Paper Magazine, November 2002

‘WATER’ BOY

IN HIGH SCHOOL, FILMMAKER NED AMBLER was voted class Casanova. That was just the beginning of his storybook life of glamour and cinematic sensation. Ambler was originally an actor, but he ended up studying film at Tisch, NYU’s School of the Arts, where he created some short movies. "Even my first short film was so much better than anyone else’s," Ambler modestly recalls. "They all wanted to be Spielberg and make these really boring dramas. Mine were crazy." After graduating, he tried to get a job and ended up in ever would-be fashion star’s fantasy; working with stylist Paul Sinclair. "The next day I was in a limousine going to Fred Leighton to get a diamond tiara for Isaac Mizrahi for an Albert Watson shoot." One of Ambler’s duties was casting and he was such a natural that in no time he became the hip casting director. When Steven Meisel hired him to cast a Calvin Klein shoot in 1995, the result was the wood-paneled campaign labeled kiddie porn by right-wing freaks.
He retired from casting in 1999 and devoted himself full-time to writing scripts, producing, and directing. He describes his latest opus, ‘Water People’, which will be shown this winter at the Slamdance Film Festival, as "Bergman meets Sylvia Kristel in ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’. The film stars Ambler’s latest female superstar, Bijoux Altamirano, whom he discovered at Chelsea’s nightclub the Park. Shot at a friend’s country house upstate, "Water" co-stars models Ryan Pilstl and Sascha Eiblmayr. www.kimsvideo.com * BY MICKY BOARDMAN * PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIC McNATT AT KIM’S VIDEO, 6 ST. MARK’S PLACE