E42 • The Subtle Art of Portraiture • BRIAN CASSIDY & MELANIE SHATZKY, dirs. of ‘A Man Imagined’ at the Rotterdam Int. Film Festival

Montreal-based Directors Brian Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky delve into the making of their Rotterdam documentary “A Man Imagined”, which focuses on the life of Lloyd, a homeless man with schizophrenia surviving amidst urban detritus and decay. Past inspo includes "Dog Days" by Austrian director Ulrich Seidl.

They discuss their unique approach to storytelling, challenges in finding and capturing Lloyd's essence, and their collaborative relationship with him throughout the filming process - emphasizing the importance of portraying homelessness with dignity and complexity, rather than falling into common tropes. 

They also speak on the art of portraiture, and the complexities of navigating trauma and memory in their narratives. 

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Chapters

• 0:01 Past Present Feature, Hosted by Marcus Mizelle
• 0:20 Brian Cassidy & Melanie Shatsky, dirs. of "A Man Imagined" at Rotterdam

Transcript

Marcus Mizelle (00:00)
A Man Imagined and beautiful documentary. It's just past an hour long, which is an interesting runtime that I haven't seen much. And you guys, I'll just read the synopsis really quick. Embracingly intimate and hallucinatory portrait of a man with schizophrenia surviving amidst urban detritus and decay. Pushing at the limits of nonfiction cinema, A Man Imagined follows 67 year old Lloyd as he sells discarded objects to motorists and passerbys.

The film reveals the existential solitude of a man at once gentle and marred by a storied past. Then I found an article about nine months ago from the Globe. You guys were hoping to make a film about homelessness and basically volunteered a shelter in Montreal for months before you ran into Lloyd. Correct? That's right. Yeah. Well, and one thing is we, you know, we always knew we wanted to make something, you know, around people experience surviving on the street. We were aware that, you know, homelessness comes with a lot of

well-worn images and tropes and there are a lot of very good and interesting films made with the homeless population. We wanted to do something quite different in our approach. So we spent a year volunteering at a homeless shelter, giving out coffees and hanging out and having meals with some of these guys as they would come through. And while we met some very interesting people,

It wasn't until the year mark that we met Lloyd. And it was at that point that we knew we had to make a film with him at the center and only him. Initially, we thought maybe we would weave together, maybe make a multi-character piece. But then Melanie and I were so taken by Lloyd's presence. Lloyd has this incredible physical presence.

He almost has this like stone carved face and these piercing blue eyes. He's almost Lincoln esque. It's a kind of face that you don't see very much these days. It's like he stepped out of another. Yeah. And against that beautiful and hard face came this almost soothing baritone voice, this gentle, almost ASMR like quality of a voice. And these paradoxes made

him, at least for us, a kind of transcendent person, someone who was more than whatever story in a reportage way they might tell, but he just had an aura about him. And Eleni and I both come from a background as artists and still photographers, that's our origin. And so we were both immediately struck by this and said, no, we have to make a film with him.

Importantly, he approached us. He saw us on the grounds of the shelter, speaking with people and making some test scenes with our camera. And he showed great interest in the camera and in being in front of it. So from the very beginning, it was like this very mutually mutual interest. have a few thoughts. First of all, why what drew you to the topic of homelessness? What made you feel like you needed to capture a story within that world?

that space? Well, both Brian and I have always had a soft spot for people living on the margins. For example, Brian used to work at, yeah, with people experiencing mental distress. And I, as a teenager, spent a lot of time with street kids and people living on the streets and would even invite them over to my parents' house to make them dinner and allow them to shower and spent a lot of time. And I knew

for myself, I knew that eventually I would want to go back and make a film with people experiencing homelessness. And so that's when we approached the National Film Board. And also, I think the idea of outskirts, urban outskirts, and these areas, these kind of nonplaces where we grew up around these areas. And we also made a film called Interchange, which really looks at

these places where they're almost just forgotten and you can't really imagine anything coming out of them and they seem so sort of forbidding and dehumanized. And we really thought that those landscapes were fascinating and fertile terrain to situate and observe a human existence and someone who subsists and thrives off of those very environments that we had.

sort of seen as so forbidding. So the film is situated often in the scenes take place in some of these most sort of harsh and unforgiving perimeters of the city. And so that juxtaposition of such a gentle and yet resilient man experiencing his own sort of solitude and survival in these particular urban landscapes was fascinating to us. How do you know when

you found your protagonist in the documentary. Like, how do you also know when it's not just on an ensemble, but one person? Like, how do you know when you found your protagonist? It just feels right. I don't know. It's just an intuitive thing. I think Brian was explaining how we were so taken with Lloyd and just his aura and his presence. And he was immediately so interested in what we were doing. And then we started filming with him and he was so interested in the

whole process and it became clear to us that he was an artist as well. And he loved creating and he was so easy to create with. And together we co-created this portrait. He took an active role in his own portrayal, which I think is pretty unique because not everyone has that sort of strength to do that or interest. And he really took an interest and basically he's

He's portraying a version of himself. But we would work together to decide what the scenes would be, all based on his life, all based on things that he would normally do, but we would want to cast them in the most sort of cinematic way possible. But yeah, it really became a relationship. And this is someone that we developed a lot of love for. And my assumption is he developed love for us as well.

So was really based on that sort of mutual trust and interest that propelled us to make this portrait solely about him. And also, and you know, whereas in a more traditional documentary, you'd be looking perhaps for the story. What's your story? And for us, it was much more about his presence. We were looking for somebody with...

Such a striking presence and that and that comes out and that's evident in the film in so many ways He's a person of paradox. He's living this very kind of harsh and chaotic Existence and yet he has a real gracefulness almost a gracefulness of the jazz Kim You guys are talking about his life and it being hard. He said no, my life's not that hard. It was like wow The perspective that he that he has like it's great. That was crazy. Yeah, and that's something that we kind of

wanted to highlight in a way in the film that it's not a sad sack sort of a film and he's not someone that feels sorry for himself. Yeah, he might have some regrets here or there and some sadness, but at the end of the day, he's actually someone who's really proud of his ability to live on the streets and to just navigate that difficult terrain. So he never speaks of his life as being without, you know, he never uses the word homeless. He never uses the word unhoused.

He says, I live on the streets. It's something that's very active and something that he's proud of. And so this sort of set him apart in a way from some other people. Like for him, the streets are his home. And so, yeah, it's got, you know, so certainly the film has an intensity, a raw, intense quality to it, but that's quite different than a pity party or something. You know, he doesn't pity himself and we don't, as filmmakers, we don't pity him, you know.

You know the idea of is there hope for this man? Well that question didn't really come up because he's he's surviving It doesn't mean it's always beautiful or easy by any stretch. You're not going for like what do they call it misery porn or something? Yeah, yeah So question when did you bring on the National Film Board of Canada? When did you bring them in? What did that process look like? Did you had did you figure out your protagonist? Did you figure out it was Lloyd and then you went to them or how did that work?

Well, there was a producer that we had been in touch with for a couple of years, just sort of loosely. And then we approached this person with the idea of, with this particular project. At this point, it was only an idea. And we hadn't yet approached the shelter. We hadn't yet found a protagonist. And the process that they use with

projects is if they sort of like the idea, then they say, well, you'll go through a phase called an investigate, which is put together a five minute demo. no, first I think it's put together a proposal and pitch deck kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. Then you do a five, 10 minute demo. And then based on the demo, then they decide whether they're going to green light your project. Got you. Well, let's talk about that for a second. Just the process of

In my mind, it's sizzle. I'm in Hollywood. Sizzle, let me see a sizzle. Here's your sizzle, you know. I mean, man, it's like not only obviously the value of having one to show people to help encapsulate what you're doing and what story you're telling, but also how much talk about how much it helps you, the filmmaker, to understand what story you're trying to tell when you do a sizzle. I would say, you know, early on, part of the idea of having multiple characters throughout the piece was, you know, to mitigate risk.

the risk that somebody drops out. mean, it's dealing with people on the street. They live with a lot of inconsistency. You don't know if you're gonna, from one day to the next, if someone's gonna be around. And so, you know, it made good sense for us to say, to think of it in terms of that this film will have multiple characters if somebody drops out or if somebody. especially in the world you're in. Yeah. I mean, cause yeah, would be naturally concerned with that as well.

I mean, it just reminds me of this, this documentary I've been working on for three years. It's called LAPI right now. It's called LAPI. It's about a private investigator in Los Angeles. And I bring it up because I didn't have it, but I knew that I wanted to do a documentary about a private investigator. didn't know what it was going to look like or who it was going to be. So I, I did it, you know, I look at it as a casting call version of a documentary, which is like, I emailed all 120 PIs in the LA County area. Wow. Ended up interviewing six of them.

I thought it was gonna be an ensemble as well. And then this one guy, the first guy of course, the first guy, right? Was the guy. It's like, I don't need these other people. This is the guy. Plus like, it's funny how you can go from like thinking you need everything to then realizing, I need to simplify. Right? It's this thing where it's like, this moment, this light bulb where it's like, this is not that hard. This is not that difficult. Why was I trying to make it so difficult?

But at the same time, you want to know what your options are, guess, right? You don't know at the outset what you're going to be taken by, what's going to put. You don't quite know at some point. yeah, I mean, in our experience, making cinema is largely a process of distillation. It is about refining and figuring out how to say things succinctly and how to go right to the heart of the matter. But at the outset, you don't necessarily know what that's going to be.

You know, it makes intuitive sense to keep options open and to keep you got to go fishing a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We just knew when we met Lloyd. mean, also, you know, in the way that a painter would be taken with their subject and maybe want to paint them over and over and over again under different lighting conditions in different environments, you just feel that the person in front of your canvas or in this case, in front of your lens is has something inexhaustible about them.

that transcends the literal story in their own moment, but something larger, more existential. And that's not easy to find. It has a lot of searching to find that, at least in our experience. Yeah. I will add that in Lloyd's case, he really liked being examined closely. So Brian was the one who shot it. And in many instances, Brian is only like two or three inches from Lloyd's face. OK.

And I think for Lloyd, he just he appreciated being seen. He I think for him, it felt like ASMR to be looked at that closely, or even like I would mic him up or sometimes I would have to put it like directly on his skin, the mic. And I know he wouldn't flinch at all. And I could just tell that he liked that sort of primary kind of caretaking, like he's so used to being in institutions and

having a more sterile environment that I just, he felt cared for in these moments. So it became a real relationship between us wanting to look at him closely and him wanting to be looked at closely. And that's a rare sort of combination that you find that kind of match. So as far as production, we're talking about production already, but were there any moments that maybe didn't make the cut or did make the cut where it was like challenging or?

Is there any moments that he had where you're like worried about him? Was he ever kind of expressing any sort of like crazy behavior? Did he ever go, did he disappear? Did he always show up? Like what? That's an interesting question because the, so we started filming him right before COVID happened. We met him in February of 2020. So then we had to take a break because everything shut down.

And then we found out that we were greenlit by the NFB and we couldn't find him for like a month after we greenlit. No longer. Y'all are sweating. Y'all are a little worried. So remember this idea of having four or five characters. Yeah. Wasn't risky. you we were in a very risky.

But exciting, but risky theory. it was, we had met him at a shelter and right before COVID happened, he went to a halfway house. So we contacted, tried to contact him at the halfway house. Once we found out we were greenlit and they're like, no, he hasn't been here for months. Or like, do you know where he is? Like, could he be back at the shelter? They're like, I don't think he's at the shelter. He's probably in the streets. We went back to the original shelter. They're like, no, he hasn't been here since COVID.

before COVID. And you he doesn't, he's truly an off the grid person. Like he doesn't use email. He doesn't have a phone. He doesn't have You should have my detective, you know, I got him right then. How did you find him? Well, so we had to go, like we went to different shelters trying to locate him. But of course, for confidentiality reasons, they won't give you information. Right, right, right. The best we could do is leave our phone number there and you know, then someone can contact you.

But then we also walked around like the streets of Montreal where people like him hang out and where we knew that he would hang out. We would walk for hours downtown. Like trying, like finding a missing person. We'd had a picture of him. Have you seen this man, you know, waking people up, you know, on the, you know, sleeping in the park guy and then, know, just, you know, really just the two of us just really trying to find him. One interesting story, actually, while we were trying to find him one time, we were downtown in one of these areas that he hangs out.

And we noticed there were like tents on the street with homeless people in them. And Montreal is not in that area is not a tent city. So I thought it was a little weird, but I'm like, okay, well, I haven't been here in a while. Maybe, you know, people are allowed to have tents now. And then suddenly the area was looking like more and more down and out. And then we realized we were in the middle of an Ari Aster set. the one with the, no, which one is that?

I was always afraid. Yeah, yeah, Exactly. Got you. Yeah. So they happen to be shooting in the city in the exact same area where Lloyd hangs out. Wow. And everything for a couple of blocks, everything just looked a little it was they weren't it wasn't there either. It was like that's why everything looked a little off, like a little bit like a simulacrum of an area. And said, this looks strange. And then we later just discovered you were inside of a movie.

Wow. And all goes back to movies. That's funny. So we had left our phone number with one of the shelters. And like Melanie said, the shelters can't reveal anything about someone. It's up to them to get in touch. And sure enough, one day about three weeks or a month in, our phone rings. And it's Lloyd in his beautiful baritone voice. He rarely uses a phone at all, but he called us and, you know.

Is that, you are we doing it? What are we doing? When do go? And then we picked him up the following morning. And then subsequently, it got easier. He that because, you know, he had called us and then he had settled into a sort of a halfway house type situation. Things stabilized and we were able to actually, you know, call him and set up shoot and go from there. And what was amazing, too, is once he was in that halfway house, he was actually very reliable. So we would.

Only like maybe like once or twice was he late. But otherwise we'd say, know, please be ready for, you know, 10 o'clock and he'd be ready at 10 o'clock and we'd go pick your rite of passage was that initial kind of scare or whatever. where did he go? It's always something it seems like. There's always something, but it, yeah. But it always works out when you stick with it. So how many days did you guys shoot?

Well, probably around what, days or something like that. Maybe about 45 days over the spread out of about two and a half years. So you see you see right up top, you know, as the movie starts, you see a shift in seasons from winter to summer and back and forth again. So it was over over a longer period of time, but probably about 45, 50 days. So how do you turn 45 days? I mean, what are you shooting all day long? Little pieces of days?

a little bit of both depending on what happens that day. We're pretty decisive. Maybe one to two hours per shoot day. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, is, which is wonderful, right? You're not overly, you're not overextending yourself, but you're getting some good stuff at the same time. Documentaries are like that. Get little pieces and move on. See you tomorrow. Documentaries sometimes can be, people can really amass a lot more footage than we did, especially if they're kind of

Figuring out chasing the action or observing things in a fly on the wall way and the you know The idea is just to roll on everything and hope that you find it in the edit that really wasn't the way we worked We were fairly decisive once we figured out what it was we wanted to do with him We were I would say we were pretty efficient, know and precise about how we were working How do you know what you want to do with him that you have a little idea for like a scene or a theme or you? Want to touch on something that day? Like how do you go about like? Okay? This is what I think we want to do today

I mean, that's a good question. We spent a lot of time just kind of observing him and talking to him and getting to know his rhythms. And then based on that, we, Brian and I would discuss amongst ourselves, you know, what's the most cinematic way that we can bring this to life and then bring Lloyd into the conversation. be set in the winter, should it be set in the summer and just sort of take it from there.

We knew that we wanted some interviews, so we interviewed him a few different locales, and that was the sort of spine. And then based on, you know, those interviews, I don't know, just... The editing was... The shooting and the editing was very much a parallel process all the way through. So that really allows us to be intuitive and to, you know, invariably we would go out and we would shoot something and...

and it would open up other possibilities. that would, you one thing would lead to the next. And putting it together was very structurally was almost musical in the sense of for a good portion of the shooting, was like creating scenes the way a musician might create songs on an album. You you accumulate eight or nine songs and then you say, well, they're going to be 12 on this album. And what's the best sequencing of those?

And so it's, you you're sort of taking this rhythmic, this approach of, and we very much at first, because I think the kind of movies we like, the most are the ones where you really remember the scenes, vivid, know, vivid scenes that stay with you, you know, regardless. And so that we really accommodated an intuitive process where we were creating these sort of scenes. And then later in the process, it was a question of, you know, a kind of narrative discipline and

how to bring them together, where are the redundancies, where are the holes that we need to fill in, how does that all dovetail with the conversations we have in a more portraiture interview mode. So it all, as it got closer to the final cut, it was a bit more rigorous in that sort of overarching act of creating that the three of us could do together. I want to talk about the kind of balance between, I guess, story and tone.

where you went for like presence and an aura, right? As a priority over kind of say a plot driven type thing. And so I struggle with this. I mean, I think that's one of the wonderful kind of like spaces to be in and find yourself in. But also like you can go down, I've gone down personally a road where like plot is priority or like story is priority. I know that's the exact same thing, but, and it's not working. And then I'll take a step back and take some breaths, know, take some, just breathe and just let the film breathe.

in these moments where they just kind of, it just hypnotizes you and you just let it be. That's what seems to work a lot of times. So I mean, I guess my question form, like what, where does your mind go when you, when you start, when you sit down and you say, how much, you know, are we going to focus on these elements? Cause you do have to pick your battles sometimes, right? There is a, there is kind of like a, a separation between tone and character driven, you know, character moments and like, you know, letting the space breathe. And then also like, okay, we have to drive the story forward now.

Well, Brian and I both come from a photography background, so it's very much, you know, what's in the frame versus what's out of the frame. Photographs are kind of resolved without too much information. Sure. And that has always been sort of our approach to filmmaking is kind of the visuals and the aura comes first. In this case, we had a little bit of a story from Lloyd.

We're not able to get the full story because the full story is not apparent to him. There's only so much that that we could get out of his story. But to us, that's really interesting. And that, you know, that that is part of the schizophrenia that we understand what the full story is for him. We do know that his story is is real to him. We don't know if it's real to you and me.

but it's the best that we can do. And I would say this applies to all our films is portraiture. We make portraiture, but I don't really think that we tell traditional stories. So we invite you to inhabit a space along with a character and hopefully, you know, feel some of the feelings that they feel inhabiting those spaces. And hopefully, you know, that you can begin to empathize with.

with him or in any other of our films with people living on the margins. Because it is about, know, the goal with filmmaking, think good filmmaking, in my opinion, is to feel, right? To feel something more than it is to just take in information. You want to feel it. Yeah. And I would say also, if I may, we pay a considerable amount of attention to dynamics and contrast between between both the rhythms, the internal rhythms of the scenes.

the seasons, so whether it's winter, blistering cold winter, and then it's a jump cut to extremely hot summer, or it's night and then it's day, or the dynamics are really, really intense. You know, there's the sounds of traffic and clamoring cars going by, and it's really, really bringing you up to a place of anxiety and intensity. And then we bring it down to like the sound of

gentle sound of crickets or a bee buzzing. that right at the beginning where he's in nature and then just boom, just cuts to him in traffic with the jarring horns and traffic. no, juxtaposition is a powerful tool. Especially in the absence of traditional plot and story. For us, it is important to tell a story and to engage the viewer to become very active participants in

the movie. And so what we find to be a great sort of pleasure is to find other means of description to do that. One of the beautiful things about cinema is that you have all these means of description available to you through sound and through picture and through movement and all these things. And that when you when you remove the obligation to tell a conventional story in a three act.

structure, which is perfectly fine. And we all love movies like that. And we may very well make one one day. But when you sort of remove that or at least reduce that in the equation, all of these other possibilities within this rich medium of cinema become available to you. And so for us, it's a great pleasure to to to indulge in that and to find out how to put together a story in that in those ways.

And think one of the best to ever do is David Lynch, right? RIP. mean, as far as just not needing, he had no interest in holding anybody's hand, that's for sure. Right, right. Well, I think there's something about leaving things outside of the margins and raising questions rather than giving answers. But as an artist, you hope you can bring up good questions and engage people to want to.

sort of fill in those blanks for themselves and that each person has their own relationship to the movie because you have an answer for them. Yeah, they're more activated that way on a broader level. Any past films, any past documentaries or anything that inspires you in general? And then also maybe that you looked at when you were making this film, is there anything that comes to mind? Well, for me, my favorite film, I don't know if you've seen it, it's called Dog Days.

by Ulrich Seidel, it's an Austrian filmmaker. Somebody else talked about this. I've not seen it. And it's like maybe four or five different stories about different people experiencing the hottest day of the summer in the Austrian suburbs. And each of these people is very disgruntled, very angry, having to deal with the heat. And it looks at their frustration and the bizarre ways that they cope with their

frustration in this crazy heat. The film got very mixed reviews when it came out. A lot of people thought it was like tragedy porn, it was that the filmmaker was cruel. And I had a completely different read on the film. I thought the filmmaker was showing people as they are. And it was like came from a real deep sense of empathy and just funny. It is a deeply, deeply funny movie.

and everything's in German and doesn't matter if you don't know the language, the situations are deeply funny because he gets at something that is so true about how people can just break when everything is going wrong. It's a part of being a human, yeah. And I guess maybe audiences didn't want to be, they didn't want to acknowledge that part. we're supposed to come to the movies for whatever it is that they expected to come to. Yeah, but so, and that film is highly photographic and a lot of the sort of

scenes, but it's certainly shot with a photographer's eye and coming from still from the background as a still photographer, it so resonated with me. And it was the first movie that I saw that made me think, well, I can make something too. Like it felt like it was so outside anything that I had seen before. And it felt so fresh and alive and honest. And I think those those are the types of qualities that

I at least strive to bring to our filmmaking and I would think Brian does too. Yeah, and for me, know, it's, I take in a lot, I read a lot, I watch a lot of films. So they've all become a kind of part of me and in ways that there is rarely a direct one-to-one relationship between a certain film and something that we're making. But I would say there was something that was on my mind while making A Man Imagined was,

This film called Vampyr by Karl Theodor Dreier, it's a Danish filmmaker, films from 1932 and it's was made right at the cusp at the end of the silent film era when sound was just beginning. it's a gothic horror movie that is very poetic and very strange and ethereal and haunting and it just has a mood about it that is

So entrancing, very, very eerie. And Dreier has a wonderful way of filming the human face, both the topography of the face itself, but also the psychology of a human being as seen through their face. also did that beautifully in The Passion of Joan of Arc, which was one of the first things I saw that, again, as a photographer,

made me interested in making cinema. you know, something about that, something about that in some kind of indirect way resonated with me as we were filming Lloyd in navigating some of this, you know, very, very fragile nocturnal terrain, turning corners and shadows. And so so there's something there, I think. And then by contrast, the Walt Disney Bambi

Something in the way that those films were made, particularly in Bambi, the way nature is, it's very beautiful the way that the natural world is rendered in those films. you know, in A Man Imagined, there are these stark contrasts where we go into a kind of hallucinatory mode where Lloyd is immersed in nature and surrounded by the flora and fauna around him.

wanted it to have a kind of hyper real kind of almost just to to the saccharine kind of beauty. Those early Disney films to man special, special. They have power. So the the thread about his parents, that was that was was hard. That was that was tough. Somebody he thinks somebody took them into a field or he's not sure. This is the schizophrenia talking. What do you what is your interpretation of what happened to his

This was his big ghost. For me, that was a moment where I was just, fuck, you know, like the trauma, the unresolved, like it seemed like he just treated that the same way he treats his life as if not as big of a deal as you or I would, you know? I didn't expect that. Like what happened to his parents that you would determine? It is as unclear to us as it is to you. Okay. He talked about it a lot for the first year that we filmed with him. He would talk about it every single day.

But there was never any sense of resolution about what exactly happened to them and who did what to whom. This is, like I was saying a little while ago, this is something that's true to him. Sure. But I don't know if it's true to, if it would meet the requirements for objective truth. An investigation or something like this, yeah. Yeah. It's something that he lives with.

I can say is there there is some trauma there. What actually happened is unclear. And it is. Yeah. And it's irrelevant, I guess. What actually happened, right? It is about the character's truth. I mean, we were, you know, we were certainly taken aback. And, you know, when he started talking about his parents and a murder that someone had a friend had wrapped his parents up and buried them. And I mean, this was striking. I we were just we couldn't believe.

you know, what we were hearing to a large extent while we were editing, we were sort of using that the ambiguities around that and the impossibility of knowing and plumbing the depth of it. We were kind of using that structurally throughout the film, but also, you know, to story. But and I think in a way that's part of where the title, A Man Imagined comes from, which is intended to be a kind of double entendre in that

It's an acknowledgement that on both sides of the camera, there's an amount that we can't, there's something unknowable and that perhaps, you know, Melanie and I as filmmakers are imagining him to a certain degree as we construct this portrait and that he also has this deep, vast, imaginative life. So we really don't, we don't know. We're not holding any cards that we don't reveal to the viewer. It's intense.

Well, I have a question for you around in the corner on this interview. Has he seen the film? Yes, he has seen it. He's seen it a couple of times. So he was at the premiere at Rotterdam. Did you guys premiere at Rotterdam? Is that correct? Yes, we premiered at Rotterdam. So two questions. Was he there? I'm sure he was. Right. And then two, how was Rotterdam? No, he actually wasn't there. He watched the film in private. We showed him the film in private because he's a very private person, as you probably can tell from the film. He's not someone that likes crowds. OK, OK, OK.

Yeah, but it was a real pleasure to watch the film alongside him. He loved it and he particularly loved the closeups of his own eyes. Oh, nice. Yeah, I think he's been told probably throughout his life that he has beautiful eyes. And he knows it. He does. He sure does. sure does. Rotterdam was great. We've shown a number of our films there in the past.

They've been very supportive of us and our work. It's a great festival. It's a festival that historically has really championed projects that are really trying to push against the boundaries of familiarity and to get into new terrain. And so it's a very boundary pushing and exciting festival. And the curation has always been that way. And as a result, they've kind of always embraced our work.

or often embraced our work. So the premiere was great. So you premiered there more than, or you screened there more than any other festival. Like that seems to be, they've been kind, they've been responsive to your work. Yeah, we've shown four films there. I would say, yeah, more than any other festival. It seems like, you know, I mean, it seems like there's festivals that you just vibe with more than others or whatever. Like Santa Barbara Film Festival, I've had a few films there and it's like,

Ah, you know, like they've just been just there's some sort of thing there, you know what I mean? Or I think about like, I don't know, like Cassavetes and New York Film Festival or Scorsett, whatever. feel like there's always kind of this home base festival sometimes. It depends on the timing. But yeah, for sure. I mean, we've shown Berlin has also been very, very kind to our films and we've shown in various.

other festivals, but it sort of depends on the timing of the film. But yeah, I definitely, you know, there are people that are kind of in your corner and yeah, so. really embrace more artful forms of storytelling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love, I so love those European film festivals. I've been to Berlin once, Berlin out, and man, was so great. So great. Just the culture around it. And it was just so, I needed it. Because being in LA, it's business, business, business, and people were just clamoring to, you know, it's a

a bit more of a look at me place, less about the art, more about the commerce. So yeah, I never forget just Berlin, just what they were about. was like my first kind of moment with kind of the respect for cinema and just how we were all together talking. And I'm like, I need more of this. And ultimately I couldn't find it in LA. I have pockets of friends, but nothing like where you have a hundred people in a room just so excited and talking about their projects and film. And that's why I started this podcast actually. It's like, how do I recreate that?

with what I have. see like these other festivals as very similar to, you know, these European, Carlo Vivare I love, know, that one right there and, you know, Venice, all these, these, Rotterdam. Yeah, the United States really would benefit from more of this. You know, there are some small pockets, they're, you know, and for sure there are places, but they're not enough. And it's really, really, it's important for film culture. And like you said, when you,

have those experiences where people are in a room together really just caring about the movies. I find that there could certainly be more of that in the United States. I feel like New York Film Festival seems very much European in essence. Yeah, definitely. I mean, Sundance is special. Sundance has got its own thing, but it's special. Sundance is great. What else in America that would be kind of high level and cinema driven? Chicago?

Yeah, that has a good relation. That has a good reputation. Yep. Chicago does. And we never showed in Tribeca. We've never showed at Tribeca, but I don't know really. I mean, well, there there are these burgeoning new festivals. There's one I'll mention here that we recently screened a man imagined that that's run by a really great curator named Eric Alan Hatch. And it's called New Next and it's out of Baltimore.

yeah. And it used to be he used to run the Maryland Film Festival and his curation is really adventurous and really interesting. And, you know, and is some extra excitement because John Waters is a hometown here there and he shows up for the festival. You know, it's it's a really interesting thing that he's created out of Baltimore. And it would be nice to see more pockets of the country having, you know, these sort of

these new hubs where... Yeah, just push it forward. Yeah. But yeah, so there are festivals in the States that are wonderful, but there could always be more film societies and places to build communities. Well, you really learn about what you're about whenever you get in certain situations. I've had that full dose. used to, my child's mother is an executive and she's great, she's sweet, but she's in that world. And it's like, I spent many years just in these parties and talking to people where like, oh wait, you don't give a shit about the movies.

about the movie, you care about other things. So LA is its own thing and it's, know, whatever, good or bad, it just is what it is. But it leaves me wanting even more because I'm just so, I feel like sometimes I'm so far away from, can we talk about the movie, you know, as opposed to like who did it and how much they made or whatever? Right, worst side of things. Yeah, yeah, you know, but.

So while we're on the topic of festivals really quickly, so I'm just curious also, because I love your festival for this film especially. I love this festival lineup. It's very interesting. you have, so the Vancouver, Docs A documentary film festival, how is that festival? That's a great festival. That's a festival in Vancouver. It's like artful documentaries. Okay. Alongside more kind of like social issue documentaries, but they have a really good mix. Got you. And they,

They're pretty adventurous in their programming. They've also been very supportive of us. Yes. And one of the festivals that's shown, I think they've shown three of our films. wow. OK. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, we've always had great audiences there, too. So some of these festivals are really good at cultivating good audiences. So you can tell the quality of a certain audience based on how the festival itself just builds community around their screenings. I don't know how they do it on their side. a big deal.

Because yeah, not until you have, you when you experience going to a festival and nobody's in the audience or whatever, it's like, you know, it's like, and it's important as a filmmaker to know what you're submitting to sometimes to understand what festivals are about what, right? You know, I think there's been many times where people could get frustrated for not getting in. It's like, well, you submitted to a festival that doesn't play type of films that you're making, you know? You have to once you've been around the block a couple of times, like you become aware of that. But still.

You know, it's, it can be hard to get into festivals, especially more and more people are making films more than ever. I so many good films. So many great filmmakers. Yeah. Yeah. the festivals. You just need the right ones for your family. I get in where you fit in. That's what, that's what I think. That's Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Okay. So last question, if you could go back in time and tell your, your, your, your early filmmaking self some advice, what would it be?

Well, it's advice that I have always followed anyway, but I would just say, just if you have an idea for a film, just go ahead and make it. Don't wait for the money. Don't wait for the best set of conditions. Don't be too, I mean, keep your vision, but don't be too perfectionist about it where, you know, things, has to be so perfect that you can't get started.

So I would say sometimes I see a lot of people getting hung up on, oh, I didn't get the money. I applied for this grant. I didn't get the money. I thought the producer was going to bring X amount of money. They didn't bring the money. Just get started. Make something great. You really just need a good idea, and you need the vision, and you need the follow through. I say just go for it. Yeah. No, would definitely agree with that. think you need to be your own momentum. And if you can learn a few of the things yourself, you know.

to whether to operate a camera or to edit that can be empowering because you know you're not really waiting for permission. could, I mean, you can get started. And if you can't do it, find a friend or somebody else that can and, you know, create your own momentum and surprising things can happen. Be your own momentum. That's good. That's good. That's nice. That's a nice simple sentence. It's true too. You need to be able to like, well, I tell them I'm talking to myself.

You know, you need to be able to pick up a camera if you need to, or need to be able to edit if you need to. Unless you're fine with the alternative of it not getting done, potentially, you know. There are a lot of, yeah, there are a lot of, a lot of times people will talk for many, many years about the film they're going to make. One day they're going to make the film. you know, just get started. even if it's a small version of that movie, figure out a way to do it with.

integrity and just use a cheap camera if you need to. And even just yeah, even if you're just doing a little bit, but just do something, you know, just just inch towards it. If even that, you know, I see too many frustrated people. Yeah, just lamenting the fact that didn't come through. This didn't work out that didn't work. Well, then work on something else. pivot. Just make something, you know, get your name out there. Get out into the community. know, time is a ticket. Yeah.

Yeah.