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'Good Dick' - written by, directed and starring Marianna Palka with
Jason Ritter and Tom Arnold. Interview with Marianna below:
Jason Ritter and Tom Arnold. Interview with Marianna below:
SUNDANCE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHTS
We have been chatting and emailing with producers and directors whose work has been selected for screening at
this year's Sundance Film Festival.
We have been chatting and emailing with producers and directors whose work has been selected for screening at
this year's Sundance Film Festival.
AFFP: In a couple sentences what is 'Good Dick' about?
GOOD DICK is an unexpected love story that follows a young man who instantly falls for a troubled,
solitary woman, and simply defies her not to love him.
AFFP: Is there a common thread between the films you've been involved with?
They have been about real people, meaning three dimensional characters.
AFFP: What is your background as a filmmaker?
I am working class, from Glasgow Scotland and have lived in the States since 1999. This is the first
narrative feature I've written and directed. I did not have a TV as a kid. I grew up watching films that were
my mum and dad's taste; meaning very specific and not in English usually. When I was 16, I directed a
documentary short film, By My Very Self, in Glasgow, which is about my bi polar sister Nina and my dad,
who has Huntington's Disease. I later directed the documentary For My American Friends, which
highlights Glasgow’s working-class neighborhood of Maryhill where Nina lives and is raising my niece
Tara Palka. In 1999 I moved to New York to study with the Atlantic Theater Company, where I wrote and
directed various works for the stage until graduating in 2001. I was also acting a great deal in New York
and also Los Angeles. I co-founded the production company Morning Knight. I've learned a lot talking to
all different kinds of directors both in Scotland and here in America.
AFFP: Have you been to Sundance before?
I was in Sundance once before. My good friend Peter Mullan was here with a film he was great in On A
Clear Day (he's always great), Mark Webber- also a dear friend- was here with the Thomas Vinterberg
film Dear Wendy and Jason Ritter was here with Happy Endings. It was a great experience, very
inspiring, I met Andrea Arnold after a screening of Wasp and I have been really interested in her work
since. She's amazing.
AFFP: What is your next project?
I am reading the lead role of ALICE at a reading at AFI in Feb of FOREVER by Tatia Pilieva and Gill
Dennis (WALK THE LINE), that will shoot this spring. It is Cora and Jen's (our producing partners on
Good Dick) next film. I am acting in the role of GRACE in IN THEATER by writer/director Nick Towne,
where I play a Scottish female marine. I am thrilled as it is the first time I will play a Scottish character in
film. I am going to do a documentary in Glasgow this year, about my Babica (grandmother) I am always
working on my own scripts. I would also however love to take 2008 and focus on acting in other people's
films. I have made a rule for myself, that I only want to work with directors who are smarter than me.
Because I want to keep learning more things.
________________________________________________________________________________
GOOD DICK is an unexpected love story that follows a young man who instantly falls for a troubled,
solitary woman, and simply defies her not to love him.
AFFP: Is there a common thread between the films you've been involved with?
They have been about real people, meaning three dimensional characters.
AFFP: What is your background as a filmmaker?
I am working class, from Glasgow Scotland and have lived in the States since 1999. This is the first
narrative feature I've written and directed. I did not have a TV as a kid. I grew up watching films that were
my mum and dad's taste; meaning very specific and not in English usually. When I was 16, I directed a
documentary short film, By My Very Self, in Glasgow, which is about my bi polar sister Nina and my dad,
who has Huntington's Disease. I later directed the documentary For My American Friends, which
highlights Glasgow’s working-class neighborhood of Maryhill where Nina lives and is raising my niece
Tara Palka. In 1999 I moved to New York to study with the Atlantic Theater Company, where I wrote and
directed various works for the stage until graduating in 2001. I was also acting a great deal in New York
and also Los Angeles. I co-founded the production company Morning Knight. I've learned a lot talking to
all different kinds of directors both in Scotland and here in America.
AFFP: Have you been to Sundance before?
I was in Sundance once before. My good friend Peter Mullan was here with a film he was great in On A
Clear Day (he's always great), Mark Webber- also a dear friend- was here with the Thomas Vinterberg
film Dear Wendy and Jason Ritter was here with Happy Endings. It was a great experience, very
inspiring, I met Andrea Arnold after a screening of Wasp and I have been really interested in her work
since. She's amazing.
AFFP: What is your next project?
I am reading the lead role of ALICE at a reading at AFI in Feb of FOREVER by Tatia Pilieva and Gill
Dennis (WALK THE LINE), that will shoot this spring. It is Cora and Jen's (our producing partners on
Good Dick) next film. I am acting in the role of GRACE in IN THEATER by writer/director Nick Towne,
where I play a Scottish female marine. I am thrilled as it is the first time I will play a Scottish character in
film. I am going to do a documentary in Glasgow this year, about my Babica (grandmother) I am always
working on my own scripts. I would also however love to take 2008 and focus on acting in other people's
films. I have made a rule for myself, that I only want to work with directors who are smarter than me.
Because I want to keep learning more things.
________________________________________________________________________________
The Sundance '08 documentary 'Secrecy' - interview with co-directors Peter Galison (PG) and Robb
Moss (RM):
AFFP: In a couple sentences what is 'Secrecy' about?
PLG: "Secrecy" explores the classified world of government secrets. Combining animation,
installations, original music, and interviews with players in the struggle over information, the film
confronts us with the collision between national security, secrecy and democracy. It is a film about the
lawyers, CIA agents, analysts, and ordinary people for whom secrecy is a matter of life and death.
RM: "Secrecy" is about the vast, invisible world of government secrets. By speaking with members of
the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, reporters, and individuals whose lives
have been marked by their close encounters with the national security bureaucracy, the film probes
secrecy's relationship to fear, executive power and national security. My hope is that the film has us think
about what kind of country we want for ourselves.
AFFP: Is there a common thread between the films you've been involved with?
PLG: I am particularly interested in using film to explore the battle over the moral and political side of
science and technology. My last film, "Ultimate Weapon: The H-bomb Dilemma" (2000) (with Pamela
Hogan) was on the furious battle inside the community of scientists over whether they should build a
weapon a thousand times more destructive than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
RM: My films always begin with something that is bothering me. I make the film to figure out what is
making me so uncomfortable. In this case, “Secrecy” is an attempt to create a lens in which to look more
clearly at our current, shared political landscape, a landscape that seems more grim each day.
AFFP: What is your background as a filmmaker?
PLG: I come to film through a broader interest in the visual dimension of science. Trained as a
theoretical particle physicist and historian of science, my written work (*How Experiments End* (1987),
*Image and Logic* (1997), *Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps* (2003); *Objectivity* (2007) have all
orbited around questions of the visual in science. Having consulted on a myriad of film projects and
worked on several museum exhibitions about science, I keep coming back to the fascinating problem of
visualizing things hard to see.
RM: I have been making films for twenty five years and most of my films have been situational, not
topical. Mostly, I have immersed myself in particular situations: a river trip, a work camp in Africa,
traveling around the world shooting films for other people. “Secrecy,” by the way, is the first film that I did
not shoot myself. I have also taught filmmaking at Harvard University for the past twenty
AFFP: Have you been to Sundance before?
PLG: A few years ago, I was on a panel at the festival--on science and film--but this is the first time I've
been there with a film.
RM: My last film, "The Same River Twice," premiered at Sundance in 2003. I was on the documentary
jury in 2004 and moderated panels at the festival in 2005-6 about documentary story telling and hybrid
forms in non fiction film. I was a creative adviser for the Sundance Documentary Labs in 2004, 2005,
and 2007.
AFFP: What is your next project?
PLG: Not sure. Robb Moss and I have been batting around a number of ideas; we'd love to push more
into the zone where political reality and imaginary ideas cross. But the fanatical work of finishing a
feature length film brings one pretty squarely into the here and now.
AFFP: RM: Still figuring that out...
Moss (RM):
AFFP: In a couple sentences what is 'Secrecy' about?
PLG: "Secrecy" explores the classified world of government secrets. Combining animation,
installations, original music, and interviews with players in the struggle over information, the film
confronts us with the collision between national security, secrecy and democracy. It is a film about the
lawyers, CIA agents, analysts, and ordinary people for whom secrecy is a matter of life and death.
RM: "Secrecy" is about the vast, invisible world of government secrets. By speaking with members of
the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, reporters, and individuals whose lives
have been marked by their close encounters with the national security bureaucracy, the film probes
secrecy's relationship to fear, executive power and national security. My hope is that the film has us think
about what kind of country we want for ourselves.
AFFP: Is there a common thread between the films you've been involved with?
PLG: I am particularly interested in using film to explore the battle over the moral and political side of
science and technology. My last film, "Ultimate Weapon: The H-bomb Dilemma" (2000) (with Pamela
Hogan) was on the furious battle inside the community of scientists over whether they should build a
weapon a thousand times more destructive than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
RM: My films always begin with something that is bothering me. I make the film to figure out what is
making me so uncomfortable. In this case, “Secrecy” is an attempt to create a lens in which to look more
clearly at our current, shared political landscape, a landscape that seems more grim each day.
AFFP: What is your background as a filmmaker?
PLG: I come to film through a broader interest in the visual dimension of science. Trained as a
theoretical particle physicist and historian of science, my written work (*How Experiments End* (1987),
*Image and Logic* (1997), *Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps* (2003); *Objectivity* (2007) have all
orbited around questions of the visual in science. Having consulted on a myriad of film projects and
worked on several museum exhibitions about science, I keep coming back to the fascinating problem of
visualizing things hard to see.
RM: I have been making films for twenty five years and most of my films have been situational, not
topical. Mostly, I have immersed myself in particular situations: a river trip, a work camp in Africa,
traveling around the world shooting films for other people. “Secrecy,” by the way, is the first film that I did
not shoot myself. I have also taught filmmaking at Harvard University for the past twenty
AFFP: Have you been to Sundance before?
PLG: A few years ago, I was on a panel at the festival--on science and film--but this is the first time I've
been there with a film.
RM: My last film, "The Same River Twice," premiered at Sundance in 2003. I was on the documentary
jury in 2004 and moderated panels at the festival in 2005-6 about documentary story telling and hybrid
forms in non fiction film. I was a creative adviser for the Sundance Documentary Labs in 2004, 2005,
and 2007.
AFFP: What is your next project?
PLG: Not sure. Robb Moss and I have been batting around a number of ideas; we'd love to push more
into the zone where political reality and imaginary ideas cross. But the fanatical work of finishing a
feature length film brings one pretty squarely into the here and now.
AFFP: RM: Still figuring that out...
