Noah Buschel
Friday, January 14th, 2011
I guess somewhere, in the back of my mind, I knew it could never last. I wanted to make art films. But it was just a matter of time before the realities of life intruded. I am thirty-two now. Most of the people I met in the independent film world are long gone. They are movie stars or cable directors or waiters or teachers. I don’t know them anymore.
It was raining and it was hot on the river. I was crashing on my friend’s couch. Me and my fiancé had just split up and I was having a nervous breakdown. In between nightmares, I thought about how I could get back on my feet maybe. There was that little, strange two-hander script — the one all the agents and managers had told me not to do — in fact, they wouldn’t rep me if I did. I had written it while living in a Tokyo motel for a week — a couple years back. The actors, John Ortiz and Martha Plimpton, were attached. It was about an agoraphobic. And she falls for her plumber.
The movie looked set to shoot for around a million dollars. There was only one problem. I was having trouble leaving my friend’s apartment. I missed meetings with investors. I was late getting everywhere. Ortiz gave me pep talks, but there was only so much he could do. Eventually the project kinda melted away. I didn’t really care.
Day after day and night after night, I would lie on my friend’s couch. Mostly I just stared at the ceiling and drank Seltzer. Sometimes I could focus enough to watch a movie on my laptop. I started watching some of Ozu’s movies. They were soothing, but not in a trivial way. They were made by a heart-broken person, I could feel. But a heart-broken person who hadn’t given up. Simply, he had compassion.
I kept watching Ozu’s films. The static camera. The calm clarity. Some small fire was starting to glow in me again. Some small fire to make a movie. But not with serious money or a big crew or nothin’ like that. In fact, I didn’t even wanna move the camera. I … Read the rest
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
It’s hard to go head first into film noir and not regurgitate the themes, styles, dialogue and characters from the past. But Noah Buschel in his latest cleverly dances around the genre to tell a story of a man who’s hit rock bottom and how he unknowingly redeems himself.
Set in the modern day, Michael Shannon gives one of his best performances in a budding career as a gifted character actor with his portrayal as sauced Chicago private eye John Rosow. When we meet Rosow he’s extremely hung over and gets a call to do a job tailing a guy with little information on why but for a lot of money. Given instructions by the attractive Miss Charley (Amy Ryan), Rosow is onboard a train to L.A. As his job continues he begins to learn more on why the guy he’s following is so important and why he’s the best man for the job.
Okay, that sounds like all the noirs you’ve ever seen in your life.
But instead of following Rosow as he stumbles upon clues and inevitably shows he’s a much better detective than the bad guys gave him credit for, Buschel keeps the plot at bay for most of the film, instead concentrating on the complex Rosow and exploring how he got to where he is now. And Shannon makes this exploration a joy to watch; grunting, slurring and cracking wise through most of the film, he makes Rosow out as a guy who’s seen it all and has had enough of the job but can’t think of anything better to do. Think of a much more disturbed Harry Caul from The Conversation.
The mood is also set by the top notch work by d.p. Ryan Samul, and the predominant jazz score. You can almost smell the stale cigarettes as the music comes in when Rosow enters a bar.
There really is no grand villain in The Missing Person or sultry femme fatale, we’re in a world “beyond right and wrong,” as Rosow puts it in the end. A place where getting by is the only … Read the rest
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
I’m at the Edinburgh Film Festival, jetlagged bad, and I’m asked for emerging filmmaker advice by some kid. He says, in particular, he wants to know about making art films and being a writer/director. Oh boy. I try to find something to say, but it’s disingenuous and the kid knows it. I go back to the hotel room and roll around in the bed, can’t sleep. The only thing on the T.V. is Michael Jackson’s body bag.
I go to the window and look at the ancient castle and the ancient fog and I think about what I would tell the kid if I really had the nerve — if my nerves weren’t all shot. This is what I’d tell him: If you really wanna make movies, and make them your own — there’s gonna be loneliness. And no one really talks about it, but it’s true, I promise. For instance, did you know that even the people you work with — a lot of them won’t like the final product. They’ll think you screwed it up and not really dig what you’re doing. And your producers will hate you. And your editor will quit you. And your dog will give you dirty looks in the morning.
There isn’t too much time to feel sorry for yourself. The distributors just sent you the poster and it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine — you know it’s fine — but Goddamnit it ain’t the movie you made and you gotta at least try to make it the movie you made. At least try. But it’s fine. But it’s not. You take a long walk at three in the morning. Kick bottle caps.
The project is your project, and it is your problem. It’s not anyone else’s problem. In the years that you spend on the project, it’s very likely you will never have a conversation with anyone about the project that makes you feel less alone with the project. The project is a problem.
But you know! You know it’s true. You know what you’re saying and that the movie is true. … Read the rest
Monday, January 19th, 2009
Noah Buschel’s The Missing Person stars Michael Shannon, last seen as the asylum-bound neighbor in Revolutionary Road, and if Sam Mendes had directed this film, he might have played it straight, disregarding the minefield of clichés to pay reverent homage to The Long Goodbye; Buschel knows what a bold move it is to make a noir in 2007, so he subverts the genre with un-ironic simplicity and a few tall guys hitting their heads on the ceiling.
We meet Shannon’s character in his dungeon-like Chicago apartment. His cell phone is ringing; he’s a PI; he’s offered a lot of money to get on a train and follow someone to California. He drinks too much, generally, but the liquor isn’t filling the hole gaping open on his sleeve. As the case develops and winds its way through L.A., Mexico, and back to New York, he is forced to choose which side of this case he wants to be on. Instructed by his employer’s secretary (Amy Ryan) to obtain a cell phone with a camera, he spends much of the film learning to use it. Buschel (previously the director of Bringing Rain and Neal Cassady) wanted the film to play like a dream, he says, because sometimes movies that feel like dreams are more real than real life.
Filmmaker: The world of the film, especially visually, is very controlled. Can you talk about how you placed the film in time?
Buschel: Hopefully it all plays as sort of a dream, and feels like its own world. He’s sleeping in bed in the first scene, and I would like to think that we retain the possibility that maybe he never woke up, that it was all just a dream. [The story] is sort of about him wandering through his past, him wandering through his own mind. Those are my favorite kinds of movies, where you can see the story literally but also you could view it as a trip through the main character’s mind. Movies by Hayao Miyazaki, David Lynch, Terrence Malick, Hitchcock — The Conversation is like that, where it … Read the rest
