So Yong Kim's films sound totally up my street, but For Ellen was the first I managed to see projected. [It was also the second film I saw at this year's IFFBoston.] I'm not gonna lie -- it kind of irritated me. Basically, I liked Clean better.
Here's what I wrote on the back on my boarding pass:
- shifter on steering yoke hand unheld
- long skinny rocker legs vs. little girl in moon boots
- [illegible] intensity of shopping excursion = audience giggles
- Fish Kill Fea + Crazy Heart
- Alice in Chains chin hairs + Buffalo '66
- wincing btw young De Niro & [illegible "mindless"? "millennial"???]
- Dano bowling Chet Baker hair black nails
- Dano as Gepetto's real boy
- lovely escalator shot
- "It's not real shit. We need to [illegible] real shit."
- Bill W. Clean?
- Feel like Trigger
- diegetic music fakeout
- Dano's nose
- "In the Still of the Night"
- perfect Dagfin [a guy in grad school early 90s] / Maggie Chung sockhead
What I remember: Feeling impatient. The blueish quality of the snowy upstate New York landscape.
RELATED: FIVE QUESTIONS WITH “FOR ELLEN” DIRECTOR SO YONG KIM
TRIBECA: Did you and Paul hit it off right away? Did you find the energy to feed off of each other?
JON HEDER: Yes and no. I am, by nature, a lot like Butler. And Paul certainly plays a lot of the role “in character,” but if it was strict to the script and so controlled, it would feel like, This is acting. But it wasn’t so controlled, so we could just kind of try different takes and feel things out. So it was him just being very real.
