Fill out some forms. Send money to the state. Hire a publicist. Announce a “slate.” Rent a yacht in Cannes and throw “an event.” One year later, fade from view.
Most film companies follow some variation of this sorry trajectory. Filmmaker, however, is banking long-term on Kulture Machine, making this company the first ever to be included in our “25 New Faces” roundup. Kulture Machine is director-writer-d.p. Dennis Lee, writer-director Francisco Ordoñez, director-writer-producer Joe Turner Lin (all Columbia Film School grads) and producer Milton Liu. And while Kulture Machine may be a relatively new venture, its individual members have already pumped up its collective C.V.
Lee, who previously taught kindergarten and first grade as well as an art program to “at risk” middle-school children in Houston, wrote and directed the award-winning short Jesus Henry Christ, which garnered him a directing assignment on New Line’s Slay the Bully. Ordoñez has written pilots for Spanish television and is developing a feature, Norwegian Wood, with Kinetic Entertainment. Lin produced Lee’s Jesus Henry Christ and Lee returned the favor by writing and shooting his Seibutsu (Still: Life), a national finalist in the 2004 Student Oscars. Liu also produced the latter two films from a background as a senior manager in an economic consulting firm.
So why a company? “A dear friend of mine once said that Hollywood is a town polluted not by smog but by euphemisms,” explains Lee. “That being said, I trust my partners to tell me the truth.” “I want to walk through life with the people I love, telling stories I love,” says Lin. “It’s no fun alone, successful or otherwise.” “We’re extremely disciplined and motivated because we don’t want to let each other down,” Liu adds. “But this isn’t U.S. Robotics — we put a Playstation and wet bar in our office.”
For Lee, that office space is key: “We come in each day to talk, to write and to work.” One of the company’s functions is that of a “development factory.” “One or all of us will come up with the idea for a spec script,” Ordoñez explains. “Then we’ll all get involved in the outline and treatment phase. Once we develop a detailed scene-by-scene treatment of what the film should be, one of us will go off and actually write the screenplay.”
Kulture Machine hopes to have five films in production in its first year, with the first being Lee’s The Life and Times of H.J. Hermin, a feature-length elaboration on Jesus Henry Christ. — S.M.
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Link to original article: Filmmaker Magazine
