SCAD Savannah Film Festival Continues with ‘May December,’ ‘Saltburn,’ & Honoring Kevin Bacon

Megan McLachlan continues coverage of the 26th Annual SCAD Savannah Film Festival with a tour of the new Savannah Film Studios backlot, the best advice from the producer panel, a Conversation with Kevin Bacon, and more.

Each year at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival, I see the growth of the college, including the evolution of Savannah Film Studios. Last year when I was here, it was just a few “flat” buildings that served as a backdrop, but a year later, Phase 1 of the project includes a city street, buildings, and “shops.”

During the tour, SCAD students served as extras in these scenes, including a couple dining at a restaurant, a woman sitting outside a coffee shop, and a “bones” guy at a creepy antique shop. Phase 2 and 3 will include a New York City section as well as a rural one with a church.

Behind the Lens: Producing

SAGindie executive director Darrien Gipson moderated a panel of female producers called “Behind the Lens: Precision, Persistence, and Passion,” and producers from film and television shared their experiences and challenges.

“Usually, the first test is, do I want to see it and why?” said Karen Rosenfelt, producer of the Twilight series as well as Hulu’s Dopesick. “I read a piece in The New Yorker about the Sacklers, and to me, they were the ultimate villains, and I thought, this story needs to be told because we need to understand how the opioid crisis started. And that’s how Dopesick happened.”

Robbie Brenner, producer of Barbie, talked about her work on the summer’s biggest movie. “It starts with an original voice. We always said, going into Barbie who’s existed for 64 years, how are we going to tell this story? It’s actually very, very complicated. Lo and behold, Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach came in and said, we want to tell the story. It all really started with that, with somebody who’s an incredible filmmaker with vision and conviction and knows what it is that she wants to do.”

“It’s really hard,” said Janine Nabers, producer of Amazon’s Swarm, about going to bat for unique projects. “It’s a little bit of selling yourself, too. When Donald [Glober] and I pitched Swarm, we were like America could hate us, but we want to do it. It’s a little weird. We’re giving you something that’s kind of reinventing the wheel in the way that TV is scene and you just have to go with us on this.”

A Conversation with Kevin Bacon

In his conversation with Vanity Fair‘s David Canfield, Kevin Bacon talked about not really looking back at his films and TV, except for in situations like winning SCAD’s Outstanding Achievement in Entertainment Award.

“The truth is that I tend not to have much of a rearview mirror,” said Bacon. “I’m someone who’s always looking down the road and thinking about the next thing and hoping that my best work or best experience is gonna be in front of me. Sometimes that’s what these types of situations afford you; you pump the brakes and think back.”

Bacon described his earliest memories of wanting to perform for his family and even strangers.

“I just wanted to be front and center. I got obsessed with pop culture when I was probably about 10, 11, or 12. Starting with the Beatles moving on to Jackson 5 and the Osmonds, people like Bobby Sherman and David Cassidy and bunch of people the younger people here will have no idea about. They were on magazine covers, and all I wanted to do was be one of those guys and I didn’t care how I would get there.”

May December/Outstanding Achievement in Directing – Todd Haynes

Even though Todd Haynes is not originally from Savannah, he was greeted like a hometown boy when receiving his Outstanding Achievement in Directing Award for May December, shot in the city with plenty of help from SCAD students.

The melodrama stars Natalie Portman as Elizabeth Berry, an actress trying to get into character to play Julianne Moore’s Gracie Atherton, a Mary Kay Letourneau-esque figure. Samy Burch, who penned the script, said she wanted to take a look at the tabloid culture from the ’90s and how it’s seamlessly transitioned into this true crime moment we’re having.

“Entering this story through a television actress coming to Savannah to have this experience left some room for satire,” said Burch. “I wrote this on spec, so it was all formed and outlined and done in the spring of 2019. I finished the first draft the day before Memorial Day, which is the first day of the movie [when the movie takes place]. Working with Todd was the best. I’m completely ruined obviously.”

The film is fun and soapy, with a Twin Peaks-esque soundtrack, something I chatted about with cinematographer Chris Blauvelt on the red carpet.

“There were a lot of influences like Bergman, and we watched The Graduate,” said Blauvelt. “And there’s a really great score that becomes such a signature for the film. The idea was very cinematic, very textured, and beautiful.”

Editor Affonso Gonçalves was excited to be in Savannah to premiere the film.

“For me, I wasn’t here when we were shooting,” said Gonçalves. “I was cutting somewhere else, so just to see the places that are in the movie and discovering the world where it was shot is great.”

However, while Portman and Moore are great, the buzz of the fest has been how good Charles Melton is in the film.

“This is his first feature dramatic role, and he’s so incredible,” said Burch.

The Mission

Five years ago, director Jesse Moss was rocked by a headline concerning a young missionary who was murdered by the Sentinelese, the most isolated tribe in the world. Moss and co-director Amanda McBaine ended up delving into John Allen Chau’s short life in the dynamic, thought-provoking NatGeo documentary The Mission, which utilizes animation, interviews, and found footage to tell this tragic story.

“We were extremely challenged both in form and content,” said Moss in the post-screening Q&A with The Daily Beast Obsessed‘s Kevin Fallon. “In terms of content, access was extremely difficult. John is no longer with us. His community was very protective, so that was one challenge. We also had very little to work with, other than John’s diary and social media. We really didn’t know how to approach this, so that was both an exciting place to be and a terrifying place to be. It was really a leap of faith that we would find our way through this.”

The animation in the film is beautiful, representing the naivete of Chau, who Moss said “willed himself into a comic book” by wanting to save people’s souls through Christianity. Linguist and former missionary Dan Everett provides the most interesting commentary on religion in the film, as someone who was once very much like John Chau and whose life was ruined because of it.

Saltburn/Spotlight Director Award Recipient – Emerald Fennell

While American Fiction has been picking up Audience Awards at TIFF and Middleburg, Saltburn garnered the biggest applause of the SCAD festival so far. Not only that, but director Emerald Fennell got a standing ovation when she came out for the post-screening Q&A with Variety’s Clayton Davis.

Davis asked her the question on everyone’s mind following the wild and twisty film: “Why?”

No doubt about it, Saltburn is completely fucked up in the best way that a movie can be fucked up. It’s gross, it’s beautiful, it’s hilarious, it’s brutal. And it has even more confidence than Fennell’s first film, Promising Young Woman. 

The Q&A was also one of the most fun Q&As I’ve experienced at any festival, with Fennell asking the crowd, “Hands up, who’s a good person?” When one student raised his hand, the director asked him what someone he dated might say, and he turned to the girl next to him. Everyone laughed, but the twist was that it was their first date, which caused the audience to go nuts with laughter. Saltburn demands to be seen with a crowd, and this one ate it up.

The SCAD Savannah Film Festival runs from October 21 through October 28.