Opening Day
Holy crap, the day of our theatrical premiere is here at last! I did a tech check at the Angelika this morning and came away happy with the projection, especially given that they’re not used to digital projection. The manager couldn’t have been nicer – treated me to a double cappucino and moved the blow-up of our humongous Sunday NY Times article outside right next to the box office window.
It’s not like I’m hardened to all this, but we have a group of eager young people in our office here, and they’re super excited about the upcoming weekend. And everyone’s thrilled with the incredible coverage and many great reviews we’ve gotten. A. O. Scott in the New York Times calls The Kids “remarkable” and gives it a Critics’ Pick, as does New York Magazine. Eric Hynes in the Village Voice calls it “nakedly personal” and “profoundly universal,” and Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com says it’s a “powerful, wrenching movie” (not to worry, he also called it “funny” and “irresistible”).
The Subject Strikes Back: Lucy Block on ‘The Kids Grow Up’
Whenever you make a personal doc, you have to brace for people ripping you, and sometimes in a very personal way. I’m still amazed that so few slings and arrows have come my way for ’51 Birch Street’ over the years. But with ‘The Kids Grow Up’ opening this Friday in NY, I’m steeling myself again, and probably with more reason.
It’s one thing to put your parents under the probing lens of your camera, quite another to put your young daughter there. So I’m gonna get shots taken at me. In fact, I already have (for the record, Doug Block does like his daughter Lucy). Luckily, I also have my strong supporters.
But one important thing is that the shots will come at me and not Lucy (or so I’d like to believe). Another is that I not only made exactly the film I wanted to make, but that Lucy is still speaking to me. Quite often, in fact, thank you.
One thing I promised myself was that before the film opened theatrically I’d have some kind of response from Lucy posted on our website. And happily, before she went back to college in August, she sat down with me (and my camera) and did a 45-minute interview about her reaction to the film and to being the subject of an intensely personal film by her dad. I should add that it was the first time I shot with Lucy since the end of filming three years ago.
The video is intended for the DVD extras of ‘The Kids,’ at least that’s the plan. But I want to give Lucy a platform before then, so the following is an excerpt from the first few minutes of the interview, very lightly edited for better clarity.
Countdown to Launch
In advance of our premiere at the Angelika Film Center this Friday, two great articles on The Kids in the papers today. The New York Times piece goes more in depth (and gives the film some serious real estate), The New York Daily News opts mainly for a director interview.
More press coverage coming in the days ahead, as well: The Village Voice, Wall Street Journal and indieWIRE, among others.
Thanks and kudos to our extraordinary publicist, Susan Norget, who’s believed in the film from the moment she saw it at our first industry screening last fall. Our entire print ad budget will pay for exactly two postage-stamp sized ads in the Times. And journalists, face it, generally aren’t interested in any film that isn’t celebrity driven, much less a personal documentary. So you can see what kind of job she’s done.
And now it all comes down to getting butts in the seats at the Angelika this coming weekend. If you’re in the NYC area, hope one of them will be yours.
