Scott Macaulay

The poster for Sean Dunn’s dark comedy, “The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford,” has just dropped. Excited for audiences to experience it when opens June 12 from @mubiuk . Proud to have had so many great collaborators in the film. @bbcfilmofficial @screenscots @britishfilminstitute @gazelletwin Alex Polunin @come_into_the_fold @jessiefrostcasting @jamielapsleydesign @davidgallego @ellewilson.costumedesign @charadesfilms @scottcummingsfilm @abovesatisfactory @nahdeerah @sarahfidelomua @_____gaylerankin______

“A fuller assessment of Cannes today, and its role in the cinema ecosystem, requires a consideration of the festival selections alongside developments and trends captured by the accompanying Marché du Film.” With Cannes (@festivaldecannes ) kicking off tonight, Scott Macaulay (@bugjack ) offers an industry preview of this year’s festival: the market trends, the anticipated acquisitions, the festival’s uneasy entanglement with social media and A.I, and more. Read “Cannes 2026: Fairytale in the Supermarket” and stay up to date with all of our Cannes coverage at filmcomment.com.

Over at Substack (link in bio) I wrote about how a lookbook can help transmit a director’s vision and a film’s tone using examples from Sean Dunn’s “The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford.”

We are excited to announce THE SPACESUIT, the latest film written and directed by multi award-winning filmmaker Kitty Green (The Assistant, The Royal Hotel, Casting JonBenet), starring Academy Award-nominated, and BAFTA-winning actress Vanessa Kirby (Pieces of a Woman, Fantastic Four: First Steps, Mission: Impossible franchise, The Crown [TV]) and Emmy Award-nominee Lewis Pullman (The Testament of Ann Lee, Thunderbolts*, Lessons in Chemistry [TV], Top Gun: Maverick). The story follows an astronaut (Kirby) who is forced to make an impossible decision after an incident with her co-pilot (Pullman) leaves an indelible stain on the mission in the days leading up to lift off, setting off a tense race against the clock. According to the filmmakers, the film expands on the same themes as Green’s earlier films while “dialling up both the stakes and scale.” Click the link in our bio to read the full article 🔗 #TheSpacesuit #VanessaKirby #LewisPullman #KittyGreen #Cannes

When in 1992 Robin O’Hara and I walked into Tom Noonan’s Paradise Factory Theater to see his play, “What Happened Was…,” our lives were changed. There were 11 people in the audience that night, and Tom’s in-the-round staging and his and Karen Sillas’s “film acting on stage” approach delivered a beautiful, hushed intimacy. We stumbled out on East Fourth Street after, aware that we had just experienced some only-in-New-York magic. “If we can just make a film as good as what we just witnessed, we’ll have made a great film,” Robin and I said to each other. And with Ted Hope and James Schamus as our EPs, Joe DeSalvo, Dan Ouellette and Kathy Nixon as our department heads, Steve Apicella as our AD, and Tom directing, writing, acting, editing and scoring, that’s what we all tried to do and, I believe, succeeded in. That film remains so special to me. Robin and I had never produced a feature and, while a couple, had never produced together. We were wonderfully naive, not thinking about Sundance or distribution or anything. We just wanted to capture some of that magic on screen. We did wind up going to Sundance, where the film won the Grand Prize and the Waldo Salt Screenplay Award, and we carried with us there a proposal for Tom’s second film, “The Wife,” based on the play he was running in New York. Two months after Sundance we were in production on that film, with Tom, Karen Young, Wallace Shawn and Julie Hagerty starring. Thinking about Tom on the very sad news of his passing, I’m brought back to those days and on his faith in two untested producers as well as his singular sense of humor — his sly expressions indicating he had found unexpected comedy in whatever you’d say, which would leave you scrambling internally to figure out what that was. I’m thinking of his keen radar for authenticity — in performances, art and people. And, especially, for the moments of kindness and understanding he displayed during our work together that I’ll never forget and will write more about in the days ahead. R.I.P. Tom Noonan. (Above, post-sushi dinner, Tom in the East Village in 2018.)

Excited to be premiering next week at @iffr Sean Dunn’s “The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford,” starring Peter Mullan and Gayle Rankin and produced with Alex Polunin, Jennifer Monks and our kind partners at BBC Film, BFI and Screen Scotland. It’ll be in Goteborg too. With original music by @gazelletwin .

To celebrate Scott Macaulay’s (@bugjack ) incredible run at @filmmakermag I have to speak about the coolest thing he let me do there while I was his managing editor at the mag. We knew we could get Michel Gondry for our Winter 2008 issue so after seeing the movie he had coming out, BE KIND REWIND, I suggested to Scott, “let’s drape him in VHS tape!” (In the movie Jack Black and Mos Def play friends who remake movies with their camcorder). To Scott’s credit, he was never against an ambitious idea. So I went to a local Radio Shack and bought all the VHS tapes they had, broke all them apart so we just had a trash bag full of tape. Then the great photographer @richardkoek crafted one of my all-time favorite covers Filmmaker ever did. It wouldn’t have been possible without Scott’s leadership and passion for indie film.

My Filmmaker mag swan song event: December 6 at @metrograph two programs of short films from the new filmmakers we picked for the magazine’s 2025 25 New Faces list. It’s a strong lineup and many of the directors will be there. And I’ll be doing my final Filmmaker mag Q&A’s as most of you know I’m leaving the magazine January 9. Hope to see many of you there! /filmmaker-mag-2025/

...LITTLE, BIG, and FAR held over at IFC Center! Now on thru July 24 -(check showtimes) Director Q&A added tonite 7/16, with Michael Almereyda Trailer: /1098693919 NYT Critic's pick! /2025/07/10/movies/little-big-and-far-review.html More info/other screenings: /film/little-big-and-far/ Please come and please spread the word! This run is the crucial test for the film going to other cities...

#ghopperfilm #littlebigandfar #ifccenternyc #jimwhitedrums #allhitsmemoriesjimwhite

Surprised and saddened to hear of the passing of Val Kilmer. Robin and I worked with him once in the ‘90s on Frank Whaley’s “Joe the King.” Frank and he had a relationship from “The Doors,” but it wasn’t a definite that he’d sign on to a sub-$2 million indie after just having done “Batman.” I have complicated (both funny and borderline traumatic) feelings about closing his deal — his agent would end every call by saying, “I’m refraining from closing,” until the last one, when I replied, “Sir, your client is on set right now shooting” — but not about working with him on the film. When he arrived we sent our $150/day HMU head to his hotel room to ask if she could cut and dye his hair, which he allowed her to do in his hotel sink. He was boarded for two weeks and then we had to collapse his schedule into three days when that became all he was available for. We had 14 scenes with him scheduled, we cut three and shot the remaining 11, including one reshoot, when he wanted a second go of his pivotal monologue scene, which this picture depicts. His days were a breakneck pace! At the end he ordered pizza for the crew’s second meal. As is often the case on indie films, he had no contractual publicity commitment, but when we got into Sundance we just sent him the info and asked if we could book his flight, and he came and did a whole day of interviews and attended the premiere. A serious actor and down-to-earth guy who had no issues with going totally independent at a time when his star was bright. R.I.P. Val Kilmer.

Very proud to be an executive producer on @gravityhill_pictures ‘s “Little Big and Far,” premiering tomorrow at @thenyff and distributed by @ghopperfilm . Writes the festival, “… the real matter of the singular’Little Big and Far’… is as vast of the universe itself, a reckoning with scientific truth at a moment of humanity’s existential crisis.”