Thursday, December 20, 2018
PETER MASTERSON 1934-2018
PETER MASTERSON
1934-2018
Peter Masterson was one of the nicest people I ever interviewed. I am sorry he is gone. He was intelligent, friendly, encouraging, and skilled as an actor, director and writer.
He was married to the actress Carlin Glynn. The cinematographer Peter Masterson is his son, and the actress Mary Stuart Masterson is his daughter. I interviewed Mary Stuart when her fine film, The Cake Eaters, was shown at the Stony Brook Film Festival. I was glad, at the time, to be able to tell her how much I liked her father.
Peter Masterson was best known for his Tony nominated adaptation and direction of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. (He won the Drama Desk Award for Best Director. Carlin Glynn won both the Tony and Theater World Awards for Featured Actress.) He also directed the film Trip To Bountiful, which won an Oscar for Geraldine Page, which was adapted by his cousin, Horton Foote, who had written the original stage play. Peter played Katharine Ross' husband in the original adaptation of Stepford Wives. Mary Stuart, then just 10, made her film debut as his daughter in that film.
LINKS
PETER MASTERSON - WIKIPEDIA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Masterson
PETER MASTERSON - IMDB
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0557751/
QPORIT: MARY STUART MASTERSON AND THE CAKE EATERS
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2008/07/mary-stuart-masterson-and-cake-eaters.html
Labels: broadway, Carlin Glynn, Drama Desk Award, Mary Stuart Masterson, Oscar, Peter Masterson, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, The Cake Eaters, Tony Award, Trip to Bountiful
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
JAYCE BARTOK AND FALL TO RISE
Jayce Bartok is a terrific screen writer, actor and director.
He wrote the script and appeared in the brilliant film, THE CAKE EATERS, starring Kristen Stewart and directed by Mary Stuart Masterson. He has appeared in many films and theater productions, and Jayce was part of the selected cast for a SLOAN Script-Reading at HIFF. He is a co-founder of Vinyl Foote Productions.
Jayce Bartok
THE CAKE EATERS
And he has just come out with a terrific new film, FALL TO RISE, that will be shown at The Stony Brook Film Festival on Saturday, July 19.
The Stony Brook Film Festival, by the way, is a great place to watch films: They have a superior projection system, it's on the beautiful campus of SUNY Stony Brook, and they have an interested and involved audience plus a terrific selection of films.
THE STONY BROOK FILM FESTIVAL 2014
JULY 17 - JULY 26
FALL TO RISE is one of very few interesting dance films. The story is intelligent and involving, the dancing is terrific, the cinematography is striking, the direction is understated and natural, and the acting, by Katherine Crockett (who has been a Principal Dancer with the Martha Graham Company) and Daphne Rubin-Vega, is superb.
Jayce's writing and direction is simple, complex, clean, sophisticated, sensitive, and both sentimental and unsentimental at the same time.
Daphne Rubin-Vega
FALL TO RISE
It is worth noting that FALL TO RISE (originally called "Tiny Dancer") was partially supported by successful Crowd Funding campaigns.
FALL TO RISE has been selected for special screenings at several important events, including the First Time Film Festival and a SAG screening and panel discussion.
Fall To Rise Official Trailer from Vinyl Foote Productions on Vimeo.
JAYCE BARTOK ON IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0058983
JAYCE BARTOK ON WIKIPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayce_Bartok
VINYL FOOTE PRODUCTIONS
http://www.vinylfoote.com/
FALL TO RISE ON IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2884576/
DAPHNE RUBIN-VEGA ON IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0748189
KATHERINE CROCKETT ON IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3121646
THE CAKE EATERS ON IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418586
THE CAKE EATERS ON QPORIT
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2008/07/mary-stuart-masterson-and-cake-eaters.html
http://qporit.blogspot.com/2009/03/cake-eaters-and-mary-stuart-masterson.html
THE STONY BROOK FILM FESTIVAL 2014
http://stonybrookfilmfestival.com/
Labels: Daphne Rubin-Vega, Fall To Rise, Jayce Bartok, Katherine Crockett, Stony Brook Film Festival, The Cake Eaters, Tiny Dancer
Friday, March 13, 2009
THE CAKE EATERS - AND MARY STUART MASTERSON
Director of THE CAKE EATERS
at the Tribeca Film Festival 2007
Photo by Eric Roffman for QPORIT
Mary Stuart Masterson's brilliant and sensitive film, The Cake Eaters (TCE) opens Friday the 13th at "selected theaters in selected cities".
I first saw TCE at the Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) two years ago, where it was one of my favorite films. It features a great (award worthy!) performance by Kristen Stewart, who is soon to be one of our most important actresses. Kristen is beautiful, young, interesting to watch, extremely talented (with a wide range of roles), and almost ubiquitous (the mega-hit Twilight, the comedy What Just Happened, the action film Jumper, plus Panic Room, In The Wild, and five films in the works!).
Also notable about The Cake Eaters is -- well, it's a cliche, but even cliches can be true -- that the location is "almost a character." Shot in upstate New York, the physical environment has a reality that contributes to the mood and the substance of the film, in much the same way that environment was so important in Altman's films.
On a personal note, I interviewed Mary Stuart's father, actor/director Peter Masterson, many years ago, and he was very smart, and the nicest person; I saw Mary Stuart first, long ago, on location on her first film, when she was eight or nine; and I saw her, more recently, bouncing down the Red Carpet at The Tribeca Film Festival, and later I had the opportunity to speak with her on the phone and post about the film, before TCE opened at the Stony Brook Festival last year. She is charming, vivacious and friendly.
The Cake Eaters has a strong pedigree as an award winner at many film festivals (including Best Feature at Stony Brook), and is a very special film to see.
As an extra bonus, Mary Stuart will be on hand for a Q & A after the screenings in New York:
Q&A with Director Mary Stuart Masterson
Cinema Village (NYC) – 3/13 after 7:25p show & 3/14 after 3p show
Cobble Hill Cinemas (Brooklyn) – 3/14 after 7:45p show & 3/15 after 3:10p show
THE CAKE EATERS starring Kristen Stewart, Aaron Stanford, Bruce Dern, Elizabeth Ashley, Jayce Bartok. Directed by Mary Stuart Masterson.
OPENS MARCH 13TH – New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Phoenix, Santa Fe…
http://www.thecakeeaters.com/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418586/
Labels: Kristen Stewart, Mary Stuart Masterson, The Cake Eaters, Tribeca Film Festival
Monday, July 14, 2008
MARY STUART MASTERSON AND THE CAKE EATERS
Mary Stuart Masterson directing
The Cake Eaters
Mary Stuart Masterson, is charming, ebullient and intelligent... and an actress and the director of The Cake Eaters, to be shown on Saturday evening (July 17, 7:00 PM) at the Stony Brook Film Festival (SBFF) (see our post on SBFF below).
In this film, she tells an interesting, romantic story, about difficult and troubled people. The acting, especially by Kristen Stewart, is dead-on. Kristen plays an adolescent girl with a serious disease and, thinking about the film, I kind-of had to keep reminding myself that Kristen was an actress and not a patient recruited for a film role.
Mary Stuart (that seems to be what she likes to be called) said that she cast Kristen (fifteen when this film was made), remembering having seeing her in The Panic Room in 2002 (which she made when she was just nine). Meeting her, she found Kristen was "so poised and intelligent and ... had such a ferocious... love for the character, that I just knew that it had be her." (Poised, intelligent and ferocious: great qualities for an actress!)
Mary Stuart Masterson with her brother
cinematographer Pete Masterson
What makes the film most special, it seems to me, is that it is uniquely American in a way that few films are. It was shot on location upstate in New York, and has an authenticity that comes from being firmly rooted in the present time in a real place in this country. The film was shot with understated realism by Mary Stuart’s brother, Peter Masterson.
Mary Stuart Masterson and Bruce Dern
The story is contemporary and gently treats of romance and relationships, difficult and otherwise. The character’s talk, and the action proceeds, with a rhythm that is genuine to the place, the time and the story. The script, by Jayce Bartok, who also appears in the film, has not been formulized the way studio films are.
Mary Stuart comes from a family and milieu of actors and directors. Her mother is the Tony winning actress Carlin Glynn. And Mary Stuart has appeared as an actress in films which are something of a family affair, such films as The Trip to Bountiful, written by the playwright, Horton Foote and directed by her father, Peter Masterson (who is Horton Foote's cousin). Mary Stuart's father is a charming, and intelligent (Note: it's not a coincidence that I used the same adjectives to describe Mary Stuart) actor, writer and Tony nominated director (for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas). That understanding of family, and that tradition of crafting film and theater which is in her background history, seems to inform the decisions and structure that were made in crafting a film that portrays sophisticated relationships, and that looks and feels unique and genuine.
There is likely to be a Q&A with Mary Stuart after the screening on Saturday. With a diverse and interesting schedule of films, the Stony Brook Film Festival seems like a very good place to visit between Thursday (July 17) and Saturday (July 26), with the first Saturday night (July 19) a particularly fine time to attend, for the screening of The Cake Eaters.
Note (July 25, 2009) -- The Cake Eaters is now out on DVD. Below is a link to watch the film online or buy a DVD. Also, Mary Stuart has produced a new film, Tickling Leo, written and directed by her husband, Jeremy Davidson, which is being shown today at the Stony Brook Film Festival 2009.
Labels: Kristen Stewart, Mary Stuart Masterson, Peter Masterson, The Cake Eaters, The Stony Brook Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival
