The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Monday, December 10, 2018 — 5A

AVAILABLE FALL 2019 
905 Church St (near Hill St). Newly 
re 
modeled three bedroom apartment 
with Granite, SS appliances, and 
hardwood floors. Parking and laun‑
dry available. Free Heat. $2395/mos. 
keysmanagement.net

STORAGE FOR STUDENTS 
studying abroad. Indoor, clean, safe, 
closest to campus. AnnArborStorage.
com or (734)‑663‑0690.

By Frank Virzi
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
12/10/18

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

12/10/18

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Monday, December 10, 2018

ACROSS
1 Strains to lift
6 Scribble (down)
9 Former Russian 
despots
14 Dickens’ Heep
15 Cain raiser
16 Florida’s __ 
Center
17 Nabisco cookie 
with a pastry 
jacket
19 “Cold Case Files” 
airer
20 Seminoles’ sch.
21 Lukewarm 
reviews?
22 Sadden
24 Gulf Coast 
Florida city
27 Scrape or scratch
28 F equivalent, in 
music
29 Investigations
33 Hostess snack
35 Sound from a 
tabby
37 Wee hr.
38 Barley brew
39 __ Fáil: Irish 
coronation stone
40 Joseph of ice 
cream fame
42 “Cats” monogram
43 Mazda sports car
45 City bond, briefly
47 Suit to __
48 The “M” in LEM
50 Like red-line 
traffic, on Google 
Maps
52 For example
53 Lights that darken
56 Kate of “Steve 
Jobs”
60 SSW opposite
61 Bucolic setting
62 __ Gay: WWII 
bomber
63 Succeeded 
big-time
66 “Over the 
Rainbow” 
composer Harold
67 Grow older
68 The Lindy, e.g.
69 Tally again
70 Hide-hair link
71 Jouster’s ride

DOWN
1 Blows like the Big 
Bad Wolf
2 Pension law 
acronym

3 *Nominal leader
4 Beachgoer’s 
color
5 “Good grief!”
6 *Atmospheric 
wind that aids an 
eastbound U.S. 
flight
7 Lacto-__ 
vegetarian
8 Look after
9 *Boston tax 
protest of 1773
10 Cousin of a 
snowfinch
11 Most common 
skin condition in 
the U.S.
12 Fishing sticks
13 Fr. holy women
18 End of many a 
riddle
23 Holy Roman VIP: 
Abbr.
25 Japan’s largest 
active volcano
26 PFC’s address
30 Net profit, and 
what the answers 
to starred clues 
have
31 Lessen, as pain
32 Hook’s right 
hand
33 Soccer great Mia

34 Mishmash
36 *Failed, as a 
business
39 *2016 film 
wrongly 
announced as 
Best Picture
41 Singer Warwick
44 Wrestled
46 Battleship 
initials
47 Turkish chief
49 Peacock tail 
feature

51 Tells it to the 
judge
54 Pound’s 100, in 
England
55 Totally full
56 Be dressed in
57 Regarding, on 
memos
58 Pelican St. city
59 Fed chasing 
Capone
64 In the past
65 Doorstep 
welcomer

FOR RENT

HEY.

YOU'RE 
DOING GREAT 
AND WE 
know you 
can do it. 

Don't give up!

Classifieds

Call: #734-418-4115
Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com

Director Daniel Goldhaber talks ‘Cam,’ collaboration 
and the normalization of sex work through cinema

A few days before writing this 
article, my Instagram briefly got 
hacked. My initial reaction was 
confusion, followed by a sudden 
surge of panic and a series of 
unanswerable questions: How 
could this have happened? Who 
could have done this? Why 
me? Once I logged back into 
my account, I found that my 
username and email address 
had been changed to something 
completely 
different. 
After 
hastily 
putting 
the 
correct 
information back in, I thought 
more about this collective fear 
embedded in our culture of 
online identity theft, that at 
any given moment, a random 
stranger could access and distort 
the intimate details that define 
how we are perceived on the 
Internet and beyond.
This bewilderment, paranoia 
and dread that manifested from 
this momentarily scary situation 
are the same emotions endured 
to an extreme by the protagonist 
of the glossy, thought-provoking 
psychological thriller “Cam,” 
which premiered at the Fantasia 
International 
Film 
Festival 
in July and on Netflix in Nov. 
The film follows cam girl Alice 
(Madeline Brewer, “Orange is 
the New Black”), who faces an 
unexpected dilemma when she 
is locked out of her account and 
finds a doppelgänger has taken 
her place.
While 
Instagram 
is 
not 
at the forefront of the film’s 
premise, “Cam” reflects the 
same existential horror someone 
might encounter when their 
online profile has been violated 
and 
exploited 
out 
of 
their 
control. In the specific case 
of Alice, who operates as an 
online sex worker, this issue is 
particularly 
anxiety-inducing. 
As Alice sets out on a desperate 

quest to investigate how this 
“clone” took over her life, “Cam” 
gradually blurs the lines between 
fantasy and reality, resulting in 
a twisty, unnerving and utterly 
captivating viewing experience.
Although “Cam” is his feature-
length directorial debut, Daniel 
Goldhaber has directed music 
videos for ambient rock artists 
Michal Menert and StaG and 
worked on several short films 
and 
commercials, 
including 
an ad for MapQuest that won 
the 2016 Emmy Award for Best 
Commercial, Single Spot. In an 
exclusive phone interview with 
The Michigan Daily, Goldhaber 
talks about the process of making 
the film, finding his lead from 
a “Black Mirror” episode and 
normalizing sex work through 
an immersive narrative.
The Michigan Daily: Tell 
me a little bit about your 
background, what got you 
interested 
in 
filmmaking, 
where you went to undergrad, 
what you studied, etc.
Daniel Goldhaber: I grew 
up in Denver, CO. I went to 
Harvard for undergrad. They 
have 
a 
department 
called 
the 
Department 
of 
Visual 
and 
Environmental 
Studies. 
Essentially, it’s a combination of 
film, photography, studio art and 
visual theory all up in one. I had 
known about it in high school 
and that Darren Aronofsky, who 
I was quite obsessed with, had 
gone through the department. 
I learned just a little about 
what the pedagogy was like 
there, which is very different, 
I think, from how a lot of film 
departments are run in this 
country.
There’s not so much a focus on 
production as much as there is a 
focus on learning what is a movie, 
how you watch film, what is the 
meaning of images, what are the 
ethics of images, why make a 
movie. The big exercise they do 
that was pretty formative for me 

is that the first year that you’re 
in the film program, the entire 
class directs a documentary film 
by committee over the course of 
a semester. There’s no director, 
so it takes this idea of authorship 
and it really focuses the idea of 
authorship on the collaborative 
filmmaking process. I think 
that 
that’s 
something 
that’s 
really under-talked about and 
under-thought about, especially 
in film school. Filmmaking is a 
collaborative medium, but we 
can kind of just automatically 
assume the authorship belongs 
to a director.
When you’re directing a film 
by committee with a whole class, 
you really start to think about 
the nature of authorship and the 
nature of the filmmaking process 
quite differently. One of the other 
cool things about the program is 
that there’s no permanent film 
faculty there. It’s all visiting 
professors. You don’t get that 
stale sense that I think you get in 
a lot of film departments where 
it’s three or four professors 
with their idea of what a good 
narrative film is and it kind of 
just becomes the house style 
and that’s that. That’s definitely 
true of Harvard, which is mostly 
a documentary program, but 
with new blood, it keeps the 
intellectual conversation around 
film alive. 
TMD: How did you venture 
into filmmaking after college?
DG: I did the (short films) 
in college. Kind of everything 
else came after. It was really 
just me trying to survive post-
grad, trying to find work, trying 
to build a reel. Ultimately, 
most of it didn’t really help me 
land a feature film. One of the 
interesting things about getting 
“Cam” made and jump-starting 
my career was that it really was 
just a script, the idea, the clarity 
of vision that me and (“Cam” 
screenwriter) 
Isa 
and 
our 
creative producers at Divide/

Conquer all had. We didn’t get 
into the Sundance Labs. I didn’t 
ever have a short film at a major 
film festival. It really was just 
faith in the ideas and that we 
could answer any question that 
we were asked.
TMD: I read that the film’s 
screenwriter 
Isa 
Mazzei 
worked as a camgirl, which 
helped inspire and shape the 
story. How did you two get 
together to collaborate and 
what was that collaboration 
like?
DG: We’ve known each other 
since high school. We actually 
dated in high school. And we’ve 
been collaborating since that 
point in time too in some form 
or another. Ultimately, what 
happened is she hired me to 
shoot… long after that, she went 
into camming and when she 
started camming, she needed 
to make a bunch of promotional 
video content for her show 
and thought that I might make 
some good porn for her. That 
was my introduction to the 
world of cam. Her story and her 
approach to her own practice of 
sex work … I think that we both 
felt like there was a film to be 
made about it. Through a series 
of conversations, we kind of 
just found that making a genre 
movie set in that world would 
be the best way to communicate 
our ideas to a large, commercial 
audience, which was really the 
goal.
TMD: 
“Cam” 
tackles 
a 
dense bevy of topical themes 
— 
namely, 
the 
obsession 
with maintaining an online 
identity, the commodification 
of desire, the male gaze and the 
conflation of sex and violence. 
What were you hoping people 
would get out of watching the 
film?
DG: Politically, I think that 
the goal was to tell a story 
that would ask an audience to 
empathize with a sex worker 
who was a creative 
professional 
and 
to make a film that 
was from her point 
of view formally, 
that it’s from a 
woman’s point of 
view, 
portraying 
her sexuality as 
she sees herself. 
From a filmmaking 
standpoint, 
I 
think 
that 
was 
another 
goal. 
But ultimately, I 
think that movies 
are 
empathy 
machines 
on 
a 
certain level. We 
wanted to reflect 
Isa’s 
experiences 
of being a cam 
girl, being a sex 
worker, 
talking 
about 
putting 
forth an example 
of how she feels 
like her experience 
of a sex worker 
was for her and a 
way of thinking 
about 
portraying 
sex work in media 
in a more ethical, 
representational 
capacity. Also, just 
wanting to make a 
movie that felt true 
to our experiences 
of being online… 
there’s no moral to 
the story outside of 
the politics of its 
representation. 
TMD: 
Madeline Brewer 
gives a striking 
performance 
as 
the 
main 
character 
Alice. 
How did you land 
on casting her as 
the lead?
DG: 
My 
dad 
actually 
saw 
Maddie 
(Brewer) 
in an episode of 
“Black 
Mirror” 
and was like, “She’s 
really perfect for 
this.” So, we just 
really beat down 
our 
manager’s 
door. 
Luckily, 
someone on our 
team 
knew 
her 

manager and beat down his door 
and got him to actually meet 
with me before she even read the 
script, so that I can kind of be 
like, “Hey! So, this is crazy, but 
here’s what we want to do with 
it…” That was really effective. 
She read the script and then she 
met with Isa and then came in 
to read for us and we cast her 
within minutes later. What was 
so immediately telling about her 
earlier work was that we needed 
a film in which the actor can go 
from a completely naturalistic 
person to algorithmic sex robot. 
Maddie has that kind of rare 
combination of technical ability 
and naturalism. She’s a very 
technical actress and you can 
tell that in her performance. She 
never feels particularly “act-y.”
TMD: There’s some stigma 
surrounding 
“the 
cyber-
cinema” subgenre — films that 
revolve 
specifically 
around 
technology. But considering 
the attention your film is 
getting and the success of 
other recent indie films like 
“Ingrid 
Goes 
West” 
and 
“Searching,” do you think 
cyber-cinema 
will 
receive 
more critical recognition in 
the years to come?
DG: I think good movies 
should 
receive 
critical 
recognition, regardless of what 
they are. I can’t think of a 
cyber-cinema movie about the 
Internet or technology that’s 
really good that’s gone horribly 
unrecognized. Even a movie 
like 
“Unfriended,” 
which 
is 
pretty genre, was very well-
reviewed and I think was a 
game-changing movie in a lot of 
respects. The reason that a lot 
of “cyber-cinema” hasn’t been 
taken seriously is that it’s been 
made by people who didn’t grow 
up with the Internet. I’ve had 
social media since elementary 
school in some form or another. 
There’s no alienation factor. 
People have seen the Internet as 
an impediment — “Oh, movies 
set in the modern day, we kind 
of have to deal with this Internet 
thing in order to do that.” But 
they’re not taking a step back and 
saying, “Hey, there’s this new 
thing that exists. Let’s change 
the way we think and interact. 
How do we make cinema that 
responds to that? Is there one 
way to do that?”
What we wanted to do with 
“Cam” was simply say, “How do 
we show the main character’s 
experience online with no tricks, 
just editing? Let’s go back to the 
basic fundamentals of cinema 
and build up from there.” That’s 
where the use of the cut-ins 
came from. The kind of flat space 
of the Internet that’s seen in the 
movie — that was very inspired 
by “Unfriended.” On some level, 
I think the movie is a refutation 
of this screenlife idea that if 
you’re gonna make a movie 
online, it has to only take place 
online. What I’m interested in is 
the collision between the digital 
and real.
TMD: What was the process 
of conceptualizing “Cam”?
DG: 
It’s 
honestly 
really 
complicated in the sense that it 
was a really organic process, it’s 
a talking process, it’s a process 
of sharing ideas and constantly 
challenging 
each 
other 
to 
specify the idea, to dig deeper 
into the idea and then to find the 
best possible way to deliver the 
idea inside of the architecture 
of a commercial movie. P.T. 
Anderson says that “writing is 
like ironing.” I think sometimes, 
it’s also about layering things 
into each other, so you start 
with this idea of a movie about 
webcam porn. What’s the right 
story for that? One of the things 
I really like to do process-wise 
when I’m working with anybody 
is trying to build world banks, 
to build a big bank of, “Here are 
all the potential stories we could 
tell in that world.” And then, 
we start whittling them down: 
Which of these stories are good? 
Which of these stories have 
common ideas?
Eventually, we actually met 
with a bunch of other cam 
girls 
and 
sex 
workers 
and 
interviewed them. We’re trying 
to find the similarities between 
Isa’s 
experiences 
and 
their 

experiences, trying to figure 
out which of the more universal 
things was connecting these 
ideas. Then, whittling that idea 
down to the idea of identity, the 
dopplegänger. You start saying, 
“OK, well, what’s that look like?” 
You start talking about the big 
themes that you’re interested 
in. Isa would frequently talk 
about her practice as a former 
performance artist and how 
it felt to her. So, OK, that’s 
something that is a very relatable 
idea for people. What are movies 
about great artists that we really 
love?
TMD: How were you able 
to get “Cam” financed and 
distributed?
DG: (Blumhouse Productions 
CEO 
Jason) 
Blum 
basically 
financed the movie and set it 
up at a production company 
called Divide/Conquer. Divide/
Conquer 
finished 
the 
film. 
Blum bought the film back and 
then they sold it to Netflix. 
Blumhouse 
helped 
develop 
the script. They were kind of 
advisors on the project, but they 
weren’t significantly involved 
in the day-to-day making of 
the film. Couper Samuelson 
and Bea Sequeira were the two 
executives over there that we 
worked really closely with. Bea 
was the person who found the 
script and kind of kicked it up to 
Couper. Both really championed 
the film and gave notes and 
helped us connect with people 
when necessary. It’s an amazing 
company. They’re doing amazing 
work. Jason’s some sort of cross 
between Roger Corman and… 
I need to figure out who else 
because he’s not just Corman. 
He’s taking what Corman did 
and he’s bringing it into the 
mainstream, 
and 
it’s 
really 
interesting. 
TMD: What has been your 
reaction to the film’s response 
from audiences and critics?
DG: I’m surprised that the 
ending has gotten the response 
that it’s gotten. To be completely 
honest, I don’t think the movie 
is nearly as confusing as people 
seem to think it is. People were 
like, “What is Lola?” And all the 
evidence is in the film for what 
she is. It’s not that we don’t 
explain it — the main character 
figures it out. We don’t literally 
spell it out because you’re seeing 
it from (Alice’s) perspective and 
she’s figuring it out on her own. 
I’m kind of surprised that that’s 
as controversial as it is. That’s 
more of an audience response 
thing than a critical response, 
and that’s really not something 
that became clear until after it 
was actually out on Netflix. It’s 
been extremely satisfying to 
see the critical response to the 
film. (“Cam”) is like the second 
highest-rated horror movie of 
the year on Rotten Tomatoes.
It’s 
extremely 
gratifying 
also to see the politics of the 
movie be embraced in the way 
that they are. It was a surprise 
when The New York Times 
called it a “feminist film.” We 
have to take a second to realize 
that that’s The New York Times 
Arts 
section 
embracing 
the 
destigmatization of sex work 
and the legitimization of sex 
worker narratives from that 
point of view. That’s a really big 
step forward. I don’t even think 
that that was even a conscious 
decision on the part of (New 
York Times critic) Jeannette 
Catsoulis. I think that was just 
kind of what she took away from 
the film.
To me, one of the most 
gratifying things for a filmmaker 
is when you’ve told a story, you 
put an incredible amount of work 
into the politics of the film, but 
that ultimately, a great political 
film isn’t necessarily one where 
it ends with a big speech with 
somebody explaining what the 
politics of the movie is. It’s a 
movie that’s taking you into 
somebody 
else’s 
world 
and 
allowing you to empathize with 
them in a way that only film can. 
When that’s been successful, 
you can’t necessarily explain 
it. You just know that you had 
that experience. Seeing people 
embrace the experience they 
had with “Cam” has been really 
amazing.

SAM ROSENBERG
Senior Arts Editor

FILM INTERVIEW

