11/08/2025
Last spring I got an unexpected invitation - to storyboard new project. I hadn’t collaborated with Ira for almost a decade since Keep The Lights On, and was delighted by this invitation. The project was called Peter Hujar’s Day and was based on a transcript of an interview he gave in 1974. I read the script and couldn’t quite imagine how this mundane conversation would translate to a feature film.
We had the luxury of working on the actual set. Just myself, cinematographer and Ira sitting in the beautiful room trying to crack the puzzle of visualising this incredible time capsule. We watched snippets of mid century avant-garde European films, immersed ourselves in the space, and I switched between pencil and paper and digital ink. At a certain point I suggested we capture photos (since we were already on location) and organise them in sequence on the boards. A lot of pieces came together - the outline of a vision starting to manifest.
But even at the end of preproduction I only had the vaguest of ideas of what the film might be like.
Today, I finally watched the film. Nothing could have prepared me for the beauty that unfolded. Sure, I knew many of the compositions. I even had a small hand in forming some of them. But how it all came together. The beautiful subtlety of Ben Whishaw’s performance. The texture of the 16mm film, never quite fully in focus. The meta aspects - the open admission that what we’re experiencing is an interpretation, not an actual time capsule. But the soul of Hujar as an artist, and the soul of an entire historic scene was captured on film. A bygone era at once more romantic than our imagination ever allowed but also beautiful in its mundanity.
The film is playing for a limited time with a small exhibition of Hujar’s work at Lincoln Center. If you’re in New York, don’t miss the opportunity to see it in context on the big screen.