| I really like the idea of a film that people discover and experience free of preconceptions. A few years ago I stumbled upon Lukas Moodysson's
beautiful Show Me Love, and I think my enthusiasm for it had a lot to do with the fact that I had no idea who any of the actors were (as young kids, and Swedes, they were doubly unknown to
me--I still don't know their names but I believe they're geniuses), so I could invest in them utterly as characters. There's a terrific excitement that comes from seeing an actor for the first time and not knowing anything about them but what you see on the screen. So, artistically, I think that our
super cast of non-professional actors is our greatest
asset.
The brilliant director Mike Leigh has a great quote about how the world that filmmakers + actors create together should "go around corners," that is, the world should feel complete, that it continues beyond the edges of the frame, that you can understand that the characters have lives before the movie begins, after it ends,
while they're offscreen. And I
suppose that that's a pretty common element in all the movies I really care about, that the world feels complete, whether it be
stylized realism à la Mike Leigh, or fantasy à la
Star Wars or whatever. (George Lucas' world certainly used to go
around all sorts of corners--and I suppose it still does, though these
days it seems like all of his energy has gone around the corner.)
Nashville, Trash, Blade Runner, any and all
Cassavetes movies,
Carrie, Dazed and Confused, Don't Look Back, Stolen
Kisses, even something ridiculous and absurdist like The Big Lebowski,
or the Monkees' Head, all of these movies feel like they come out of complete worlds with internal logic.
(Even if it's illogical. And external.)
So that, I guess, is what I was going for. We tried to get things that felt
honest and made sense. When in doubt, we tried to hew as closely to the reality of the situation as possible. The fewer lights we put up, the happier I was, as I wanted to keep the environment as natural as possible for the
actors--it's tough enough to act like a human being with a camera and a microphone in your face, and every additional light and crew member and technical distraction just makes it harder. So I tried to keep all of the tech stuff as simple and streamlined as possible, and my wise and very accommodating
d.p., Matthias Grunsky, did an
outstanding job of translating my anti-professionalist rantings into functional set-ups...Although none of the actors are "playing themselves" by any means, I did not ask anybody to affect anything unnatural to them. Certainly their speech patterns and clothes and
hairdos and all basic external characteristics are their
own; they are all very interesting, very watchable people.
...Is this boring? Should I be ranting more here? Should I get into some self-serving stuff about how the American film scene is in really dire shape and needs a big revolution to come along and reset all of the priorities? Should I rail against
capitalism itself? Well. Buy me a drink someday and I will. For now it seems a little inappropriate, but
the internet is a fluid sort of forum, maybe I'll come back and revise.
Feel free to e-mail me about any of this philosophical type stuff or whatever. In the meantime, please go off and read about our brilliant
cast + crew--they're all real interesting folks with diverse + weird interests. If you're a filmmaker, you'd do yourself a favor to work with as many of them as possible.
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