'Son of Rambow' springs from the well of filmmaker's early memories
By Kelley L. Carter
Tribune reporter
May 9, 2008
Tribune reporter
All writer and director Garth Jennings really wanted to do was craft a throwback film, you know, something that would take him—and with any luck an audience—back to an untainted place in the 1980s, when make-believe was enough to entertain us for hours on end.
What he and filmmaking partner Nick Goldsmith ended up with was a story of two unlikely friends—the class deviant and the kid whose religious sect dictates that he never watch television—who go on a moviemaking mission and break down barriers.
"It started when I had seen a copy of 'Rambo: First Blood [Part II],' " says Jennings of his love affair with films. "It blew our minds. [My friends and I] were like, this guy can do anything! He can take on 200 men with just a stick and a knife! He was in the forest, and we used to play in the forest every day, and this was like the perfect film for us. It just blew us away, so much so that I made my own action movie with my friends based on Rambo."
From that, he says, he started making what he considers terrible little movies with his childhood buddies. Years later—after film school and after a little early success with his business partner Goldsmith—here's the movie based on that memory.
The pair revisited the film school experience in Chicago recently at Flashpoint Academy for the Media Arts and Sciences, 28 N. Clark St., where they touted their film and met with the college's students.
"Son of Rambow," opening Friday, tracks two kids who try to make their own film. More important, it captures that childhood-like wonder.
"When you look back on that age when you were about 11 or 12 and the world is very different and anything's possible and you don't consider the consequences in terms of relationships or even jumping off dangerous things and all that good stuff—that's what we wanted to get at," Jennings says. "It was just all about trying to capture that feeling and how we remember it rather than how it really was."
It also was a way to contribute something to the canon of coming-of-age films. There hasn't really been much out there that satisfied the filmmaking duo, who go by the name of Hammer & Tongs.
"You don't have that emotional, uplifting feeling that older films like 'Stand by Me' or films like 'Harold and Maude' have. These sorts of films—they had a sort of strange effect on you. You came out of the cinema, and you just felt good about life. ... And we knew we wanted to make a film that would have that sort of effect on people."
The film was shot in 2006 and for the most part features first-time actors. Ed Westwick co-stars as an older brother, and thanks to CW's "Gossip Girl," he's one of the best-known.
"I think it's a very humbling story. It's good to be reminded of life on a smaller, more natural scale that can make us smile and feel warm inside," Westwick says. "It's the way we were when we were young and were oblivious to the complications of our lives."
klcarter@tribune.com
Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune
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Saturday, May 10, 2008
Nice Tribune Article on Son of Rambow Guys Mentions Flashpoint Academy Visit
Noted Author Marie Brenner Coming to Flashpoint Academy to Speak to Students about Her New Book - Apples and Oranges
BIO
Marie Brenner is an author and Writer at Large for Vanity Fair.
She has published five books, including Great Dames: What I Learned from Older Women (Crown, 2000) and the bestselling House of Dreams, The Bingham Family of Louisville (Random House, 1989). She joined the staff of Vanity Fair in 1985; she has also been a contributing editor for New York magazine and The New Yorker, and has contributed articles to the New York Times Magazine and Vogue.
She is the winner of six Front Page awards for her journalism and the Frank Luther Mott Kappa Tau Alpha Award for research. Her 2003 investigation of the rise of anti-Semitism in France (“France’s Scarlet Letter’) made international news.
Her expose of the tobacco industry, “The Man Who Knew Too Much”, was the basis for the 1999 movie “The Insider,” which was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Her article “Erotomania” became the Lifetime movie “Obsessed.” The director Alex Gibney is currently developing her article “In the Kingdom of Big Sugar” for Tribeca Films.
She lives in New York City.
Flashpoint Academy Expands to Include Broadcast Media Program to be Based in Newly Re-Designed NBC Studios at Merchandise Mart
Flashpoint Academy will be expanding its course offerings in September 2008 to include a comprehensive program of studies in Broadcast Media with a particular emphasis on the Internet and new web-based distribution methodology.
New Faculty members, content advisors and long-time industry professionals will all participate in the development of a brand-new curriculum and in the program itself. 
David Rammelt and Linda McLennan Visit Flashpoint Academy
Linda McLennan and Bill Kurtis in an Old Classic WBBM Promotion Video
Friday, May 09, 2008
Another Interesting Article on Art Chicago and Artropolis from the Chicago Reader
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE
Flashpoint Academy Releases LEED Film - "LEED BY EXAMPLE" - Produced by FPA Studios to be Distributed by Various City Departments
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Flashpoint Academy Partners with ABC-WLS to Provide Remote 24/7 HD Coverage of Daley Plaza
Newly installed Canon HD remote camera at Flashpoint's downtown campus provides both Flashpoint and ABC-WLS with constant coverage of all of the activities in the Daley Plaza. Flashpoint Academy is credited whenever these shots are used in news coverage.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Flashpoint Academy Students Working on Daniel Burnham Documentary "Make No Little Plans" Visit Notre Dame to Discuss the Project
Tullman Collection Artist Costa Vavagiakis Featured in Article in The Artist's Magazine
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE PAGE
Tullman Collection Artist Wes Magyar in New Show at Plus Gallery in Denver
Wes Magyar is an extremely interesting and vibrant young artist. Also a Colorado native, Magyar comes from a successful family of painters, although his style and technique vary greatly from his father and brother’s work. Unlike the abstract painters in his family, Wes’ work is purely representational, and almost always centers on a figure.
The role of the figure in his work is very important. He asserts that his paintings are not portraits, but rather representations. He works with actors to convey a specific action or thought that he has generally preconceived. Subsequently, the models themselves are not the subjects of the work. They function as a conduit for telling the story Magyar invented.
This particular series, in his typical large-format scale, is (potentially) an introduction to a larger narrative yet to be written. Though each piece is meant to exist as a stand-alone work, there are undeniable commonalities and relationships between the various canvases. From repeated symbols to duplicate faces, each of the works in "Convergence" is painted in like style and palette.
Magyar uses impressionist-like strokes of pure color to create the realistic faces in the forefront of his compositions. Each face is painted precisely, despite the size of the strokes, and so realistically that the viewer can almost feel the figure’s breath and can predict the texture of their skin. Aside from the formal components of his work, Magyar has a strong belief in the process of painting – and the life that process gives to the work.
Film Produced by Flashpoint Academy Dean Paula Froehle - "Arithmetic Lesson" - Selected for Short Film Corner at Cannes Film Festival
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Flashpoint Academy Begins Expansion to 4th Floor of Burnham Building with Set Shop Area
Students have begun using part of the 4th Floor of the Flashpoint facilities in the Burnham Building to construct sets for their next group of student-made films. An extensive prop room and storage room for flats are also now available.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Final 8 Art Chicago - Artropolis Videos from Flashpoint Academy Now Online
Flashpoint Academy's Videos of Artropolis can be found online at:
www.flashpointacademy.com
www.artropolis.com
www.artchicago.com
Kevin Nance Article on Artropolis from Chicago Sun-Times
Kevin Nance
Artropolis is better, but needs tweaking
ART | Merchandise Mart fair just needs some tweaking
May 4, 2008 Recommend
BY KEVIN NANCE Sunday Show Editor knance@suntimes.com
By now the word about Artropolis, the sprawling art expo at the Merchandise Mart last weekend, is that it was too big for its own good -- too many shows, too many exhibitors, too much sheer acreage.
It was so big that several exhibitors who were disappointed in their sales speculated that the fair's giganticism meant that the pie of the collector's spending power was cut into too many slices. Even some dealers who did relatively good business -- such as Joe Amrhein, director of Brooklyn's Pierogi Gallery, which sold a variant of Jonathan Schipper's popular "The Slow Inevitable Death of American Muscle," a pair of muscle cars colliding in super-slow-mo -- thought the show's size was a problem. "There was so much to see," Amrhein told me, "it seemed like people couldn't make up their minds."
But it's interesting problem to have, given that two years ago -- before the Mart bought the struggling Art Chicago from its previous owner -- and for years before that, the common complaint was that the fair had shrunk too much. After years of decline, top galleries were staying away.
No more. Artistically, at least, it's a case of rags to riches.
And we shouldn't forget the riches. Whatever the failings of this year's fair, it was clearly a massive improvement over what we had before. Virtually every big-name gallery in the American art world was in Chicago last weekend, as were many from Europe, Asia and Australia. NEXT, a lively new show of work by emerging artists, perfectly complemented the more established Art Chicago; certainly NEXT was far superior to the Bridge Art Fair, which it replaced in the Artropolis stable.
The Mart also deserves props for the work and money it put into refurbishing the 12th floor, where the Art Chicago exhibit spaces looked more like elegant galleries than temporary booths. (To complain about the low ceilings in the corridors, as some of the dealers did to me, is nit-picking.)
True, the Artist Project, expanded from 50 unagented artists last year to 300 this year, needs tweaking. There was too much mediocre work -- too much intermediate-level painting in particular -- and too little evidence of real discernment in the jurying. (You know you're in trouble when you feel the need to explain yourself, as some of the Artist Project exhibitors did, with booth labels like "Contemporary Myth" and "Where Dreams and Reality Converge.")
There was some excellent stuff in the Artist Project. I was blown away, for example, by the jauntily mysterious collages of Chicago's Kass Copeland (see more at www.kasscopeland.com). I also loved the work of Canada's Lee Henderson, whose photographs of condom-draped Bodhisattva statues were eerily beautiful meditations on the resilience of culture in the path of globalism. (See more of his work at www.noattainment.com.)
These were the exceptions, sadly, not the rule. And late this week, in response to criticism from dealers who thought the Artist Project diluted or detracted from the big shows, the Mart announced plans to detach the Artist Project from Artropolis. But I'd hate to see the Artist Project go away completely, partly because of Mart president Chris Kennedy's original impulse to provide an option for lower-income art-lovers who can't afford to buy anything at the higher-priced shows.
And if the Artist Project has to be cut loose from Artropolis, the Mart should also consider giving its International Antiques Fair a separate timeslot as well. Robert Landau, the big-ticket modern art dealer from Montreal, had it right. "I don't think an art fair should be mixed up with an antiques fair," he told me last week. "I don't have anything against the antiques dealers, but I don't think they mesh with what we're doing."
Nor should the Mart accede to suggestions I heard from some dealers to jettison NEXT. Even if its video component tended toward a rote irreverence -- as in those defiantly whimsical or just plain juvenile tape loops that had patrons rolling their eyes at all the silly, Coke-can-smashing, fake-Jesus-on-the-cross pranks -- it was, overall, a much-needed breath of fresh air at Artropolis, which drew about 50,000 people.
Schipper's piece was the top crowd-pleaser, of course, but cruising just behind it was another piece of automotive art, Lee Stoetzel's "VW Bus" (2007), a replica of everyone's favorite countercultural chariot done in pecky cypress.
"I grew up in a conservative family in Phoenix, Ariz., but we rented a garage apartment to a guy in the '70s who had a VW bus that I liked to play in," Stoetzel explained. "It's always been a very symbolic car to me, symbolic of counterculture. This wood is kind of blown out, old-looking, and it's symbolic of nostalgia and older things."
Stoetzel, whose piece was attached to the booth of Mixed Greens Gallery of New York, was both happy and a bit freaked out by the popularity of his artwork, which had "do not touch" signs all around it that fairgoers were gleefully ignoring.
"People want to get in it," he told me queasily. "Now the door handles are pulled off and the stick shift is broken. I can't watch it, but I'm happy to elicit this kind of response, where people want to touch. It's a good sign, even if it makes my heart skip."
Stoetzel understands that touching thing, in part because he shares it: He drives the actual 1970 VW bus his artwork was modeled from. "When I drive it, people give me a peace sign or something," he said with a smile. "I'm a fairly conservative person, so I think it's funny."
Saturday, May 03, 2008
New Art for Tullman Collection from Tad Lauritzen Wright
"In Advance of A Broken Arm II"
The figures, words, and symbolic markings that fill my work are my own synthesis of culture, both past and present, creating what I consider visual poetry. The work is created to remind people of lost thoughts that pass by each of us with or without notice. The work involves a dialogue with the observer, established through interaction. The act of creation is as much a part of a piece as the final product-the formation of ideas, the construction of the surface, the selection and application of media all function as important elements of my process.
The use of language in the work is a study of words as the representation of ideas, objects, and events. This presents an opportunity for viewer interaction, as each i identified word or phrase brings a personal set of visual possibilities to the viewer’s mind. Grid paintings offer collaboration between the figurative and the narrative elements of my works. Integrating grids with figurative, written, and abstract images I create an analytical puzzle of the work. These works function as riddles that allow insight into the meaning of the work.
One-line drawings are another example of my efforts to bring interaction to the work. These time-based works involve drawing one continuous line to form various images in a somewhat subjective approach. The intricacy of the line is contrasted by the simplicity of the images depicted. Images are not necessarily readily discernable and the viewer must follow or study the line to discover the content of the piece.
Nice Article on Recent Show by Tullman Collection Artist Bill Marhoefer at Architrouve
Art restorer at play
Architrouve exhibit spotlights the fun side of Bill Marhoefer
By LEAH BANKS
Contributing Reporter
About 100 people packed into the Architrouve gallery in West Town last Friday to celebrate "Genuine Object," the works of local artist W.K. "Bill" Marhoefer. The exhibit featuring sexy women, French bulldogs and a cast of surreal characters, is free and runs until June 7.
"You walk in here and you feel good," said Ken Thompson, an art lover who stopped by to see the show. "You walk in here and you smile, that's just what I needed-a positive emotional experience."
Marhoefer's surreal creatures-inspired by satyrs, skulls and baseballs-line the wall of this intimate gallery.
"They're fun, and scary, and beautiful, and whimsical, and frightening," said Tonya Pyatt, director of the Architrouve. "You can see his hands in the work," she said, referring to small thumbprints barely visible in the delicate figurines.
As director of the Architrouve, Pyatt has worked with Marhoefer in his other business, art restoration. Marhoefer and his wife, Michelle, own Broken Art Restoration, 1841 W. Chicago, where they specialize in repair of porcelain and ceramics. The Marhoefers started their business in 1980; they now repair more than 1,000 pieces of year.
About a year ago, Pyatt stopped by Marhoefer's studio to drop of a few pieces for repair and she noticed a few of his designs.
"I said, 'Oh, my God! I want you to do a show.' "
Marhoefer then began creating these fascinating creatures and, in 10 months, he had an entire collection. This is his first solo exhibition in more than 30 years.
"I love his humor," said John Nichols, an art collector, philanthropist and one of the biggest patrons in the history of the Chicago Art Institute. "I know him as a restorer and to see another side of him is fabulous."
Nichols said that Marhoefer has restored many pieces from his private collection of Chinese Han dynasty ceramics. Nichols bought three of the pieces from Marhoefer's collection.
"I told my wife that if nothing else comes out of this, it's going to be a fun party and we won't have to clean up after," said Marhoefer with a chuckle. It was his wife who encouraged him to spend more time on his own work.
"It got to be such a successful business that I just stuck with that," Marhoefer says of his restoration work. "I kept doing art, but I kept it in my private collection."
The opening was packed with art lovers of all ages. Children were leaning in to get a good glimpse of the surreal pieces.
Some of the pieces have heads made from animal skulls, but recently Marhoefer has used 12-inch softballs for heads instead. He said that he was inspired by an old baseball he found around his house one day.
"I just sort of looked at that baseball and thought what would it look like?" he said. "I like the look of the stitches; it gives them a doll-like look."
How did he crank out all of these pieces in such a short time?
"I've been doing this all of my life," said Marhoefer. "It's what I do."
Architrouve founders Bob and Darci O'Connell, also West Town residents, opened this mixed-use space in 2006 to support the pursuit of the creative process in all mediums.
"I want people to not be intimidated by art," said Bob O'Connell. "We want to take a lot of chances here."
Very Nice Letter from Lisa Mack on D.A.R.T. workshop at Flashpoint Academy
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE
Nice Article from SCRIPT on Son of Rambow Film Team who Recently Visited Flashpoint Academy
CLICK TO ENLARGE PAGES 
Friday, May 02, 2008
It's A Wrap! Filming Concludes on First Flashpoint Academy Music Video
BLOG from Psychodots Drummer
This has been quite a week.
The psychodots went to Chicago to work at Flashpoint Academy - a digital media school that does recording, film, and game design. We arrived Monday around lunchtime and proceeded to bring gear into the school's recording studio to re-record a tune off Terminal Boulevard (Not a Pretty Face) at their very nicely tricked out studio - we set up and got sounds Monday and tracked Tuesday all day. The engineering instructors were terrific, and we did some question and answer stuff with the students, who also got to take turns manning the board and tracking vocals. We had rough mixes by the end of the day
Wednesday we went over to their video production facility to shoot a video for the tune. I thought the students were going to be doing that, but it turns out the film professor was directing and he had a full pro crew doing cameras, makeup, wardrobe, sets - there were about 25 people working on it, and the students were mainly observng, but some were helping with the sets and doing gopher stuff. We did several takes of us just performing the tune, then a bunch of vignettes that were supposed to portray the band stuggling to kep up with pop trends over the years, so they had us first as hippies, then punks, ten hair metal, then grunge - with full hair and makeup for every period. Their were also some pro actors - a hilarious named Levi portraying our sleazball manager, and some super hot young ladies who assisting us in making transtions from one style to the next.
The director was terrific, as was the entire crew. The final video is going to have a lot of art and animation added, so it will be in post production for a while. I've done videos before and didn't enjoy it much, but this was an absolutely incredible experience. I'm sure it will appear on youtube at some point, so I'll link it up when that happens. In the meantime - if you cruise around the flashpoint website, you can see what the school is all about - there's a picture of the video shoot on the front page and a little blurb about the recording in the blogs. www.FlashpointAcademy.com
Then to cap it all off, we played a smokin' gig in Dayton last night.
New Book by Tullman Collection Artist Lora Fosberg is Now Available
Purchase directly from www.lorafosberg.com
New Art for Tullman Collection - David Hevel from Marx & Zavattero
"CUSTODY"
New Article on Miami Art Show Includes Great Review of David Hevel's Works
Art with Laughs
A new Lincoln Road show delivers the sting of comedy.
By Carlos Suarez De Jesus
Published: May 1, 2008
If you've ever found yourself cackling at contemporary art, you will likely bust a gut at the latest ArtCenter/South Florida show.
But this time, rather than a response to artistic opportunism or obscurity, hilarity is the point. "What Are You Laughing At?" features nearly 30 outrageous mixed-media works by David Hevel, Abby Manock, David Leroi, and Scott Listfield. The artists employ humor to let the air out of highbrow windbags.
Curated by Gallery Diet's Nina Johnson, the exhibit invites viewers to laugh at the absurd vagaries of life at the expense of the art world. The works use parody, satire, camp, irony, and jokes to break down barriers of taste and audience resistance. It's loaded with biting visual puns that are as unforgettable as they are utterly ridiculous.
"The intention behind the show was to attract people who might be intimidated by conceptually based work to enter inside," Johnson explains, "and experience art that is still smart but laced with enough humor and satire to allow viewers to let down their guard."
The four artists she chose explore themes that address everything from postapocalyptic alienation and celebrity culture to mutant sea life, rampant consumerism and technology, and art theory meta-mumbo jumbo.
"I wanted work that was funny but not dumbed down, and with relevant themes to art and everything else in general," Johnson says.
Frenchman David Leroi appears to be the class clown of the bunch, poking authority at every turn. He clobbers spectators with craptastic sculptures cobbled from crude materials, and has given these works artsy-fartsy French names.
On the floor near the gallery's entrance, one piece, fashioned from wood, tape, cardboard, and wire, gives the impression an unsuspecting snorkeler is about to be attacked by a shark. Leroi has created the illusion by crafting the top of the swimmer's head and rump, in proximity to a shark's fin, placed at intervals and appearing to bob just above the surface of the murky concrete floor.
Leroi's quirky Parfum d' Opportunisme (Perfume of Opportunism) features three industrial cleaner containers perched on a black and white checkerboard square. The plastic jugs are labeled "Arrogance," "Cynicism," and "Pettiness," suggesting art world honchos need to be douched with heavy-duty degreaser or soap.
The scatological references abound in Leroi's hilarious Intronisation (Enthronement), an installation crowned by what looks like a spaceship housing a giant extraterrestrial turd. The loopy ship's plastic bubble sits on a spindly tripod, from under which a tapeworm-shape udder spews alien mucous onto what appears to be a raw hamburger patty. A hastily scrawled sign trumpets, "Emerging artist kit included inside."
To hammer the point home, his spacy turd opus is priced at six grand.
On a nearby wall, Scott Listfield seems more interested in the edges of reality, where the facts never gibe. His oil-on-canvas works depict the quixotic journey of a solitary astronaut in simple yet remarkably evocative scenes that exude a weird 2001: A Space Odyssey vibe.
In Post-Nuclear Guggenheim Visit, the landmark New York museum is tagged with graffiti as bombed-out cars rust in front of the building and two cougars and a Tyrannosaurus Rex roam the desolate streets. The bewildered astronaut hunches his shoulders in angst as a man turns a corner unaware of the danger.
Another scene finds the flummoxed astronaut contemplating Damien Hirst's famous sculpture of a rotting shark in formaldehyde. The pickled predator has been placed as public art in a subway tunnel in which a lone woman appears boarding a train. A Starbucks sign on a wall heightens the sense of a civilization near collapse. Moody green, yellow, orange, ochre, umber, purple, and gray hues punctuate the eerie Twilight Zone appeal.
Perhaps the goofiest work here is Abby Manock's Elusive Jellyfish Project, in which the artist unleashes a swarm of the creatures from papier-mâché and yarn. Manock's ratty yellow cupcake-size invertebrates dangle from the ceiling on fishing line.
Signs explain the creatures suffer from sugar shock when fed peanuts, marshmallows, lollipops, or gummy bears.
Although real jellyfish lack brains, her fictional mutant flying jellyfish had to be isolated from sweets to prevent "psychotic hyperactivity," the text explains, warning viewers not to feed the ornery critters lest they fly into an "uncontrollable rage."
In a delightfully wacky video, the artist twirls hypnotically in her studio with an Elusive Jellyfish Viewing Helmet strapped to her head. The video jumps to an upscale supermarket where the swirling squids are seen dipping their tendrils into the chocolate and cookie bins. Collectively, the artist's warped sculptures, video, and drawings deliver quite a sting.
David Hevel steals the show with his uproarious C-prints and mixed-media sculptures that skewer America's infatuation with celebrity, using taxidermy forms, gaudy baubles, snazzy hair weaves, and faux fur.
Armed with a glue gun and a ribald imagination, Hevel channels Liberace and Norman Bates to create sumptuous, grotesquely baroque concoctions. He even trumps The Donald with a Bambi-brained, rug-draped doe.
Timberlake Bringing Sexy Back is a mixed-media scream that represents the pop heartthrob as an emaciated Dalmatian perched on a hollowed-out tree trunk. The end of its stumps burst with orchids, periwinkles, wild mushrooms, and prickly fruit. The twinkle-toed pooch wears a platinum Chanel collar over his scrawny neck bone.
The artist obsessively ladles on the kitsch in Katie's Silent Screams. He depicts Tom Cruise's saner half as a fanged mandrill, jaws agape as she lays her Suri egg. The figure nests atop a tacky black urn brimming with blood-red gladiolas, beaded curtain tassels, plastic strawberries, and scarlet rhinestone hearts. A flock of blue glitter butterflies buzz the snarling monkey's gob, her tawdry hair weave accentuated by a delicate flower web.
An image near a window that froze passersby in their tracks during a recent visit was Hevel's celebretard homage to Anna Nicole Smith. He framed the late Tinseltown train wreck as a blue-eyed, harlequin-pelted, raw-boned bitch. The savory C-print depicts Smith as a scrawny whippet languishing on an ivory fur throw, suffocating under the weight of golf ball-size pearls, beaded pink curtain tassels, and an awful fright wig.
Like his fellow cutups, Hevel mocks the value of art with aplomb and leaves the spectator convulsing.
The works in "What Are You Laughing At?" use subversive humor to not only yank the rug out from under the viewer but also break down barriers of taste and audience resistance. And that's no laughing matter.
