David D. Burstein

In his new feature with Alec Baldwin, and here, James Toback exposes the broken system behind studio filmmaking. Alec Baldwin and James Toback set out at last year’s Cannes Film Festival with a seemingly simple mission: to try to get a film funded. The film would be a psychosexual political thriller called Last Tango in Tikrit set against the backdrop of the post-war Iraq. It would star Alec Baldwin as a defense contractor and Neve Campbell as his love interest. It would be a kind of 21st-centur [...]

Writer, director, and producer Shane Salerno, fresh off his new documentary about Salinger, offers some of his tips for doing it all with the time you have. Writer, director, and producer Shane Salerno bounces between mediums and genres with some regularity, from documentaries to feature films to books, from writing films to producing television to directing documentaries. Most recently Salerno simultaneously completed Salinger, a theatrical documentary film about J.D. Salinger which opened rece [...]

Lucky Magazine’s new editor is young, digitally savvy–and taking her cues from the tech world. “I love Times Square.” Those might not be the words you would expect to hear out of the mouth of a fashion magazine editor, but this kind of statement is typical of Eva Chen, the new editor-in-chief of Lucky magazine. Since her arrival in June, now with two issues under her belt, she has been putting her own stamp on a magazine founded nearly a decade ago. Chen’s office in the Conde Nast building overl [...]

Joe Swanberg, whose new feature, Drinking Buddies, debuts today, is one of the most productive directors around, having made 11 features by age 31. He shares some of his methods for making movies, a lot of them, his way. To understand Joe Swanberg, it might be useful to know that at age 31, he has made 11 feature films, seven of which were finished in 2010. While some filmmakers who have been working in Hollywood for decades are known for their consistent output, Swanberg might easily be one of [...]

Filmmaker Philippa Robinson discusses the art of getting people to open up on camera. For Philippa Robinson, the idea of filming a series of total strangers talking about their relationships and sex lives while sitting in their own beds seemed like a perfectly wonderful idea as she embarked upon the project last year. The resulting film, Americans in Bed, which is airing all week on HBO, was inspired by a similar film Robinson did in 2010 for the BBC. The film includes interviews with more than [...]

Can you imagine John Lithgow as the Joker or The Graduate without Dustin Hoffman? Both almost happened! Casting By tells the story of the casting directors that shaped film. The role of the casting director is often overlooked in Hollywood. But now the profession is getting the spotlight in a new documentary, Casting By, which premieres tonight on HBO. It tells the story of the birth of the casting profession, in the late 1950s led by two of the first casting directors Lynn Stalmaster and Marion [...]

Acclaimed doc filmmaker Alex Gibney talks about his new film We Steal Secrets, the difference between a topic and a story, and making a difficult film without the cooperation of its difficult main character. Alex Gibney is no stranger to controversy. In fact he is drawn to it. As a documentary filmmaker, his films have taken on Eliot Spitzer (Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer), Enron (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), Jack Abramoff (Casino Jack and the United States of Money), th [...]

Jason Winer, Josh Gad, and Jon Lovett discuss the finer points of making the White House about family, first. TV director Jason Winer and actor Josh Gad were looking to work together. A friend suggested they meet with Jon Lovett, who had just finished serving as a White House speechwriter for Barack Obama and had come to L.A. hoping to write comedy. When Lovett sat down with Winer and Gad, the first thing he said was that he didn’t want to write anything about the White House. Funny story there… [...]

Upworthy, a web platform designed to spread content that matters, has a unique approach: Curate compelling content that already exists, and package it in a way that makes people instantly want to share. How can we take the structural tools that make funny cat videos go viral, and use them to make important stories go viral too? That was the question that began to bubble in Eli Pariser’s mind shortly after he left MoveOn.org, the liberal advocacy group, where he was executive director from 2004 t [...]

Not Fade Away, David Chase’s feature film debut, sees the Sopranos creator return to his roots. Not Fade Away, which opens this Friday, tells the story of a group of teenagers in 1960s New Jersey, who see the Rolling Stones performing on television, and are inspired to start a band. The film follows their journey through the tumultuous 1960s as the boys in the band learn about love, life, sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. The film, full of nods to 1960s cultural touchstones from South Pacific to Ant [...]