IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival continued on Friday, May 31a with a close-up conversation with Pamela Adlon, FX’s Better Things executive producer, writer, director and actress, after a screening of the Season 3 finale of the critically-acclaimed series. During her conversation with Split Screens Festival co-creative director Melanie McFarland, Adlon gave a piece of advice to the audience about dreaming big: “Try to imagine it, because maybe it’ll happen sooner...and maybe do sit-ups every day.” Adlon also went on to discuss how both she and her daughters identify with the character ‘Frankie’ in Better Things: “My kids live in a very non-binary way. It’s fluid. When I was growing up, I was androgynous. Now it’s called fluid, now it’s called non-binary. And my kids are all very comfortable in that world, as are their friends. It makes me very happy that we are able to hold that. It’s like a little Faberge egg.”
Also on Friday, fans enjoyed a live screening of HBO’s highly anticipated Deadwood: The Movie at the SVA Theatre, some dressed in costume. Following a sold out screening, Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz took the stage with Robin Weigert who portrays ‘Calamity Jane’ and director Daniel Minahan, plus actor Ian McShane who plays ‘Al Swearengen’ joined the conversation live via satellite. When asked if she ever thought this day would come, Robin revealed: “I started to think it was going to happen when [creator] David Milch showed me pages of what he was working on and I thought it was too beautiful not to happen, and then it was just a matter of holding onto that faith through many ups and downs.” McShane shocked crowds when he added: “It was a pleasure to take part in this MAYBE final exercise...well look at Al, at the end the old finger is still moving.” When Seitz questioned McShane, reminding him he had previously said this was the last one, McShane clapped back: “I’m f*cking Al Swearengen, I lie a lot.”
On Saturday, June 1, Christopher Abbott sat down with Seitz to discuss his starring role in Hulu’s new hit series Catch-22. On working with Grant Heslov, George Clooney and Ellen Kuras, Abbott jokingly said their acting notes for him were: “Better. More. Slower. Faster.” He added: “The whole thing was cross-boarded so on any given day I was shooting multiple scenes from multiple episodes with all the different directors...that in itself was challenging. All three of them were there all the time, so you had the individual experience of working with each director and all of them, for lack of going too deep, were great, but at a certain point it just became a fever dream. Whoever was in front of me giving notes, I would nod my head, give a thumbs up and go do it. It felt insane.”
Following, Sam Esmail, the writer-director who has produced two TV series in a similar vein, USA’s Golden Globe® award-winning hacker drama Mr. Robot and Amazon’s military conspiracy thriller Homecoming, stopped by the festival to take the audience on a tour of the paranoid thriller genre, from the distant past through the present day, and its influence on his own work. He surprised Mr. Robot fans with exclusive news that his wife, actress Emmy Rossum (Shameless), who was in the audience, will make a cameo appearance in the upcoming final season. In discussing how today’s environment is the richest for paranoid thrillers since the ‘70s, Esmail said: “Trump blows Nixon out of the water. Trump is ten times worse than Nixon and we can’t bring him down…We don’t even have to catch him on tape, he just tweets out admission after admission and it doesn’t seem to matter, and there weirdly feels a little more of a hopelessness.”
FX’s Better Things executive producer, writer, director and actress Pamela Adlon at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
(L-R) Split Screens Festival executive director Raphaela Neihausen, FX’s Better Things executive producer, writer, director and actress Pamela Adlon and Split Screens Festival co-creative director Melanie McFarland at the IFC Center in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
HBO’s Deadwood: The Movie actress Robin Weigert at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival at the SVA Theatre in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Simon Luethi
(L-R) Split Screens Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz, and HBO’s Deadwood: The Movie director Daniel Minahan and actress Robin Weigert at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival at the SVA Theatre in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Simon Luethi
HBO’s Deadwood: The Movie director Daniel Minahan and actress Robin Weigert at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival at the SVA Theatre in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Simon Luethi
(L-R) Split Screens Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz and HBO’s Deadwood: The Movie actress Robin Weigert, director Daniel Minahan and actor Ian McShane via satellite at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival at the SVA Theatre in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Simon Luethi
Hulu’s Catch 22 actor Christopher Abbott at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Lou Aguilar
(L-R) Split Screens Festival co-creative director Melanie McFarland and executive director Raphaela Neihausen, Hulu’s Catch 22 actor Christopher Abbott and Split Screens Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz at the IFC Center in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Lou Aguilar
(L-R) Split Screens Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz and Hulu’s Catch 22 actor Christopher Abbott at the third annual Split Screens Festival at the IFC Center in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Lou Aguilar
USA’s Mr. Robot and Amazon’s Homecoming creator, writer, director, producer Sam Esmail at the third annual Split Screens Festival at the IFC Center in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
(L-R) Split Screens Festival co-creative director Melanie McFarland, USA’s Mr. Robot and Amazon’s Homecoming creator, writer, director, producer Sam Esmail and Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz at the third annual Split Screens Festival at the IFC Center in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
USA’s Mr. Robot and Amazon’s Homecoming creator, writer, director, producer Sam Esmail and Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz at the third annual Split Screens Festival at the IFC Center in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Carlos Sanfer
(L-R) Split Screens Festival co-creative director Melanie McFarland, Soraya McDonald of The Undefeated, Sonia Saraiya of Vanity Fair, Caroline Framke of Variety, politics and pop culture critic Delia Harrington, Jamie Velez, actress and writer Emma Potter and actor Connor Ratliff at the (S)heroes: Women of Action! Panel at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Lou Aguilar
(L-R) Split Screens Festival co-creative director Matt Zoller Seitz, James Poniewozik of The New York Times, Soraya McDonald of The Undefeated, Sonia Saraiya of Vanity Fair, Caroline Framke of Variety and Split Screens Festival co-creative director Melanie McFarland at the Skip Credits: Critics on Storytelling in the Age of Streaming Panel at IFC Center’s third annual Split Screens Festival in New York.
Photo credit: IFC Center/Lou Aguilar
Split Screens Festival is produced and presented by IFC Center, one of New York’s leading independent cinemas. Collaborating with broadcasters, cable networks and streaming services, the festival highlights great content from a range of platforms to bring together the creative talent behind TV’s most acclaimed shows and sophisticated New York audiences. The 2019 program, celebrating the art and craft of storytelling, puts a spotlight on wide-ranging themes including identity, the mystery of existence itself, dystopian realities and alternate timelines, and invites fans to enjoy screenings and events that transport us into any number of time periods and places, be it a late-1800s South Dakota town or the tensions of New York City at the end of the 1980s. Tickets to the public are on sale (www.splitscreensfestival.com) for exclusive screenings and compelling panel conversations featuring the biggest and boldest names in scripted content, both in front of and behind the camera. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at @SplitScreensTV.
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