{"id":244365,"date":"2011-06-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-27T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/film-interview-director-jeff-lipskys-twelve-thirty\/"},"modified":"2011-06-27T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-27T07:00:00","slug":"film-interview-director-jeff-lipskys-twelve-thirty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/film-interview-director-jeff-lipskys-twelve-thirty\/","title":{"rendered":"Film Interview: Director Jeff Lipsky\u2019s \u201cTwelve Thirty"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Film<\/a>
Writer\/director Jeff lipsky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Frank, naturalistic and conversational
\n
\nPor Scott Marcas |<\/strong> Cr\u00edtico de cine SDUN<\/p>\n

Jeff Lipsky helped to market John Cassavetes\u2019 \u201cA Woman Under the Influence,\u201d the first independent film to receive national distribution, and he hasn\u2019t looked back since. A pioneer in the American independent film movement, Lipsky worked as General Sales Manager of New Yorker Films before co-founding distribution companies, October Films and Lot 47.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwelve Thirty,\u201d currently playing at Reading Cinema\u2019s Gaslamp 15, is the first of Jeff Lipsky\u2019s four films as a writer\/director to play San Diego, and an excellent excuse to visit Kensington Video in search of his previous efforts. It\u2019s a frank, naturalistic, six-character melodrama about a 22-year-old virgin (Jonathan Groff) who becomes sexually (if not romantically) involved with siblings Mel (Portia Reiners) and Maura (Mamie Gummer) and their mother Vivien (Karen Young), much to the horror of their divorced, bisexual father (Reed Birney).<\/p>\n

Lipsky excels at slowly and indelicately peeling away just enough layers to make the act of withholding information all the more enjoyable. Essentially a series of filmed conversations, expert Texas Hold \u2019Em dealer
\nLipsky knows exactly how and when to dole out the river cards for maximum payback.<\/p>\n

Our conversation quickly turned to the difficulty of making sympathetic films about seemingly unlikable characters.<\/p>\n

Scott Marks:<\/em> People have forgotten how to make melodramas. They\u2019ve become the subject of telenovellas. Let\u2019s talk about the way in which you handle the \u201cmy gay step dad\u201d subplot. Martin (Reed Birney) comes out to the audience in such an odd manner. We initially cringe at the thought of Martin on the phone sweet talking his lover in front of his ex-wife Vivien (Karen Young). Yet when we realize that it\u2019s a guy, not a woman he\u2019s speaking to, it softens the blow and he doesn\u2019t come off as the sadist one originally takes him for.<\/p>\n

Jeff Lipsky:<\/em> The complexity of that moment is you are watching Vivien\u2019s heart being broken all over again at that very moment. [The audience is] about to learn he\u2019s bi-sexual.<\/p>\n

SM:<\/em> It\u2019s a great reveal. I find myself unfamiliar with the actor\u2019s work, but Reed Birney nails this character.<\/p>\n

JL: <\/em>I couldn\u2019t agree with you more. Reed is going to be one of the stars of my next film. I was completely unfamiliar with him. Since we shot \u201cTwelve Thirty,\u201d he has become one of New York\u2019s most in-demand stage actors. The only film I had seen him in prior to \u201cTwelve Thirty\u201d was a small role as the Mayor of Los Angeles in Clint Eastwood\u2019s \u201cChangeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

SM:<\/em> That, and a role in Sam Raimi\u2019s \u201cCrimewave\u201d were the only titles that rang a bell when I looked over his filmography.<\/p>\n

JL:<\/em> It was so important for me to cast someone like that because it was so critical that this man is believable as a bi-sexual. I happen to be straight in my private life, but I have an obligation if I am going to do something as bold as that, to make sure that it\u2019s credible and to make sure that you can empathize and sympathize with him. I have tremendous sympathy for Martin, and I think it took super-human courage for that character to do what he did in order to be true to himself. The word \u2018abandoned\u2019 may be pretty severe, but to walk out on his family was the only way he could be true to himself. And the other interesting thing about his character, and many of the characters in the film, is that we never meet the only character in the film who is not in any way, shape, or form broken\u2014Martin\u2018s partner, Robert. Everybody in the family talks about Robert, most of the time in very glowing terms.<\/p>\n

SM:<\/em> I can empathize with your characters and sympathize with them, but that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that I\u2019m going to like them. I think many of the greatest films ever made deal with characters I don\u2019t like. Apart from Annie, there is no one likeable in \u201cImitation of Life.\u201d I can\u2019t stand the martini-soaked Roger Thornhill and his gang of Madison Ave. stiffs in \u201cNorth by Northwest,\u201d and Otto Preminger is a personal deity, but he\u2019s never presented us with a likeable character. I think it is much harder to make a film about characters you don\u2019t like than it is the other way around.<\/p>\n

JL: <\/em>I can certainly appreciate and respect what you just said, but as the writer who conjured up these people, I won\u2019t make a movie about people I don\u2019t like or understand, or people I can\u2019t justify. We are all flawed human beings. There are people who can\u2019t stand each of us no matter how saintly or wonderful we might perceive ourselves to be. I think when I have scenes like Mel and Maura\u2019s rapprochement at the end, or the first scene with Martin, admittedly, it takes a while for the audience to assimilate exactly what\u2019s going on. That scene with Martin speaking such profound love to his partner on the phone\u2026to me, nobody can love a human being like that so unreservedly. At the same moment, you have his wife who is not only willing to maintain\u2014for whatever her motive was\u2014sexual dalliances with her ex-husband, she is willing to mask the pain that she feels when he says things like that in her presence.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frank, naturalistic and conversational By Scott Marks | SDUN Film Critic Jeff Lipsky helped to market John Cassavetes\u2019 \u201cA Woman Under the Influence,\u201d the first independent film to receive national distribution, and he hasn\u2019t looked back since. A pioneer in the American independent film movement, Lipsky worked as General Sales Manager of New Yorker Films […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":244366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Film Interview: Director Jeff Lipsky\u2019s \u201cTwelve Thirty","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}