Ultrasound is a complex, stylized sci-fi gem that rewards repeat viewings. With confident direction, a strong visual identity and strong performances from a litany of actors like Vincent Kartheiser (Mad Men), Bob Stephenson (The Chair, Top Gun: Maverick), Tunde Adebimpe (She Dies Tomorrow), and Breeda Wool (Mass) — it’s a surprise to learn the actual production was a decidedly indie affair with a shortened pre-production period and quick shoot.
Conor Stechschulte adapted his graphic novel Generous Bosom into Ultrasound and while his script was ready for some time, once the film moved into pre-production in the first week of January, the small team were shooting in early February.
“It quickly ramped up,” director Rob Schroeder said during a Q&A at the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival this week. It started as just a three man team of Schroeder, his producer and line producer Justin Cyrul, with no actors or other department heads yet attached.
“A lot happened in the two weeks before the shoot, including all those locations, which was probably the most painful part: finding locations in L.A.” Schroeder says.
“In L.A. you can film anything anywhere as long as you go through a locations service.” But that was deemed too expensive so the team instead was literally “knocking on doors.”
Once production began in February, the newly assembled team “shot five day weeks for a total of 19 days,” Schroeder said. But much of the narrative takes place in a research facility — a location the production did not have for 19 days.
“The most expensive location was the facility that was an empty senior living facility. We could only afford that for five days.”
“We shot a good portion of the film in five days. So those were like 10 page days,” Schroeder added.
Unintentionally well-timed, Ultrasound wrapped production in March 2020 which meant no wrap party. “The wrap party is tonight, ” Schroeder joked.
Actors Chelsea Lopez and Bob Stephenson who play an unhappily wed couple in Ultrasound, were both present at the Q&A. They stressed it was not beneficial to try too hard to wrap one’s head around the narrative at every moment. Instead it was critical to focus on emotion and actions.
“The script is so complex, but for me, it was a lot of conversation with Rob and Conor about what was going on. But I always knew where my character was at emotionally,” Lopez said.
“It really called for me to just jump and be present with the material, for what I knew it to be,” she added.
“You have to just think about what you’re doing in the moment,” Stephenson said. “Because if you think about the whole world, I can never figure it out. So just had to, like pay attention on the activity I’m doing at that moment.”
The Conjuring house is for sale, with ghosts included; people are freaking out over dubious reports of an X-Men name change; great festival news for cinephiles in Atlanta, Indianapolis and Austin. All in today’s Movie News Rundown.
Ghosts for Sale: The Wall Street Journal has a very funny, kind of scary story about the owners of the house from The Conjuring selling it. It’s actually haunted, they say, and they pull in a tidy sum renting it out to people fascinated by the paranormal. The asking price is $1.2 million, which makes you wonder — how much is it without ghosts?
Out on Film: The Atlanta festival, which opens today and runs through Oct. 3, just announced that GLAAD has come onboard to sponsor the closing night world premiere screening of William T. Horner and Stacey Woelfel’s Keep the Cameras Rolling: The Pedro Zamora Way. The doc is especially intriguing for those of us who grew up watching Zamora on The Real World, where he bravely worked to de-stigmatize homosexuality and HIV/AIDS in an era when ignorance and bigotry ran rampant. (Also, every single time I eat Skippy, I think gratefully of the time Pedro scolded Puck for his disgusting habit of sticking his hand in the peanut butter jar.) Zamora’s partner, Sean Sasser, worked with GLAAD from 1997 to 1998, helping to open and run the organization’s Atlanta chapter. Here’s more on this year’s Out on Film, which also features a 30th anniversary screening of Madonna: Truth or Dare, among other films.
Cool AFF: The Austin Film Festival just announced a lineup that includes opening night film The Same Storm, directed by Oscar nominee Peter Hedges and starring Noma Dumezweni, Mary-Louise Parker, Sandra Oh, and Elaine May, among others. Other titles include Wes Anderson’s TheFrench Dispatch and Mike Mills’ C’MON C’MON. And the Writers Conference, a major draw of the festival, will include Judas and the Black Messiah co-writer Will Berson, Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby, Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy, and Gentefied co-creator Linda Yvette Chavez. Details are here. The festival is from Oct. 21-28.
Heartland: Indianapolis’ Heartland International Film Festival, running Oct. 7-17, also features The French Dispatch and C’MON C’MON, as well as the highly anticipated Will Smith film King Richard, about Venus and Serena Williams’ father, and the Princess Diana film Spencer. We’ll have much more on Heartland soon, because I just spoke with Heartland artistic director Greg Sorvig about how he put this year’s incredible lineup together. More details are here.
Today’s Dumb Joke: “How many producers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” “Does it have to be a lightbulb?”
Mogul Mowgli: Check out Micah Khan’s great interview with Bassam Tariq, whose new film Mogul Mowgli follows a rapper (Riz Ahmed, always good) as a rapper who falls ill just as he is about to embark on his first world tour. “I’ve had a few years before Mogul Mowgli where things kind of went south for me with a few projects, so I learned very quickly that the reason why they went south was when I was trying to act smarter than I am. So, learning to just be very honest with everybody in the team is the key,” Tariq says. (His honesty is one of the qualities that landed him the job of directing Marvel’s upcoming Blade, but we don’t talk about that in the video.)
Ex-X-Men? Social media people did what they do best yesterday over a story warning that Disney’s Marvel might change the name of the X-Men to reflect the fact that there are also women on the team of super-powered mutants. But this was dumb. First, because the X-Men are just pretend. But more importantly: The basis of this story was an offhand comment by Marvel executive Victoria Alonso during an interview two years ago. There’s no indication that any “news” occurred here, and to present this as a new development is dishonest. (You can watch the two-year-old interview here, if you care. The X-Men comment is at the 3:41 mark.)
How Did This Happen? The site that posted the X-Men story, We Got This Covered (no link, it’s that bad), does little or no original reporting. Instead it traffics in clickbait headlines based on clueless or deliberate misreadings of things that people said in interviews with other outlets. For example, an obvious joke by Johnny Depp at a news conference this week led to the clickbait We Got This Covered headline, “Johnny Depp Wants To Be Jack Sparrow at Kids’ Parties To Keep The Spirit Alive.” A better headline for this silly non-story would be, “Johnny Depp Jokes About Playing Jack Sparrow at Kids’ Parties,” but of course, no one would click that.
What to Do? The fan-sphere is filled with sites like this, and I guess I should be grateful they don’t cover, say, vaccines. But it’s frustrating, for anyone whose livelihood is based on researching, interviewing and fact-checking, to share the movie news space with sites that don’t “cover” anything — they just rewrite other people’s stories, badly.
Finally: If you’re a man who worries that they’re coming to emasculate us via the old change-the-names-of-our-favorite superheroes trick, remember that it’s our job as husbands, fathers and sons to find positive ways to channel our raw masculine power. I go out back and chop wood with my pretend Wolverine claws.
Confidential to Half Cack: While we welcome opposing points of view, please be advised that this website fought on the side of rap in the Great Rap-Rock Wars of 1986, before the combatants came together and recorded the terrific soundtrack to Judgment Day, a fact no one remembers. Have a great weekend, everyone.
Main image: Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, who will probably be a Disney princess in the next X-Men movie unless people on the internet act now. I mean, I assume
The films of Wes Anderson, with their pleasing symmetrical designs and cozily cluttered aesthetics, inspire a degree of widespread fandom that few directors’ filmographies can boast. Fans who wish they could be whisked away into Wes World may be interested to learn about a new exhibition coming to London next month.
180 Studios have announced plans for an upcoming event at their space on The Strand, with a host of props, sets and costumes used in Anderson’s latest film, The French Dispatch. They rolled out a similar attraction when Isle of Dogs opened in 2018, and now they’re inviting the general public to slip into another meticulously-crafted vision of a fictionalised foreign land.
Visitors will be treated to “miniature dioramas and large-scale oil paintings” that appear in the anthology film about journalists in ’60s France, along with the thoughtful couture that always pops up in Anderson’s productions. After drinking in the memorabilia, visitors can refresh themselves with a bite at Le Sans Blague, a Parisian-style café serving the appropriate cuisine.
While the press release doesn’t go into specifics on which items ticket-buyers can expect to see, a familiarity with the film invites some ideas: the bicycle used by Owen Wilson as cycling reporter Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson), the provocative artworks of imprisoned painter Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro), and the pied-à-terre where Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) watches student revolutionary Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet) bathe could all very well appear in the flesh, so to speak.
The exhibition runs for one month from 14 October to 14 November and tickets go on sale 26 September at 180thestrand.com
The films of Wes Anderson, with their pleasing symmetrical designs and cozily cluttered aesthetics, inspire a degree of widespread fandom that few directors’ filmographies can boast. Fans who wish they could be whisked away into Wes World may be interested to learn about a new exhibition coming to London next month.
180 Studios have announced plans for an upcoming event at their space on The Strand, with a host of props, sets and costumes used in Anderson’s latest film, The French Dispatch. They rolled out a similar attraction when Isle of Dogs opened in 2018, and now they’re inviting the general public to slip into another meticulously-crafted vision of a fictionalised foreign land.
Visitors will be treated to “miniature dioramas and large-scale oil paintings” that appear in the anthology film about journalists in ’60s France, along with the thoughtful couture that always pops up in Anderson’s productions. After drinking in the memorabilia, visitors can refresh themselves with a bite at Le Sans Blague, a Parisian-style café serving the appropriate cuisine.
While the press release doesn’t go into specifics on which items ticket-buyers can expect to see, a familiarity with the film invites some ideas: the bicycle used by Owen Wilson as cycling reporter Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson), the provocative artworks of imprisoned painter Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro), and the pied-à-terre where Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) watches student revolutionary Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet) bathe could all very well appear in the flesh, so to speak.
The exhibition runs for one month from 14 October to 14 November and tickets go on sale 26 September at 180thestrand.com
The films of Wes Anderson, with their pleasing symmetrical designs and cozily cluttered aesthetics, inspire a degree of widespread fandom that few directors’ filmographies can boast. Fans who wish they could be whisked away into Wes World may be interested to learn about a new exhibition coming to London next month.
180 Studios have announced plans for an upcoming event at their space on The Strand, with a host of props, sets and costumes used in Anderson’s latest film, The French Dispatch. They rolled out a similar attraction when Isle of Dogs opened in 2018, and now they’re inviting the general public to slip into another meticulously-crafted vision of a fictionalised foreign land.
Visitors will be treated to “miniature dioramas and large-scale oil paintings” that appear in the anthology film about journalists in ’60s France, along with the thoughtful couture that always pops up in Anderson’s productions. After drinking in the memorabilia, visitors can refresh themselves with a bite at Le Sans Blague, a Parisian-style café serving the appropriate cuisine.
While the press release doesn’t go into specifics on which items ticket-buyers can expect to see, a familiarity with the film invites some ideas: the bicycle used by Owen Wilson as cycling reporter Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson), the provocative artworks of imprisoned painter Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro), and the pied-à-terre where Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) watches student revolutionary Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet) bathe could all very well appear in the flesh, so to speak.
The exhibition runs for one month from 14 October to 14 November and tickets go on sale 26 September at 180thestrand.com
