Jiří Menzel is rather like a character from literary fiction, the brilliant best friend who is beset by bad luck but accepts his lot in life with a wry, philosophical smile. Menzel, born in the former Czechoslovakia on the cusp of World War II, grew up with a passion for theatre but failed to get into drama school due to a perceived lack of ability. Instead he went to film school, where he was taught by the seminal Czech director Otakar Vávra and was part of a group of students that included pivotal Czech New Wave directors like Jan Němec and Věra Chytilová. All three contributed to the portmanteau film based on short stories by cult Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, Pearls of the Deep (1966), a project which lead to a lifelong friendship between Menzel and Hrabal. Menzel's full directorial debut, an adaptation of Hrabal's Closely Observed Trains (1966), won Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, but soon after he was prevented from making further films until 1974 due to his anti-Communist views. Menzel's 1969 film Larks on a String – yet another Hrabal adaptation – was banned until 1990, when it won the Golden Bear at Berlin. Menzel has also frequently collaborated with writer-director Zdeněk Svěrák (Kolya), who wrote the Oscar-nominated My Sweet Village (1985) as well as Menzel's last film, The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (1994).

Since the mid-90s, Menzel has essentially been inactive as a director (he contributed a segment to Ten Minutes Older: The Cello in 2002), but he was lured out of semi-retirement when offered the chance to helm his sixth Hrabal adaptation, I Served the King of England. The film is a colorful and hugely entertaining look at Czechoslovakia between the 1920s and the 1950s, told in flashback as recently released ex-con Jan Díte (Ivan Barnev) recalls his eventful progression from rags to riches and then rags again. Menzel brings a pleasingly light touch to proceedings as he casts an eye over the prostitutes, hedonistic millionaires, hoteliers and Nazis with whom the childlike Díte – a perfect satirical naïf – becomes involved as he stumbles from one misadventure to another. A picaresque romp through history, Menzel's film skillfully offsets its affectionately nostalgic celebration of the delights of a hedonistic lifestyle with a subtle, thoughtful commentary on the Czech national psyche.

Filmmaker spoke to Menzel through an interpreter about his connection with Hrabal's work, his decision not to work in Hollywood, and the time he beat a producer in front of a film festival audience.



Filmmaker: You've now done a number of adaptations of Bohumil Hrabal's work. What is it particularly that attracts you to his writing?

Menzel: I really enjoyed Hrabal's work from the moment it started to be published in Czechoslovakia. Hrabal's work was quite delayed – a lot of it was written much earlier, but didn't really fit into the mold of the Stalinist literature of the 1950s and so it didn't come out until a bit later. It came out in the early 1960s, first in magazines and then in book form. As soon as it started to come out, I fell in love with Hrabal's work because I love Czech literature and I saw in Hrabal a continuation of the outstanding traditions of interwar Czech literature, writers like [Karel] Čapek. I was not alone – my whole generation fell in love with Hrabal. When a bunch of my contemporaries decided to put together a film of short stories based on Hrabal's work, they asked me to join that project. So I met Hrabal while working on those short films, Pearls of the Deep, and then after that I had the chance, of course, to work extensively with him on Closely Watched Trains. From that time, I remained close friends with Hrabal until his death.

Filmmaker: Was your close relationship with Hrabal the reason you collaborated with him so many times?

Menzel: I got to form a much closer personal relationship with Hrabal at a time when Hrabal was not allowed to publish and I was not allowed to make films, so I spent quite a lot of times at Hrabal's summer house and got to know him quite well beyond the artistic level as well.

Filmmaker: What was your particular artistic connection?

Menzel: I always admired in Hrabal the ability to look at people and see them as they truly are, with a truly uncompromising perspective, but he still loved people. He wasn't a misanthrope after all that. I would contrast with this the perspective of more recent Czech writers – and world literature in general – where I see a strong misanthropic tendency which is not there in Hrabal's work, where that love for people is really present.

Filmmaker: Do you feel like you and Hrabal shared a worldview?

Menzel: I would say that's fair to say, and similarly that Hrabal's ideas and perspective influenced me. A lot of other Czech authors did but probably Hrabal's influenced my own ideas about art a great deal.

Filmmaker: There was a 12-year gap between you making your last feature, The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, and I Served the King of England. What was the reason for that?

Menzel: Well, just for a long time I didn't really have any offers for work that appealed to me. When finally the offer came around to do this film, I was, of course, very enthusiastic about it. I think part of it is that in order to make movies in the Czech Republic now you have to know how to raise the funds for it and that's something that I don't really know how to do. I've been really engaged in it and this was a project that really came ready to go. This film had the support already, it was a project that appealed to me and it was something that just logistically could be done.

Filmmaker: From what I've read, this was a project you had worked on in the 1990s while Hrabal was still alive, and that it's had a difficult production history.

Menzel: It's true that we did begin collaborating on it, but at one point the owners of the rights sold the project to a private television company. That was the incentive for which I gave [the producer] a public beating at a film festival because at that point the rights had been lost. It was only finally many years later that the owner of the rights returned to me with the offer to complete the film.

Filmmaker: The period that this film covers is really before you were born or when you were relatively young, but do you feel as if it is indicative of Czech history as a whole?

Menzel: There's a very key sentence that actually isn't in the book but that occurs here [in the film], that “We Czechs do not make war.” That's probably a pretty important leitmotif in Czech history.

Filmmaker: The film is a paradox in many ways, an affectionate, nostalgic look back at a period of history where the majority of people suffered greatly. Why did you choose to frame it that that way?

Menzel: Perhaps this approach again is something that I'm carrying over from Hrabal's work – it's something that Hrabal chose and discovered. If there's a lesson or a moral to this story that is to be told or to be gained, it can't be told in too harsh a way it has to be the way a friend tells a friend something.

Filmmaker: Yes, it really seems like an appreciation of the good life at the worst of times.

Menzel: This is a wild contrast. If you want to draw someone's attention to things that are black, you have to put them on a white background.

Filmmaker: Another one of the aspects of this film is a celebration of young women by older men.

Menzel: This is something that I share with Hrabal, but I wouldn't say that it's particularly an older man's perspective – I've been obsessed with girls since I was a 10-year-old boy.

Filmmaker: There's a line in the film where the hero Jan Díte is told “You are small and from small people.” Does that line refer to the Czech people generally also?

Menzel: This is again straight out of Hrabal's book, it's not my own idea, but I would say that it's also this idea that small people have to stick together and help each other out, because after all it's another small man who tells this to Díte. It's in the spirit of solidarity.

Filmmaker: Going back a number of years, what impact did the huge success of Closely Observed Trains have when it came so early on in your career?

Menzel: The effect was rather limited because four months after [winning the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar] the Russian tanks came and my career was interrupted, and really derailed it for an indeterminate period.

Filmmaker: Your Czech contemporaries Ivan Passer and Milos Forman went to Hollywood at this time. Was this something that you thought of doing also?

Menzel: There were certain particularly depressing moments when I did consider it, simply for the reason that there was nothing for me to do here, but I never had the ambition that Milos did.

Filmmaker: Did you ever consider what path your career might have taken had you followed Forman to America?

Menzel: I don't think it would have turned out well – I don't have quite the same sort of elemental energy, the same sort of force that someone like Forman does.

Filmmaker: Then what is it that still now drives you to keep on making films?

Menzel: It's my job.

Filmmaker: And do you feel as if you will ever be able to to retire from that job?

Menzel: It's not possible. I like it when someone sees me on the street and says “I liked your film.” It's very satisfying.

Filmmaker: I read an interview with you in which you said something very Wildean: “Apart from being a genius, modesty is my only character flaw.” While that was obviously a tongue-in-cheek statement, how much do you feel you have been able to fulfill your “genius” and have it recognized by the world?

Menzel: Well, you can probably never say that you're truly satisfied with what you've achieved entirely, but overall there is certainly some satisfaction. From the very beginning, I wanted my work to have meaning and that means that people would go to see these films and appreciate them. I didn't make films for critics and or to be famous, but for people to enjoy the films. They will go to the films – even if the films are not stupid.

Filmmaker: I'm still trying to grasp what you meant by saying you kept on making films because it was your job.

Menzel: I will make films as long as I feel they have meaning, this significance, which means that people go to see them and appreciate them. As long as that possibility is there, then I will continue to feel the need to make them.

Filmmaker: You're known globally famous as a director, but what's less widely known is that you've acted in Czech films for many years. Did you start acting because you were unable to make films for a period of time?

Menzel: It wasn't a matter of the censorship. At the time that I was banned from making films, I was also banned from performing or doing anything else in film. I'm not an actor by vocation or by profession but I was the right type initially for my first film role, for [Accused,] a film made by the Slovak director [Ján] Kadár. Then once people saw me in that film they assumed that I was an actor and that they could continue to cast me, and so they did. I've also had some success in the theater as well as films, but I still don't consider it really either a vocation or a profession.

Filmmaker: How has your acting informed how you operate as a director?

Menzel: I'm very nice to actors.

Filmmaker: From what I've read, theater was your first love and you initially wanted to study theater rather than go to film school. Do you still feel passionate about theater, and how does it compare to how you feel about film?

Menzel: Yes, theater was my first love and I wanted to do theater but I wasn't accepted to the drama academy, for lack of talent. So I saw at that point that TV was an emerging medium and I saw that they would need actors of lesser talent and abilities for television, so I applied to the film and television academy (a single academy at that time). I had the good fortune while I was studying there that the great Czech director Otakar Vávra taught me how to make films.

Filmmaker: What were you at school: the smart kid, the class clown or the dunce?

Menzel: I was a bad student. When my father saw my first report card from high school, he broke a rod on me.

Filmmaker: So when did you start becoming more studious?

Menzel: Never.

Filmmaker: So what do you attribute your success to?

Menzel: I'm a child of fortune.

Filmmaker: Which film do you wish you had directed?

Menzel: The Bible. No, I can't think of anything else that fits that description.

Filmmaker: Should a director always take risks?

Menzel: No, because he's not working with his own money.

Filmmaker: So have you never taken risks yourself?

Menzel: I don't enjoy taking risks and I don't enjoy exhibitionism.

Filmmaker: Finally, what's your best piece of advice for aspiring filmmakers?

Menzel: To have a good relationship with the people you're working for and for the audience, not to look down upon them and not to humiliate them or make fun of them.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 8/29/2008 12:52:00 AM Comments (0)

Trying to make it as a director is difficult – and particularly so when your father is one of the most respected filmmakers in his field – however in the last few years Azazel Jacobs has made a name for himself in his own right with a string of individual and resonant films. Jacobs, the son of avant garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs and painter Flo Jacobs, grew up in New York City and studied film at Purchase University in upstate New York. His graduation film, Kirk and Kerry, won best short film at Slamdance in 1997, and he began making his first feature, Nobody Needs to Know while studying for his Masters at AFI in Los Angeles. The film, which played the festival circuit in 2003, fused conventional narrative with more experimental elements as Jacobs grappled with the idea of “honest” filmmaking. He followed it up in 2005 with the delightful offbeat comedy drama The GoodTimesKid, which he made for just $10,000 in collaboration with Jacobs' girlfriend Sara Diaz and Drama/Mex director (and fellow AFI alum) Gerardo Naranjo. (The GoodTimesKid is forthcoming on the Benten Films DVD label.)

Jacobs' third feature, Momma's Man, sees him return home with the story of Mikey (Matt Boren), who stays at his parents' house while on a business trip to New York. Lulled by the security of these familiar surroundings, he starts concocting reasons why he can't return to his wife and baby daughter in California, pushing the responsibilities of his new life from his mind as he slips back into the world of his adolescence. Inspired by Jacobs' own feelings of comfort in his childhood home, Momma's Man draws on much from Jacobs's life, as Ken and Flo Jacobs play Mikey's concerned parents and it was shot in their Tribeca loft, Jacobs' childhood home. As a result of this, the film is particularly resonant and moving, as well as being funny and tender, and Ken and Flo Jacobs both give surprising, strong performances, despite never having acted before. But it is ultimately Jacobs' inspired writing and deft direction that make this film so remarkable, his keen eye compellingly capturing the deteriorating situation created by Mikey's inertia.

Filmmaker spoke to Jacobs about the intersection between truth and fiction in the film, not blinking for four months during post-production, and his childhood plan to save his family with pennies and magic rocks.



Filmmaker: I believe Momma's Man was inspired by your feelings about your parents' apartment, and how reluctant you felt to leave it.

Jacobs: The root of this really came from the place more than documenting my folks and my friends. I've been out in Los Angeles for nine years, but even before I left the place my home was something that I was extremely attached to, as far [back] as I can remember. It was a this play place, there were all these things that my parents put up; there was a swing and a hoop and a Batman pole and all these things that kept me in and made me enjoy my time there. There's these cracks between the wood floors, and I stored so many pennies and change in there, and it was all with this idea – especially during those times, Reagan and nuclear war – that I would be able to rescue the family because of all this “gold” that I was storing. So underneath, it's filled with “magic rocks” and everything that a kid thinks is going to protect the family when Armageddon hits.

Filmmaker: There are a lot of autobiographical elements in Momma's Man, so how instinctive was it for you to write?

Jacobs: It started off with a lot of difficulty because I was basing the son much closer to me and I was writing parents that weren't [based on] my parents, so I needed to work out to change both those things. At first, the dad was a writer, but once I started realizing that it was my dad that I was writing, whether he would play him or not. It wasn't so much that I was struggling with the character [of Mikey], it was that I wasn't that interested and I just couldn't find a reason why this character would stay if it was me. So that was the toughest thing, finding out that I needed to focusing on a stranger and once that started happening, I started to know these people really well. I knew the place really good and because I had real experiences I want to draw on – like waking up there, the cable guy and all that stuff, and I had a few images, the shaving cream, my mom's lap – I had these few points I wanted to hit.

Filmmaker: At what point did you decided to have your parents play Mikey's parents?

Jacobs: I was talking about it with my parents and we were talking about what the parents did. I think they had read a third or fourth draft, when the dad was a writer, and my dad said, “This is not a writer's home, this is a filmmaker's home.” That's what it is, and it seemed like I was trying to avoid something. And once I thought of it, the idea of an actor playing [the father] seemed really ridiculous. So once it got that close to being based on them it seemed really silly to do something else.

Filmmaker: Did it feel right that they would play them? They've not had any acting experience, so how did you feel about that aspect?

Jacobs: I felt more guarded just on the idea of doing anything that would be embarrassing of them. The characters were already written that the mom was extra nurturing and there were things that were extremely extreme variations on them, so I didn't want it to be this thing that was from Mikey's point of view, that I was poking fun. I wanted it a lot from their point of view. In the midst of writing, I had the script pretty much done when I had to go take care of Piero, who plays the old best friend, who'd just gotten out of jail. His parents were going away and he asked me to come stay with him for 10 days while his parents were going because he just wanted to be watched over while they were gone so that he didn't do anything stupid and fall back into old ways. So I went there and I was in the midst of writing, so I just kept writing while I was there and the idea of writing about this guy who's making this choice and being there in Piero's place and seeing what Piero was dealing with, it would have been insane not to put that in. So a lot of the things that came from my real life came much later on when a lot of things were already done; it's a lot of seeing things that are in front of you, and it just takes a while to see.

Filmmaker: So how did your parents and Piero feel about playing alter egos of themselves?

Jacobs: They were nervous about the situation, definitely my mom. For my dad it was an easy thing, he's playing a really solid, certain thing and there's not many lines but my mom had to do a different type of acting and Piero as well. I was nervous about Piero because it's such a different world; my whole film thing is not what we talk about when we're together, we talk about “Back in the day...,” so I know there was a lot of tension. I've never said this before, but I couldn't rehearse with them, it didn't make sense. – and what were they going to learn? I wasn't going to replace them at this point, I was just going to have to figure out how to make it work when I was there, so that time of finding out if they could act was right when we started shooting.

Filmmaker: I have to ask you about what happened in post-production. From what I've read, you were planning to cut Momma's Man in L.A. but then (rather like Mikey) decided to stay in New York...

Jacobs: ...and the Bell's Palsy thing. What happened was I wound up working with these producers who have a space in here, and for me going to New York and working is what I've always dreamed of. Suddenly, not only is there a place I can shoot in but edit: there's an Avid and everything was set up, and I found someone to edit with, Brett Jutkiewicz, who shot The Pleasure of Being Robbed. The idea was for me to leave with some kind of assemblage to show [the producers] before I headed back to L.A. I talked to [my girlfriend] Diaz – and by this point I'd already been gone off and on for about five months – and there was definitely a pressure and a strain but there was also this opportunity and maybe I could stay. I said, “Yeah, just give me two more months. I'll be here for the summer.” And then I wound up going to the doctor... It's hard to say if things are connected, but I left the doctor's appointment – I got my eyes dilated – and it was a super sunny day, and I went straight back to the Avid. They didn't give me shades, so my eyes started tearing immediately. And then I started cutting and I got this really, really strange headache, where it felt like a seizure on my brain. Every four minutes. So I said, “I better stop for the day.” Then the next morning I woke up, and half my face was paralyzed. The thing is, I already had a friend who had had this Bell's Palsy a week earlier. My old roommate at Purchase called me and told me about this crazy shit, so I knew what it was. Next thing we know, we're both talking on the phone...

Filmmaker: What was your response to the situation?

Jacobs: I was just so depressed, man, you know? It wasn't even so much about being so vain... The first thing they do is put you on steroids, and as someone who hasn't had milk or dairy, being put on steroids is super depressing and a super shock to your system. I had honestly been on the phone a week earlier saying, “This is the happiest I've ever been in my life.” I was cutting this thing that I fucking loved and I really knew what I was doing in this situation and there was enough for me to do it. Now that things are back to normal, I don't have regrets about it. I think it humbled me a lot. I think it was good damage to the ego, in a certain way, like I needed to just remember how important it was to just be alive and functioning, and to do basic, simple things like blinking. To go without blinking for four months was a really brutal thing and it was a hard thing to deal with for me.

Filmmaker: The three films you've made so far seem extremely different to each other. Was there a conscious shift from one to the other to the other?

Jacobs: Well, know this, that for most filmmakers – at least, for me – in between each film, there are other scripts and other movies that you either don't get together or just that the writing of it was enough to get you to the next place. So there's missing pieces, but when I was writing those movies I was living them, so I see those – whether they got made or not – in between. So there's a more literal bridge. How I write, what I know about the next film is that I can taste the movie and I can smell it and I know exactly how the film is supposed to feel. I have characters that I've fallen in love with already and I would say the story's been going on for years beforehand, and I'm hoping it will bring me into a really uncomfortable world with this one. I do know, on one side, I really need to do something I don't know at all. I need to go to a world I don't know, I need to go to someplace far out of Chambers Street, far out of Jarmusch and Kaurismäki land, and I need to do something really scary. I feel the urge to do something the same, and you want to start aiming for something that could get [success], but I trust myself enough to know ultimately that I need to get myself to an uncomfortable land. There will be enough of my vision on these things that I don't need to push for that anymore, I just need to go someplace else and I'll see it that way and interpret the way and show it the way I see it.

Filmmaker: How was it for you growing with a father who was such an influential figure? And when you started making films, did you initially feel like you were working in his shadow?

Jacobs: As far as growing up, there was no shadow; that only happened when I got to Purchase, and I happened to get there the year right after an avant garde class by Tom Gunning was taught. So when I got there, I had no idea why the upper classmen were acting so weird to me but it was because they thought that I must have gotten in because of who my dad was. I was like “Who's son?!” That whole thing that my dad had this name to other people never entered [into my head. I mean, growing up in public school here [in New York] – do you think anybody would care about any of that stuff?

Filmmaker: How aware were you of the work your father was producing?

Jacobs: What I would see at screenings growing up was definitely that there were individuals at the end that had their lives changed, and that struck me. And as a kid, that was something I got used to seeing – and this is after tons of walkouts. A lot of times going from a full place to a completely empty place, but those people who were left would look at my father like they though that they were on the island by themselves and here was somebody else. I got used to seeing that thing and it struck for sure as something I'd like to do in my life, that I'd want to bring to [people]. But I also found the walking out so painful, that people would be so upset that they couldn't last for an hour-and-a-half or two hours, that they'd leave after five or ten minutes, and that there'd be a lot of angry walkouts, or you'd hear some people talking. That also had a big effect on me – I couldn't understand why. And then with Nobody Needs To Know, I went straight from cutting that to showing it in Rotterdam: as far as I was concerned, here was a movie with actors, music and a story – it's Hollywood, for me. That's what I thought – I was that much in that [world]. And then I went to Rotterdam, and people started walking out in that first screening. After that first screening, I went back to the hotel with Sara and I just fuckin' bawled, you know? I just did not know I'd made a movie like that, I did not know there was anything tough about it. I just didn't understand that here I was in the same position as my father.

Filmmaker: What's the worst (or weirdest) job you've ever had?

Jacobs: How about best? Besides working on my own films, the best job I ever had was doing construction for a summer, hard wood flooring, when I was 20. We did a whole block of buildings on 116th, I never mentioned film, no one knew I had anything to do with film, school, any of that, it was just hard work all day. I had an apartment on the East Side for 300 a month that I shared with a beautiful girl who wasn't my girlfriend, but the bathtub was in the middle of the place so it was nice to be home. Plus I had a tab at a Chinese restaurant that I would pay at the end of each week. I never slept so good in my life.

Filmmaker: Which actor would you pay to see in anything?

Jacobs: Linda Manz. Tati. Chaplin. Paul Muni. Elliot Gould. Tricia Vessey.

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

Jacobs: One time in high school, I had some kids after me. They couldn't find me but for some reason told people that they did and had beaten me up. When I heard about it, I just went along with it, giving them the credit and saving me the pain.

Filmmaker: Finally, what's your best piece of advice for aspiring filmmakers?

Jacobs: There is no such thing as a spec film – whatever you do is what you will live with and define you whether or not you like it. The people that I know who did spec films thinking that at some point they will make the films they really want to, are now living spec lives.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 8/22/2008 07:08:00 PM Comments (0)

At a time when horror films are getting ever more brutal, Jon Knautz brings a comfortingly old- fashioned feel to genre filmmaking. The Ottawa-born writer-director, who grew up on a diet of slasher films and 50s creature features, went to Vancouver Film School to pursue his dream of making movies. Knautz's graduation project, Apt. 310 (2002), a stylish, tightly scripted noir, was the first in a series of shorts that harked back to classic modes of filmmaking. After making the blood-spattered comedy horror Teen Massacre (2004), Knautz won acclaim for the festival favorites Still Life (2005), a tribute to Twilight Zone-style storytelling, and the chilling The Other Celia (2005), adapted from a sci-fi story by Theodore Sturgeon. In 2007, Knautz directed Trevor Matthews and Patrick White – his two partners in the Brookstreet Pictures production company – in the short thriller Moment of Truth.

For his debut feature, Knautz also goes retro as he taps into the spirit of 80s horror films with Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer. The eponymous hero (Trevor Matthews) is a plumber with anger issues stemming from the childhood trauma of seeing his parents and sister killed by a monster during a family camping trip. He attends night school to learn science from Professor Crowley (a hearty turn by Robert Englund), but when Crowley unearths an evil spirit Jack is forced to take action and finally put his rage to good use. Knautz's movie feels very out of sync with current horror trends, but only in a good way: he spends time developing story and character, brings a real sense of fun to proceedings, and delivers with both climactic action sequences and great monsters. Jack Brooks recalls lovingly crafted 80s fare such as the early films of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, and Knautz succeeds in creating an affectionate and highly enjoyable homage to those movies.

Filmmaker spoke to Knautz about films from the time before CGI, the impact of watching A Nightmare on Elm Street at age six, and his abandoned dream of becoming a ninja.



Filmmaker: How did you come to start your production company, Brookstreet Pictures, with producer Patrick White and actor-producer Trevor Matthews?

Knautz: Well, I was in film school in Vancouver in 2001 when I met Pat White, who was in my class. And then I came back from Vancouver in 2002, and that's when I met Trevor Matthews back here in Ottowa. We worked on a short film together called Teen Massacre, and around the same time Pat and I had got a grant from the government to do a short film called The Other Celia, so I just said to Trevor, “Why don't you come get involved with this Celia thing in Toronto?” So that's how the three of us met originally, and then at that point Pat stayed in Toronto and Trev and I came back to Ottawa and decided to start Brookstreet. Our first project was going to be Still Life, and then we brought Pat on board to produce that, and then he stuck around and we've been running the company for the last four years together.

Filmmaker: So far the Brookstreet productions have been essentially horror, ranging from the Twilight Zone-esque Still Life to a creature feature like Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer. On your website you say that your aim to make “commercially viable yet artistically driven films,” so are you going to diversify your output?

Knautz: Well, we're really not interested in making horror films at all. Initially, we delved into the genre films – sci-fi, horror, thriller, action – but Trever and I would love to one day make epics. Some of our favorite films are Braveheart, Gladiator. But to start out, we thought it would be a smart move for the feature film to do something with a real demographic, and these horror films definitely have a demographic. With the short films, we chose genre type stuff probably more just because the stories appealed to us – we didn't set out to make a sci-fi movie, we just came across the script for Still Life. It just happened to be sci-fi, and it just happened to be a really great story so we decided to make it. So far, we've definitely done horrors and thrillers and sci-fi based stuff, but we're definitely looking to move into dramas at some point once we establish ourselves a little bit more.

Filmmaker: What were you aiming to achieve with Jack Brooks?

Knautz: On a business level, we thought by targeting the horror demographic that we knew definitely existed we could hopefully get our money back. On a creative level, it was excellent for all of us because I think we wanted to establish ourselves as guys who could make a feature film, we didn't just want to be making shorts, and our company's gonna be around for a while. We're already moving into another feature and we plan to move into another right after that. So we just wanted to get our feet wet, and doing a horror comedy was really fun because we could experiment and try some fun stuff out and I guess it felt a little safer than trying to do a heavy-handed drama, because if you don't get that right... Being inexperienced, we wanted to start with something a little more lighthearted.

Filmmaker: What were your influences for the film?

Knautz: I grew up with the horror films of the 80s, so that's a lot of the reason why I wanted to do a throwback to good old-fashioned, no CGI, all practical effects horror. We looked at all sorts of films, Gremlins, Peter Jackson's early work like Bad Taste and Dead Alive and Meet the Feebles, and Sam Raimi's Evil Dead. John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China was a big influence. Lots of horror films. We just cruised through as many horror films as we could from the 80s to sort of draw from that time period.

Filmmaker: What aspects of 80s horror were you particularly keen to bring back?

Knautz: Number one, the fact that there were no computer graphics. From the mid-90s and early 2000s, films were starting to experiment with CGI – sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't but the bottom line is that the audience just reacts differently to CGI as opposed to practical effects, especially in a horror film. I grew up with A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Fly and Gremlins, so maybe there's something to do with remembering experiencing those films at that age. They can have a profound effect on you, so maybe they've stuck with me. Now it's more the “torture porn” stuff. I like that stuff, I think it's great for what it is, but it seems like maybe that's all people were getting right now and we wanted to kinda give 'em a more lighthearted, fun Gremlins experience. The way I usually explain it is if you think of a gremlin getting thrown in a microwave [laughs] and then they turn up the heat until it explodes, that was the kind of movie we wanted to make, where you've got monsters and creatures and they're just getting their heads smashed in and they're getting all messed up and killed by some heroic character throughout the film.

Filmmaker: The film almost feels like the first part of a franchise. Was that something you were thinking about when you were writing the film?

Knautz: I fully admit we were not thinking of sequels when we wrote this at all. But certainly with the way it ends, I think a lot of people take that as leading into sequels and more adventures. We just subconsciously were probably thinking of that when we were writing it, but we were more thinking it would be funny to see him become more this incredible monster slayer by the end and leave it on a cliffhanger. But if people are liking the first one and like the Jack character and want to see more then we'd definitely love to produce sequels. We actually have Part 2 in development right now as a script.

Filmmaker: Recently, it's almost become a horror movie cliché to have Robert Englund in a supporting role, but you utilized him really well here, I thought.

Knautz: I totally appreciate that comment because it was very, very important to me to not use Robert as your typical “I used to be Freddy Krueger” cameo. I knew he had a really humorous side to him and he just seemed like a really great character actor and I thought he suited the role perfectly. So we sent him a copy of the script, his agent read it and really liked it, and passed it on to Robert. I guess he didn't really get the comedic side to it at first, and then [his agent] said to read it again and think more on the lines of old school Evil Dead-type horror comedy. Then Robert read it a second time and really got it and really jumped on board and wanted to be a part of it. We also sent him as copy of our film Still Life, and I think that sorta helped secure the fact that we were legitimate and serious about making movies.

Filmmaker: I thought it was refreshing that Jack Brooks is a horror movie that takes its time to slowly build character and plot rather than the majority of the film just being action.

Knautz: We've definitely been getting grilled a little bit on how long it takes to get to the action and in retrospect I kinda feel like our title has hurt us a little bit, because when people see the title Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer I think they're right away going, “OK, this guy's going to slay monsters the whole movie,” but really it's the origin story of how he becomes a monster slayer. I wanted you to feel this guy's struggle and feel his anger and his frustration while you're going through the film, so that when he does kick ass at the end of the film, you can feel that release of the anger and feel it being used properly. I wanted people to be right there with him, going, “Right on, This is what you should be doing!” [laughs]

Filmmaker: The monsters in the film look really great, especially with your relatively limited budget.

Knautz: David Scott (of Form & Dynamics) and his team went above and beyond to create all those monsters. Generally with a low budget horror you might have one monster that you maybe don't see that much until the end; we had a cyclops, a troll, mutants running around the school, we had the prof monster that Robert turned into in the end, so Dave really had his plate full. He worked on a lot of really big projects working for other people, but we let him be the key special effects person on this film so he was really, really hungry for it. He's got a great love and passion for the horror genre and definitely was inspired by the same movies as I was, so he was just rarin' to go.

Filmmaker: What was the first film you ever saw?

Knautz: The first film I saw that got me goin' was The Neverending Story, and I must have been three. As far as I my brain will let me remember, I remember that movie having a profound effect on me. Emotionally, when Atreyu's horse starts to sink into the mud, I couldn't handle that. [laughs] It really upset me, but in the end I was ecstatic. A Nightmare on Elm Street came pretty close after that. I saw that when I was way too young – I must have been six. I don't think I knew what I was in for; I was watching a lot of old movies like Creature from the Black Lagoon, Abbot and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Roger Corman-type stuff, and then all of a sudden I'm watching Elm Street that I got my mom to rent me. Obviously she didn't realize how messed up it was and I didn't sleep for weeks [laughs] – but I was hooked. I couldn't stop watching horror after that.

Filmmaker: When was the last time you burst out laughing on set?

Knautz: When Robert Englund is going through the crate in the movie and he finds the skull and then he pulls out the bone and he finds the heart, I was directing him during the shot. I was saying “OK, Robert, show me the lid of the crate coming off... show me the dirt moving around... show me the skull...” And then I said, “Show me the bone,” and everybody burst out laughing because “Show me the bone” is somehow referencing “Show me your cock.” [laughs] That was pretty embarrassing and we had to cut because everybody was laughing.

Filmmaker: Finally, what was your dream job as a kid?

Knautz: I wanted to be a ninja, until I found out that that's not a professional career here in North America – unless I just didn't look hard enough. I wanted to be a ninja up until I was like five or six. I was big into the ninja movies as a kid. [laughs] All the bad stuff that Kill Bill was inspired by: some Sonny Chiba stuff – obviously that stuff was good, but then there was some of those really bad movies like American Ninja parts one, two, three, four. [laughs] I was pretty into those. The first one's not bad – I saw it again recently, and I still kinda like it.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 8/15/2008 07:07:00 PM Comments (0)

Since he first picked up a camera, Steven Sebring has been defying expectations and blurring genre boundaries. A South Dakota native who grew up in Arizona, Sebring taught himself photography during his teens and then honed his style during several years spent in Europe. Following his return to the States, the mix of glamor and grit he brought to his images made him an in-demand fashion photographer, and also distinguished himself as an inventive celebrity portraitist. His background in fashion and an interest in cinema led to him direct two synergistic projects for DKNY, New York Stories (2003) and its follow-up Road Stories (2004), short films that showcased Sebring's visual and narrative flair, as well as Karan's couture. Recently, Sebring has also overseen two book projects, Bygone Days (2005), a collection of photographs by his great-great uncle, John Penor, chronicling his life in rural South Dakota, and Lalanne (2006), a tome featuring Sebring's pictures of the work of French artists Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne.

In 1995, Spin magazine commissioned Sebring to shoot a session with Patti Smith, and the instant rapport between photographer and subject inspired Sebring to embark on a documentary about the legendary poetess of punk. Sebring filmed Smith intermittently over the course of 12 years for Patti Smith: Dream of Life, capturing both her high energy live shows and unguarded private moments that reveal the flipside to her onstage persona. Shot on 16mm and mostly in moody black-and-white, Sebring's film adopts an abstract, almost experimental style which is well-suited to capturing Smith's aesthetics. Featuring a wealth of Smith's music as well her poetic narration, Patti Smith: Dream of Life has a lyrical, rhythmic quality and unconventional structure that help it transcend the usual restrictions of the documentary form. Sebring has expanded the scope of his project by creating a tie-in art installation with Smith, Objects of Life, and a book of photographs — also called Patti Smith: Dream of Life — which will be published later this month.

Filmmaker spoke to Sebring about his epic documentary undertaking, the convergence of photography and cinema, and making a film with Picasso and Parker Posey.



Filmmaker: Before the interview started, you were talking about a screening of the film at the Museum of Modern Art, and how you wanted it to play at places like that. Do you view the film simply as a documentary, or as more than that?

Sebring: I don't like it when people call it a documentary. I always say it's a visual poetic experience and Patti Smith is the star. It's my version of how to look at an artist - but again, this movie came out so organically, from the hip, me and Patti. It just became something really unusual.

Filmmaker: Tell me about how your relationship with Patti Smith began. I believe you were doing a photo session with her for Spin magazine in 1995.

Sebring: I used to shoot a lot for Spin magazine, and I'd photographed Michael Stipe just a month before. He and Patti were working together on a song, I think it was called "E-bow the Letter," and Patti had a list of photographers from Spin magazine. She doesn't like to take pictures with too many people and Michael said, "Well, you should work with Stephen Sebring." So it was really through Michael — I adore Michael for that little plug.

Filmmaker: So what happened in that session?

Sebring: There was an immediate connection. I didn't grow up with Patti Smith and didn't know a whole lot about her, and she kinda knew that. I think that's what drew her to me too — I was learning about her, you know? We didn't take a picture until the end of the day, we just kinda hung out. And that's like the movie too: I didn't have a camera the whole time. Every once in a while, I'd travel with her and bring my camera. But we just had a good connection, and then she eventually invited me to Irving Plaza in '96. I saw her [play live], and I was like, "Are you kidding me?! This is the same woman I met in Detroit?" Because the woman I met in Detroit is the woman you see in the bedroom [sequences] in the movie — very innocent and very spiritual, very funny. And then you see her on stage, and it's a whole 'nother person. And that's what blew my mind about her.

Filmmaker: So you started filming in 1996?

Sebring: Yes. The London footage in there where she starts talking about Bob Dylan, that was the first footage. And when she says, "You have to stop filming," that was the tension.

Filmmaker: You said it was very organic in how it came together as a film, but what was the initial idea you had for how the project should be?

Sebring: I always knew it was going to be different, because I never went to film school, I just bought a movie camera and a sound system and experimented. I knew it was going to be an experimental film. I didn't think it would ever be where it is today, I always thought I'd show it in an arthouse where it was free, where it was 16mm projected and cut real raw. It just took its form.

Filmmaker: How often would you film Patti over the decade or so you were making the film?

Sebring: I would usually meet her on tour. Like when she went to Japan, I said, "I'm going to go to Japan," and she wouldn't believe me. And then I'd show up and she'd be like, "Are you kidding me?" That's the way it was. At her mother and father's house in Jersey, it was like "I'm gonna go to my Mom and Dad's house — do you wanna come?" I said, "Yeah, of course!" So it was like that kind of thing throughout the years. It was really like her home movies, in a way. We just had this really cool connection. I was financing [the film], and it was just me, whatever film I could get at the time. Towards the end, I was like, "How shall we make all this footage from all over the world make sense?" And that's when I said, "Let's [shoot] something in your bedroom, in the corner." That was how we made it feel like a stream of consciousness.

Filmmaker: Was there a marked difference between your relationship with Patti when you had a camera and when you didn't?

Sebring: It was always the same. Once in a while, she would perform for the people through my lens. [But] I can quite honestly say that throughout the whole movie, there's nothing forced in that film, it's all really from her heart and my heart, straight up.

Filmmaker: You shot on black-and-white 16mm stock mostly, I think. But there's a shot late on where it changes from black-and-white to color ...

Sebring: I shot on black-and-white and color stock. Yeah, there's that shot where they're walking and I changed it from black-and-white to color. I was doing a lot where I would shoot color, but I would turn it black-and-white just because I felt it worked better in the flow of the film, or the palate seemed better. When I was filming Patti, I would use what I had. I wasn't saying, "I'm going to shoot all this in black-and-white," or "I'm going to shoot all this in color," it was like "What do I have? What should I get more of?" Because nothing was lit in the film — nothing — I had to use a faster film. If she was in a dark space, I would have to use color, faster — and then I'd stop to push the film, like, two stops to see what I'd get. With 16mm, you see the grain and the dark, and there's something beautiful about that. Our logic was to make it have an artistic sense to it, and that's what I do.

Filmmaker: There's a moment when Patti Smith is talking about Bob Dylan and mentions Don't Look Back, which it turns out you hadn't seen. Given that, how aware were you of the territory you were entering by making a music documentary? And did you see Don't Look Back afterwards?

Sebring: Not until two years after that, probably, and then last Christmas Patti bought me the box set. But I really haven't seen anything. The only things I've ever really watched are Kurosawa films — I'm a Kurosawa freak. I love Hitchcock, all those old school directors and films. Touch of Evil. I've never really watched any documentaries. Sometimes I don't want to be influenced that much, or I see something and I'm really disappointed. So I was completely a free bird when it came to making this.

Filmmaker: This film is steeped in music, and is very rhythmic and poetic in its feel.

Sebring: Music is really important to me, and mostly sound. I like subliminal sound. I'm one of those guys who can put some really beautiful sounds or music to something tragic. I love messing with people's minds, that's why I'd always use the sound of a train in the film, because for me it's lonely sadness. Or birds chirping. It's all this chaotic music that she did with Robert Mapplethorpe. I love that and I think it's really important to do stuff like that, so music and sound are very inspiring.

Filmmaker: So, it took you 12 years to complete the film...

Sebring: ...Yeah, somebody was telling me at Sundance that Quentin Tarantino was all over this movie, saying "This is what it's all about: somebody taking 12 years to make a movie!" I was like, "That's great, that's really cool." But I don't think I could do another 12 year project. [laughs]

Filmmaker: When did you know that it was time to stop shooting and go into the editing room?

Sebring: It just felt right. When Patti turned 60, we were all like, "This is a whole new chapter of her life." And she was really ready. PBS called me and asked me what was going on with it, and really gave me a little spark again. I thought, "Hmm, maybe we should do something with it..."

Filmmaker: So you were very relaxed about your plans for the film?

Sebring: Yes, very relaxed. I always had a sense, "What should I do with all this footage?" A lot of people were expecting me to do something with it, obviously. But it was very relaxed, and it was like, "I've got some money, I'm doing well, let's take it to another level." I was budgeted for three months of editing, and it went over a year. [laughs]

Filmmaker: How was the editing process for you?

Sebring: It was a really hard film to [edit] — it was its own beast, this movie. We'd try a scene, and it just wouldn't work! And then the more experimental it got, the better things happened. It was really cool. There was no script and I was just making the script as we went. That's why I found it really refreshing. Plus I didn't have to go through anybody to tell me I can or can't do that. We had control because we owned it. This is our thing. We didn't let anybody in until the end.

Filmmaker: How much footage did you shoot?

Sebring: My editor knows, but I don't know. When you're financing something like this on your own, you don't overshoot. That's how I take pictures. The problem with video is that people just overshoot and don't think about what they're doing, and it's a nightmare in post because you have to sit there and look at it all. Who cares? With this, I would really concentrate on what I was filming to make sure it looked visually perfect, as if I was shooting stills. A lot of the time, my camera would run out [of film], and I didn't have anybody loading my camera so I would just have to stop and I would load up the camera [again]. Pretty much all of [the footage] can be used for something, it wasn't wasteful whatsoever.

Filmmaker: The DKNY shorts you did seem very different from this, as they were narrative and were shot in color using a very different palate.

Sebring: That's my commercial side — I know how to sell product and I know how to build companies up. [DKNY] came to me knowing that I'd been dabbling in film, and I was championing this idea of taking fashion and film [and fusing them] because film wants to be fashion and fashion wants to be film. I really don't believe anybody's merged these two. Donna Karan loves film, and I really think if we'd kept on doing those, she'd have her own sitcom. I really, really do. We did those whole things in like three days — it was crazy stuff. I mean, hardcore. But it was a really good crash course for me and really makes me want to do fiction films. Big time. For me to work with actors and really compose would be a dream. Because that's really what I do when I shoot stills: when I shoot an actor, I'm creating some kind of moment, and to be able to roll film on it is really, for me, just changing the camera.

Filmmaker: What's your biggest extravagance?

Sebring: Buying art, like this Lalanne desk. It's wonderful to buy works of art that you know will never depreciate, but the problem is I'll never sell it, you know what I mean? It's really great to admire artists' work, or do a book of them or do a movie.

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

Sebring: There's so many people... Picasso. It would be some sort of fiction film with Picasso as the actor. And somebody good opposite him would be... Well, I always wanted to do a film with Parker Posey — she's a friend of ours. I think she's genius. How weird would that be?

Filmmaker: Finally, should actors sing and singers act?

Sebring: Yeah. We just watched West Side Story; it was so amazing to see actors sing. But I don't think that exists anymore, good actors that can sing.

Filmmaker: What do you think about people like Jennifer Lopez and Scarlett Johansson releasing albums then?

Sebring: I don't like to see Jennifer Lopez in movies, I prefer her as a singer. I think you have to be really careful who the actor or singer is to make it believable to me. I think Bob Dylan is a good actor, he's done some good things. He'd be somebody I'd like to do a film with on Patti's level. If he'd let me in. Orson Welles would be somebody I'd like to film. Him and Picasso.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 8/06/2008 10:13:00 PM Comments (0)

A true independent, documentarian Dorothy Fadiman has resolutely worked outside the system for more than 30 years. Pittsburgh native Fadiman was a Stanford speech pathology graduate with a husband and two kids when, in 1976, an LSD trip inspired her to become a filmmaker. The resulting short, Radiance, took a religious, poetic and academic look at light in the universe, and motivated Fadiman to continue to make films driven by her passions and interests. A grassroots activist since the early 60s, Fadiman has predominantly focused on social and political issues in her documentaries, and she had tremendous success with the From the Back Alleys to the Supreme Court & Beyond trilogy (made between 1992 and 1996), three short films on abortion which between them garnered an Academy Award nomination and an Emmy. More recently, Fadiman directed Woman by Woman (2001), about women in the poorest villages in India, and Seeds of Hope (2006), a series of five short films about AIDS in Ethopia. In addition to directing, Fadiman has produced many of her films, and this year she co-authored a book entitled Producing with Passion: Making Films That Change the World.

Fadiman's latest project, Stealing America: Vote by Vote, is arguably her most prescient to date, a documentary inspired by her own experiences working as an election volunteer in 2004 at the Florida polls. Beginning with malfunctioning electronic voting machines, the film explores an alarming number of inconsistencies and irregularities, painting a damning picture of widespread election fraud. The film is rudimentary rather than slick but trusts in the power of the compelling case it makes that George W. Bush was reelected was only because of the suppression of votes and intentionally corrupted voting machines, and that this is a continuing trend which fundamentally threatens the right of Americans to have their voices heard and their votes counted.

Filmmaker spoke to Fadiman about covering a story the mainstream media had avoided, the advantages of having true independence as a filmmaker, and where Hollywood is going wrong.



Filmmaker: What was it that prompted you to make this film?

Fadiman: For decades, I've been a grassroots activist. I was a member of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, in 1961 and I have always wanted to participate in disenfranchisement issues to see if I could help make a difference. I was working at the polls in Florida for the 2004 election as a volunteer, doing whatever needed doing, and when we were being oriented the attorney said to a group of about 100 of us, “I have to warn you about something. During the early election, people have reported that they would try to vote for Kerry and they were getting Bush on the screen.” And this is where the story starts to get interesting, because he said, “Now, I want to caution you to not tell people that that is going to happen or that it might happen because it will discourage them from voting.” At that point, I couldn't make any sense of either piece of information, that the vote was flipping or that we shouldn't tell people, but in any case I went on to work at the polls. I didn't actually see it, but I was catching wind of the fact that this was continuing to happen throughout the day in South Florida, that people were trying to vote for Kerry and were getting Bush. On the way home on the airplane, many of us who'd come from California to work at the polls began to talk and it turned out that everyone had been hearing about or directly experienced that. So the next day I decided I wanted to make a film about that one phenomenon and when I lifted the rock, there was a whole world of irregularities.

Filmmaker: How did you go about researching the film?

Fadiman: At first it was just word of mouth among the people who'd actually been with me in Florida, and then I looked at the newspapers and I couldn't find anything. So I went on the internet – and this was the only place I found this information – and I began to see that from reading bloggers and political activist sites that something was wrong but nobody could quite track what it was. Then one by one, articles that actually followed these problems began to appear, so I read about the irregularities in exit polls, for example, and then I began to follow that. Then where that lead is Jonathan Simon, who downloaded the exit polls on election night and saw the discrepancy when the polls froze, and so I went to Jonathan Simon himself and said, “Tell me more.”

Filmmaker: How shocked were you by the extent of the irregularities?

Fadiman: Well, I hadn't seen anything cumulative. I was piecing it together for myself as many people were and I'd say the thing that shocked me most about the irregularities as the information about them began to accumulate and be validated was the fact that no mainstream media was picking it up. The first article I read in print, which was fairly extensive, was Mark Crispin Miller's article called “None Dare Call It Stolen,” and that was in Harper's. And when he actually put his extensive findings into several books, they were virtually ignored by the mainstream media. There is this phenomenon where, for some combination of reasons, the mainstream media is not touching this subject.

Filmmaker: Why do you think that is? Do you think it's a belief that people are not interested, or do you think it's active suppression?

Fadiman: Oh, I think it's suppression. I don't want to make this interview too political, but I will say something that is just a fact: the mainstream is for the most part owned and run by corporate organizations and companies, and the relationship between the current administration and corporations is well documented. I don't think it's that people don't want to hear about it because when I toured the country with this film as a work-in-progress, the theaters were packed. So I think people do want to hear about it, but they're not being given easy access to the information.

Filmmaker: How keen were people to talk to you when you approached them to be in the film?

Fadiman: It wasn't easy at first. The people who had been studying the issue and finding information were thrilled to have an opportunity to share what they found because there so few outlets; the people to whom it happened were more careful. So what I needed to do – and I'd done this before because I've been making films for 30 years – is record at first two or three people who were willing to come forward, and then I shared those interviews with a large group of people who were gathered by a church in Youngstown, Ohio, where many votes had flipped in that community. I showed them the footage and then one by one people said, “I want to share my story.” And once the film was being shown, everywhere I went people would come up and say, “I have a story.”

Filmmaker: The film paints the issue of election fraud in the current era as something which is exclusively being carried out by the Republicans. You say in the film that the media and the Democrats are complicit by doing nothing, but it still seems a very partisan perspective.

Fadiman: Well, what I tried to do was find out from the interviewees was what their own feelings and observations were about the Democrats. You may remember that somebody in the film says that both parties do it, but at the moment the Republicans seem to have access to and ownership of more sophisticated equipment. The fact is, is it partisan to say that white men took black men as slaves? As I researched the subject, this is what I found: I researched vote flipping to find out what percentage of votes reported in 13 states had flipped from Bush to Kerry. In the film, it says the majority indicates more than 90%, but the fact is the percent was about 98%. But I thought people weren't going to believe me if I said that. Is it partisan to say this is what happened?

Filmmaker: Was it always your aim to release the film at this time to coincide with election fever?

Fadiman: Honest to God, it wasn't done until now. It kept lacking things and I kept adding interviews to balance it and make it more believable to people who were cautious or disbelieving. So I just interviewed Paul Craig Roberts, who was in the Reagan administration and at the Wall Street Journal, [and] I just interviewed Ion Sancho, who is an elected election official who was the technical advisor to the Florida recount. I felt that I needed to have some of those other voices in there and by the time I got everybody together it was now. In fact, people advised me to get it out way before this if I wanted to make people aware when they voted to be careful, to pay attention and be observant – but I couldn't finish it any faster than this. Things take as long as they take, and this one took almost four years. I just finally got it right now.

Filmmaker: I'd like to talk about your first film, Radiance. Am I right in saying that you were inspired to make it after the experience of an LSD trip?

Fadiman: Yes, it was an LSD trip and it was very spiritual and very sacred. LSD has a spectrum of uses: it can be used for fun; it can be used for sacred, spiritual experiences especially with a guide. And I did have a guide, and had a very deeply spiritual experience in which I saw and experienced the presence of light as intelligence throughout the universe.

Filmmaker: And since that film, you've been a filmmaker working outside of the system for more than 30 years. What has that experience been like? Do you feel you've been at something of a disadvantage?

Fadiman: No, I don't feel that at all. People are hungry for projects they believe in and care about. I have no lack of funding, I have no lack of volunteers, and I have no lack of people who want to work on the films. It's really been phenomenal how people come forward to work on these films and support these films. The abortion series had more than 300 individual donations and 17 foundations gave grants. So yes, I'm outside the system but there are a number of individuals and foundations who want to support filmmakers who are willing and able to work outside the system.

Filmmaker: I read somewhere that you have struggled to balance your personal life and family life with your filmmaking.

Fadiman: That has been the sacrifice, that has been the place where it has cost me something that I could actually sit down and add up: Less time with a husband (I've been married to the same man for 45 years), less time with children and grandchildren, less time with all extended family. And everyone supports me, and everyone trusts me and believes that what I've been doing is worth it. I sat my children down – at one point, I'd taken some kind of growth workshop and it encouraged you to apologize to the people in your life that you've hurt – and I apologized to my two daughters, and they both said the same thing to me, almost simultaneously. They said, “What are you apologizing for?! We're so proud of you, and we love what you do and you were always there when we needed you.”

Filmmaker: Do you feel you've been able to strike the right balance then?

Fadiman: No, not a balance. But was it worth it? It's close, but I'd say yes. But not by much. [laughs]

Filmmaker: Is Hollywood going in the right direction?

Fadiman: [laughs] Well, I'll answer that one abstractly. I'd like to see more well-funded, well-produced high-end documentaries. I'd like to see more films like the Karen Silkwood story [Silkwood], or Whose Life Is It Anyway?, films that take real life situations and docudrama them with real people going through real experiences. There was a film on HBO, If These Walls Could Talk, and Cher, Lily Tomlin and Sissy Spacek told stories of women who'd lived through abortions in a narrative, and I'd like to see more well done docudramas [like that].

Filmmaker: Finally, if the world ended tomorrow, what (if anything) would you be sad about that you hadn't achieved?

Fadiman: Well, creatively I've exceeded my goals by so much I can't even measure – I've produced 20 films and I love every one of them. Interpersonally, I feel really good about the relationships that I have in my life. I would say if the world ended tomorrow, I'd regret that I haven't taken better care of my body, that I would be stronger, more athletic, eat even better so that I would have the clarity and strength to do the work. My body is OK but it is one of the things that I have sacrificed in a way while I've immersed myself in filmmaking. I am turning a corner now but I am going to have to do a lot of work to catch up for so much that I haven't done. I'm making a new commitment once this film is finished to focus on healing and strengthening my body.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 8/01/2008 04:35:00 PM Comments (0)