“I think Kalamazoo is now a model for how a community can turn around and go from one extreme to full acceptance,” he said.

KALAMAZOO, MI — When David France founded the first gay and lesbian support group at Kalamazoo College in 1980, the members met in secret locations for their own security.

Before France went on to become a decorated journalist and the director of the Oscar-nominated documentary, “How to Survive a Plague,” the Grand Rapids native and K-College graduate struggled with Kalamazoo’s “hostile” attitude toward the gay community. During a phone interview from his home in New York, France said he was assaulted twice in Kalamazoo, once in the city and another time on campus.

France, 54, will return to Kalamazoo College at 7 p.m. Sunday to screen his acclaimed film about the AIDS/HIV movement of the 1980s and ’90s. He will also participate in a Q&A following the movie. The event is free and open to the public. It’s his first time on campus since 2001 and France said he’s impressed with the strides Kalamazoo has made in the years since he left.

“The city itself was a place where it was dangerous to walk as a gay person in the streets of most neighborhoods, many neighborhoods, in Kalamazoo, and even dangerous at times on campus. There were repeated acts of violence. There wasn’t the consciousness among the administration and the school, and the city itself, for how to counter that or what to do to change that kind of culture. It’s taken a concerted effort over the last couple decades, but it’s really paid off. I think Kalamazoo is now a model for how a community can turn around and go from one extreme to full acceptance,” he said.

France graduated from Forest Hills Northern High School in Grand Rapids, where his father, Jerry, still lives. He graduated from Kalamazoo College in 1981 and moved to New York to pursue a doctorate in philosophy from the New School for Social Research.

He ended up leaving school to cover the AIDS/HIV epidemic. He became a contributing editor to New York magazine and was a senior editor at Newsweek. His articles have also appeared in some of the nation’s most prominent publications, including the New York Times and Rolling Stone. He’s also considered an authority on the work done by groups like the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, that paved a path for the modern gay and lesbian rights movement.

“It’s really remarkable to think how things have changed so rapidly in such a short period of time,” France said. “A lot of that was built on the ashes of the dead of AIDS. The AIDS movement that took foot during the mid-’80s to counter the epidemic and to try to survive through those times became the foundation for the modern gay and lesbian rights movement. If it weren’t for what organizations like ACT UP did in the ’80s and ’90s, we would not be awaiting two momentous Supreme Court decisions on marriage today. We really owe that to the activism that was on the ground and frantically trying to find the solution to AIDS.”

France emphasized the importance of the fight against AIDS still going on today, although it’s rarely discussed in the media. There are 55,000 new cases of HIV transmission every year in the United States, he said.

“That’s nuts and a majority of those transmissions are among people in the age group 13 to 24. That’s a problem that needs to be addressed very actively in an activist’s way by young people. And it’s not quite yet, at least not in an effective way. I’d love to see college students taking that issue up and trying to find a way to once and for all innovate a prevention message,” he said.

“How To Survive A Plague” was France’s first foray into filmmaking. It garnered strong reviews and earned France a ticket to the Academy Awards where he posed for a group photo alongside Sally Field and Anne Hathaway. France said intended to use his reporting on the AIDS movement to write a book, but the rapidly declining publishing environment of 2009 made him reconsider.

“I wouldn’t have gone to make a documentary if I had been fully engaged in my magazine work. I just had time to try it and to learn about it. It’s always something I wanted to do, but I was trying to write a book about that piece of history at a time, 2009, when the entire publishing industry was collapsing,” he said. “I thought, ‘Well, I’ll try something new.’ I’m glad I did. It was really fun. No book is going to get me to the Oscars. It bit me. I’ve got the bug. I’ll do it again. I’m a filmmaker now.”

He’s also dabbling in television. ABC plans to remake the documentary as a TV mini series, he said. France said the project is in “full development mode.” He said he will serve as the writer and executive producer.

“We are pushing straight forward on it. I don’t know really what the timeline is on this because I haven’t done it before, but I imagine it will be a year or a year-and-a-half at the earliest that we can get the thing on television,” he said.

Once his “detour” into television completes, France said he plans to pursue another documentary project.

“In a poor economy, entrepreneurship is the way to go. So try new things and see. I think that’s what we learn from the young men and women in ‘How To Survive A Plague.’ You can do anything. You can learn immunology. You can learn documentary filmmaking. You’ve just got to commit to it and you can master it,” he said.

John Liberty can be reached at 269-370-7372 or jlibert1@mlive.com. Follow me on Twitter @JohnTLiberty

The voices of Michigan collegiate and community a cappella groups will fill the Epic Theatre April 12-13. On the last night they’ll be joined by the University of Chicago’s champion singers, Voices in Your Head.

University of Chicago student a cappella group Voices In Your Head will headline at the Kalamazoo A Cappella Festival.
Courtesy photo

 

KALAMAZOO, MI – The Kalamazoo A Cappella Festival is reaching out and grabbing some big voices for its third year.

The voices of Michigan collegiate and community a cappella groups will fill the Epic Theatre April 12-13. On the last night they’ll be joined by the University of Chicago’s champion singers, Voices in Your Head.

These Voices have been singing as an all-student group since 1998. They’ve won awards including first place at the 2012 Boston Sings Collegiate Competition and first at the 2012 ICCA (International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella) Midwest semifinal.

In 2009, they were invited to record Ben Folds’ “Magic” on “Ben Folds Presents: University A Cappella!” Folds told Entertainment Weekly, “they’re in  a different league from the rest of the groups.”

Thanks to “Glee” and “The Sing Off” on TV, and “Pitch Perfect” on movie screens, a cappella “has become its own little force,” festival director and FermataKzoo tenor Zachary Ruegsegger said.

FermataKazoo, a local group of students and community members, on stage at the 2012 Kalamazoo A Cappella Festival.
Courtesy photo

 

“It started to get big in the last 10 years or so,” he said. The Kalamazoo area “didn’t really have anything five or six years ago. It really picked up, and now there’s three groups at Western, there’s three groups at K College and there’s two community groups.”

The festival has had WMU groups in its first years, but none could be on the stage this year due to a scheduling conflict with the Spring Choral Showcase April 13. But Kalamazoo College’s Kalamadudes, community singers Notified, local barbershop quartet Four Got To Shave and FermataKzoo are on the bill, along with Michigan State University’s RCAHpella and State of Fifths, Grand Valley State University’s Euphoria, and University of Michigan’s Gimble.

A cappella is simply “today’s popular music that you hear on the radio, just sung with voices instead of instruments.” Expect Bruno Mars, Adele, John Mayer and others’ songs.  All instrumentation will be sung, and lead singers will do what they can without auto-tune. “You’ve got all the different parts to make the song sound like what you’d hear on the radio,” Ruegsegger said.

There’s considerable creativity involved in the groups’ arrangement, presentation and song selection. For example, FermataKzoo will bring back their version of Radiohead’s “Creep.” They turned the moody and dark rocker — “I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo” — into light and happy jazz, as inspired by comedic lounge singer Richard Cheese’s version of the song.

This year’s festival has reached a milestone with Voices In Your Head, “the highest-quality group we’ve ever had,” Ruegsegger said. He plans to keep expanding the festival into more of a day-long event and bring in high school groups next year.

The event is free and open to the public.

Best First Feature honoree director David France arrives at the New York Film Critics Circle awards dinner at the Crimson Club on Monday Jan. 7, 2013 in New York.
 Associated Press file

 

KALAMAZOO, MI – David France, director of the Oscar-nominated “How To Survive A Plague” and a 1981 graduate of Kalamazoo College, will return to the school to screen the documentary and meet with students.

France, whose film depicts the efforts of AIDS activists in the early 1980s and ’90s, will screen “Plague” at 7 p.m. on May 5 at K-College’s Dalton Theatre.

The event is free and open to the public.

France talked to MLive.com film critic John Serba prior to the Academy Awards about the nomination.

Shortly after the Academy Awards in February, ABC Studios bought the rights to France’s film with plans to turn it into a miniseries. 

“We know we’d like it to be an extended story that’s not just about AIDS and what AIDS wrought but about this tremendous civil rights movement that grew from the ashes of AIDS and the dawn of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement,” France said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

France graduated from Forest Hills Northern High School and his father, Jerry, still lives in Grand Rapids. After graduating from K-College in ’81, he moved to New York to pursue a doctorate in philosophy at New York’s New School for Social Research. He quit school in ’82 to report on the growing AIDS epidemic.

His work led to a long career as an award-winning journalist.

France is a contributing editor to New York magazine, and a former Newsweek senior editor. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone and The New Yorker, among other publications.

John Liberty can be reached at 269-370-7372 or jlibert1@mlive.com. Follow me on Twitter @JohnTLiberty

There is also a Kalamazoo connection in the film. Rocky Russo, a 2001 Kalamazoo College graduate, co-wrote four of the sketches in the raunchy comedy and served as associate producer on the film.

Johnny Knoxville in a scene from “Movie 43.”

Courtesy photo

 

KALAMAZOO, MI – We are barely a month into 2013, but some film critics have found their front-runner for worst film of the year: “Movie 43.”

As the ads for “Movie 43” promised (threatened?), you can’t un-see this thing, so please: Stay away. Even if you might think that sitting through “Movie 43” would be an adventure along the lines of experiencing “Showgirls” or “Howard the Duck,” you’ll be filled with regret five minutes into this atrocity. There’s camp-fun bad and interestingly horrible bad, and then there’s just awful.“Movie 43” is the “Citizen Kane” of awful.

– Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times

It’s as if “Movie 43” was itself a feature-length fuck-you to Hollywood, a movie made simply to show how bad a movie a studio could be induced to make and actors could be persuaded to act in.

– Richard Brody, The New Yorker

But this is a film so utterly devoid of laughs that it makes one wonder whether Hollywood stars really are feeling the pinch too. Featuring two current Oscar nominees (Hugh Jackman and Naomi Watts), two Oscar winners (Halle Berry and Kate Winslet) and many more big names including Emma Stone, Richard Gere, Justin Long and Stephen Merchant, this ramshackle arrangement of one-joke vignettes, each with a different director, is an orgy of bad taste that feels laboured, plotless and dull.

– Francesca Steele, The Independent

Rocky Russo co-wrote and served as associate producer on “Movie 43,” out Jan. 25. He also appears alongside Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet in the raunchy comedy.

Rocky Russo and his writing partner Jeremy Sosenko at the premiere of “Movie 43.”
Courtesy

 KALAMAZOO, MI – It’s not every day that Wolverine shows
you the correct way to wait tables.

Rocky Russo picked up a few tips working alongside Oscar nominee Hugh Jackman and Oscar winner Kate Winslet during the making of “Movie 43,” which opens
Friday, Jan. 25. 

In addition to cowriting four of the sketches in the raunchy comedy, as well as the wraparound plot, Russo served as associate producer on the film. He also appears in the first sketch filmed, “The Catch.”

Russo, who graduated from Kalamazoo College in 2001 and grew up in the area, likened working alongside Jackman and Winslet to “playing basketball with Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.”

“I play a waiter who’s waiting on them on their blind date,” said Russo, speaking by phone from Los Angeles the morning after the movie’s premiere.

One problem: “I have no waiting experience.”

That day, Russo recalled, “I’m trying to pretend I know how to serve them.”

Jackman was not fooled.

‘You’ve never waited tables, have you, mate?’ ” the Tony winner asked. “Here, let me show you.’ 

“He’s 6 foot 4 and he looks like he’s carved out of marble and he takes the time to show me how to wait on someone,” said Russo.

Then there was his meeting with Richard Gere.

“So, you’re the guy who’s going to ruin my career?” Gere asked genially on the set in New York. 

They were shooting on those particular days because Gere was having the Dalai Lama over and needed a few days to get back in the proper frame of mind after working on the envelope-pushing comedy, Russo remembered.

Five years is a long time to make a series of interlinked short films. 

The delay was in large part due to juggling schedules to accommodate the cast, Russo said. 

It includes actors one might expect to find in a gross-out comedy –Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott and Seth MacFarlane, say –and ones you might not, such as Oscar winners Winslet and Halle Berry. There isn’t a red carpet big enough to hold the entire cast, which includes Greg Kinnear, Dennis Quaid, Naomi Watts,  Emma Stone, Kristen Bell and Gerard Butler … as a leprechaun.

“It was a mad scramble,” said Russo of scheduling the shoot, which took place a few days at a time in New York, Los Angeles, England and Australia. “It’s a sketch movie, like ‘Kentucky Fried
Movie’ or ‘Amazon Women on the Moon.’… There’s a long history of
this.”  

Peter Farrelly (“There’s Something About Mary,” “Shallow Hal”) and his partner Charlie Wessler were the team behind “Movie 43,” and Russo said the two have since become mentors to him and his writing partner, Jeremy Sosenko.

“I saw ‘Dumb and Dumber’ when I was in
high school. I thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen,” said Russo. “I was working at the Hollywood Video in the
Oakwood Plaza and spending every night taking home movies and watching
them.”

Russo said that experience helped him decide he wanted to work in entertainment. Getting cast in a play at Kalamazoo College after a knee injury sidelined his time on the basketball court cemented it.

“He was just a really wonderful student and
young man. He came to us on a Heyl scholarship and was a double major in
computer science and theater. He was actually a great athlete. He was a
wonderful basketball player and suffered a terrible injury,” said Ed Menta, professor and director of Theater Arts. “The next thing you know he’s being cast in
all of our plays. …We’re so
happy for him and proud of him.”

Russo met Sosenko in Chicago at their first Second City class. The two started writing together after Russo realized he needed to be creating something and not just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.

To have his first big-screen credits be in a Farrelly movie “was unbelievably satisfying,” he said.

Russo’s involvement with “Movie 43″ started in 2007, in Iowa City, where he and Sosenko were stuck after Sosenko’s car died during the drive from Chicago to Los Angeles. Their manager called to say that Wessler wanted to meet with them about writing a few comedy sketches. Car repairs suddenly became much less important.

“We ended up getting to L.A., where we
pitched five sketches,” said Russo. “Within a week,
we’d sold these five sketches for this movie that we had no idea what it
was going to be. …It was not a bad first job to land in L.A.”

In the intervening years, Russo and Sosenko were hired as writers on the Comedy Central show “Brickleberry” and were tapped to adapt the graphic novella “Too Cool to Be Forgotten.” Russo also will appear in the upcoming “Walk of Shame” with Elizabeth Banks, who directed one of the shorts in “Movie 43.”

While Russo is trying to avoid Internet reviews, he’s seen enough to know that some have called the movie “the final nail in the coffin of American culture,” as he puts it. 

He thinks most people will find something to laugh at, even if every sketch isn’t to their taste.

“It’s fun to let down our hair and push the
scatological envelope,” said Russo, although he added in jest, “I have no idea what I’m
going to tell my mother when this thing comes out. We’ll see if I’m allowed home next
Christmas.”

Yvonne Zipp is a reporter for MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette. You can reach her at yzipp@mlive.com or 269-365-8639.

"It's a collection of short stories by Andy Mozina, who was one of my professors at Kalamazoo College. He really pushes the boundaries of storytelling."

…

Muskegon residents Carlos Mosqueda, 30, Will Jeannot, 28, and his brother, Lou Jeannot, 25, founded and run Mux Rec, a record label and production studio based in Muskegon.

Mux…