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Show Page C4 THE DAILY HERALD, (www.HaiiTheHerald.com), Provd, Utah, Wednesday, December 1 1, 2002 Filmmaker quickens FOOONTIIEGnOO: budding career with Winter plants offer festive possibilities 'Personal Velocity' 0 By ADRIAN HIGGINS P The Washington Post ' w' fliriT M t.T AP Movie Writer LOS ANGELES After years of struggling to raise money for her film projects, Rebecca Miller retreated to the refuge of writing, beginning a group of short stories about women that grew into the acclaimed collection Tersonal Velocity." had hit on an idea that revved up her own personal velocity. Even as she was doing final rewrites on the stories, the project had expanded into a screenplay, financing fell into place and she had shot a film adaptation before the collection reached By accident, Miller bookstores. The film trilogy, Tersonal Velocity," the second movie written and directed by Miller, won the top dramatic honor at last winter's Sundance Film Festival, along with the cinematography prize. The movie version of Tersonal Velocity" grew out of Miller's chance meeting with friend Gary Winick, who read two of her stories. Winick, who won Sundance's directing honor last winter for "Tadpole," was just launching a company to shoot films on digital video and thought Miller's stories fit the bill. The truth is, had I written the screenplay just on my own and we'd shopped it around on my own, I promise you I would still be looking for money right now," said Miller, 40, who is married to actor Daniel Day-Lew-is and whose father is playwright Arthur Miller. "It's a very hard screenplay to make sense of and visualize just on paper." Shot for less than $1 million, Tersonal Velocity" stars Kyra Sedgwick, Parker Posey and Fairuza Balk in three stories of women facing momentous crossroads. Like Miller's 1995 directing debut, "Angela," which has just been released on low-budg- et DVD, Tersonal Velocity" has a dreamlike style highlighted by striking flashbacks and still photographic images that help propel the stories. Miller figures her penchant for still imagery partly stems from her early career as a painter, along with the influence of the work of her mother, photographer Inge Morath, who died last January. The still photos in Tersonal Velocity" are complemented by voice-over- s from John "Angela" who serves as an omniscient narrator for the three women's crises. The whole style brings a literary quality and compactness to the film that allowed Miller to spin three rich, character studies in the space of a single movie. "She's very economical. She's very lean in her writing. There's not a lot of fat, not a lot of stuff you don't want to know about the characters," Sedgwick said. "I think she's a real auteur and a real Renaissance woman. The film is poetic, it's lyrical, it's beautiful to watch." Miller said she learned the value of spareness from her father's writing. Tight budget restrictions on Ter- sonal Velocity" also forced her to come up with a cineVen-timigli- a, co-st- ar full-bodi- matic shorthand. "There were certain scenes I couldn't afford to shoot, so I made them into still sequences," Miller said. "It gave birth to this wonderfully freeing form. I also wanted the narrator to be able to move us in and out of time. I saw this as three full feature films with the boring parts cut out. "I think she's a real auteur and a real Renaissance woman. The film is poetic, it's lyrical, it's beautiful to watch" Kyra Sedgwick, "Personal Velocity" "Had I made one film out of one of the stories, I think I would have had to be more conventional But I just thought, let's be really bold and see if people could sort of digest all this. And they seem able to." Miller studied painting at Yale and exhibited her work in New York City after college. Interested in moving into filmmaking, Miller wound up with a brief acting career after auditioning and winning a role in a 1988 TV movie. Later acting credits include the films "Regarding Henry" and "Consenting Adults," but Miller's real interest was writing and directing. She made a short film in 1991 and also directed a revival of her father's play "After the Fall." Miller met her future husband at a screening of "The Crucible," a film adaptation of her father's play in which Day-Lew-is starred. and Miller were married in 1996. They have and Day-Lew- is sons. After "Angela," which won the Sundance cine- matography prize and film-- . maker's trophy in 1995, Miller spent about four years unsuccessfully trying to raise money for another film. That was when she turned to writing the stories that became Tersonal Velocity," which offers the three narratives included in the film plus four other tales of women at taming , points. "There are so few writers and directors that write women or that write men as dynamic and complex as these characters," Posey said. "It's just rich. It doesn't smell like bad perfume. It smells like something really insightful." The success of Tersonal Velocity" allowed Miller to line up financing for her next film, a darkly comic psychological drama about a girl. She plans to shoot the film next summer. Still, raising money for films remains far tougher for women than men, she said. "It's a little bit like if you're sitting in the air plane and you hear your pilot come on, and it's a woman. Some part of you Because thinks, uh-oyou're so used to it being a guy, right?" Miller said. "You want a Midwestern, man to come on, quite honestly. So do I. It's a little bit the same with film directors. People feel a certain level of comfort. Someone's spending all this money, so here comes this man who looks like a film director. "I don't look like a film director because I'm a woman. It's changing, but it's not that fast. There's a lot to break through, and you can't totally blame people for it. Certain things are deeply ingrained." .' 1 I SLVilZV "" I SHOMIMES 200pm 6 30pm 10:00 pm. Pan K9ttrit9d I """ Ll g, PJII HtllrtoKl H15W5MTi1fl)157)945 HARRY POTTER 2: 5HQWHME5 I 3:40 p.m. 7:00 pm. 1:20 pm 9j0pm Jl and dead plant material, particularly seedpods, including cones. There are the Chinese chestnuts, mahogany in a nuggets spiny bur, the larch cones, feathery and roselike; the simple chalices that held absent acorns. "I think that unless people have had their eyes opened somehow, they miss it," says Cosby, a floral designer and master wreathmaker at the State Arboretum of Virginia in Boyce, Va. These materials add a new dimension to conventional greenery decorations, and Cosby likes to use them in dried flower arrangements or with fresh flowers. But in the hands of a master, they take on an extraordinary beauty when used obvious. Just as there are thousands of flower forms in the garden, there are thousands of ways that plants transform their blooms into structures to protect and disperse their seed. Bush honeysuckle covers itself with fleshy red berries, to be eaten by birds for seed 14-in- m weed, whose pods are often formed into angel wings, and a similar but bizarre pod from an exotic annual called the unicorn plant. The pod resembles a tropical beetle with antlers. Ornamental grasses and even bamboo are useful in dried and live floral arrangements, she says. In fact, almost all plants yield something by way of seed or fruit. Burning bush berries will hold up nandi-n- a berries tend not to and the grapefruit-siz- e wreath-makin- "Isn't it gorgeous?" Cosby says. It's my favorite seed-po- d cluster." A forager knows that trees and shrubs are not the only sources of material. Perennials and annuals have their own potential, the common including osage oranges will look good simply placed in a bowl. They will disintegrate if you try to wire them to wreaths, Cosby says. The State Arboretum of Virginia, also called the Blandy Experimental Farm, g has become a mecca, starting classes 31 years ago. This year's collection of workshops will draw almost 400 people in a dozen classes. Tim Painter, the arboretum's spokesman, said it had been calculated that since classes began they have consumed 50,000 pounds of greenery, produced 10,000 wreaths and earned more than $120,000 for the Friends of the State Arboretum. tall and shade tree, with shaggy bark, it has white flower panicles that turn into clusters of seedpods that resemble nodding bluebells, bicolored in dark brown and beige. If you are patient and have the room, the tree " might be worth growing for the pods alone (its botanic name is Cedrela sinensis). small seedpods. Cosby has been running wreath-makin- g and floral arrangement classes at the arboretum for 25 years. Though public foraging is not permitted on the arboretum grounds 700 acres devoted to horticultural research and she has permispleasure sion to collect her materials. She says there are plenty of places for people to find similar treasures, from beneath public street trees to your own yard or perhaps the property of a friend. (The rule is, ask for permission first.) A foraging adventure with Cosby last week revealed g coarse-lookin- Host Joyce Cosby, floral designer and master wreathmaker. State Arboretum of Virginia in Boyce, Va. half-opene- She displays a wreath of pods and cones, a composition in different textures and shades of brown, as if carved in wood. A large cone has been cut down to form a star, reminiscent of a star magnolia bloom. The wreath also contains sweet-guballs, acorn cups, rolled cinnamon sticks and various Vvashingion "I think that unless people have had their eyes opened somehow, they miss it." dispersal; the milkweed pods split to allow their silken . seeds to fly away; the chestnut protects its seeds with spiny armor. In May, the paulownia tree is marked by its exotic and oversize purple blossoms. In late fall, this inflorescence is a candelabrum of d seedpods, useful in itself or sprayed gold or some other color. Cosby also likes to spray the ubiquitous sweetgum balls, which otherwise turn from a lime green to a more drab dark brown. One seedpod she wouldn't dream of gussying up is that of the Chinese cedrela tree, a novelty plant rarely seen. A alone. LlA LWA Where some might see a bare world, a designer in Virginia that can sees plant cast-off- s create seasonal decorations. Left is a srjrig of the larch tree, at right are seedpods of the Chinese cedrela tree, and above are pods of the paulownia tree. something unexpected, if gift-wrapp- milk- - v - If the seedpods are the icing on the cake, then cones are the dough that Cosby mixes. The arboretum is better placed than most to provide cones it has specimens of half the world's but Cosby species of pines often ends up using the common, dehghtful, slender and white-froste- d cones of the Eastern white pine. Conifer connoisseurs, however, may crave the rarer form of the larch cone. The conifer drops its needles for the winter to reveal medium-siz- e cones with soft, frilly edges. Elsewhere on the' grounds, Cosby points out a deodar cedar, whose cones are borne upright above astral explosions of needles. The cones are exquisite, with a blue cast and swirl like ranunculus flowers. Alas, they shatter and make poor subjects for the dried wreath. But they look splendid on the tree. 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Beyond the conventional greenery of boxwood and holly, Cosby has found a mesmerizing world of dried CECEMSER6-JANUARY- tl06Z35Sfflll55J106S83S$l6a t 1 cast-off- Rj DIE ANOTHER DAY " V ;; Uliiffltill HARRY POTTER 2: THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS '.'in' Anyone who thinks the landscape has lost its interest on winter's edge hasn't met Joyce Cosby. Where others might bare world, Cosby sees a s treasure trove of plant that can be assembled to create beautiful holiday wreaths, centerpieces and other adornments of the h. CINEMA ;' f-'-- hnhr t ivrrrrrrn i i r n i wwti ' 84606 4 Of |
