Sunday, November 06, 2005
Robinson Devor's Police Beat
Robinson Devor's second feature film, Police Beat, debuted last night in Portland as part of the NW Film Center's 32nd Northwest Film and Video Festival. There were dozens of us.
Devor's first film was one of my favorites, an adaptation of Charles Willeford's novel The Woman Chaser, starring Patrick Warburton. A stunning adaptation that did alright for the $1million or so it took to make it. It did not do so well to fling doors open on subsequent projects however, and the upshot is that Devor fled LA to Seattle three years ago (a native of New York), where he hooked up with Stranger columnist Charles Mudede.
The film itself is the story of a Seattle bike cop named Z, Senagales by birth, whose feeling a little blue in the Emerald City after his girlfriend took off on a camping trip with some other guy. His imagination narration of where she is and what she is doing (in his native tongue Wolof, with subtitles) alternates with the "non-narrative" structure of a litany of crime scenes, culled from the Stranger column.
The crimes, gratuitous at times (a string of "Law & Order" or "Six Feet Under" openings with nary a resolution or conviction in sight), scatter the storyline across Seattle, leading to what Matthew Stadler, who introduced the film, suggested was as much a documentary of our "chaotic Northern neighbor" that shows the future of what cities will be, and something about greenspaces and urban planning, etc. etc.
Stadler referred to himself as a novelist (twice) and a public intellectual in his brief remarks; he's better known to me as the mind and money behind the curious Clear Cut Press, and in a way this is a Clear Cut movie, with tipped hats to Portland and Astoria, and campsites in clear cuts, and so much grey and that tell-tale marker: when someone uses Utopia and Cascadia in the same sentence.
Clear Cut is better known for their funny little paperback books, Charles d'Ambrosio, and maybe the big trees painted by Michael Brophy that are more pander than Pender.
More on the movie: the official site: http://www.policebeatmovie.com/bios.htm.
Devor spoke afterwards to those who stuck around, talking about the difference between LA and Seattle, copious thanks to the sprawl of funding mechanisms that made this happen for $200,000 and to Stadler for use of his Astoria home (the connection is unclear, albeit not all that important), and the use of non-professional versus SAG actors (about $800,000?).
Police Beat isn't a perfect film, and it doesn't have a Warburton to carry it; the nonprofessionals can give you that awful indie feeling, where no one appears to have any affect. Some of the crime scenes made me cringe (as they did the family with the preteens who hustled out of the theater after Z's visit to a porn store complete with a visual anatomy lesson, or the sex scene on the trapeze). Devor says the sound needs work, and he's hammering out distribution.
It is in many ways a regional film, with the blessings and curses that such a label implies. The acting is inspired, the film completed. But how much more can be done that way makes you wonder. Can such a living be made outside the traditional circles? (A look at Oregon's film economy, which exhibited via the shorts at the festival this year, offers a tentative yes...if you are willing to make industrial films for local companies....)
I digress. Police Beat was worth a Saturday night seat at the movie house, and most Saturday nights, that is more than enough. More from Devor forthcoming.
Devor's first film was one of my favorites, an adaptation of Charles Willeford's novel The Woman Chaser, starring Patrick Warburton. A stunning adaptation that did alright for the $1million or so it took to make it. It did not do so well to fling doors open on subsequent projects however, and the upshot is that Devor fled LA to Seattle three years ago (a native of New York), where he hooked up with Stranger columnist Charles Mudede.
The film itself is the story of a Seattle bike cop named Z, Senagales by birth, whose feeling a little blue in the Emerald City after his girlfriend took off on a camping trip with some other guy. His imagination narration of where she is and what she is doing (in his native tongue Wolof, with subtitles) alternates with the "non-narrative" structure of a litany of crime scenes, culled from the Stranger column.The crimes, gratuitous at times (a string of "Law & Order" or "Six Feet Under" openings with nary a resolution or conviction in sight), scatter the storyline across Seattle, leading to what Matthew Stadler, who introduced the film, suggested was as much a documentary of our "chaotic Northern neighbor" that shows the future of what cities will be, and something about greenspaces and urban planning, etc. etc.
Stadler referred to himself as a novelist (twice) and a public intellectual in his brief remarks; he's better known to me as the mind and money behind the curious Clear Cut Press, and in a way this is a Clear Cut movie, with tipped hats to Portland and Astoria, and campsites in clear cuts, and so much grey and that tell-tale marker: when someone uses Utopia and Cascadia in the same sentence.
Clear Cut is better known for their funny little paperback books, Charles d'Ambrosio, and maybe the big trees painted by Michael Brophy that are more pander than Pender.
More on the movie: the official site: http://www.policebeatmovie.com/bios.htm.
Devor spoke afterwards to those who stuck around, talking about the difference between LA and Seattle, copious thanks to the sprawl of funding mechanisms that made this happen for $200,000 and to Stadler for use of his Astoria home (the connection is unclear, albeit not all that important), and the use of non-professional versus SAG actors (about $800,000?).
Police Beat isn't a perfect film, and it doesn't have a Warburton to carry it; the nonprofessionals can give you that awful indie feeling, where no one appears to have any affect. Some of the crime scenes made me cringe (as they did the family with the preteens who hustled out of the theater after Z's visit to a porn store complete with a visual anatomy lesson, or the sex scene on the trapeze). Devor says the sound needs work, and he's hammering out distribution.
It is in many ways a regional film, with the blessings and curses that such a label implies. The acting is inspired, the film completed. But how much more can be done that way makes you wonder. Can such a living be made outside the traditional circles? (A look at Oregon's film economy, which exhibited via the shorts at the festival this year, offers a tentative yes...if you are willing to make industrial films for local companies....)
I digress. Police Beat was worth a Saturday night seat at the movie house, and most Saturday nights, that is more than enough. More from Devor forthcoming.
