Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days:  Former Monty Python-er Palin's first foray into global travelogues and, while they've all been most enjoyable jaunts, we think this one, out today on DVD, i's still his best. Following in Phileas Fogg's fictional footsteps as described in Jules Verne's story, Palin adheres closely to that route - no planes allowed, only cars, boats and trains, and nothing that flies faster than a balloon. "A fantastic series presented very well on DVD [for] those who'd like to get a taster of the varied cultures the world has to offer from their armchair." (DVD Times)

Despite a career that begins in the 1960s and decades of fruitful collaborations with composer Jorge Arriagada (arguably the greatest film-scorer working today) and numerous legendary cinematographers (Sacha Vierny, Robby Müller and Henri Alekan among them), the work of Raúl Ruiz remains sadly underrepresented on video or in theaters in the United States. This was somewhat remedied recently when Kino released Ce jour-là (That Day) in June and Blaq Out (by way of Facets) released Three Crowns of the Sailor in July and Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting today - all landmark works by the director from three different decades. What follows is a conversation between Jonathan Marlow and Raúl Ruiz in a crowded café in Rotterdam. Expect that a few things were lost in translation as the conversation infrequently shifted from English, to French and Spanish, occasionally within the same sentence.

---

You've mentioned in the book Raúl Ruiz: Images of Passage and elsewhere that you were unsatisfied with the popularity of Three Crowns of the Sailor. What are the conflicting issues at work - both in wanting success for your films and then the repercussions of their popularity when audiences embrace them?

"If you like Al Franken, you'll love this movie," Jonathan Marlow wrote when he caught Al Franken: God Spoke at SXSW earlier last year. "While I have no attraction for canned comments of this sort, the documentary entirely redeems such a clichéd phrase since it frankly portrays Franken as quick-witted and charming, taking any mild feelings you might have for the man to an entirely new level of appreciation (unless you're a humorless conservative, not unlike several of the folks he belittles in the film)."

Now, as he segues from the festival circuit to a theater near you, he talks with Chris Hegedus and Nick Doob not only about God Spoke but also about how the nature of documentaries has evolved over the decades and about their early work with Hegedus's husband and partner, D.A. Pennebaker.

---

Regarding the project that you did for the Sundance Channel...

Chris Hegedus: Fox vs. Franken.

Nick Doob: Perhaps we should ask you some questions. Do you like how we recycled it?

Well, yes. Yes, I did. The opening scenes of God Spoke share some obvious similarities. There is a jumping off point somewhere in here but, before we even talk about that, we should discuss the Al Sharpton project. From one "Al" to another...

Doob: That started with a New Yorker piece. Maybe not...

Hegedus: It came from a guy named Roberto Ramirez, who was Al Sharpton's first campaign manager, almost. Roberto is a political guy from New York. He was a Bronx borough chief at one point [according to the New York Sun, he was the "former Bronx Democratic Party boss"] and he actually was in jail with Al Sharpton. He spent a long time in jail there, six months or something, protesting the Army base. Roberto, who is Puerto Rican, worked his way up from being an elevator man or door man in New York to going to NYU Law School and becoming a part of politics. He wasn't entirely in favor of the politics of Al Sharpton but, when he was in prison with Reverend Sharpton, he got to know him and really started to like him and thought he was an incredibly moving and committed and charismatic person. He decided that he could do something. He sees the American political landscape as a possible force that unites the Hispanic and Black vote to some cause. That was what he was wanting to do and, whether or not he would elect Al Sharpton as president, he was hoping to fire up the two communities and point them towards whomever would be the candidate...

Stephen and Timothy Quay's first live-action feature in eleven years, The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, is, among many things, "a tragic fairy tale drenched in otherworldly visual splendor," as Nick Schager has put it for Slant. Jonathan Marlow spoke with the Quay Brothers at their London studio in February, 2006; this is the first part of their conversation, more will follow.

---

As I understand it, your escape from America was not a thing that was necessarily planned but something that evolved.

Timothy Quay: We were at the Philadelphia College of Art and a visiting professor asked what we were doing after we graduated. He said that we should apply to the Royal College of Art in London to get a Masters degree and venture into more film work and animation. He said, "They have a film department and you can apply as illustrators," which we were, "and then transfer." We were accepted but the film school wouldn't let us in. They wouldn't let anybody else transfer into the department. As we hung around with other filmmakers, they would loan us their cameras on the weekend. That's when we shot a couple of our animated films on the fly.

You were using a 16mm Bolex?

Timothy Quay: Yes. We were creating cut-out collages. We set up two lights on our kitchen table and just shot it that way on the weekend. Then we came back to America after those three years to pay off our debt and ended up completely unemployed. We were dishwashers and waiters in a café in Philadelphia and we said, "We've got to get out of here and get back to Europe." So we took all of our savings, thinking that it had to be better over here.

Was it during this time that you became familiar with [Jirí] Trnka and other puppet animators?

Timothy Quay: We first started seeing those people at the end of 1968 or '69 at a festival in Philadelphia. It was much easier to see them over here.

You were initially interested in cut-out animation?

Stephen Quay: I think that we had a hankering for it. I think we probably felt more at home with cut-out.