Wholphin No. 9
Wholphin No 9 features three, hilarious, never-before-seen short films by Spike Jonze; Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s short story, “Sparks,” starring Carla Gugino and Eric Stoltz; the Academy Award-nominated documentary, “La Corona,” about a high-stakes beauty pageant in a Colombian women’s prison; an incredibly rare and candid glimpse into the life of a Mormon fundamentalist who shares a husband with her younger biological sister; the Jury Prize-winning short from Cannes; Caveh Zahedi; meteorites; motordromes; acting lesson orgasms; films from Belgium, France, Germany, Australia and Japan, and much more.
14 films. 2 hours, 51 minutes
LINER NOTES
Samantha Rose* was having trouble with her ribbon. The tippy end of her left pigtail was always frustratingly difficult to tie, no matter what length of ribbon she used. Standing on the booster stool in the bathroom, she repeatedly failed to get the bunny around the bend. It didn’t help that her mom was running around all morning in tears and wouldn’t tell her why. She just kept frantically yelling at Samantha to hurry up and go get in the car. Then she would immediately switch moods, apologize, hug Samantha and tell her how beautiful she looked in her new church dress. Then two seconds later she’d be crying and yelling again. It was really creepy. Samantha couldn’t guess what the problem was; it wasn’t like they had never been late to church before. They certainly had, when Samantha’s little brother, Joseph, was born, for instance. And Pastor Joseph wasn’t even angry. Being late to church was a sin of course, but being worried about being late to church wasn’t exactly worth crying over all morning. Even her little brother knew that.
Just then, as Samantha was oh-so-carefully guiding the bunny through the hole for the fifteenth time, her daddy flew in and scooped her up, causing the ribbon to slip out of her fingers again. “Daddy!” she whined, as only eight-year-old girls can.
“Daddy!” she whined, as only eight-year-old girls can.
“Sorry, honey, we can’t be late today. It’s really important.”
That was when Samantha noticed her dad’s face was also stained with tears.
“What’s wrong? Why are you and Mom crying?” she nervously asked as he placed her in the back of their car.
“And why can’t we be late?” she added.
Samantha would never get an answer to her questions, because at that moment a helicopter flew right over their house, followed by just about every police car in the state of Texas pulling into their driveway. There were a lot of sirens, and screaming and yelling so loud that Samantha covered her ears and shut her eyes. Within seconds a policewoman was shouting at her over the noise of the helicopter, asking her if she was hurt anywhere, as if she’d just fallen off a bike or something.
They put her in an ambulance and asked her all kinds of questions. She couldn’t see her mom or dad. It was really scary.
And it was about to get scarier.
Samantha’s parents were in fact taking Samantha to church that day, not for the usual Sunday-school lesson with Pastor Joseph, but, as her daddy had mentioned, for a very important reason that—the policewoman later explained—had something to do with a giant telescope. Apparently, a few weeks earlier, astronomers from the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research lab (LINEAR) had discovered a PHO, a potentially hazardous object, which they boringly dubbed 2002MN. It was a giant space rock calculated to pass just 120,000 miles from the earth at a speed of 38,000 kph, today, June 14, 2002! Wow. Samantha would later learn that despite the astronomers’ calculations, a lot of people, including Pastor Joseph and Samantha Rose’s parents, thought the astronomers were lying and that the boringly-named 2002MN was going to crash into the earth and destroy the planet. Pastor Joseph, being a man of action, had prophesied that the only way to stave off the global destruction would be to have Samantha sacrificed on an altar of some sort. Why he believed this would deter the asteroid’s orbit was never fully explained. Luckily, one of the church members had decided Pastor Joseph might have finally gone bat shit loon crazy and tipped off the police to his plan, thus saving Samantha Rose’s pigtails.
As I write, another asteroid, 2009 DD45, has just careened past Earth at the mere distance of 40,000 miles (that’s within the orbit of some communications satellites). One of the planet’s less-boring astronomers colorfully stated to the press that had this thing hit the earth, it could have taken out a small country. At such high speeds, rocks a few hundred feet across can create nuclear-size explosions, not to mention, as Samantha’s story shows, all kinds of reactions from a reactionary public. And more are on the way.
Not surprisingly, astronomers have taken to not informing people about these events until after the threat has passed.
Beginning with Jérémy Clapin’s film “Skhizein,” the animated tale of one man’s psychic collision with a metaphoric meteor, Wholphin no. 9 is a compendium of symbolic asteroids and their very real impact on human lives. In Amanda Micheli and Isabel Vega’s documentary La Corona, for instance, a beauty pageant impacts a Colombian women’s prison like Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted Jupiter, leaving marks visible across the country. In Julius Avery’s Cannes-award–winning short “Jerrycan,” a bullied boy becomes his own comet and creates his own personal 1908 Tunguska Explosion Event. And watching Jill Orschel’s “Sister Wife” is, for me at least, like witnessing the Great Daylight Fireball of 1972 unfolding before my eyes: You can just see the raw friction polygamous marriage has created in a proud, pious woman. It burns across her face like that 100-mile trail of molten lead streaking across the Wyoming sky. The impact of polygamy, of widowhood, of prison, of acting class, of the Flemish hinterland, of bullies, it’s all here. And on top of that we have three amazing films by our friend Spike Jonze, including a rare piece starring the great Maurice Sendak.
Feast! (And please resubscribe if you haven’t already!)
* Names and details have been changed as this story was imparted to me several years ago by a drifter I met while on wheat harvest deep in the Texas panhandle.
An Interview with the Filmmaker
Q: You’ve made an incredibly polished film, which undoubtedly took a lot of time, effort, and money. What inspired you to make “Sparks” in the first place, and did it turn out the way you expected?
Joseph Gordon-Levitt: My goodness, you’re too kind. Thank you. Working as an actor since little boyhood, the entire filmmaking process has always attracted me, and cliché as it is, I must admit, I’ve long wanted to try my head in the writer/director’s hat. But what to do? Where to begin? Well, in my experience, much—and arguably all—of my most fruitful creativity doesn’t just spring out of nowhere. “Sparks” happened across my path, I started playing around with it, fell further and further in love with it, and now you’re reading this.
And if I do say so myself, I think it was wise to lose my virginity, so to speak, with material from outside of myself. Working with a solid foundation that I never had to doubt allowed me to focus on the execution, avoid second-guessing the conception, and thus faithfully realize the end result I’d envisioned. And if nothing else, I learned shit-tons.
Q: Is this your first adaptation? How did you choose Elmore Leonard and how did you approach his estate?
JGL: Oh, I adapt stuff all the time. Perhaps most notably, I adapted a poem by Jacques Prévert called “Chanson des escargots qui vont à l’enterrement.” You can see it on hitRECord.org—but more about that later. A few years ago, I acted in a movie called Killshot, an adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel. There I met Megan Freels and Melanie Donkers who were working for John Madden and Richard Gladstein, the film’s director and producer. Megan is Elmore’s granddaughter, so she and Melanie wanted to produce a short-film adaptation of “Sparks.” I was flattered and intrigued when they asked if I wanted to direct it. Within reading the first paragraph of the story, I thought of a friend I’d recently made, Carla Gugino, whom I adored then and do even more now. Why did Megan and Melanie choose this particular Leonard short story? I don’t know; we never much discussed it, but I think it had a lot to do with the catchy title.
Q:The arts-and-crafts visual style you adopted gave the film a really distinct tone. Were you happy with the results? Did you ever want “real” fire surrounding Carla Gugino, for instance?
JGL: Thanks again. Yeah, those arts-and-crafts pieces were like the butter on the bread—the warmest, wettest, most delicious part. Of course, butter without bread is a lot less appealing, so it was the contrast between the two sides that made each work, I think.
And no, I never did want real fire; I always wanted fabric flames. Perhaps my favorite thing in the whole wide world is this one Russian clown’s dream theater called Slava’s Snowshow, where the sailboat looks suspiciously like a broom and a bed, and the snow turns to paper as soon as you touch it. Our culture’s dominant tradition of filmmaking doesn’t play much with the artfully artificial—the goal is always to seem real.
One of my favorite staples of Elmore Leonard’s writing is the wonderfully revealing tangential turn a paragraph of prose will take in counterpoint to the lines of dialogue. Often, adaptations of novels relegate these gems to the implicit. But by interpreting those tangents as theatrical life-size dioramas, the actors found a foolish freedom to bring that bubbling subtext up through the fourth wall and directly into the lens.
Q: If given a choice between directing a fully funded short film you wrote and a fully funded feature film someone else wrote, which would you choose (assuming you liked both equally)? I guess I’m basically asking if you have an inherent preference between shorts and features, or if you view them both equally as mediums.
JGL: Love a bit of brevity.
Q: What was in the martini glasses?
JGL: Ice water. Now ask what was in the joint.
Q: What are you reading right now?
JGL: Remix by Lawrence Lessig.
Q: That’s you playing drums in Carla’s band, right?
JGL: Actors never get to be very involved in the music. It sucks. So, in a thunderous fit of pent-up retaliation, I made all the music on “Sparks.” It was awesome. For me, anyway.
There are two different sets of music in the film. There’s Carla’s
character’s band, Robin and the Path. I wrote those two songs more as exploratory musings on the character, but Carla responded to them so strongly, they ended up becoming rather prominent in the film. Two dear friends and I recorded the instruments (Josh Klinghoffer on guitar, Steve McDonald on bass, me on drums) at Steve’s rehearsal space, with no comp chopping or overdubbing, like a good old-fashioned rock-and-roll band. A few days later, Carla came in and sang the songs like a nouvelle Venusian rock-and-roll goddess.
Then there’s the music accompanying the theatrical arts-and-crafts pieces. I wanted it to sound like Robin’s band was scoring the movie. So I kept it to guitar, bass, and drums. Another old friend of mine, Jeff Sudakin, and I locked ourselves in his home studio for several weeks, coming up with suitable parts, me playing the instruments and he making sure they sounded good.
I find Elmore Leonard’s writing remarkably musical in its rhythms, and the idea of making music to complement that text was certainly one of the significant appeals of adapting “Sparks.”
Q: You have a great website, hitRECord.org, which you describe as a “mass collaborative RECording arts project in progress.”
JGL: Indeed I do, and thank you thrice. In fact, one of the reasons I’m so pleased to contribute to the McSweeney’s/Wholphin canon is because such a great deal of my aspirations for hitRECord resonate with what Dave Eggers et al have accomplished here.
What does it mean, “hit RECord”? Different things. It can be an object—a musical recording that sold a lot of copies. But it can also be an action, to hit Record, to start recording, to make a record, be it of sound, light, words, anything else. Hitting that round red REC button, when the tape starts rolling, or the camera clicks, or even just when writing something down, it always makes my heart beat a bit harder
It started four years ago as but a wee website to display a few videos I’d made. But in the last couple years, a multitude of creative contributors from beginners to pros have joined in. We RECord, remix, respond, resonate. We’ve become a community. We collaborate. And if any of you dear readers might be interested in collaborating with me and the rest of us hitRECorders, whether you write stories, draw pictures, play clarinet, cut video, Photoshop collages, compile mixtapes, any, all, or none of the above, I’d be delighted and honored if you’d give the site a hit. Are you RECording?
An Interview with the Filmmakers
Q: How did you two meet and decide to make this film together?
Isabel Vega: Amanda and I got to know each other while we were working on a documentary for HBO called Thin. We spent a couple months filming in an eating-disorder clinic under intense surroundings, so we bonded right away. Shortly before I was getting ready to make this film, I stopped in San Francisco. I met up with Amanda and told her all about the idea, and then I said to her, It’s too bad you don’t speak Spanish, because you’d be the perfect person to do this with. Out of nowhere she starts speaking Spanish. Who knew?! Immediately we started collaborating on the film.
Q: In what ways did being two female filmmakers help and/or hurt your ability to make this film?
Amanda Micheli: I think in a place like a women’s prison, it’s imperative that you have an all-woman crew. With the kind of personal access we wanted to get, having a man there would have made it harder… sorry, fellas!
Q: How did you get the women to speak so openly about the crimes they’d committed and their lives in and outside of prison?
IV: We didn’t interview the girls until we had already spent about a week filming with them. At first no one wanted to be a part of the film, because they saw us as media and were fearful of what would be said about them. The way we pitched the idea was, Get to know us first and then decide if you don’t want to be in it. Then it became about gaining their trust. They soon got used to us coming in every day, morning and afternoon.
It was clear we were committed. I think they respected the efforts we went through to spend time with them. So when it was time to start interviewing them they were more willing to share. Maira, the assassin, was by far the toughest in terms of getting to talk about her crime. She had so much anger in her that she had shut her past out altogether. We made it clear to all the women that the film would be narrated by their voices and that they were in control of what they said. Eventually she spoke.
Q: What was the hardest part about making this film?
IV: Getting such incredible access and gaining the trust of the women were two of our biggest challenges. A couple of months before the pageant I started doing some of the preliminary work. Being from Colombia and having most of my family nearby was a huge advantage. A cousin of mine who had some ties to the prison was able to guide me in the right direction and get me a meeting with the press secretary who grants the access. I flew to Colombia and I pitched the idea to her. Anyone from the media is allowed to go and film the day of the pageant. Getting the before and the after, and getting access to the prisoners’ cells, is a whole different task. For the meeting, I brought previous films that Amanda and I had worked on, and I think she appreciated all the efforts we went through. I also think it helped to be Colombian and to be a woman. Once she was on board, the next step was to get the prison warden on our side. This required a lot of patience and time. She was key in the making of this film. She could have shut us down any minute, but I think she understood what we wanted to do. Truth is, she loved being in front of the camera!
AM: Pretty much every day we had to bring a typed list of what we wanted to film to the warden’s office and get her to sign it. Some days, we would wait outside her office all day, knowing that we were missing a great scene inside—and other days, even if she signed the paper, if a guard inside questioned it we got the boot. Typically, we were only allowed to shoot a few hours at a time, so we just had to be really patient.
Q: What was it like shooting in a Colombian prison? Did it ever feel threatening or scary?
AM: I never personally felt unsafe on the inside—it was the outside that sometimes seemed threatening to me, especially with the expensive film gear we had in tow. But the prison itself wasn’t what I expected at all; many of the women there are very young, and they all wear street clothing, jewelry, and makeup. At first, it makes you think it’s not that tough in there—but then you find out, the reason they don’t have uniforms is because the prison can’t afford them, which puts it in a different perspective! The women are really poor, and often have to scrape together money for basic needs that the prison can’t provide, which is tough to do from the inside, to say the least.
IV: I often forgot that I was inside a prison. The women don’t wear uniforms, and you’ll see them hanging out chatting with friends in the “plaza.” It felt like we were in a boarding school most of the time. Having said that, yes, it was a dangerous place and fights did often erupt. I’m sure there was corruption within, but we were never witnesses to it. Except for Maira’s fight in the soccer game.
Q: How was the food?
IV: I’m Colombian so nothing is as good as my grandmother’s cooking, but it didn’t look bad! We were not allowed to eat the same food as the inmates, so we often ate at the cafeteria where staff and guards ate. The chefs were inmates, and they were not bad at all!
Q: I was surprised to see celebrity judges and news coverage of the pageant. For a prison that can’t even afford uniforms for its inmates, it was fascinating to see such an elaborate event.
AM: I know—it was intense how much support and attention they were able to get from people on the outside. The queen of each cell block has the support of a large group of inmates (and administrators
and guards, too) unified around pulling off this grand production on a shoestring budget. The inmates make floats out of recycled cardboard while administrators get gowns donated from local designers and elicit volunteers to help coach the girls in dancing, catwalking, hair, and makeup. Even the prison warden, who claims she doesn’t like the pageant, can’t help but get drawn in to all the excitement. But the judges were the best—one was a transvestite soap-opera star and another was a judge on a Colombian reality-competition show.
IV: They take this pageant very seriously! The day before the pageant they have a parade where they dance and show off their talent. Weeks before the event, they start building floats and costumes. One of the cell blocks built a horse and had one of the ladies dress up as Juan Valdez, and as they got to the end of the catwalk they offered coffee to all the judges! They even organize whole mariachi bands to come in!
Q: In the beginning of the documentary, Maira makes several homophobic remarks at a soccer game. Was that common among the prisoners? How do you think the pageant affected the women in terms of their sexual identities in the midst of the prison dynamic?
AM: That’s a big topic. When we first started shooting, the warden warned us that she didn’t want us focusing on gay women in her prison. Colombia is a very Catholic country and many of these women had been married to men and have children on the outside. But when you are on the inside, things change, and you are really lonely. I personally think Maira was just using homophobic slurs because they sounded tough and made her feel better than the others. Even Viviana, the quiet, dark-haired ex-FARC member in the film, had a girlfriend on the inside. She refused to let us show that in the film, but she ended up moving in with her girlfriend when they were both released from prison. So while the social taboo is powerful, the women do find meaningful relationships while they are in prison. It’s probably not so common that these relationships last, but many women do shift perspective on their sexuality while doing time inside.
IV: The crazy thing is that even Maira at one point had a girlfriend on the inside! I believe their sexuality is irrelevant when it comes to competing in the pageant.
Q: What do you think inspired the racist comments directed toward Angela at the end of the documentary? Was it pure jealousy and disappointment? Are such attitudes deep-seated in Colombian culture? Personal drama?
AM: All of the above! Racism is surely deep-seated in Colombia, and just as it is in America, prison is always even more divided and extreme than the outside culture itself. I think in any competitive situation, people often try to justify their loss, and if it’s one group against another, that depersonalizes it and makes it easy to sling mud. While the inmates might get along despite their differences in their day-to-day lives, when the pressure builds and the stakes are raised, every cell block thinks their queen deserves to win, and there must be some grave injustice if they don’t. It’s a form of peer pressure, too—I don’t think any one girl would have made those speculations to us in a one-on-one interview, but in a group they feel emboldened and can laugh along with it.
IV: Yes, jealousy and disappointment had a lot to do with it, but I do think that racism does play a role in it. These women will make these statements and the next day they will be hugging Angela. Perhaps they realize that on the inside they are all in the same boat. But yes, there is racism in Colombian culture; it’s very closely tied to classism. There is such a huge divide between the rich and the poor. Hopefully education will one day narrow that gap. It’s the same situation you see in many countries around the world.
Q: With hindsight, what are your thoughts on prison events like this? To me they seem like cold comfort.
AM: The pageant is a brief escape from an otherwise very dark reality—as revealed by the fact that the winner of the pageant was killed within a year of her release. La Corona shows just a tiny slice of life within a very complicated social situation. But these women really do take pride in representing their cell blocks and crave the distraction from the day-to-day of prison life. Also, it’s a part of a larger religious celebration of the Virgin of Mercedes, the patron saint of prisoners. I personally say let them have their fun with this, because they won’t get it elsewhere, not in their current circumstances. But that’s not to say, as a film viewer, you shouldn’t watch everything with a critical eye. For example, there are a lot of educational and work programs that could really benefit these women—and that could be a whole other film.
IV: Often in these events a member of the leftist FARC will collaborate with her opposition from the right-wing paramilitary. They will work side by side, overlooking their political differences. This was the case with Viviana and one of her fellow inmates. In an ideal world these women would all be learning a craft they could then take into the outside world, to help them get out of the vicious cycle they are in. But until then, this is what they have. And they do look forward to the contest every year.
Q:I hear smuggling is a big part of prison life. What was the most precious commodity the women wanted to have smuggled in? And did you assist them?
AM: Oh my god, no—we never smuggled anything in. I’m sure in general there’s a significant amount of drugs going in and out of that place, but we never witnessed that firsthand. We did bring in gifts, which were totally aboveboard. We got the girls cool sneakers like Pumas and Adidas, and those were a big hit!
Q: Do you have any updates? Have you kept in touch with the women?
IV: Maira has been in and out of jail a couple times. She struggles to find work. I think she competed in another pageant and lost again! Viviana is out, and last I heard she was with a girlfriend she had on the inside, looking for her son. Angie had a baby boy and is out now. Angela, as you know, has passed on. She left two young kids behind.
An Interview with the Filmmaker
Q: Is this story autobiographical?
Justin Nowell: Thankfully, no. I did, however, teach an acting class briefly here in New York, which got Tommy (my brother and the writer of the film) and me thinking about the dramatic/comedic/horrific possibilities that an acting class presents.
Q: You were involved in theater as a child and got your degree in film at NYU. Do you prefer acting over directing, or vice versa? What do you see as your strengths and weaknesses in both?
JN: Well, I’m a terrible actor. So there’s that. The last thing I acted in was Sleepaway Camp II, so I’m going to say that my strengths lie behind the camera. Having a background in acting has been helpful, though. I really enjoy working with actors—the process, the collaboration—and maybe that comfort comes from having some sense of what they’re going through, being a frustrated actor myself.
Q: The editing is incredibly, orgasmically tight, and so I assume that this film was perfectly planned out from pre- to post-production. Is that true? Do you generally stay on book? Does it make you feel more in control? Do you experiment with improvisation?
JN: “Orgasmically tight”—hmm. I’m not sure I know what that means, but it sounds like a compliment, if a slightly obscene one. Anyway, I’ll take it! As for the planning, yeah, we had to be incredibly well prepped to shoot “Acting for the Camera.” I decided I wanted to shoot in a real acting class, which meant that we only had the six hours of class to rip through fifteen pages. Grant Greenberg, my DP, and Tommy and I rehearsed with our three principal actors extensively, and blocked out the camera movements for all four cameras that we used. Our takes couldn’t be too long because we wanted to capture the shock and surprise of the kids in the class as we hit each revelation in the script. As for improvisation, I would have loved to use more, but with the amount of time we had, we just weren’t able to stray from the script or the blocking we rehearsed—too many balls in the air as it was. Next time, though, next time.
Q: What’s the best instruction/advice a teacher has ever given you?
JN: “Keep shooting.”
Q: What’s the most uncomfortable situation you’ve ever been in?
JN: It’s pretty uncomfortable asking an actor to do some of the things in the script for this short. Having to go up to Joe Urla (the acting teacher) after he’s performed four fake orgasms in front of this class, and telling him we need another angle—that’s pretty mortifying. Joe’s a tremendous sport in addition to a fantastic actor.
Q: Your first Sundance film, “Sick Sex,” was about a guy trying to convince his girlfriend to have sex with him even though she felt like death, and this film also explores sex, power dynamics, and gender roles. Care to explain? Are there any topics that do make you shy?
JN: Hmm. That is pretty troubling. Perhaps best to leave that stone unturned.
Q: What is your favorite short film, and are you still mad at us that we haven’t included it on an issue yet?
JN: Man oh man, am I ever! I met Brent this past year at CineVegas, and after I got a few coladas into the evening, I let him have it with both barrels over the absence of any Blue Tongue films on Wholphin. Blue Tongue is a collective of filmmakers from Sydney (Luke Doolan, Nash Edgerton, David Michod) who are, hands down, the best short-filmmakers out there.
(Editor’s note: Nash Edgerton’s “Lucky” appears on Wholphin no. 6)
An Interview with the Filmmaker
Q: Did you know from the start that you wanted this story to be animated? It’s a brilliant use of the form. Are there certain things that you think can be achieved with animation and not live action?
Jérémy Clapin: The fact is, I feel comfortable with animation. This is the way I like to tell stories. I like the freedom you have in animation. I think in animation. And animation is cinema, cinema is not only live action. Animation shouldn’t have to justify itself in the face of live action.
Q: Is it true that most of the work on this film was one by just you and one other person? How long did that take? And how often were you working on it?
JC: It took more than one year, and yes, for much of the time there were only two of us working on the film—Jean-François Sarazin, the technical director, and me for the design, animation, and compositing.
Of course, several other people contributed in important ways when it was possible, Stephane Piera as script doctor.
Q: What made you choose ninety-one and seventy-five centimeters? They are short distances to be disconnected from different objects.
JC: For me these numbers mean nothing. We can all sense them as lengths, so it’s easy to feel what Henry’s going through, to identify, and for staging purposes, the distances needed to be both visible and compact.
Q: It seems an American version of this movie would have Henry use his strange powers to become a superhero or make a quick buck doing magic shows. Do you think French culture affects Henry’s spiral into depression?
JC: If that’s the case, it would be a remake of “le passe-muraille” (Mister Peek-a-boo).
My first idea before doing the film was the graphic situation of a man sitting near his chair. The psychological dimension struck me afterward. I tried to let the story unfold with the same approach. It begins like an amusingly absurd graphic situation and slides toward a psychological drama.
Q: I love the final thought of the film: “They never tell you how crazy you are. So a little bit more, a little bit less… what’s the point of knowing how many centimeters you’ve slipped?” Why do you think we’re compelled to quantify everything? Do you think exact numbers and answers make us feel safer? Do you think people recover centimeter by centimeter?
JC: Numbers not only make us feel safer; estimating and quantifying things is one of the rules of our society. When you focus on something, you need to know if you are close or not. To keep going, to adapt—or to give up. Henry is completely lost. The increasing mess in his apartment represents how lost he is in his mind. He is trying to make his own perception of the world match with the real world. Most schizophrenics know that they have something wrong with them. Craziness is invisible, but the damage in the brain is real.
Q: What is the loneliest and most disconnected you’ve ever felt?
JC: When I was drunk during a small but very real earthquake.
Q: What is the best cure for sadness?
JC: I can think of one—but it’s not good.
Q: What do you think will happen to Henry now?
JC: He’s free. He is happy seeing things we won’t ever be able to see.
An Interview with the Filmmaker
Q: True story? If not, what was the inspiration? Were you ever bullied?
Julius Avery: Everyone thinks this is a film about bullying—I just wanted to make a film about kids punching, smoking cigarettes,
and blowing shit up.
I lived in a small town very much like the one in “Jerrycan.” All the kids are loosely based on kids I knew growing up. It was funny how nothing had changed. All those kids in real life I found were pretty close to the characters I knew when growing up. We cast all the kids from the town we shot in, so there was a dynamic already happening. I guess the main kid in the film is based on me. I was a social outcast and never really got along with the other kids. I gave it a go, but ultimately I never really fit in. Nothing much has changed: I am still a social outcast, really— but I am at peace with it now. So was it a true story? Did
I become the bully? We’ve all done some bullying in our time one way or another; it’s a fact of life.
Q: When was the last time you punched someone/stood up to someone like that?
JA: That’s how I got such great performances out of the kids!I am kidding, of course. But I am a pacifist who constantly thinks about hitting people who shit on me all the time. I walk away and run the scene through my head: I never lose and I usually cause a good deal of pain. I smile to myself and in my head I say, Take that, you son of a bitch! Truth be told, in real life I never did get to hit the bully. But in my head I did, and I got him good, so that’s how I wrote it.
Q: What was it like working with explosives? Was coordinating the explosion easy or did it take several takes before you got it right? Did you call Nash Edgerton for advice?
JA: Nash wishes he could blow shit up this good! Nah, come to think about it—he blows shit up good, too. It’s all smoke and mirrors at the end of the day. There was lots of boring planning with the SFX guys. I really wanted the kids and the explosion to be in the same shot to make it feel real, so we shot it on a long lens and did a controlled explosion that we could reset for multiple takes. My only direction was: make it big! And I let the experts take it from there.
Q: How did you convince the parents that this was a sane thing to do? Children and explosives equal a producer’s nightmare, right? Did you get insurance? Lie?
JA: That’s why you have good lawyers and producers. Without them directors can’t do nothin’ insane.
Q: You had a very talented group of young actors. Was it difficult to direct a film where almost no one over the age of eighteen has a speaking line? How did you cast? Did everyone get along?
JA: All the kids were under fifteen and they all knew each other already. We were the outsiders, and they loved hanging shit on us. For direction I just said if you do a good job you get another go on the arcade game we hired in for the shoot.
Q: What advice would you give to someone who is being bullied?
JA: Hit them as fucking hard as you can… in your head. That always makes me feel better.
Q: What are you working on now?
JA: I have an action car movie called “Henry vs. Chevy.” It’s all about fast cars, cars blowing up, and cars flying through the air.
An Interview with the Filmmakers
Q: Where did the idea for this story come from? Did you come up with it together?
Marc Roels & Wim Reygaert: The genesis was Wim’s erroneous assumption that he was to get a substantial amount of money back in taxes. Naturally we decided that this make-believe money should be put to good use funding the most far-out movie we could envision. We sat outside in the sun for a long time, felt rather unwell, and started mumbling ideas to each other. The mumbling bit made us giggle deliriously, so we kept that. The rest soon followed, the only proviso being: nothing should make sense, everything should be compelling.
Q: Did the film turn out the way you thought it would in the beginning? Or did it change at all over the course of making it?
MR & WR: We ended up with a budget of $14,000 (10,000 euros), which went almost entirely into shooting and processing the 35-mm stock (of which there was far too little). As a result we knew beforehand that we’d be shooting on a ratio of one-to-one so Marc storyboarded the entire film and we clung to that with something akin to religious devotion during the shoot. Looking at the drawings now, it’s almost as if they’ve been traced from the monitor. Only one shot was deleted in the edit, a scene where the mother desperately clings on to the eponymous hero and tells him about a terrible dream she’d recently had in which he’s trapped inside a giant Coca-Cola bottle rolling down a mountain. Mountains hold a special fascination for people from the lowlands, there being none around and all.
Q: The outdoor locations were incredible. Did you spend a lot of time scouting locations and altering them to meet your needs?
MR & WR: We spent about a month roaming the Flemish backwaters with our irritated producer. (Apparently we tell really bad jokes in the car.) Although admittedly our priority was directed mainly toward locations where there would be no buildings in the frame (no easy feat in tiny Flanders) rather than toward unique or evocative locations, rural Flanders being much of a muchness with regards to Breughelian pastoral vistas (ho hum, yawn…).
Q: Is there anything to fear in the Flemish countryside?
MR & WR: There is much to fear in the Flemish countryside… our film is as much a cautionary tale as it is an entertaining romp through rural perdition.
Q: The movie is very sound-driven, from the musical score to the tape recorders used to show how the main character communicates. Silence also plays a prominent role, especially in the walking scenes. What did you want to achieve with the sound?
MR& WR: Owing to the fact that there is very little dialogue—the few lines there being complete and utter nonsense—there was a danger that the film would be dismissed as the ramblings of two bungling idiots. The music and sound design were therefore vital and all the pieces were chosen well before shooting began. The musical scenes were essentially “choreographed” while one of us attempted to whistle or hum the appropriate theme. We soon stopped doing that, as it was silly.
As far as the music is concerned, we felt that the mighty Teutonic heft of those pieces worked well against the hypnotic banality of the scenes. The scene at the abandoned campsite, however, features a recording of German dadaist Kurt Schwitters reciting one of his poems, which we thought worked well to confuse issues even more. I forget now how we sold that idea to the producers.
Q: Can you also discuss the mumbling? Was it improvised, or are those scripted-yet-incomprehensible words? What does it represent to you?
MR& WR: The mumbling was scripted, however Serge Buyse, who plays the main character found it rather difficult to memorize what is essentially gibberish and remarked that by improvising we would achieve better results. We relented and set to work rehearsing. The rehearsals were rather embarrassing affairs of us attempting to demonstrate to Serge how he was supposed to sound. He in turn regarded us with such horror that we all had to cuddle afterward.
The mumbling essentially represents the Babylonian confusion of dialects which infest Flanders, where someone from one end of the street often cannot make head or tail of what someone else from the other end is trying to say (although it’s mostly something to do with slaughtering cows or pigs or both).
Q: Do you identify with this character or do you know someone like this?
MR & WR: Serge, the main actor, actually embodies much of his character’s traits. He comes from West Flanders, a region of about three square kilometers notorious for its cryptic and otherworldly dialect, and he has a rather peculiar countenance which even when regarding the most banal object is imbued with a strange quality wavering somewhere between imbecility and omniscience. In that respect we do not identify at all with the character, because we can’t quite comprehend him, although as kids we did like to beat up the local flora.
Q: What are you most afraid of?
MR & WR: Just about everything… among other things we are both petrified of flying, driving, the sun (as an unstable mass), large bodies of water, closed spaces, open spaces, chaos, heights, asteroids, unidentified insects, ladybugs (just Wim actually), disease, and a whole spate of minor irrational fears like things coming out of the toilet, the dark, or strange noises.
Q: Are you ever surprised by people’s reactions to the film?
MR & WR: We actually always envisioned it being a “divisive” film (though not necessarily controversial), and the audiences have always played nicely into our hands by either loving it or hating it, although during the screenings where we were present, we often ended up sitting next to the person who most violently abhorred the film, which was always rather interesting. (We quickly learned to cherish our anonymity, although with Wim that is rather difficult, as he sports a large beard.) Some of the more Catholic countries took mild offense at our postcards, which hinted that the main character had “messianic” qualities—that was rather surprising. Most people, however, were very taken with the main character and found themselves quite enchanted, often coming up with all sorts of strange interpretations.
Q: Do you feel a story like this could be expanded into a feature-length film, or would it lose the sense of mystery that makes it so compelling?
MR & WR: Visually and thematically there is definitely potential for a feature-length film, perhaps not this story per se, and the passivity of the main character too would have to be compensated for in some way—perhaps with a voice-over, something like a demented Flemish take on a Terrence Malick–style transcendental meditation…
On the other hand, it’s quite possible that because of the fact that the story makes so little sense, the audience is still trying to come to grips with what’s going on by the time the film has finished, lending the film its compelling nature. A longer format might have an adverse effect… That said, we can’t really escape our own fascinations, so if ever we were to make a feature, some aspects of this film would probably worm their way in somehow (which could be construed as a warning by some).
Q: Have you shown this film to your mothers?
MR & WR: Yes, Wim’s mother thought the film was all right, she was just a bit worried that he might have done that urine-mopping-
with-the-facecloth thing when he was at home. He repeatedly tried to assure her that he had not. Marc’s mother thought the film was a bit odd, but was happy to see him finally doing something he likes.
Q: What are you working on next?
MR & WR: “Various projects in various stages of development,” I think they told us to say. Marc has another short film coming up called “A Gentle Creature,” and Wim has a band called Drums Are for Parades.
An Interview with the Filmmakers
Q: When was this audio recorded? What for?
Caveh Zahedi: The audio was recorded a couple of years ago at San Francisco’s monthly Porchlight storytelling series.
Q: Did you know that you wanted to make an animation before you performed it for a live audience? Is this animated over the actual footage of the stand-up routine?
CZ: I had no intention of animating the story when I performed it, so I didn’t bother to videotape my performance. I later ended up videotaping myself lip-synching to the original audio in my bedroom.
Q: I noticed the animation switches between a cartoony and more photorealistic style. What were the motivations behind this?
CZ: I once read somewhere that ancient Greek drama developed organically out of oral storytelling. A bard (Homer, let’s say) would tell the story of, for instance, the Trojan War and act out the various parts. Later, they decided to have different people play the different parts, and that’s how theater was born. But I kind of like that interim stage, where there’s both a narrator and a dramatization occurring at the same time.
Q: I imagine that after “Tripping with Caveh,” you learned something about the pros and cons of working with people on drugs, but has it ever been this personal before?
CZ: It’s always this personal.
Q: Was this your hardest on-set experience? Directing or other?
CZ: I wish.
Q: There is a little delay to the laughter after Mark states he has been raped, were you ever worried that the audience would be too sensitive for the material?
CZ: Yes, but I enjoy making people uncomfortable.
Q: All your work has a deeply personal element to it. What is it like having people know so much about your personal life?
CZ: It eliminates the need for small talk.
Q: What are the things that you are not comfortable discussing on film?
CZ: I can’t think of anything.
Q: What is your philosophy on drugs?
CZ: The word drugs can mean different things. I’m not a big fan of addictive drugs, and it’s pretty obvious that certain drugs (heroin, cocaine, crack, etc.) can and do destroy lives. But psychedelic drugs (psilocybin,
LSD, DMT, ayahuasca, peyote) are nonaddictive and often spiritually transformative. I don’t think psychedelic drugs are right for everyone, but they’ve been very helpful to me personally.
Q: What’s your favorite film? Favorite director?
CZ: I love Lars von Trier, and I especially love Breaking the Waves and The Idiots.
Q: What are you working on now?
CZ: An eighteen-hour real-time adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
An Interview with the Filmmaker
Q: How did you first meet DoriAnn?
Jill Orschel: I met DoriAnn at a personal-empowerment
workshop in Salt Lake City. She was radiantly pregnant and stood out in the crowd. I had no idea she was a Mormon fundamentalist practicing polygamy. If I had, I’m sure I would have been too intimidated to approach her. I introduced myself and we connected instantly. A few days later, a mutual friend told me that she shared a husband with her younger biological sister, and that she was about ready to give birth to her twelfth child.
Q: Whose idea was it to build the film around the bath? It is a brilliant setting.
JO: I really wanted to do the film vérité-style with DoriAnn in her natural environment surrounded by her family, but a number of circumstances got in the way, including DoriAnn’s husband and sister wife not wanting to participate. I switched directions and went with a more theme-based piece. One thing going on in DoriAnn’s life was that she woke up each morning, before the rest of the family, to do a bath meditation. I asked if we could shoot that, and we discussed how it could have this baptism/unmasking-of-her-truth quality to it. When we were shooting, DoriAnn expressed that she felt less exposed naked in the bathtub than she did with me filming out and about in her community.
Q: How did you get DoriAnn to discuss her emotions so candidly? Was she worried about backlash from the rest of her family or the Mormon Church?
JO: There was about three years of hand-holding and trust-building between us before she opened up authentically in front of the camera. Polygamists are used to the media condemning or victimizing them, so there’s a lot of distrust.
Q: What was her motivation for agreeing to be in the film, do you think?
JO: DoriAnn’s hero is Joan of Arc, and I think she believes that she too is a symbol of sacrifice for her people. DoriAnn is doing something very rare. She is acknowledging some of the hard truths about living as a Mormon fundamentalist, but is also very committed to her lifestyle and faith.
Q: Have her husband and/or sister wife seen the film? Have you done any screenings in the community?
JO: DoriAnn’s older children, closest friends, and parents have seen it. Her teenage boys gave her a hard time for the bath scene, but most everybody I talked to likes the film. I worry about the people in her community who haven’t seen it and will form judgments without giving it a chance. I’m both excited and scared to show the film to DoriAnn’s husband and sister wife. I want them to understand where she is coming from, but there’s always the chance they won’t get past the nudity.
Q: Despite briefly mentioning her twelve children, DoriAnn never discusses how they play a part in the power dynamics of the family. Was there any mention of how her children complicated the situation further?
JO: She never even remotely references her children as a complication; in fact, quite the opposite. I was in shock and awe witnessing
that many siblings under one roof. The children are no doubt a huge piece of the family puzzle, and it would be another interesting side of the story to explore.
Q: She frames her polygamist relationship almost as a requirement. Were there any moments where she seemed to look outside of the Mormon system for answers?
JO: It’s very clear from what DoriAnn says in the film that she leads this life out of duty to her religion and to get closer to God. But her sacrifices are her choice. A lot of people have a hard time grasping this concept. DoriAnn is also very spiritual in broader terms, in that she takes empowerment workshops, or does Native American sweat lodges.
Q: Was the film shot all in one day? Did you ask questions off camera or did DoriAnn prepare the script ahead of time?
JO: We shot the bath for about an hour starting at six o’clock one morning. Then a few months later, we did a very intense four-hour interview. I got out from behind the camera so I could really listen and ask the tough questions, and DoriAnn agreed to have someone watch her children so she could be fully present and candid.
Q: Did you come away from the experience feeling more or less favorably toward polygamy?
JO: Polygamy is not for me, but I respect DoriAnn and the choices she makes for herself and her family. We hear a lot about child brides and dominating husbands and uncles, but the abuses should be treated on a case-by-case basis in my opinion, not by the group as a whole. If nobody is getting hurt, and it’s between consenting adults, why should people be so quick to judge?
Q: Do you believe in God? And if so, does God have an opinion on polygamy?
JO: I believe in a higher being, spirit, creator… “God.” I don’t think God has an opinion or judgment either way. To me, God is what creates the universe and puts us humans on the planet to try and love one another. One of my biggest discoveries while making “Sister Wife” was realizing how much big love it takes to be in a plural marriage. Quite impossible for most of us!
Q: Do you think it is possible to deeply love two people equally at the same time?
JO: You know how a parent can love more than one child equally and unconditionally at the same time? I think the polygamists are striving for that kind of love. Of course, sex gets in the way, as DoriAnn points out in the film.
Q: I would love to see more of her world. Her house, her family, her friends. Do you have any plans to continue exploring DoriAnn’s story?
JO: Absolutely. I would love to make this into a feature-length doc with everyone’s blessing and participation, of course. I’m definitely
interested in expanding the project to include DoriAnn’s external world. This film is a more internal, emotional slice of DoriAnn’s life, and it turned out to be a perfect place to start. She faces her jealousy head on, but comes out the other side an utterly human and complex individual. That’s why audiences are responding to her.
An Interview with the Filmmaker
Q: What was the inspiration for this film? Was it a real crime scene?
Flatform: The film springs from the idea of connecting an internal point of view—always personal and subjective—and an external
point of view—comprehensive and more objective—of a landscape. A landscape, therefore, that results from multiple trajectories, movements in space, which are open to the vagaries of chance and indefinition. The possible is just the other face of the impossible. Our external eye alone reconstructs themes and arranges them quietly. It is therefore understood that every action that occurs within the landscape points toward something else which may have caused it. And though it is not the scene of a crime, it could be.
Q: It seems the landscape itself is the main character in your piece. How did you choose the setting?
Flatform: We wanted to set the film in a landscape closely related to those of Italian Renaissance paintings. It needed to somehow be paradigmatic. We chose this landscape in central Italy’s Marches also because it is one of the places where the painter Lorenzo Lotto spent several years of his pictorial exile.
At the premiere of “Sunday 6th April, 11:42 a.m.,” it was very important for us to project the film in a space which overlooked the same landscape that acts as protagonist in the work. Upon exiting the screening space at the end of the show, the attendees found themselves confronted with the very landscape that they had observed in the film.
Q: Have you ever personally witnessed a crime?
Flatform: What is really interesting in your question is the concept of “witness,” because it includes both receptiveness and attention, that is to say two peculiar characteristics of the active state of consciousness, which is at the base of observation. And this is really our territory. Anyway, the answer is affirmative: one of us discovered a crime committed several years ago in a condominium in Parma.
Q: What is your favorite landscape?
Flatform: Landscapes, like people, historical and cultural facts, and many other events in life can, in the best of times, pose aspects which strike us as peculiar and better than others in just a few particular moments of our existence. But this does not represent either an absolute feeling or an absolute consideration. We do not believe that a landscape exists which can be defined as a “favorite.”
Q: Can you tell us a little bit about Flatform? Who the group comprises and how you came to work together?
Flatform: Flatform is an artistic project of two of us, Annamaria Martena and Roberto Lucca Taroni, and it is open to the collaboration which defines us as a group. Currently four artists participate.
We each collaborate for different reasons. Perhaps the most important reason, however, because it is shared by all of us, is the possibility of redefining and surprising ourselves.
A conversation between the director and Maurice Sendak
SPIKE JONZE: I’ve known Maurice for ten or eleven years now, and we’d talked about making Where the Wild Things Are into a movie a couple times. But I could never figure out how to do it, what you could add to it. Obviously you have to add something because the storybook is only two hundred words long, but what are you going to add to it that’s not going to just ruin it? So I’d always think about it, and call him back and tell him, “I don’t know what to do with it.”
MAURICE SENDAK: Various people have been interested in making the book into a movie but those people did not interest me. They would do everything to make it just like the book, which is absolutely
the wrong thing to do. But then Spike Jonze came into my life. So many young people who wanted to make movies out of my books have never shown the bite that Spike has. He’s crazy in the most wonderful, adventurous way.
SJ: The breakthrough that I had was that the Wild Things are emotionally wild; they are our wild emotions. I realized that was possibly something I always knew, and maybe that was why I reacted to the book as a kid. But then I realized, we’re all totally crazy: the way we relate to each other and imbue everything with our own emotional perspectives on everything is insane. Once I knew I could write the wild emotions inside of everyone, then the book was basically limitless.
MS: At first, I wanted him to respect the book in ways that he intuitively would have found limited him. And he stood up to me, and that endeared him to me. I’ve seen him turn it into his Wild Things without giving up mine, embodying mine with Spike Jonze. I really am lucky to have it in the hands of a meshuggenner, a really crazy kid who is willing to be independent and get it his way—not my way.
SJ: The only thing Maurice really cares about is that it’s honest. His instructions to me were always to go further, to make it mine and to make it personal and dangerous. Because when the book came out in 1963 it was dangerous. So the movie should be dangerous in its own way. He always encouraged me to trust myself.
MS: I trusted him. I knew he wouldn’t make a fool out of the book or a fool out of me, because I knew he had a vivid sense of what the book was all about in your head. Which was the same with me when I wrote it. So how dare I interfere with what he was doing? I never felt tred upon. I never felt the book was taking second place. I just felt they were two very different works of art, and I like them both.
Conversation excerpted from Heads On and We Shoot: The Making of Where the Wild Things Are (McSweeney’s, October 2009)
An Interview with the Filmmaker
Q: What was the inspiration for “Bearings Glocken”: the music or the machine?
Kawase Kohske: The inspiration was the phenomenon that the ball bounces in the same path. This work is collaborated work between I and engineers. When one engineer who assembled this machine told me that the characteristic of steel ball for bearings, I got an inspiration of this work.
Q: How long did it take to assemble? Was it a difficult process?
KK: We spent about half a year. At first, I gave my idea of this work to the engineers. After that they tried to exam it. Two months later, they found the way to assemble this machine. So, we had a discussion about the structures, the functions, the layout of the keys, and so on. After the discussion, I started to compose the music for “Bearings Glocken.”
I wanted to compose “music” for this instrument, not just “sound.” However, there is only one octave key on it. I considered how the layout of the notes could give the music some variations. Finally, I designed the final layout and this machine became “instrument” at the moment. There are a lot of special technologies. I would like to show them, but they can’t be shown because of our patent.
Q: If I want one of these in my house, how much would it cost?
KK: This is top secret! If you really want this work, you can ask me directly. However, you will need more money than you think. You can buy an expensive supercar like a Ferrari or a world-famous grand piano before being owner of this work.
Q: Is it a completely mechanical device, or are there any computer-controlled elements?
KK: This instrument is controlled by an original software program on computer. The software controls the opening and closing of the launchers and loading. I would like to say loudly that the balls’ movements are a perfectly “physical phenomenon.” They keep bouncing autonomously without computer control.
Q: What are the bearings made of?
KK: Inside the bearings, there are some steel balls. Those balls are perfect spheres. If you expanded the diameter of the ball up to the size of the earth, there would only be undulations of about twelve meters. That is, neither the Mariana Trench nor Mount Everest would exist on the surface of the steel balls for the bearings. This perfect sphere decreases friction. It provides the bearings steady rotation and long life.
Q: Why did you choose that particular piece of music? (Where’s the Metallica?)
KK: It is because this is my artwork. I must show my own philosophy. If we had a big budget, we could invent special model for playing any music. Also I would like to organize “Bearings Orchestra” in the future. For realizing it, I would need many sponsors though.
Incidentally, I like rock music and believe it can break the common sense. Art is also the same. I always instill my thought into my own works. It will never change no matter whether they are charming or not. As for this consideration, my compositions are similar to the rock music like Metallica. I would like to break the common sense like a rock band.
Anyway, I have a lot of favorite American rock bands! For example, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, Tool, Van Halen, and so on.
Q: How many Bearings Glocken have you made?
KK: We have two models. The first model, which you can see in this DVD, can play only one song. In Spring 2009, we announced the second model called, “Bearings Glocken II.” I have composed four new songs for it. Moreover, the design of new one has been modified.
By the way, the second model is made for the rental business. We would take it to everywhere for sharing delightful moment with you.
Q: Where is the Bearings Glocken music box now?
KK: The first model is in Osaka, Japan, playing the music every day in the lobby of the manufacturing company of steel ball for bearings. The second model is in our factory located in Kanagawa, Japan.
An Interview with the Filmmaker
Q: What inspired you to make a film about a Motordrome?
Jörg Wagner: When I was a kid, the attraction that most fascinated me at the annual fair near my hometown was the Motordrome. I loved the sound of the roaring engines, the smell of gasoline, and the stunts of those hellriders who seemed to defy gravity. I remember when I saw it for the first time I was so enthusiastic that I threw all my pocket money down to them when they asked for a little donation for their own casualty insurance (they still do that at the end of each show, because no insurance company covers the risks of Motordrome riders). Anyway, the years passed, I didn’t go to fairs anymore, and I all but forgot about them. But my memory flashed back when I talked to a friend a couple of years ago and we both remembered those shows from our childhood. I got curious if there were still Motordromes touring the German
fairgrounds. I checked the Internet and found the show of Hugo Dabbert that was performing at a fair just about a hundred kilometers from Hamburg. I didn’t hesitate. I borrowed a car and went there. And, believe it or not, it was the very same Motordrome that I had seen as child. I easily recognized it by the light blue Formula V racing car that, just like in the old days, stood as an eye-catcher on the platform in front of the Motordrome. I went in, watched the show, and was on fire again. Afterward I talked to Hugo, and he readily agreed on making a film.
Q: How much preplanning did you do on the shoot? Did you map everything out with the stuntmen in advance?
JW: Of course, before shooting I already had various ideas about the shots I wanted to do. So we sort of started with a rough plan, but most ideas occurred while shooting. Also some of the shots
I had in mind were technically not realizable or too dangerous for the motorcyclists. On the other hand, me, the cinematographers, and also the riders constantly developed new ideas. After a while we more and more became like hunter-gatherers, experimenting with all kinds of different camera angles and seeing what we would end up with at the end of the day.
Q: How did you shoot the rapidly spinning aerial shot of the riders? Did it make you feel dizzy?
JW: For that shot we had a small camera crane standing on top of the audience platform. What really made me feel dizzy was when Jagath Perera (the colored rider who does most of the acrobatic stunts) took me for a ride on our last shooting day. We only did three or four rounds in the wall but to me it felt like eternity. Horrible experience.
Q: How fast are the motorcyclists going?
JW: They go approximately 50 to 60 kph (31 to 37 mph), but the small space inside the Motordrome, the short distance between spectator and motorbikes, and the loud roaring of the engines create the illusion of a much higher speed.
Q: Were there any accidents while shooting the film?
JW: Fortunately not, and that is something that I am really grateful for. Of course all the riders are top professionals, but still accidents do happen now and then. An engine failure or being inattentive for a second can result in a bad accident. For example, Hugo, the boss of the Motordrome, is looking back on a career of twenty-seven accidents resulting in forty-two fractured bones.
Q: Did you ever think about interviewing the stuntmen? Did you get to know them very well?
JW: It was so great to get to know these guys. While working together with them we soon became good friends, and at the end of the working day we sat together with them in their trailer, talking and laughing for hours. Listening to their stories, the idea of interviewing them crossed my mind, but it did not really fit into my concept of the film, as I did not want to make a classical documentary. I wanted to focus on the show and make the audience physically feel what it’s like inside the Motordrome. Interviews would surely have been very interesting, but that would have been a different film.
Q: Do you ride a motorcycle?
JW: I used to ride motorcycles, but I sold my bike a couple of years ago. I sometimes miss it though.
Q: What are you working on now?
JW: I just finished a new short film. It’s about the work in a container terminal. In a way it is similar to “Motodrom”: it’s also an experimental documentary without words. I hope it will be screened at some film festivals. It’s called “Terminal,” so watch out, maybe you can spot it somewhere.
FILMMAKER BIOS
In 2005 Julius Avery graduated with a masters in film and television from VCAM Film and Television School. Julius has received numerous awards such as the 2008 AFI award for Best Short Fiction Film, the 2008 ADG award for Best Direction in a Short Film, and the 2006 MIFF Emerging Australian Filmmaker of the Year award. He is represented by UTA and currently has two feature-film scripts in development.
Lance Bangs is a filmmaker and all-around enthusiast.
Jérémy Clapin, born in Paris in 1974, graduated from Les Arts Décoratifs school in Paris in 1999. Since then, he has worked in several areas: as a graphic artist, as an illustrator, and as an independent director.
In 2004, he directed his first animated short film, “A Backbone Tale.” His second film, “Skhizein,” has won awards at Cannes, Annecy, Clermont-Ferrand, and other festivals.
Flatform is a group of artists founded in 2006 and based in Milano, Italy. The group has been invited to international film festivals and public institutions such as Oberhausen, Rotterdam, Palm Springs, le Centre Pompidou, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and many more.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Brick, Mysterious Skin, The Lookout, (500) Days of Summer) began his career as an actor making little movies with the family video camera. After accumulating half a liberal arts degree from Columbia University, he taught himself to edit with Final Cut Pro and started to create a variety of short films, writings, songs and release them on his website, hitRECord.org. “Sparks” is Joseph’s first project as a traditional writer-director.
Spike Jonze is a filmmaker and substitute sweetener.
Kawase Kohske, born in 1970 in Kyoto, Japan, has been involved in music composition for commercials and TV programs since the mid 1990s, and embarked on artistic activities in 2002. In 2006 Kohske presented “Bearings Glocken,” a musical instrument for bearings. Learn more at kawasekohske.info and bearings-glocken.jp.
Amanda Micheli is an Academy Award–nominated filmmaker and a celebrated cinematographer. Her first film, Just for the Ride, won a student Oscar and an IDA Award before it aired on PBS. Her film Double Dare won awards at AFI and the San Francisco International Film Festival before its theatrical release. Her other D.P. and producer credits include: Cat Dancers, Thin, 30 Days, My Flesh and Blood, and The Flute Player.
Colombian-born Isabel Vega moved to the U.S. at the age of seven and graduated from Wesleyan University with a degree in film studies. She has been an editor, assistant director, and associate producer for documentary projects for HBO, Bravo, and FX, as well as for numerous national commercials. In 2005, Vega’s directorial debut, “First Kiss,” premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Vega coproduced Morgan Spurlock’s series 30 Days and was most recently the D.P. on Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa. Currently, Vega is developing a documentary about gang girls in East L.A.
Justin Nowell is a 2006 graduate of the New York University Film School MFA program and in 1998 received his AB from Harvard University, where he was an editor of the Harvard Lampoon. His previous short film, “Sick Sex,” premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and was the number one short film on iTunes North America for six months.
Thomas Nowell cowrote with his brother Justin the 2008 Sundance short “Sick Sex” and received the King Prize for Screenwriting at the 2006 NYU First Run Festival for Grant Greenberg’s short film “Cricket Head.” He has worked as a writers’ assistant in television and as a personal assistant to director Mike Nichols.
Jill Orschel grew up in Aspen, Colorado, and moved to Mormon country in 1990. Since then she has worked as a photographer for the Sundance Institute, which shaped and inspired her filmmaking career. Her previous shorts, “The Places You’ll Go” and “Lakota Workcamp” have each taken home documentary honors. Jill lives in Park City, Utah, with her husband and two sons.
Wim Reygaert was born on a particularly balmy night in 1974. He spent large portions of his youth amassing an unusually large (and trivial) knowledge of birdsong. He also wrote intentionally abstract wine-soaked poetry during this period. He has a morbid fear of ladybugs, particularly in clusters. Not many people have seen him beardless; those who have recall the moment fondly.
Born on a particularly uneventful night in 1978, native South African Marc James Roels spent almost his entire youth indoors reading and watching endless reruns of David Attenborough’s The Living Planet and hit soap series Santa Barbara punctuated by fleeting moments outside on his skateboard trying desperately and fruitlessly to “do an ollie.” He then moved to Belgium to pursue a career in filmmaking.
Born in 1967 in Stuttgart and now living and working in Hamburg, Jörg Wagner graduated in audiovisual media design, worked as a projectionist, directed stage shows, and hosted various film events. From 1996 to 2002 he directed the theatrical distribution for the Hamburg International Short Film Agency and worked as a programmer and curator for the Hamburg Short Film Festival. Since 2002 he has worked as a freelance filmmaker and scriptwriter. Besides his short films he produces and distributes card games (Weltquartett Top Trumps).
Caveh Zahedi is an independent filmmaker best known for:
a) writing, directing, and starring in I Am a Sex Addict.
b) taking mushrooms with singer/songwriter Will Oldham in Tripping with Caveh.
c) appearing as himself in Waking Life.
d) none of the above.