Though she may appear to casual observers as simply a gifted young chronicler of Southern culture, Margaret Brown's talents extend beyond that. The daughter of Milton Brown, the songwriter who penned the catchy title song for the Clint Eastwood vehicle Every Which Way But Loose, Brown was raised in Mobile, Alabama, and since graduating from university has been highly active behind the camera. In the past decade, Brown's filmmaking career has been impressively diverse: she first produced the Student Academy Award-winning short Six Miles of Eight Feet (1998), then wrote and directed the narrative short 99 Threadwaxing the same year, and has since acted as D.P. on the Sundance award-winning doc Ice Fishing (2000) and produced her father's first film as a director, the comedy western musical Mi Amigo (2002). In 2004, she made her own directorial debut with Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt, an acclaimed documentary about the late, iconoclastic singer songwriter.

Brown's follow-up film, The Order of Myths, sees her return to her roots as she chronicles the Mardi Gras in her hometown of Mobile, where the first Mardi Gras was celebrated in 1703. The documentary looks at the different groups that contribute to the carnival festivities, including the Strikers and the Mystics, and principally focuses on the Mobile Carnival Association (which organizes the white Mardi Gras parade) and their African American counterparts, Mobile Area Mardi Gras Association. Though Brown adopts a vérité style for the film, she does not simply observe but rather uses the inherent segregation within the Mardi Gras festivities to examine the historical context of race relations in Mobile. As a result, The Order of Myths not only offers insight into the complexities of an ancient ritual but also presents a picture of a time when the tensions between tradition and modernity, white and black, are beginning to shift.

Filmmaker spoke to Brown about the challenges of filming secretive organizations, her mother's anticipated response to a burning cross in her yard, and the rule about when it's OK to leave your friend's bad movie.



Filmmaker: How long had you been thinking about this project prior to making it?

Brown: In different permutations, a really long time. When I was in grad school even, I was developing a project that was a narrative about a runaway Mardi Gras queen, kind of based on my mom. Friends of mine from film school have been like, “When are you going to make that project?” So I went down there after I made the Townes Van Zandt film, Be Here To Love Me, thinking I was researching for a narrative but when I got there it just turned into a documentary. I started meeting the people there and at first I was thinking, “This is great research for my narrative,” and then I thought, “This is just a great film. These people are better than I could ever write – why don't I just make a documentary?” It felt like living history, like a point in time that needed to be documented, so it wasn't that hard to make.

Filmmaker: So when did doing research for a narrative project metamorphose into making the documentary?

Brown: We started filming probably a year and a half ago, and it happened really fast. We edited it in 6 months and there was 370 hours [of footage], so that's no small feat. It was a quick project compared to my first documentary.

Filmmaker: How easy was for it for you to become accepted by the people you were filming?

Brown: When you film 370 hours, some people forget the camera's there. When we were filming, I didn't know how much the film was going to end up being about race – I thought it was really more about Mobile. I was following so many different organizations and characters that the film only really took shape after I saw a lot of the footage. Going in, I didn't know what it was going to be to some degree, but that was sort of the fun of it.

Filmmaker: You filmed a number of different Mardi Gras societies – was there a significant difference in the way that they responded to you?

Brown: Yes. [laughs] In the MCA, there were some people in that group who knew my family and would say, “Oh, it's Margaret, she used to babysit my kids. She's cool.” But there were other people who just totally didn't trust me [and would say] “What's your motivation?” My dad's Jewish, and someone even said to me, “Do you have an axe to grind because your dad's Jewish?” (because I guess they don't let that many Jews in, I guess...) And I was like, “No, I'm making an observational movie about Mardi Gras.” It was interesting, people had all kinds of ideas about what it meant that I was making the film. People from MAMGA, the black group, were very polite to me. In the South, people are so polite for the most part, so you can't really tell [what they're thinking], and I still don't know what people think of me or the film. Some people are straight shooters, but other people are always polite. In a way that's nice, but in another way you just have to watch your back. I feel that surface is visible in the film, the façade of “We get along!,” or rather Southern hospitality – and the reason that's a stereotype is because it's a real thing. It exists. My mother was kidding, but she said, “If people in Mobile don't like the movie and someone burns a cross on my yard, I'm just going to plant around it!”

Filmmaker: How much did your perception of Mardi Gras – based on your memories of it from growing up in Mobile – shift as a result of the film?

Brown: Just immensely. The main example – which surprises people, though it shouldn't – is that I wasn't really aware of the black Mardi Gras. It was not part of my life because it's separate and my family was so tied up in the white Mardi Gras. I was dimly aware that there were parades in the black part of town, but I didn't know. And that's such ignorance, which I hope the film might help correct. I'm a pretty inquisitive person and the fact that I didn't know probably speaks a lot. I also didn't understand how history was so directly connected to now – and we didn't know the way that [the MCA Mardi Gras queen] Helen and [MAMGA queen] Stefannie's families were connected going in. That was revealed after Mardi Gras: Stefannie's grandfather, when he's talking to Stefannie, says that his family came in on [Helen's family's boat]. Mike [Simmonds, the DP] and I looked at each other and at that moment we knew we had a movie.

Filmmaker: Were people uncomfortable with how much you were bringing race and historical context into the film?

Brown: A lot of people are like, “It's not segregated,” but it is. Everyone knows that. I mean, how is it not segregated, please tell me? In a lot of ways, Mobile is moving forward but in certain ways it isn't and I think the film shows both. It's complex, and that's what's interesting about it.

Filmmaker: Did you interview Helen about her family's position within the racial context of Mobile and the carnivals?

Brown: I did interview her about it, but it's not in the film. When she saw the film for the first time at Sundance, the day before the first screening, she turned to me and said, “There's a lot of things in that film that I didn't know about my family.” I was like, “Wow!” Something interesting that's coming out of the film is that tomorrow Joseph [the MAMGA king], Helen and Stefannie are all having lunch together, which I don't think would have happened if they hadn't just toured all over with the film. I think the only way things change is when people barbecue together or when people hang out – it's not formal meetings where someone's reading a scroll. What they have seems to me a real friendship. When we were at the Edinburgh Film Festival, people asked how things were changing and Helen said, “Well, I hope our children will play together.”

Filmmaker: How did you approach balancing a personal perspective with the necessary objectivity that this project required? I'm asking particularly because we discover at the end that one of the interviewees is your grandfather.

Brown: Well, I knew that the film was a personal film: it's about where I'm from, I knew my family would be a part of it. My grandfather got me unprecedented access – I don't think anyone else could have made this film because these are highly secretive groups, they don't let people film them. Everyone was asking, “Well, who else is letting you film?” My granddad opened so many doors to me. He would call around and he's someone who's universally liked. I knew that I wanted the film to not be that idea I had of a personal film, which is a cathartic film which is about you and your journey because I was very intent on making an observational film where vérité was the main guiding force. I didn't want to make a movie that was about race, class and gender that was like “Kachong!” with a mallet. I wanted people to see it and draw their own conclusions. I felt like by revealing at the end, rather than at the beginning, that my grandfather has this relationship to me, it would just be another layer that you added on to your experience. And hopefully it would be moving in a certain way.

Filmmaker: Looking at your resumé, you've been a producer, a D.P., and you've directed a fiction short in addition to your two doc features. Though most peopled would pigeonhole you as documentarian, how do you personally perceive yourself as a filmmaker?

Brown: I won't be pigeonholed as a documentarian after the next one! I definitely just like being thought of as a film storyteller, because I like making music videos too. I don't really like producing, but that's sometimes a way to make dough. But I think the second film is a response to the first film. On the second film, I was like “I'm so sick of talking heads!” so it was vérité based. I think for the third film I'd definitely like to try a narrative next because it would be a different kind of challenge.

Filmmaker: How much of what you learned from the Townes Van Zandt film helped you make The Order of Myths?

Brown: I think I learned patience, and holding on things. Just because something's moving very quickly doesn't mean that's what you should film. On the first film, I worked very closely with Lee Daniel, who shoots a lot with Richard Linklater and is a master documentary photographer. I learned a lot from him about patience, and that helped with this film a lot. A lot of stuff you learn in editing. This is going to sound hippie dippy, but just paying attention to your subconscious and being open to things evolving and not being what you expected, which is what I found really exciting about it.

Filmmaker: How did you come to produce Mi Amigo?

Brown: That was right out of film school. My dad's a songwriter – he wrote the song “Every Which Way But Loose” – and he wrote a script. Through his songwriting connections he was able to raise enough money to make this feature. First, he was like, “Do you want to be my assistant?” but then I ended up producing it. It was a wild ride – I learned a lot about making films! My dad had never made a narrative feature, and it was a total family affair: my mother was the accountant, my brother was the sound P.A. Somebody should have made a documentary about my family making this crazy western in the middle of Alabama. It was absolutely mad.

Filmmaker: What was the first film you ever saw?

Brown: The first one I remember is that Bo Derek movie 10, because I wasn't allowed to see it and my dad was like, “Come on, you can watch it with me.” That was the first one I remember because it was... contraband. My mother said I couldn't see it. I remember Bo Derek running along the beach.

Filmmaker: Do you always try and get into the theater early enough to watch the previews?

Brown: I'm chronically late, so I'd like to say that I do, but I never do. People are always mad at me because I'm late. I sit on the end. I like to leave if I need to. I'm not one of those people who have to watch the whole film. I used to have that rule for myself for a long time, but now I think life's too short.

Filmmaker: So do you leave films early at festivals?

Brown: Well, if it's your friend's film who you had like 80 beers with the night before, obviously you're not going to walk out of their film. Even if it's terrible.

Filmmaker: Is there a specific one you're thinking of?

Brown: Yes. [laughs] But I'm not going to say.

Filmmaker: Finally, when was the last time you burst out laughing on set?

Brown: I remember I was doing this music video for Okkervil River. Oh, this is bad... I might get someone into trouble, but it was really funny. Jonathan [Meiburg, the lead singer] was engaged and there was this girl who was the star of the video and she played all these different parts. He had to make out with her over and over, but he didn't know that this was going to be his part in the video. I kind of wrote it in the last minute and he didn't realize just how much he'd have to make out with her. We were teasing him a lot.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 7/25/2008 11:42:00 AM Comments (0)

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)