My Purpose to Make Art

I work in my purpose to make art usually in the form of film that helps or enfranchises you, that liberates you, that is available to you. To all of my incredible supporters, who have left me messages here or anywhere, I want to say thank you so much. Your messages help, enfranchise and liberate me. And by being brave enough to write to me, you've made your truth available to me. I take that very seriously indeed. I am so grateful to you all. I have a master plan to make your brave words available to more people, more to come on that. But for now, thank you my Angels for the kind words. We're all working to make the world a better place. Dream big because they come true. Keep the faith.
Love Marianna xxxx

"Sexy is really complicated"

Andrew O'Hehir talks to Marianna Palka about GOOD DICK on Salon.com

READ POST VIEWING OF GOOD DICK

READ POST VIEWING OF GOOD DICK:

‘I wanted to write a story with three-dimensional characters,’ Palka continues. ‘And thought it would be interesting subject matter to explore. I read a statistic that drove me to write the script. "One in three women are sexually abused before the age of 16." That was incomprehensible to me. It's too big a number. What do we do about that and why is that happening? How are we as a culture raising our sons? How do you get over something like that if it has happened to you. The film is about that: the change from dark to light in a person. And I was also interested in the definition of "Sexy," Because sex is a very dynamic vast beautiful thing. What I personally find sexy in a person is not what mainstream culture says is sexy, i.e. someone who is simply "Physically attractive." So I was trying to expose the fact that as far as mainstream cinema goes we’re not that well versed in what sex actually is.’ Palka has certainly achieved her goal ‐ no easy feet in an industry that’s notorious for stifling individual artistic expression. No doubt her get-up-and-go attitude helped: born to Polish parents in Glasgow, Palka found an early mentor in polymath Peter Mullan before leaving home at 17 to study theatre in New York and at 20 moving to LA, where she began working in film and where she eventually set up a production company with Ritter, Morning Knight. Ultimately, it’s being involved with every aspect of making Good Dick, what film historian David Thomson refers to as “the whole equation”, that has allowed Palka to make her film just the way she envisioned it. ‘I did a lot of acting and that was part of it, I love acting and I found this character fun to play even though she is dealing with a serious set of challenges’ Palka says, ‘So also with 'Good Dick' I wrote ‐ and ended up directing, producing and starring in ‐ my own film. It was a lot of work, but it did streamline the filmmaking process ‐ the writer and the director and the producer and the lead actor didn’t have to have many discussions with each other because they were all the same person.’ CHECK OUT GOOD DICK THE FILM

NEDS Article

Check out this article about Peter Mullan's new film NEDS. It won Best Film at the San Sabastian Film Festival!!

NEDS will be playing at the 54th BFI London Film Festival October 20th and 22nd.

GOOD DICK Review on EFilmCritic.com

Check out the review of GOOD DICK by Erik Childress on efilmcritic.com

Follow Marianna on Twitter!

Follow Director Marianna Palka on Twitter!
http://twitter.com/mariannapalka

You don’t want to miss her Tweets from the Toronto International Film Festival

September 9 - 19, 2010

xx

LIFE Online

2008 Park City - The Green Lodge - Day 2

PARK CITY, UT - JANUARY 20: Actress Marianna Palka visits The Green Lodge on January 20, 2008 in Park City, Utah. 

http://www.life.com/image/83120983 

Pure Aces

 

 

Your Favorite Indie Film is Now on Hulu!

GOOD DICK is now on the main page of Hulu Movies


Click the link below to watch your favorite indie film on Hulu, and see what the NEW YORK TIMES calls “Exceptional acting... Funny, abrasive and oddly innocent!” - NEW YORK TIMES

http://www.hulu.com/popular/feature_film?timeframe=today

Life In A Day

A project by Ridley Scott and Kevin MacDonald

www.youtube.com/lifeinaday

Me and Whitney Abel

Marianna at EIFF opening night 2010

Today

Leonard

Leonard:
If it is your destiny to be this laborer called a writer, you know that you've got to go to work every day, but you also know that you're not gonna get it every day. You have to be prepared but you really don't command the enterprise. Sometimes when you no longer see yourself as the hero of your own drama, expecting victory after victory, and you understand deeply that this is not paradise, somehow we're especially the privileged ones that we are, we somehow embrace the notion that this vale of tears, that it's perfectible. That you're gonna get it all straight. I found that things became a lot easier when--when I--when I no longer expected to win. I tried to put this into that song called . where you understand that you abandon your masterpiece, and you sink into the real masterpiece.

After the Acting Lab

The great Erin Way and me. Outside Joan Scheckel's house, next to the Jasmine bush, after the acting lab.

Do you know what is superbly strange?

Do you know what is superbly strange? It is troubling and weird to write a blog when you consider yourself to be a totally private person, a recluse even. I go to the beach everyday and get out the house and exercise a lot, and see people at the coffee joints I go to but I find it unusual to write my diary essentially knowing that anyone who wants to can read it. But I tell you why I do it, every once in a while, because I like to mark time. I like to scrape a line in the stone and count the passing days. And I also have shit loads to say. And I also think it might be great for the coming generations to have this kind of documentation to read. Not that anyone will read this. The diaries I have from when I was growing up are falling apart or lost. Letters I send people are sent and probably in similar states as the fading diaries or they are binned. There is something that seems permanent about this. I don't blog everyday or anything like that so I have this sense of take it or leave it about it which I like and I feel I am getting more used to the idea. It doesn't feel so much like a fake endeavor anymore. The more I write here the less it feels forced and the more personal I am getting. 

I just did Joan Scheckel's acting lab and I have to write a hard core chunk about that experience. I had as always an illuminating fantastic time. http://www.joanscheckel.com/

In a about a week and a half we should know if NEDS gets into Cannes. Here is an article about it below from The Herald. I went to Hawaii for a week just now to hang with Jason while he shot The Event pilot, it turned out they pushed the shoot a week, so we got to have time together in Hawaii on Oahu for 8 days, I am tanned and very happy and lucky. It was brilliant. It was basically a free holiday, which neither of us were expecting, and we didn't realize how much we needed it. We work a ton and never stop, day, night, Sundays, everything can be interrupted for work, well most things generally. I haven't had a holiday for over a year and a half. Jason's still there now, shooting and I am back to writing in LA. I watched Martin Compston on the plane in a film on the way out there, THE DAMNED UNITED. He was fantastic, as usual. I can get full-on home sick sometimes and nothing can really cure me, it started as I was watching Martin being a genius in that film, and seeing the locations they shot in sent me into a tail spin home sick longing and it didn't go away. I thought about SWEET SIXTEEN and how gorgeous a film that is and I started thinking about Greennock and the Clyde Tunnel and stupid stuff like that, flashing images of the streets or the mugs at my pal Sammy Mulgrew's flat or the smell of my Babcia's house. Nothing seems to cure it when I get a wave of it. It's been over 10 years I've been here in the States. The NEDS shoot this summer ('09) was the longest I've been in Scotland in the past decade. It was an honor to be part of that phenomenal experience and to work with Peter. He is the king of Scottish cinema. Jason and I really hold every performance, ours and folks we are working with or performances we see, up to the standard Peter Mullan sets. Over the years, it has stood us in good stead that standard.

So anyhoo. I get this ultra strong wave of home sickness that no one over here can help me with, nothing cures it, not going to the British shop or making a cup of PG tea. My pals Fiona Glascott and Eva Birthistle have gone back to London now so that increased the wave's intensity this time around. I always search and search for a home sickness cure, I make a CD for one of my pals back home and send it, or I write to someone back home or text them, I text Stephen Sheriff and want him to be in my living room here, or I send a parcel to my niece, Tara, of pants that have the days of the week on them, or those things that attach to her crocs that she likes. I draw all over the parcel/envelope just so I have my pen dancing close to the address I've already written, as if that puts me closer to home somehow. But, after I leave the post office I still have to search and search for something to stop the ache in my chest. Then with nothing left in me and truly believing no solution will come, I just sit down and watch a Ken Loach film on DVD and I remember what I forgot, which is that no matter how much I yearn for home, a Loach film, no matter which one, always makes me feel better. To know that that quality of work is happening anywhere in the world is a relief of the greatest proportions. I am so relieved that I actually feel inspired to work on my writing, which is good because both scripts I have are due. It's actually a cycle, I'm realizing as I write this, I feel home sick and loose my desire to write/do anything, then I potter about for ages trying to fix it, then eventually I semi-accidentally watch a Loach film and get back to writing again. It's an almighty cure for a common ailment. It actually works with Peter Mullan films too. If he's directed it or not, a performance of his is always so profound that it knocks me for six every time and really sorts me out. It's the best antidote to practically anything: snake bites, deadly illnesses, definitely wee wavy feelings of homesickness. I just hear Peter's voice telling me to stop moaning and I get back to work. If I hadn't had him to write to or to sit and talk to when I came home to Glasgow over these years, I'd be a total fanny right now. I'd be a fanny of an actress. And I've told him that. I think he agrees. Or he should anyway.

The article is exciting, regarding the health of Scottish cinema. It makes me happier than my mega tan from Hawaii to read this article.

I'm doing a book on tape right now for Deyan Audio. I am loving it. I am meeting my pal Tyler Pierce for coffee tomorrow at Le Pain on Melrose. He is the first guy I ever acted with in NYC when I was 17. I remember looking at him the first day of class at The Atlantic Theater Company and saying to myself, "Right, Palka, there's no way you'll be friends with that one when you leave this school" And I totally am friends with him. We got very close.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/neds-romans-and-ewan-the-tartan-army-set-to-storm-cannes-1.1014912

I'm On Fire

Check out a funny music video some of the Good Dick cast did called I'm On Fire!

Corduroy Magazine

Corduroy Magazine wrote about Good Dick. Here's a link to some pictures and a little blurb about the article:

http://www.corduroymag.com/uncategorized/good-dick-the-film

Sunglasses

NEDS

To find out about Peter Mullan's new film NEDS and see a picture of him directing me- which was the dream come true of my life- click here:

http://www.screendaily.com/home/interview/making-neds/5005249.article

GOOD DICK at the NACA Convention!

Greetings to all fans of GOOD DICK:

After having the most attended film screening at the National Association for Campus Activities National Convention last year, it only seems right to bring GOOD DICK and our associated film events back to colleges for a second year.

Film screenings and events associated with GOOD DICK were some of the largest of the year for several major universities. We are thrilled to be partnering with FESTIVAL INDIES to bring our movie and ourselves back to NACA.

In addition to film screenings of GOOD DICK (“Official Selection” at the Sundance Film Festival and winner of the “Skillset New Director Award” at the Edinburgh International Film Festival), FESTIVAL INDIES offers exclusive events associated with the film, including a Q&A with writer, director and actor Marianna Palka and actor Jason Ritter. They cover a variety of lecture topics including the portrayal of sexual abuse in the media, opportunities for women in film and television, working as an actor in film and television, and writing, producing and self-distributing films.

Please check out our website www.FestivalIndies.com, which has tons of information about the film, our events and how you can bring GOOD DICK to a school near you!

I just watched "i Borg" with Jason. It is my fav episode of Star Trek TNG. The human dignity is overwhelming in that episode. We ate coconut oil veggies with garlic and steak for dinner. It was a perfect night. He read to me. We drank fizzy water. I was asked to be a judge at THE SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2010 for the Sloan Award this week. I am going to be skiing and judging and writing this Sundance. I am so honored. I was asked if I wanted to present the award as well. David Hyde Pierce is going to introduce me at the award ceremony. I also get to get a few extra tickets and I asked if I could see BLUE VALENTINE on Sunday at Eccles, as that is the film I really want to see. Ryan Gosling is in it and it screens right after Jason's film THE DRY LAND. There are so many good films this year. I am very excited. Anne-Marie Duff is in a film at the festival too. Anne-Marie is the greatest British actress. Her face is like a reflecting pool. She can tolerate so much, her emotional capacity is enormous. She was in Peter Mullan's film THE MAGDALENE SISTERS. If you watch it, there is a scene between Anne-Marie and a garden gate (maybe it's a door, I can't remember, it may be a garden door) that is eternally haunting. It is literally an entire scene between her and a garden gate. The scene is about human freedom, or lack there of. I love it when an actor has a dialogue with a piece of paper, or a chair, or a window, or a cigarette, or a key, or a flower, or the edge of something, or the end of something, or the beginning. I love actors alone on camera. I love being alone on camera because everything around you suddenly has a justified meaning, like you are in a painting that is moving telling a story. It is a lovely feeling. It is nice too, when that feeling creeps up with another actor, like you are dancing together and the stage is part of the motion of the story is being told. Jason just came up behind me and was reading over my shoulder. I said, "Jason, you are such a nosy-parker!" Then he said, "Oh, yeah, like I can't just read it later on your blog" then I laughed a lot then he said, "I love your blog" then I laughed even more, then he said, "Do you think your Good Dick fans will know what TNG stands for?" And that made me laugh super hard. Now we are going to watch the next Star Trek episode in Season 5, it is called "The Next Phase" which is what we are all in now. The next phase, 2010. Big year.

Declaration of Indies: Just Sell It Yourself!

THE NEW YORK TIMES - Film

Declaration of Indies: Just Sell It Yourself!

By MANOHLA DARGIS

Published: January 17, 2010

Looking at a new way of film distribution where filmmakers maintain full control over their work from beginning to end. (To read more...)

New York City Taxi

Words to Live By...

"The most effective way to do it, is to do it."
- Amelia Earhart