The Internet Owes Its Sense of Humor to Bob Odenkirk – In the mid-’00s, Odenkirk was given the chance to direct his own big-studio comedies. But the fatigue of fighting and bickering had worn him down. He decided not to push his crew, or himself, as hard as he might have in the past. “I thought, ‘There’s got to be a way to do this without being such a jackass,’” Odenkirk says. The resulting films—Let’s Go to Prison (2006) and The Brothers Solomon (2007)—were panned by critics and ignored by all but the most devout Mr. Show fans. “I should’ve made more of an effort, and that shows in the movies,” he says.
William Friedkin on Citizen Kane – As the journalists move through the beams like shadow puppets, Friedkin talks more about how Welles harnessed light to achieve the effects he did. “His cinematographer, Gregg Toland, had a hand in inventing the 24 mm Cooke lens they used for most of the film. It was coated with magnesium fluoride to allow more light to enter, so they could stop-down the lens and achieve deeper focus. They also used Eastman Kodak’s new, fast Super-XX film and brought back arc lights, which had long been out of use. They throw a powerful beam and a beautiful light, and Kane is one of the very few films to really make use of it.”
