DGA Monthly

O C T O B E R 2 0 2 6 I 2 5 Membership Screenings Q&As listed in alphabetical order by Director. See more detailed descriptions, additional photos & podcasts online at www.dga.org. DGA Screenings Q&As Dave Green's comedy, Coyote vs. Acme, brings Looney Tunes characters come to life as Wile E. Coyote enlists a billboard attorney to sue the Acme Corporation for repeatedly selling him alleged faulty products that fail too many times in his dogged pursuit of the Roadrunner. Green discussed the making of the film with Directors Phil Lord & Christopher Miller and spoke about the challenges of making a film that combined animated characters with live action. "Producer Chris DeFaria said, 'the one person who's not going to show up on set is Wile E. Coyote because he doesn't exist.' What it meant was this year-long story process where we made this proof of concept that was hand drawn illustrations printed on top of previs so the previs represented everything that actors would be doing and then the cartoon layer told people what the cartoons would be doing. Our puppeteer built this life-size Wile E. Coyote puppet that had expressions and he would kind of you know walk around. So, it would be like sometimes like, 'And then he's gonna go here and then he's gonna be a blur and he's gonna be out the door.' But it helped everyone imagine Wile E. as like a living breathing co-star." Dave Green discusses Coyote vs. Acme photo by Elisa Haber Photo L-R: Directors Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (moderators) and Dave Green discuss the making of Coyote vs. Acme in LA on August 23. Amanda McBaine & Jesse Moss' Teenage Wasteland examines how a group of teenagers made a documentary about the dump in their upstate New York town and uncovered a vast conspiracy poisoning their community in the early 1990s. Thirty years later, they revisit their film and confront the legacy of the transformative experience. Following an introduction by Special Projects Committee Co-Chair Rachel Raimist, who appears in the film as a former student journalist, McBaine & Moss discussed the making of the film with Director Alice Gu and revealed that they went through 500 hours of archival footage from former Middletown High School teacher Fred Isseks. "We identified the building block scenes and were also juggling the narrative of the investigation, the development of the subjects and who they were and what their relationship to Fred was. We needed to really understand what we had to work with before we were ready to have that conversation with them," said Moss. "Jesse and I are different," added McBaine. "He likes being in the field and to shoot. I'm happy to be in the editing room. There was a lot of footage to get through. We had to figure out how to make it shorter than seven years. I mean, they made a film right and that's a new challenge like we're remixing someone else's awesome product." Special Projects Documentary Series Screens Amanda McBaine & Jesse Moss' Teenage Wasteland photo by Quintin Lundy Photo L-R: Directors Alice Gu (moderator), Amanda McBaine & Jesse Moss and Special Projects Committee Co-Chair Rachel Raimist pose for a photo following the screening of McBaine & Moss' new documentary, Teenage Wasteland, on September 3 in Los Angeles. The fate of the world hangs in the balance as two world leaders meet in Michael Russell Gunn's historical drama, The Brink of War. The film takes us back to the Cold War days of 1986 when U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met over one long, tense weekend in Iceland to try to create a deal that would dismantle nuclear arsenals or ignite disaster. Gunn discussed the film with Directors Sarah Pirozek in New York and Rawson Marshall Thurber in Los Angeles where he spoke about the techniques he adopted to tell the story cinematically, like placing a black bar between Gorbachev and Reagan. "I was trying to figure out a way to separate them as much as possible with both the lens choice and the actual framing so that by the end of the film they literally are smushed up to one another physically. The table shrinking was something that I always wanted to do. I always wanted to try to find a visual way to convey their coming together so we built three tables in different sizes and ran the scene all the way through every time. I pitched the financiers early on that I wanted to do it and they were like, 'Just so long as you cover it with a wide table.'" Michael Russell Gunn discusses The Brink of War photo by Howard Wise photo by Marcie Revens Photos Director Michael Russell Gunn with moderators Rawson Marshall Thurber in LA on September 5 and Sarah Pirozek in NY on September 9.

• Cover