Another international premiere at the 15th edition of Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival currently on festival track is William Eubank's ambitious indie sci-fi drama Love (2011), produced by the alternative rock band Angels & Airwaves and poised to screen at Austin's Fantastic Fest. Slated as the opening night feature in Fantasia's Camera Lucida spotlight on "genre cinema in its utmost extreme, surprising and iconoclastic form"—Love is clearly a labor of.
Graphing the gradual madness born from the loss of human contact and the necessity of love for the furtherance of the human spirit, if not the prolongation of the human race, Love is structured as a parallel narrative that conjures up the messenger's recitation from The Book of Job (1:15): "I alone have escaped to tell thee." The film's prologue introduces Lt. Lee Briggs (Bradley Horn) witnessing the death of his Union regiment in a violent Civil War skirmish evocatively lensed in speed ramp slow-mo. Then—as Dennis Harvey phrases it in his favorable review for Variety—the narrative "lunges nearly two centuries forward and 220 miles outward" where the routine mission of lone astronaut Lee James Miller (Gunner Wright) goes seriously awry when he loses contact with Houston HQ as the Earth self-destructs in nuclear war. It's Miller's story that makes up most of the film and Gunner Wright's performance that nearly single-handedly carries it (other than the occasional hallucinatory cameo).
"Lead thesp Wright, shouldering nearly a one-man-show burden, is gamely athletic, all-American and somewhat of a blank slate, like Kubrick's astronauts," Harvey writes, "until some unfettered personality begins to seep out." At Twitch, Kurt Halfyard agrees: "Gunner Wright is very convincing in his reaction to first loss of control, then boredom, then loneliness and despair."
I caught up with Gunner Wright during Fantasia at The Irish Embassy, bought him a drink, and sat down to discuss his involvement with Eubank's respectful contribution to a lineage of thinking man's science fiction that harkens back to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972), and its more contemporary compatriot Duncan Jones' Moon (2009).
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Michael Guillén: Gunner, you worked on Love for four years. For an actor, that's a considerable investment of time. How did you react when you finally saw the film projected?
Gunner Wright: I first saw Love with an audience when it premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Although I had seen some remnants, bits and pieces, with Will, the Santa Barbara premiere was the first time I watched my performance. I was trying to watch the film for all the things we were trying to communicate and get out there, but I was being my own worst critic and looking at areas in my performance that I didn't believe—"You were real here. You were pushing it to get that emotion here"—but, that was just me from racing motorcycles for years fine tuning technique. For the most part, watching the audience get excited about the film was just special. Santa Barbara was amazing because there was so much support. It's close to L.A. and we had a lot of Hollywood there at the premiere giving us thumbs-up.
Guillén: Granted, you would be your own worst critic; but, I was impressed with the continuity of your performance. The progression of your character within such a complex narrative was noteworthy.
Wright: Thanks so much.
Guillén: As Love is a film whose narrative was built up over a long period of time, how did you adjust to that process as an actor? Were you given a general arc to your character at the beginning of filming to hold onto throughout? How did you compensate for the many adjustments made to the script over the years?
Wright: For me, it's like asking the question: "How come kids—if you aimed a camera at my nephew or niece, let's say, when they're playing astronauts or playing Batman—deliver some of the best performances I've ever seen?" The answer: because they're in it. My nephew Jet is four and when we play Batman and Robin, I'll watch him in awe because he's in it. This aspect of filmmaking really goes back to so many moments. I could almost play you back the movie and comment, "Okay, now this scene here is being filmed at 4:00 in the morning and it's basically Will and I and we have no producers to tell us, 'Hurry up, guys.' " We're just playing like two kids in a sandbox exploring dialogue, doing some improv with random ideas that had come to him or me. In some ways you're wondering, "When is this movie going to end?" but in other areas you realize you're never going to get that opportunity again to have that much time to just play.
These moments weren't set-ups. It wasn't like Will was saying, "Instead of you being here, you go over there." It was more about getting into an emotion. A lot of those scenes had ADR or voiceover in post so I didn't really have anybody to feed off of during filming. I had a handful of moments with the actresses but most of the time I was just looking at boards, trying to pretend that I'm introducing myself to my first love. Will would feed me imaginary lines. Again, it came down to two kids with capes on.
Guillén: I appreciate that having the time to develop Love was probably a once-in-a-lifetime acting experience for you; but—now that it's finally done—do you think it's going to be a difficult movie to sell?
Wright: I do. There's a couple of great aspects to Love that are our saving grace and one of them is that one of the producers happens to be a rock star with a great fan base who love him and his projects and you see that.
Guillén: In his Variety review, Dennis Harvey noted that "marketing hook."
Wright: We were in Seattle at the E&P with 500 kids five hours before one of our shows at the Seattle International signing autographs. Ewan McGregor and all these big stars were there—my heroes, my counterparts—but because of Tom DeLonge and because of the band, Will and I and Tom and the guitar player were signing autographs for a film. It's a kind of weird aspect to the film.
Guillén: But an effective melding of art forms.
Wright: It is. The film itself is artistic. It's an arthouse film. A lot of the questions at tonight's Q&A concerned the ending. You take a young director like Will who's a great fan of Stanley Kubrick and a poetic rock and roll star like Tom and you put them together in a room and they're not necessarily going to make Iron Man 3. They might love Iron Man 3 but with their own film they want to push the envelope. They want to stretch that rubber band, so to speak.
Like I said, as an actor the toughest thing was being a lead for the first time, trying to carry a film, and learning how you do that as you go. I had to trust Will. He was my only partner in this thing. And then to place my performance in that abstract canvas. Listen, I love popcorn action shoot-'em-ups come June, July and August and what we were making with Love was foreign to me. I had to internalize a lot of the ending for myself. Where did Captain Lee Miller go? Was it heaven? Did he find a euphoria of true love? To where it's not really fair to necessarily say he went here, he went there: it's open to everyone's interpretation. And that was kind of new for me. I don't see too many films like that. It was a big risk for everybody involved.
Guillén: Most films are formulaic and manipulative. They make the audience go to a certain place. I don't believe that Kubrick wanted 2001 to be understood; he wanted it to be felt. In that respect, Will's homage to Kubrick successfully restrains itself. As Kurt Halfyard mentioned in his review at Twitch, Will doesn't embarrass himself by trying to match one of the greatest films of all time. He finds his own measure of expression.
Wright: There were a handful of films that Will suggested I watch before the meat and potatoes of the space station production. One of them was, of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey and I had watched it just before he brought it up. I got on a Kubrick kick because, honestly, I was ignorant of film history. It's sad to say but true. So I watched Spartacus and a couple of other Kubrick films and I got it. I got more of a sense of why Will liked Kubrick to begin with, along with understanding other filmmakers and other actors.
I thought about what it was like to be pigeonholed in a box. I watched Cast Away and what Tom Hanks did with that character. But then you have to make it your own. That was a big issue. How insane do you take this guy? He's an astronaut. He's trained for all kinds of emergencies. You ask yourself, "What would I do if I were flying a 747 and the engine went out?" If you talk to pilots, you realize that they've been conditioned over and over and over, such that their motor skills take over in an emergency. There had to be a little bit of that with Captain Lee Miller. "Okay, I don't know what's going on but I know what I can control. And it's this button and this procedure." To where he might go off his rocker to a degree but he will still come back when his motor skills go into effect and press air and oxygen and lights are on.
Guillén: This is the first performance of yours I've seen. The adage "the camera loves you" applies to you.
Wright: I appreciate that.
Guillén: Give me a sense of your training. You came out of Florida?
Wright: I raced motorcycles. My dad's in the motorcycle business and—through his business with Honda Motorcycles—the whole family got uprooted from Florida to L.A. I thought I was going to be a professional racer for the longest time and I had roads to choose and things I wanted to do that with racing, unfortunately, the more professional you are as an athlete, your world becomes two-dimensional. But because of motorcycling and other endeavors, but mainly motorcycling, everyone in Hollywood's infatuated with two wheels—that Brando, Steve McQueen, machismo kind of thing—and it's still there, even more so than when we moved to L.A. 16 years ago. So because I was a motorcycle guy, I made a lot of friends in Hollywood who wanted to hang with me and talk about bikes. But I wanted to talk about what it was like to be on a set. I had friends who were stunt doubling for actors. So I was brought into Hollywood organically and in the great way of not knowing anything about it. Not knowing if I wanted to do stunts or if I wanted to be an actor.
I met people, specifically David Barrett and his family who were huge in Hollywood. Dave's dad was Burt Reynolds' stunt double. Burt taught Dave how to swim. David was a motorcycle racer first, then did stunts in second unit, and now he's a great big producer in Hollywood. David gave me an opportunity to get on set to do some extra work and stand-in work. I had no idea what I was doing, but I really fell in love with that process. My first starts were years of extra work and stand-in work part-time here and there. Today I tell tons of actors or people in L.A. who want to get involved in acting, "You know, it sounds menial but you learn so much by being an extra." We're all extras at some point, even the stars. You're in focus and I'm in the background getting a drink? That's extra work. You're not saying anything. You're basically crossing camera. But that's how you learn the foundation, at least for me. It set the tone.
I learned a lot of physical technique on the set of Love. There are no classes in Hollywood that teach you marks, for the most part. I took some on-camera training here and there. I had a great on-camera coach named Charles Carroll for a couple of years. Charles is great. He's a working actor, which I love. I trusted him because of that. He's working for Spielberg, and you'll see him as a judge or a lawyer, he's a big presence, and he's working, which I like.
I did a play called The Play Ground in L.A.. It was a challenging role. Very difficult. The director was a young guy out of New York City and his mentor had been Peter Flint, a great coach out of New York City, who came on his own dime to spend three weeks working with all of the cast. What helped in that theatrical experience is that The Play Ground was blocked like a feature film. It was gritty. I played a long-haired greasy pimp. It wasn't Hamlet. It was raw. And Peter was brilliant. He stripped me apart day after day. So, I did get a little bit of that formal training.
Guillén: How did you stumble into this project?
Wright: In a weird way I have to go back, again, to the blessings of being brought up around motorcycles. I had met Will. There was a Lifestyle pilot being shot of two motorcyclists leaving L.A. and driving up to Mendocino north of San Francisco. It was almost like a travel show with two guys on bikes going to five-star wineries and great restaurants along the way. Will's friend was putting this project together. He was the D.P., one of the shooters. It was one of those projects that never really saw the light of day, so to speak, but we had a great time. I basically rode the motorcycle, read my script on camera and hung out.
Will and I bonded enough that—when he was courted through Tom DeLonge about this project—they were thinking, "What should we do?" Angels & Airwaves had a song called "Love Like Rockets" that's about an astronaut who gets left in space. Will liked that aspect of the potential story. The more he started mulling around: "Well, who should I get to play this astronaut?", he remembered me. I got a call from Will in August 2007 saying, "Hey man, I want to talk to you about something. I don't want to talk about it over the phone. Come meet for coffee." He showed me some basic storyboards and rough sketches and—as soon as I heard the word "astronaut"—I went to eight years old in 30 seconds. I said, "Sign me up, Daddy!"
Guillén: Can you speak a bit to your specific process of creating the character of astronaut Lee Miller?
Wright: It was so far-reaching. As I said, when Will asked me about this project and mentioned, "Hey, how do you feel about playing an astronaut?", the two things that I wanted to do as a kid growing up was either race motorcycles or be an astronaut. I'm from Florida and Cape Canaveral was always just around the corner. As he was building the space station, I was trying to wrap my head around being an astronaut and doing that role justice as far as what astronauts do. All we had really were books. I'd sit on the floor and look at old photos and go through stories and try to figure out, "What would this character do on a day-to-day basis?" Other films, I would play around and watch and pick some things that I could pick apart; but, the process for creating the character in Love was abstract.
Will didn't want this character to be too Cast Away, which—as I mentioned earlier—I did watch early on. I had to think about how insane was this guy going to be? How crazy was he going to be? But I kept going back to the fact that—though he might not be a Navy S.E.A.L.; he might not be a special forces operative—but, he's someone who's trained to handle a lot of different circumstances and he has a job to do to survive. He's a survivalist. And yet he's by himself for years, which—hence the title of the film—we all want contact. We all want some form of communication. That's why he breaks down when he can't see his brother's video anymore. That was his only human connection. Now all he has left are Polaroids of girls because, c'mon, this guy had at least a couple of girlfriends on Earth. [Grins.] So that was kind of the process. It was very organic. His character wasn't ever set. We really did explore and discover, sometimes even on the day.
I have to give Will tons of props as a filmmaker and as a friend, but the thing I kept thinking about when I watched the film with the audience earlier tonight that hit me as an actor was that the biggest aspect between a filmmaker and an actor together is trust. I was watching certain scenes that we started to shoot in September 2007. At that time I knew Will briefly, but I didn't know Will. You have to understand, I was in short shorts, which I didn't want to be in. I had this whole idea in my mind that I'd be wearing these cool spacesuits and he handed me these shorts and said, "Here you go, bro." It was a challenge enough to be carrying a film in my first leading man role, but to trust Will when I was in such a vulnerable situation as a first-time actor in those situations took a lot of trust. Will and I developed over the course of those four years mutual respect, mutual trust, even as friends. And tonight as I was watching the film, I noticed towards the end certain scenes where Will said, "You say what you want, man, because I know exactly where this is going to go." So I gave him everything I had. I wasn't going to second guess him. I knew his vision and I was in.
Guillén: Did you know, however, when you agreed to this project that it would be such a prolonged effort? Yet you remained committed enough to sandwich your participation in between whatever else you had to do to pay bills?
Wright: Absolutely. All of us did. Will would have to go off to do some DP work. Sometimes we'd have to reschedule things because at the last minute a very key person for that day had to go shoot something to earn a living. It was very cowboys and Indians style, you know? Just roll camera and shoot when you can. But I was committed, yeah.
After the first year, the project kept building momentum because the few money men that were seeing more dailies and hearing more buzz, the fans hearing more or finding behind-the-scenes photos on Facebook or Twitter or the A&A website, you kept feeling the energy and the excitement of what could be. Not what it was going to be but what it could be. We wanted it to be what everyone was hoping it would be because we were all doing it out of the honesty and the innocence of what we loved to do. I love acting. I don't want to direct. I don't want to produce. I don't want to write. I just want to act. If some of those other things come together, that's fine, but I love acting. I'll never grasp it. I'll never own the craft.
Guillén: Why would you say that? You do own your craft. You show that in this film.
Wright: And I appreciate that—that really means so much to me—but there are so many actors I could watch for days that resonate for me. Paul Newman. Clint Eastwood. Guys that time and time again prove themselves. It goes back to the sport of motorcycle racing for me. The most consistent driver wins the championship, not necessarily the fastest guy or the guy who wins the most races. It's the consistency and longevity of one's career that's so romantic to me.
To parlay that into golf, you can have two or three great holes and you go, "I got it. I just parred. I got it." And then the very next hole you shake it, it hits the house, and you think, "What did I just do?" There's moments when you're on set and you feel like you're an Oscar®-contending actor. "Yup! Got it!" And the very next take for me personally, I go, "Man, what in the hell am I doing?" You feel like you just lost all of that magic and skill that you had during the last take or the last scene.
Guillén: Aside from the spirit of play—which you've been describing quite affectionately in our conversation—what have you gained from this experience that has given you a professional edge or personal growth?
Wright: Two things. One, instinct. Instinct as an actor. So many times there are certain things that I will do that, again, stem from racing motorcycles. You start off analyzing the track, analyzing your moves, looking to see obstacles, and it's the same as trying to look at a scene for the day, and trying to visualize it in your mind. But sometimes the best scenes are when you throw that all away. You always hear that story, you know, where you learn the scene and its objective so that you can lose yourself and find something that you didn't expect to find. That instinct is something that Love helped me gain and grasp. But also, again, it's a technical aspect. The minute camera focus on your close-up. Finding the emotion and the scene's objective but making sure you're in focus and that you're hitting your marks, things that sound so elementary.
I just watched this great YouTube of Christopher Reeve in a scene of Richard Donner's Superman. It's a close-up but the behind the scene camera's wide so you get the marks where his feet are going to hit. It's take after take of him going after Gene Hackman and, I kid you not, he is nailing his marks with every single take—his toes are on the tape!—and I know how hard that is. People don't understand that he's either counting or he's so programmed that he's walking and his steps are perfect, but, he's in that scene. Picture four years of Love, mainly being the central character on set day in and day out, fast forward and you've done a handful of big films, smaller roles per se but you're playing Dwight Eisenhower and Leonardo di Caprio's right beside you and there's Clint Eastwood in the Paramount lot and the camera goes tight: being on set is an experience you can't buy and you can't replace it.
Guillén: Let's shift to these alternate performances. Clearly you secured these roles not on the laurels of this project?
Wright: That's right. It was kind of weird because—as I was struggling and in this world of Love—I was blessed to get small roles. I got a chance to play a secret service agent opposite Jonathan Pryce as President in G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra (2009). It was a small two-day role that gave me the chance to experience some great moments with a guy like Jonathan Pryce. In The Losers from Warner Brothers I'm a jet pilot and it's me and Idris Elba and a few cast and crew working for Joel Silver. Working with Idris was amazing. Watching his process. Because I want to be a leading man. I want to do some action. I want to push myself in that world. So to get a chance to carry a film like Love is, in some ways, to be a paid fly on the wall. The Losers did what it did but what Garrett Warren, who's an amazing second unit stunts coordinator, was doing on set at least while I was there blew my mind. He was doing Avatar at the same time.
Guillén: I, too, romanticize the longevity of a career. And one of my favorite ways to approach movies, since I watch so many of them, is to take note of the early performances of actors when they're, as you say, paying their dues and learning their chops in small career-building performances. I project that somewhere down the line, perhaps because of your motorcycle skills, you'll do a Steve McQueen role; a remake of Le Mans (1971) perhaps?
Wright: I want it soooooo bad!
Guillén: [Laughs.]
Wright: I'm a great fan of Steve McQueen. It's funny. I was in London years ago and I found this Steve McQueen book in a bookstore at Heathrow coming back to L.A. I was so broke at that time. That was an early lesson in my acting career. I got involved in acting and immediately I got a hosting job on a Lifestyle motorcycle show so I was at least getting paid and I thought, "Here we go. This is easy." Until production went belly-up and I didn't get checks for a couple of months and I'm grabbing my guitar and I'm on Venice Beach Strand playing five days a week making $20 a day. I didn't want to call my dad and say, "Hey Dad, can you loan me $500" because he was like, "You're leaving what to be an actor?" It was the principle of course at that time. Anyway, I'm in London, I find this book, and I read this book on Steve McQueen. I had heard about him. I had liked him because he was a motorcycle guy. But when I read his story, that's when I started to research his catalogue.
Guillén: More appropriately, however, I could see you doing a Paul Newman biopic. Would you do that?
Wright: In a heartbeat. But I don't know if I could do him justice. A friend of mine in L.A. recently gave me a box set of McQueen films and a box set of Paul Newman films. I watched Cool Hand Luke...
Guillén: One of my favorite Newman films.
Wright: ...and I watched three or four more of his films including The Towering Inferno, which I love because it's got McQueen and Newman and you can see the nuances between the two. It seems like Newman loves dialogue, his performances are dialogue-driven, whereas McQueen hardly needs any dialogue. He's a presence. It's comforting who he is or at least who he appears to be.
Whoever plays Paul Newman, if that film ever comes to the surface, is the same person that I hope will give Steve McQueen credit. Out of anybody if you're considering who to cast in a biopic, James Franco did James Dean so much justice. James Dean wasn't easy to do. So you hope that someone like him can do a Newman or McQueen the same way.
Guillén: As you develop into an actor who handles leading roles, who would you want to be your leading lady? There's got to be at least one.
Wright: There's more than one. I'll throw in Raquel Welch just because I want to throw in Raquel Welch. There's so many, you know. Currently, I think Olivia Wilde. Her onscreen presence is striking. Natalie Portman is a feminine gem. I try not to be all male chauvinistic but it's somewhat like looking at a gallery of wonderful art or a museum exhibit of 30 motorcycles and each one has their own distinct beauty.
Guillén: Finally, returning to Love, can you give me a sense of how the film will roll out?
Wright: Right now Fathom Events has it in close to 500 theaters on August 10. It's live so it's 9:30 East Coast, 6:30 West Coast. You can log onto the Fathom Events website and buy the tickets on line. A couple of kids already approached me, saying, "Hey, we're going to see it in Boston."
Guillén: These are some of the fans that are following you around?
Wright: Yeah, these kids drove from New York City. It's amazing. And that again is Tom. That's not me or Will. It's the band's fans wanting to support the film and see it succeed, which is so rare for an indie film. But the August 10 event is amazing because I looked at the markets and they're all major. Chicago alone has 30 theaters. Almost every major city involved are going to have five or six theaters involved.
Guillén: What will your participation be in that event?
Wright: I don't know for certain. On the way flying here Will said the event will be three hours and will include the movie, a Q&A, and then the band at one of those venues is going to put on a psuedo-concert, an acoustic performance or something to give the fans a treat. Because it's live for that one night, every single viewer's going to see the film with a little bit something special at the end. I'm excited. I was talking to one of the other filmmakers this weekend who had heard remnants about this event, though not in detail. It's such a unique event. It could screen for more days, depending on what markets sell out down the road; but, for the fans, this is it. They have one night. This is the time. You don't have a chance to say, "Awww, I'll see it on Saturday or I'll see it at a matinee."
Guillén: There's no doubt in my mind that the value added at such cinema events is what is helping keep film culture alive. So to finish up here, Gunner, congratulations on your lead performance in Love. I wish the film well. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me today.
Wright: Hey listen, thank you, man. You're a film connoisseur yourself who's clearly been around a lot of movies, a lot of actors, and it's clear you love it. That's what I like most: just sitting around, having a drink, shooting the shit and talking about our favorite pics.
Love - William Eubank - Trailer n°1 (HD) by 6ne_Web
Andy Fetscher's German thriller Urban Explorer (2011) [official site] boasted its North American premiere at the 15th edition of Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival, where festival publicist Jean Grégoire arranged for me to meet with Fetscher and his writer-producer Oliver Thau at The Irish Embassy Pub. As Urban Explorer advances to its U.S. premiere at Austin's Fantastic Fest, now seemed a perfect opportunity to transcribe the Fantasia conversation.
Eljan Tomek writes in his mini biography for IMDb: "Andy Fetscher is a German-Romanian director, writer and cinematographer. In his teenage years he shot his first movies as PR stunts for a satirical magazine that he published with friends, though they were censored for containing graphic violence, sex, and crude language. At the age of 19 he worked as a freelance photographer and journalist for a picture agency in Germany. From 2001 to 2007 he studied cinematography and directing at the Ludwigsburg Film Academy, where he began to make a name for himself with a number of short movies such as Peste la Bucharesti (2004) and Kingdom of the Youth (2005). In most of his pictures, in addition to directing, Andy has taken on multiple production roles including camera work, editing, and sound design. He graduated film school with his first full length horror feature Bucharest Flesh which has been invited to numerous festivals, including Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival and Germany's highly acclaimed Hofer Filmtage. The Berlin-style horror thriller Urban Explorer is his first co-production with America."
My Fantasia experience of Urban Explorer was heightened for being in the company of Variety film critic Robert Koehler. This afforded the chance to gain a firsthand sense of Koehler's critical practice and how he times his films and notates impressions. His subsequent review for Variety proved favorable: "Fetscher avoids the temptation to push the situation into an exercise in torture porn—an option he easily could have gone for—while nevertheless ratcheting up the horror. Indeed, his one-man-band combination of direction, lensing and editing proves crucial, displaying a balance of craft and patience in building layers of suspense under a horrific setting that goes beyond any urban explorer's worst nightmare."
At Fearnet.com, Scott Weinberg gave high marks to Urban Explorer's "intangible components like tone, style, and intensity" but expressed irritation with what he perceived to be a lazy script that failed to flesh out its characterizations.
Myself, I found Urban Explorer a satisfying thriller. Grating, tense, nailbiting, Urban Explorer skillfully employs Berlin's underground tunnels to achieve a claustrophobic mise en scène. The central villainy of Klaus Stiglmeier is a horror to behold.
[This conversation is not for the spoiler-wary.]
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Michael Guillén: Andy, Urban Explorer is your second feature?
Andy Fetscher: It's my first movie after film school where my graduate thesis film was a long-feature horror movie Bucharest Flesh. My professors and the headmaster of the school were against it, but even so I did it, which earned me some enemies. On the other hand it gave me the chance to meet Oliver Thau and the others who produced Urban Explorer, which has helped me get my foot in the door of genre movies.
Guillén: You've always wanted to make genre films?
Fetscher: Not exactly. I have two selves living within my chest that I've tried to combine in my films. Urban Explorer is a genre piece with a commercial approach, of course; but, if you watch my student film Bucharest Flesh, it's more an arthouse horror love fairy tale; but, the bottom line is to entertain audiences and I love creeping out audiences with horror. Once you combine horror with arthouse elements or explore political issues the film achieves a higher level.
Guillén: What some call "elevated genre"?
Fetscher: Yes, I'm interested in both.
Guillén: Oliver, where arthouse cinema might receive some government backing as an effort to promote a national cinema, would the same financial backing be available for genre? Within Germany, specifically, are there national subsidies for genre filmmaking?
Oliver Thau: Absolutely not. For art house, yes, but for genre, no. Definitely we get no funding in Germany if we want to make this kind of movie, unless you cast one of the two best-known German actors and they have powerful connections. Otherwise you get no support if you're a genre filmmaker. Since we knew that, we didn't even try to get money through those channels, which involves investing a lot of time filling out paper work, often for nothing. We decided to look elsewhere for funding.
Guillén: What motivated you and your production company Papermoon Film to become involved in producing Urban Explorer in the first place?
Thau: We wanted to make a genre film and were talking to talent and Andy came recommended to us through the head of his school. I watched Bucharest Flesh and then Andy and I met to talk about what we could possibly do. The idea for Urban Explorer developed from scratch. But Papermoon Film doesn't only produce genre films. We produce other kinds of films. We don't want to be put into a box as a production company who only makes genre films. We like to make them because—as we said earlier—they're commercial; but, we like making other films as well, and if those films receive national funding, we'll take the funding.
Fetscher: Within Germany there are certain filmic approaches or narrative plots that nearly guarantee you will receive government money.
Guillén: Which is what interests me. What kinds of films would Germany be willing to subsidize in order to internationally promote a national image of Germany? What is the "master plot" in Germany these days?
Fetscher: It's difficult to answer your question without a sense of irony because, of course, some of the movies that get funded by the government are great movies. They're usually post-WWII dramas or at least serious dramas.
Thau: Yes, serious. Usually, your main character is revealed to have cancer, loses his family, and loses his job.
Fetscher: Or you have little African children seeking orientation within Germany and looking for a family. It's easy to get money for a story like that. Papermoon Film and myself are both interested in a lot of different kinds of stories but we don't want to fall into that pattern. We basically want to make good pictures and if we can get government subsidies for that, good; but, it's not the main reason we make movies.
Thau: Though it's difficult otherwise to make movies in Germany. You have to keep in mind that 90% of German films are government-supported movies and they don't have to care if a movie is commercial or not. If it's well-received, okay. If it's not well-received, you don't lose anything as a filmmaker because the money for the film has come from the government. We, on the other hand, vie for private equity. We have to take care that the film will do well commercially because, otherwise, it becomes our problem and we won't be able to make movies again.
Guillén: So, again, this is where genre necessarily comes into play in insuring that a film reaches past its national boundaries to achieve an international reception since the tropes of genre traffic well and communicate globally.
Thau: Absolutely.
Fetscher: That makes me think of something funny. I know arthouse directors who feel offended or insulted if you really understand their movies. They want their films to be so arthouse that you cannot decipher the films.
Guillén: They want them to be impenetrable?
Fetscher: Yes.
Guillén: And isn't that silly? [Laughs.]
Fetscher: It's so much silly, yeah.
Guillén: So how do you Oliver, as the producer, convince international investors to take a chance with genre?
Thau: First, we talk with national companies: DVD companies for example who have specific markets that support this kind of genre film. A film gets attached in advance to a DVD company, which is what happened with Andy's first film Bucharest Flesh and that company also wanted to be involved with Urban Explorer but they ran out of money so we lost their financing and had to turn elsewhere. Having been a buyer for a distribution company, I said, "Let's go international." The whole structure of Urban Explorer was intentionally international. The approach was international. We had an international team. We wanted to shoot in English. We didn't want to shoot in German, which would limit the possibility of selling the film world-wide. Then we went to people we knew in Los Angeles to help us seek out the right partner to solicit international funding. For Urban Explorer, the money came from outside into Germany.
Guillén: Speaking of distribution, I'm aware you have distribution in Germany this Fall. But do you have U.S. distribution yet? Urban Explorer seems a perfect candidate for Lionsgate. Have you approached them?
Thau: That's not our job. From the beginning the film was in the hands of a world sales company. That was a requirement for us. We needed someone to sell the picture. So they're in talks with a couple of companies but we don't make these decisions. I know they've sold the film to Anchor Bay in Britain and to the biggest distribution firm in Germany.
Fetscher: We wanted to wait to premiere at Fantasia because, in my opinion, it is the most important genre festival in North America. Genre comes from America in a way so we wanted to wait for this festival and then find the right distribution partner for the U.S.
Guillén: Let's speak about your Fantasia experience. How did you find your Fantasia premiere and your audience? You admitted when you took the stage to address your audience that you were trembling?
Fetscher: I'm always trembling! That lies in the nature of directing. When you show movies to a public, you have to tremble in a way. It's moreorless normal. But I loved showing Urban Explorer at Fantasia because their audience doesn't conceal their emotions. They shout and applaud if they like something. Their enthusiasm added a special flair to our premiere and provided me a special experience because, of course, I love watching the audience watching my movie.
Guillén: Let's discuss your sound design. The dripping of the water and the scraping of metal on concrete effectively rattled my nerves and added incredible intensity to the film.
Fetscher: I'm really into sound. Some people don't believe it because I'm doing the cinematography as well, but sound is as important to me as the visuals. I've done the sound design for all my films, except for Bucharest Flesh where I hired someone professional. With Urban Explorer I started working on the sound design from the first day I began editing. I love it. I love creating an atmosphere with a small cluster of sounds and getting to the right emotion by leaving behind every unnecessary sound. For the sound at the end of the film, we had a great team from Germany who helped with the mixing, and I had a wonderful supervising sound editor Nigel Holland, and a great foley artist Joo Fürst. I had so much fun working with them on the sound and on the music as well because in horror films sound design and music meld together. The film's composer Steven Schwalbe is a good friend of mine. I tend to work with him and will work with him on my next project as well.
Guillén: As the cinematographer, did you use synchronized sound or was sound added in post-production, or a combination of both?
Fetscher: Most of the sound design is post-production. Some of it is on set.
Guillén: For me non-synchronic sound is an art house touch.
Fetscher: That might be true, yes, because in a way you use sound to make a film more unrealistic, weird or film-like.
Guillén: I presume you filmed in HD?
Fetscher: Yes.
Guillén: So, again, I presume you had a small crew? How many people worked with you on set, that is to say in these confined off-limit environments?
Fetscher: We had a crew of about five to eight people. The environments were tiny and sometimes we had to literally run away from authorities or policemen so the smaller the team was, the easier it was to get away.
Guillén: During your Q&A, you talked about being arrested. Can you repeat that story?
Fetscher: I badly needed a P.O.V. shot from down on the subway tracks with the train approaching, but we didn't have the allowance on this particular day to shoot on the subway tracks so I snuck down with my assistant director Peter Fuchs. It was okay at first because nobody saw us, not even the passengers on the platform, but then we had a flashlight to light the scene and the flashlight beam dazzled the engine driver who stopped the subway car in the middle of the tunnel. We tried to hide. We heard the police on the platform so we couldn't go back that way. We thought about running all the way through the tunnel to the next station but that would have cost us too much time so we tried our luck with the platform but the police caught us. They arrested us and my assistant director and I had to spend one night in custody so we lost one day of shooting.
Guillén: Will there not be any legal repercussions with German authorities identifying locations deemed off-limits that you used guerrilla-style in your film?
Fetscher: Maybe in Germany but hopefully not here. [Laughs.] The beginning of the movie is about finding the "Fahrerbunker", which still exists but is sealed off now. Some of the paintings in the film are real. When I go back to Germany, some people might point at me. Making a movie, especially a genre movie that's about entertaining people, or a movie like this one that is specifically about Nazi sites from WWII—something Germans don't like to talk about—involved bribing hands to gain access. In those instances where the authorities charged too much, we shot guerrilla-style at night.
Guillén: You've indicated you're not a professional urban explorer, but you're obviously into urban exploring? Just as you said that—after watching Wake In Fright—you'll never let someone buy you a beer again, you can imagine that I will never go urban exploring after watching Urban Explorer. You realize this? You're not worried that your film will piss off these sport extremists?
Fetscher: I don't think so. After seeing Bucharest Flesh, a lot of people among my festival audiences told me they never wanted to go to Romania—which is where I come from and where Bucharest Flesh takes place—but that was not my intention. I had wanted to show the beauty of Romania and this time I wanted to show the beauty of urban exploration and I think you can see it, past all the dark details in the narrative. If you go urban exploring beneath Berlin you'll see bats clinging to the high ceilings, underground lakes and flooded tunnels, and it's all really beautiful. The rot can be beautiful. That's something I think urban explorers generally appreciate. We collaborated with some urban explorers. They saw parts of the movie and I believe they appreciated it. In a way it's romantic.
Guillén: There's a romantic truth to urban decay, yes. It's a reminder of the organic momentums inherent in urban design. Cities, histories, rise and fall and—wandering among the detritus of a previous incarnation of a city—the urban explorer is reminded that even cities are vulnerable and fragile. Did you encounter any actual urban explorers while you were filming?
Fetscher: No. We met a lot of homeless people. One of them had an air pistol and tried to shoot my assistant director. One night we bumped into an underground latex fetish party. I wasn't prepared for that and didn't know what it was. We found these professionally-installed electric cables running through the tunnels, which we thought was strange but we followed them because we thought we might be able to use them, and suddenly we came into a huge hall that was filled with these fetishists. We had this moment of dead silence where we were staring at them and they were staring at us. They weren't really happy to see us down there. There was a fire breather among them who tried to burn my camera assistant and my camera. I stood in front of my camera assistant to stop him, which was dangerous. But then Klaus showed up as Armin the villain and that same day he had stolen an electric power drill from the art department. He went up to the fire breather and threatened to drill him in the head. The fire breather ran away. So, in that case, Armin saved our lives.
Guillén: [Laughs.] Let's talk about your choice to have a multi-ethnic cast. Again, I presume this was part of the strategy to reach an international audience?
Fetscher: Of course. I liked the fact that so many different cultures were combined in one group of tourists, that they came from so many different countries. Having different languages on set gave me a particular thrill as a director working with the actors.
Guillén: Which leads me to a theme I've been investigating in genre: its transnational appeal.
Fetscher: The code of fear is not limited to any one culture; it's multicultural. You know how in Japanese horror they're into the long dark hair of women in a weird way? Maybe we don't exactly understand it but it's still creepy to us as well.
Guillén: Your decision to make the Nazi horror a real horror—in contrast to a supernatural horror of ghostly supermen coming back to harm people—was a wise, effective choice.
Fetscher: When people were talking about The Descent, they would agree it was a great horror film but some people expressed disappointment. They would have preferred if Neil Marshall had left out the crawlers, these metaphysical creatures, and stayed grounded in reality. For me this was important to stay close to reality and have the darkness of the villain be cynical.
Guillén: You've certainly created an iconic villain in Armin (Klaus Stiglmeier). For me he was a blend between Lee Marvin after way too many drinks and Klaus Kinski. How did you find him?
Fetscher: Actually, Klaus Stiglmeier has been working as a hard-core on-stage comedian in Bavaria for a long time now. In the '80s he used to play a role in a series called Paternostra From Sacramento where he was a priest who would insult his congregation with lacivious language. Not only was he a priest but he was a part-time ski instructor. One of his well-known quotes from that show is: "Some men are polygamous. Some men are monogamous. I'm a ski instructor."
Guillén: [Chuckles.] His turn as Armin is going to be great international exposure for him. I'm not sure if he would consider this lucky or not, but he could probably be cast in this kind of role for the rest of his career.
Fetscher: The character of Armin is like Freddy Krueger for me and I truly hope that Klaus gains what he deserves for this performance. A lot of German actors didn't dare to play the role but Klaus was eager to do it.
Guillén: His teeth—which Mitch Davis described as "40-foot wide teeth"—will go down in infamy. I understand he actually bit a make-up assistant during the shoot?
Fetscher: It was a very long day for Klaus Stiglmeier who is actually very much like his character in the film. He spent time in the early '80s fighting Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan, which made it even more intense to work with him. It's where he learned the mujahideen practices of torture, including the "shirt" torture performed on the character of Denis. You wouldn't dare ask him any questions about that experience.
As for the story about his biting the make-up girl, she was from Western Germany and had never experienced the East-West Germany problem so she was joking about it and Klaus warned her not to joke about the army. She persisted and he bit her. The make-up department was quite angry with me. I didn't see him biting her but I could see the bite marks. We wanted to make him look nicer but we couldn't afford it and—after this incident—there was no make-up on him.
Guillén: Let's talk about the lesbian flourish.
Fetscher: [Laughs.] That had to do with giving the audience what the audience wants, which is a good thing on the one hand but on the other hand I feel that the beginning of the movie is very much about distracting the audience by certain possibilities of danger: by referencing the Nazis, and the zombie legends, the guys with the dogs, and by positioning this love story between two girls where you're not really sure how it's going to end. They kiss in front of a sinister Nazi mural in the bunker. It's pretty much about distracting the audience.
Guillén: An elegant foreshadowing that worked for me was the earrings you had them wear. The Korean girl was wearing dangly ones and the French girl was wearing these blue-green earrings. I don't know why but as I was watching the movie I thought, "Those earrings are going to be important. I'm going to pay attention to those earrings." Sure enough, when the earring shows up on the floor, it signals a significant ellipse in the narrative.
Fetscher: Very good! You are a pro!
Guillén: All in all, I very much enjoyed your entire cast. First of all I appreciated that I didn't recognize any of them. I often feel it's a danger to cast well-known actors because they pull me out of the situation. Nick Eversman was perfectly sympathetic as the young male lead Denis.
Thau: He's becoming well-known in Europe.
Guillén: Is he? That's understandable: he has a natural presence on film.
Fetscher: Nick is currently in a TV movie called Missing, which was filmed in Prague and is already receiving much attention. Nick is going to be someone soon. That's, of course, good for us.
Guillén: So when you're casting these young actors, what is it? What is the quality you're looking for to represent the young teenagers that you hope audiences will relate to?
Fetscher: In a way I have to fall in love with all of them.
Guillén: That's what it is, isn't it? The audience has to fall in love with them and care about them so that—when you torture them the way you do—the audience feels for them.
Fetscher: For me as a director it's very important to be sure that there's a similar language, even though I have difficulty with English at times. There needs to be a similar language for my actors on set. With Urban Explorer, there was immediately a good language for me with Nathalie Kelley, Nick Eversman, the French actress Catherine de Léan....
Guillén: Who I fell in love with instantly, by the way, I hope you use her again in one of your movies.
Fetscher: ...and Brenda Koo. Early on in the casting I told them, "This shoot is going to be a nightmare for all of you. There won't be any toilet facilities around, no wardrobe rooms, no bathrobes, no warm or clean water. You're going to actually have to go down into these places and it's not going to be funny." This young cast were the ones who said, "Yes, let's go on the ride!" So I was sure they were the right ones.
Guillén: It did, indeed, sound like a nightmarish shoot for all parties concerned, even yourself. During the Q&A, Montreal actress Catherine de Léan confirmed the eels in the water were real and that they bit. Could you repeat your story about what it was like shooting in the water?
Fetscher: We had at least five actors in the water so we had to use waders. We had five new waders for the actors and one secondhand pair for me. It turned out my waders were full of holes so that after a minute in the water they became full of water. I couldn't move to get out of the water. My crew had to use knives and scissors to cut me out of the waders and the water gushed out like blood. It was very funny. Everyone laughed, right?
Guillén: I've been taught that any good genre film relies on a certain amount of thievery. You've already admitted that Urban Explorer has borrowed elements from Neil Marshall's The Descent, or at least that audiences perceive that. I perceived it in the sequence where Lucia (Nathalie Kelley) is crawling up through that tiny space to the surface. Was that a direct borrowing?
Fetscher: Yes.
Guillén: Did other films come to mind as you were crafting your own?
Fetscher: I don't think you can avoid being influenced by all the movies you've seen during your childhood, especially horror movies because they're about fear, which the brain captures. A good horror movie never lets you go. These strong images, especially the ones you see as a young child, stick with you. I remember being six years old and being forced by my brother to watch the movie Alien. In the scene where the android is being destroyed with the fire extinguisher and his white blood is spraying out, a switch toggled in my brain. The fear, which remained fear, turned into fascination as well and I remember taking the remote and watching that scene over and over again in slow-mo. My brother, who was watching me do this, became frightened by my behavior. [Laughs.] You can never let a moment like that go. It follows you. I'm not sure if you can see any semblance of Alien in Urban Explorer—I wouldn't have been able to control that—but, of course, what I've seen in my past is there. Then again, almost every horror movie is about people descending into darkness. The descent is always there but I wouldn't be able to tell you which specific movies are there because I became interested in making movies from watching arthouse movies from Russia, which weren't really horror movies. They were difficult to understand.
Guillén: Can you speak then to what it is about fear or terror that is beautiful?
Fetscher: Whenever I'm asked that, I quote the ancient Greeks and their theory of catharsis. Fear and compassion clean your soul, especially for young people going to the cinema and watching horror movies. I love to watch them watching the movies. With love couples, the girl is squeezing the arm of her boyfriend and he is jerking out of his seat. It's like a roller coaster for them. After they leave the cinema, they feel shaken but they feel better, they feel cleaned. Horror movies help you better appreciate the value of life.
10/03/11 UPDATE: Urban Explorer will have its West Coast premiere at Hollywood's Screamfest on Tuesday, October 18th at 10:00PM, Chinese 6 Theater–Level 3, Hollywood & Highland, 6801 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, CA 90028.
Raha Shirazi was born in Tehran, Iran and immigrated to Canada with her family at the age of eleven. Her short film Four Walls premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2007, and has gone on to screen at international film festivals around the world.
In 2008 Raha was selected as one of six Canadian representatives in the Berlinale International Film Festival Talent Campus where she was also given the opportunity to pitch her upcoming documentary. Raha is focusing on post-production of Picturesque, a narrative film funded by the Ontario Arts Council shot last spring in Mexico and her next project a documentary entitled, Prisoner of Tehran, funded by Canada Council for the Arts and Toronto Arts Council.
Raha Shirazi is an Artistic Co-Director of Plural Productions and holds an MFA in film production from York University with a joint diploma from New York University and Famue Film School in the Czech Republic, where she completed intensive training in the cinematic arts.
Her most recent film Acqua (2011) is premiering in the Short Cuts Canada programme of the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. Shirazi describes her film as a "reflection of spiritual traditions" that "organically brushes the portrait of a young woman's journey with water through the cyclical meditation of life and death." As Magali Simard notes for the TIFF catalog: "As winter borders on spring, a young woman silently walks alone to retrieve water from a natural source. A celebration of traditions, Acqua presents the quest for water partly as a necessity, partly as a solemn pilgrimage. Raha Shirazi unfolds this idea with great visual scope and personal investment."
Acqua does, indeed, excel in its visual language, subtly revealing the role that ritual and vigil play in negotiating grief. Cinematographer Ita Zbroniec-Zajt's style has a touch of the Dardennes. Via abstracted close-ups, the beauty of water is expressed in varying patterns: from raindrops on a pool of water to bubbling flow. The fundamental truth applies: water is life.
My thanks to Alma Parvizian of Touchwood PR for facilitating an interview with Shirazi. [This conversation is not for the spoiler-wary!]
* * *
Michael Guillén: First and foremost, congratulations on being programmed into the 2011 Toronto International. How did that come about?
Raha Shirazi: Thank you for your kind words. I think Toronto International is one of the most important festivals in which a Canadian film maker can participate, not only on a national scale but also internationally. After the submission process, I was incredibly excited when I heard the good news. Although I've had the honor of participating in the festival previously, this opportunity feels completely independent of my previous experience at TIFF and I'm looking forward to the new and unchartered path the film will provide this time around.
Guillén: Already as a young filmmaker you exhibit an international pedigree. You were born in Iran, from which you emigrated to Canada, and then educated in Toronto, New York, and the Famue Film School in the Czech Republic. Does this comport or conflict with your being identified as a Canadian filmmaker? How important is it for you to think of yourself as a Canadian filmmaker?
Shirazi: The international pedigree, which you mention, is directly a result of my being a Canadian filmmaker. As a young country that is home to many first generation immigrants, I think it can be difficult for one to identify as Canadian. Yet with time, I have realized that a foundation of being Canadian has its roots in the terrain of multiculturalism: that is, being Canadian is an attempt to shape and form a new identity which embodies your culture and traditions at the same time as it makes room for and welcomes new ones. Nonetheless, I cannot deny how great a weight my Iranian roots carry in the process that is who I am and who I will be, and thus naturally their influence is heavy in my work. Yet I am neither Canadian, nor Iranian; I would rather like to think of myself as an Iranian-Candian filmmaker.
Guillén: Talk to me about your co-artistic directorship with Plural Productions, "a multiarts collective that encourages collaboration, support and innovation while actively seeking out artists in various disciplines around the world." What are you seeking to effect here? What is the value of a filmmaker participating in her own production company?
Shirazi: Plural Production is about art in all its forms. This collaboration started between myself, Cole J. Alvis and Chelsea McMullan after we graduated from York University. The passion that we shared for the arts brought us together and thus Plural Production was born. Our goal was to first create a space where we could all experiment with different mediums, work with different artists, and create multidisciplinary work that was new and exciting. Looking at the world right now one cannot help but think that the idea of borders is merely an illusion; the internet has provided us access to places and people that we would not otherwise be able to so easily reach and connect with. This is something that has definitely started to show itself in art on a global scale and it makes it much easier to connect and work with artists from different places and backgrounds. This can make for great and interesting work. I have learned a lot from this process and have been lucky to collaborate with artists with an array of experiences on a global scale.
Guillén: In her program note for Acqua, Magali Simard states: "Raha Shirazi unfolds this idea with great visual scope and personal investment." Can you speak to working with Polish cinematographer Ita Zbroniec-Zajt to achieve that "visual scope"? How you negotiated the look of the film? And what Simard is referencing by "personal investment"?
Shirazi: Acqua was made in a workshop that I completed in Italy with Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Frammartino in December—I was one of six international young filmmakers selected to participate in this workshop and Ita Zbroniec was another. As a director of photography, she was looking to collaborate with a director and—when I approached her with my idea—we instantly connected. I loved her work and she was interested in the story that I wanted to tell. Ita and I spent a lot of time location scouting, getting still images and looking at visual references to create a specific look for the film. By spending a tremendous amount of time with one another, we slow thought together, in harmony, as artists. It was absolutely magical. I had never worked with someone where I was able to connect with them so easily. By the end of it we both spoke the same visual language.
The personal investment to which Simard refers, is the connection I have with the story: while the cultural practices of water that are depicted in the film were rooted in my past, the experience of creating these images was my present experience of being in Italy and furthermore, using my own body as a means to connect to nature, to go through the culture of my past first hand. Put differently, my personal investment in the film was not only the final product but also the overall process.
Guillén: Clearly, your "visual scope" was engineered through an eschewal of dialogue and a reliance on narrative ellipse. Can you speak to how you worked out telling this narrative purely through visual language? How did the script develop? Do you storyboard?
Shirazi: I have recently found myself drawn to the narrative concepts that explore the relationship between nature and human beings. What has happened to these relationships and how do they differ from one another when the geographical location of the individual (city versus rural life) changes? I also find myself more and more interested in the cinematic form of the hybrid. Where do the boundaries of documentation and fiction cross and how do we use these elements with care and precision to convey a deeper understand of the image itself? How much of film is visual storytelling and does narrative cinema depend on dialogue to carry its weight? These are the type of ideas that have shaped the premise of my recent works. I didn't know beforehand what I was going to make while I was there and I tried to find a connection between myself and the place in which I found myself. I allowed myself to be inspired and to truly connect to my surroundings and thus the story was born. I didn't have a script in the traditional sense, but I did have a clear narrative in mind and I storyboarded everything. My storyboarding was based on the locations that I found: I create a storyboard by taking photos at locations and so my storyboard is a series of stills.
Guillén: In your interview with Katie Uhlmann for TTN-HD, you specified Acqua was shot in Italy. Can you speak to that experience? And, again, how it characterizes you as a Canadian filmmaker to be shooting outside of Canada?
Shirazi: As I mentioned before, this film was done in a workshop with Michelangelo Frammartino, which consisted of filmmakers from seven different countries: four of these filmmakers were from Italy and six were from other countries. It was amazing to be around young talent that represented the future generation of filmmakers globally. We learned so much from one another and continually taught one another. The experience changed me for the better: not only was I able to make a film which is my strongest work yet, but I also learned and built friendships that will last me a lifetime. I think the experience reflects both my identity as a Canadian filmmaker and the future of filmmaking around the globe. With co-productions, immigration and globalization on the rise comes a new approach to filmmaking. There is a new generation of emerging talent out there which will use this to create interesting work.
Guillén: As the film starts out and the protagonist walks through the snow to fetch water, the audience experiences a cognitive dissonance. Why not melt the snow for water? It becomes instantly clear that this is a ritual pilgrimage for purposes of vigil. Where does this ritual come from? Is it invented? Is it Iranian?
Shirazi: Indeed, as soon as the film starts, the main character is surrounded by the element of water in its different forms: there is snow, rain, and many other forms, yet she is on a specific quest and on her way to a precise place. The story and the stem of this ritual is very real. In both Iran, and where I was in Italy, a long time ago women would travel from their village to bring back water. Fetching water was always a woman's job. Even now for purpose of vigil in these areas, women travel to a specific place and bring back water. I found an instant connection between these two cultures and that only brought me closer to my natural surroundings. The film became a ritual, a representation of traditions and their roots. I walked into the water, I carried it on my head in freezing weather as I hiked up the mountain. Using my body as a canvas, I was able to find the elements which connected my past, Iran, to my present, Italy.
Guillén: How influenced are you by Iranian cinema? Who are your influences as a filmmaker?
Shirazi: I love Iranian cinema, especially Iranian cinema before 1979. One of my favorite films is Gav (The Cow, 1969) by Dariush Mehrjui. Another favorite filmmaker of mine is Masoud Kimiai. Early work by Abbas Kiarostami is also inspirational: Close-Up is in my top ten list. And now after the Green Revolution, I am so interested to see what will come out of Iran. There is a film this year at TIFF, called This Is Not A Film by Mojtaba Mirtahmasb and Jafar Panahi. I'm looking forward to seeing it.
Carl Theodor Dreyer, François Truffaut and Andrei Tarkovsky are just a few of my favorite filmmakers. In recent years, Michelangelo Frammartino's work has been incredibly inspirational for me.
Guillén: You are a clear example of a young filmmaker whose short films have been supported by Canadian agencies: the Canada Council for the Arts, the Toronto Art Council, and the Ontario Arts Council. Can you speak to your interaction with them and if they will be involved with you and Plural Productions to further your dream of a full-length narrative feature? What are your first steps to achieve that dream?
Shirazi: OAC, CCA, TAC have been crucial in my career as an emerging filmmaker. Without their support, all this would have never been possible. These institutions are why I will always remain a Canadian filmmaker. They have made my career possible and I hope that there is more support for them from the government so that the Canadian arts and culture can keep growing and flourishing to its fullest extent. By supporting artists that work internationally, they are making it possible for Canadian filmmakers to reach international success. Plural Production has been working with these organization in many different capacities, and will continue to do so; their support has made our projects possible.
As for the feature, I think it might be a bit more complex, I don't have enough information to answer that question properly except that I know there is not enough money from these organization to support all types of feature projects—I think it mostly depends on what type of feature film you are making and what your budget is. That being said, they have fantastic grants available for writing and I think that might be one of my next steps. At the moment I have a treatment for a feature length film that is also very personal, a story that takes place here in my city, Toronto. My next step will be to develop it further and whatever avenue makes that possible, I will seek to find.
Cross-published on Twitch.
Another international premiere at the 15th edition of Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival currently on festival track is William Eubank's ambitious indie sci-fi drama Love (2011), produced by the alternative rock band Angels & Airwaves and poised to screen at Austin's Fantastic Fest. Slated as the opening night feature in Fantasia's Camera Lucida spotlight on "genre cinema in its utmost extreme, surprising and iconoclastic form"—Love is clearly a labor of.
"Lead thesp Wright, shouldering nearly a one-man-show burden, is gamely athletic, all-American and somewhat of a blank slate, like Kubrick's astronauts," Harvey writes, "until some unfettered personality begins to seep out." At Twitch, Kurt Halfyard agrees: "Gunner Wright is very convincing in his reaction to first loss of control, then boredom, then loneliness and despair."
Gunner Wright: I first saw Love with an audience when it premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Although I had seen some remnants, bits and pieces, with Will, the Santa Barbara premiere was the first time I watched my performance. I was trying to watch the film for all the things we were trying to communicate and get out there, but I was being my own worst critic and looking at areas in my performance that I didn't believe—"You were real here. You were pushing it to get that emotion here"—but, that was just me from racing motorcycles for years fine tuning technique. For the most part, watching the audience get excited about the film was just special. Santa Barbara was amazing because there was so much support. It's close to L.A. and we had a lot of Hollywood there at the premiere giving us thumbs-up.
Guillén: As Love is a film whose narrative was built up over a long period of time, how did you adjust to that process as an actor? Were you given a general arc to your character at the beginning of filming to hold onto throughout? How did you compensate for the many adjustments made to the script over the years?
Guillén: I appreciate that having the time to develop Love was probably a once-in-a-lifetime acting experience for you; but—now that it's finally done—do you think it's going to be a difficult movie to sell?
Wright: We were in Seattle at the E&P with 500 kids five hours before one of our shows at the Seattle International signing autographs. Ewan McGregor and all these big stars were there—my heroes, my counterparts—but because of Tom DeLonge and because of the band, Will and I and Tom and the guitar player were signing autographs for a film. It's a kind of weird aspect to the film.
Guillén: Most films are formulaic and manipulative. They make the audience go to a certain place. I don't believe that Kubrick wanted 2001 to be understood; he wanted it to be felt. In that respect, Will's homage to Kubrick successfully restrains itself. As Kurt Halfyard mentioned in his review at Twitch, Will doesn't embarrass himself by trying to match one of the greatest films of all time. He finds his own measure of expression.
I thought about what it was like to be pigeonholed in a box. I watched Cast Away and what Tom Hanks did with that character. But then you have to make it your own. That was a big issue. How insane do you take this guy? He's an astronaut. He's trained for all kinds of emergencies. You ask yourself, "What would I do if I were flying a 747 and the engine went out?" If you talk to pilots, you realize that they've been conditioned over and over and over, such that their motor skills take over in an emergency. There had to be a little bit of that with Captain Lee Miller. "Okay, I don't know what's going on but I know what I can control. And it's this button and this procedure." To where he might go off his rocker to a degree but he will still come back when his motor skills go into effect and press air and oxygen and lights are on.
I met people, specifically David Barrett and his family who were huge in Hollywood. Dave's dad was Burt Reynolds' stunt double. Burt taught Dave how to swim. David was a motorcycle racer first, then did stunts in second unit, and now he's a great big producer in Hollywood. David gave me an opportunity to get on set to do some extra work and stand-in work. I had no idea what I was doing, but I really fell in love with that process. My first starts were years of extra work and stand-in work part-time here and there. Today I tell tons of actors or people in L.A. who want to get involved in acting, "You know, it sounds menial but you learn so much by being an extra." We're all extras at some point, even the stars. You're in focus and I'm in the background getting a drink? That's extra work. You're not saying anything. You're basically crossing camera. But that's how you learn the foundation, at least for me. It set the tone.
I did a play called The Play Ground in L.A.. It was a challenging role. Very difficult. The director was a young guy out of New York City and his mentor had been Peter Flint, a great coach out of New York City, who came on his own dime to spend three weeks working with all of the cast. What helped in that theatrical experience is that The Play Ground was blocked like a feature film. It was gritty. I played a long-haired greasy pimp. It wasn't Hamlet. It was raw. And Peter was brilliant. He stripped me apart day after day. So, I did get a little bit of that formal training.
Wright: It was so far-reaching. As I said, when Will asked me about this project and mentioned, "Hey, how do you feel about playing an astronaut?", the two things that I wanted to do as a kid growing up was either race motorcycles or be an astronaut. I'm from Florida and Cape Canaveral was always just around the corner. As he was building the space station, I was trying to wrap my head around being an astronaut and doing that role justice as far as what astronauts do. All we had really were books. I'd sit on the floor and look at old photos and go through stories and try to figure out, "What would this character do on a day-to-day basis?" Other films, I would play around and watch and pick some things that I could pick apart; but, the process for creating the character in Love was abstract.
I have to give Will tons of props as a filmmaker and as a friend, but the thing I kept thinking about when I watched the film with the audience earlier tonight that hit me as an actor was that the biggest aspect between a filmmaker and an actor together is trust. I was watching certain scenes that we started to shoot in September 2007. At that time I knew Will briefly, but I didn't know Will. You have to understand, I was in short shorts, which I didn't want to be in. I had this whole idea in my mind that I'd be wearing these cool spacesuits and he handed me these shorts and said, "Here you go, bro." It was a challenge enough to be carrying a film in my first leading man role, but to trust Will when I was in such a vulnerable situation as a first-time actor in those situations took a lot of trust. Will and I developed over the course of those four years mutual respect, mutual trust, even as friends. And tonight as I was watching the film, I noticed towards the end certain scenes where Will said, "You say what you want, man, because I know exactly where this is going to go." So I gave him everything I had. I wasn't going to second guess him. I knew his vision and I was in.
Guillén: Why would you say that? You do own your craft. You show that in this film.
Guillén: I, too, romanticize the longevity of a career. And one of my favorite ways to approach movies, since I watch so many of them, is to take note of the early performances of actors when they're, as you say, paying their dues and learning their chops in small career-building performances. I project that somewhere down the line, perhaps because of your motorcycle skills, you'll do a Steve McQueen role; a remake of Le Mans (1971) perhaps?
Wright: In a heartbeat. But I don't know if I could do him justice. A friend of mine in L.A. recently gave me a box set of McQueen films and a box set of Paul Newman films. I watched Cool Hand Luke...
