Filmgoers may not know the name of London-based designer Sam Ashby, but they’ve probably seen his work. He created the posters for acclaimed independent releases like Archipelago, A Prophet and Weekend, British director Andrew Haigh’s microbudget gay romance. A keen cinephile, he embarked on an ambitious side project in 2010, with Little Joe (“a magazine about queers and cinema mostly”). The third issue went on sale this month, and covers a diverse range of film-makers, from underground figures like George Kuchar, to Ken Russell and Terence Davies. He spoke to me about some of his recent projects and his preference for print, in a marketplace dominated by all things digital.

Who or what gave you the impetus to become a designer?

My father is an architect, so I think I spent a long time running away from design and not wanting to follow in his footsteps. I always wanted to try something different and for a while design was too close. I left university having done a theory course (art history essentially) and I then spent a year twiddling my thumbs. I tried to get into film production and eventually found my way into a film company [Empire Design, based in central London] that was producing posters and doing trailers. I got very interested in the poster side.

Did you start out working on campaigns for mainstream films?

Empire was mainstream, but it also had a very good ethos that was all about good clean design. I really loved what they were doing. I was just a runner for 8 months, delivering packages and making tea. But I did spend a lot of time hanging out with the designers, asking them annoying questions. That’s basically where I learned what I do. Then when I left I asked them for two weeks’ work experience and they gave me one, in the design studio! So I did a few posters and it turned out I was quite good.

What was your first poster design?

It used to be on my website. It was for Breakfast on Pluto [Neil Jordan’s 2005 comedy drama with Cillian Murphy as the flamboyant Patrick “Kitten” Braden]. I’m not even sure whether they ever sent it to the film company, but it was in our portfolio and I think it got some good comments. It’s one of my favourites.

Now that you have your own company [Sam Ashby Studio], how does the commissioning process work?

It depends on the level you’re going for. Most of time you’re working with UK film distributors. Then there’s a whole other section of the industry which is the sales side and they’re trying to sell to distributors at markets like Cannes. So there you’re working for the sales agents who produce the films. In those cases the film is often not even finished, so as a designer you’re working with minimal tools. For most part, though, it’s distributors and we’d normally be pitching against one or two other studios.

Do designers usually rely on looking at trailers and stills, or is it important to have seen the whole film when you start work on a campaign?

I always see the films. I’m trying to distil an entire film into one image. But I don’t know about others. Book jacket designers don’t always read the books!

Andrew Haigh’s Weekend was different though, because the posters were developed from the work of photographers Quinnford + Scout (http://www.quinnfordandscout.eu/weekend/). How did you get involved?

I’m a friend of the director Andrew Haigh. I worked with him on Greek Pete, which was his first film. We did three versions of the poster for the festival release, all based heavily on the photographs by Quinnford + Scout. Andrew was very inspired by their work and tried to carry it over into the production design and cinematography. I don’t know how much my work was tied up with the film’s success at the 2011 SXSW (South by Southwest) Festival, but I remember Andrew saying people were asking to buy the posters even then. When the film got picked up in UK by Peccadillo Pictures, they wanted to do something different. Initially I was quite reluctant, but in the end we went with a design that tells more of a story, which they felt they had to do. I’m much happier with original posters.

How frustrating is it to see your pristine design concepts buried under lots of poster quotes and star ratings?

It’s something I get very angry about. With Weekend in particular I had real wrestling match with them over quotes. I felt I had a beautiful balanced composition and then they wanted to throw loads of quotes at it. So my job now as a poster designer is to shoehorn in loads of superfluous quotes and try and make it look nice. Sometimes you get companies who are brave enough to go for quad poster with maybe just one quote. Sometimes I have to tell myself you’re in advertising, you’re not an artist! Though I like to think there is still a level of artistry in what I do.

How did you approach designing new posters for this year’s four classic Ealing Studios releases [Whisky Galore!, Went the Day Well?, Kind Hearts & Coronets and The Lavender Hill Mob]?

People who know those films can see that I’ve cherry-picked ideas from different versions. So Whisky Galore! has previously used the idea of a giant bottle. This time instead of being bigger than an entire island, it’s a giant, surreal washed-up bottle. Went the Day Well? is referencing a propaganda poster from the 1940s, but maybe it’s one of the more idealistic countryside visions of England. The one I was least happy with was the tree motif for Kind Hearts & Coronets, because there was so much referencing of different posters. I’ll be doing some more Ealing re-releases next year and I’m working on some older films for the BFI, including [Terrence Malick’s] Days of Heaven. I’ve just done Meet Me in St Louis, which was fun!

What do you think is the main challenge of designing for independent releases, as opposed to blockbusters and franchise movies?

Well, something like the Twilight campaign would be challenging for my Photoshop skills! Unfortunately the nature of the market now is that smaller films are still struggling to do well. Marketing people seem to be taking a lead from the mainstream cinema and trying to appeal to as many people as possible. They think they have to spoon feed audiences because people will always just go with what’s familiar. So comedy posters always end up looking white, with big, bold red type . . . It makes my job quite frustrating to see that nice ideas still get watered down even within this smaller, art house market.
How successful are you at striking that balance between commercialism and art house with your designs?

There are definitely concepts I’ve pitched for posters where I felt I toed a very good line between the two camps – only to see the final product being completely for the mainstream. I feel I did perhaps my best ever work on a pitch for We Need to Talk About Kevin – it almost made it through. I used same font [as the final version], because it’s the one that’s used in the film, but in a much more interesting way. My design was playing off the mirroring and the idea that she [Kevin’s mother Eva, played by Tilda Swinton] sees herself in him. It’s the conceit of the film, which I think they weren’t prepared to deal with because they just wanted it to sell on the name.

What about the impact of digital technology – do you ever use a pencil?

Yes, often I’ll sketch drawings that look similar to my final concept. I like to have one stage in the “real” world — it helps develop the composition. I’m working now on the designs for Soda Pictures’ new documentary about WG Sebald, which is based on the path he took for The Rings of Saturn. There I have a clear concept of how I want it to look and I’ll do variations on that central idea. I don’t think digital has made people lazy, though. If anything, it’s had a democratising effect — there are just so many different areas you can design for now.

There are websites and blogs catering for all cinematic tastes, so why launch Little Joe as a limited edition film magazine?

That’s a very good question and one I’m still struggling to understand. I design for print essentially. I’m not interested in designing for online. When it came to my own project it was always going to be a physical object. I’d always wanted to do a magazine; it was just a question of what it would be about. At one point I wanted to do an architecture ‘zine, but when we finally came up with Little Joe it was such a clear quick idea, that it just stuck.

Did you read a lot of magazines when you were growing up?

I grew up at same time as the internet, but there were no online magazines and no iPads. I was growing up with The Face and i-D. I was completely obsessed with magazines as a child. I would pull out whole pages and create wallpaper for my room from images I found in magazines. My bathroom wall is still plastered with images from The Face.

Is there a theme for Issue 3 of Little Joe?

The whole issue is bookended by loss. George Kuchar [who features on the cover and is interviewed by Ed Halter] died in September as we were planning. Then Ken Russell died just as we were going to press. So the issue itself is dark and preoccupied with death in some ways, but I think it’s also a forward thinking issue compared with the previous two, which were quite nostalgic. I’ve also written for this one. It’s the first time I’ve presented my own work (other than design). I did interviews with [Tomboy director] Céline Sciamma and with Andrew Haigh. I also wrote an essay on Derek Jarman’s sets for The Devils.

How do you see the magazine developing?

This is a labour of love and seeing how people have responded has been incredible. The fact that we’ve doubled our print run each time proves that there is a need for it. [Issue 3 is a run of 1,000 copies.] Next year we’re also doing a monthly screening programme in London. One month it will be at the Rio in Dalston and the next month it will be at the Cinema Museum in Kennington.

Are there any contributors on your “wish list” for future issues?

I’d love to get Todd Haynes and Tilda Swinton. But I like the idea of people you wouldn’t expect and who are not necessarily related to film. I’d also like to talk to Madonna about all her strange film choices!

Little Joe No. 3 is out now and is available from www.littlejoemagazine.com

Susannah Straughan

Follow Susannah Straughan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/susannah63

Joshua Leonard should look familiar to you by now. Not only was he one of the gang that helped revolutionize no-budget filmmaking with The Blair Witch Project, but he’s also become a go-to character actor over the last few years, including his acclaimed turn in Lynn Shelton’s Humpday. This week, Leonard releases his first feature as a writer-director, a dark drama-comedy titled The Lie, also featuring Jess Weixler (Teeth) and Mark Webber (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World), which Leonard stars in as Lonnie, an unsatisfied family man and would-be musician who tells his employers that his newborn daughter has died in order to get out of work. I spoke with Leonard over the phone about his career move, the process of making the film, and the industry as a whole.

This is your first time directing a feature. What was it about the short story that made you say, this is it?

JL: It happened quickly and with only a nominal amount of premeditation. I consider myself someone who doesn’t get good ideas very often,  but when I do they resonate on a very deep level, so I hold to to ‘em like a dog with a bone. And this flick happened…Mary Pat Bentel, my producing partner, and I had been trying to do another flick for a couple of years, and it kept almost going, and I was really sick of hearing myself talk about being about to make a movie. Fortuitously, when I read the short story, we were right in the thick of doing press for Humpday, which was getting a very warm audience response…and, y’know, I read T.C.’s story in the New Yorker and it just struck a chord, on many different levels, first and foremost because I’ve got a dark sense of humor and so it made me laugh, secondly, on a cultural level…subtextually, it was about something very familiar to me and people in my peer group, those of us who, our first memories are the rejection of the Reagan ‘80s, and the apathy of the Clinton ‘90s, and all of a sudden we wake up and find ourselves as adults, and don’t really have a template or a toolbox to deal with it. So, a story about these folks in their thirties trying to find that balance between the ideology of their past and the responsibilities of their present, especially given the fact that they have a newborn baby daughter…and lastly, from a production standpoint, it resonated because it was something that could be done in Los Angeles as a truly independent film, it was a story that could be told in large part with a group of collaborators that I already had surrounding me. I read the story and I saw actors that were friends of mine in my head playing the parts…Ben Kasulke, who shot Humpday with me, I knew he would be the perfect cinematographer for it. So it was something that, from a production standpoint, I felt like we could put together very quickly, and in fact from the time I read the story to the time we started shooting the movie was a sum total of three and a half months, I think. Once it got started, it really became a bullet that didn’t stop until we got in the editing room.

You mentioned collaborating – you shared the credit for the screenplay with Jess Weixler and Mark Webber, your co-stars. Was it a sort of planned, workshopping-style process, or something looser?

JL: Well, much like Humpday, there was barely any scripted dialogue for the movie, most of it was improvised. So the process became…I took the short story, we not only got the rights, we also got T.C. Boyle’s blessing to change and enhance where we needed to, because to translate from a short story to a feature film was going to require some structural work. So once we got the go-ahead from him, I sat down with my buddy Jeff Feuerzeig, who’s a talented director and writer in his own right, and who also happened to have a shared history with the protagonist of the film – he was a commercial editor’s assistant, he was familiar with the indie rock world – so I thought he would be a great guy to collaborate with. We wrote out kind of a three-act structure, a whole journey for these characters that we thought would hopefully make for an entertaining movie with stakes and obstacles and motivations, and all that very traditionalist Robert McKee story structure. And then, Mark and Jess, who I’d cast when it was still in short story form and was lucky enough that they said yes, came in, and the three of us spent about two weeks taking this kind of primary color arc of the story structure and figuring out the nuance and the details, and very specifically who these people were to each other, to themselves, how long they’d known each other, doing all the homework you have to do as an actor. I felt like they were huge collaborators, not only on the dialogue, but on helping to really create and inhabit the characters that they played, and I don’t just feel that way about Jess and Mark, I feel that way about all the actors in the film.

You’ve worked in all kinds of stuff, both in films and TV. Were there any particular experiences or directors which inspired you as a filmmaker?

JL: You know, I think I’ve learned as much from working with directors I did not like, or I stylistically differ from, as the ones that I loved. I guess the one thing that you learn, or that I personally learned, over many years as an actor, is that the best directors absolutely have a handle on their craft, and that’s the foundation first and foremost, but then they really direct in a manner that is truly organic to themselves – I don’t know that there’s a playbook that works for everybody. In fact, the worst directors I’ve worked with are the ones who feel like they’re doing what they think they should be doing, and it’s often the younger directors who feel like they have to overcompensate or be dictatorial, who I find often make the worst directors because they’re not actually sharing a creative experience because of their own fear or naiveté.

You sort of touched on this before, but I thought I’d get into it a little deeper – The Lie kind of connects to this recent trend in movies of depicting men in their thirties in a state of developmental crisis – neither angry young men nor experiencing a middle-age crisis. What do you think accounts for this trend?

JL: I think it’s generational. Whereas on one hand, I think a lot of these stories, hopefully with The Lie as well, get told with a certain amount of levity, because, I feel like there should be some self-awareness when you’re talking about the existential crises of white people in their mid-thirties, which, culturally, relatively, compared to a lot of the planet, we are lucky to have these problems, they’re sort of luxury problems. I find the best way to approach that is with a level of humor, to not take itself too seriously – because, you know, nobody’s curing cancer, we’re not getting shot at on a daily basis, there’s food on the table. If our biggest crisis is that we’re having a hard time pursuing a life that resonates with our spiritual interior, that’s pretty lucky – although very relatable, and very present, and something that most people I know grapple with. But in terms of those specific kinds of movies, I think it connects – we were always gonna hit our mid-thirties. What the fuck was gonna happen when we really convinced ourselves that it was OK to really not care about anything, and all of a sudden you get a mortgage and a kid, and if you made those decision, you have to care, you have to find a way to care. And I think a lot of us just don’t have, as I mentioned before, the template or the toolbox to deal with that.

You mentioned the need to deal with the material with a light touch, but I was sort of surprised at how much of the movie was straight-faced, given the premise. Did you struggle at all with getting the movie’s tone right?

JL: I think we were all on the same page as to what the tone needed to be from the beginning, which was as much humor and high-concept as you can get in there before you start sacrificing the reality of the characters, because I know people like Lonnie and Clover and Tank, you approach it with a certain amount of reverence. You don’t want to treat characters who are like people you know as caricatures. We always wanted to retain enough naturalism that hopefully people could really relate. But yeah, that tonal balance is really difficult, between the dark comedy and moments that are not funny at all, and a lot of that had to be found once we got into the editing room. On the editing room floor, there’s a lot more drama, and a lot more comedy. We would just do a pass on the film, show our friends, see what was getting a response, and we’d go back…to me, some of the funniest moments that we shot did not make it to the film, just because they took you out of the moment, because they kind of became funny for funny’s sake, so they had to hit the floor.

Coming back to some of the social themes that kind of percolate throughout The Lie, you mentioned economic responsibility, especially in a family context. Do you feel, as a moviegoer as well as a filmmaker, that movies are doing enough to represent economic realities?

JL: I’m probably not the best person to ask that question of, because, whereas…you go, what’s the social significance of doing another, do we need a third Transformers, really? Do we need a fifteenth Twilight? Studies have shown, and historically it’s shown, that often what an audience wants in times of the greatest cultural upheaval, is escapist entertainment, so I think that serves a purpose. In terms of dealing with where our country’s at right now, in terms of the financial disparity between the rich and the poor right now, are we doing enough to deal with it? I think movies are always a couple years behind the times. We’re seeing stuff right now like Margin Call, which deals with the issues directly, I think we’ll be seeing more of that in the next two or three years, but I also think that, to some extent, our job as filmmakers is to interpret a cultural situation and place it in the background, in the subtext. I think there’s a time and a place to deal with some of those issues head-on, and there are some vastly political filmmakers and documentary makers who take that stuff head-on. My approach has always been, you know, let it come through the stories of your characters – build that world around them, but remember…the things that have always affected me the most have always dealt with larger issues through a smaller lens, with human stories.

I read an interview with Alexander Payne recently, and he made a comment about the disappearance of the “medium budget” movie, which is basically what he does, speaking of economic disparity. Increasingly you have microbudget movies – which I assume The Lie qualifies as – on one end and Holylwood stuff in the other. Do you think that’s true?

JL: Yeah! I think that’s very accurate, I think it’s systemic. We’ve got a vanishing middle class in our society, and I think that permeates the film industry just as it does everywhere else. I think it’s the same motto, the rich get rich and the poor get poorer. For those medium budget movies…they  started spending so much money between production and marketing on the top-level tentpole movies, that it gets so much harder to compete, and my favourite movies could be considered part of that world – the Alexander Paynes, the PT Andersons, the Wes Andersons, you know, those are mid-budget movies. Michael Clayton, probably on the higher end of things. Drive had some success – I didn’t love the movie, but it kind of gave me hope for something different than the regular Hollywood tentpole template succeeding. I think you’ve got a couple factors. It’s now easier to make movies for cheaper, so there’s more tools for the middle and lower class in the independent world, so we can tell our stories…you know, when we made The Blair Witch Project in 1997, we had to plant into that film why it looked so bad, because for $50,000, at that point, you could not make something that looked good. I think part of the reason that film worked is because it did look like shit, because they were student filmmakers filming themselves. Now you can make a movie that looks decent for that same budget level, because of where technology’s come to, but the trick has become, how do you get your money back, how do you get people to see it? And I think we’re still very much in the embryonic stages of figuring out how to connect with our audiences directly and monetise those films. So I think that middle-class film may come back when folks really figure out, if it’s not at the multiplex, if we can’t compete with the big movies at the multiplex, how do we really catalyze, seek out our audience, find them, and get them to support our films on that mid-level. Because certainly there’s an audience for them, we just don’t know how to necessarily make them pay for it yet. VOD, streaming, all of these things are in some way going to be the world where that happens, but I don’t think anyone’s hit on the formula yet.

I think there’s also the emergence of TV as the realm for the character actor and for richer stories. You yourself got to work on Hung.

JL: Yeah, and I think that…so often the case is, when I started out in the indie realm in the mid-90s, everybody’s dream was the Robert Rodriguez or the Quentin Tarantino, you made your little movie, you did it with friends and favors, and you sold your plasma or did whatever you had to do to get your film made, and somebody took notice and gave you a real budget to work with. Now, much more often that I see that progression, I see filmmakers making those same kinds of little personal independent movies, and hopefully, if they catch on, they go straight and try to sell a pilot to HBO. It’s become a different realm, and I think it’s become a much better realm for personal stories to be told, especially in the cable realm, than ever before, and that’s why you get so many talented people working there, because they’re telling a lot of the stories that people like Hal Hartley, Alison Anderson, Nick Gomez, the Coens, a lot of the filmmakers who inspired me to get into it, those kinds of stories are now being told on HBO, and Showtime, and FX.

Simon Howell

Take Me Home is, in the simplest form, a road movie. It tells the story of two strangers who find themselves at less than desirable points in their life, and take off on a cross-country road trip from New York to California.

Sam Jaegar, best known for his role on the television show Parenthood, is the writer, director, and (along with his wife Amanda Jaeger) star of the film. I recently got the chance to have a conversation with him about how he came to make this project, the perils of wearing many hats, and the beauty of filming the United States.

William Bitterman: First of all, thank you for taking the time to sit down with me today. It’s pretty cool, I realize you be very busy.

Sam Jaeger:  Oh no, it’s my pleasure.

WB: And I guess I’ll just go ahead and let you know, you actually have the distinct pleasure of being my first interview not done through email. So congratulations on that.

SJ: Well, it’s a high honor. And I just hope I don’t mess it up.

WB: You and me both. Mess it up on my part, I mean. I’m sure you’ll be great.

SJ: [laughs] Alright.

WB: Well, first up, you have been predominantly known as an actor. You’re on the show Parenthood, and you’ve done films, like Catch & Release with Jennifer Garner.  So I guess what I’m wondering is what brought on this desire to write, direct, and even star in your own film?

SJ: I used to make movies in high school with my buddy Jeff Seibenick, who is now the editor for the TV show Eastbound & Down. And we just used to make movies, you know, instead of going out drinking like most kids. It not only kept me from being an alcoholic, but it became a passion of mine, and from there I always sort of considered myself a filmmaker. And, you know, acting is just one way that I can be involved in making movies, but I’m happy to do anything else. Besides the catering because I’m really inept when it comes to cooking.

WB: As far as making the transition from mostly acting, to kind of taking on all these responsibilities that a writer/director would have to do, was it difficult to make that transition into it? You know, from making films in high school to working on actual major film, was it different in any way?

SJ: You know, it was a slow transition. You know, one of the things was Jeff was the director, and I was the writer plus the actor. And so I think I always had an insecurity that I couldn’t direct. So taking on this movie, I knew it was something I was passionate about. So it was kind of rising above my insecurities, which I think a lot of first time filmmakers have to do. But it’s certainly worthwhile. I’ve learned so much about just every aspect of filmmaking. And I know I wouldn’t have learned as much had I not worn as many hats when I did this.

WB: Was it hard to balance the acting aspects of it with the behind-the-scenes aspects of it? Could it be a bit of a juggling process?

SJ: You know, there was only one scene in the film where I had difficulty. My oftentimes writing partner…Mike Hobert, who’s a producer on the film, he was able to step in and kind of guide me through the more dramatic scenes. If I wasn’t sure we had got what we needed, it was great to be able to bounce stuff off him. But most of the time I was just ready to go, and we were just flying by seat of our pants. But I was the writer, director, and actor because it cuts down on the amount of time that it takes to communicate to all the different sections. Especially when you’re losing sunlight in the middle of the desert and you’ve got a crew relying on you, the last thing you want to do is pamper an actor. And I don’t try to pamper myself too much.

WB: You talked a little bit about the writing aspect of it. As far as coming up with the story, was there as certain inspiration to it? Was it something you came up with one day, or was it something you’d had for a while?

SJ: I was writing a very complex musical with the guy who ended up doing the score on this, a man by the name of Bootstraps. And we were having such a hard time, and it just sort of dawned on me that I wanted a story that could be explained really simply. And the idea of a woman traveling across the country in a taxi cab, you know, you can’t get much simpler than that. And so I sat down to write and I think I wrote as much as fifteen pages the first night, and it took a long time to get to the point where I was proud of the script. But it came out of that, I think, at the time I was figuring exactly marriage should mean to me. And it’s a romantic comedy that I think asks some deep questions about the significance of marriage. And I think it’s a discussion of the reflections going on in my head, before I married my wife.

WB: You talked a little about it being a road trip movie just there. In writing the script and making the film, was there ever a point where you sat down and felt any sort of worry that maybe it wouldn’t be able differentiate itself from other road movies? Is there anything you did to make sure it would be different, be it telling it in your own voice or the subject matter itself?

SJ: Well, I think often when you talk about road trips, you talk about buddy comedies of some sort, and I knew that this would certainly be not that. You know, I actually wrote the film because I was actually also inspired by seeing the countryside, and you know, there aren’t too many movies that have actually shown the entire continent. So I knew I had that in my back pocket. We had this lush production design called the United States, and I’m proud of the fact that we, you know, put a bunch of guys in an RV and drove across the country, just to get the true majesty of this land. So I feel like in 90 minutes you can sit down and feel like you’ve been on a road trip across the United States.

I think road trips, what we love about them, you know, road trips movies, is that they are transportation. We are being taken somewhere, and it’s so easy to jump on the journey with somebody, and go from point A to point B, you know, wherever we are in our lives. It’s just a great opportunity to feel elsewhere. You know, I think one of the films that was influential to me back in the day was the David Lynch film starring Richard Farnsworth, where he travels across two states on the John Deer.

WB: Yeah, The Straight Story.

SJ: Yeah, Straight Story. And, you know, I just love the sort of meditation that that movie entails. At the time I was living in New York, and when I saw that movie I felt like I was back in Ohio. The movie doesn’t take place there, but seeing all those rolling fields of corn and stuff, it was like a mini vacation for me, from the hustle and bustle of that city.

WB: Right.

SJ: That was…that was a healthy answer.

WB: [laughs] Yeah, it was good. Just one last question for you here. You talked about shooting across the United States and traveling. Did you ever run in to any sort of difficulties with that?

SJ: You know, I think that we sometimes do filmmaking because of the stories we hear from trying to get those movies made.

WB: Oh yeah.

SJ: Not only did my wife get Poison Ivy at the beginning of our trip across country, but it got so bad to where we could only shoot one side of her face. And that was from me directing her to crawl through the dirt to pick up her purse in the scene where she chucks it into the forest. But beyond that, we got permits for all these fascinating places. In New York, we shot on Park Avenue with no problem; we shot on the Las Vegas strip with no problem. We shot in the middle of the desert with a permit, but we’d drive into a town with, I don’t know, maybe 500 people, Ashville, Ohio. And we got pulled over maybe within the first five minutes of being there because the people in the town saw this New York taxicab with this huge camera mounted on the front of it. I don’t know if they thought we were terrorist or what. But sure enough we get shut down and asked to leave the city. So, you know, we’re marked men in Ashville, Ohio. But mostly, we shot without a hitch.

You hear a myriad of stories about continuity, where you have your purse in one scene but you’ve forgotten it in the next and you have to put it back into the scene later on. But all those discussions just sort of had to ramble on in my head, and it stinks that didn’t have to rely on anyone else to come up with a solution to it because time was ticking.

Take Me Home is screening tonight at 6:20pm, and October 14th, at 2:15pm.

William Bitterman

The Chicago Film Festival runs from October 6th-20th. Visit the festival’s official home page.

I interviewed director Monte Hellman about his recent film Road to Nowhere, future projects and his thoughts on daydreaming:

Neal Dhand: What is the current status of Road to Nowhere? Is it still making any theatrical rounds?

Monte Hellman: Opening in Japan around the first of the year. We’ve only really scratched the surface with countries. It’s played France of course, and Portugal, Israel, West Africa, Brazil, Italy.

ND: How has it been received?

MH: The French have always been friendly to my movies. The reception critically has been about 50/50 in France. It’s doing so much better than that in the US and I never expected that. I remember Two-Lane Blacktop was about 50/50. I think we’re somewhere around 80% on Rotten Tomatoes and not all of the critics are up there yet.

ND: There’s a definite synchronicity in your filmography. The Shooting, Ride in the Whirlwind, Two-Lane Blacktop– all are existential genre road movies in some way, shape or form. Do you see Road to Nowhere fitting into a similar categorization?

MH: To paraphrase Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi (I can never remember which) in The Black Cat, “road perhaps, existential perhaps not.”  Having studied existentialism as a child, I never know what it means when used to describe my movies.  In my mind it refers to the distinction from the idealists, for whom essence precedes existence, and the existentialists, for whom existence precedes essence. That being said, yes I do believe there’s a formal and stylistic line between at least The Shooting, Two-Lane and Road to Nowhere. And a thematic line as well between Two-Lane and Road, the conflict between work and love.

ND: You intentionally blur the various lines of “reality” in Road to Nowhere, culminating in the sequence with Mitchell in the hotel room where another film crew is revealed. Is this your crew? Was it planned?

MH: It is my crew, as well as Mitchell’s crew, which we see in some other scenes as well. This reveal was actually filmed by Mitchell with his “prop” camera, and we only decided during the editing process to include it in the movie.

It was not in the script. It was something that he photographed in the scene where he picks up the camera. Literally, the script says that he picks up the camera and goes to the window to photograph the police, and so everything else that he does in that scene, including photographing the bodies, is something that he choreographed himself in that scene.

ND: Is there a specific reason you chose to use that in the edit?

MH: We just thought it had a power to it and people were very, very strongly affected both ways. Some people said, ‘you can’t do that,’ and other people said that it’s the best thing in the movie. So naturally we left it in.

ND: Is this a film to be solved? Can it be entirely solved?

MH: The things in the movie that many people have difficulty in unraveling aren’t meant to be confusing, i.e., when we’re seeing the making of the movie, and when we’re seeing the movie being made. It merely requires attention and observation, and for some seeing the movie a second time. But it’s pretty simple stuff.

But the more difficult riddles, i.e., whether everything we see after Mitchell plops the DVD in the laptop at the beginning is really ALL his movie, as well as how Nathalie can also be in the movie she’s watching, as well as what the bookends where Mitchell and Nathalie are watching the movie fit into this reality, may not be solvable. It’s like the riddle of life: “How did we all get here?” “God put us here.” “Who put God there?” Ad infinitum.

ND: The opening of the film – the long take of Shannyn Sossamon on the bed with the blow dryer – has been much talked about. The sound, the long take, her posture, all seem to indicate something foreboding, but still romantic. Do you see this as more than just an introduction of character? As a prologue somehow?

MH: I see it as much like Bobby Billings cleaning out his car before he goes to be shot. Why does someone put on nail polish before driving one’s car into a lake? (Or not.) It’s a way to make the audience ask questions, if not the major question. The final scene in this sequence is Laurel’s panic attack in the tunnel. That puts the final question mark to all these questions, and may indeed be the major question. It’s what hopefully keeps the audience glued to their seats until the end.

ND: I’m curious about your technique with the actors. Maybe a good place to start is a simple question, especially with the characters that are doubled as to whether they are playing the character, or the actor playing them. Did your actors always know whom they were playing?

MH: It shouldn’t be confusing. If she’s called Laurel she’s the actress, if she’s called Velma she’s Velma. I’m a bit surprised at the confusion.

ND: It’s less confusion than it is this merging or blending. Did you talk to them about bringing traits of say Laurel over to Velma and vice versa?

MH: I tell my actors no matter what, whether it’s another movie without people playing two roles or not, that what I want is them. I don’t want them to play a character; I want the character to become them. The same in this movie. If it’s Laurel Graham, it’s always Laurel Graham. If it’s Velma, it’s Laurel Graham playing Velma.

ND: Is there much improv in the film, or is it pretty close to the script?

MH: It’s very close to the script other than occasionally, if you do multiple takes, the actors will throw in a line or two to make it interesting and keep themselves fresh. Some of the funniest stuff was added that way. The line when Laurel is watching her dailies from the computer and in the scene and he says, ‘you should have been an actress, Velma,’ and she says, ‘or not.’ That was improvised in one take.

We did several takes of the rehearsal on the porch of the hotel. In one take he ad-libs, ‘who wrote this shit,’ and that was one of the takes we used as well.

ND: It’s hard to ignore that Mitchell Haven has the same initials as you. He also takes part in various films within Road to Nowhere: he’s the regular director on set, he shoots with his camera out the window at the police officers, he’s interviewed by Nathalie Post in the jail cell, and he’s the object of scrutiny by your own film crew. Is his position as director who loses control, who is alternately director and directed similar to how you see, or have seen yourself? How do you fit into the character of Mitchell Haven?

MH: The character of Mitchell Haven was indeed called Monte Hellman in an early draft of the script. The movie is part documentary of the way Steve Gaydos and I have made movies. But we changed the name of the character because he’s not Monte Hellman. He could be any number of young directors working today. In fact, as with all my actors, I tried to encourage Tygh to reveal the character of Tygh Runyan.

ND: In some way the mirroring that takes place in a film like The Shooting is very similar to the connection between Mitchell the director and Mitchell the prisoner. Is this a common theme you see – the same character as creator and destroyer?

MH: It’s not something I’ve ever thought about.

ND: What then about obsessive characters? Characters who have this end goal and whether or not it gets in the way of more important things – ie Velma/Laurel getting in the way of Mitchell making his movie – they’ll do it. Is this type of obsession a common theme?

MH: Well I don’t write these scripts. I think that just having a character with a goal is good drama. You want to have a character who wants something very badly, to give the audience something to root for

ND: Sure, there’s a goal there. It seems that more so than in traditional dramatic structure, that your characters will eschew all else to achieve that goal. Are these the scripts you’re drawn to?

MH: If you say so. It’s not something I think about when I read a script. I don’t really think when I read a script. I feel. And if something moves me then I want to make it.

ND: This is a film that has also heard comparisons with Mulholland Drive in its structure, view of Hollywood, and switching of characters. Was this an inspiration? I also see some Resnais in here.

MH: Resnais was definitely an inspiration. The only things I remember about Mulholland Drive are that Robert Forster seemed like he was going to be an important character, and then we never see him again, and that Naomi Watts seemed much more believable when she was acting (in her audition) than when she was being herself.

ND: Is it Resnais’ chronology? The way he deals with time, memory, or something else entirely?

MH:“I think that one of the things that appealed to me about Road to Nowhere is the fact that it dealt with time in really a novelistic way as opposed to a dramatic way. LIke in one of Steve’s favorites and mine, Stavisky. Of course there are elements of Last Year at Marienbad as well.”

ND: It seems to me that the major difference between Mulholland Drive and Road to Nowhere is that you are more interested in self-destruction and realization than in the nature of celebrity. These are characters that could be just as intriguing were they not famous. It’s the inter-connectedness and play with fantasy and reality that really counts. Is this your intent?

MH: I agree with your analysis, except for the relationship to Mulholland Drive, which I don’t remember. But this is after the fact, and only to the limited extent I can be objective about something so subjective. As for my intent, I don’t have any, other than to entertain and, hopefully, move an audience. In the inimitable words of Samuel Goldwyn, if I have a message, I’ll call Western Union.

ND: There’s been more than 20 years since your last feature film. Why Road to Nowhere? Were there any projects that fell through the cracks in between?

MH: Some fell through the cracks, like Freaky Deaky, but most were merely put on a back burner, like Love or Die, which I hope to do next, Cody and Farol and Dark Passion. Love or Die is a project I’ve had for almost 20 years. It’s a supernatural-romantic-spy-thriller, I think. I’m not very good at these kinds of descriptions. It’s a thriller and it’s supernatural and it’s romantic.

ND: Is that the next one? Are there others?

MH: I think it’s the next one. There’s another one that Steve Gaydos has written that could come first called Rattlesnake Shakedown. There’s another one he’s writing the script on that’s an adaptation of a novel called The Man Who Was Not With It. That’s based on a Herbert Gold novel.

ND: Is there a reason why you picked this script? There’s a lot to like in here in terms of doubling and riddles. Is that what stood out for you?

MH: I think I like things that are open to interpretation because it’s the way that I watch all movies. I remake every movie that I watch in the sense that I have my own daydream while watching it and literally I can’t tell you what the movie’s about, I tell you what my movie’s about – what I dreamed while watching it.

ND: Is that how you would like people to watch this movie?

MH: That’s how I hope people watch it, yes.

- Neal Dhand

Seminal documentarian Joe Berlinger has made a career out of defining and disseminating stories that are as engaging and poignant as they are obsure. Every bit as relevant to the modern resurgence of popular narrative documentries as Errol Morris or Werner Herzog, Berlinger has shown his audiences tales of small-town fratricide, corporate corruption in the Ecuadoran rainforest and the previously unseen petty relationships of one of the world’s largest bands. However, he is best known for his expose of a grevious miscarriage of justice that began 18 years ago in West Memphis, Arkansas. His 1996 film Paradise Lost, which chronicled the arrest and trail of three teenagers for the horrific murder of three young boys, murders they clearly did not commit, has become a documentary classic. Following the release last week of the three men, known for years as the West Memphis Three, Paradise Lost can now also lay claim to being one of the most effective social justice advocacy pieces ever made.

Michael Waldman sat down with Joe Berlinger to discuss the case, the upcoming Paradise Lost 3 and the legacy of this story and the films that brought it to the world. Paradise Lost 3 will be making its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next month, Sunday, September 11.

Download the interview in a new window

Listen to our review of Paradise Lost from episode 269 of the Sound On Sight podcast

The latest entry in the now-fully formed horror subgenre of the found-footage film, Hollow, had its World Premiere here at Fantasia this past weekend, and I had the opportunity to sit down with the film’s director, Michael Axelgaard, and its writer-producer, Matthew Holt. The film concerns a group of four friends who travel to an area called Suffolk, which contains a tree of legend associated with heinous events. We talked about the myths of the film, the limits and joys of low-budget moviemaking, and the unsettling habits of foxes.

-

-

In the fifteen years of the Fantasia Film Festival, I can’t recall any filmmaker who has visited Montreal and remained for the entirety of the fest (three and half weeks) – until now. Swedish filmmaker Filip Tegstedt has graced us with his presence from day one and has quickly become one of the more familiar faces of the fest, a new member to the Fantasia family. He comes with his feature debut Marianne, making its World Premiere and winning praise from critics and audiences alike. It’s safe to say that he has charmed his way into everyone’s hearts, with his encyclopedic knowledge of film, good manners and drunken karaoke singing. I had the pleasure of meeting Filip at the start of the festival and was fortunate enough to interview the director about his physiological thriller. Marianne is a clever, a strong, thoughtful and well-written family drama that plays the movie less as a traditional ghost story and more as a portrait of a man on a downward spiral – a slowly measured and patient film that takes it’s sweet time toying with the reality of its own raison d’être. The film will have audiences guessing until the final frame, but as with all great endings, it will leave audiences interpreting different meanings. Marianne is quite an accomplishment for a first feature, an exploration of regret and grief that combines elements of urban folklore, visual poetry, and modern psychology. It’s a somber, sometimes slow-slithering and beautiful piece, written, produced, financed and directed by a man who clearly knows his movies.

The following interview was my personal favourite from this year’s event. Tegstedt explains Swedish folklore, informs us of his wide range of influences and shares a very personal story of how a late night made-for-TV horror film, seen at age seven, would come back into his life decades later, and inspire his first feature film. Enjoy!

Download the interview in a new window

Director Joseph Kahn has been directing music videos for two decades, working with big-time efforts like U2, Britney Spears, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, 50 Cent, The Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga, and many, many more. Now he’s combined that experience with his love of all things pop culture to create one of the Fantasia Film Festival’s biggest crowd pleasing hits, his sophomore feature, Detention.

Packing in more confounding slang than The FP, and more gonzo subplots than an Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu film, Detention is a speedy reckless high-school horror-comedy made specifically for the YouTube generation. I had the pleasure of sitting down with both Khan and co-writer Mark Palermo to discuss their labor of love, a film financed completely by the director himself. Not surprisingly, Kahn talks like his film: fast and precise, and makes for a great interviewee. Take a listen below. Enjoy!

Download the interview in a new window

Jen and Sylvia Soska are twins who enjoy the darker side of cinema and their first movie, the succinctly titled Dead Hooker In A Trunk is getting its UK TV premiere on the Horror Channel on Fri July 29th @ 10.55pm. Greg Day was nice enough to send us over this interview to post.

-

Here they chat about spiders, grindhouse and their new movie, American Mary.

So it’s true Poltergeist was the first horror movie you saw?

S: Yes and it was awesome. After that, my mom had a very particular rule about horror. It was OK to see the movie if we read the book first. She was an avid Stephen King fan and let us borrow her books. My first book, then movie in Mr. King’s horror land was Cujo. Any word or scenario or what not that I had questions about while reading, my mom wanted me to come to her and we would talk about it. It was such a reasonable and intelligent way to deal with mature subject matter.

J: Yes! That movie scared the sh*t out of me. I had this clown doll (that looked nothing like the Poltergeist clown aside from the mere fact that it, also, was a clown) and I started to have nightmares of it getting me. My parents put a lock on my closet door, upon my insistence, and I would lock him in there at night, right at the back of my closet, aka the scariest part of the closet. He oddly was permitted out of the closet in the daylight hours. He was only powerful in the dark. I would avoid TVs. I didn’t want to get trapped inside one. There was a TV in my living room that you had to pass to leave the house and I can still remember running past it when I had to go out.

I’ve recovered. I’ve never had a fear of clowns aside from that doll from that film. I LOVED Tim Curry in It. Masterful. I also get a kick out of Twisted Metal’s Sweet Tooth.

Did many of your friends share your passion for horror?

J: Not really. We didn’t have too many friends. We had each other. We’ve always been outsiders and found ourselves sticking up for and banding together with the underdogs. That’s more than fine with me. I love my fellow weirdos. Normal scares me.

S: Being identical twins, Jen and I stood out a lot growing up. Add a fascination with horror and that just made us stand out more when it was difficult enough to fit in. Luckily as you grow older, you realize that not fitting in and having your own interests is the best way to be. That said, it sucked to be spit on in school and called witches.

After we made Dead Hooker In A Trunk, we started to really learn about the horror community and the people who love the genre. It was incredible. It went from not being able to find people that could relate to us and our interests to us having great friendships with people around the world. I feel very lucky to be a part of that community.

Dead Hooker In A Trunk stems from a short you made with the same name. How
difficult was it to extend the original premise?

J: With a film like Dead Hooker In A Trunk, there are no limitations. We had no rules. We suspend your belief from the get go, even the title of the film itself is intentionally ridiculous to give our potentially audiences a taste of the oddity that awaits them. It was very liberating. The film is just a series of escalating WTF moments and I’m very proud of that. When we were making the short, which was a faux trailer in the Grindhouse style, we would joke and say, “Oh, we’ll do this in the feature” or “We’ll have Badass do that in the feature”. In a way, we were writing the feature the entire time without even realizing it.

S: The short that we started with for Dead Hooker In A Trunk was a fake trailer for the feature, so we already had the most high action and interesting parts mapped out. We knew we wanted a crass dark comedy with quality gore like the old style grindhouse films. Actually, Grindhouse was playing in the theaters at the time and it really introduced to that style of filmmaking. We have been huge Rodriguez fans since we were little and loved his ten minute film schools – now making a film seemed even more possible.

We had his book and first hand account of making his no budget feature – El Mariachi – with us. We nicknamed it the Bible, but its actual title Rebel Without A Crew is almost as appropriate. In it he talks about using creativity to overcome obstacles that a big studio would throw money at to counter. We wrote a script with our limitations and strengths in mind. We chose a style that would be more forgiving in its rougher feel. It was made mostly to entertain each other and hopefully that would translate to people with similar interests.

How do you two write; does one type whilst the other paces around the room?

J: Ha ha, Sylvie only paces when she’s on the phone. Like a tiger in a cage.

We used to write with the recipe card method that we read that Robert Rodriguez used. It worked well for a film like Dead Hooker In A Trunk. We wrote our “stand out scenes” on cards and spread them across the floor. From there, we filled in blank ones for how much time we would reasonably need to get from point A to point B. We have retired that method, for now. Now, we sit on opposite couches and throw ideas back and forth until we get one that we’re both really excited about and we flesh it out from there. We write out a time line and then decide who wants what scene. Even then, we know who wants first crack at what.

S: We play video games usually and tag the other in. Our writing process is really fun when it’s not completely stressful. That last part was a joke. What we do to first come up with a concept is just start talking about something cool we would like to see. If an idea is too mainstream, boring, or whatever – the other usually rips it apart before it has a chance to exist. It’s a bit harsh, but it’s important because the ideas that survive are the goodies.

Then we plot out the story line in three acts, plan the main story elements and moments, and plan it out. We’ll tell the story back to the other and mess around with different tweaks here and there. We call different sequences that we want to write and have the ability to tag the other in if we get stuck.

Budget wise was it hard to get funding?

S: I think a lot of projects don’t get made because there is this notion that there is a proper way to make a film and only through those means can a project grow and exist. It’s hard as hell to get funding, especially today. We didn’t want to wait for things to be a certain way to make the film, so we decided to bite the bullet and just make the film. We maxed out all our credit cards and called in every favour we could to make the film, but the film was made. It was an incredible experience because everyone who was there was there because they love making films and wanted to be a part of the project. We had the greatest team ever.

J: We weren’t funded for Dead Hooker In A Trunk. That film is the result of credit cards maxed out, savings depleted, and the support of our loved ones. I can’t say how much the film itself cost just yet as we are finalizing things with our distributors at the moment, but let’s just say we wanted to maximize on what we could do with nothing. We had very little support at the beginning, only a few true film makers who could see even back then staring at a script written in Microsoft Word with a pair of fledgling film makers holding it proudly out, smiling, that it could come as far as it has.

We’re living in a rough time. No one really wants to say it, but everyone’s feeling the pinch. Even established, proven film makers are having a hard time getting their work funded. It’s scary. It’s like what chance does everyone else have to get funding for their work? You have to stick to your guns. So many people quit when it gets hard and it is hard, but you have to stick it out. There’s always a way.

Did you use any of the cast from the original short in the feature?
J: Very few. Things didn’t work out with most of the original cast. It’s a huge undertaking to go from a short to committing to do a feature. We lost a couple Junkies do to scheduling. We lost our Goody Two Shoes, originally a girl in the trailer, just before we started filming and we had to re-write the script. MaryAnn Van Graven, our wonderful Key Make Up Artist and one of our Producers was there from the very beginning. She was outstanding. She was with us through all of it and she always believed in the project. She came onto the feature with us. Only myself, Sylvie, and MaryAnn came onto the feature from the trailer.

S: It’s a testament to the ever changing, think fast on your feet mentality you need if you are going to work in this industry. I thought the same cast would want to come to the feature, but we lost almost everyone for various reasons. Directors lose actors all the time and it’s what you do when curve balls are thrown at you that really speak to the person that you are. I absolutely fucking love the team I ended up with. The fact that no actress would play Goody Two-Shoes and the part had to be re-written for a man was one of the best things that happened on this project. CJ Wallis was a phenomenal Goody and was brilliant with all his jobs behind the scenes. We were very blessed with the team we ended up with.

Was it a long shoot?

J: Ha ha, it felt long! You should’ve seen how much we fit into a single day of shooting. Driving all over Vancouver, chasing the sunlight. It was about 6 months shooting on and off. We drove down to LA just to shoot Carlos Gallardo. That was fun. We met on Cinco de Mayo.

S: I would say under thirty days all inclusive, not mentioning timelines and scheduling. We had some pretty epic shooting days.

If you’d had larger budget (without giving any plot away) would you have shot it any
differently?

J: We would’ve punched a trained bear in the face. Seriously. We had to write it out. There was this ridiculous scene where a grizzly steals Junkie’s detached arm and Badass chasing it down through the woods. She catches up to it and says, “F*ck you, bear” and one punches the bear out cold. We couldn’t get a trained grizzly that could do what we needed so we had to cut it. It was just too complicated. There were a few more explosions and fancy stunt bits that we had to cut down on. Just too dangerous and too expensive. Maybe one day we’ll get the opportunity to do a Desperado version of our DHIAT like Rodriguez did with El Mariachi. Then we can punch all the bears we want, ha ha.

S: It would have been nice to have that money to pay all the people who came out, but I don’t think it would have made a difference. The people who made up the cast and crew of this film came out not only for the story but the story behind it. They knew what we were out to do and the inspiration behind it and that’s what they wanted to be a part of. You don’t get too many instances where cast and crew work together, everyone with multiple jobs, and work such long hard hours with zero compensation.

So what projects are you working on at the moment?

S: We are in pre-production going into production on American Mary our second feature film. It stars the lovely Katharine Isabelle in the title role and is a very unconventional subject mattered film. We’re keeping details relatively quiet, but you can get hints from the set on http://www.abstrakt.me/

We also have a documentary called Please Subscribe that follows YouTube personalities David Choi, HappySlip, Tay Zonday, and Daxflame in this new and ever growing medium of online entertainment. We plan to have it out on the festival circuit later this year.

J: American Mary is our everything right now. We go to sleep thinking about it and wake up thinking about it. It has been a much different journey than that of making Dead Hooker In A Trunk. This film will be in a lot of ways the polar opposite of DHIAT while keeping true to our style, colourful characters, witty dialogue, and, of course, our WTF moments. Mary will be much more polished with a much deeper storyline and complex characters. We just can’t wait to share this film with the world.

After that, who knows? After DHIAT, people wanted to see what we could make with a little money behind us. American Mary is our answer. And wait till you see what we can do. We have such an astounding cast and crew assembled, many of which I believe will be going on to work on our upcoming films as well. The likely “next one”? Probably Bob. He’s the favourite right now.

Jen and Sylvia, thank you very much.

With Hot Docs underway in just a few days, our Toronto correspondent Mike Waldman speaks with Jay Cheel,  the writer-director of Beauty Day, which chronicles the life (and injuries) of stunt-TV pioneer Ralph Zavadil. Just ahead of its Canadian premiere at the fest, Cheel discusses the film’s style, Zavadil’s personality, and Cheel’s documentary influences.

-

Download the interview in a new window

…I’m angry that my daughter went to prison when she was a baby to be breastfed. And I’m angry that in twenty years’ time, or thirty years’ time when she comes back to me and asks ‘Dad, what did you do?’ The least I can do is say, ‘well I tried to make a film that was about it, cause I was a eunuch and a whore and could do fuck all else. But I did try to use art on some level. I didn’t pick up a baseball bat and beat the shit out of some politician, which is what I felt like doin’ multiple times.’

Now you’ve met Terry McMahon.

I had the chance to talk with the tall, curly-headed Irishman last month during Austin’s beloved SXSW film festival. He and Ruth McIntyre, who plays Soairse in the film, sat down to lunch with me at the Buenos Aires Café on Austin’s eastside. McMahon takes a seat and, after glancing at the menu says, “what the hell are empanadas?“ The waiter, a little caught off guard at the question, describes the baked dough with meat and veggies stuffed inside, and then walks away to let us think a while, at which point McMahon’s turns to us and says, “so what are empanadas?”

Over a pile of empanadas, red wine, chocolate crème brulé and coffee, McMahon paints a picture of an Ireland that has defeated itself and how his film Charlie Casanova exposes the reasons for Ireland’s saddest downfall.

The film’s main character, Charlie Barnum, represents something very real and destructive for the Irish working class, and it’s clear that Terry McMahon hates his creation, Charlie, just as much the viewer will.

He’s a cowardly piece of shit. And he’s not a cowardly piece of shit that we need to empathize and understand so that we can somehow come to terms with him and by extension appease him. He is not a character to be appeased. This guy will destroy you on every level and see your humanity as a weakness.

Fonona Flannigan, she’s the “the grand dame” of Irish acting… got the film on every level. Her husband is a professor…and she said she could not wait for him to see the film because the title of his thesis was ‘the malignancy of self-doubt in the rise and fall of the Celtic tiger,’ which could have been a tag line for Charlie Casanova.

Why let such a despicable character come out on top in the film?

Because they are getting away with it. They are getting away with it with impunity and you get that long final shot, which everyone says is way too long, but for me the whole point of the shot is, that you were sitting there. There’s a guy dying just off screen and what are you doing? You’re doing nothing and for this long, long time when you have the chance to do something you do fucking nothing…He gets away with it, with absolute impunity and the more he gets away with it the more he thinks he can get away with it and the more we allow them to get away with it, the more they do. It’s a battle cry.

Three generations in Ireland down the fucking toilet.

There was a bit of a bullshit election but all they did was bring in a different form of the same nonsense. There’s a lot of stuff happening in Ireland but, we’ve made a deal with the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and what they did was, they screwed us the next three generations minimum, the next three generations of Irish people to come. My kids and my grandkids are gonna get fucked, and that situation hasn’t changed with the new government…There are different politicians who’ve now come in and are determined to fight for rights. But they’re so small that as a collective body who knows what’s gonna happen.

There’s a small group of people in Ireland who have sold the futures of 3 generations in Ireland down the fucking toilet. The British Empire could not succeed in 800 years to defeat Ireland and over three terms of one government they managed to destroy everything that was good about Ireland. We did more damage to ourselves in 10 years than the British government did in 800 years.

Women in Ireland and the Women in Charlie Casanova

The suggestion that women are equal in Ireland is an absolute fallacy. The suggestion that they are treated as equal is a fallacy. The suggestion that democracy is somehow effective is a fallacy. The suggestion that we have rights, inalienable rights and entitlements are fallacies…

During the most progressive, in conventional terms, the most progressive era in our history, there was more erosion of rights than in any other time in our history. That’s profoundly disturbing and it has to be looked at because it will continue unchecked. But who the hell wants to see a film that’s a polemic about politics, so you try to make it polemic of character. And it turns out that half the audience really hate the film, and the other half seem to be passionate advocates of it…

The other night we were in a bar after a screening and there was an Indian guy there and there was an African American guy there and both of them spoke with incredible eloquence and for long periods of time with passion about how much the film meant to them and how their sense of disenfranchisement had suddenly been articulated in a way that they had never thought possible. And the rage it born in them, the hope curiously enough it born in them and the desire to stop it now, not to allow it to continue to go unchecked: Just the casual violence of language or the casual violence of arrogance or the casual indifference of women.

In this society, and especially in Charlie Casanova, to me it’s very, very important-there’s a lot of muscular dialogue, but the dialogue is all overlapping. It’s because the men don’t listen to the women. When they say something, they’re not listened to. And the interjection is either, ‘I’m gonna bolster you,’ and as long as the woman is bolstering the man she’s fine. But if she interjects with anything that annoys him, it’s ‘shut the fuck up,’ there’s a man talking here. Those elements were very, very important. So that even within their own hierarchical society, it’s very, very clear that there’s one in power (Charlie), with multiple servants of his power who are male, and then there are multiple servants of those three who are female. That’s unfortunately the structure of our society.

What makes Charlie Casanova different from other Irish films?

In Ireland we don’t make films about class and we don’t make films about politics. Since the changes in Northern Ireland and supposedly peace–whatever form that means–came into play and politics took over, we stopped making films about politics. So for a long time in Ireland, every film that you saw was about some IRA imbecile who was going to blow himself up or somebody else up, and the drama was, ‘is he gonna get  caught or is he gonna get away with it?’–and the old enemy The British Force. And that became our standard bullshit film in every form, but since then we don’t make political films at all. And the political landscape in Ireland has changed so profoundly for the better in Northern Ireland but so profoundly for the worse in Southern Ireland….

No novelists write about it, no playwrights write about it, our national broadcasters sure as shit don’t commission any projects about it. In Ireland we’re quite happy to represent the working class as track-suited thugs who are junkies, who are a danger, who are one-dimensional stereotypes.

We have a soap opera in Ireland called “Fair City” and I wrote for it for over a hundred episodes so I know how bad the representation is of the working class. I know that it’s a middle class perspective and a soap opera that’s supposed to be about the working class is a deeply patronizing and very dangerous presumption of what class is. So we don’t deal with politics and we don’t deal with class in Ireland. And I wanted to deal with both head on.

The Christians and the Lions

Go back to ancient Rome. I know in factual terms it’s probably a myth, but in terms of the narrative, the idea of throwing the Christians to the Lions. It made the locals forget their hunger as they watched the savagery of the Lions.  As long as you have two sets of people fighting beneath you, they’re not looking up at you. That’s all you’ve gotta do; keep them at odds with each other. Keep us financial servants. Keep us unhealthy. Keep us uneducated. Keep us fighting and everything is good. If you educate us too much, we might turn around and go, ‘who the fuck are you? And why are you doing this to me?’ We’ d have a much greater fight in us if we were educated. We’d have a much greater fight in us if we were healthy.  So it’s systematic and it’s deliberate. It’s not a conspiracy theory; watch the simple practice of it. We are imitating what happened in England. We are imitating the capitalist model. We are imitating the notion that the majority needs to be controlled by the minority for the betterment of all. When clearly it’s a fallacy.

By the way sometimes I have fun and I laugh. I sound like an incessant boring prick. Sometimes I get drunk and get laid and crack jokes.

The Dehumanization of Language in Ireland’s Ruling Class

The dehumanization of language is a magnificent weapon and I really do believe that the most effective form of fascism has now become democracy, because in fascism you clearly and publicly repress people. And with democracy you give the impression of freedom, which anesthetizes them much more effectively. Second thing is that with Ireland…the idea of creating shame, it’s like in Catholicism, you had original sin and I always noticed original sin was such a scam, such a disgusting scam, pulled by the Church but also so ingenious–that you were born with sin. This is what they’re doing here that literally, to be working class you were born to be ashamed of yourself. And the only way to get rid of that shame is to follow the capitalist model and excel within the given structure and all that structure satisfies the group on top.

I do love language of characters because very often the characters that I like to write, or that I like to explore…their language is designed to be smoke and mirrors. It’s the language of deflection…It’s meticulously orchestrated to be impressive but it’s totally vacuous. And it’s flashing to your left, flashing to your left, as they’re stealing your wallet to your right. And I find it very, very compelling in a character.

For example with Charlie…I don’t want you to listen to what he’s saying, because it’s ‘smoke and mirrors’. Charlie’s meandering and his gorging on this language of prejudice is what excites him, but it’s absolutely meaningless. And I see this in politics every day. Language has no meaning anymore. I take the word ‘love’ and I can make you hate the word love if I want. I take the word ‘hate’ and I can make you yearn for the word hate if I want. That’s disturbing! And Charlie and his ilk do this type of thing all the time, everything they say is to manipulate. Everything they say is to solicit.

Charlie Casanova, the Bastard Film.

In Ireland there is a small group of people who have seen it. The Irish Film Board, the head of the Irish Film Board, Simon Perry was his name, the head of development of the Irish Film Board Andrew Meehan was his name, and the head of production of the Film Board, Alan Maher was his name. Three remarkable men with real passionate yearning for provocative cinema and a real love for writing– all three of them despised the film. They despised it at inception stage, they despised it at script stage, they despised it at reading stage and they despised it when the film was made. They hated it. Absolutely hated it…

Yes, the script was roundly rejected, but the level of embrace in America was remarkable…Donald Sisk gave a copy of it to media ventures, Screen Media Ventures in New York. They immediately offered a deal, a V.O.D. deal, but they offered a deal before the titles were even done. And then we were selected for the Dublin Film Festival…

But then suddenly we get an email from Janet Pierson [Producer of SXSW], two days after Christmas, that is the most incredibly passionate comprehension and defense of the film. And they offered to do the world premiere…we had our first screening and the sound wasn’t great, unfortunately, and I could tell we were leaving half the audience cold. And then the second screening the audience laughed their asses off, which is fantastic, and everybody stayed for the Q&A, it was really extraordinary. And now our 3^rd screening, it’ll probably be empty because we won nothing and Variety hated us…

And I’m aware I pushed it to such an extreme-I’ve alienated a huge amount of people. I’m not fucking naive or stupid enough to think otherwise, but I also knew it would be the only chance I’d get to do that. It would be the only chance I’d ever get to go right down the line, that I’d never have to answer to anybody or compromise the aspiration on any level, because every other time I will have to, and appropriately so… To me it was very important that you weren’t watching Charlie going ‘I actually kind of feel his humanity.’ I wanted you watching him going, ‘half of what he’s saying is bordering on a kind of truth but the other half is so obscene and disturbing it’s like watching a Hitler-fucking-rally.’ And you should be mesmerized by that. We don’t know what Hitler is saying. We don’t need subtitles to know what Hitler is saying. Charlie’s language is the same way. It’s all bullshit language. Watch what he’s doing. Watch how he’s manipulating people and watch how he’s getting away with it more and more and more.

A Filmmaker and a Nation, Reeling.

…There’s a woman called Mary Harney, one of our government officials. This grotesquely sweaty, fat, caricature, a poster child for everything that was unhealthy, was our minister for health. An arrogant scum piece of shit who should be in prison; she swaggered away, waddled away from government in the last election with a pension of over a quarter of a million a year plus multiple others.

These are people-and I think it is important we name these people-these are people who–I don’t want to go to the extremity of phrases like ‘war crimes’–but these are people who have committed crimes against the humanity of a nation. These are supposedly-elected leaders who are there to protect the interest of the people and they sold us out on every level, on every single level. And we are reeling from it. As a nation we are reeling from it and for generations to come we will be reeling from it. And the once ‘proud fighting Irish’ have now become the squalid, cowardly Irish. And I’m ashamed of that.

So if I sound naive, or if I sound churlish or I sound whatever, it’s because I’m reeling from this. And I want to somehow articulate it in some way. And I know Charlie Casanova is a difficult sell. Even the tagline of the film, “You don’t know him, but he already hates you.” You know you’re not going to be going to see a Disney film. And that’s okay. And because it was made completely independently, in an unnecessarily maverick style, I own the film outright so I don’t owe a huge debt to anybody, I don’t have backers to consider, I don’t have producers to fellate, I don’t have any of those things. And for that one time ,you wanna make a film that is about something…

And it’s as fundamental as that, that’s the drive. I wouldn’t mind getting laid too.

Alice Gray

Over the coming weeks, as a lead up the Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto, Sound On Sight will be publishing a series of exclusive interviews with an eclectic group of documentary film makers. Mike Waldman sits down (over the phone) with the directors behind some of the most unusual, outrageous and personal narrative documentaries made over the last few years. These are some of the true story-tellers in documentary film and all of them have amazing tales to tell about their subjects, their process and themselves.

We begin our interview series with Lee Demarbre, director of Vampiro: Angel, Devil, Hero. His film about an fallen super-star of Mexican wrestling, born in Thunder Bay Ontario, is a true achievement in first-person narrative documentaries. The story of how his film got made is almost as amazing as the one on camera.

Last week we published a preview of Animal Control, a short film playing at SXSW this March. Intrigued by this eerie, nocturnal film, I shot some questions over to the director, Toronto resident Kire Paputts. I was lucky enough to get back answers that reflected the mood of film itself: often tormented, a little disgusting, honest and charming.

I wanted to know more about the inspiration for the story behind Animal Control. Turns out, as with so many creative stories, it was pieced together from little bits of life. Here’s what Kire had to say about its origins:

Some time in the early 2000′s, I caught an old re-run of the Kids In The Hall. One of the skits featured Bruce McCulloch as a creep who lived in some sort of industrial concrete building where he drove around at night on a scooter picking up road kill with a short shovel. This is where I got the idea for the character of Larry.

In 2008, my girlfriend of 5 years came back from a trip to Cuba and decided she wanted to be single. This is where all the film’s emotion came from. Kind of explains itself.

While nursing my newly broken heart at some Toronto east end shit hole, a friend launched into a story about how his dog, Sammy, had just died. Personally, I didn’t even like the dog, he was a mean son of a bitch that always growled at me. However, what really struck a chord with me was that my friend is not the type of person who gets emotional or shares his feelings, but I could tell that he was shaken up over it. It was kind of like one of those cliche moments in a film where an old rubby sits in a bar and talks about the one that got away. Walking home I started to think about my family dog, a German Shepherd named Honey, that had died when I was in high school and the connection I had with her.

Everything just clicked and the script was written in a matter of days.

Animal Control features taxidermy scenes as well as a recurring scene of a long hall at an animal center lined with cages of yelping dogs. I asked Kire what it was like to work with the animals on the set, both dead and alive.

Working with live animals was both awesome and at times depressing. Dekka, who plays Sammy, was a delight. I really lucked out with her. She was also the only dog I auditioned. Every other owner/wrangler was way out of my price range. The animals at the shelter were a different story. Depressing as hell. Not that the shelter was treating them inhumanely or anything, it’s just that when you’re around cats and dogs crying for hours on end, it can be quite draining.

Dead animals are always depressing. What’s great about filming in an animal shelter is that you have access to all the dead animals you want. At one point my Art Director was laying out a bunch of dead dogs, looking for a dog that would match Dekka, and she broke down in tears. When it came to the dead animal freezer scene, I was the one who had to go in there and retrieve the bags take after take. It was a bit of lead-by-example and a bit of my crew not wanting to do it. I must add that frozen dead animals don’t smell great and that thawed dead animals smell even worse. When we shot the raccoon taxidermy scene in my mother’s tiny dining room, my DP had to step outside on numerous occasions. The smell got worse especially when the lights started to heat that carcass up. When transporting the bagged remains outside, a few drops of blood landed on the floor and those few drops alone were enough to make your stomach turn.

I was impressed with the clean, precise presentation of the taxidermy scene in the film, so I asked Kire about it. Here, he describes the care that went into the editing for this scene and how he made it tell a story with the juxtaposition of different shots/steps in the process.

With the taxidermy scenes I really wanted to show the process. It seems to be a dying art form, at least in the city. There’s one guy who does it in Toronto, but he’s nuts. I contacted a few other taxidermists outside of Toronto but they turned out to be nuts as well. The stereotype of the insane/creepy taxidermist is an accurate one, with few exceptions. For a while I thought I was gonna have to actually do the taxidermy myself, but I found a guy a few hours out of the city who seemed normal, and when I say normal, I mean he had a wife, kids, and looked like he showered regularly. He really made that scene work. It was important to show the idea of breathing life back into something dead, so although a lot of the shots depict the more gross side of the process (skinning), we mirrored that with the reconstruction of the carcass (ie. we see the face being removed from the skull and then we show the face being fashioned onto the foam mold. To be honest, there were even more disturbing shots that we didn’t include in the film, mostly removing the paws. The sound of little cracking bones can really fuck you up. Over all, the scene is not there to shock, it’s there to foreshadow Larry shedding his own skin by the end of the film.

The main actor in Animal Control was really the film’s heart. Here’s a little more on where this lanky, mysterious man came from and why he works so well for the part.

Julian Richings was my number one pick. I had seen Julian in numerous Canadian productions over the years and was always drawn to his distinct look. His face speaks a thousand words and my DP was in heaven because there’s no bad way to light the guy. Julian killed it, especially for a guy who doesn’t say a single word in the film. He really got the character. Although we spent time speaking about it, he really took it to the next level.
He remained extremely patient throughout and put up with some draining conditions/situations. That’s what I love about Julian. There’s no bullshit, no ego. He’s a real person.

Kire is a member of Made By Other People…he told us more about what it means to be a part of this collective.
Made By Other People is a Toronto based Arts Collective that consists of artists who take a DIY approach to creating art as well as helping one another in any capacity to get the project made. If we’re not directing our own projects then we’re doing sound, gripping, or making lunches for someone else’s. We don’t try to buy into or copy what’s happening in the mainstream, we just wanna tell stories or try new things that seem interesting. If it takes off or makes us a few bucks, even better. Another big component of the collective is providing feedback for each other’s work. Each of us approaches film making differently and it’s always beneficial to get your work torn apart by 8 distinct personalities. Their feedback during the editing of Animal Control was critical. If it wasn’t for them the film would still probably be called “Preservation.” Shit, how pretentious does that sound?

- Alice Gray

In this unique interview, Director Ben Brewer and Executive Producer Anna Rau, reflect on their time at Slamdance, which was, for both of them, the first festival they’ve attended as filmmakers. Both Brewer and Rau are recent graduates from Emerson College and the excitement, inspiration and confidence gleaned from their experience at Slamdance is palpable. Read on to find out what these young filmmakers learned and who Brewer emailed to express that he would “be willing to hold his coffee on whatever movie he makes next.”

Ben Brewer, Director of Beneath Contempt

What other film festivals have you been to and how does Slamdance compare?

Brewer: I had never been to Slamdance before, or any festival besides the New York Film Festival as an audience member. Slamdance was a wonderful antidote to whatever nutty Hollywood-esque things were going on in that pretty little town. I wish they’d do it twice a year, just so we can come back to the Treasure Mountain Inn and hang out again. It was like a summer camp run by the most interesting and intelligent people you’ve ever met. Peter and Dan, who founded the festival, are keeping a mode of film appreciation alive that you feel dying every time you read the term VOD, and it was really special for me to be part of such an event. Someday when the Cannes film festival is happening live on Netflix, the Treasure Mountain Inn will still be packed with cool folks watching the latest shoestring masterpieces!

Rau: I had been to South by Southwest and Austin Film Festival before, but that seemed fairly normal as it was something that invaded my home yearly.  Slamdance was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Park City, even more so.  It’s incredible how this little town completely transforms to welcome Sundance and Slamdance.

Anna Rau, Executive Producer of Beneath Contempt

How did the first screening of Beneath Contempt go?

Brewer: We sold out our first screening! It was incredible. We had people sitting on the floor, which happens to be one of the best vantage points in the TMI screening room, but still! People seemed to be very into it, and most of them stayed for the Q+A. Answering questions was fun, and there were a lot of great questions, but I was so nervous I think I’ve blocked most of the Q+A experience out. I just tried to keep it light—the film is quite serious and slow, and I didn’t want to seem like a sourpuss with a pretentious movie. I wanted people to feel free to ask anything, and to know how honored I was that they stayed for the movie.

Rau: The screening and Q + A are quite honestly a blurred memory for me.  I remember being thrilled that so many people stayed through the Q + A, and their reactions were all very kind and questions very thoughtful.  I remember standing in the back watching Ben field questions from the audience in a very humorous and charming manner, and just thinking to myself “this is all so damn cool!”

Slamdance, whose tagline is “By Filmmakers, For Filmmakers” is known for giving first time filmmakers a platform for showing their work and making connections. Did this sentiment come across during the festival?

Brewer: Yeah definitely. Everyone we met was an impressive filmmaker! Like Josh Mandel, who was one of the programmers we really connected with, his movie Ringers was a huge festival hit a few years back. He has another feature, which he produced, happening very soon. He definitely inspired me, being such a talented guy in his own right who took time out of his life to rear some new talent into the festival world. I tend to be very competitive, so it was a good example to have set in front of me!

Rau: Absolutely.  The festival is programmed by filmmakers who have previously screened at Slamdance.  They are all incredible, fun people who go out of their way to welcome newcomers to the family by showing them the ropes and offering advice.

Have you met any interesting people?

Brewer: I don’t know. But I think some of the people who met me definitely met an interesting person.

But seriously, um, yes I definitely met some super interesting people. Like the guy who designed the Slamdance poster, Kii Arens. We met and talked at a party, he’s an amazing artist who specializes in concert and movie posters. Great pop-art influenced but elegant stuff. His Lady Gaga poster is classic. He also directs things like music videos. I don’t know if he’d remember talking to me, it was a bit of a late night, but we talked for a good 25 minutes about making music videos.

Rau: Everyone we met had their own interesting story to tell.  However, some of the most interesting people we spoke with were the filmmakers behind Summer Children, a film created and shelved 45 years ago that premiered as a special screening at the festival.  It was wonderful to hear the story of the film and its restoration, as well as to hear filmmakers speak so passionately about their project.

What other films have you gone to see? What were some of your favorites?

I was beyond impressed by the films. The first movie we saw was Snow On Tha Bluff by director Damon Russell, and it ended up being one of the films that really stuck with me. I hope someday to make a movie as daring as Snow, it’s totally wild and unforgiving, surreal in a ‘war-time journalist’ sort of way, and funny and sad and a work of its own time and place. I also really loved Matias Lira’s Drama, which was this vulnerable guilt-ridden beautiful movie with tremendously daring performances. It’s sort of like a Haneke film in that deals with lingering traumas of past atrocities—in this case it’s the post-Pinochet world of Santiago. It feels like Baz Lurhman remaking Guzman’s Obstinate Memory, to name a few more random directors. I emailed Matias after the festival and told him that I’d be willing to hold his coffee on whatever movie he makes next. That guy is the real deal.

The film that won the grand jury was really lovely, Stranger Things. It has a wonderful look to it—a very nostalgic warm grain, and that dynamic range you get when things are lit by natural light through foggy windows. There is a scene in the film where the main character packs up old clothes that were hanging in a closet, and I’ve never felt an audience quietly relate and deeply feel for a character more in my life—it’s a hard feeling to describe, but the whole room moved together through that movie, and that’s a crazy cool thing to accomplish.

What have you learned from all this? What will you do next?

Brewer: I learned that it’s pretty important to hire a publicist early on, because having a press list and stuff beforehand lets you set up meetings and get into gross awesome parties. I wouldn’t go into the next one without some sort of press rep publicist type person, mainly because I’m a big fan of working really hard in the preparation stage, cause I think we have a story behind our movie that catches people’s interest, but not if they are distracted by a big festival happening all around them. We were just too broke this time around to hire anyone to officially pump our movie.

Next step will hopefully be more festivals. We haven’t heard back from any of the ones we are waiting on. But we sent out a ton of screeners, so…hopefully someone will take the plunge on our long-ass student film again!

Rau: It was a great experience to attend the festival and see how things worked from a sophisticated level to a street level.  I still have faith that people can succeed at Slamdance with a good film and not a whole lot of money – but also believe the filmmakers must incorporate a bit of cleverness to stand out.  There’s a lot to compete with in Park City, so preparation is key.  Furthermore, it’s crucial to begin this preparation when you’re in preproduction on the film by beginning to build a fan base and buzz for the project.

Whats next?  More films of course!  There are several documentary and feature ideas that have been shelved for quite some time.  I’m excited to get the ball rolling again on a new project and incorporate all I’ve learned from Beneath Contempt.