In a movie about servants, is it possible to take the
masters’ side? Probably not. But that doesn’t make another story about
aristocratic anomie versus proletariat pluck the solution, and that’s exactly
what director Philippe Le Guay has done. Accomplished, well-acted and
sporadically charming, The Women on the 6th Floor is ultimately too predictable and inoffensive to ever make us care.

Jean-Louis Joubert (Fabrice Luchini) is a stockbroker in
1960s Paris. His grandfather was a broker, his father was a broker and one day,
he hopes, his two children will also be brokers. His wife, Suzanne (Sandrine
Kierlain), shops. A long-employed maid runs the house but when she gets in a
fight with Suzanne, her status as “part of the family” is revealed as what we
suspect it to be: a lie. The Jouberts are well-meaning and vaguely
forward-thinking but deferential to society’s rules.

This all changes with María (Natalia Verbeke). A beautiful
young refugee from Franco Spain, she is something of a housekeeping genius:
laundry done daily, sheets folded just so, Jean-Louis’s egg cooked at exactly
three-and-a-half minutes. She also has brilliant timing. Jean-Louis’s comment
about France’s tricky financial situation elicits a deadpan comparison to Spain’s—it’s
hard on business when Franco kills everyone. His compliment on her bathroom
cleaning gets how she prefers doing it here than at home—hers is shared with a
floor of Spanish maids. These are the women of the sixth floor, one above the
Jouberts, and when Jean-Paul finally visits he gives the film its most earnest
and most hackneyed line: “These women are living right over our heads, and we
don’t know the least thing about them.”

What follows is entirely expected and occasionally amusing.
Jean-Louis befriends the maids and scandalizes society. He pulls favor to get
some better housing and helps them escape from de facto slavery. “You can pool
your savings and buy stocks,” he says. “Stock? Like extra ingredients in a
kitchen?”

Carmen Maura and Lola Dueñas adroitly play supporting roles
with refreshing energy but by this time the plot has become too staid.
Jean-Louis has started falling in love with María and even that twist uses a
familiar trope. María, it turns out, was rich prior to Franco. The peasant girl
is an aristocrat after all.

Alain Corneau was remarkable. Sixty-seven years old, dying
from cancer, not only did his style remain as rigorous and lucid as ever but
with Love Crime, he tapped into adolescent truths inaccessible to
directors half his age. The story’s first half is an office drama between
Isabella (Ludivine Sagnier), a young executive who despite her brilliance is
hopelessly innocent, and her boss Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas), who steals
Isabella’s ideas. Her colleague and lover Philippe (Patrick Mille) is a callous
coward. And she’s happy with that because everyone likes her.

All the while Corneau perfectly conveys the corporate
milieu. “Let’s double check with HQ.” “Profits are going through the roof!”
“Get me that brief, now.” In period pieces like All the Mornings of the
World or Fort Saganne, Corneau proved that he was a master of the vivid
detail, but here his approach is the exact opposite: comic generalities. By
broadening his scope, he allows us to focus on Isabella’s mortification.

Late at night, she has a financial epiphany and while
immediately executing it forgets to credit to her boss. Big mistake. Because
this is a French film, Corneau has previously interjected a lesbian undertone,
and Christine takes the neglect as proof her love will never be requited, and
turns on her. There are recriminations and fractured alliances. Threatening to
turn in Philippe for a jointly committed financial crime, she gets him to
schedule a midnight office tryst and then stand Isabella up. A security camera
records the tearful aftermath and Christine includes it in an ostensibly
lighthearted video of overstressed executives. It’s enough to drive someone to
murder and that’s exactly what Isabella does.

Corneau got his start directing simple, effective cop movies
and Love Crime’s second half is sort of
a return to form. It’s a police procedural, but instead of whodunit it’s more
of a howdunit. We see Isabella meticulously commit the act and meticulously
frame herself. What’s her plan? By lining up all the evidence to point to her,
she hopes that when her intricate plan methodically overturns she’ll seem all
the more innocent. It’s a plan that risks descending into absurdity but
provides for an immensely entertaining movie.

This semi-satisfying scene is one of the better ones in a film that aims to be both funny and philosophical and succeeds at neither. The first half follows the independent stories of Alice and psychotherapist Xavier Demestre (Bouli Lanners). Alice is the consummate professional; as we watch her fulfill eclectic fantasies—the scenes are always shot using the same comedic formula, a bizarre preparation followed by the postcoital punchline—we get the impression nothing will faze her. Strange sex doesn’t affect her everyday demeanor and she thinks of clients as less than people. She nicknames the hypothetical john who’ll enable a fully decorated home “her chandelier.”

Xavier, on the other hand, is a disaster. His practice is losing clients. His marriage is about to implode. He doesn’t even attempt to feign stability and one patient declares himself cured because compared to his doctor’s, his own depression is negligible. At this point, still without a real narrative, Labrune tries to create meaning through a series of heavy-handed
comparisons between prostitution and therapy. Both are one-on-one transactions. Both take place in private rooms. Both require clients to pay even if they’re unsatisfied. But directors have been critiquing psychotherapy for over half a
century now and if the angle is that psychotherapy has sexual undertones, then the idea is even older. Freud was there at the turn of the century.

Eventually, Alice and Xavier’s stories intertwine when Xavier wants a prostitute and Alice wants a therapist. Over the phone, they both unwittingly accept the other as a client. It’s a coincidence that could provide some entertaining (if uninspired) comedy, but then Labrune refuses to allow it. When they meet, the two seem only capable of talking about what this film points out ad nauseum—how their professions are similar.

This is unfortunate. Huppert’s performance is strong and Labrune’s previous films show she’s not without talent. You wish she hadn’t so stubbornly adhered to one tiresome idea. Otherwise, that talent would have come through.

The recent boom of superhero movies has led to the
development of a subgenre: the superhero parody. And, at least at first, Leon
Ford’s debut feature looks like one of these uninspired comedies. Griff (Ryan
Kwanten, True Blood’s Jason Stackhouse)
is a crime fighter with problems. He works an office job at boring WW
Enterprises; his colleagues pick on him; police want to end to his vigilante
justice.

The film’s beginning is filled with effective but typical
jokes. Alone, Griff says things like, “It’s not a choice. It’s a responsibility,”
and in crowds, “Never fear, Griff is here,” a phrase he practices at home. He
spends a lot of time on rooftops. You wait for the jokes to get lame, but they
never do; they never get that funny either. Instead they start feeling… weird.

When Tony (Toby Schmitz), the main bully at work, becomes
implacable, Griff’s boss (Marshall Napier) tells him to become more invisible.
Griff doesn’t take it in the social sense. Invisible! That’ll be his new power.
He researches esoteric molecules online and then enters a hardware store. “Do
you know anything about invisible ink?” He leaves with a box of baking soda and
then mixes it with lemons in his bathtub.

This DIY incompetence, along with Griff’s pervasive
awkwardness, should tip off moviegoers to the truth: it’s all imaginary.
Without framing it as a miserable twist, Ford coolly reveals that his
protagonist is a 28-year-old man trapped in a 10-year-old’s fantasy, and what
at first seemed to be a superhero film is actually a melancholy portrait of the
maladjusted.

We wonder if this pathetic man will ever find happiness, and
a chance encounter with Melody (Maeve Dermody) suggests he might. Melody is
sort-of dating Griff’s brother (Patrick Bammall)—whose nice but fatuous mien
represents everything enervating about real life—but she is just as strange as
Griff. She conducts street surveys about street surveys. She protests protests.
An experimentalist, she is currently testing a theory by running into walls.

A wonderful piece of nerd courtship follows. Melody shows up
on Griff’s doorstep and he summons the courage to ask if she wants a glass of
water. “I’ll be right back,” he says, slamming the door and then reopening it,
glass of water in hand. “Isn’t it funny to think I just poured oxygen and
hydrogen into this hole in my face and soon it’ll be part of my body?” she
says. “That is, until I flush it out as waste.”

She encourages Griff’s heroics, and as his new sidekick
provides the film’s best comedy. “You can come out now,” she says after giving
him an improved invisibility suit. She is staring right past him and his
ridiculous outfit. “I’m right here.” “Oh my god. It’s working!”

Eventually the world disabuses Griff of his delusion and
forces him to choose between reality and a now conscious fantasy. “Cooking
classes,” he says in an execrable attempt at small talk, “judging by tonight’s
meal you certainly don’t need them!”

Early in the film, Griff’s boss gives a throwaway speech
that in retrospect gains resonance. “I used to be an odd fellow, too. But then
I started chatting with people. I tried to act normal. It felt weird at first
but soon one day it didn’t, and then I suddenly realized I had become normal.”

In a movie intentionally cluttered with dead clichés, a few
conceits stand vibrantly alive.

Griff the Invisible

Directed by Leon Ford

Running time: 93 min.

Last Thursday, Cure Thrift Shop on East 12th Street and Third Avenue celebrated three years of catering to all levels of income. Four-dollar T-shirts hung alongside $400 designer boots; trinkets were sold next to furniture. Punks looked at early Betty Jackson and the MTA-averse debutante picked up a decorative coffee grinder. She set it down, confused.

"It comes with the territory," said owner Liz Wolff. "We get everything through donations, so we’re going to have variety, and people who believe in our cause generally give us nice things."

All of Cure’s profits, including those from last week’s party, go toward fighting juvenile diabetes. This may have explained the constant line at the bar—drinkers felt justified. Hosted by Voli vodka, the bar served the sponsored spirit for hours until it was forced to switch to its backup, Beefeater, which, unfortunately, reminded one imbiber of what his past cocktails lacked. "You can taste it now," he animatedly told a friend. "It actually feels like you’re drinking alcohol."

Defined liberally, the evening’s theme, "Night at the Circus," seemed inclusive enough for anyone who made an attempt. The hula-hooping girl wore a top hat. Bryan Brava, a black actor with blond hair and blue eyes, wore a small Native- American headdress. But the best costume undoubtedly belonged to downstairs assistant manager Roger Remedios.

"I’ve worked in thrift stores 13 years and this is all part of a collection I’ve amassed," he said. He gestured at his purple shirt, plaid bow tie, ringleader hat and, his finishing touch, a fake mustache. "The only thing I borrowed from Cure are my shoes."

"Which don’t fit," downstairs manager Lizze Altmann interjected. She wore vintage leather boots, gold tights and a puffy Tracy Reese shirt.

"But they are 1980s Versace." "Which Roger loves because he’s Italian."

Upstairs, the music had stopped and a line had formed by the register. Malory Butler, a ballet dancer whose lace boy shorts were visible under her hot pants, paid for a new pair of shorts. Elle Ward, a fashion designer, stood holding a pink tee and theater producer Catie Humphres scanned the bookshelf for a novel to help her French.

"’XVII Sicle.’ I think this is volume 17 of some collection." 

When I arrived at The Blind Barber, on East 10th Street and Avenue B, the small, industrial barbershop was in full swing, Gogy and A.J. styling away, mustachioed men lined up against the whitewashed brick. In the back, owner Adam Kirsch stood next to the shop’s not-so-secret secret: a rusted door leading to a speakeasy. Inside, IFC stars sat in leather booths and bartenders served craft beers on tap. Miletus Callahan- Barile, member of Beard Team USA and the Austin Facial Hair Club, stood on an impromptu stage holding a microphone.

"The birth of man and the birth of beard are one and the same. Beardsmen have walked among us ever since Egyptians wore the goatee and the Sumerians sported the Donegal. Our ranks are filled with famous men like Abraham Lincoln, Salvador Dali—" "Stalin! Hitler!" "And those who have stolen beard power for evil. But the beard has since fallen in decline. May we start its resurgence!" That’s how every speech went—with a knowing wink. When a show is about the "unknown sport of bearding," you hope its characters will be unintentionally funny, too serious about the utterly ridiculous. Baby-faced fathers living vicariously through bearish sons. Growth hormone applied to the chin. But as president Myk O’Connor made clear while explaining the focus of his promisingly named club, the Gotham City Beard Alliance, facial hair enthusiasts are generally self-aware.

"It’s social. We mostly get together and drink beer." Another member agreed. "I wouldn’t call it a real sport. What are our injuries? Not getting jobs, not getting girls. They’re not typical for athletes."

"Getting girlfriends to accept it can be hard," said beardsman Aaron Kelly. "You first have to be honest and tell her you want to grow a beard, and then the two of you—well, you just work through it." His tone could be used to describe any number of troublesome but resolvable problems in an early relationship. Toenail fungus. Genital herpes. "What’s important is that you’re in love."

In the speakeasy’s center, the main event was about to start: a New York beard-off judged by the show’s stars.

Karolina, O’Connor’s girlfriend, stood wearing what looked like a drape next to IFC employee Josh Bark, whose only qualification seemed to be general attractiveness and a slight shadow. His face unshaven for months, Michael Postel was poised to win. The judges deliberated and then announced the winner was…Bark?

"In private, Josh told us that if he wins he will grow his beard for a year, so that’s why we’re giving him the trophy: to encourage him," said Callahan-Barile. "And you will grow it, won’t you, Josh? I will personally check up on you next time I’m in New York."

At the bar, the lonely Postel nursed his loss with a pint. Was this finally the competitor whose excessive drive would provide some unintended comedy? I approached and he slammed down his beer. Yes! Rage, Mike. Rage at the injustice.

"Upset? Not at all. It was perfect. The first year is the hardest—by giving it to Josh, they’re recognizing that. They’re raising awareness. It’s a victory for beard culture," he told me.

Well, not exactly. But not bad.

Last Friday, a group of 20 men and women, many wearing the
company’s iconic Hawaiian shirt, gathered outside the Union Square Trader Joe’s
to offer free samples. “What is it, what is it?” a bicycle-wielding pedestrian
asked. He picked up a cup and looked inside: a penny. “Would you like to sample
justice, sir?”

The Community/Farmworker Alliance (CFA) and the Coalition of
Immokalee Workers (CIW) were staging a creative protest of what they felt was
Trader Joe’s chronic underpayment of Florida tomato pickers. Placards reading
“Food with Justice” and “1-cent more” held high, they asked patrons to find a
manager and hand him the penny, the per-pound wage increase pickers are asking
for.

“We’re fighting several supermarkets,” said Claudia Saenz, a
CIW member. Along with five others, Claudia is on a two-week East Coast protest
tour that has already stopped in Baltimore and Philadelphia and will soon hit
Providence, R.I., and Boston. ”But we’re focusing on Trader Joe’s because of
their image. It acts progressive, so we find its support of abusive farms very
hypocritical.”

“Trader Joe’s wants its tomatoes clean, organic and cheap,
and they look for contractors who have those. Unfortunately, to get cheap
tomatoes, contractors will often pay workers close to nothing,” said CFA member
Guadalupe Rodriguez. Rodriguez was the principal organizer behind the rally and
has, since last fall, been involved in over 30 protests at every Manhattan
location. Located in New York, the CFA was formed explicitly to work with the
very active Florida-based CIW.

Susan Valvez-Dupena remembered how it has gone with some of
the coalition’s past targets. “Subway was easy, so was Taco Bell. Burger King
was the ugly one. You’d hope that, with their kind of consumer base, Trader
Joe’s wouldn’t take much convincing.” So far the three she mentioned—along with
Bon Appétit, Sodex and Whole Foods—have signed an agreement promising to use
contractors who both pay more and have safe work environments.

Tomato picker Oscar Otzoy said the corporate support has
changed lives. “That why we’re calling on Trader Joe’s to join the others,
because we’ve seen what suppliers can do.”

“Grocery stores and the fast-food industry are now
consolidated, and that puts a lot of downward pressure on growers,” said Amanda
Shanor, who works with the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights and
Justice. “Growers aren’t able to cut for things like pesticides or farm
equipment the way they can with wages. That’s why if you want better wages you
have to start high up, with the suppliers.”

“In the past we would work 70 to 80 hours a week,” said
Otzoy, “and always below minimum wage. Now, for the first time in 30 years,
we’ve seen a wage increase and systems to report forced labor and physical abuse.”

Underregulation is behind many of the problems. Most tomato
pickers are traveling laborers, never sure of whom exactly is their boss, and
they’re all paid by the bucket, a 32-lb. container for which they get 50 cents.
This system allows exploititive farm owners to hide in anonymity. One of CIW’s
end goals is a time clock at every farm to record where pickers have worked and
for how long.

As the Union Square demonstration came to a close, the
evening’s final event began: the race for equality. Rodriguez, Valvez-Dupena
and a few others had to left to protest at the Chelsea Trader Joe’s and now, a
copy of the wage increase agreement in hand, they were about to compete over
who could present it to a Union Square manager first.

Two red lights quickly put Rodriguez out of contention.
Valvez-Dupena, taking a winding, traffic-adaptive route, managed to sprint the
whole way and handily won. Winded, she approached a manger. He excused himself
and said his store needed tending.

A lack of dialogue has been endemic. Local management has
directed the press and protesters to the company’s central PR department, and
both the CIW and Trader Joe’s have called each other disingenuous. Trader Joe’s
says that, after taxes and damages, the $.01 wage increase is actually a $.015
increase, a point which the CIW concedes is true. And the CIW has accused the
Trader Joe’s PR department of sophistry.

“They keep saying they don’t currently have Florida
tomatoes,” said Bridgette Gynther. “That’s only because they’re not in season.
They would if they were. No one has Florida tomatoes right now. They only grow
October through May.”

This has forced activists to focus on winning over
customers, a conversation which has proven difficult. Inside, shoppers scoured
the tomatoes looking for the firmest, unaware or indifferent to the battle
outside. The few converts seemed interested in activism for its own sake, like
self-styled “professional revolutionary” Tibby Brooks.

“I’m just looking for a manger right now,” she said, holding a folded
CIW contract. Finding no one, she opened it. “I guess I should read what I’m
about to ask him to sign.”

Good Neighbors, Jacob
Tierney’s third feature, is set in 1995 Montreal. Nationalists clamor for
Quebec separation, but the real tension is created by a man who separates
something different: women. A serial killer is slashing throats around
Notre-Dame-de-Grace, and the residents of Madame Gauthier’s (Micheline Lanctot)
apartment complex are worried. Cat-loving Louise (Emily Hampshire) and
wheelchair-bound Spencer (Scott Speedman) live a floor apart and gather nightly
to discuss the latest murders. Could it be Victor (Jay Baruchel), that
suspicious new tenant moving in a couch? “A sleeper, actually, not too heavy
but pretty unwieldy, used to be my mother’s couch, and watch the sides,
sentimental value and all…”

No, certainly not.

Nearly all the action is confined to the apartment, and as
the months pass and the body count rises, the camera hovers around those three
and you get the impression that it must be Spencer. Just look at those
aggressive kitchen knife skills. And his new fish look like sharks! And the way
he knew that one unreported detail… Could the mysterious car accident not have
paralyzed him after all?

Thankfully Tierney saves the film from becoming a prosaic
whodunit by casually revealing the murder’s identity 40 minutes in, forcing Good
Neighbors to succeed as all films should,
through character and style. Victor is in love with Louise and at the height of
the scare will walk her home whether she likes it or not. His delusional love
is half-comic, half-sad and produces the film’s best lines. “I told the police
about our engagement,” he says to her bewilderment. “Oh, shit. I guess I should
have told you too.”

Spencer may or may not also be in love with Louise, but a
recent bereavement has left him cold and clinical. An aesthete capable of
Batemanesque mania, he’s at his best cooking a gourmet dinner to Chopin while
awkward Victor wonders about Louise. “She’s probably playing with her pussy,”
Spencer says with a homicidal smile. Victor chokes. “Her cats, Vic. She’s
obsessed with them.”

And the puerile pun is actually quite telling. Movies have
taught us to trust characters who love animals, but Louise’s love for cats is
so strong it becomes sociopathic; she’s in fact Spencer’s emotional double.
Just as he’s retreated from the world to enact a series of power fantasies,
she’s abandoned life in favor of animals. And the result is no less gruesome.

The film’s climax involves Victor and Spencer setting up
opposing plans to frame the serial killer using Louise’s help, and Tierney cuts
between real time and their past discussions with such technical mastery that
we only know Louise will look out for one character: Balthazar, an attractive
Siamese. Blending suspense and pleasurable misanthropy this jet-black comedy is
ultimately very satisfying.

Six years ago, Earls was a human resources director trapped in a loveless marriage when she realized what she actually wanted to do: fuck and photograph. She promptly got divorced and became an erotic photographer. Now having sex five to six times a day and often charging over $1,000 for a shoot, she’s achieved her version of success. And watching her sign at the back of Taschen’s underlit Soho bookstore, she looked like a guy who gets a lot.

"Men respond to women who have a lot of sex," said Earls’ editor, Dian Hanson, who sat next to Earls drinking a white wine. Blond, tan and poised mysteriously somewhere between 40 and 60, the two looked like sisters.

"Men will often contact me through my website to hook up," said Earls. "Sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t. I remember a middle-aged mechanic… his hard body. And then younger men often hit on me in bars and it can be so hard to say no."

"And why should you?" asked Rory Vandermark, Taschen’s seductive, racially ambiguous manager. She gestured for a new drink and in came a lithe little thing carrying Earls’ vodka cranberry. She looked so young you wanted to cover her ears, to take her away from these dirty, dirty women.

"I like young men because of porn," said Earls. "Never has a generation been so desensitized. It’s great. You last longer. And you’re good. I slept with a 21-yearold who was absolutely incredible and I thought, How do you know this? And then he told me. He’d been watching porn since he was 9."

At this Liz stroked my hand and Dian leaned in. "She’s not wearing panties. Buy a book. She’ll show you." 

Late in 2009 Tully, Onur Tukel and Robert Longstreet, all multitalented indie cinema veterans, started outlining a movie through email. Tulley and Tukel were directors who between them had shot six movies: Cocaine Angel, Silver Jew, The Pigs, Ding-a-Ling-Less. Longstreet was an accomplished actor and also had production experience (Pineapple Express; The Catechism Catacylism). But all three had interests beyond what they had managed to fit into film. Tulley’s smalltown upbringing gave him an affinity for sports and ensured that part of him would always relate better to jocks than film nerds. Tukel was a visual artist who drew children’s books. And Longstreet had always wanted to write an outlandish character and play him completely straight. Was this enough for a movie, they wondered.

"For a while we weren’t sure," says Tulley. "I took all the emails and just tried to bang out a script incorporating everything with some semblance of coherence, and then we just shot what I wrote. It was scary. The whole time we were like, ‘What are we doing? Are we actually doing this?’ but I wanted to treat this movie as if we might never make another and had to fit in everything."

Septien (pronounced sep-tea-EN) was shot on the largesse of an investor "entirely comfortable with never seeing his money again." And Tulley held the coveted Orson Welles spot: writer, director, actor. Watching his film is a bit like watching inventive children play Cowboys and Indians, only now it’s Space Invaders. Each of Tully’s imaginative shifts is a change in genre, a cinematic allusion rapidly established then rapidly disassembled. Without set rules, the movie should have shared the same problem as those childhood games, an appeal extending only to its participants. But magically it seems to have found a way to remain universally engaging. Reviews at Sundance were mostly positive and its run at the IFC Center begins this Friday.

"I try not to think about criticism and use my instincts and stay unconscious," Tully says about making the film. "It informed me only to the extent that I knew there wouldn’t be another movie like this on the film circuit in 2011. So if someone rejects it it’s because it’s terrible and not because, ‘Oh, there are two documentaries about badminton and we can only choose one.’ And I suppose it was a reaction to the indie film world [and] those panels, ‘You’ve got to know your audience. If you don’t know your audience don’t even bother making your movie.’ I still can’t imagine its ideal audience."

It’s fun to try, though. An imprisoned southern belle? A pornographer with a fear of high school sports? A gay William Faulkner? It certainly doesn’t court the big rapist plumber contingency. But these jokes do a disservice to Septien’s real audience: anyone who appreciates independence in indie cinema.

The story ostensibly follows the impact of Cornelius Rawling’s return on his two brothers (Tukel and Longstreet) after an unexplained 18-year absence. But this makes its plot sound overly pedestrian. There is a group exorcism and a mentally stunted farmhand who lives in a tire. An art show and athletic hustles provide some laughs, but only when a toliet spontaneously erupts shit does the film really take off.

These strange stylings were the result of a highly collaborative environment that for 16 days existed in autonomy under a mid-July Southern sun. When Longstreet showed up wearing a frilly denim shirt from Kmart, Tully decided the actor had independently stumbled on the perfect costume. He gave Tukel free reign over the movie’s art and allowed actors who came from other professions (John Maringouin, documentary filmmaker; Jim Willingham, musician) to play their characters as if they had theatrical training. He even encouraged PAs to contribute.

"Everyone who showed up to bust their ass in a 100-degree heat wanted to be there and was talented. There’s no reason not to use that. I believe creative people can shift between gifts," says Tully. "I think that’s why I’m happy with Septien. That and luck. There were moments—a spontaneous rain storm, hitting a trick basketball shot—where the plan was we’ll try to get this but if not, it wasn’t meant to be. And we always did. It felt miraculous.

"I’m a big fan of putting everything in a pot and attacking the strange gumbo with as much sincerity as possible. Who knows? Maybe my next project will be the one that fails, but I think that’s the way to leave with no regrets."