In Production

‘All About Evil’ doer Joshua Grannell plots in post

Just two-and-a-half months after wrapping production on his blood-soaked, darkly comic debut, All About Evil, writer-director Joshua Grannell and editor Rick LeCompte have already locked picture. Even with time allotted to focus-group screenings, the movie is on an express-train schedule rare for an independent feature. Its backers identified Toronto as the optimal festival for the premiere, submitted a cut and are proceeding apace to have the film finished if and when they get the call. “You shoot for the stars, and you stay on course,” says Grannell, the longtime manager of the Bridge Theatre whose alter ego, Peaches Christ, has a juicy role in the movie. “I like the pressure. I like the sense of urgency that everyone has.”

topics: bay area, diy, gay lesbian cinema, genre films, horror, rep houses, toronto international film festival, world cinema

In Production

"Strand" follows thread to rep cinema's glory days

Christian Bruno, like a lot of filmmakers, is alert to the fluidity of urban life. In Strand: A Natural History of Cinema, he pays homage to the pivotal and shifting role of movie theaters—and rep houses in particular—in San Francisco’s cultural life in the second half of the 20th century.

For his first interview back in 2003, Bruno sought out longtime theater manager Jack Tillmany, who ran the Gateway in the ’90s and published Theatres of San Francisco in 2005. The book drew on Tillmany’s sizable collection of photographs, an archive he kindly opened to Bruno.

topics: authors, bay area, cinephiles, critics, hollywood, iranian cinema, rep houses