One-on-One Q&A: Director/Screenwriter, Phillip Van

One-on-One Q&A: Director/Screenwriter, Phillip Van

A scene from Phillip Van's She Stares Longingly At What She Has Lost.

She Stares Longingly At What She Has Lost is the title of Phillip Van’s segment of Little Minx, a new web film series produced by Rhea Scott and based on the French parlor game of the same name where the last line of the previous film's script starts the first line of the next film's script. The Film Panel Notetaker conducted a One-on-One Q&A with Van who explains what it was like contributing to the Exquisite Corpse process. He also talks about his new feature-length screenplay Darkland that is in the Tribeca All-Access program at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival. Van also has a number of acclaimed short films to his credit including the Student Academy Award-winning High Maintenance, Dunny, Flight, and the PSA Lone State for MetLife.

TFPN: How would you characterize the entire Exquisite Corpse process and how did you conceptualize your particular segment for Little Minx?

Van: I wanted to define something that I don’t think there’s a word for in the English language, maybe the closest one is ‘nostalgia.’ But it’s more fatal and meaningful. Other cultures have descriptions of this kind of mood or feeling. In Portuguese, it’s called ‘saudade.’ There’s a type of music called ‘fado’ that they dedicate to it. There’s a cultural movement surrounding it that has been going on for generations. It’s a very visceral sort of feeling, which I know well, but it’s not a major source of art in western culture. It usually relates to a loss of home or a loss of some form or incarnation of yourself. I devised a story around it. I was really into Carl Jung growing up. A lot of his ideas influenced the ideas in the story, especially the idea of the “Animus,” an unconscious conception of a man in the mind of a woman before she knows man and a kind of ideal that she projects onto man. The gender reverse is the anima. Jung had all these accounts of patients he worked with that said things like “I’ve been married to my wife for 10 years and I realized yesterday that I actually don’t know who she is.” Those accounts influenced the Water Man, who is essentially an illustrated version of the Animus in the mind of the little girl in my story.

TFPN: It seems that Jung’s philosophies also come into play in your short film High Maintenance. Can you talk about that?

Van: I made High Maintenance to touch upon behaviors that I see in excess today among friends and in society; things like rampant consumerism, serial monogamy, lives predicated entirely on connections through technology or some sort of networking platform, and a real, new kind of loneliness. We’re more connected now than we’ve ever been before but somehow, also more disconnected. I think this relates directly to the filters that we use to reach out and connect to one another. The film was a way for me to turn those themes into a story and I did it through the characters of Jane and Paul. Jane is looking for a man by ordering designer robotic men online, tweaking them to accommodate her desires, and making sure the upgrade is better than the first version of the husband she bought. In that process, she tests the degree to which men are interchangeable. In one respect, the film comments on how programmatic love can be in human lives. We’re susceptible to a series of stimuli that induce chemical reactions. When we’re told what we want to hear, our response is mechanical on a certain level. In another respect, by attempting to demonstrate that love is replaceable, the film becomes a strong argument for the opposing truth. It pinpoints a kind of alienation, depravity and need for companionship that is all too human.

TFPN: What is your screenplay Darkland about? How does it differ from your shorts and where did the idea come from?

Van: Darkland bares similarities to my other work, but it’s also very different. All my shorts deal with themes of alienation. To some extent, they also all deal with interchangeability: the degree to which we can be made irrelevant or redundant in the modern world and the fears, anxieties and, at times, comedy surrounding that.

Darkland has political overtones but is ultimately very human. It’s the real love story of my mother and father and the things they went through together in Laos before the entire area fell with the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. It’s also very much a dark thriller. It centers on Thanh, a Vietnamese man raised in Laos, and his conflicted relationship with Lauren, an American woman who works for the USAID and gives resources to starving Lao villages whose trade routes have been cut off by the war. Thanh is in charge of a dam building operation designed to generate money and power. He believes it will fortify the country against communism and the threat of the war next door. But as he tries to put together his workforce, he discovers that all of the Lao workers have already secretly turned to the communist regime. The only way to get the job done is to hire these people and keep quiet. In doing so, he ends up inadvertently funding communist attacks on his own country. Working on the frontlines, Lauren bears witness to the murder that he’s unleashing on his own people, and upon discovering his secret, has to weigh her love for him and ability to keep it covered up against his path of destruction. It’s a story that plots grand dreams of freedom and salvation against the ugly realities of murder, corruption and egomania. As Thanh’s love for his country and Lauren’s love for Thanh become engines for complacent destruction, the story forges a central opposition between love and morality.

TFPN: This seems really relevant with current events.

Van: Absolutely. That’s great that you’ve said that. I’ve stopped saying that. I don’t want to force it down people’s throats. The speeches that Nixon gave at that time with regard to withdrawal from Vietnam, which in a cursory way addressed Laos, were very similar to Bush’s speeches now. I’m sure Bush’s speechwriters are aware of the overlap, but I don’t know why they would be paraphrasing Nixon given his track record. The way that the technocrats in Iraq were disempowered because of misguided decisions on the part of our government is pretty incredible. When you use the government to fire the intelligent working forces in a country they will turn to the anti-establishment, because it’s best game in town. And they have to feed their families. They also have all this knowledge and they have to use it somewhere. The dam Thanh is building is a way to actually show these dynamics at play in a visceral, physical manner.

TFPN: Is Darkland fictionalization or a completely true story?

Van: It’s safe to say that it’s based on a true story, but I’ve changed certain elements around and taken a few, reasonable dramatic liberties.

TFPN: What was the process of being accepted into Tribeca All Access and what does it mean to you to be selected?

Van: It was very much like applying to the festival itself. I turned in the first draft of the script, treatment, synopsis, logline – all of the written material they required. Also a personal statement on why the script and the film are relevant to me. Then it went through a pretty rigorous period. They called me and we had a lengthy interview. I think there were four or five people from Tribeca All-Access on the phone asking me questions. It reminded me of getting into NYU. My script and others in the program aren’t conventional, maybe because of the strong multi-ethnic contingent or subject matter. Prior to writing Darkland, I’d been working on a featurization of High Maintenance that I’m still working on with the writer of the short, Simon Biggs, who’s a great partner. And then this idea for Darkland came up and really took over for a spell.

TFPN: Can you talk more about some of your earlier film influences and inspirations?

Van: I grew up on films in the 1980s before I found any arthouse work. Films from Donner, Spielberg and Zemeckis, like Back to the Future, The Goonies, Raiders of the Lost Ark – all the movies that were completely ubiquitous and still hold up today. There were a few exceptions to the popcorn cinema. I saw 2001 when I was in 3rd grade and Scanners even earlier. I watched the Twilight Zone and all the Friday the 13th, Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street films at my babysitters. It’s amazing what kids are exposed to by diffusion. When my brain formed out more I sought out Bergman, Godard, Tarkovsky, Antonioni, neo-realism, the new wave. These redefined why I wanted to be in film. I realized what a peripheral knowledge I had through my primary lens and how much I could do with the medium.

One-on-One Q&A: Sue Williams, "Young & Restless in China"

One-on-One Q&A:

Sue Williams
Director, Young & Restless in China

Young & Restless in China, a new documentary from director Sue Williams and her company Ambrica Productions, opens April 11 for a week-long stint at New York’s Cinema Village as well as at Laemmle Theatres - Grande 4 in Los Angeles. The film “follows the lives of nine young people over four years as they struggle to find their way in a country changing faster than any in history.” Below is The Film Panel Notetaker's One-on-One Q&A with Sue, who discusses her experiences shooting this and four other previous documentaries in China.

TFPN: What prompted you to make Young & Restless in China? Why did you choose this topic?

Sue: I have made four other films in China. (China: A Century of Revolution – A trilogy of three features: China in Revolution, The Mao Years & Born Under the Red Flag and also China in the Red.) The latter is about how the end of communism was being lived by ordinary people and it came out in 2003. Everyone then was talking about China being the next superpower. I was interested to know what China was going to be like in 10 years time when it’s a major player on the world stage. What are the people like who are going to be running it and who will be important in business and in the arts? I thought it would be interesting to get to know young people in their 20s and 30s and see what motivates them, what interests them, what drives them and what their lives are like. That was really the reason that I started the film.

TFPN: How did you go about getting funding to film in China?

Sue: That’s a long and difficult process. Some of the money comes from grants. Some of it comes from support from PBS stations. We have a number of private individuals who have foundations or have given money as tax-deductible donations. It’s very hard to raise money for independent films.

TFPN: What was it like filming in China? Did you face any regulations or restrictions?

Sue: Usually when you’re there and you want to film anywhere official, such as a government official or at a large business, you need to have permission. You can get permission through different organizations. We happened to work with CCTV (China Central Television) which is the national television network. They have a department that works with film crews from abroad. So we had someone with us. That’s good because it’s the only way you can get into some places. Then of course sometimes it’s a drag, because they want you to show the positive side of China. We were very fortunate on this one – my other films were much more controversial – for example trying to film one of our characters who ended up in jail! This film I was really more interested in making these portraits of young people. We had pretty good access, even though there are a lot of distressing stories in the film. Those include: the daughter whose mother is trafficked and sold; the migrant worker who works 11 hours a day, 7 days a week; the environmental lawyer who is fighting for individual rights so that the government will acknowledge that individuals have rights in a society as well. Because these issues were very integral to the characters, we managed to spin them pretty positively to our minders. Some of them were quite helpful and sympathetic. I think people have assumptions about China. It’s not politically free by any means, but it is a huge and vibrant country with lots of people going on with their lives, having very little to do with the government. We were kind of moving in and exploring that area.

TFPN: Where else will Young & Restless in China be showing and what are some other projects you are currently working on?

Sue: In addition to this week’s openings in New York and LA, it will also play in Pasadena. And then it will be on Frontline before the Olympics. We’re working on a film about Johnny Cash, something completely different. We have a couple of investigative pieces that we’re also developing with Frontline.

TFPN: What else should people know about your films?

Sue: The reason I keep making these films is because China is such a difficult place to understand. It’s often treated very one dimensionally in the media. It’s all human rights or Tibet or how China makes all the goods we have in this country. All those things are true but it’s not the only story in China. I think that we face many common problems with the collapsing environment and health pandemics. I see that the bird virus has just started to mutate; it’s started to have human-to-human transmissions, which is hugely serious. If we’re going to work together on these issues that are trans-global, we have to start trying to understand each other. I hope people come away and say, “Gosh, I can relate to them. We listen to the same music. We all like sports. We care about our kids. We care about our parents. We all need healthcare, somewhere to live.” As well as having big differences, you see we share quite a few things. After going to China more than twenty times now, I know we do have a lot in common too.

One-on-One Q&A: Paul Krik, "Able Danger"

One-on-One Q&A:
Paul Krik
Writer/Director, Able Danger

Paul Krik’s Able Danger, which premiered at the 2008 International Film Festival Rotterdam, is a fast-paced, very good-looking, modern-day independent film noir about a conspiracy theorist/Brooklyn bookstore café owner who unassumingly gets in the middle of a 9/11 cover up when he helps a femme fatal keep a secret that leads to murder and espionage. Below is an One-on-One Q&A between Paul Krik and The Film Panel Notetaker.

TFPN: How did Able Danger come about? Were you interested in conspiracy theories? Do you have a message?

Paul: The message is that truth won’t be handed to you. There’s a lot going on in the world that most people don’t know about. I wasn’t really a conspiracy theorist before I started writing and researching. When Bush won the last election, I was inspired to do something to contribute to the culture, to try to affect the zeitgeist. The café Vox Pop is a real café. I came to know the owner, Sander Hicks, who’s been an activist for years. I came to be a big fan of his tireless efforts to promote the truth. Vox Pop is a cool hangout place. It’s great for the neighborhood where people come together for wireless Internet and get some coffee. It’s also a bookstore with books you don’t find in mainstream bookstores. He’s also a micro publisher. He wrote a book, which is in the movie, the Big Wedding. My initial feelings about this conspiracy theorist café owner was something ofthe everyman perspective on conspiracy theorists, these sort of kooky whack jobs who are screaming, “Dig for the truth.” But because I liked this café and what he was doing in the neighborhood, I invested the energy to read the book and I kind of fell into the abyss of conspiracy theory. It was such a well-written academic very interesting treatise on 9/11 and also a bigger picture of things that are going on we don¹t know about that will never make it to mainstream media. He was the basis for the main character. He’s not exactly modeled on him, but the idea that hopefully the character is a bit of a goof, but underlies the seriousness of the issues he’s talking about. For a year, I sort of read everything on the Internet and some of the best conspiracy books I could find. I wasn’t a conspiracy theorist before, but on that day something didn’t feel right to me. I’m not a 9/11 academic or researcher in the strictest sense, but I do think that the official story is clearly flawed and covering up quite a bit. That’s really the main point. Everybody acknowledges that, even the official Keane Hamilton report, it’s clearly not a final story. Our understanding of 9/11 completely determines the post-9/11 world and that’s why I think it became an important issue. At the same time, I don’t really want to be the person who’s drudgingup the old issue that no one really wants to think about, but it’s the issue that sort of informs our world more than anything else. I really wanted to start dealing a blow to how we understand it.

TFPN: The black & white cinematography and overall production/art design is really fantastic. How did you put it all together? Was there a limited budget?

Paul: My budget was very limited. It’s a completely self-financed project. I begged, borrowed and stole to get it done. I work in post production for Jump Editorial. I’ve been editing television commercials for a number of years. I did edit it myself, but called in all my post-production favors. I was fortunate enough to enlist the immense talent of a great director of photography named Charles Libin. He was willing to work on the project forless than his normal rate because he liked the script and the subject matter. He certainly informed the look quite a bit. The reason why I chose black and white is that it is a film noir homage. When you’re in the noir environment, you’re assuming that there’s something darker than what appears on the surface. We accept in a noir environment that people have ulterior motives. No one is perfect in a noir environment. The vocabulary of evil can be played with in a way. We live in the noir environment and we can play with it and have witty banter, but it’s sort of understood that things are darker than they appear. For me, conspiracy theorists see past the mainstream media what is offered as the truth. In a way, they live in this noir environment. When I watch news now or read mainstream media, that’s not really the story. We don¹t really want to drop bombs on Iran because they want to develop nuclear weapons, we want to drop bombs on Iran because they’re going to be undermining our economy when they set up a bourse that sells gasoline in Euros, therefore undermining the dollar. But that will never make it to the mainstream media. Originally noir came about because we saw the depths of the depravity of the human condition during World War II. We saw what Godlessness means. I feel like it’s a similar time now, but we are the perpetrators of this sort of Nazi-like evil. Using the noir genre brings us into a space where this moral depravity is a really current topic.

TFPN: I like how you show all the TV broadcasts in color. It’s a bold contrast to the black and white. What was your intention with this? Were you trying to make a statement about the media?

Paul: What we see on the television, because it’s on TV, it’s more readily accepted as true. The cooler the logo and brand are, the more interested we are in watching it and the more we accept it because if they’re paying all this money for production value to sell their news, then it must be true. I think that’s how Americans take their news. The glossier and slicker it is, the more they’ll buy it.

TFPN: What was the reaction from audiences at the film¹s world premiere inRotterdam? What was it like doing a Q&A?

Paul: The reaction was amazing. We had three sold out shows with about 400 people in the seats. It was sold out weeks in advance. I’d literally been working 20 hours a day for months. I got into the festival and then actually had to finish it. I was kind of on an insane course just to get it done. And so I showed up and really sort of watched it for the first time finished with a crowd. When you’re doing a Q&A, it distorts your experience, because it’s kind of about you and less about the movie. I’m worried about what I’mgoing to say. For the first screening, it was a little weird, because you’re watching it and the crowd is reacting. At the Q&A, people were really interested. They were asking question for what seemed like at least an hour. They had to boot us out because they were going to shut down the theater. For the third screening, I was able to be a fly on the wall. I didn’t have to introduce the film. I sat in the back and just observed the crowd. It wasactually amazing how into it they were. They were laughing the moments that felt small on a small monitor, but on the big screen these moments got stretched onto a larger canvas and the audience picked up on all the humor. These small moments became real moments. People were laughing as much as I had hoped, but more than I expected and really getting into it.

TFPN: Who are some other filmmakers or films that you admire and that mighthave inspired you for your film?

Paul: It is a noir homage. It’s first and foremost a hats off to Humphrey Bogart, Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammet; that kind of fast talking detective story. I’m also a huge Kubrick and Coen Bros. fan, and of the film Pi. It’s a similar sentiment that there’s a truth that takes a lot of scraping to get at. If you find the truth, you’ll go blind maybe or crazy. My take on my conspiracy theorist character is, he sort of knows the truth and he’sconsidered a kook because of it. For me, the object was to make an entertaining good date movie where hopefully by the end of it, your head explodes, or at least you’re asking questions like, what, that’s really true? I did a fair amount of research and I think in 25 years, pretty much everything that made it in there, what’s considered now an out thereconspiracy theory will basically be common knowledge or will be accepted as true.

One-on-One Q&A: Josh Koury - Director, "We Are Wizards"

One-on-One Q&A:
Josh Koury
Director, We Are Wizards

We Are Wizards, a feature documentary directed by Josh Koury about fans of the Harry Potter phenomenon, had its world premiere at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival last month. Koury’s next stop on the film festival circuit is the New York Underground Film Festival on April 5 & 8. Then he heads down to sunny Florida to the Sarasota Film Festival on April 12 & 13, and next moves onto IFFBoston on April 24 & 26 (FYI, after the 4pm screening on the 26th there will be a wizard rock concert with the bands Harry and the Potters, Draco and the Malfoys, the Hungarian Horntails and the Whomping Willows.) I had the chance to *interview Josh about his new film and his experience on the fest circuit, both as a filmmaker and a film programmer. He’s formerly the Short Film Programmer and Programming Manager at the Hamptons International Film Festival and also formerly the Programming Director and Co-Founder of the Brooklyn Underground Film Festival, which had its last bout in 2006.

* I am now calling my filmmaker interviews: ‘One-on-One Q&A.’ It’s just a little spin on a traditional audience Q&A, except that figuratively speaking, the audience has left the building, and The Film Panel Notetaker gets to ask a bunch of questions directly to the filmmaker.

Harry and the Potters, a wizard rock band in Josh Koury's documentary We Are Wizards. Photo courtesy of M.A.L. Productions.

TFPN: How much of a Harry Potter fan were you before making your film, and what gave you the idea to choose this subject for a documentary?

Josh: I was a fan of the books, not so much the movies. Close to three years ago, the film’s producer Gerald Lewis and I got together and threw around some ideas and one of them that came to the table was We Are Wizards. I was a fan, but I also knew there was a subculture out there that should be explored. When we started looking, it was kind of a snowball effect, everything just started opening up. The more we looked, the more we found. It was pretty remarkable how large the fan subculture was. It was important for us to document the fan culture in the pivotal moment between the fifth and sixth book. We weren’t sure what was going to happen. It just so happens that this fan culture is still thriving, but it felt like that was a time to make this movie. That gave us a feeling of urgency. I didn’t expect most of our characters to be really great people. They’re really funny and interesting people on real levels, which was important for the film.

TFPN: Were there more groups and people you didn’t get a chance to include in the film?

Josh: The fan culture is enormous. It’s far bigger than what the film depicts. In order to make a movie that was truly about the subculture…everything, I just don’t know if that’s a realistic film. That’s definitely not a film I was interested in making because the subculture is so massive. What we needed to do was go through and cherry pick some of the people we associated ourselves with and cared about and felt like we wanted to portray their stories on screen. There’s probably more than 400 wizard rock bands, we only showed about five. There were hundreds of fan sites, we only show a few. What was more important for us was finding characters that stood for something and also we really related to, and I think that was important. Everybody in the film, we respect greatly. We respect their work. We like them very much. You can feel that when you’re watching the movie, I hope. That was a result of choosing our characters wisely.

TFPN: Some of the subjects you interviewed in the film, including Heather Lawver, faced legal issues from Warner Bros. Did you also have to deal with rights & clearances at all to use any of the Harry Potter-related images in the film itself?

Josh: We were very careful to not include anything that might infringe on copyright. We tried to depict this in the film as well. I think Warner Bros. has changed a lot since 2001, and that was with Heather’s issues. I think they’re much more lenient with the fans. There’s a community that’s been built around them and I think that’s the journey they went through in 2001 and I don’t know they want to necessarily go through it again because I believe they’ve got a common understanding between their interests and the fans’ interests. That being said, we had the rights to make a documentary or nonfiction film, as journalists you have that right as long as you’re careful with the material. That ultimately makes the difference. We tried to be very fair with Warner Bros. depicting their side. This wasn’t a boogeyman movie. This wasn’t a big corporate entity versus the little guy. We tried to make it more about the people. I’ve said this at screenings before: at the end of the day in a strange way, the movie is not even about Harry Potter. It’s about people, their struggles, stories, exploration and need to create. Some people walked into the movie theater and were a little disappointed because they wanted more Potter. It was interesting making a movie that was more than that. If you’re making a movie that just panders to fans, or you’re just making a movie that literally talks about all the fan outlets and wizard rock bands and crazy websites, that’s fine, but I’m definitely very interested in personal stories and finding something within the people that audiences can share and associate with. I think that really helps to humanize the film. These aren’t ridiculous nerds or fans who are “obsessed.” These are real people and you can feel that in the movie.

TFPN: We Are Wizards had its world premiere at SXSW. What was that experience like for you?

Josh: People really responded positively to the film. SXSW was the perfect launching pad for the film because of its musical tie-in. I’ve been to Austin, but never to SXSW before. I’ve worked at festivals. I’ve been around. It’s one of the best festivals I’ve ever been to. It’s the vibe there and the attention paid by the press and the amount of people that come out. I would go there if I made another film and I got accepted. The reception to the film was pretty remarkable. The first show was sold out. The second one at the Paramount Theater was not, but I think that’s because it’s a 1,200-person capacity. But we had 400 or 500 people there at 11am. That’s not a bad screening. One of the things I was particularly proud of was when people came up to me and said, I’ve never read a book and I’ve only seen one movie or not seen anything, but it didn’t matter, because your film is not really about that. It didn’t make a difference that they didn’t understand the Harry Potter world. Some people came up to me and said they hate Harry Potter. If you can get through to those people, then I think that’s a sign of a successful film.

TFPN: Has Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling seen your film yet?

Josh: She is just about the hardest person in the universe to get a hold of. I don’t know, but I think if she ever had an opportunity to see it, which I would love, I think she would like it because I think she very much respects the idea of being inspired and creating something from nothing and working creatively from the ground up. And that’s the way she has always written her books. And that’s the way she started as an unknown and created this massive world that’s treasured by millions of people. One of our characters, Melissa, is still in touch with her and she does interviews with Melissa often and they’re friends to a degree. That’s something that is rare. I think that Rowling still recognizes the value of participation. I think that’s what would hopefully resonate with her.

TFPN: What has the experience been for you going from film programmer to filmmaker and back?

Josh: It was a funny little journey for me. I started with my first film, Standing By Yourself, which did really well and ended up with a theatrical release in New York for seven awesome days and was really well received by critics. After that I was so inspired by the whole film festival experience that I started the Brooklyn Underground Film Festival, which we ran successfully for five years. At the same time, I started with the Hamptons International Film Festival. I love festivals and I love making films. It gave me a different perspective for sure. Of course I made a lot of contacts through that, but it also helped train me on how to see as a programmer. Programmers have very little patience if a film is working for them or not. Some of them watch all the films, especially if it goes through a screening committee. I think that it’s helped me to understand that side of the world a little better. When I started with my first film, I took everything so personally. I got rejected from this and that. It was tearing me a part. Then I realized after working at a film festival, it’s not that way. There’s lots of rules and premiere status is a big thing. Just because it doesn’t get in, doesn’t mean it’s not good, just maybe it didn’t work. I think this new film, We Are Wizards, is getting pretty good reception from film festivals and I hope it will have a great run. If we can keep that momentum going for a while, that’s all we really want. We didn’t really make this thing to sell. We just made it because we wanted to make something that was engaging. My last film was released five years ago. I went a long time without making another film because I got involved with film programming. I’m still interested in programming, and I love it, but I hadn’t felt that filmmaking bug in a while, because it left me and I got it again. The most important thing for me was to keep that moving and keep going. Making films is what I definitely feel most passionate about. Of course hopefully it will do well and we can some of the money back we invested and all this good stuff, but what’s also important for me is to find that next story and start working on it.

TFPN: What is next for you?

Josh: I have some ideas, but we haven’t locked any in yet and can’t talk about because I don’t know which one I’m going to do yet, but there’s definitely a couple of really good ideas. I’m going to work with the team that made We Are Wizards and get some stuff rolling.

TFPN: Do you want to stay on the documentary track or make narratives?

Josh: No, absolutely documentaries. I grew up making narratives, but documentary is definitely the track I’m headed on. I love finding stories. Finding something that’s worth being put on a screen is tough, but it’s important to do and I think that’s what excites me most. That’s why ultimately we stuck to only five or six subjects in We Are Wizards because I think if we showed 100 subjects, this would have been a retrospective, and that’s not what I’m interested in. What I’m interested in is characters and real people and finding their inner story. We could have had Heather just talk about her experiences with Warner Bros. and then call it a day, but it was important to talk about her illness and other issues and aspirations beyond that, the second layer underneath Harry Potter. I think that’s what we tried to do and that’s what we’ve been told we did and I think that’s important.

Go "To The Hills" On Easter Sunday with Fritz Donnelly

At SXSW a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet and hang with Brooklyn-based filmmaker Fritz Donnelly. Fritz gave me a copy of his latest DVD, To The Hills 2, a collection 25 of his short films including Financial Advice, Real Estate, Milk Industry and my personal favorite, Awkward Social Situations. Fritz will be on hand this Sunday at 8pm at Glasslands in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where he’ll be hosting Easter Island Sunday, an evening of short films from the likes of himself and others including Elle Burchill, Ben Coonley, Arin Crumley, Susan Buice, Myles Kane, Jason Talon and three spontaneous submissions. Be sure to stop by for all the festivities. In the mean time, please enjoy my interview with Fritz below.

Fritz Donnelly

TFPN: Tell me a little about your screening series.

Fritz: I'm doing a series of events at the Glasslands, which is a music, art and wild party venue in Williamsburg that's been around for about a year. I think the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs did a video there kind of early on and the whole independent music scene of a certain tier has performed there. It was started by Brooke Baxterand Rolyn Hu, two women who I've worked in the past on my movies. Every month, I do something there like an open mic/performance night or a film nite. At the last performance was a guy who lectured about chocolate and then gave out free raw chocolate samples. I rapped in Chinese, there was a beat box guy, some song singing, and a modern dancer, and a couple of people read poems and fiction. I also do To The Hills Movie Nights showing local filmmakers work. I usually use the screenings as a deadline to make work. And actually, I'll show anybody's work. There's people who regularly make work for this screening like Ben Coonley and Elle Burchill, and some people who just come in at the last minute with spontaneous submissions. It's an inclusive forum. We're trying to build a little community of filmmakers.

TFPN: What is the meaning behind your To The Hills short films?

Fritz: We live in the city and we're influenced by the variety and the strangeness that we see everyday; To The Hills is about that. You come to New York or you grow up here and you're inherently ambitious; you ask, how can I succeed in this metropolis? That is the environment you put yourself in, but sometimes you just need to get out of that because you lose track of yourself or because if you come out if it and you come back, it's going to be so fresh. To The Hills is that impulse to go off to the hills, either so that you can come back fresh or so you can imagine something different or because that's the space where your ideas can run amuck. You're born into the world and it's already all set up, but you kind of want to mess with it. It's that impulse: to mess with the world that's already presented for you.

TFPN: How would you describe your films? Would you classify them as experimental?

Fritz: I think they've been described in so many ways. I showed them to Tom Schumacher, The President of Disney's Theatrical Division. He said he was into them because they showed different systems for living your life. You know, these are movies about stealing your roommate's milk , calling your lover by the wrong name, and overly long eye contact (Awkward Social Situations). A bunch of Berkeley Freudians and neuroscientists saw my Yoga-Dance film in the Hi/Lo Film Festival and they asked me, are you making fun of yoga or are you really into yoga? You're being ridiculous with yoga but you seem into it. So there's that tension, how much is something being made fun of and how much is it being celebrated? A ridiculous looking person is also a fantastic looking person. A ridiculous way of dressing is also flamboyant and wonderful. So a lot of these films have that tension where there's fun in it, but also this way that it's very sincere. I don't think any of it is that experimental, but I treat the whole filmmaking process as one where I'm very conscious of what the conventions are, and then I know whether or not I need them. Like shot, reverse shot, when people are having a conversation. I think that's a really weird and arbitrary convention. Why would you see a conversation from both perspectives? I mean, it's exciting to see both of their faces, but it's really voyeuristic. I feel like a lot of the cinematic conventions are voyeuristic. That's not my interest in watching a movie, to be the person who's looking in. My interest is more to be the person who's participating. I try to shoot my movies in a way where the camera is the participant and gives the viewer a chance to participate and not be an omniscient eye that sees everything. Borrowing from literature, you could call it first-person filmmaking. My films tend to skew toward using experimental techniques, but I feel like the result is not experimental.

TFPN: Are you trying to make any statements with your films?

Fritz: What I like in film is when you put a lot of it together in your head. I feel like the film is what happens between the person and the thing on the screen. So I'm not trying to say anything directly, but I am trying to evoke the part of a person that they're shy about, but that they really like about themselves. I feel, based on the responses I've gotten from people, that some of the films are effective in doing that. For example, Financial Advice, the film that was licensed by IFC and that's at the very beginning of the DVD (To The Hills 2). The guy has no money, but he's giving you financial advice. He's not even capable of keeping track of his life, it seems like, but somehow he's compelling anyway. I've actually had people follow his advice. He's not really giving you advice like, you should do this, but they sort of followed the spirit. Somebody calls me up and says I quit my job and my boss offered me more money, just like you said. And then I've had a lot of people who wanted to make their own stuff based on seeing my movies. Really, it's just me and a camera in a lot of them. I think that's inspiring to other people--that you can do something simple and it can be compelling without using teams of 100 people and massive budgets.

TFPN: What inspired you to make films?

Fritz: That's interesting because I make films, but I also write. I wrote a novel, and almost two, one and a half now: an absurdest how-to memoir, How to Live the Good Life and a hipster murder mystery with astrological themes, Mercury Retrograde. I had a radio show for a while, Shake Your Head, and To The Hills started as a TV show on public access in Manhattan. So I've done different things, not just making movies. I have an interactive video project showing in the New Museum in a couple of months, it's online at http://www.vidopedia.com/. If I feel like I have a message, I write it. I find that film is more evocative. I think creating environments can also be really evocative, but film is demanding because you're asking for time of a person's life. I think of architecture in relation to film. Time and space. Building an environment is demanding because you're asking people to go somewhere and move their bodies through your thing. And I actually think architecture is all about getting people to move their bodies in a certain space in a certain way. I'm trying to not to be too demanding of people, but to offer a lot in exchange for what they give me. Films seem to me like the most efficient format for that.

TFPN: Are there any filmmakers or other people who inspired you?

Fritz: I read a lot of fiction, and a lot of my movies are I think inspired in a general way from people such as Dostoevsky and Borges. Lately I've been editing like Murikami and James Joyce, in the sense of how they return to certain metaphors and images to structure their stories. It's not montage and it's not mash-up, let's call it morphic resonance, to borrow a term from the experimental biologist Rupret Sheldrake. There's a couple of early films of William Wegman's that I really like. He's an artist. You probably know his photographs of dogs. He's got these early videos where it's just him talking to the camera and telling you stories. They're hilarious and amazing. You picture so much going on, even though you don't actually see so much. I had already been doing my thing, but then I saw his work and thought it was related. I guess the same thing happened to me with Borat and Ali G. I saw those after I was already in the middle of doing my foreign characters (How Drive the Car and Instructor and my POZitive character (Live N Maintain). I like the way Sacha Baron Cohen throws himself into the people. The joke is not on the people, it's more on these conventions and these ways that we have of acting that we think make a lot of sense, but in the end are so ridiculous, even reprehensible; he's so good at showing that. I feel like my movies are also about that. They're probably a lot less confrontational. Those are some people who have really inspired me, not really to start, but kind of just along the way like you're running the marathon and somebody gives you a cup of water as you're going.

TFPN: Can you talk about the technical choices you made with some of your videos, such as the Awkward Social Situations one where you played around with the sound?

Fritz: Some of those are me doing a voiceover. So I'll shoot it and then I'll re-do the voice because I wanted the voice to have a different quality. Or I layer the voice twice. I put one out of sync a little bit. It's not actually backwards or anything. In my very first film I ever made, Blue Lobster, there's almost no sync sound in the whole thing, but there is a lot of dialogue. I used a lot of different ways of syncing sound and image so there was syncing going on, but it wasn't lip-syncing.

TFPN: Have you ever been involved panel discussions?

Fritz: During SXSW, I was involved with the roundtable discussions for From Here To Awesome. Brian Chirls, Arin Crumley and Lance Weiler gave an introduction of what it's all about and then they opened it up. (From Here to Awesome is a tool for filmmakers to find their audience online, I'm a filmmaker they've asked to submit to it, the poster child along with Susan Buice, Isis Masoud, Karl Jacob and M dot Strange. I think the conversation gets deeper, faster when there are more participants because people want to get to the heart of the matter. I think panel discussions can be very political--people are self-conscious and a lot of time is spent floating around stuff, whereas when you put everyone on stage I feel like it opens up immediately, you get some angry or extreme questions to get things moving. I think there's a way people try to talk really safe as well, when they're put in a position of authority. The From Here To Awesome discussion was amazing. I think we covered basically everything in this conversation. It ended up going through paradoxes like, how can people make money off of their movies while giving them away to everyone for free. Filmmakers like Lance Weiler and M dot Strange both have done that. We talked about how the audience is involved in the creation process and a Canadian filmmaker discussed how his documentary about copyright includes at least six scenes that were re-edited or created entirely (in the case of an animation) by fans and are in his final film. Arin Crumley talked about licensing plans where the license adheres to the project--so you put one of your movies out there and if people want to distribute it in a small way they pay you a small amount of money, if a major distributor wants to take it to the moon then you'll get a lot more--and this would be automated. We talked about ways to simplify the monetary structure, and a lot of really practical ideas that were futuristic. This whole discussion is online, I'll put a link to it on my website. As for my personal panel experience, Mr. Film Panel Notetaker, I've spoken at NYU on film regularly. For example, I was an expert on Chinese film for Professor Richard Brown. I worked with a bunch of Chinese filmmakers when I was starting out and I speak Chinese, those are my credentials for that. I've done a lot of speaking, and lead lots of discussions, but not that many panels.

TFPN: If you were to be on a panel, what are some ideas or topics you would like to talk about?

Fritz: Anything having to do with love and how to live your life. To me, those are really related. Maybe that's seems like it's coming out of the blue, but it involves communication and art. Another area is how to do things, how to actually do them, like how to make a movie or make art. And another would be timeless writing. And then maybe the fourth thing would be nomadic lifestyle/workstyle. So basically how to keep moving in terms of a project and not feel like you have to attach yourself to resources, but being able to find the resources when you need them and then let them go when you don't need them. I think all four topics relate to filmmaking. But wouldn't you rather know how to have a perfect relationship?

Support Fritz Donnelly

Buy To The Hills: Includes films like HOW DRIVE THE CAR and INSTRUCTOR - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002DGTGO/

Buy To The Hills 2: Includes films like AWKWARD SOCIAL SITUATIONS and FINANCIAL ADVICE - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EZKZTW/

Email: fritz(at)tothehills(dot)com

http://www.youtube.com/tothehillshttp://www.tothehills.com/

Interview: Leah Meyerhoff Brings Retrospective to Boston Underground Film Festival

On Saturday, Brooklyn, NY-based filmmaker Leah Meyerhoff will be heading to Beantown to present a retrospective of her short films at the Brattle Theatre during the Boston Underground Film Festival. I had the great pleasure to hang out with Leah recently during the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in Austin, Texas. I first became familiar with Leah’s work at a screening of short films at the Brooklyn Independent Cinema Series last year where I saw the music video she directed, Team Queen. Soon after, I watched her Student Academy-Award nominated short Twitch, which has played in over 200 film festivals around the world and won numerous awards. Last night, I spoke with Leah about her upcoming trip to Boston and what people can expect there, as well as what’s going on with her feature film in development, Unicorns, and other defining moments in her young career.

Leah Meyerhoff

TFPN: Can you give a little preview of what you’ll be talking about at the Boston Underground Film Festival? Have you been there before?

Leah: This will be my third time there. They showed Twitch and Team Queen there before. It’s a fun festival. They’re calling it a retrospective, which is a little strange because I don’t think I’m old enough for a retrospective. Isn’t that what happens after you’re dead? Anyways, I’ll be screening about a dozen of my short films. A lot of films I made in undergrad at Brown University, some experimental films I made when I was in art school in Chicago, and some of my shorts from grad school NYU. Then I have some commercials and music videos I made outside of school. I’ll be talking about my progression as a filmmaker and how I got from being a teenager going off to college to where I am now about to make my first feature film Unicorns. They’re promoting the Q&A to undergrad and high school students in the area. It’s supposed to be somewhat educational, like an artist lecture, and hopefully will inspire aspiring filmmakers to pursue their own path. Since Twitch was so successful on the festival circuit, I also give lectures at various film schools around the country about how to get into film festivals and what to do once you get in. I enjoy educating people on that process, something I didn’t learn in school and had to figure out for myself.

TFPN: What made you decide to become a filmmaker?

Leah: I originally thought I wanted to be a marine biologist, something totally not in the arts at all. Then I went school at Brown and started taking film classes. I started with film theory, kind of more on an intellectual basis and then began taking film production classes at RISD which was this art school nearby. I continued to make sculpture, painting, photography and other kinds of visual art for years and went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for a year. It was almost a half-creative and half-practical decision to go into filmmaking, a way of doing something that I love while also having an impact on the world. I enjoy the collaborative aspect of filmmaking rather than being in a tiny studio all day painting by yourself. It also has a potential to reach a wide audience and affect social change on a level that other art forms aren’t capable of. The distribution system can be mind-bogglingly complicated, but it’s also great because if you can tap into that, you have the chance to really change the way people think. That is part of the reason why I’m particularly interested in coming of age stories about teenage girls. That was the age range for me when I was figuring out who I was in the world and what it meant to grow up as a female in this society. I didn’t see myself reflected in the media. To me, all the TV shows and films I saw were not my reality. Now that I’m older, this idea of creating characters that young girls can look up to or can identify with is a powerful idea.

TFPN: Who are some filmmakers that have inspired you?

In general, I’m inspired by artists who show the world how it is, raw, gritty and real. Kimberly Pierce is a great example. I like Lynne Ramsay, Jonathan Caouette, Catherine Breillat, and Gus Van Sant. I like artistically-minded filmmakers who are making stories about real people. And at the same time, having a creative take on it and making the world a more beautiful place.

TFPN: What is Unicorns about? Has it been cast yet and when do you go into production?

Leah: Unicorns is a coming-of-age film about an awkward teenage girl named Davina who escapes to a fantasy world involving unicorns when her first romantic relationship becomes abusive. The film starts on her sixteenth birthday and follows her relationship with an older, punk rock boyfriend. It starts off being fun and exciting, that kind of butterflies-in-your-stomach feeling, and then progressively becomes more and more emotionally and physically abusive. At the same time, her best friend Cassidy has a crush on her and her father is marrying a woman she despises. It’s kind of like an updated Welcome to the Dollhouse. Or another good reference is The Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys or Heavenly Creatures. It’s a straight-forward narrative drama, but then there are these fantastical animated elements as well. Were hoping to start shooting this summer. Alison Anders, who is executive producing, is a filmmaker I really admire. Her film Gas Food Lodging was instrumental in my teenage years, so I’m excited to have her attached to the project. We’re hoping to start casting next month with Judy Henderson, who also cast L.I.E. and Twelve and Holding and Eyde Belasco, who cast Half Nelson. She also casts the actors for the Sundance Labs, which the Unicorns screenplay was a finalist for, so that’s a great resource as well.

TFPN: Do you have anyone in mind who you’d like to cast in the role of Davina?

Leah: It’s tough, because I really want the 16-year-old girl to seem like a real 16-year-old girl. There are not a lot of name actors out there who actually look 16. I like Kristen Stewart a lot. I like this girl named Mia Waskilowska who was in a short I saw at Sundance called I Love Sarah Jane. I’m guessing what’s going to happen is the lead girl will be someone we discover who is authentic and real. For the lead boy, it might be more of a name actor, along the lines of Emile Hirsch or Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Really I just want to cast whoever is most right for the part. Whoever feels the most real. I am not interested in making the next Clueless or Mean Girls. It’s more My So Called Life than 90210, you know? There are not a lot of films about teenage girls to begin with. There are a lot of coming-of-age films about boys, but there are not a lot of female stories out there. And of the ones that are, they’re usually so unlike any reality that I experienced. Which is what inspires me to make this film. To dig beneath the glossy surface and scratch at the heart of the matter. The brutal realities of adolescence. This is why I spend so much time on casting. If I can cast someone compelling and authentic, then most of my job as a director is already done.

TFPN: What were some of your favorite films you saw and panel discussions you attended at SXSW?

Leah: My favorite film was a documentary called Beautiful Losers, which was about street artists like Shepard Fairey and Harmony Korine. It was beautifully shot. I also liked Lynn Shelton’s film My Effortless Brilliance. And it was fun to see Bi the Way in a theater with a lively audience. Honestly, I came away from that festival wishing I had seen more narrative films. At one point, in the middle of a screening, my friend turned to me and said I just really want to see a scripted film. Kimberly Pierce has been giving me advice on my film, so I really wanted to see Stop-Loss but it played the day after I left. I also went to a lot of panels. The writing panel was useful to me, with Amy Dotson and Scott Macaulay. Also the Fact or Fiction one was interesting. I went to part of the one the Four Eyed Monsters kids were on about digital distribution. I’ve spoken on a lot of panels myself so it’s always interesting to be on the other side. In general, festival panels become somewhat redundant, but at SXSW there were so many incredible people smashed together in this small venue that even if you came in part way though you could pick some stuff up and move on to the next. That’s kind of what I did.

TFPN: What would you say are some of the best festivals you’ve ever been to with the best panels?

Leah: This year, I actually found the panels at Sundance and Slamdance to be really interesting, but SXSW is definitely up there in terms of good panels. They’re well moderated, have interesting guests, and are short and to the point. I tend to judge festivals on more of a filmmaker criterion. I like smaller festivals that take good care of the filmmakers and have really good programming and fun parties. I really like Woodstock, Milan (in Italy), and Avignon (in France). I used to like Brooklyn Underground, which doesn’t exist anymore. I also really like the Sarasota Film Festival as a filmmaker and an audience member. It’s a really well-run festival. And there’s another festival a lot of people haven’t heard of called Cucalorus in North Carolina that I would put on my top 10 list of all time. They make a point to bring all the filmmakers out, no matter where you’re from. You stay with a volunteer and they give you a bicycle to ride around in this tiny little town. The audience is fantastic and the theaters are beautiful and all the films are great. I also like the Newport International Film Festival in Rhode Island. They have parties in mansions with lobsters. It’s fancy but it’s also down to earth at the same time. I was there the year that they were missing the print for the closing night film and a helicopter landed in the middle of town to deliver it, and because of it, they ended up pushing my screening block. To make up for it, they gave us all a free sailboat ride the next day. I don’t like Sundance and Cannes and the larger festivals as much, especially as a short filmmaker because you can get lost in the mix, but Venice is a really great one. Actually I think Venice has the best Q&As I’ve ever seen where it becomes a real community discussion. Plus, it’s in Italy, which is always nice.