The Furniture: John Waters, Small-Business Advocate

Team Experience is celebrating John Waters for his 75th birthday. So here's a special episode of "The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, our series on Production Design. 

Pecker is a rare, quiet(er) film in the John Waters filmography. It’s not as outrageous as Pink Flamingos or Female Trouble, nor as bombastic as Hairspray or Serial Mom. It’s plenty lewd, of course, and it’s hardly devoid of yelling. But it’s understated.

After all, it’s a movie about photography - pictures over words, that sorta thing. It’s about capturing the essence of Baltimore in crisp snapshots. The titular Pecker (Edward Furlong) is an amateur photographer with a passion for the little moments of his life: a burger on the grill, the Hampden neighborhood welcome sign, rats mating in an alley...

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3 days til Oscar. Who is the best three time winner?

Best Actress predictions change daily but where are we in regards to Frances McDormand's third Best Actress Oscars? Happening or not? I'm tentatively saying it will. That's where my brain is today at least. Frances would be only the seventh actor to manage three Oscars for acting in the 93 years of Academy history and become only the second woman to win three leading Oscars (after Katharine Hepburn).

The others who've won three acting statues:

Fargo (96), Three Billboards (17), Nomadland (20)

1. Walter Brennan -Come and Get It (36), Kentucky (38), The Westerner (40) - all in supporting
2. Ingrid Bergman -Gaslight (44), Anastasia (56), Murder on the Orient Express (74)
3. Katharine Hepburn - Morning Glory (34), Guess Who... (67), Lion in Winter (68), On Golden Pond (81) - all in leading 
4. Jack Nicholson - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (75), Terms of Endearment (83), As Good As It Gets (97)
5. Meryl Streep - Kramer vs Kramer (79), Sophie's Choice (82), The Iron Lady (11)
6. Daniel Day Lewis - My Left Foot (89), There Will Be Blood (07), Lincoln (12) - all in leading 

COMMENT PARTY QUESTION: Removing all other performances and movies from your brain (I know it's difficult) how would you rank these six packages of performances? 

COMMENT PARTY QUESTION 2: Are there any two-time winners not in the race this year that you could see winning a third?

My Spirit Award Ballot

Please welcome guest contributor Chels Eichholz for this preview of the Spirit Awards...

by Chels Eichholz

Anybody with $100 can be a member of Film Independent. Some people join solely for the screeners and the privilege of voting for the Independent Spirit Awards. Others, like myself, are filmmakers that use the other membership perks to help network and get our projects created, and voting is just a fun little cherry on top. The nominees are decided by small juries and winners are decided by all members. The awards will be held tomorrow Thursday, April 22 at 10:00 pm, exclusively on IFC and AMC+.

If you’re looking for a lineup that balances both an independent spirit and Oscar love, look no further. I do prefer when award shows have their own identity and don't try to predict the Academy Awards. The Oscar race itself isn’t a meritocracy, and Film Independent is great at highlighting  unsung gems of the year (along with a few more celebrated Oscar hopefuls). I’ve been a member for a few years now and always make it a point to watch every nominee before voting and this year gave us a great selection.  The categories and my own votes after the jump...

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John Waters @ 75 : Female Trouble (1974)

Team Experience is celebrating John Waters for his 75th birthday this week

by Jason Adams

If you'd like a new addition to your "Damn why wasn't I there?" list of super-cool world events of the past, have I ever got a doozy -- circe 1973, not long after Pink Flamingos had become a cult sensation, a screening of the film was set up by Fran Lebowitz (because obviously) for Andy Warhol and his various hangers-on at Warhol's Factory in New York. John Waters was already a big fan of the soup-can man -- he still owns a "Jackie O" print that pre-dates his homosexuality, gifted by his then-girlfriend in 1964 -- and so this was no doubt a big deal for the famed Baltimorean, and he's recalled the night fondly in interviews:

"... [Andy] had been shot recently, and the last thing he needed was to meet a bunch of new lunatics.... I brought my gang and Candy Darling was there, and that's when Divine met Candy, and they got along great. Andy watched it sort of hiding it in the closet, and then when it was over he went in the back with me and said, "Why don't you make the exact same movie over again?" And then he said he would back my next movie, which shocked me because no one was saying that, but I think I wisely said no, because it would have been Andy Warhol's Female Trouble...

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Emile Mosseri: The king of 2020's film music

by Cláudio Alves

He may have only been composing film scores since 2016, but Emile Mosseri has quickly become one of the most exciting composers in today's Hollywood. At least, he's got a prime spot on my list of ones-to-watch. Two years ago, he made a big splash with the hauntingly beautiful compositions for The Last Black Man in San Francisco. Joe Talbot's delicate tone poem about a city and its people earned much critical acclaim and even a couple of awards for the young composer. Flash forward to today, and Mosseri's at the top of the world, having conquered his first Oscar nomination for Minari. What's more, that wasn't even the only masterful score he delivered in 2020…

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