HOW THE MILLION CALORIE MARCH LED TO THE THOUSAND DAY FILM

"Losing 150 pounds was brutal. Walking the Eastern Seaboard was incredibly hard. Writing the book "Big and Tall Chronicles," was challenging. But making a movie about all three? Nothing compares to that. I have a new respect for filmmakers after this," says Gary Marino, star, director, writer, producer, and subject of the new movie, MILLION CALORIE MARCH, due to have its World Premiere at the Boston Film Festival later this month.

In late October, 2004, when a friend introduced me to Gary, just a few months after he completed the March, he told me he wanted to make a feature film out of his "Million Calorie March, " a l200 mile walk he took from Jacksonville, Florida, to Boston. My response way, "Do you have any idea what you are getting yourself into?" Of course, he didn't - but - a thousand days later, the film is done.

Not that Gary was entirely new to media. As founder of Harmon-Marino Entertainment, he provided talent for corporate parties and made promotional videos. He gave me the 23-minute promo/informercial vdieo of the march. It did show a great sense of editing, but more important, it gave me a great sense of Gary. like so many Italian-Americans, he has a great sense of humor. More than that it showed that Gary has a mission, that he could command the screen, not just because of his personality, but because of his story. I felt that the film, like Gary's battle with obesity, had a chance of winning.

The March was never about his losing more weight, although he did lose 40 more pound on the walk. In was more of a personal journey. Gary had already lost ll1 pounds. After trying all kinds of diet and weight loss programs, he took matters into his own hands. After tipping the scales at 397 pounds, he hired a physical trainer, a nutritionist and a therapist and attacked his weight problem himself. In idea for the March came out of his concern for the obesity epidemic, parcitularly in children. He wanted to draw attention to the problem, and formed a non-profit organization Generation Excel (ExtraLarge) as a means of creating obesity awareness. And as the March footage shows, he got media coverage up nd down the Atlantic Seaboard, including four appearances on the Regis and Kelly show.

But there needed to be a team. Although there was over 160 hours of footage from the March itself, that was not enough to make a movie. There needed to be some way of representing the back story of Gary's obsessin with food when he was a kid, as chronicled in "Big and Tall Chronicles." There also needed to be interviews, and, of course, a follOw up to the March, to set it in 2007. And, all of this had to be structured, both through writing and through editing.

So, like the seven samurai, Gary assembled a team.
there was Gary, of course, and his extraordinary Executive Producer, Todd Patkin, a businessman/philanthropist who believed so much in Gary that he was the primary funder not only for the March, but also the film. Gary retained the services of local entertainment lawyer Joel Shames. With contacts to National Boston, whose commitment to the project in post-production was exemplary, he got Jimmy Jay Fraiedan to film the recreated scenes fro the book.
for the music, he contacted his old associate John Butcher, of Jon Butcher Axis fame, now living in California. But all this footage, recreated scenes, interviews, voice overs, etc. needed a structure, so he got local screenwriter Sandy Jaffe to do the screenplay. And, finally, this all had to be put together, and he got the heroic editor, jeff Schmidt, to do the editing.

But it wasn't all that easy. As Francois Truffaut said in his valentine tothe filmmaking process, "Making a movie is like a stagecoach ride in the Old West. At first you hope of a good bumby ride, but then you're thankful you get there at all." For MILLION CALORIE MARCH, there were some false starts in assessing the dramatic potential of the March footage; the recreated scenes, which together could have made a film of their own, ended up being severely cut' and, of course, there were the creative differences about the shape and direction of the film.

But, in the final days, when puting the film together was between Gary and Jeff Schmidt at Pulse Media, Jeff says, "Gary and I worked realy well together. We were able to bounce off one another, and he gave me a lot of freedom as an editor to run with some of the footage and see what I could come up with. We joke about it, but a good Director/Editor relationship is a lot like dating. You've got to make sure that the other person is someone that you want to spend a lot of time with and is someone whose opinion and judgment you trust and respect."

So, after 1,000 days, the film is done. Preview audiences and focus groups seem to like it. But Gary's personal odyssey will continue - from his battles with obesity, through his challenge of the March, through the discipline of writing the book, through the "running" of the Boston Maraton, to the incredible learning curve of having made a feature film. Both Gary and his mission will continue.

HOW THE MILLION CALORIE MARCH LED TO THE THOUSAND DAY FILM

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"12" REVISITED

Here, at the beginning of the Boston Film Renaissance, comes one of its most ambitious projects, "12" a feature film with a cast and crew of hundreds, shot in film with seasoned professionals, all for a budget of under $25,000 (no taking advantage of the tax incentives here

Having worked out of Boston for several years on projects like FEVER PITCH and THE BROTHERHOOD, filmmakers Scott Masterson and Vladimir Manuti realized how much filmmaking talent Boston has - a talent that has largely gone unrecognized. They came up with the idea for "12," and assembled a group of filmmakers to do it.

"12" is a series of twelve 5-7 minute short films, each with a different locally based director.

It is structured around the months of the year. There are twelve directors, twelve separate stories. But the segments are developed after extensive meetings. Each segment must be shot in the designated month. Although the directors have a considerable degree of automony, each segment must have a shot of a certain tree in the Fenway area. And, some of the segments have overlapping characters. Nevertheless, the subjects and style differ widely. Some are dramatic, others comedic. One is a detective musical; another, shot last month, is a documentary about bees. Some of the filmmakers are making shorts that can stand alone while others are making films that might later be developed into feature film projects..Crews ave ranged from 3 to 30, and set locations, always with a view that they are Boston locations, have gone from one to 7.

For the organizers of the project, it has been an incredibile experience As the producers assembled the talent, they went for diversity. Many of the directors have had experience in the slick commercial/industrial field, with others, like Garth Donovan, have worked with low budget, hand held camera, Cassavetes-style film. They have all worked together, and, according to Scott Masteson, have learned from one another. It has been a truly collaborative project.

The hope is that not only will they have made an entertaining feature film, but one which will draw attention to the filmmaking talent that is here. This comes at a time when many of the creators of "12" are working on the crews of the big budgeted films that are being shot here, like the remake of THE WOMEN on which 12's Executive Producer Angela Manuti is working

The project has been an exhilerating one for the participantsl They have worked on one other's projects - one time a director, the next time a DP. All the directors and producers have been involved in the development of the project. In terms of both crew and cast, over 200 people have been involved. As Vladimir Manuti puts it, "it has been one of the greatest professional experiences of my life."

THE MAINE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Of all the regional film festivals in New England, far and away the best curated festival is The Maine Internatiional Film Festival which is a l0day festival that has run for 10 years in mid-July in Waterville, Maine. Although Waterville is hardly a destination (there's a nice river and Colby College, and an indesernable night life), there are Ken and Beth Eisen.

The Eisens operate the 3-screen Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville's version of the Kendall Square, so, over the years, the theatre itself has built a following. The Eisen's also run Shadow Distribution, a small film distribution company which had handled such great documentaries as LATCHO DROM and THE WILD PARROTS OF TELEGRAPH HILL. They also attend festivals (I first met them in Toronto. In other worlds, they are immersed in every phase of the art house/independent film scene. They know - and LOVE film, and their festival shows it. Going to their festival is unique. Waterville is hardly a destination, but over the years they have brought people like Terence Malick, Sissy Spacek, John Pierson, Ed harris, Lily Taylor, Rebecca miller, and this year Bud Cort. But the atmosphere is hardly a celebrity one.
Since the Eisenbs have built such a personal following over the years, it fvells a little bit like some old friends inviting you over to their house to share with you some film that they really love. People there know them so well that they don't even bother to introduce themselves to the audience.

Unlike other festivals, they don't use submissioins (no Without a Box here0. Usually the only films that apply are films made in Maine. And, to be sure, there are some films that the distributors that Ken works with want to have shown to do market testing.

Nevertheless, there was in impressive array of films.. In addition to the independents and the usual Eastern films (Ken must be a closet Buddist), there was a retrospective of the works of the great French filmmaker Jacques Rivette (three shows of the 3-1/2 hour CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING with good attendance). They also shows an amazing film from l988, a Swiss film called MACAO, that is one of the great undiscovered films, that has a narattive structure that would make Charlie Kaufman envious. For Bud Cort, they not only showed tje usual MASH, HAROLD AND MAUDE and BREWSTER MCCLOUD, but they unearthed a video of Bud Cort's favorite film, I DANCE ALONE, a film within a film about the daughter of Nijinski/

They also showed two great films that are not going to get commercial distribution, C.R.A.Z.Y., a disfunctional family film from Montreal that spans thirty years and has a great sound track (Patsy Cline, Jim Morrison, the Rolling Stones, etc. - that's the reason the film won't get distribution - the myusic rights are too expensive), and FOUR MINUTES, a German film that won as many German Oscar equivalents as THE LIVES OF OTHER, but there is only one print and it is playing mostly in gay and lespbian festivals before coming out on DVD. Then ther was GIRLS RCK, a documentatry that Shadow is distributing about a rock and roll camp for girls from age 7-17, that has the same appeal as MAD HOT BALLROOM and SPELLBOUND, but goes deeper and more imaginatively into the issues that face girls in that age range.
finally on the local front, there was KNEE DEEP, a documentary about a Maine man who tried to kill his mother when she sold the family farm from under him = a fascinating variation a BROTHERS KEEPER, with some of the tone of a Christopher Guest film. It will be seen outside of Maine.

So, in spite of Waterville itself, one ought to consider a journey there. Nearby Belgrade Lake is truly beautiful and restful. But it is the festival itself that one experiences a genuinely shared experience.

SICKO - FACT OR FUN?

I always look forward to a Michael Moore film. Although I agree with him politically, I go less to have my on convictions verified, and perhaps pandered to, with the accompanying sense of moral outrage, than to have fun at the way he assembles the facts. Of course, there is also the accompanying sense of being sickened at the state of things that often keeps me from full enjoyment.
Speaking of sickened, I didn't quite expect the range of sicknesses that pervate his latest film, SICKO. Of course, I knew it was about the health care system, which actually has worked quite well for myself and those I know. But any film that begins with an image of W has got to have something bigger on its mind

As everyone knows by now, there is less of Moore in the film (Even I felt he went too far with the Charlton Heston sequence in BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE).. Neverless, although he is not as physically present, he still is our narrator. As such, lhe does well at comparing the various health care systems and arranging with facts, with both irony and paradox, in his exposure of the true shortcomings of our own system. When he does appear, he does so in the final sequence, where he takes a group of 9/11 rescuers who have suffered post 9/11 disabilities without adequate domestic care, to Cuba, whare they get better care, and seemingly cured. On the one hand, it is the most rigged scene in the entire movie. On the other hand, it has the strongest narrative flow. It reminds me of Ofrsn Welles" F FOR FAKE, his three part documentary on forgers and fakers, in which the final Picasso sequence was an expert piece of narrative storytelling, while the earlier two were rambling. Of course, the first two were true, while the last was utterly falso.

So, in the final analysis, I responded to SICKO less as a call to arms that as an advance in Moore's filmmaking - less him, greater economy, better editing, and a better command of stgructure and narrative flow.
I had fun.