An Interview With Writer-Director Matt Zoller Seitz.

By Jeremiah Kipp.

Bobby (Jason Liebrecht) joins the party with Susan (Nicol Zanzarella) and Rose (Erin S. Visslailli), in the feature film Home. Photo by Gabe Evans/Richard Seitz.

When asked whether he’s making a transition between film critic to filmmaker, Matt Zoller Seitz grows slightly defensive. But it’s an inevitable question he’ll face along the festival circuit. Home is Seitz’s assured debut feature after years of writing reviews for the Newark Star-Ledger and NY Press. “I don’t see why we need to think of it in either/or terms,” Seitz replies. “There are several people who make movies and still write about them regularly, often critically, including Bilge Ebiri, Peter Bogdanovich, Richard Schickel and Godfrey Cheshire. To me, filmmaking is an extension of criticism, expressed visually rather than in words.”

Made on a shoestring budget in Seitz’s duplex apartment in Brooklyn, Home is a vivid existential collage of love and loss. Released from the constraints of a three-act structure, Seitz concentrates on precious moments in time during an all-night party. Lovers unite or quarrel, fights break out in the backyard garden, stoop philosophers opine on the nature of desire, and musical performers burst into song. If Seitz weren’t a critic — an easy hook, I admit — his reviewers might focus on how compassionate and humanistic his gaze is.

The key to Home lies in a haunting sequence midway through the film, after the main character Bobby (Jason Liebrecht) has encountered numerous party guests, all of who could spin off into their own movies (an audience favorite being Stephen T. Neave’s Tommy, a kick-against-the-pricks misanthrope). In the furthest corner of the backyard garden, Bobby has a conversation with a dream interpreter (hulking but soft-spoken Dennis Cabrini) who’s a psychiatrist at Riker’s Island Penitentiary.

Bobby proceeds to share his recurring dream: He’s in a club (“a meeting place, with many rooms of many colors”) and has an encounter with John F. Kennedy. Kennedy shares anecdotes about the Cuban Missile Crisis and how he first met Jackie. But Bobby has to go to the bathroom, and excuses himself. When he returns, Kennedy has disappeared. Bobby and his interpreter realize that it’s about freezing up in the face of opportunity. It’s not surprising that Seitz admits to having this dream himself, since Home is so deeply personal, so emotionally naked, that you can’t separate the critic from the filmmaker, or Seitz’s life from the film. Indeed, Seitz opens himself up to criticism himself by making Bobby a struggling writer. (“Of course he is,” sneers the peanut gallery.)

Bobby’s work exists in various outline stages and he prefers not to talk about it unless he’s drawn out. He’s more interested in playing an endearing cat-and-mouse game with newly single Susan (Nicol Zanzarella). He marks time with her without ever getting close. To its credit, Home feels like a million parties city-goers are all familiar with, and Bobby can’t be written off as just a film critic’s fantasy of himself. Bobby’s so introspective it forces the viewer to project onto him. Audiences will accept or reject Home based on their feelings toward Bobby — and Seitz doesn’t hand out a compass.

Left: Susan (Nicol Zanzarella); Right: Tommy (Stephen P. Neave) gives Harper (Minerva Scelza) a foot massage in Home. Photos by Gabe Evans/Richard Seitz.

Filmmaker: What is your background as a filmmaker?

Matt Zoller Seitz: I studied film production at Southern Methodist University with the intent of becoming a filmmaker, and fell into journalism by writing film reviews for the campus newspaper. For 12 years, I was mainly a journalist. But I also wrote scripts [on the side], a couple of which were optioned but never made. I produced a [low-budget] feature for another director called Tinsel Town, and was thinking of [how to make] a movie of my own that could be made [simply].

Filmmaker: That was the impetus for Home?

Seitz: My initial idea was to follow the course of a relationship for several years. It was broken into distinct chapters, allowing us to shoot as much as we could using the time and money we had. If there were an interval of a few weeks or months between chapters and the actors returned with different haircuts or weight, there wouldn’t be a continuity problem. It also wouldn’t interfere with anyone’s day job, which was important at our budget level — which is to say no budget.

Filmmaker: How did that relationship movie transform into an ensemble piece during one all-night party?

Director Matt Zoller Seitz. Photo by Jennifer Dawson.

Seitz: We started shooting what was to be the first chapter, which would run 25 minutes. During rehearsals, we realized that the supporting characters were involved in situations not unlike what the leads would be [facing] later. It seemed redundant, so instead I reconceived Home as taking place in one night with multiple characters rather than following two characters over seven years.

In this sense, every couple contains an aspect of the leads, Bobby and Susan. She is getting over a relationship with a character named Tomasz (Pavol Liska), the formal end-point of which you see in the movie. That was originally going to happen with Bobby and Susan [after seven years]. Then the subplot involving Tommy, who is torn between the girl he works with and her best friend, was going to be an incident in the original script where [Bobby] has an affair.

Filmmaker: You shot the movie in your own apartment. I can only assume it was a joint agreement between you, your wife and kids.

Seitz: Yeah. I have a wife, two kids, my brother Richard on the third floor, and a landlord, Stan Murray, on the fourth. Stan is arguably the nicest landlord in the five boroughs. I approached him with great trepidation about shooting a movie here. But he’s very proud of his house and garden, and saw Home as a way to commemorate all the hard work he’d done. Not only did he not mind that we were chipping paint, destroying baseboard and drilling holes to hang lights from his 19^th Century ceilings, but if we were running low on power he’d throw an extension cord out his window to give us some extra juice.

Filmmaker: Was it a challenge to make a film with so many characters in your place at one time?

Seitz: We had one night where we were able to convince the church next door to house the actors, and cooked dinner for 40-45 actors including background extras, then another 10-15 crew people. We made sure to get as much material as we could, and it was the most expensive night of shooting. But we didn’t have 40 characters on the set all the time. The structure of Home mirrors the structure of the party. It starts with one character, you add a second, and then you add a couple more. By the middle, you’re up to full steam when you’ve got 20, 30, 40 people. When they start to leave, you gradually [whittle your way] back to where you started: two people, and then one person.

Filmmaker: You seemed to pay special attention to sound throughout, which seems appropriate for a party film.

Seitz: The sound design is actually the most fulfilled aspect of the whole movie. That’s the one part that I would not go back and change in any way. It was by my brother Richard Seitz, who designs sound for video games such as Hulk, El Diablo and Scarface. We did something I insisted on, which was to rip off Robert Altman. Rather than just putting in general background hubbub, we wrote entire scenes to be played off camera, and recorded them in the studio. If you listen to the soundscape closely on a good system, you can hear offscreen conversations. Those were written as thinly veiled commentary on the onscreen action.

Filmmaker: Did you have to take time off from your criticism to make Home?

Seitz: It depended how busy things were. I do television criticism for the Newark Star-Ledger, which is between 4-8 pieces a week, and film reviews for the NY Press. When we were shooting, instead of seeing five to eight movies a week, I’d [catch] one or two. I’d try to [attend] screenings well in advance then write a bunch of reviews all at once. That way, I could continue to be in print while filming.

Left: Harper (Minerva Scelza) confronts Rose (Erin S. Visslailli); Right: Harper (Minerva Scelza) in Home. Photos by Gabe Evans/Richard Seitz.

Filmmaker: You can’t deny that your background as a critic provides a useful frame of reference when discussing ideas with cast and crew.

Seitz: It’s great having that base of knowledge to draw on. We had the kind of on-set arguments that people dream of having. There was a long discussion about whether a character should cross the axis, which evolved into wondering if Home was being made in a classical Hollywood style or if we were post-French New Wave where crossing the axis is allowed. You’d be surprised by how many people got into that discussion. They had very definite opinions.

Filmmaker: You dedicated your film to the late John Frankenheimer.

Seitz: He was a friend of mine during the last seven years of his life. I met him when I wrote a piece for the New York Times about his movie The Train, which I described as the forerunner of the modern action film. He wrote me a nice letter and we started a correspondence, which continued until his death, except for a six-month period when he stopped speaking to me after I panned Reindeer Games. He was the one who [gave me the encouragement I needed at the time]. I had a particular script in development with an independent company, which ended up not happening. I felt that was two years of [my career] down the drain. [John] said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you. You should go ahead and shoot a movie. Make it small enough so you can do it yourself, and quit bitching to me!”

There are several shots in the movie that are directly lifted from Frankenheimer, such as the shot of Harper sipping the wine where we gradually zoom out to reveal what’s happening on the patio then you zoom up to what’s happening to Rose (Erin Stacey Visslailli). There’s a shot in The Train that’s very much like that, which zooms in to pick out the ID tag on the back of a conductors lantern. That’s my little shout out to John.

Filmmaker: You’re not afraid of the zoom.

Seitz: I love the zoom! I think more movies should use it, because it mimics how the brain perceives eyesight. If I’m looking at someone across the room, say, at that drinking fountain, and I want to get a good look I mentally crop to their face. But it’s a mental process when you’re getting your bearing. It makes you aware of the entire environment. You’re moving in or you’re pulling out, but you’re always aware of the entire space. I like that because it acknowledges there’s a world beyond the close-up. I love close-ups, but I think those that are not connected to wide shots in any way are just bullshit.

Left: Annie (Jennifer Larkin) and Josh (Bradley Spinelli); Right: Tommy (Stephen P. Neave) in Home. Photos by Gabe Evans/Richard Seitz.

Filmmaker: Many film critics are introspective. Sometimes, it seems as though they spend so much time in darkened theaters that they are a little cut off from the world. But from Home, one gets the impression that you like people and aren’t afraid of interacting with them.

Seitz: The first part is true and the second part is not. I do love people. I love many different kinds of people. I am notorious in some circles for having friends that some people cannot stand. Many of my closest friends are socially maladjusted. I connect with those people because I am that way. Right now, you’re hearing a guy who can handle interview situations only because I’ve taught myself how — because I’m a journalist. My natural inclination is to be like Bobby, on the outside looking in. I have a melancholy temperament. People often say to me, “Why don’t you smile? You look so sad!” My response is usually, “I am smiling.”

Filmmaker: Yet in the making of the film, you have to connect with many people. You had to sustain the loyalty and trust of actors and crew throughout production.

Seitz: You have to give them their artistic freedom. That’s why there’s such an eclectic mix of styles in the movie. You have some very rigidly storyboarded, meticulously designed scenes, and then you have some documentary style, like a live news event. You have characters that are like old movie characters — the leading man and the leading lady — and others that have stepped out of a Scorsese film from 1972.

Our two leads had never carried a movie before. The director of photography had been a gaffer on a number of movies, but he had never done a d.p. job. My brother Richard, who is probably the most experienced person in the crew, had never done sound design on a feature before. I’d given people the opportunity to do something they had not done before, and imprint their own personality on the movie in a vivid way. That was why they kept coming back for 8-14 hour days in the [heat of] summer. It wasn’t for the money.

Filmmaker: There’s always that awkward question, about the budget of the movie.

Seitz: Everybody lies about the budget, so I’ll tell you the truth! There are two budgets: one that was paid for in money, and the other that would have halted production if people hadn’t been so nice about working deferred. The actual out-of-pocket budget for this movie was $37,000 from the first day of shooting until final output to exhibition in theaters. The actual budget is probably around $200,000.

Filmmaker: I understand you’ve been reading your own reviews.

Seitz: It’s funny, because we had two very good reviews from Slant Magazine and Philadelphia City Paper. They were both positive, but chided me over the exact same line of dialogue where Susan’s ex-boyfriend Tomasz hears Bobby describe his play and says, “Let me give you one piece of advice. Don’t make your main character a writer. It’s a bit of a cliché.” One of the writers called it an unnecessary preemptive strike against criticism, and the other said it was an apology in a movie that had nothing to apologize for. They were both valid observations, which got me back looking over the movie. I realized to my horror that the entire movie criticizes itself in ways that I was not even conscious of.

Filmmaker: Isn’t reading someone else’s reviews like reading their diaries, and hearing what they’re saying about you?

Seitz: It is. But criticism itself is like writing diary entries in print. It’s been interesting to see what they’ve written. Nobody said anything I felt was unfair or inaccurate. I felt they paid close attention and they either liked it or they didn’t. That’s the best you can hope for. Of course, I was thinking the entire time that it was reckless, crazy and possibly stupid of me to be making a movie as a critic. There are dozens and perhaps hundreds of people I have panned over the years who would like to throw a drink in my face. I’m exposing myself to their ridicule and contempt. But then I thought, “If I don’t do it, I’m a coward — because I’m a filmmaker. I happen to be a filmmaker who writes criticism. If I don’t do this, I’m not being true to myself.” I’ve always felt I was a non-practicing filmmaker who wrote criticism, as opposed to a film critic that wants to make movies.

Jeremiah Kipp is a freelance journalist and filmmaker based in NYC.