Lifestyle FRIDAY, JULY 3, 2015

This photo provided by courtesy of Still Rolling Productions shows, Ron ‘Stray Dog’ Hall, left, This photo provided by Still Rolling Productions shows, Robin Smith, and Ron ‘Stray Dog’ Hall, and Alicia Soriano Hall, in a scene from the documentary film, ‘Stray Dog,’ directed by Debra in a scene from the documentary film, ‘Stray Dog’. Granik. — AP photos A biker named ‘Stray Dog’ postpones Granik’s Ozarks exit ebra Granik met Ron “Stray Dog” Hall at a biker church in ly understated, patiently observational film about a so-called was also necessary for Granik (who’s currently making a docu- the Ozarks. Granik, a 52-year-old filmmaker from New “ordinary” person - far from the follow-up project most seek after mentary about life after incarceration) to win over a community DYork, was in the Missouri Mountains to make “Winter’s an Oscar-nominated hit. “A lot of things my truest soul is attracted extremely wary of outsiders. “I ain’t trying to knock nobody, but Bone,” the 2010 indie drama that catapulted Jennifer Lawrence to to have no commercial value,” says Granik, whose other projects I’ll tell you, brother, folks with cameras in Vietnam were not our stardom and earned four Oscar nominations, including best pic- (an HBO pilot, a Baltimore urban drama) didn’t materialize. “What friends,” says Hall. “They filmed a lot of bad stuff about us. The ture. The man seated next to Granik - burly, bearded, tattooed do you do with a filmmaker like me in terms of the business news was very slanted to one side. We did a lot of humanitarian and kind-eyed - caught her attention. “His tattoo struck me really world?” The profound simplicity of “Stray Dog” lies in Hall’s things over there, but these were never filmed or talked about, hard. I hadn’t seen that word on someone’s body in a really long rough-hewn compassion and an open-mindedness that would just the blood and the guts.” time: the word ‘Vietnam,’” Granik says. “A dump truck of ques- surprise many, were they to motor past him on the highway. In a tions just cascaded on me in that pew.” Granik, looking for local country that has already begun forgetting more recent wars, Hall Raw portrait authenticity to her film, ran after Hall and cast him as Thump is still haunted by Vietnam and bound in brotherhood to fellow Yet Hall loves the movie Granik made. “It’s real. It’s just the way Milton, the backwoods patriarch of “Winter’s Bone.” Hall, a veterans. it is,” he says. “There’s no mask on it.” There’s sadness and pain in Vietnam veteran in his 60s, was skeptical but resolved it would be His sensitivity comes through in scenes with friends and “Stray Dog,” a raw portrait of American heartland poverty. But, for “pretty neat” for his kids to see him in a movie. strangers, alike, at home and on the road with other bikers visit- all his demons and struggle, there’s nothing impoverished about “I didn’t know she was looking for a drug dealer at the time,” ing the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C. But he’s also Hall’s life. “All these things that people worry about .... it don’t he chuckles, “but it worked out.” It’s a good story that could have engaged in the present, learning Spanish to better communicate mean nothin’” says Hall. “My uncle used to say, ‘You got a bad easily ended there, with Granik returning to East Coast with his wife, Alicia, tearing up while talking to a therapist or case of “I-wants.’” I’ll tell you, man, the luckiest people in the moviemaking and Hall back to the RV park he ran. But it didn’t. dolling out Viagra to his pals. “He was someone who had felt a lot world are the folks who learn to be happy with what they got.” When shooting wrapped, Granik stopped by Hall’s home and was of fierce things throughout his lifetime and his willingness to con- The assumption-shattering anthropology went both ways, too, as taken by the scrappy, neighborly existence he and others in the sider another perspective or point of view - it wasn’t that that was Hall and his friends learned about Granik, the Jewish Cambridge, park were eking out. “He also left this cliffhanger. He was like, ‘I endearing to me, it was extremely attractive to me and also hope- Mass.-native in their midst. Hall also came to New York last fall think I’ve just fell in love with this Mexican woman,’” says Granik. ful,” says Granik. “Ron was going to be this complicated ball of when “Stray Dog” premiered at the New York Film Festival, and “We got back to New York and I’m like, ‘Gosh, all I really want to themes.” was surprised to like the place and the people. He even got a foot know right now is what’s happening with Ron and his girlfriend.’” Granik and Hall, who spoke individually by phone, are, as massage in Chinatown. — AP Granik says, “canyons apart” culturally. But Hall came to trust her: No commercial value “She’s real people,” he says. Granik spent more than two years Granik resolved to make a documentary about Hall. The movie, shooting the movie. “You ever see the movie ‘The Never Ending titled “Stray Dog,” opens Friday in limited release. It’s an exquisite- Story’?” says Hall. “That kind of comes to mind.” Hall’s vouching Rupert Everett receives CineMerit Award at Munich Film Festival

upert Everett was lauded at the Munich Film Festival on come from Germany. “This funding has been the foundation Wednesday, when he received the CineMerit Award for out- upon which I have slowly managed to build a European co-pro- Rstanding contribution to cinema. Glenn O’Brien, a former duction,” he said. member of Andy Warhol’s Factory and the first editor-in-chief of Interview magazine, which featured Everett on its cover when he Four languages was a teenager, acted as laudator. O’Brien said: “(Everett) rede- “Like most people in the UK, I am passionate about Europe...,” fined what it is to be a leading man. Part of that is he proved that he added, to loud laughter and applause from the audience, as you don’t need to be straight to be emotionally unavailable, and the UK government is in the process of trying to dilute its com- that it is important to do the roles that formulate your idea of mitment to the European Union. “And I feel I can create a truly yourself and do them in your own way.” European film. My movie stars actors from the UK, France, Italy After he received his award, Everett said: “I feel terribly proud and Germany. It speaks naturally in four languages, and is about a to be here tonight, but also I feel very unworthy, because even character whose life and death were one of the great punctuation though in some ways one deserves an award just for surviving 35 points between the 19th and the 20th centuries. So I hope that years in show business, I really don’t feel I’ve done enough yet to when it comes out I will finally merit the award you have given merit this fantastic award. However, as Elizabeth Taylor once said, me tonight.” —Reuters ‘I haven’t finished with you yet.” Everett explained that he is preparing to direct his first film, “The Happy Prince,” about the final years of Oscar Wilde, for which he wrote the screenplay and takes the leading role. Shooting will take place just outside In this July 1, 2015 picture British actor Rupertin Everett Munich next year, and much of the initial funding for the film has holds his CineMerit award in hand in Munich, Germany. — AP