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Our Song Premieres In Athens
Community Connection Presents A Free Showing Of Jim McKay's New Film
C ommunity Connection had planned to show Athens/New York
filmmaker Jim McKay's new film Our Song as a fund-raiser. When
the events of Sept. 11 intervened. Community Connection was
instrumental in raising thousands of dollars from Athens to help out
in New York City. The Community Connection board decided, there
fore, to present McKay's film free of charge as a way of saying
thanks to Athens for the town's outpouring of support.
Our Song will be screened at
the Georgia Theatre on Tuesday,
Oct. 16 at 7:30 p.m. < McKay
will introduce the film before
hand and will answer questions
afterward. Following the show,
The Possibilities will play Neil
Young covers. Call the
Community Connection office at
353-2824 for information on
how to obtain tickets, which are
free but limited in availability.
In 1987, McKay and R.E.M.
lead singer Michael Stipe
founded C-Hundred Film Corp.,
for the creation and promotion
of alternative film works. After
producing music videos and an award-winning series of public ser
vice announcements, McKay in 1989 completed his own feature-
length documentary. Lighthearted Nation, which portrays five elderly
residents of a Boston nursing home who contribute to the often-
hilarious, always-enlightening magazine The Duplex Planet. In 1995,
McKay co-wrote, directed, and co-produced Girb Town, which was C-
Hundred's first feature narrative film. Girls Town received the
Filmmakers Trophy and a Special Jury Prize for Collaboration at the
1996 Sundance Film Festival. The film was released in August, 1996
in the Unites States by October Films.
McKay wrote, produced, and directed his second feature, Our
Song, in 1999. The film premiered at Sundance in 2000, played at
New Directors/New Films, Locarno and Edinburgh film festivals and
others and was theatrically released in the United States in May,
2001 by IFC Films.
Our Song is described by C-Hundred as "the story of three
teenage girls facing the challenges of growing up in a world filled
with uncertainty, risk, and, ultimately, hope. Following Lanisha,
Maria and Joycelyn through the hot August streets of Crown
Heights, Brooklyn, T ur Song explores the ways in which family,
friends, and community all compete to shape a young person's life,
plans and path, along the way offering a rarely seen glimpse of
teenage inner-city life. During the closing weeks of summer, the
small moments and dramas that mean nothing and everything to a
young girl navigating her way into adulthood start to accumulate.
And these girls and their friendships change forever."
Powell Weaver, a young Athens filmmaker, now a freshman at the
New York University film school, viewed Our Song and then inter
viewed Jim McKay for Flagpole at the Tir a Cafe on Lafayette Street
in lower Manhattan on Friday, Oct. 5.
started with the band, I think you're right: I think it could've really
taken over, and what I wanted it to be was more of a backdrop.
Flagpole: Where did you start writing the script? What was the
first action you had your characters take?
Jim McKay: The very first thing I had was like this idea of
friendship—a teenage trio, and one of them strays from the group,
and what is that like—was the initial thought. So I would just write
down little scene ideas, or not even scene ideas but "idea ideas."
And just compile all these little ideas for story lines or scenes of
characters, and everything starts to come together separately so
(l to r) Anna Simpson, Kerry Washington and Melissa Martinez star in Our Song.
FP: Will you talk a little bit about subtlety in filmmaking? You
know, a good film seems always to have subtlety. Do you ever worry
that if you're too subtle your point won't get across?
JMc: That's the kind of stuff you're always balancing and
weighing in the writing and then in the directing and then again
in the editing. I mean, you have these three different stages to
confront that and go, like, "is it too much, is it too little? Is it
just right?" And obviously everybody has their own opinions about
what too much and too little
and just right is. I guess the
bigger concern really was,
what's the difference between it
being where I want it, where I
like it, and the audience "get
ting it" and being fulfilled by it,
you know.
I'd always much rather keep
things a lot more... quiet and
unspoken. Our Song is like an
action movie compared to them.
I mean, I love watching obser
vation documentaries where
there's no narrator, there’s no
dialogue, there's just watching
things unfold. And in a weird
way when I started out I kind of
wanted to make something like
that. Then I realized more and
more: Okay, you need a story,
you need some kind of art, you
need a structure. But I tried to
get away from it as much as I
could without completely alien
ating people.
that I figure that out as I go along. So that's how it happened, and
I wrote a whole first draft of a script that was just about these
friends, and then I saw the marching band that was in the film, the
Jackie Robinson Steppers, and I went back in and rewrote the
script, putting them in the movie. And there were about four drafts
of the script after that where I just kept r efining it. So I think when
we shot, it was around the seventh draft or so.
FP: Talking about the band in the movie, it sort of seemed sepa
rated from the rest of the girls' lives. Outside of band practice, they
never really talked about it too much, and it wasn't overshadowing
everything all the time. Was it hard to restrain yourself from letting
the band totally take over?
JMc: No, not really. You know, I think I was lucky that I had
written the whole story about the friends beforehand. If I had
FP: What's an example of that?
JMc: Like the last shots of the movie: we talked about them for a
month, and every time, we changed them subtly over and over and
over again, you know. The film ends with two very long takes—
single shots. And there was all this debate about how long to keep
them on, first of all, but also on the second of the shots the credits
come up a little ways into it, and it was like we had a version where
they didn't come up at all until it was over, but that was like a
three-minute shot or something, and then we... well what if it was
like a one-and-a-half minute shot and we didn't bring 'em up till it
was over? And what if we brought 'em in earlier? Every one of those
options made a different ending to the film. If the credits came in
when Maria was on screen, that kind of made it a little bit more of
her story in a way—her ending. So those little decisions are con
stantly there.
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12 FLAGPOLE.COM • OCTOBER 10, 2001