my craft, but I don’t completely love it. I find it very superficial at times. I have a love-hate relationship with making movies. I guess some filmmakers are sharper that way. I remember a Chilean filmmaker telling me, “If you want to shoot a car scene, just watch how Quentin Tarantino does it and copy it!” I’d never copy something. If I have to shoot a car scene, I’d figure it out on my own.

I love Michael’s character in Magic Magic, Brink.

Sebastian: He’s the best. I love Brink, too. Michael and I got so addicted to him. He’s such a closeted gay. Very creepy. I love him.

Was it your idea from the beginning to dye his hair dark?

Sebastian: Yeah. I wanted to transform him. I asked him to gain a lot of weight, but he said, “No fucking way.”

Tell me about your next project, Nasty Baby.

Sebastian: We’re locking picture at the end of March. We shot it in my neighborhood in New York, and I’m starring as the main character with Kristen Wiig and Tunde Adebimpe, the lead singer of TV On The Radio. I think we did a really good job. It’s very naturalistic and funny, but it gets a little dark. It’s not a comedy, it’s not a drama. It’s just a piece of life that goes wrong. By the end it becomes a sort of thriller.

This is your first time starring and directing, so that’s another unique filmmaking experience under your belt.

Sebastian: You want to keep it fresh, so that’s why I decided to act. It’s a very small movie so there was no risk. Co-starring with Kristen was very comfortable. She’s a great improvisor and made me feel very safe. The DP I work with on most of my films came from Chile, so I felt at home. Very comfortable. But it was very overwhelming to be directing and acting. I had no monitor to see what I was doing, see the takes. I had to just trust my co-actors. I told them, “If I’m embarrassing myself, just let me know I’m doing a shitty job.”

In Along the Roadside, the debut feature by Zoran Lisinac, a young man from the Bay Area (Iman Crosson) and a colorblind German tourist (Angelina Häntsch) accompany each other on a road trip to a big music festival in Southern California, learning about themselves and each other as their vastly different cultural backgrounds clash.

The film made its North American premiere at this year’s Mill Valley Film Festival, where we spoke with Zoran and his brother, Vladimir (who produced the film), about writing the screenplay at a hotel desk, moving to California from Serbia, the beauty of diversity, the advantages of casting Youtube stars in the film, how they plan to explore Youtube culture further, and more.

Along the Roadside screens this Saturday, November 23rd, at the Roxie in San Francisco as a part of the San Francisco Film Society’s ‘Cinema by the Bay’ series.

What inspired you to make Along the Roadside?
Zoran: We both grew up in Serbia during the wars and economic collapse, so coming here was a journey on it’s own. Once we got to California, I was completely fascinated by the diversity that I found here and the tolerance that is probably unrivaled in the world in terms of people who look, sound, think, and act different. Somehow, everybody seems to coexist and live in harmony. To me, that was a big internal motivator to come up with a story that exposes California, racisms ugly face, and kind of sends a message. We come from the Eastern Bloc, where there’s some serious growing up to do. That was one of the motifs.

So, you built the story around that idea.
Zoran: Yeah. The main character is a black guy from Oakland, and we pair him up with a colorblind German tourist. Her being colorblind is a metaphor; she’s the only pure character in the film. All these other characters that they encounter along the way kind of bite at each other, but that’s just one aspect of the story.

How long have you lived in California?
Zoran: 8 1/2 years. I didn’t speak much English when I came here, though.

You learn quick!
Vladimir: We learned to write in English, which is a whole different challenge! First, you need to learn to speak it, then you need to learn to write it. Then, you need to learn to write well, which is a whole new ballgame. I admire Zoran. He excelled fast and put in the time. Screenwriting is a process that takes work, dedication, and experience. It takes a routine, and I think he found it.

Zoran: I found it in a hotel. I wrote the script at the front desk of a hotel, while working. I had all this down time; on the busiest days, you’d put in about two hours of accumulative work. The guys next to you is on Facebook, the other guy is gambling online, so it’s like, “Fuck it.” I downloaded Final Draft and started banging away. The managers were super supportive and I didn’t have to hide anything.

How does it feel to have your film playing at the Mill Valley Film Festival?
Zoran: I love it, and I’m very honored. It legitimizes our effort, and it feels great to be in the company of these other films.

Vladimir: We’re extremely proud, because the film is very personal. We wanted to shed light on the place that we call home, Serbia. Like Zoran said earlier, it has a little growing up to do in terms of being progressive and liberal, accepting different cultures, ethnicities, backgrounds, genders, you name it. This is one place on our planet that has growing up to do, but we’re very familir with it and wanted to show our film with a Serbian star in it and how he understood where we’re coming from and came to America to work on the film for free. He really wanted to help us, understood our point of view, and understood the screenplay. He wanted to help spread the message in Serbia. I think his actions speak volumes. It all started with Zoran’s idea.

Zoran: That’s just one side of the whole story. Judging from what we’ve said, you’d think we’d made a fucking documentary! It’s just one of the layers. This is a story about two people from different parts of the world who cross paths on a journey of self-discovery to a big music festival in California. It takes place over the course of 48 hours, and it takes on issues, like taking life on it’s own terms. A lot of people seem to not do that, therefore, they escape it. They run away from it. I deals with that aspect of character internal conflict.

Living in the Bay Area all my life, it’s surprising to me how little this community is represented in cinema. No one shoots in Oakland. Hell, a lot of people have no idea what Oakland’s like. But, your main character is from Oakland.
Vladimir: Another underlying theme is fatherhood and what it really takes to want fatherhood. It speaks to the staggering number of single mothers, particularly in Oakland. That’s why we put our main guy there. He’s at a crossroads; he’s always wanted a certain lifestyle, and when this big news is broken in his face–that his girlfriend is pregnant–he completely flips and doesn’t know what to do. He wasn’t ready for that. He needs to let go, accept some responsibility, grow up, and want to become a father. It’s a big deal to me. I’m a father, and I understand that. We wanted to shed light on it. African-American culture in the States, especially in the city of Oakland…the statistics show that there are way too many single mothers struggling to bring up their children. Fathers are simply goners. We wanted to say, it doesn’t have to be like that. You can be present. You don’t have to marry the woman, you don’t have to be the greatest dad on the planet, but you need to be there.

Zoran: It comes down to accepting life on its terms, not trying to set your own rules. It’s kind of impossible. That’s summed up in the ending of the film.
This is a great moment for you guys, screening here at the festival. Looking forward, are you excited about your next project? Do you have a lot of ideas swimming around your heads?

Zoran: We stumbled onto this film with this unique (by other people’s account) situation where we cast a number of Youtube stars in the film along with some mainstream stars. It gives us a prominent social media presence. With today’s landscape of indie movies, that means everything. It’s really coveted to have 300,000 views on Youtube without spending money on advertising. It’s interesting. We dipped our toes into this Youtube culture, and in our second film, which we plan on hopefully shooting in January or February, we plan to cannonball into that sphere of digital media. As I like to say, bloggers are carving into digital stone for our descendants to interpret. At this point, they’re expressionists. People don’t know how to pin them. They’re not making short films, per se, and they’re not making features. It’s new. It’s driven by pure passion, and it’s definitely found its response globally. We think it’s precious.

So, your casting of Youtube personalities in this film was strategic, in terms of marketing.
Vladimir: Very much so. There’s only maybe one other film that’s done this, but it’s a horror genre film. It doesn’t have a social side to it, and it’s more for fun. But, it’s done well. What we’re trying to do is be very strategic with it, longterm. With this film and the following two films we have in development, we want to make a big splash with it. We want to shed light on the talent that aren’t mainstream actors in Hollywood. Folks on Youtube are extremely talented, not only at creating content, but at several other things: they’re courageous; they do editing; they do marketing; they do business. They do everything.

Zoran: Most importantly, they build a relationship with their fans.

Vladimir: Exactly.

Zoran: That’s the future.

Vladimir: We like the direction we’re headed, and we’re excited.

For more info, visit www.metakwon.com

Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave, and the Unexpected Guest

Of all the films in the exceedingly strong MVFF lineup, none have generated the momentum and near-universal acclaim of Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, based on the autobiography of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841. McQueen and stars Chiwetel Ejiofor (who plays Northup) and Lupita Nyong’o took the stage in front of a full house at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center to answer the questions of the audience, who were still reeling after seeing the gut-wrenching film.

“I wanted to make a film about slavery because I felt, within the cannon of film, this particular subject hadn’t been tackled,” professed a straight-faced McQueen. “Everybody knows Anne Frank’s diary. Every school should have 12 Years a Slave (the book) on their curriculum. That’s my aim with this film.”

During the Q&A session, something very special happened, though few noticed it. The mobile microphone that had been floating around the theater from person to person wound up in the hands of Fruitvale Station director and Bay Area native, Ryan Coogler, one of the brightest young directors in the game. Funny thing is, very few audience members seemed to recognize Coogler, though he didn’t seem to pay that any mind at all. With wide-eyed curiosity, eagerness, and humility, Coogler–amongst a sea of weighty questions about slavery–chose instead to ask McQueen about filmmaking technique, specifically his proclivity for doing one-shot takes as opposed to traditional coverage.

“I don’t do coverage,” McQueen explained to the intently focused Coogler. “For me, it’s a waste of time because I know what I want.” It’s this confident, assertive, no-bull attitude that so many great auteurs share, and in that moment between McQueen and Coogler, I could sense the future of cinema getting just a little bit brighter.

A Dark Teen Idol Returns with a Powerhouse Performance

No red carpet arrival at MVFF could match the energy of Jared Leto’s. The most likely explanation for the fervor is that he’s one of the dreamiest cinema dreamboats of the past 20 years, but in his new film, Dallas Buyers Club (his first film in four or five years), he proves once again that he’s much too talented to be reduced to just another pretty face.

Based on a true story, the film (you know, the one Matthew McConaughey lost a bunch of weight for) follows Ron Woodruff (McConaughey), a bull-riding man’s man who was diagnosed as being HIV positive and subsequently waged pharmaceutical war on the FDA and other companies in the ’80s in hopes to make alternative treatments available for HIV-positive patients. Leto plays Rayon, a transsexual, HIV-positive business partner of Ron’s who’s got sass and hustle for days. Though McConaughey is likely to get an Academy Award nomination for his turn as Woodruff, Leto is equally deserving of a supporting nod, with a performance so lived-in and remarkable it’ll make you wish he’d quit 30 Seconds to Mars (that rock band of his) and come back to acting for us full-time.

Leto stayed in character even when off-set, walking around with Rayon’s leggings, lipstick, and clothes on. “It was interesting how people treated me differently,” Leto said in the post-screening Q&A session. “Every glance somebody gave me, every time I had an encounter, every time a grip offered his hand when I stepped out of the van…it ultimately helped me deliver a much better performance.”

John Wells Turns the Tables

One of the best things about film festivals are the Q&A’s; everyday people like you and me get to pry the brains of some of the most talented filmmakers in the business. Director John Wells, however, flipped the script on the MVFF Q&A crowd–who had just finished watching his new film, August: Osage County–by asking them questions.

“Did you think it was funny?” Wells asked, earnestly, which was met by an emphatic, unanimous “yes” and a smattering of applause from the smiling festival-goers. Wells was likely concerned whether the film’s humor came through or not because the film–based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name by Tracy Letts, who also wrote the screenplay–revolves around a family tragedy and crises. The feuding women of the Weston family–played by Meryl Streep as the drug-addled matriarch, and Julia Roberts, Julianne Nicholson and Juliette Lewis as Streep’s daughters–are brought together after years of separation to their old Oklahoma home after receiving devastating news about their father, Beverly (Sam Shepard).

Wells went further with his questioning, asking the audience members who were familiar with the play if there was something they missed from the stage version that he cut from his screen adaptation. When several audience members voiced their preference for the play’s ending (which is only slightly different), Wells admitted their feedback could have an effect on the final cut of the film. “I actually have to lock the film by Monday or Tuesday next week, which is why I’m asking these questions!”

When asked about the on-screen relationship between Streep and Roberts and how they approached their roles as mother and daughter, Wells explained just how significant their mother-daughter chemistry is to the story. “One of the themes of the film is, for better or for worse, we become our parents. We reach a moment in our adult lives at which we have to decide what we’re going to use and what we’re not going to use.”

Blues Bad-Asses Rock Sweetwater

In celebration of late Blues guitar legend Mike Bloomfield and the new film detailing his life, Sweet Blues (which played at MVFF), music fans piled into Mill Valley’s historic Sweetwater Music Hall to listen to some of the baddest Blues on the planet played by some veteran virtuosos and some old friends of Bloomfield’s. Amongst the music marvels were Conan O’Brien cohort Jimmy Vivino, Bay Area Blues veteran Elvin Bishop, and harmonica master Charlie Musselwhite. The tiny, excellent-sounding venue was packed shoulder to shoulder with elated music lovers swaying as one, a perfect way to unwind and a perfect lead-in to what’s sure to be a killer final two days at the festival.

Stay tuned to Way Too Indie for all the news coming out of the festival this weekend, including coverage of the directors panel (Ryan Coogler, Steve McQueen, JC Chandor, Scott Cooper, John Wells), capsule reviews, interviews, photo galleries, and much more!