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“Out of Omaha” aka “California Dreaming” project adds to area’s evolving indie filmmaking scene

January 14, 2012 5 comments

Several years ago I did this story for The Reader (www.thereader.com) about an independent film that shot in the city where I live, Omaha, Neb.  At the time the project went under the title Out of Omaha, only the film ended up getting released as California Dreaming.  I’ve never seen it and I guess I don’t much care to since the reviews I find are mostly negative, though I do admit to a parochial interest in catching views of my burg on the big screen.  Movies, indie or studio, small or large, rarely get made here, and if it wasn’t for Alexander Payne this place would truly be off the radar of filmmakers.  The feature film production pace did pick up for a time in the late 1990s and early 2000s and probably peaked right around the time this movie shot and this story appeared (2006). Nik Fackler revived things with his Lovely, Still a few years ago. But it’s been pretty quiet since.  I wrote the story in the hopeful but misguided spirit that a lively feature filmmaking scene was upon us here, but  it just hasn’t been so, and it likely won’t be as long as tax incentives are not offered to film companies and as long as Omaha colleges and universities fail to offer full-fledged film programs. California Dreaming-Out of Omaha writer-director, Linda Voorhees has family connections to Nebraska and she counts as her mentor native and resident Lew Hunter, whose Superior, Neb. screenwriting colony she read and workshopped her then fledgling script at.  This blog features a profile I wrote of Hunter after spending a few days at his colony.

 

“Out of Omaha” aka “California Dreaming” project adds to area’s evolving indie filmmaking scene

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally appeared in The Reader (www.thereader.com)

 

As further proof of the robust cinema scene evolving in Omaha, where little niche features regularly shoot after years of film inactivity here, there’s Out of Omaha, a modestly-budgeted indie with a “name” cast. The NoHo Films International venture was scheduled to wrap principal photography October 12 following a 20-day shoot.

Second unit work may continue through week’s end on the pic, described as a character-based comedy played straight about a dysfunctional clan whose aborted efforts to leave Omaha for a family vacation open old wounds and spur new values.

Like most such projects, this one has Nebraska ties. Writer-director Linda Voorhees, a native Californian and a UCLA visiting film professor, has relatives here. She also teaches at screenwriting-meister Lew Hunter’s script colony in Superior, Neb. She’s best known for the television movies Crazy from the Heart (wrote) and Two Mothers for Zachary (wrote and directed).

She’s been coming here since she was a child to visit her aunt and uncle, Martha and Larry West of Bellevue, and her cousins. She even used their homes as key film locations. She said her familiarity with the place and her warm regard for it and its people, is why she views her film as “a valentine to the city of Omaha.”

“I really, truly, and this not bullshit, have very positive feelings about this place,” she said. “I see it as a very sophisticated city and I see it incorrectly interpreted by people I meet who haven’t been to Omaha. I happen to think this city has a lot to offer. I’m very impressed with theater here. I’m very impressed with the music scene. I love downtown and Old Town (the Old Market).”

Out of Omaha centers on the Gainors, an upper middle class suburban family controlled by wife-mother Ginger, played by Lea Thompson (Caroline in the City), and indulged by husband-father Stu, played by Dave Foley (Kids in the Hall). Their 15-year-old daughter, played by Bellevue native Lindsay Seim, is full of teenage angst and rebellion. Seim said her character is “the catalyst” for a lot of the things that go awry on the journey.” She said her younger brother in the story is “hiding behind his Game Boy…trying to just go with the flow.”

The 40ish Ginger has regrets about past chances lost and aches for what’s beyond her hometown borders. Her family resists being force-fed her bitter dreams.

“It’s about her yearning for something bigger, not realizing that wherever she goes she’s going to be unhappy. It has nothing to do with Omaha. It has to do with her own sense of discontentment,” Voorhees said.

When Ginger pushes her family to ditch its traditional Branson vacation for a California RV trip she hopes relives an adolescent idyll, the family’s cracked seams come apart to reveal all the emotional stuffing inside. Their journey, which never makes it outside Omaha due to a series of family meltdowns, leads them right back where they started, only with a new understanding of each other.

Aiding and abetting the turmoil are the flighty Porters (Vicky Lewis and Ethan Phillips) and snobbish Aunt Connie (Patricia Richardson of West Wing).

By the end, Ginger realizes “what’s right here and wonderful in her own life and her own world. There’s a sense of there’s-no-place-like-home with this,” ala The Wizard of Oz, “but we’re doing a comedy version and without the music,” Voorhees said. Omaha’s virtues, she added, are intrinsic to this awakening.

“I do see Omaha as an arena and a setting, but also sort of as a terrific character.”

If the film is, as she said, “a big, sloppy, wet kiss to Omaha,” than it’s also a bow to the workshop process at Lew Hunter’s writing colony.

She calls Hunter, himself a longtime UCLA film instructor and author of popular books on the screenwriting trade, “my mentor” and “the one that taught me how to write screenplays.” She trusts his opinion enough that she first read her Out of Omaha script, then entitled Omahaulin’, at Hunter’s conference last year.

“I read the first 30 pages there just to see how it went and Lew gave me the first critique on it. You can’t ask for a better assessment of your writing and where you stand with it. He said, essentially, ‘All systems are go.’”

The colony, a pastoral workshop setting that unfolds in restored Victorian homes, is what brought together Out of Omaha producer Patricia Payne, a native Australian with decades of experience in the Aussie and American film industries, with Voorhees. Payne was at that initial reading of Voorhees’ script and through subsequent meetings with her “friend and colleague” she came to the conclusion “this is going to be good and this is something I want to be involved in.”

 

 

 

A film with Omaha in the title still doesn’t have to be shot here. So, why was it?

“It actually would have been cheaper for me it we’d shot it in L.A.,” Payne said, “because I wouldn’t need to fly actors and crew in here, but Linda and I both decided we wanted the authenticity, and we’ve got it, and it’s worth it.”

Voorhees said that she, along with cinematographer James Bartle and crew, have worked hard to capture Omaha’s essence on screen. “We’ve tried to get the shots that really convey the city, the heart and pulse in a true way, not in a cliched way, and I do believe we’ve been finding that.”

Rounding out the film’s local flavor is co-producer Dana Altman, president of North Sea Films in Omaha. His feature credits include directing The Private Public. Altman was referred to Payne by native son Dan Mirvish, the founder of Slam Dance and the director of festival favorite Omaha, the Movie, which Altman produced.

Only greenlighted recently, the project started shooting its summer-set story in late September. The production hauled ass to avoid losing the season.

“Logistically, the city’s been outstanding in the level of support they’ve given,” Altman said, “and they just always seem to be.”

Then there’s 2004 University of Nebraska theater grad Lindsay Seim, cast on the coast after the filmmakers auditioned several actresses there and in Omaha. The L.A.-based Seim has appeared in a couple smaller indie films, but ranks this as “the one with, by far, the most legitimate chance of going somewhere.”

Ironically, Seim’s mother, Sharon Seim, was hired as the film’s location director a few weeks before Lindsay was cast. Since retiring from the Bellevue Public Schools a few years ago, Sharon’s worked as location director for Altman’s North Sea Films, a commercial film/video house. Sharon’s husband and Lindsay’s father, Don Seim, was recruited as a transportation wrangler on the shoot.

“It’s been kind of neat having us all work on this,” said Lindsay, who plans returning one day to make a film with her roommate, an aspiring writer-director. “It’s really the people that make Omaha a good place to do an independent film. It has to be such a group effort and you really have to lean on people. Money can’t be the driving force behind it. It has to be heart. And the people here are so welcoming.”

The filmmakers agree, saying Omaha’s well-suited to follow the Robert Rodriguez paradigm of using friends and culling favors. Voorhees said, “I really see a push of independent film here…I hope our project continues the momentum. Omaha deserves it and has a rich talent pool to make it happen.” Or, as Payne put it, “It felt good to come here and do it, and do it now. That’s what said hello to me.”

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Categories: Film, Lew Hunter, Movies, Omaha, Writing Tags: , , , , ,

Cuba’s “Illogical Temple” the subject of student Academy Award-winning film by UNL students

January 14, 2012 2 comments

A fine Student Academy Award-winning documentary made several years ago by University of Nebraska-Lincoln students, Cuba: The Illogical Temple, is the focus of this story for The Reader (www.thereader.com).  If you get a chance to see the film on your local educational television or public access channels, I highly recommend it.

 

 

 

 

Cuba’s “Illogical Temple” the subject of student Academy Award-winning film by UNL students

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally published in The Reader (www.thereader.com)

The illogical nature of Cuba is explored in a Student Academy Award-winning documentary made by area student journalists whose reporting odyssey there reveals a people in love with their country despite its oppression. The risk of practicing independent journalism in Cuba is dramatically discovered by the students, who find some sources are government spies and one reporter profiled is among many dissidents later jailed.

The documentary is the result of an ambitious in-depth reporting project that sent about a dozen University of Nebraska-Lincoln student journalists to Miami and Cuba last year. The film offers a micro-macro view of the small island nation that’s loomed so large in U.S. politics and in Cuban exiles’ hearts and minds. The reporting team conducted more than 180 interviews with a cross-section of laborers, journalists, politicos and business leaders for the honored film, Cuba: The Illogical Temple, and a Pulitzer-nominated magazine, Cuba: An Elusive Truth. The film also won the national Eric Sevareid Award.

The film is the first UNL entry to win an award in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ national competition. The hour-long film by Lindsey (Kealy) Gill and David Pittock is a complex meditation on the rich dichotomy of the last Communist hold-out in the Western Hemisphere. About the award-winning film, Gill said, “I guess I’m most proud of the sheer magnitude of what we took on in reporting on such an amazing, strange country.” She and Pittock were in the Los Angeles area last week for film industry-related activities culminating in the Student Oscar ceremonies on Sunday, June 13 at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. That night, the pair learned their film won a bronze medal in the documentary category and a corresponding cash prize of $2,000. The silver and gold medals (with cash prizes of $3,000 and $5,000) went to filmmakers from the University of California-Berkeley.

An award can create buzz in the industry. Already, such major film companies as Lion’s Gate and First Run Features have expressed interest in seeing the film. Gill and Pittock hope it’s selected to play a major festival, where it could get picked up for theatrical/video release. Some PBS stations have already acquired it.

As the Cuba project’s only broadcast majors, Gill and Pittock were its designated filmmakers. They collaborated in producing, directing, shooting, editing and writing the film. Gill, a UNL grad, is now a KMTV Channel 3 associate news producer, while UNL grad student Pittock is finishing up his master’s. Both want filmmaking in their future. “Travel the world and make documentaries. That would probably be my dream job. I love the fact it combines filmmaking and journalism,” Gill said.

“This experience makes me want to do more. To see the world and to document people, their lives and their personal stories. I would love to work on a narrative film. It’s opened up a lot of doors,” Pittock said.

The film explores Cuba from many perspectives, including that of rank and file Cuban nationals and government officials, Cuban exiles, U.S. officials and the students themselves. For most of the students, who studied the country’s history and culture prior to the trip, this was their first time in a nation with a state controlled media and where the penalty for crossing the party line can be grave.

The oppressive Castro regime is an ever-present character in the film. The high risk run by reporters daring to tell the truth is personally brought home when one of two independent journalists profiled turns out to be a spy. Upon their return home, the students discover the man posing as a journalist works for the government and is responsible for denouncing the other reporter as part of a large roundup of dissidents that occured after the UNL group left. The reporter who was betrayed by his supposed colleague is now serving a jail term of 20-plus years.

“That came as a huge shock,” said Gill. “It was appalling. Heartbreaking really, because the journalist now imprisoned was such a nice man. We were in his home. When we see people like him being persecuted for what we do on a daily basis, it’s sad. We take our freedom of speech so much for granted here.” Fellow student journalist Jill Zeman says in the film, “It was always in the back of my mind…if I use this person’s name or face, they could be thrown in jail. For once, I could see how my journalism would affect one person’s life. That’s a lot of pressure to have.”

Following their return, the students also uncover they were targets of Cuba’s insidious disinformation-agitprop campaign. Gill says in the film, “We thought we were getting the truth in Cuba and most of the time we did, but it was frustrating when we got back and found out that some people had outright lied to us. Even government officials. We knew the higher up government officials were feeding us a line. They told us a lot of the things they probably thought we wanted to hear.”

Much of the film focuses on Cuba’s stark contrasts. In one sequence, Cuban exile Felix Dominguez, now living in Norfolk, Neb., tells of the harrowing journey he made by boat in fleeing dictatorship for democracy. He saw many others who did not make it. His story is contrasted with that of his daughter, Jenny, whom he left behind. Now a single mother, Jenny lives in relative Havana squalor but fiercely defends her nation and lauds the free education and health care it provides. However, the film asserts nothing is really free in Cuba, where wages are so low that nearly everybody works scama, hustles or the black market on the side.

Despite crushing poverty, strict food rationing and pervasive material shortages made worse by the long-standing U.S. trade embargo, the film shows Cubans’ spirit and passion in their celebrations, warmth and wry wit. Then there’s the hypocrisy of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro criticizing the inequities of capitalism while welcoming North American-European tourist trade whose dollars create a cruel class system of tourist and non-tourist workers.

Everyday Cubans are seen and heard guardedly telling American visitors the harsh facts of life. The face of a disenchanted government worker is blurred to protect his identity. The palpable fear of speaking one’s mind is embodied in one man who, looking into the camera, says in hushed tones, “Your tourist guide was right behind you. Maybe I’m telling you things he don’t want you to know.”

The “guide” is among the functionaries assigned the Americans in restricting them to the official red carpet itinerary, complete with its press conferences and photo ops. Despite pressures to tow the line, Pittock says he and others managed to “go off and do our own thing” — interviewing people in the streets or in private homes.

The comments of an artist identified only as Gregorio inspire the film’s title and theme. “Cuba is an illogical temple,” he says. “You have to be Cuban to see it. It doesn’t make any sense, but I love my country.” Project participant Matthew Hansen, now a Lincoln Journal-Star reporter, says in the film that to grasp Cuba is “to be able to see the illogical temple. Things can be bad in a place… poor…its people oppressed. But that guy Gregorio still loved Cuba. He didn’t want to leave. He wouldn’t leave. In a sense, that’s illogical. Well, it’s not supposed to make sense. It’s about something deeper than logic or reason. It’s about loving Cuba.”

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Categories: Documentaries, Film, Journalism, Media, Politics, Social Justice, University of Nebraska, Writing Tags: , ,
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