Somewhere between John Woo and the auteurs of the French New Wave lies Hong Kong native Johnnie To, currently one of the most engaging and vibrant directors in world cinema. The 53-year-old started making action movies in 1980, and over the course of the next decade and a half established himself as a skilled genre director, not only of thrillers but also of light comedies and melodramas. He rose to prominence with a number of highly successful collaborations with star Chow Yun Fat and in 1996, along with Wai Ka Fai, a fellow director and sometime collaborator, founded Milkyway Image, a production company which would forcefully make its mark on Hong Kong cinema. Since starting Milkyway, To has been hugely prolific, directing 29 films and producing 45, in that 13-year period. More recently, he has taken a distinctive approach to genre filmmaking, effortlessly moving from populist comedies and classy thrillers to Demy-esque musicals and sensitive dramas, and has challenged genre divisions by doing such things as incorporating Tati-esque slapstick into his stylish shoot-em-ups. Since 2003, his work has been a regular staple at the major film festivals, and movies like Election (2005), Election 2 (2006) and Exiled (2006) have gone on to become international arthouse hits.

To's new work, Mad Detective, is his 11th collaboration with Wai Ka Fai as co-director, but their first film on which they have have shared megaphone duties since 2003. The plot concerns Bun (Lau Ching Wan), a renegade ex-cop with psychic powers who can see people's inner personalities, who is brought out of retirement by young detective Ho (Andy On) to solve the mystery of a missing policeman, a case he has been unable to crack. Typically for To, the film is an intriguing mix of genres, an intense police thriller which has moments of light comedy and poignant romantic drama, plus a musical sequence reminiscent of classic Hollywood and an inventively staged final shoot-out. The thriller genre is essentially used as a vehicle to examine the effect of Bun's psychological insight, which has driven him mad and ruined both his professional and personal lives. Wan is superb as Bun, and To and Ka-Fai add hugely to the film's dramatic (and comic) impact with their inspired use of actors to physically represent characters' personas – including the seven personalities of villain Chi-Wai (La Ka Tung) – rendering an abstract concept brilliantly concrete.

Filmmaker interviewed To by email and asked him about genre, auterism and his reshaping of Hong Kong cinema.



Filmmaker: What was it like working with another director on Mad Detective? Did you each have certain duties or did you do everything together?

To: Wai Ka Fai and I have been co-directing films together for almost 10 years. I consider him the "brain" of Milkyway and I am the "hands." For Mad Detective, we were on the set together. I would set up the shots and direct the actors, whereas he will be there to make sure I execute his ideas correctly.

Filmmaker: How different was it from your previous collaboration?

To: Mad Detective is a film that follows no rules. Very much unlike the commercial films Wai and I did together in the past. So every day on the set felt like an experiment.

Filmmaker: What were the particular challenges of making this film?

To: The story unfolds through the perspectives of different characters/inner personalities. It was difficult to decide who's perspective we should shoot at different moments.

Filmmaker: Is it always important to you to have comic moments in your thrillers? Are you consciously trying to subvert the genre?

To: I like black humor because it reflects my view of life: It is always full of unexpected surprises!

Filmmaker: You say in your director's statement that both you and Wai Ka Fai are "never satisfied with what's already been done." Do you mean your own work or filmmaking in general?

To: For Wai and I, making a film is always about doing something new. We don't like to repeat ourselves, even if the previous works were successful. We like to push the boundaries. Exploring uncertainty is the most exciting part of making a film.

Filmmaker: You continue by explaining that you want to "break new ground and establish new rules." How successful do you feel you have been so far in doing this? And does this always always come organically, or is it increasingly difficult to remain innovative and original?

To: As I have said, I don't like to repeat myself. So that's my attitude toward making movies. As long as I know what I want to say in a film, I believe it will be unique.

Filmmaker: How much has Hong Kong cinema changed since you started Milkyway Image in 1996 and began reshaping its image? How clearly now do you see what you still want to alter?

To: The industry has gone into a recession in the past 10 years. But the good thing that came out of it is more filmmakers are learning to eschew commercial formula and explore their personal style. This attitude gives Hong Kong cinema a fresher edge, compared to the formulaic genre pictures in the past. What worries me is there is a shortage of new young filmmakers. I hope we can find more fresh talents to join the industry.

Filmmaker: Do you see yourself as an auteur? Are such things of importance to you?

To: "Auteur" is a big word. But I think nothing matters more than making a film that reflects who you are as a person.

Filmmaker: Do you see your talents as being more suited to interpreting other people's scripts, or will you go back to writing again?

To: Finding a good collaborator for writing is very difficult. I am very fortunate to have Wai Ka Fai, who like me likes to test new ideas.

Filmmaker: Do you see genres as a help or a hindrance to filmmakers? Is it easier to do interesting work within an existing and easily recognizable framework?

To: Hong Kong cinema is based on genre films. I don't find it to be a hindrance. In a way it helps audience to be more receptive to our films. We believe a good commercial film is 70% formula and 30% of fresh ideas. Audience enjoys familiarity because they want to be entertained. But at the same time they want to be surprised. As a filmmaker, I think it is very difficult to find the balance.

Filmmaker: In your director's statement, you mentioned that you want to take "a new direction for the next 10 years." Do you know what direction that will be? And how will it differ to your previous course?

To: What I meant was to stop repeating what we have already done and come up with new ideas. Today, "Milkyway movies" have a meaning to its audience. We hope we don't get stuck with one stereotypical label for the next 10 years.

Filmmaker: As you are so prolific, do you still have time to watch a lot of films?

To: Not really. These days I am very selective when it comes to movies. I spend more time on reading.

Filmmaker: What was the last film that had a big impact on you?

To: Dogville. An amazing film which I have recommended to many friends.

Filmmaker: Finally, which actor would you pay to see in anything?

To: Steve McQueen or Alain Delon.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 7/18/2008 11:38:00 AM Comments (0)

A strong partnership always relies on both individuals bringing different things to the table, and documentary filmmakers Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss certainly draw on diverse backgrounds for their creative collaboration. New York City native Gerber began his career directing alternative theater and making films for theatrical productions, and went on to work with conceptual artist Matthew Barney on Cremaster III (2002) and Drawing Restraint 9 (2005). He directed the short film, Small Taste of Heaven in 1997, and his debut fiction feature, the Merchant-Ivory produced Side Streets, followed a year later. In contrast, Moss began as a Capitol Hill speechwriter but quit political life to work for legendary documentarian Barbara Kopple. Beginning first as a producer, he made his directorial debut with Con Man (2003), the story of Princeton hoaxer James Hogue, and also completed his second film, the demolition derby documentary Speedo, the very same year. Gerber and Moss met in 2004 when Gerber, then an executive at AMC, commissioned Moss to make Rated 'R': Republicans in Hollywood for the network.

Gerber and Moss' backgrounds in fiction and politics respectively are put to excellent use in their first film as co-directors, Full Battle Rattle. The documentary is a fascinating examination of the U.S. Army's National Training Center in the middle of the Mojave desert, where replica Iraqi villages – populated with real Iraqi expats and U.S. soldiers playing Iraqi insurgents – have been constructed to create simulated training scenarios to give troops bound for the Gulf what is essentially a dress rehearsal for war. Following the experiences of both the soldiers in training and the “villagers” and “insurgents,” Moss and Gerber draw out the surreal ridiculousness of the simulation, which plays out like a cross between a soap opera and a murder mystery weekend. However, despite its dark and often hilarious humor, Full Battle Rattle never loses sight of the fact that its subject is ultimately deadly serious, that every fake death in the simulation could be a real death on the battlefield, that the fake Iraq where the refugee role players spend their time is now more of a home to them than their own country.

Filmmaker spoke to Gerber and Moss about occupying this strange alternate reality, the war films that inspired them, and making films with dead people.



Filmmaker: This is the first time that you two have worked together. Did you have a friendship prior to Full Battle Rattle or was it the project that brought you together?

Moss: We had an existing friendship. Tony had briefly been a television executive at AMC and commissioned a documentary that I directed about Republicans in Hollywood, so we worked together creatively on that project. It was a great relationship and as Tony is first and foremost a filmmaker we had talked about working together on a project. About two and a half years ago we sat down, this idea came up and that was how our directing partnership was born.

Filmmaker: How did you first come across the story of these fake Iraqi villages?

Moss: When we talked about collaborating, there were a couple of news articles about the simulation. Up until that point, it had really been secret and the army had gradually allowed some people to come in and take a look. It was almost like journalists on a safari, where they would escort them around. It seemed too strange to be real to us. Around the same time, the news from Iraq was so awful, the war was going so terribly and it had become very overwhelming, and I think both of us were looking for a way to engage with the war as filmmakers. This struck us as a total strange and surreal story and one that could potentially make a fascinating documentary.

Filmmaker: Did you have a clear idea beforehand of what the simulation would be like and how you wanted to capture it in the film?

Gerber: I think we had a very, very strong gut reaction and instinct that the life around the periphery of this training exercise would be damn fascinating. You have U.S. soldiers bound for Iraq, many of them never out of their own country before in their lives. You have U.S. soldiers who've been to Iraq and are now back playing the part of insurgents. And then you have Iraqis in various roles as civilians on battlefields. So what happens when the curtain drops? What happens around the fringes of this training protocol when you have U.S. and Iraqis living side by side in the middle of the California desert? [They're] playing volley ball together, barbecuing, negotiating the life of a village. There's this ersatz village that exists that was created for the purpose of training soldiers, but you have a real village, a real community that grows organically out of the mere fact that you've dropped these disparate people off in the middle of the desert.

Moss: We knew they were fighting the war in simulation and the attraction of that was the opportunity to capture this war from both sides – the insurgency and the American soldiers. We didn't have a lot of money and we didn't have a big crew, but we both shoot and we both work independently, so could split up and embed respectively, me in the village of Medina Wasl and Tony with the 4th Brigade.

Filmmaker: How long did it take to get permission to make the film? Presumably such a thorough portrait of their training methods was not quick to get approved.

Gerber: Yeah, it was really a mission impossible getting the greenlight, but through persistence and by hook and by crook we managed. Once we got there, we found that what we were doing so was so out of the ordinary – at least in terms of what the public affairs officer at the National Training Center was used to – that we flew below the radar. I think eventually they forgot about us.

Filmmaker: So you went and lived on the base for three weeks.

Moss: I lived in the village of Medina Wasl and Tony lived on the forward operating base [F.O.B.] of the Army Brigade. And we should distinguish between the Army Base and the F.O.B.

Gerber: Yeah, if you've been to army bases you'll know that they're little communities, little cities with their own Taco Bell, multiplex movie theater and shopping mall, but then 10, 20 kilometers outside of there is the F.O.B.

Moss: The city of Fort Irwin is about 20,000 people in the middle of the Mojave that rises from the sand like a...

Gerber: ...strip mall, really, [laughs] as you approach it from the desert. But then outside of that you have a staging area known as “The Dustbowl,” which is the representation of Kuwait. So when the simulation begins, the brigade sorts out all of their gear and equipment in the Dustbowl and then prepare to travel out to “The Box,” hostile territory.

Moss: The Box is Iraq, a 1000-square-mile simulation of one entire Iraqi province with [a number of] villages. When we started the film there were six villages, and there are now 19.

Filmmaker: How easy was it for you to embed? And how long did you have to familiarize yourself with both groups before you started filming?

Gerber: The nature of the work that we do is that they get to know us as the guy with the camera, so you get to know them as you're shooting. It serves two purposes: determining who are the compelling characters who will work on screen, but also getting folks accustomed to how it is that we work.

Moss: It was very difficult, to be honest, to [just] airdrop in. Both the Iraqi village and the brigade are very insular communities, and there was a lot of suspicion. We didn't have the lead time to spend with these folks before we could start filming, so I found that very tough and frustrating.

Filmmaker: Which one of you found it more challenging to assimilate into the respective communities?

Gerber: We had the opportunity to go back and to pick up interviews with the Iraqis in the village after the brigade had left for Iraq, so I had the privilege of seeing that world from Jesse's perspective. It was very different, and in a lot of ways the level of anxiety was different. The levels of anxiety were extremely high up on the operating base, and it was night and day.

Moss: Tony, you had three thousand soldiers to choose from, but I had a much smaller community, Iraqis and soldiers to choose from. I had cultural challenges and you had the sheer enormity of the cast you were working with...

Gerber: ...plus a cultural challenge. The military is a culture unto itself, and it was a complete and total immersion. In some ways, living in the neighborhood I live in in Brooklyn, I had more in common with the Iraqis than I did with a specialist from rural Arkansas.

Filmmaker: It struck me that the Iraqi village was maybe easier to film because they were performing anyway much of the time, and thus used to constant scrutiny.

Moss: They're actors, they're used to taking direction in some way, but culturally there was a great deal of suspicion. For the longest time, they thought that Tony and I were CIA operatives, and for some of them who still had family in Iraq there were very real concerns about privacy and the risks that they might expose their families to if their images were presented in our film. They were happy to show us what it was to be a role player in a simulation, but they weren't necessarily willing to talk about their family in Iraq and the fear they felt or how they're perceived in their communities back home because of the work they do.

Filmmaker: There a curious irony that the Iraqis are working for the American army, and there are U.S. soldiers playing insurgents who are gleefully “killing” huge numbers of their fellow soldiers, both engaged in a betrayal of sorts.

Moss: I found that double betrayal quite fascinating, Iraqis who are perceived by some as turning on their country and collaborating with the army. And for Sergeant Greene and his buddies in the insurgents, there's a great deal of glee in “blowing shit up” and killing their American comrades. [laughs] In fact, after Greene led that night mission in which they “killed” many American soldiers, [he and his men] were actually awarded a medal. We weren't allowed to film that for some reason, but I just found it perverse.

Filmmaker:When I initially heard about the movie's premise, I didn't initially think it would be so funny or irony-laden. Was it always your plan to focus so much on the comic complexity of the situation?

Gerber: Yeah, absolutely. I don't think either of us are interested in literal, one-dimensional work, we're interested in the many layers of this place and interested in it as a prism through which to view the war. Early on, we discussed this as a multiple character film that's ultimately about a community. For us, many of the references early on were the films of Robert Altman, because he makes films about communities exceptionally well, and there's a beautiful, lyrical sense of irony that was also important to us. And we found it there in abundance.

Filmmaker: The Altman film most comparable here is M*A*S*H. Did you have that or any other specific touchstones in mind while making this?

Moss: The war films that I have responded have taken a sideways look at war or inverted our expectations. Recently, I think Three Kings is an enduring work of the first Gulf War, a combination of realism and humor and gritty aspects. Peter Davis' Hearts and Minds is an extraordinary documentary about Vietnam that broke formal ground in the way it was constructed.

Filmmaker: The world of the simulation becomes almost more real than the world outside for the role players. When you were shooting, did you ever forget that this was all fake?

Gerber: From the perspective of Lieutenant-Colonel McLaughlin and his battalion, it didn't feel fake and in many ways it wasn't. The analogy is really that of scrimmaging in football: it's hot as hell, you're sweating, you're banged up, someone smashes their helmet into your gut and it hurts, it hurts as much as it does in a real game. And so I think for those guys, it does become real.

Moss: With the brigade, they never turned off. But in Medina Wasl, even though the simulation is 24/7, Sergeant Greene and his buddies in the insurgents would come home after a raid and fire up the barbecue and have some down time. That was never true with Colonel McLaughlin. There was no down time. Mistakes were and are very real to them in a way that they were not to the people of Medina Wasl.

Filmmaker: It's very dispiriting to see how incapable the troops are of dealing with even the training situation, so were you similarly depressed while filming them?

Gerber: When Colonel McLaughlin admitted to failure, which is an extremely poignant moment in our movie, it was one of those times as a filmmaker when I felt almost embarrassed shooting it, because it's so naked. And I was shocked to discover that there are simulated memorials for fallen soldiers. As a notion, it's a touch absurd and has great potential for comedy, so I thought this had to be documented. But you get in that room and you hear the bagpipes and you see grown men weeping over a dead fictional guy – it's an extremely surreal experience, and ultimately very, very emotional.

Moss: I'll say from my perspective, the first time I saw Sergeant Ramsay with his mechanical robotic mannequins, the bodyparts, the blood and the makeup, I thought “This is the craziest thing I've seen. This is truly horrifying in a way that the war has never been made horrifying to me.” Just seeing the length to which they had gone in the simulation to reproduce that experience, where they have severed limbs, spurting blood and these mannequins with pre-programmed voices calling for help, it was bizarre and blackly fun but also really stomach-turning and quite awful. It made the war real in a disarming way that we hoped the story would for our viewers. These are taboo images – you don't see injured American soldiers, you don't see dead American soldiers – and there were ways that we could get into the war through these funhouse mirror reflections.

Filmmaker: What's the smartest decision you ever made?

Moss: Some of the better decisions I've made have been almost unconscious decisions. I used to work many years ago, in a previous incarnation, in politics. I was not happy and I sort of threw myself off this cliff and came to New York with a dollar in my pocket and went to work for a filmmaker. Looking back on that decision, I can't understand it in rational terms – because I had a good-paying job and didn't know anybody in New York – but I just felt like I needed to do something and this was it.

Filmmaker: If you had an unlimited budget and could cast whoever you wanted (alive or dead), what film would you make?

Gerber: I'm sort of a romantic and I think I would do some spin on Romeo and Juliet, and I would cast Heath Ledger and that woman who was a U.N. ambassador and was in Sabrina... Audrey Hepburn. Both dead, unfortunately.

Filmmaker: Finally, if you could hand out an Oscar to someone who's never won, who would you give it to?

Gerber: I got one: Hal Ashby.

Moss: That's what I was thinking, actually.

Gerber: Another touchstone for us was Coming Home. We talked about that film a lot. The tone of it, and it's grounded lyricism is so beautiful.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 7/09/2008 10:55:00 AM Comments (0)

Like his much buzzed shorts, Scott Prendergast's debut feature brings to the screen his poignant outsider's perspective and talent for creating vivid comic characters. Born in Galveston, Texas but raised in Portland, Oregon, Prendergast attended Columbia University and then pursued a career as a comic writer and improviser at L.A.'s Groundlings Theater. He went on to develop his own one man comedy improv show, UNman, which had a two-year run in NYC. In the late 90s, he started making short films – grounded as much in performance comedy as cinema – which he wrote, directed, produced and edited, on top of frequently playing all the roles. He attracted a lot of attention with his two shorts, Anna Is Being Stalked (2002) and The Delicious (2003), idiosyncratic, bittersweet and often very funny films which demonstrated Prendergast's mastery of shortform cinema and his development as an all round filmmaker.

Though Prendergast's shorts were small, self-contained works, he conveys the expansive world of Kabluey, his debut feature, with surprising ease. The plot, inspired by incidents in his own life, revolves around hapless loser Salman (Prendergast) who is asked to help his sister-in-law Leslie (Lisa Kudrow) look after her two demanding sons while Salman's brother is away fighting in Iraq. As Salman is broke, Leslie finds him a job – which turns out to be dressing up in a giant blue mascot costume and handing out flyers on a lonely, boiling hot highway. Kabluey continues Prendergast's preoccupation with socially awkward men struggling to find their place in life, presenting an absurdist, melancholy perspective on the world. As he weaves together slapstick comedy and moments of profound sadness, he displays a confidence that belies his relative inexperience as a director. Prendergast gives a perfectly understated performance as the passive protagonist, Kudrow impresses as the dowdy, downtrodden Leslie, and there are also spirited comic turns by Conchata Ferrell and Teri Garr.

Filmmaker spoke to Prendergast about Kabluey's “Eureka!” moment, hitting rock bottom before making the film, and getting over excited about his first trip to a movie theater.




Filmmaker: I believe you were on an airplane when you first got the idea for Kabluey.

Prendergast: My brother is in the National Guard. He was in Iraq and I was staying with his wife, taking care of the kids. We were on a family vacation: she would sit on the beach and drink margaritas and cry, and we would take care of the kids. On the way back from that vacation, I was sitting on an airplane and I just thought, “Man in a big blue mascot costume.” I opened up my laptop and wrote “Man in big blue mascot costume – this is your first feature.” I turned to the guy sitting next to me and went, “A man in a big blue mascot costume,” and he went, “What? Who are you? What are you talking about?” I was like, “No, no, no, it's amazing!” [laughs] So it just popped into my head, but at first it was just going to be an idea about the costume, like a whole wealth of jokes about him being on the inside and people not recognizing him, him having a pointless job, not being able to hold the flyers, the woman [who hired him] not caring. But gradually as I was working on it, I thought, “I should make my real story part of this story, so maybe this guy is taking care of his nephews and it's going horribly like it's going horribly for me,” and that's how it came together.

Filmmaker: And where did the title come in?

Prendergast: When everything goes wrong, people say, “My whole life went kabluey!” But it's also from Batman the TV show: when you punch somebody, it says “Kabam!,” “Kapow!,” “Kabluey!”

Filmmaker: There is certainly a cartoon element to the film.

Prendergast: I think that was like the number one issue for me. As I was on the airplane, I took a little cocktail napkin and drew out the suit, having him look as much like a cartoon as possible. Having him look as much like a weird, alien object was really important, so I did the initial drawing and then we had a graphic artist refine it. A company here in New York called Gepetto built the suit and I kept coming back to New York because we wanted the head to hang at the exact right angle so he looked depressed. We just wanted it to look totally surreal so that when you're out in the middle of nowhere, you're not really sure what you're seeing.

Filmmaker: You said that you decided that this would be your first feature, but was it the first feature script you'd written?

Prendergast: I'd tried to write another one. When I first got to L.A., my agents and managers were saying to me, “Welcome to L.A. This is what we're going to do: you're going to write a romantic comedy and we're going to sell it. You're going to get into the studio system, you're going to earn a lot of money, it's going to be amazing and we're going to begin your Hollywood career as a screenwriter.” I, being an idiot, was like “O.K.” I'd never written a feature film, so I spent nine months writing this really horrible, crappy romantic comedy that I didn't care about. And then it didn't go anywhere and it was dumb and it was bad, and then I realized, “What am I doing? All I've ever done is make short films that I'm in that are about my life – that's what I have to do for the feature.” So I wrote Kabluey, and that's what worked.

Filmmaker: None of your short films feel like features in miniature, so how much did you alter your writing approach when you wrote Kabluey?

Prendergast: When I wrote short films, I would have an idea and it would be pretty simple – a woman being stalked by an albino, or a man in a red pantsuit – and I'd just sit down and write it and I'd be done. When I started writing features, I was like, “OK, I'll just sit down and write it.” So I'd sit down and start writing, but it does not work that way. [laughs] I had great characters and great ambiance, but it just wasn't going anywhere. Figuring out a plot and keeping the audience entertained for two hours is really, really hard. So I think part of the way that Kabluey worked was that I had the initial context (which was the mascot suit) but I knew that that wasn't enough to sustain the whole and that's when I started thinking, “Well, what's going on in this guy's life?” and that's when the sister-in-law story came in. So really I had two stories and I think it worked that you had one slapstick story and one sad story and they're kind of overlapping and they come together in the end. But it was hard. Let me tell you, writing a feature was probably the hardest thing I've done in my entire life, but now I feel, at least temporarily, like I've got it down.

Filmmaker: Was the fact that one plotline was autobiographical a help or a hindrance to you?

Prendergast: Well, I told my family “I'm writing a movie about a mascot costume – it's going to be so funny!” and then gradually I realized I was going to write about the family and I didn't tell anybody because I didn't want them to get upset or know. It's true when they say “Write what you know,” because it's helpful: some of the lines that Lisa Kudrow says in the movie are lines that my sister-in-law actually said, and some of the things that happened – like her watching the news during dinner – my sister-in-law did every night. So I put in a lot of real emotional subject matter, but I didn't tell them until the movie was all ready to go. Right before we shot, I went and visited my sister-in-law and said, “Hey, so I have something to tell you... Yeah... So... You know that movie I was writing about the mascot costume? Well, there's this other character in the movie who's a woman and she's got two little kids and her husband's at war and her brother-in-law comes to help her...” She sort of gave me this very thin look, but kept folding laundry. I said, “And she sort of does some questionable things and she's sort of an unlikeable character and she really makes some mistakes, but I dramatized it all because it's a movie and we have to have a fictional plot so she does some things that didn't really happen...” My sister-in-law, without missing a beat, said, “Who is playing me?” I said, “Lisa Kudrow.” She said, “OK, fine, whatever you want.”

Filmmaker: How driven were you to make Kabluey?

Prendergast: Well, I had made a bunch of short films, I could see that I wasn't going to get to the next stage of my career until I learned to write a feature script. I was living in New York and I lost everything: I quit my temp job doing word processing for law firms in the middle of the night, I was in a relationship that ended, I lost the apartment, I spent all my money and everything ended because I just had tunnel vision where I was like, “If I'm going to get this movie made, I need to give up everything to get there.” I lost everything and ended up moving back to Portland, Oregon, and living with my family. I had no money. My mother's a real estate agent and she had this house for sale, so I was living in this empty house and I was going to the library every day and writing the script. In a way it was gorgeous because I would be working in this tiny study cubicle and I knew that script was good, and even though my life was collapsing and I was $25,000 in credit card debt and I had no money and I had crashed my mother's car and I had no job and I had ended my relationship and I was living in a city where I didn't know very many people, every day I would go to the library and I had this undeniable, hot, burning joy because I was thinking “This script is going to be awesome!” I knew it was going to work.

Filmmaker: It seems almost like an act of masochism to cast yourself as the guy inside the blue mascot suit who stands all day in the extreme heat. It looks hugely uncomfortable in the movie, but was it as bad for you in reality?

Prendergast: It's all absolutely true. The funny part is that in the script there are jokes about him not being able to use his hands and being trapped inside the suit when it's really hot and sweaty, but when we first got the suit they brought it in and we were in this conference room and they put me in it. Then everybody was like, “Oh my God, we've got to get the producers to show them,” so they all left the room and closed the door. I couldn't get out of the room and I couldn't open the door, and they'd just sort of forgotten. And it's very claustrophobic inside that suit, and I was laughing at myself, like “Oh my God, it's real. You wrote it, and now it's actually happening. You're trapped inside this suit and you can't get out.” It was weird. It was awkward because there were times when I was on camera and I couldn't see anything because the suit is actually blind – there is no peephole (we faked that in the movie) and you can't see anything. We'd do a take, then we'd pop the head off and someone would run up with a clamshell to show me the footage. In terms of the performance, it was very helpful because I was living the exact factors in the movie: it was really weird and claustrophobic and shut off. You can't be in that suit for more than half an hour at a time, because you will die. I mean, it's 100 degrees in Austin, Texas and you're in giant blue foam suit. It was not medically possible to stay in there longer than that.

Filmmaker: What was the first film you ever saw?

Prendergast: I think the first film I ever saw in a theater was Snow White, which I recently rented again because I got this book about earlier Disney animation. I remember that I was so excited about going to that movie that I popped popcorn and dyed it with food coloring and then made these cones so we could have our own popcorn. I think I even made costumes for all the kids that were going. It was a big production. I was six or seven. All the kids in the neighborhood went as a group, and I think I drove the parents crazy. I remember getting in trouble for being too excited.

Filmmaker: What's the strangest experience you've had during your time in the film industry?

Prendergast: The strangest experience is probably being in a giant blue mascot costume out by the side of the road in Texas. When we were shooting the wide shots, the suit would be standing there and the camera would be half a mile away. Real cars would drive by on the road and people would stop and be like, “What the fuck are you?” and I was like “No, no, no, it's part of a movie.” They're like, “There are no cameras here,” and I would say, “No, they're right over there. Please, you're disturbing the shot. Could you just keep going.” I was worried that people would try and kill me, would try and hit me like in the movie.

Filmmaker: Finally, what phrase best describes your philosophy on life?

Prendergast: Be prepared. Well, that's not true, that's my philosophy on work. I'm a Boy Scout, so I have to say “Be prepared.” I don't really have a philosophy on life, just “Weird shit is going to go down.” It's true, though. Weird, weird, weird things will happen.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 7/04/2008 10:41:00 AM Comments (0)

Hated and loved in equal measure, Catherine Breillat is a filmmaker who could never be accused of being boring. The French writer director seems courting controversy since the beginning of her career: she was a literary sensation at the age of 17 when she published her first novel, L'homme Facile which was sufficiently racy to be forbidden reading for minors and her first cinematic involvement was acting in Bernardo Bertolucci's sordid classic Last Tango in Paris (1972). She made her directorial debut in 1976 with an adaptation of her own novel Une Vrai Jeune Fille, but her portrait of adolescent female sexuality was considered pornographic and would not be released until 1999. While writing further bestselling novels as well as screenplays for Federico Fellini's And the Ship Sails On, Maurice Pialat's Police and even the soft-core porn classic Bilitis, she tried to continue her directing career but struggled until the international success of 36 Fillette (1988), about the sexual awakening of a 14-year-old girl. Charges that her films were more pornography than art were fueled by her casting Euro porn legend Rocco Siffredi in Romance (1999) and Anatomy of Hell (2004), however both those films were critically acclaimed and, along with her 2000 success Fat Girl!, helped further raise her profile.

In 2004, Breillat suffered a stroke and was confined to a hospital bed for five months, but remarkably a year to the day after the stroke, she began shooting her latest film, The Last Mistress. Based on a novel by Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly, the film is a period piece and thus a significant departure for Breillat whose previous work has all been deeply grounded in modernity. The story is nevertheless as erotically charged as ever: aristocratic Ryno de Marigny (Fu'ad Aït Aattou) marries the rich, devoted Hermangarde (Roxanne Mesquida) but is lured into infidelity by La Vellini (Asia Argento), the earthy courtesan whose primal desires match his own. The Last Mistress has all the trappings of a period piece – lavish costumes, elaborate sets, etc. – but Breillat makes the material her own by transforming Barbey d'Aurevilly's 19th century novel into a vital and highly sexual noir. Breillat gets brave performances from her two ill-fated lovers, Aattou and Argento, and the stylistic grandeur perfectly offsets the emotional intensity of the film, which is Breillat's most exciting so far if not also her best.

Filmmaker spoke to Breillat at last year's New York Film Festival about her love of sex and violence, her romantic side, and the importance of being hated.



Filmmaker: How are you?

Breillat: For me, to be in New York and have a film at the New York Film Festival is fantastic because the first time [I was at the festival] with 36 Fillette, I was hated in France. It did so well here that it allowed me to make another film because they discovered that I wasn't the worst filmmaker in French cinema. [laughs]

Filmmaker: Let's talk about The Last Mistress. How long ago did you first read the novel?

Breillat: Since I wanted to adapt it right away, it must have been 10 or 15 years ago. In fact, right after Perfect Love.

Filmmaker: And what was your initial reaction to the book?

Breillat: It's like it is with my actors – [I felt] that it belonged to me.

Filmmaker: Did you have a very clear vision of how you wanted the film to be?

Breillat: No, I never have a clear vision in advance. You start the film and it makes itself on its own at a certain point. Now in France they all want to call us “réalisateur” [French for “director”], but I always say that I only “realize” the film after I've made it. I only know what movie I have made afterwards. [laughs] A “réalisateur” is like a mason, and I'm an architect.

Filmmaker: How difficult was it physically, after your stroke, to make this film?

Breillat: The only difference was the insurance companies – nobody would insure me. I have a producer [who insured me]. I don't think any [other] producer in the world would have produced a film like this under those circumstances.

Filmmaker: This cost 10 times as much as any of your previous films so did you feel a lot of pressure because of that?

Breillat: No, because I did it exactly the same way. I was extremely precise with the project and if anything I saved money because I used less film than I had anticipated. I didn't do one more hour than was budgeted for. It was me that chose everything – I was obsessed with lace and I went to the flea market and picked everything out, I chose all the objects.

Filmmaker: The film seems to continue a preoccupation that you have with the relationship between violence and sexuality.

Breillat: In cinema, I love violence and sexuality. I love blood, but not in the style of chainsaw massacres. Apart from the painters from the Renaissance who are my absolute inspiration, when I was very small I had a passion for [Chaim] Soutine. You know, that crazy painter who painted hanging carcasses. [laughs] I was a lot like that in the end. I love that funereal violence. Also [Francis] Bacon was very violent. I adore Cronenberg, who's very violent - and I hope I'll be as violent as he is in my next movie! [laughs]

Filmmaker: As with Anatomy of Hell, this is a film where the male lead seems to be your muse.

Breillat: I'm always told that I don't like men and that I like women so much more in my films. But I think, in any case, with this movie I project myself and identify with the character of the young man. The camera is in love with him. It's his intimacy that the camera penetrates. Asia is a person who is much more on the exterior and is more the fantasy of the femme fatale.

Filmmaker: So in the past you've felt that you've liked your male characters, but film critics haven't?

Breillat: Yes, because in the end the males were the ones that acted but what interested me was how a woman looked in the eyes of a man. Because the look constitutes the person. As a woman, you don't really know what you're made of under a man's gaze. As I'm an entomologist, that's what interested me the most, to see that. [laughs] Now that I've seen it, I can project myself into the body of men.

Filmmaker: You described the Asia Argento character as the fantasy of a femme fatale, and this almost feels like a period film noir.

Breillat: Yes, the novel's like that. I adore film noir and femme fatales – Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe – they're always fatal only to themselves. I also love the iconography of American film noir and femme fatales but also Orientalism, those femme fatales as well. What makes Vellini a femme fatale is that she has that side of a Flamenca from Seville, and then a very feminine side. Her father was a toreador, and all toreadors have a very feminine side – they dance with bulls. They're dressed in a very Oriental fashion, wearing golden bolero. All of the paintings of the 19th century with that Oriental influence have in them the dream of the femme fatale in the harem. Orientalism is also a fantasy of the femme fatale, so I wanted to mix the two.

Filmmaker: Your films have previously always been very grounded in the present, so what do you feel is the contemporary relevance of this film?

Breillat: Well, for one thing, there's an androgyny between boys and girls currently. Dior and Chanel, all they're creating for boys is dandy costumes. If you look at ads for Hugo Boss, all of the models have a feminine beauty. The look of masculine beauty that you can see in Renaissance paintings or Holbein's paintings has become a model for contemporary beauty. That sort of rock 'n' roll look that's almost masculine that you see in women is an iconography of this time as well. Furthermore, this story takes place during what I call the last cry of the aristocracy: the aristocracy are rich, they didn't worry about money – the bankers were the ones who worried about money, not the aristocrats. Their moral values were more in their nobility of character than in the heart, with large freedom of spirit and mores. Passion had its place in the aristocracy; when she says, “Hermangarde is rich enough for both of them,” that's not something that would be said during the century of the bourgeoisie. The century of the bourgeoisie, with the rise of industrialism in society, is just starting to appear when this novel is being written. And with the appearance of the bourgeoisie is the hypocrisy of a certain puritanism. And I personally believe that we're still in the 19th century.

Filmmaker: But you've said elsewhere that you're an 18th century woman.

Breillat: Of course. I'm free, I'm not a horrible bourgeoise. [laughs]

Filmmaker: I'm interested in how you view the feminist aspect of this film.

Breillat: If I had written this, they would have told me I'm a feminist but it's Barbey d'Aurevilly who wrote it. Everything that the two older women say when they're discussing men would have seemed like clichés had it not been for the fact that Barbey d'Aurevilly wrote all of it word for word. And there's also little digs about women who are too well educated whose moral values degenerate that's also in Barbey d'Aurevilly's book. I find the two very amusing.

Filmmaker: There's a line in the movie, “It's the perverse influence of over-provocative novels on female common sense.” Does that also come straight from the novel?

Breillat: That's the only one where I can't remember whether I invented it or it was actually in the novel.

Filmmaker: Your movies seem like the modern equivalent of “over-provocative novels.”

Breillat: This book had a lot of problems with censorship. [Barbey d'Aurevilly] almost went to prison because of this book, so he had to then go and backpedal and say that actually what he was really doing was showing how awful vice was, and that he was singing the praises of virtue.

Filmmaker: How much do you associate with him, comparing what he was doing then and what you're doing now as a filmmaker?

Breillat: I think it's clear that if I had lived at the time that he did, I would have been Barbey d'Aurevilly. I'm very romantic, contrary to what most people think. He can be very provocative, but also very romantic.

Filmmaker: You've said that this film is closest to you as a person. Can you explain exactly why that is?

Breillat: It is the film where I plunge to the core of romanticism. It's always been said that I'm absolutely unromantic, but I think that everybody was wrong. They've always made a mistake that way because, for instance, Romance was very romantic. Romanticism is always something that's very dark. Romanticism is despair – Lord Byron killed himself. It's an adolescent despair of having an ideal that you can never attain. I'm like Madame De Flers, who's furiously, avidly 18th century; I'm furiously, avidly adolescent.

Filmmaker: You said that with Anatomy of Hell you closed a chapter stylistically so that you could move on to this. How did you know you'd finished working in that vein?

Breillat: It's not a certain style, it's that Anatomy of Hell is like a theory, and once you've made a theory you can move on to something else that is more romantic. In fairness, I'm not a mathematician or a philosopher and it gave me the chance to come back to something that was more fictional. And softer. Because a theorem is radicalness, but it's also absolute solitude and there's almost no fiction in Anatomy of Hell.

Filmmaker: You were saying before that you came to New York with 36 Fillette and that the reception here made the French reevaluate the quality of your work. How isolated have you felt as a voice in French film?

Breillat: I felt lynched in France. It wasn't that they didn't like the movie, they hated me. When 36 Fillette was chosen for the New York Film Festival, the president of uniFrance made a special trip to come here so he could say that my film was not representative of French cinema and that they had made a mistake in selecting me. When I say it's hate, it's hate. It's not called by any other name. It was stupefying.

Filmmaker: Do you feel that's still the case today?

Breillat: It's half and half. When you have people who really hate you then there's other people who start to love you. The French finally noticed that there was another world aside from France around them. And to not be representative of French cinema could mean that you are representative of cinema and that's, in fact, much better.

Filmmaker: Do you think this film will change the way the French film community feels about you?

Breillat: Yes, there are some people who hated me who are now starting to say that, yes, I had made a really good film now, that I had calmed down. But I have not calmed down! [laughs] They're wrong. And people who are wrong will always be wrong. [laughs]

Filmmaker: You compared yourself to Ryno because somebody says of him that if he becomes a politician then he will always try to be unpopular.

Breillat: That's totally me. Even when I was young and published my first book, people would say, “Who did you write this book for?” I always said, “For me. Only for me.” I was very arrogant. When I did my second movie, Tapage Nocturne, I was on a television programme and was attacked by Gainsbourg, who said it was a porno film. In fact, it was a portrait of a modern woman in the exact same way that 36 Fillette is the portrait of an adolescent. At the beginning I was shy and allowing myself to be insulted, and all of a sudden I looked them straight in the eye and said I was 20 years ahead of my time and the future would prove me right. Despite that, when I saw my first film [A Real Young Girl] 25 years after it came out, I looked at it and said, “Well, it's a young film, but it's a modern film.” At that time with that film, the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes refused me because it was a horrible film and pornographic. They said it was also very badly directed, so I sent them a letter with return receipt requested because I was making a date for the future and the future would prove them wrong. I've always been arrogant, and arrogance in France is not perceived well. It's a country where they cover their heads, a country of courtesans. I always say in interviews that France is the country of Louis XIV and Marshal Pétain, and that's the deep French character. Of course, there are exceptions and, of course, the exceptions are sublime and beautiful.

Filmmaker: Do you sometimes feel pressure to be controversial, to keep on upsetting people?

Breillat: No, I don't do it on purpose but my shell has gotten a little thicker so I can take it, but sometimes I do cry. After the Berlin Film Festival where I was on the jury, I was sitting on the plane and there in the paper was an announcement that looked like a notice of death, framed in black, saying “FINISH WITH CATHERINE BREILLAT” in enormous black letters, like they wanted to kill me. It's phenomenal hate. I thought I had come back with 36 Fillette, so I sobbed for two days. I was desperate and then I lifted my head up and I wrote an article for a very sophisticated French review and I called it “The Importance of Being Hated.”

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 6/27/2008 02:30:00 PM Comments (0)

After observing and learning from some of the best directors around, writer-director Cecilia Miniucchi has put all her acquired wisdom to use in a distinctive and promising debut. Born in Rome, the multi-talented Miniucchi is notable for the number of mediums she has worked in: a prolific maker of documentaries and music videos, she has also written poetry, songs, plays and short stories, and is an accomplished photographer. While in Italy, Miniucchi worked with Federico Fellini and the Taviani brothers, and went on to serve an apprenticeship with Lina Wertmuller. She moved to the U.S. to study at Harvard and the American Film Institute, and then interned with Francis Ford Coppola at American Zoetrope. Miniucchi made a name for herself making arts-related documentaries (her subjects include Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese and Paul Verhoeven), and has complemented her non-fiction career with more lucrative stints as a music video director, helming promos for such artists as Devo, White Zombie and Gloria Estefan.

Given that Miniucchi made the 60-minute film Normality back in 1990 and has also directed a handful of shorts, her debut feature, Expired, is a long time coming. The film is an unlikely and often unromantic love story: meek meter maid (Samantha Morton) attracts the attention of brutish traffic officer Jay (Jason Patric) and a relationship awkwardly develops between them. Jay is an emotionally crippled loner and good-hearted Claire lives with her ailing mother (Teri Garr), but despite their wildly different personalities, these opposites attract and there seems a small chance they could be happy together. Against the backdrop of a depressing and alienating Los Angeles, Miniucchi presents the dysfunctional central relationship in a blackly comic manner redolent of Neil LaBute. Indeed, Patric plays Jay like he's the half-brother of Cary, his pathologically unfeeling character in LaBute's Your Friends and Neighbors, delivering his barbed dialogue with obvious relish. The interactions between Jay and Claire are often excruciating and Expired is intentionally uncomfortable viewing, however the strength of Miniucchi's writing and even-handed direction and the performances from the ever-excellent Morton and Patric (who has seldom been better) make this a compelling viewing experience.

Filmmaker spoke to Miniucchi about her own experiences with parking attendants, the illustrious directors she has worked with, and fleeing a location after it was trashed by gang bangers.



Filmmaker: You present Los Angeles very differently than most films, as you make it seem a very boring, alienating place. Did the way you paint it come from the perspective of the characters or from how you yourself see the city?

Miniucchi: It's a very interesting question because I think it's a bit of both. Some is a bit of personal experience – the alienating factor, the loneliness. I think a lot of us experience these things in this town. On the other hand, the characters are everyday people and so the environment that they live in is certainly not a glamorous L.A. It's working class, everyday life in a big city where at times you have to even take the bus and not drive your own car. There's a lot of people like this in this town.

Filmmaker: Tell me about the research that you did for the film, and what your experiences meeting meter maids and traffic officers have been like.

Miniucchi: Maybe I should have done more research. I didn't do much research, I just witnessed a couple of incidents. I lived one myself and then I just started writing the story. When I finished the script, I did go to the parking attendants' office, spoke to a supervisor and asked him, “Look, I put down these couple of incidents – are they realistic?” He said, “Oh, my God, yes!” It happens to these [traffic officers] all the time that these guys abuse them and he was saying that people spit at them, throw ice creams, drinks, all kinds of stuff at them. So I had reason to pretty much keep it the way it was.

Filmmaker: What was the initial incident that prompted you to start writing the script?

Miniucchi: I witnessed a woman who was not too slim and she was giving a ticket. This driver, this guy, really reacted in such an impolite and abusive way and called her “fatso” and went off [at her]. She was so hurt. I guess that's what stayed with me. They're supposed not to talk back. It was so touching. I lived one experience that was kind of the opposite: I was being kind of normal and kind and this guy was so abrupt and impolite and really abusive of his authority. I thought, “Wow, what happens if these guys meet and fall in love at work?” So the story just unfolded that way.

Filmmaker: Those two people were presumably the inspirations for Claire and Jay, but how did you turn them into fully fleshed out characters?

Miniucchi: They did it themselves, I think. I believe when one writes something, one listens to what one starts off with – it kind of directs you and tells you what to write and what is appropriate that would come out of that person's mouth. So it took shape slowly. I just had in mind a very gentle, wallflower kind of person and another one [who was] angry, abrupt and frustrated, snappier. I just fictionalized it, pushed it a bit to the extreme. I guess reality when it's too real becomes funny, so it also became quite comedic. People seem to laugh a lot through the movie, so that humor [came through].

Filmmaker: There seems to be a parallel with the work of Neil LaBute in this. Was he an influence?

Miniucchi: You know, it's very strange because I've never seen his films, and it's not the first time [somebody has made the comparison]. One of my producers, Fred Roos, said when he saw the film for the first time, “My God, you are a female LaBute.” I saw Nurse Betty years ago, and then I saw a piece of Jason [Patric]'s film he did with him [Your Friends and Neighbors], just to check out Jason. But I swear I never thought of him.

Filmmaker: Let's talk about that vision for the film. So much of the film's distinctiveness comes from the dialogue and the contrast in exchanges between the meek Claire and the callous, emotionally stunted Jay. How easy was it to write their conversations?

Miniucchi: [laughs] I don't know, I just pushed it a little bit. I thought, “What would happen if I went in this direction?” and I started to like it. Then I needed to be consistent and the characters kept telling me what they would say, so it just unfolded itself that way. Then I read the script with Jason, and Jason changed a couple of lines here and there. One of my favorites lines that he changed was when he says, by the door after having dinner at her place, “I might call you.” In the script originally it was “I will call you,” so it gave it an extra [kick]. English is not my first language after all so there were a couple of incidents where, very kindly, he came up with a couple of new lines here and there.

Filmmaker: How much did you actually like your characters and enjoy writing them? They both have very obvious flaws and I would imagine that Jay is extremely unlikable to a lot of people who watch the film.

Miniucchi: My experience with the film is that people would probably not like to be in a relationship with somebody like him. But people actually enjoy and laugh mostly at his performance. He's the one who creates the most humor – absurd humor, I would say – in the picture. A lot of young guys identify with him. There are guys that are a little bit undependable and scared of contact and a little bit more abrupt. I saw a lot of people relating to him, saying “Oh, I've been like that, ha ha ha ha ha!” or “I've been Jay!” A lot of guys.

Filmmaker: When you were writing the script or shooting the film, were you ever worried that he was too unlikable?

Miniucchi: Yes, I did, and I thought that if he was not performed properly it would have been a disaster. So I got Jason to bring out the humor in him and moments of compassion, because the guy is supposed to be pathetic, a person you feel sorry for not just feel put off by. He's a man that has jeopardized his own life, has made mistakes. It's hard to turn back, now he's angry and he's lonely and he's hurt and he has difficulties in finding love and keeping love and managing love. He's a sad person.

Filmmaker: This is one of the bleakest and most unusual romances I've seen in a long time, so I have to ask you whether this is a reflection of your personal perception of romance?

Miniucchi: I'm interested in human nature, I'm interested in the depths of human nature. I think it's such a mysterious world, the world of relationships and it can take you in so many different directions. In this one, they're this way; in another script, they [might be] much more romantic or funnier. If you portray something on the screen that's not been portrayed every day, it might be interesting because it opens up to a different kind of thing that hasn't been seen as much or as often. So that's interesting to a writer-director, and the characters and the story are loaded with pathos, with emotions, with psychological depths.

Filmmaker: You've had a lot of experience working on music videos and documentaries, but how much had you worked with actors before?

Miniucchi: Well, I had made about nine fictional films of different lengths. My first film was Normality and was almost 70 minutes long. It was a comedy – fun, dark at times – and it was about loneliness too. [laughs] And then I made another six different shorts of strange lengths - 25, 35, 40 minutes. Then I was making my first feature film some years ago, with Harvey Keitel, Judy Davis, Matthew McConaughey and Jeremy Piven, and unfortunately in the middle of shooting it fell apart due to the embezzlement of funds by one of the executive producers. That created such a shock, and it ruined my life for many years. I said, “Enough of this for a while,” and went into documentaries. The music videos I did all along because I needed to make a living. Unfortunately. [laughs]

Filmmaker: Looking at your résumé, you've written poetry, short stories and songs, you're a photographer, you've directed music videos, documentaries and now a fiction feature. Which one of those do you view as your primary mode of creative expression? Or are they all essential to you?

Miniucchi: Writing and making a film is the thing – it's when I feel I'm in the right place doing what I want to do and what I know how to do and what I feel like doing the most. But, in between, your creativity sometimes has to be expressed no matter what, so writing or taking a picture are much more immediate. It's between you and the medium itself and doesn't have to go through so many other people waiting around for the funding. So I guess a lot of artists do have these other [modes of] expression on the side to help them through, to find an outlet for their creativity while they wait around to have a film put together, which is not an easy task.

Filmmaker: You've worked with or made documentaries about an incredible list of people: Lina Wertmuller, the Taviani brothers, Fellini, Coppola, Scorsese, Verhoeven and Altman. Out of all of those great directors, who influenced the most?

Miniucchi: I admire a lot of those people and I am sure that they live within me somewhat. The most incredible piece of advice that really changed my life was from Bob Altman who said to me, “Never take any advice.” [laughs] It carried a lot of weight because it was basically encouraging me to just go ahead and do what I was born to do and believed in, and not let anybody stop me. A piece of advice like that goes a long way and I was enormously influenced by that. All [those directors] shared an incredible, honest passion for their work and for their creative expression that went beyond the [money]. None of them cared about money, fame or any of that, it was really about the work and what they wanted to say. Stylistically and content-wise, it's hard to tell who is the one that influenced me the most because I think that the beauty of each one of us as artists is to express oneself in a very honest way so that the real self comes through, and there being only one of us that will automatically be original. So if you listen to your honest voice, you will be setting yourself apart.

Filmmaker: What was the first film you ever saw?

Miniucchi: Fantasia. But the first films I ever saw as a grown-up were Ingmar Bergman's films, aged 12 or 13, and I think that's what put the film bug in me. My mum has always been a huge film buff and would take us to see movies a lot, and my father's an artist so it's hard to tell where the real first thing comes, but certainly seeing Bergman's films at such an early age [had an impact].

Filmmaker: Finally, what's the strangest thing you've experienced during your time in the film industry?

Miniucchi: We had found a little house that was perfect [for Expired’s Aunt Tilda character]. There was a man in his mid-fifties living with his mom and it was a cute little house that you could tell had been around for a while, and in the back it had an extra guest house which we thought would be perfect for Jason's apartment. My art director started painting the room there, Jason picked out what [colors he wanted for the walls], and so I went there to check the colors of the paint and all of a sudden we found the house turned upside down. Mattresses had been scattered and slashed, bottles of beer everywhere, everybody gone and [there were] a huge amount of gang bangers outside the house with huge muscle cars, waiting around. We just never went back. We fled. I took my production designer and drove as fast as I could. To this day, she and I never really discovered what really happened. It was a very strange experience. [laughs]

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 6/20/2008 10:38:00 AM Comments (0)