Postcards from America

Last updated

Postcards from America
Postcards from America poster.png
US theatrical release poster
Directed bySteve McLean
Written bySteve McLean
Based onClose to the Knives and Memories That Smell Like Gasoline
by David Wojnarowicz
Produced by
Starring
Cinematography Ellen Kuras
Edited byElizabeth Gazzara
Music by Stephen Endelman
Production
companies
Distributed by Strand Releasing
Release dates
  • 10 September 1994 (1994-09-10)(TIFF)
  • 28 April 1995 (1995-04-28)(United Kingdom)
  • 21 July 1995 (1995-07-21)(United States)
Running time
87 minutes
Countries
  • United Kingdom
  • United States
LanguageEnglish

Postcards from America (sometimes styled as Post Cards from America) is a 1994 drama film written and directed by Steve McLean, based on the memoirs Close to the Knives (1991) and Memories That Smell Like Gasoline (1992) by David Wojnarowicz. [1] It has been described as an example of New Queer Cinema.

Contents

The nonlinear film presents sequences from three periods in the protagonist's life. The character, called only David, is portrayed by James Lyons in his adulthood, and by Michael Tighe and Olmo Tighe in his teenage and adolescent years.

Production

This marked the first project on which Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler both worked. Koffler served as post-production producer on this film; the pair would form Killer Films, which released its first film the following year. [2]

Marc Maurino, the writer and executive producer of FreeRayshawn (2020), worked on the film as an intern. [3]

Release

Postcards from America premiered at the 1994 New York Film Festival. [4] It was also screened at the Berlin, Sundance, and Toronto Film Festivals. [5]

Reception

Postcards from America was awarded the International Confederation of Art Cinemas award at the Berlin Film Festival. [5]

The film received mixed to negative reviews upon release. Many reviews knocked the film for portraying "Wojnarowicz as a passive, inarticulate victim." [6] Variety described it as "(a) downer without much compensatory insight or dramatic power" in which "McLean shuffles and deals the cards from his deck in a highly selective manner and leaves far too many of them face down." [7] In a review for The Advocate, Emanuel Levy concluded that Postcards "a dispassionate, uninvolving film" that "may be drenched in too much style, making the experience even more fractured and remote." [8] Adrian Martin called it "a depressingly poor attempt at making a vivid, iconoclastic, stream-of-consciousness movie about some rather grim, relentless and preening ideas." [9]

One favorable review commended it for the use of scenes in which characters address the audience, saying the device was better-utilized in Postcards than in The Sum of Us . [10]

Related Research Articles

<i>Natural Born Killers</i> 1994 crime film by Oliver Stone

Natural Born Killers is a 1994 American romantic crime action film directed by Oliver Stone and starring Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Robert Downey Jr., Tommy Lee Jones, and Tom Sizemore. The film tells the story of two victims of traumatic childhoods who become lovers and mass murderers, and are irresponsibly glorified by the mass media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Wojnarowicz</span> American artist and AIDS activist (1954–1992)

David Michael Wojnarowicz was an American painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, songwriter/recording artist, and AIDS activist prominent in the East Village art scene. He incorporated personal narratives influenced by his struggle with AIDS as well as his political activism in his art until his death from the disease in 1992.

<i>Safe</i> (1995 film) 1995 film

Safe is a 1995 American psychological horror film written and directed by Todd Haynes and starring Julianne Moore. Set in 1987, it follows a suburban housewife in Los Angeles whose monotonous life is abruptly changed when she becomes sick with a mysterious illness which she believes is caused by the environment around her.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Schamus</span> American filmmaker (born 1959)

James Allan Schamus is an American screenwriter, producer, business executive, film historian, professor, and director. He is a frequent collaborator of Ang Lee, the co-founder of the production company Good Machine, and the co-founder and former CEO of motion picture production, financing, and worldwide distribution company Focus Features, a subsidiary of NBCUniversal. He is currently president of the New York–based production company Symbolic Exchange, and is Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University, where he has taught film history and theory since 1989.

<i>Wolf Creek</i> (film) 2005 Australian horror film by Greg McLean

Wolf Creek is a 2005 Australian horror film written, co-produced and directed by Greg McLean and starring John Jarratt, Nathan Phillips, Cassandra Magrath and Kestie Morassi. Its plot concerns three backpackers who find themselves taken captive and subsequently hunted by Mick Taylor, a sadistic, psychopathic, xenophobic serial killer, in the Australian outback. The film was ambiguously marketed as being "based on true events", while its plot bore elements reminiscent of the real-life murders of backpackers by Ivan Milat in the 1990s and Bradley Murdoch in 2001, both of which McLean used as inspiration for the screenplay.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christine Vachon</span> American film producer

Christine Vachon is an American film producer active in the American independent film sector.

<i>Go Fish</i> (film) 1994 film by Rose Troche

Go Fish is a 1994 American comedy drama film written by Guinevere Turner and Rose Troche and directed by Rose Troche. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1994, and was the first film to be sold to a distributor, Samuel Goldwyn, during that event for $450,000. The film was released during Pride Month in June 1994 and eventually grossed $2.5 million. The film was seen as groundbreaking for celebrating lesbian culture on all levels, and it launched the career of director Troche and Turner. Go Fish is said to have proved the marketability of lesbian issues for the film industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wash Westmoreland</span> British film director

Paul "Wash" Westmoreland, previously known professionally as Wash West, is a British director who has worked in television, documentaries, and independent films. He frequently collaborated with his husband, writer-director Richard Glatzer. Together, they wrote and directed the 2014 film Still Alice, based on Lisa Genova's NYT best-selling book and starring Julianne Moore, Kristen Stewart, and Alec Baldwin. The film won many awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actress for Julianne Moore and Humanitas Prize for feature film for the duo. Their 2006 coming-of-age feature film, Quinceañera, won the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emanuel Levy</span> American film critic and author

Emanuel Levy is an American film critic and emeritus professor of sociology and film of Arizona State University. For the past 50 years, he has taught a wide variety of courses in sociology film, and popular culture at Columbia University, New School for Social Research, Wellesley College, UCLA, and Arizona State University.

<i>What Happened Was</i> 1994 American independent film

What Happened Was... is a 1994 American independent film written for the screen, directed by and starring Tom Noonan. It is an adaptation of Noonan's original stage play of the same name.

American Film Festival is a film festival held annually in October in Wrocław, Poland. The first festival was held from 20 to 24 October 2010. The festival is organized by Stowarzyszenie Nowe Horyzonty and co-funded by the Wroclaw Municipality and Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

Twin films are films with the same or similar plots produced and released at the same time by two different film studios. The phenomenon can result from two or more production companies investing in similar scripts at the same time, resulting in a race to distribute the films to audiences. Some attribute twin films to industrial espionage, the movement of staff between studios, or that the same screenplays are sent to several film studios before being accepted. Another possible explanation is if the films deal with topical issues, such as volcanic eruptions, reality television, terrorist attacks, or significant anniversaries, resulting in multiple discovery of the concept.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Killer Films</span> American independent film production company

Killer Films is a New York City-based independent film production company founded in 1995 by film producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler. The company has produced many acclaimed independent films over the past two decades including Far From Heaven, Boys Don't Cry, One Hour Photo, Kids, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Happiness, Velvet Goldmine, Safe, I Shot Andy Warhol, Swoon, I'm Not There, Kill Your Darlings, Still Alice and Carol. Killer Films also executive produced Todd Haynes' five episode HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce, which went on to win five Emmys, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Richard Glatzer was an American writer and director.

<i>Wonderstruck</i> (film) 2017 American film

Wonderstruck is a 2017 American mystery drama film directed by Todd Haynes, based on the 2011 novel Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick, who adapted the novel into the screenplay. The film stars Oakes Fegley, Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, and Millicent Simmonds in her film debut.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antonio Campos (director)</span> American film producer, screenwriter and film director

Antonio Campos is an American filmmaker and producer best known for directing films such as Afterschool (2008), Simon Killer (2012), Christine (2016), and The Devil All the Time (2020). Campos is also known for creating the Max biographical crime series The Staircase (2022).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rebecca Carroll</span> Writer and radio producer

Rebecca Anne Carroll is an American writer, editor and radio producer. She is producer of special projects at WNYC and the editor of collections including Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America and Saving the Race: Conversations on Du Bois from a Collective Memoir of Souls. She is a producer of the podcast on gentrification in Brooklyn There Goes the Neighborhood. Previously she was managing editor at xoJane and was the founding editor at Africana.com.

<i>Postcards from London</i> 2018 film by Steve McLean

Postcards from London is a 2018 British drama film written and directed by Steve McLean. It is McLean's follow-up to his 1994 film Postcards from America, which he based on the work of David Wojnarowicz. The film follows a teenage boy, Jim, who escapes his rural Essex town for London, only to find himself involved with a group of high-class gay escorts in Soho.

Scorpion Spring is a 1995 American crime thriller film written and directed by Brian Cox and starring Esai Morales, Rubén Blades, Alfred Molina and Matthew McConaughey.

Pamela Koffler is an American film and television producer and founding partner of Killer Films, an independent New York-based production company she co-leads with Christine Vachon.

References

  1. Levy, Emanuel. Postcards from America: Steve McLean's Tale of Troubled Gay Man, Inspired by David Wojnarowicz. EmanuelLevy, 21 July 2007. Accessed 4 July 2020.
  2. Mitchell, Wendy. The Centrepiece interview: Killer Films chief Christine Vachon on the fluctuating state of indie film. Screen Daily . 28 February 2020. Accessed 25 May 2021.
  3. Fanto, Clarence. Building a film career. The Berkshire Eagle. 25 January 2008. Accessed 25 May 2021.
  4. Far from Heaven : About The Filmmakers. Cinema.com. Accessed 25 May 2021.
  5. 1 2 About Craig Paull. Accessed 25 May 2021.
  6. Artist as Nihilistic Victim. The New York Times . 21 July 1995. Accessed 4 July 2020.
  7. McCarthy, Todd. Postcards from America. Variety, 19 September 1994. Accessed 4 July 2020.
  8. Levy.
  9. Postcards from America Film Critic: Adrian Martin September 1997. Accessed 30 January 2023.
  10. Guthman, Edward. `Postcards' From a Traumatic Life. SF Gate, 28 July 1995. Accessed 4 July 2020.