DIRECTORY OF WORLD CINEMA AMERICAN INDEPENDENT pdf

Acknowledgements 5This first edition of the Directory of World Cinema: American Independent is the result of the commitment of a range of committed contributors from the fields of acade

EDITED BY JOHN BERRA

First published in the USA in 2010 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press,

1427 E 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Copyright © 2010 Intellect Ltd

All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Publisher: May Yao

Publishing Assistant: Melanie Marshall

Cover photo: Half Nelson, Journeyman Pictures.

Cover Design: Holly Rose

Copy Editor: Heather Owen

Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E Yorkshire

Directory of World Cinema ISSN 2040-7971

Directory of World Cinema eISSN 2040-798X

Directory of World Cinema: American Independent ISBN 978-1-84150-368-4

Directory of World Cinema: American Independent eISBN 978-1-84150-385-1

Introduction by the Editor 6

The Hurt Locker

Interviews with Adam Green

and Wayne Kramer

ReviewsNarrative Disorder 180Essay

Reviews

EssayReviews

EssayReviews

EssayReviews

EssayReviews

EssayReviews

EssayReviewsRecommended Reading 316American Cinema Online 319Test Your Knowledge 322Notes on Contributors 325WORLD CINEMA

AMERICAN INDEPENDENT

Acknowledgements 5

This first edition of the Directory of World Cinema: American Independent is the result

of the commitment of a range of committed contributors from the fields of academia and film journalism, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has contributed to this volume Although the backgrounds and approaches of the writers are quite diverse, their collective passion for the project has yielded an analysis of American Independent Cinema that is both informed and invigorating The depth and scope of

the entire Directory of World Cinema project is a credit to the dedication of Intellect with

regards to the field of Film Studies, and I would like to thank Masoud Yazdani, May Yao, Sam King, Melanie Marshall and Jennifer Schivas for their continued support throughout what has been an immensely rewarding process

I would also like to extend special thanks to Dr Yannis Tzioumakis of Liverpool John Moores University, who organized the American Independent Cinema: Past, Present, Future conference in May, 2009 This was an especially interesting event which encour-aged a wide range of approaches towards the subject of American Independent Cinema and enabled me to make contact with a number of the contributors who feature in this volume; the essays concerning the films of Jon Jost, Charlie Kaufman and John Waters, and also the entire section devoted to the suburb Film, arose from papers delivered at, and debate generated by, the conference I also greatly appreciated the opportunity

to discuss the rich history and ongoing cultural and industrial evolution of American Independent Cinema at such a crucial juncture in the development of this volume In

addition, I would like to express my gratitude to my fellow contributors to Electric Sheep

magazine for taking on reviews and essays alongside other commitments, and Adam Green and Wayne Kramer, two film-makers who took time out of their busy schedules to candidly discuss their work and their navigation of the industrial networks of the Ameri-can independent sector

6 American Independent

Directory of World Cinema

The pressing – and perplexing – question of what exactly constitutes an

‘American independent film’ is integral to any account of this unique form of national cinema; even if such studies somehow manage to avoid addressing the question directly, they ultimately offer their answer through the films and directors which they choose to include or exclude, while arguments centred around ‘authorship’ or ‘independence of spirit’ lead to the grey area of corpo-rate sponsorship and the suggestion that this sector is simply an offshoot of the

Hollywood studios As with other volumes in the Directory of World Cinema

series, this entry does not aim to be a definitive guide to a particular form of cinema; rather, it covers the key genres and thematic concerns of a still-vital sector of cultural production, focusing on specific films and directors which exemplify American Independent Cinema at its most socially significant or aesthetically adventurous While this may not yield a finite definition of the term

‘American independent cinema’, it certainly sketches a map of its unique trial and cultural networks, revealing a cinema that balances art with exploitation and celebrates the conventions of genre whilst frequently defying them

indus-At the time of writing, media commentary suggests that American pendent cinema is in a state of emergency, struggling to sustain itself due to economic crisis; however, reports of such industrial issues have referred not

inde-to genuine independents, but inde-to the Hollywood sub-divisions which were established to appeal to the niche audiences which turned Steven Soder-

bergh’s provocative talk-piece sex, lies and videotape (1989) into a surprise hit and would later exhibit such enthusiasm for Pulp Fiction (1994) that Quentin

Tarantino’s crime epic grossed over $100 million and became the first pendent blockbuster’ – arguably a contradiction in terms, but one which the studio system could not afford to ignore While these boutique operations have arguably nurtured a number of unique film-makers since the mid-Nineties (David O’Russell, Paul Thomas Anderson, Alexander Payne), whilst also invest-ing in their forerunners (Robert Altman, the Coen Brothers, Jim Jarmusch), their aggressive attempt to industrialize independence has ultimately ensured market saturation, critical cynicism and audience apathy This retreat from the speciality market by the Hollywood majors has been efficiently executed: Warner Indepen-dent and Picturehouse have been closed down, while Miramax and Paramount Vantage have been severely downsized, despite delivering such cost-efficient

‘inde-critical and commercial successes as No Country for Old Men (2007) and There Will Be Blood (2007) However, the dependence on prestige to attract audiences

to ‘quality’ product has entailed expensive awards campaigns, promotional cises that have brought the overall investment in such titles to such a level that the industrial accolades have been undermined by eroding profit margins.However, on the margins of the mainstream, American independent cinema remains a vital force, with enterprising directors overcoming budgetary restric-tions to deliver films that are timely and socially relevant, emphasizing characters INTRODUCTION

exer-BY THE EDITOR

Introduction 7

over caricatures and psychology over spectacle: both Courtney Hunt’s Frozen

River (2008) and Cary Fukunaga’s Sin Nombre (2009) tackle the topic of

immigra-tion within the confines of the road movie and succeed in making their

eco-nomically-disadvantaged protagonists fully-formed moral constructs rather than

political mouthpieces, thereby engaging their audiences on a humanist level

that transcends genre trappings Steven Soderbergh continues to surprise, if

only to prove that he still can, alternating between the studio project The

Infor-mant! (2009) and the The Girlfriend Experience (2009); the latter film followed

Soderbergh’s Bubble (2005) in aiming to establish new distribution avenues

for independent cinema with The Girlfriend Experience being available as an

Amazon Video on Demand rental title before its theatrical release The subject

of the American occupation of Iraq, which has been explored by a long line of

well-meaning but under-performing studio productions, was finally dealt with

in a sufficiently invigorating and incisive manner by Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt

Locker (2009), a taut warzone thriller that largely jettisoned political stance in

favour of day-to-day minutiae with occasional bursts of life-threatening danger

The publication of the Directory of World Cinema: American Independent finds

the American independent sector coming full circle 1999 was the year that the

independent sensibility successfully penetrated the Hollywood mainstream; films

such as Being John Malkovich, Magnolia and Three Kings utilized studio resources

to fully realize the personal visions of their directors, while The Matrix became an

international phenomenon by placing its ground-breaking ‘bullet-time’ effects within

the philosophical realms of Immanuel Kant and Jean Baudrillard, and the

micro-budget The Blair Witch Project demonstrated the power of viral marketing, with

an ingenious online advertising campaign, to reach blockbuster status 2009 found

Hollywood distancing itself from the independent sector, concentrating on

youth-orientated franchise films, while directors willing to work outside the studio system

were able to make politically-engaging and emotionally-challenging projects, which

resonated with audiences on the festival circuit and beyond Of course, the ‘next

Blair Witch’ finally emerged in the form of Paranormal Activity (2009), but Oren Peli’s

debut feature is already being cited as a triumph of marketing strategy rather than

individual quality, indicating that the American independent sector may be allowed

some creative breathing room before the major studios seek to maximize its

com-mercial potential through in-house development and Oscar acceptance

Regardless of its current industrial importance, the cultural diversity of

Ameri-can independent cinema is undeniable; from existential road movies, to

uncom-promising exploitation, to politicized documentary, to deconstructive genre

cinema, to explorations of race and sexuality, to depictions of dysfunctional

family units, this is a form of film-making which thrives on the intuitive instincts,

and of film-makers who are unafraid to examine the social-political fabric of their

nation Many of those films and film-makers are featured in this first edition of

the Directory of World Cinema: American Independent, and the essays, reviews

and interviews that follow are indicative of both the diversity of American

inde-pendent cinema and the serious critical consideration which its output receives

from cultural commentators; after all, this is a cinematic sector that is home to

both Abel Ferrara and Jon Jost, and has been discussed in depth by both David

Bordwell and Peter Biskind If American independent cinema is synonymous with

the open highways of Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970) and Two Lane

Blacktop (1971), then it is hoped that this volume provides the appropriate route

map to an unspecified destination

John Berra

8 American Independent

Directory of World Cinema

FILM OF THE YEAR THE HURT LOCKER

The Hurt Locker, First Light Productions/Kingsgatefilms.

Film of the Year 9

is unable to fully adjust to family life, and returns for another tour of duty in Iraq

Critique

The post-9/11 era has led to the political engagement of filmmakers working both within the studio system and on its industrial margins, resulting in a series of films that examine the effect of American military presence on foreign soil, both in the field and back in the United States Studio investment has led to such films as Paul Haggis’

In the Valley of Elah (2007), Kimberley Peirce’s Stop-Loss (2008) and Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies (2008), while the independent sector has delivered David Ayer’s Harsh Times (2005), Brian De Palma’s Redacted (2007) and James C Strouse’s Grace is Gone (2007) Most of these

projects have received critical respect for their worthy intentions but they have all failed commercially, with audiences unwilling to visit the multiplex to see a Hollywood version of the combat footage, or the grief of bereaved families that has become a fixture of the evening news An Academy-Award-nominated performance by Tommy Lee

Jones could not generate interest In the Valley of Elah, while a tive Sundance reception for the John Cusack vehicle Grace is Gone

posi-did not lead to wide distribution Even the cross-generational star power of Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe could not carry the

$70 million Body of Lies beyond a disappointing $39 million at the

domestic box office

By comparison with those films, Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker

arrived ‘under the radar’, much like the insurgent IEDs (improvised explosive devices) that her mismatched team of soldiers must disman-tle if they are to make it through their tour of duty largely unscathed

Unlike the aforementioned films, The Hurt Locker does not weigh

in on the political arguments surrounding the Iraq conflict, rather

it details the activities, both on duty and off duty, of three soldiers, paying particular attention to the character of Staff Sergeant William

The Hurt Locker

Studio/Distributor:

First Light Production

Grosvenor Park Media

10 American Independent

Directory of World Cinema

James, and examines the male psyche in situations of extreme cal and emotion duress Rather than relying on a traditional three-act structure, and the mentor-student conflict that is characteristic of the American military movie, or the fatalistic relationships that provide the dramatic friction in Bigelow’s own work – such as the fetishistic

physi-cop thriller Blue Steel (1989) or her cyberpunk excursion Strange Days (1995) – The Hurt Locker opts for an episodic narrative, one that prob-

ably stems from screenwriter Mark Boal’s prior experience as a war correspondent Bigelow’s film follows James, Sandborn and Eldridge from mission to mission, taking in their downtime and interaction with the local community Almost as if she is working with the virtual-reality

technology that was integral to Strange Days (video units which

allow users to experience the extreme activities of others, in the first person), Bigelow takes to the mean streets of Iraq (the film was shot in Jordan) and captures much of the action from the perspective of her protagonists Establishing overhead shots and sweeping pans are not

part of the aesthetic; much of the suspense of The Hurt Locker stems

from the unknown, the threat of enemy – or friendly – fire, which could

be waiting on the next patrol, around the next corner, or beyond the next road block

The title refers to the place deep inside where these men put away their pain, frustration and fear, and Bigelow expertly conveys James’ ability to substitute emotion with adrenaline; an unlikely ‘hero’ and team leader, James (portrayed brilliantly by Jeremy Renner) is not a typical ‘action man’ and Renner’s somewhat pudgy features and short stature would usually find him lost amidst an ensemble in a Hollywood war epic rather than taking centre stage Bigelow has, of course, made two earlier films about groups with charismatic leaders: the

vampire thriller Near Dark (1987) with Lance Henriksen as the head

of a makeshift family of bloodsuckers is an enduring cult item; and

Point Break (1991), with Patrick Swayze as the sky-diving mastermind

of a gang of bank robbers who mix crime with extreme sports, has become something of a pop-culture classic However, while those films were undeniably exciting and technically proficient, they were firmly rooted within Hollywood genre and the folklore of the Ameri-can outlaw, their moments of psychological insight occasionally at

odds with the mythic sensibility applied to main protagonists The Hurt Locker strips away such iconography to capture ordinary people

undertaking day-to-day duties in a morally-questionable international conflict The action sequences are excellent, but it is the small, telling, explorations of character that linger: a heavy after-hours drinking ses-sion which lurches uncomfortably from joking to a dark night of the soul; James opening a juice box for his fellow soldier whilst pinned down by sniper fire in the desert; Sandborn breaking down in the final days of the tour and demanding that James explain how he keeps his sanity amidst the chaos

The character of James is something of an enigma throughout, as perpetually in motion as Bigelow’s hand-held camera, but the final ten minutes find him back with his family in the United States and bring his seemingly-contradictory nature (careless yet caring, impetuous yet informed) into focus: in a suburban supermarket, James stares at

an entire isle of cereal, defeated by having to make a decision about

Film of the Year 11

whether to go with the Cheerios or the Captain Crunch

Eventu-ally selecting one of the varieties on offer, he meets up with his wife (Evangeline Lilly), who has already loaded up her trolley James can only function amidst chaos, and can only make a decision when it is

a life-or-death choice that has a definitive outcome His love for his son is evident in the tender manner in which he cradles the child, but

as he talks to his family about his experiences in the field in a manner

of almost winsome longing: it is obvious that he would rather be

somewhere else In the closing moments, back in Iraq for another tour

of duty, James strides towards yet another unexploded IED, calmly composed and clad in his metal suit A loud blast of rock music plays

on the soundtrack, and it is clear that this is how James sees

him-self when he is putting his life on the line on foreign soil: a rock star amongst soldiers, always aiming to top the previous ‘performance’ The opening quote states, ‘War is a drug’, and the final image of

James back in the thick of the action brings that statement full circle

Incisive and invigorating, The Hurt Locker eschews politics for sheer

experience, and the often inexplicable allure of mortal danger, and delivers an uncompromising depiction of the modern battlefield

John Berra

Industry Spotlight 13

Interview with Adam Green

A cursory perusal of two chapters in this volume (The American Nightmare and

Exploitation USA) will reaffirm the assertion that horror is the genre of choice for

first-time film-makers seeking to make a movie which will both the attract attention

of a core audience, and deliver the required return on investment to endear them

to financiers in the future Unfortunately, since the low-budget horror heyday of

the 1970s, which gave birth to such cult classics as Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain

Saw Massacre (1974) and John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), many independent

horror films have felt more like cynical positioning exercises than exciting

excur-sions into genre territory Such comments, however, do not apply to Adam Green,

whose swamp-bound slasher Hatchet delivers shocks and laughs in equal measure

without ever descending into the sheer nastiness of the current ‘torture porn’

craze, or the postmodern parody of Scream (1996) and its imitators Harry Knowles

of Ain’t it Cool News.com insisted that, ‘Adam Green is the real deal – and Victor

Crowley is a friggin’ fantastic horror icon waiting to be unleashed on y’all’, later

including Hatchet in his Top Ten Films of 2007 A limited cinema release courtesy

of independent distributor Anchor Bay yielded impressive returns on a per-screen

basis, and Hatchet found more fans on DVD Adam took time out of

post-produc-tion work for his latest thriller Frozen (2010) to discuss his career to date, his

influ-ences, and the inherent challenges in making low-budget genre movies

You are most widely known as the director of the horror film Hatchet (2006

How did you develop an interest in the horror genre, and which film-makers

have had a particular influence on you with regards to either their films or

their working methods?

Horror has always been my first love in terms of the films I choose to go out of my

way to see When I was just 7 years old, my older brother showed me Friday the

13th Part 2 (1981) The Thing (1981) and Halloween (1978) It was love at first sight

I was not so much scared by them as I was challenged to figure out how they

pulled off their effects, and also inspired by how ‘cool’ the villains were I was only

8 years old when I first invented Victor Crowley, so in many ways Hatchet was over

20 years in the making In terms of film-makers who have inspired me, I’d have to

say it still comes down to Steven Spielberg E.T – The Extra Terrestrial (1982) will

always be my favourite film of all time and I know that may not get me much credit

with the horror fans, but it’s the truth Spielberg will always be that unreachable

shining star that I will strive to reach as both an artist and a human being Other

favourites include John Carpenter, Guillermo del Toro, and I rip off John Landis in

almost everything I do I always find it funny when critics compare Hatchet directly

to Friday the 13 th, (1980) when An American Werewolf in London (1981) was my

inspiration in terms of comedic tone, shooting style, and composition

How did you raise the $1.5 million budget for Hatchet, and how did you

secure cameo appearances from such genre icons as Robert Englund, Kane

Hodder and Tony Todd?

My team and I were able to raise the money for Hatchet by having a proposal

package that spelled everything out Another important device was a mock

trailer that told the story of Victor Crowley and got people excited about seeing

the film In fact, that mock trailer was the template for the theatrical trailer when

Hatchet was released in 2007 One of the producers, Sarah Elbert, had recently

produced the special features for the Friday the 13TH DVD box set and was able

to get the script for Hatchet in front of FX wizard John Carl Buechler He helped

14 American Independent

Directory of World Cinema

me create the make-up job of ‘Young Victor Crowley’ for the mock trailer He also slipped the script to Kane Hodder, who signed on almost instantly Fate found me at the same party as Robert Englund one night, and though I didn’t have the audacity to approach him about my project, he instead approached me and asked where I got the Marilyn Manson Suicide King Shit T-shirt that I was wearing Tony Todd was already working with Buechler on another project and I

met him on his set Again, I didn’t bring up Hatchet at first, but once I knew him

a little more, he asked me about it These guys are all legends in the genre and I

think what they responded to was the spirit of Hatchet and how it was a

celebra-tion of what horror movies used to be

There is a fine line between comedy and horror, one that Hatchet treads fully and knowingly How did you achieve the balance between the laughs and the shocks, and to what extent did you ‘find’ the film in the editing room?

skil-I was making my living as a comedy writer at the time, so it was a style that skil-I was

very comfortable with With my biggest inspiration being An American Werewolf

in London, I could see that the key was to keep the comedy out of the horror

In Hatchet, the villain was never presented in a light manner, unlike the cast

of characters that were trying to survive the situation I also find that comedy

is the quickest and easiest way to make characters likeable, endearing and

three-dimensional I wrote the ‘victims’ in Hatchet in a humorous way and it was Hatchet’s sense of humour that really won over the crowds That experience can

never be replicated on DVD at home, no matter how many rowdy, gore-loving

friends you cram into your living room Nothing about Hatchet was found in the

editing room as the budget limitations meant that I could rarely get more than

a few takes In fact, Hatchet’s running time is technically under 80 minutes if you

don’t include the credits – that’s how lean the script and the shoot had to be.The trend in independently-produced horror cinema since the success of The Blair Witch Project (1999) has been to utilize lo-fi production methods,

or to approach the genre from a psychological perspective, yet Hatchet is

an unapologetic throwback to the studio-financed body-count horror films

of the 1980s What do you particularly like about that period of horror cinema, and to what extent do you think Hatchet imbues that material with

to shoot a film with low-fi gear but the truth is really that they just couldn’t get

a bigger budget together When I wrote Hatchet, I merely wrote the type of

movie that I grew up on and wanted to see again The goal was never to make the 80s’ ‘slasher’ formula hip again but to remind people what horror used to be like and give people that theatrical communal experience of laughing, cheering, and screaming together The independent sensibility really comes down to the script and the fact that I was making a movie that brought the old formula back

in a modern way No Hollywood studio would have ever touched a movie that’s got comedy in one scene and then a woman having her head torn off in the next We had a very limited budget, but we also had a lot of good people and close friends that cashed in every favour they had One of the best things about

Hatchet is that, when you watch it, you can almost feel the crew scrambling

around, covered in fake blood, doing whatever they could to get it done

Industry Spotlight 15

News, Hatchet grossed a disappointing $155,873 domestically before finding

a wider audience on DVD Do you think the genre has become dominated by

the Hollywood majors to the point that even commercially-orientated

inde-pendent productions have trouble breaking through theatrically?

Something to keep in mind is that Hatchet opened on only 80 screens and

through Anchor Bay, a distributor that, up until then, had only been a DVD

catalogue company The person in charge at the time seemed to feel that, with

the buzz, audiences would just ‘find’ it, but most people had no idea it was out,

or they lived two states away from a theatre playing it In fact, unless you were

a frequent reader of the horror websites, there was no way of knowing the film

existed A great example is how in San Diego there wasn’t even a poster or a

listing on the marquee of the theatre that was playing Hatchet It was essentially

an experiment to see if online buzz and my MySpace page alone could open a

movie, and it was devastating to watch it go down like that Yet, when Hatchet

opened, it actually did surprisingly well Shows sold out [in] Los Angeles,

Baltimore, Boston, Austin, and New York In fact, Hatchet grossed $17,000 on

one screen in Los Angeles alone, beating the studio film 3:10 to Yuma (2007)

that weekend At the end of the day, though, the only horror films that are really

shining at the box office have outrageous budgets behind their campaigns and

usually sport pre-packaged titles that bring even the most passive fans out in

droves A tiny film like Hatchet had no chance of standing up to the remake of

Halloween (2007) At the end of the day, though, the fact that Hatchet went from

passion project to a theatrical run was something to be grateful for and, on DVD,

it has been a monster hit for Anchor Bay It is far and away the biggest success

they’ve ever had with an original genre title and a sequel is now in the works So,

while some may consider $155,000 on 80 unadvertised screens disappointing,

for everyone who was actually involved it was really quite a feat

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Hatchet was swiftly followed by Spiral (2007), the story of a socially-awkward telemarketing agent haunted by his past which was marketed as a horror film, but plays more successful as a dark character study How challenging was it to shift from a gross-out horror film to something more psychological?

Spiral was shot before Hatchet had finished post-production Joel David Moore and I had such an exceptional time working together on Hatchet that we just didn’t want it to end, so when he showed me his script for Spiral, it was a no-brainer to

sign on What I loved about it was that, although it was a small arthouse film, it was

a project where I could flex a completely different creative and artistic side of myself

Knowing how Hollywood works, I knew that Hatchet was going to define me around

town and I didn’t want to be put in that ‘box’ Shifting gears was really not difficult

at all, though having the film come out right on Hatchet’s heels was a bit scary At Fantasia in Montreal that summer, Hatchet played on Friday night to an 800 seat sold-out crowd that was on their feet cheering, and then Spiral played the next night

to a crowd of 100 When I introduced the film, and looked out at the fans in their

Hatchet T-shirts, all I remember thinking was, ‘Oh no, they’re gonna hate this.’ But many said they liked Spiral more than Hatchet For me, Spiral is the movie that much

better illustrates what I am made of as a director

You co-directed Spiral with Joel Moore, who also played the lead role How did

you collaborate, and do you think that this is a working method that would be more characteristic of an independent production than a studio feature?Co-directing with Joel Moore really couldn’t have gone better When he first asked me to come onboard, it was because he was already wearing the hat of producer, writer, and lead actor, and he wanted to make sure that nothing fell through the cracks We sat down and created a bible of shot lists and visual con-cepts so that there was never the chance of not seeing eye-to-eye when making decisions on set Once we began production, I took on the role of ‘leader’, though Joel was still involved with every choice Co-directing is not something I would encourage, although I had a great experience doing it Joel is one of my closest friends, and there was complete trust on both sides It would be nạve to think that it would always work that way Most of the cases I’ve heard of usually involve a first-time director who could not be removed from directing their own script but was forced to agree to have an experienced director come onboard in order to secure financing No one ever wants to admit it, but it happens a lot Your other professional activities have ranged from stand-up comedy to fronting the heavy metal band Haddonfield Do these activities complement each other in some way, or do they represent distinctly different outlets for your creativity?

I suppose it all comes down to that childhood thing of wanting to entertain and the fact that I needed the attention and that rush of adrenaline The first time I did stand-up it was simply to prove to myself that I could do it It’s the scariest thing in the world, and any stand-up who tells you that they are comfortable up there is a liar But I conquered my fear, did it for a few years as a hobby, and learned whatever

I could about timing, word choice, and how to get the reactions I want There’s just something in performing live that really feels good The instant gratification of hear-ing a large crowd laugh at a joke, or the relaxed high I get after screaming myself into the stage with a band Film-making is the only thing I consider a professional activity though I’m not serious or good enough at any of the other pastimes to make a good living at them I guess I never outgrew the whole ‘Hey, Mom look at me’ thing And thankfully, I also have a mother who never outgrew wanting to look

John Berra

Interview with Wayne Kramer

Although born in Johannesburg-Kew, South Africa, the writer-director Wayne

Kramer always aspired to work in the American film industry, and has succeeded

in establishing a career within the independent sector After toiling away as a

screenwriter for many years, and suffering the setback of struggling to complete

a directorial debut which never saw the light of day, Kramer finally enjoyed critical

success with The Cooler (2003), a dark comedy set in Las Vegas which

show-cased superb performances from William H Macy as a perpetually-unlucky former

gambler in debt to Alec Baldwin’s volatile yet strangely-loyal casino boss Kramer

followed his breakthrough with Running Scared (2006), a violent crime thriller that

was released by New Line Cinema and became a cult sensation on DVD This

interview was conducted following the release of Crossing Over (2009), Kramer’s

controversial immigration drama which, despite coaxing Hollywood superstar

Harrison Ford into a rare excursion into independent territory, was effectively

discarded by financier and distributor, The Weinstein Company Although the

studio-sanctioned version of Crossing Over that was eventually released deviates

dramatically from Kramer’s original vision, it remains a brave attempt to tackle a

difficult issue within the confines of narrative cinema Kramer discussed his career

to date and elaborated on the behind-the-scenes battles of Crossing Over.

The Cooler (2003) is often referred to as your directorial debut but,

accord-ing to IMDB, your first directaccord-ing credit is actually Blazeland (1992), which

apparently deals with a dead rock star returning from the grave to promote

a new band What has happened to this movie?

Technically, The Cooler is actually my directorial debut since Blazeland was

never completed and no one has seen the film – and I’d like to keep it that way!

Blazeland was an absolute nightmare from beginning to end; an investor who

thought I might amount to something decided to invest about a hundred grand

Courtesy of Wayne Kramer.

18 American Independent

Directory of World Cinema

in a low-budget feature It was about a Jim-Morrison-type rock star whose vocal chords are severed by windshield glass during a car wreck and he loses the abil-ity to sing His manager and his groupies plot his comeback from the rock star’s gothic mansion They’ve been convinced by a crackpot scientist that, if they can find the right vocal chord match for the rock star’s voice, he can perform the world’s first vocal-chord transplant So, this crazy group keeps luring wannabe bands to the mansion and offing them, until they find the right candidates for his transplant I was completely inexperienced with regards to production and

I brought onboard a very sweet guy named Russell Droullard to produce the film for me – neglecting the fact that he had zero experience, other than having been a production assistant It only got worse from there We hired a DP based

on his having shot one documentary – the result of which was that the entire first week of photography turned out over-exposed and out of focus We had to reshoot, as well as hire an entirely new crew We had rented a warehouse down

in Fullerton, Orange County and were shooting there without any permits Of course, the police turned up within a week or two and suddenly we were paying out of our eyeballs for permits and insurance and everything else that goes with that I was broke and homeless and living off production catering

Did you complete Blazeland and does it still exist in any form?

I spent the next two years saving every cent I could and begging and borrowing money from my family to complete production – which I did for $7,000 During that time, I had gone down on hands and knees and begged a post-production house

in LA to let me rent an editing room Since I was homeless, I basically slept in the cutting room for about three months – until they got wise to me and told me to rent an apartment or lose the cutting room, which I was barely paying for in the first place As far out on a limb as I was, I remember my cutting-room experience quite fondly Oliver Stone had ten editing rooms down the hall from me and was cutting

The Doors, which was really cool Anyway, after I finished cutting the new footage

together, I tried to find a distributor One day, some fly-by-night producer turned

me onto this so-called distributor operating out of Orlando, Florida – who, if I had done my homework, I would have found out was a thief and a fraud and was already being sued by a dozen film-makers and investors He managed to convince me to release the negative to him and that he would finish posting the film in Florida and provide us with home-video distribution Two years later, the guy still had not deliv-ered the film – and wouldn’t even show us what he had done! Russell and I spent thousands of dollars on lawyers and eventually a private investigator to track this guy down When his wife realized a PI was sniffing around, she contacted us and offered

to ship the negative back to the lab We agreed, and that’s the last I saw of the film

I seriously doubt that the lab has kept the negative all these years All that exists of

Blazeland is a work print in my garage

What kind of career path did you take between the Blazeland experience and The Cooler?

I always intended to use screenwriting as a means to arrive at a directing career

so, all throughout that period, I was writing away I was also doing any job I

could to survive Finally, I was able to sell a script I wrote called Mindhunters to

20th Century Fox For the first time in my life I had made some real money and had a small cushion to make the right choices for myself I had wanted to direct

Mindhunters, but I was essentially told that, if I tried to attach myself, the deal

would fall apart, so I took the money and walked away Fox put the project into turnaround about a year later and Intermedia bought it from them and set it up with Dimension Films They brought on about ten different writers At no point did

Industry Spotlight 19

they ever come back to me and say, ‘have another shot at it.’ They turned it from a

taut suspense thriller into a full-on action film and there are plot holes that you can

drive ten trucks through Nothing makes sense – the characters are all supposed

to be the best of the best in the FBI Academy and every one of them makes the

stupidest decisions People mistakenly think I wrote Mindhunters after The Cooler

but it was written in 1997 and shot in 2002 Dimension kept it on the shelf for

about two and a half years The money and residuals have been good over the

years, so I don’t entirely regret the experience

Did you have a particular interest in, or experience of, Las Vegas before you

wrote and directed The Cooler? The film presents a fairly balanced view

of the city in that it revels in some of the glamour and nostalgia associated

with the Strip, yet does not shy away from the tragedy and violence that

occurs there on a daily basis, especially around the casino business

I always had more of a cinematic interest in Vegas than a hardcore gambler’s

interest I loved the Fellini-esque world of downtown Las Vegas – the section

that attracted the more old school, hard luck cases than the Strip I’ve always

been a sucker for film noir and damaged-character studies and the seedy, yet

glamorous world of Vegas really spoke to me To me, the film was always more

about the interaction of the characters – the weird triangle of relationships – than

any real fascination with gambling, other than the superstitious nature of the

entire enterprise that lent itself perfectly to telling an old-fashioned love story

with a contemporary, high-concept spin The project came about when my friend

Frank Hannah pitched the idea to me I fell in love with it immediately and asked

him if he wanted to write it with me – and I would do everything in my power to

get it made Frank is the real deal when it comes to gambling He is obsessed

with the world and makes religious trips to Vegas to hit the tables He basically

served as our technical director on the film Right from Frank’s first pitch, I knew I

could write those characters and put flesh on their bones

There was some controversy over the scene in which Alec Baldwin’s

old-school casino boss kicks a ‘pregnant’ woman in the stomach Although it is

made clear that he knows that she is faking her pregnancy, some viewers

found it hard to get past the brutality of the moment Were there any

par-ticular challenges to executing or editing that scene, and were your worried

that it might repel members of the audience who had been enjoying the

usual love story?

Right from the moment that we wrote that scene in the script, I knew it was going

to blow people’s minds The challenge was how to pull it off and milk it just long

enough before the reveal, without having the audience rushing from the theatre

We literally had to time the editing so that if someone got up to leave the theatre,

he/she would hear a gasp from the audience before they could get to the door –

and would realize that it was a fake pregnancy And true to our calculations, there

were always some audience members who couldn’t handle it and decided to

walk out until they heard laughter or clapping from the rest of the audience They

always returned sheepishly to their seats Alec Baldwin tells the story that when he

first read the script, he got to that scene and threw it down, declaring there was

no way he was doing this movie When his agent called him to see what his

reac-tion was, he told his agent he’s not going to do a movie where he kicks a pregnant

woman in the stomach His agent asked him if he read the rest of the scene Alec

told him he hadn’t bothered His agent told him to finish reading it I guess that

from that moment Alec was pulled into it

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Alec Baldwin once quipped that the budget for chewing gum on the set of Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbour (2001) was equivalent to the entire cost of The Cooler How did you manage to deliver such a stylish first feature, with a cast of well-known actors, on such a limited budget and schedule?

With regards to the actors, we were able to attract them due to the material – and most of them wanted to work with William H Macy Everybody loves Bill and

he proved to be a big talent magnet He was the first to come onto the film – we wrote it for him, but it took him a long time to come around He was tired of playing ‘lovable losers’ and was looking to do more studio films But producer

Ed Pressman and I dogged Bill and his agent on a weekly basis, and wore them down I think Bill recognized the potential of doing the role and basically said, ‘If I’m going to never play another loser again, let me at least play the Super Hero

of losers.’ I knew that I didn’t have a great resumé when it came to directing

before The Cooler so I meticulously storyboarded the entire film to be able to

show the producers my vision for it We were also helped enormously by the location Our line producer, Elliot Rosenblatt, found a casino in Reno, Nevada, that was undergoing renovations and made a deal with them for us to shoot, and house our cast and crew in the hotel, while they were tearing the place up.You made the crime thriller Running Scared for New Line Cinema However, the film was shot on location in Prague to keep the costs down When you are dealing with adult material that is often violent and potentially divisive, are than any significant differences between working with a Hollywood studio or an independent financier?

Running Scared was as much an independent film as The Cooler We were

completely independently financed, and only sold the film to New Line in the homestretch of post-production Once New Line got involved, I feared that they would inflict huge changes upon the film in terms of toning down the content But Toby Emmerich and Bob Shaye were very respectful of what the film was, and I ended up only having to tweak a few moments for pacing issues With regard to the budget and having to shoot the film in Prague, there was just no other way to make the film with the limited budget we had It would have cost

us twice as much to shoot the film in New Jersey, where it’s actually set We did shoot about a week in New Jersey and it cost a fortune – but I insisted on get-ting those shots to tie the film together I didn’t think a film set in New Jersey could be effectively pulled off by shooting in Prague, but Toby Corbett, who has worked on all my films, designed some great sets and found the appropri-ate locations But it wasn’t without its immense challenges and we spent a lot of time keeping Prague out of our field of view

Running Scared is an extremely violent film, yet it received the R rating when submitted to the MPAA, whereas The Cooler was slapped with an NC-17 due to a few seconds of pubic hair Do you see this as a reflection of American society’s acceptance of violence as opposed to its almost puritani-cal attitude towards sex?

I definitely agree that the MPAA is way more lenient when it comes to violence versus sexual situations But if you’ll recall, there were some pretty explicit full-frontal shots in the strip club and the MPAA had no problem with them I had

always feared that the MPAA might rate us NC-17 on The Cooler but I would have

thought it was for the first sex scene, where Maria Bello puts her hands on Billy Macy’s goods after they’ve just had sex I never imagined it would have been for

a two-second glimpse of pubic hair Their explanation was that Macy’s head was right next to her pubic hair and that was a no-no – as in they slam you for nudity

Industry Spotlight 21

cavorting in a nightclub The burden on receiving an NC-17 was that we had

already completely finished the film and had already screened at a number of

fes-tivals Usually, as in the case of Running Scared, you present the MPAA with a work

in progress and try to gauge if you’re going to have any rating’s issues, so that

you can address them without having to re-open the film once it’s already been

mixed and the negative has been cut or, as is more likely these days, once the film

has already gone through the digital intermediate process We had to reopen the

offending reel in The Cooler, which cost Lions Gate quite a bit of money

Your most recent feature, Crossing Over, deals with the issue of

immigra-tion in the USA As you became a naturalized US citizen in 2000, how much

of your own experiences are reflected in the film, and was the

naturaliza-tion process simply a professional necessity for you, as it is for the Alice

Eve character in Crossing Over, or did it hold deeper meaning and personal

significance?

I pretty much identified with all the immigrant characters because, having been

through the bureaucracy of legalization, I know how challenging – and arbitrary – it

is More specifically, as an artist trying to make his mark in the United States, it’s

so important that you have access to working and raising financing in America

Speaking for myself, I always wanted to live in America and I always wanted to be

an American I grew up on American culture and felt spiritually connected to the

country and the opportunities that it promised, or should I say, advertised, to the

rest of the world I have come close to achieving the ‘American dream’ and have the

privilege of making films that get seen all around the world, as opposed to being

just a ‘South African’ film-maker whose work is perceived as ‘foreign’ My attitude

was always: why be a big fish in a small pond when you can be a big fish in the

biggest pond I applied for naturalization the first day I became eligible because it

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Directory of World Cinema

was something I very much wanted and as an immigrant it’s the smart thing to do

I only travel on my US passport and don’t maintain a South African one at all In fact, when I travel to South Africa I use my US passport and they stamp me in with

a tourist visa – which is pretty surreal My intent with Crossing Over was to make a

movie that wasn’t trying to solve America’s immigration problems but to give an honest portrayal of the diversity in the immigrant struggle to achieve legalization or naturalization – and the differences in each immigrant’s struggle

Your original cut reportedly featured a story strand involving Sean Penn which book-ended the film Can you explain more about how these scenes function alongside the other narrative elements, and has removing this footage significantly altered the overall impact of Crossing Over?

For me, this was the most damaging cut that Harvey Weinstein made to the film and the one I can least live with The film originally opened with Sean Penn, play-ing a border patrol agent, driving his truck through a heavy storm on the eve of the Mexican holiday, Day of the Dead A young Mexican woman steps in front of his truck, causing him to swerve into a ravine and total his truck When he comes around, he finds her standing there at his window He climbs out of the truck and detains her They both end up having to share the back of the totalled border patrol truck because the rain is coming through the shattered front windshield

He warms to her over the course of the night and they end up showing photos

of their respective families It appears that she has a young son who is waiting for her in Los Angeles She keeps telling him, ‘You’re the one who’s going to help me cross over.’ He keeps insisting he’s a border patrol agent and he has a job to do She just smiles at him and appears to fall asleep He realizes that she’s not going anywhere in the storm and drifts off to sleep as well On screen it then said: One week earlier So now, the audience knows that whatever transpired in the border patrol truck between Penn and Braga was happening one week later Toward the end of the film, when the timeline has caught up with the events in the prologue,

we find Sean Penn waking up the next morning to find Mireya missing from the back of the truck He climbs the ravine looking for her, but she’s nowhere around and he just assumes he’s been played He returns to the truck and slumps down, exhausted, against the back wheel, where he notices a piece of blanket sticking

up from under the tire He starts digging at it, revealing a decomposed human arm The big reveal is that Mireya is buried underneath his truck and it was her ghost that he encountered the previous night on the Day of the Dead (where it’s mythologized that the dead get to commune with the living) The storyline breaks with the tone of the rest of the film and adds a metaphysical component – and a transcendent quality to a sad storyline, which I felt was badly needed

What were the circumstances surrounding the excising of the Sean Penn footage?

Sean Penn wanted to be cut out of the film due to political issues with the honour killing storyline I’m hesitant to even call it an ‘honour killing’ storyline because the incident that takes place in the finished film is more a crime of passion than a traditional honour killing The National Iranian American Council lobbied Penn to insist on changes to the film, which we were already in the process of making per Cliff Curtis’ input and, if that couldn’t be achieved, to disassociate himself from the project This was after Penn had committed to a more extreme version of the script that featured a genuine honour killing The NIAC’s position was that honour killings do not happen frequently in Iran and they managed to convince Sean that was the case, contrary to the many accounts that I researched on the internet – many of them quite recent None of the changes ultimately satisfied Sean, who is

Industry Spotlight 23

very heavily invested in Iranian politics; he’s written for the San Francisco Chronicle

about Iran and believed that the United States was on the verge of bombing

Iran and didn’t want to ‘villainize the Iranian people’ in these tense times, so he

insisted on having his scenes cut from the film No matter what Sean’s attitude

and position was, the ultimate decision was Harvey Weinstein’s Penn had signed

a contract to appear in the film and had no legal position to dictate his removal

Harvey chose to cut Sean because he opted to preserve his professional

rela-tionship with Sean over the good of the film Once it became publicly-known

that Sean had been cut out of the film – with only rumours and internet gossip

to account for why – the film was seen as damaged goods by critics, bloggers

and discerning moviegoers alike Especially since it had been announced as an

awards-season candidate and then bumped out of contention two years in a row

Although there are perhaps more financing avenues available to independent

film-makers today, the main obstacle for anyone working outside the system,

or on its industrial margins, seems to be that of distribution In the case of

Crossing Over, it seems bizarre that a film starring Harrison Ford would

be released on just nine screens with a minimal publicity push, and never

expanded beyond forty-two screens before being sent to DVD When

com-panies like TWC keep films on the shelf for extended periods before granting

them, does this create the sense that the films are ‘damaged goods’?

Absolutely A film has a limited shelf-life and it’s getting worse in terms of internet

trackers and fan sites If a film is announced for release and doesn’t meet that

release date, the chatter immediately starts up and the word starts to filter out

that there’s something wrong with the film Weinstein is habitually oblivious to that

factor and announces and cancels film-distribution dates indiscriminately What

galls me about the treatment of Crossing Over is that Harvey beat me up

con-stantly to get the cut he wanted – a cut that I warned him would not be critically

well received They got pretty negative reviews and I guess that convinced Harvey

to just throw Crossing Over out there and see if anyone turned up I thought the

trailer was a rip-off of Crash; they should have marketed the film as a Harrison

Ford political thriller and used more provocative moments in the trailer

You recently set up your own group on the social-networking website

Facebook to interact with your audience and to discuss your work

along-side other related interests What motivated you to do this, and do you

think that more film-makers should be making themselves available to their

audiences through cyberspace?

I’m really new at the Facebook thing I get the sense that a good number of

people have enjoyed my films, but I’m not sure they assign any identity to the

film-maker behind them I feel I need to build my audience – which allows me

to get the films I want to make into production – and have them turn up to

support my work when it opens theatrically Most of my success has happened

on DVD From some of the numbers I’ve been quoted, I think The Cooler and

Running Scared have done really well on DVD, so I feel good about that But

my films have never opened well theatrically and I need to make some effort on

my own to change that – because I’ve stopped relying on the distributor to get

the word out I questioned whether I wanted to engage about Crossing Over on

Facebook, but it’s been such a dispiriting experience for me that I feel

com-pelled to let the world know how I feel about it I’m not sure if that helps or hurts

me, but the book is far from closed on this one

John Berra

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Directory of World Cinema

CULTURAL CROSSOVER JOHN WATERS AND

BALTIMORE

Pecker, Polar Entertainment

Cultural Crossover 25

From his earliest short black-and-white underground pieces made in the 1960s,

to the multi-million dollar features that followed Hairspray (1988), John Waters

used his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, as the quirky, sometimes charming,

and often bizarre, setting for his films The portrait of Baltimore that emerges from

Waters’ twisted scripts may not always be flattering, but Baltimoreans have come to

accept Waters’ vision, and are now as devoted to the director as he is to the city

There is clearly a contradiction evident in Baltimore’s two most popular

nick-names On the one hand it is Mobtown, on the other, Charm City For Waters the

contradiction is easily resolved Baltimore’s reputation as a rough-and-tumble

port city replete with violence and corruption is the key to its charm When

Bal-timore leads the nation in per-capita murder rate, teen pregnancy, incidence of

sexually-transmitted diseases, or other dubious distinctions that might embarrass

civic leaders and promoters of tourism, Baltimore’s best-known film-maker sees it

as a source of great pride In his autobiographical first book, Shock Value (2005),

Waters writes, ‘Baltimoreans (or Balti-morons, as they sometimes are called)

shouldn’t hang their heads in shame when they hear Baltimore referred to as the

Armpit of the Nation, or Bumberg Be proud! Think of it as Trashtown, U.S.A.,

the sleaziest City on Earth, the Hairdo Capital of the World.’

Even Waters had to learn to appreciate Baltimore’s rough charm, however

As an aspiring film-maker coming of age in the early 1960s, Waters was drawn

to New York where avant-garde film-makers like the Kuchar brothers, Kenneth

Anger and Jack Smith were beginning to get attention in arthouse theatres for

making films that Susan Sontag and other cultural critics categorized as ‘camp’

Waters was clearly attracted by camp’s ability to transform the discarded refuse

of mainstream culture into art but, for him, New York was a city with too much

good taste to really be a capital of bad taste For genuine bad taste, one had

to go to Baltimore Fortuitously expelled from New York University’s film

pro-gramme in his first semester for smoking marijuana, Waters never regretted his

lack of academic credentials He returned to Baltimore with the goal of

becom-ing a successful film-maker, and started an ensemble group with friends and

neighbours, a loose collection of Baltimore’s hippie outcasts, that operated from

a bedroom in his parents’ house, which he called Dreamland Studios

Dreamland could certainly never match Hollywood for glamour but, in a camp

spirit of glorifying bad taste, Waters fashioned a ‘trash aesthetic’ to compete with

Hollywood spectacle It was a strategy that took full advantage of Baltimore’s

dubi-ous attributes In Shock Value, Waters writes, ‘You can look far and wide, but you’ll

never discover a stranger city with such extreme style’ Although Waters’ early

films, Hag in a Black Leather Jacket (1964), Roman Candles (1966), and Eat Your

Makeup (1968), show the influence of New York’s underground, Waters began

employing the ‘trash aesthetic’ as a way to promote the made-in-Baltimore aspect

of his films Publicity flyers for Roman Candles described it as a ‘trash epic’ Waters

went even further with his first feature-length film, calling it Mondo Trasho (1969)

It starred Divine, the actor most closely associated with Waters’ early films Born,

Harris Glenn Milstead, Divine was a 300-pound female impersonator whose

mas-sive wigs and radical make-up perfectly reflected Baltimore’s extreme style

In the 1970s, Waters pushed bad taste to its limits, taking trash to the level of

filth by devising increasingly-outrageous stunts for Divine and the Dreamlanders

to perform onscreen Drug usage, nudity, crime and perversion were common

in Waters’ films, but his fail-safe method for creating cinematic controversy was

to mix deviant sexuality with religious devotion Divine, whose name Waters

specifically chose for its religious connotations, was Dreamland’s exemplar of a

holy hell-raiser Waters was raised Catholic in one of the most Catholic cities in

the United States Baltimore, home of the first American diocese, with the first

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bishop and the first Cathedral, is located in what was also the last state to have

a functioning censorship board For over twenty years, the reigning queen of the Maryland Censor Board was an Italian Catholic grandmother named Mary Avara, who was famous for her appearances on TV talk shows with Johnny Carson, Mike Douglass, Dick Cavett, and others, but also for her Maryland Senate appear-ances whenever the question of the Censor Board’s budget renewal came up Pointing her finger at lawmakers, Avara would inquire in her heavy Baltimore

accent, ‘Do you like filth?’ Her aversion for Waters’ movies was legendary yet, in Shock Value, Waters called Avara, ‘the best press agent I could have’ With his

gift for showmanship, Waters realized that condemnation from Avara constituted

a strong endorsement for his counter-cultural audience

Multiple Maniacs (1970), which featured Divine as the murderous leader of a

circus of sexual deviants, is Waters’ most filthy film from this uniquely-Catholic perspective After Divine is raped in a Baltimore alley, she has a vision of the Infant

of Prague who leads her into St Cecilia’s church There she meets Mink, the gious whore, who performs a ‘rosary job’ on Divine while reciting the Stations of the Cross as the film cross-cuts between a realistic crucifixion scene and Divine’s sexual ecstasy in the church pew The film was banned in Baltimore until 1981, the year Maryland’s Censor Board was abolished, but it was picked up on the Cinema

reli-12 circuit and toured sixteen cities in the early 1970s, enjoying its greatest

suc-cess in San Francisco In Shock Value, Waters stated that, ‘Multiple Maniacs really

helped me to flush Catholicism out of my system, but I don’t think you ever can really lose it completely … Being Catholic always makes you more theatrical.’Waters may have temporarily flushed Catholicism out of his system, but the

desire to create filth remained His next film, Pink Flamingos (1972), features a

battle between two Baltimore families, each vying for the title of ‘the filthiest people alive.’ Playing out like a laundry list of carefully-orchestrated comic gross-

out stunts, Pink Flamingos features acts of murder, cannibalism, bestiality,

castra-tion, transsexual exhibitionism, and incest, but the film’s most memorable scene occurs at the very end when Divine proves she is ‘the filthiest person alive’ by eating (in one long take so that there is no doubting its authenticity) dog faeces Once the film was picked up by New Line Cinema and released as a popular midnight movie, it made Waters, Divine, Mink Stole, and other Dreamlanders like Edith Massey, David Lochary and Bonnie Pearce, famous beyond Baltimore

Waters followed Pink Flamingos with Female Trouble (1974), which tells the

story of career-criminal Dawn Davenport (Divine) following her rise to criminal stardom from her high-school years as a juvenile delinquent to her execution in

the electric chair Made with the $27,000 Waters received in profits from Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble is Waters’ most technically-proficient and narratively-

coherent film, but it is bizarre enough to have prompted film critic Rex Reed to write, ‘Where do these people come from? Where do they go when the sun goes down?’ The answer, of course, is Baltimore, but Reed had inadvertently raised an issue that would cause problems for Waters’ next film David Lochary, the male

lead in all of Waters’ films since Roman Candles, died of a drug overdose in 1977, while Divine was contractually obligated to tour with a stage production Female Trouble was the last film Waters made through Dreamland Productions With Desperate Living (1977), which was filmed on a set composed almost entirely of

garbage, Waters had reached the limits of filth and the trash aesthetic

By the 1980s, either because he had matured or because the lack of a ing censor board made filth a little less fun, Waters began to show Baltimore in a slightly different light; Baltimore becomes a city of idiosyncratic charm in the Waters

function-films that follow Polyester (1981) Nowhere is this more apparent than in the

nos-talgic portrait of Baltimore Waters creates in his most commercially-successful film,

Cultural Crossover 27

Hairspray (1988) Set in 1962, Hairspray recreates the Baltimore of Waters’ youth

for a story about outcast teenagers breaking racial barriers through dance The

fictional Corny Collins show of Hairspray is based on The Buddy Dean Show that

aired in Baltimore as a daily after-school teen-dance programme from 1957 until

1964 The show was cancelled after its tentative attempts to integrate spawned

controversy Waters, who was once a guest on The Buddy Deane Show and even

won a twist contest, recalls this troubled racial history in Hairspray It would be

Waters’ last film with Divine, who died of heart failure a week after Hairspray’s

release, but the film introduced Ricki Lake, who played the heavy-set heroine Tracy

Turnblad and went on to become a star in her own right

Cry Baby (1990), which stars Johnny Depp, takes a similarly nostalgic look

at Baltimore, but focuses on late-1950s’ class divisions in the city, rather than

race The Dreamlanders were gradually being replaced by a new generation of

Waters regulars, including Ricki Lake and Patty Hearst, but Waters continued to

highlight specific Baltimore locations, such as Turkey Point, and used

regionally-specific terms, such as ‘drapes’, for the juvenile delinquent greasers who battle

the upper-crust squares Serial Mom (1994) is set in the Lutherville

neighbour-hood where Waters grew up While making Serial Mom, Waters commented

on the irony of being invited to use the homes of neighbours who chased him

away while he was making his first films The high school where Beverly Sutphin

(Kathleen Turner) commits her first murder occurs at the same school that Divine

attended in the early 1960s Actual Baltimore establishments, such as the movie

rental shop Video Babylon, also feature prominently

In Pecker (1999), Waters valorizes Baltimore as a place that is decidedly less

pretentious than New York Set in Baltimore’s Hampden neighbourhood, Pecker

stars Edward Furlong as a photographer whose portraits of Baltimore characters

are celebrated for their ironic commentary on Baltimore’s clearly-backward culture

Pecker is an alter ego for Waters Friends steal film for him, as they did for Waters

when he started out, and Pecker struggles with the ambivalence he feels as his

success in the phony art world of New York takes him further from the real world

of Baltimore Similarly, Cecil B Demented (2000) takes its title from a review

Waters received early in his career: a group of guerilla film-makers kidnap a

Hol-lywood star (Melanie Griffith) and force her to appear in their underground movie,

something Waters wrote about years earlier in his second book, Crackpot (2004)

For A Dirty Shame (2004) Waters again chose a working-class neighbourhood on

a specific Baltimore thoroughfare: Harford Road A movie about sex addicts who

strive to liberate their ‘neuter’ neighbourhood from prudish sexual prohibitions, A

Dirty Shame returns to some of the themes of Waters’ earliest films

Waters has struggled to find an audience for his most recent films, but as a

speaker, actor, and raconteur he is always in demand As host for the Court TV

series Til Death Do Us Part, Waters introduced half-hour dramatizations of real-life

marriages that ended in murder He is also a frequent host of the Independent

Spirit Awards Despite his celebrity status, Waters continues to keep a house in

Bal-timore As one of the city’s famous natives, he joins a list of luminaries that includes

Eubie Blake, Babe Ruth, H L Mencken, ‘Mama’ Cass Elliot, John Astin, Frank Zappa,

and many others In most cases, these Baltimore entertainers were as renowned for

their quirky personalities as for their professional achievements Waters is no

differ-ent With his pencil-thin moustache, flamboyant suits, openness about his sexuality,

and quick wit, Waters remains a true Baltimore eccentric The city honoured Waters’

contributions to his hometown on 7 February, 1985, when presiding Baltimore

Mayor William Donald Schaefer proclaimed it ‘John Waters Day.’

Joseph Schaub

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SCORING CINEMA MULHOLLAND DR.

Mulholland Dr., Studio Canal+/Les Films Alain Sarde/Universal.

Scoring Cinema 29

David Lynch has always been obsessed with getting beneath the

sur-face From the start of his most famous film, Blue Velvet (1986), where

the camera dived beneath a lawn to reveal a subterranean world of gigantic insects, reality in Lynch’s works always seems to be a cover

for something more evil and monstrous Mulholland Dr is perhaps the

apotheosis of this, taking the analytical eye to the extreme in its ination of fairy-tale Hollywood and its frightening underbelly After a car accident, Hollywood actress ‘Rita’ becomes a confused amnesiac, adrift in Los Angeles Concurrently, a young ingénue, Betty, arrives in Tinseltown keen to make her name When the two women discover each other, they are drawn into an increasingly-disturbing fantasy, where the glossy veneer of LA is peeled back to reveal a nightmare world of mistaken identity, murder, love affairs and more besides Can Betty help ‘Rita’ discover who she once was? Is everything as straight-forward as it seems?

exam-Inseparable from Lynch is his regular composer Angelo

Badala-menti, who gets so little attention (outside his iconic theme for Twin Peaks) simply because his music is so intertwined with both the

director’s soundscape and twisted visuals One is faced with a similar

challenge when taking a casual listen to the score for Mulholland Dr

The eerie, sinuous string/synthesiser lines that have earmarked all of the composer’s albums on the surface appear to have little going for them … but, as with Lynch’s own obsession with getting under the skin, there is much more going on than meets the eye

Indeed, what becomes apparent on listening to this soundtrack is how well it blurs the line between traditional score and piece of sound design Just as its rumbling sonorities in the film are sometimes barely distinguishable as music, the music on the album functions much the same way Much of this, of course, is down to the influence of Lynch himself, who frequently describes himself as a ‘sound man’ These contradictions make for a surprisingly hypnotic and fascinating listen away from the film

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And then, of course, there are the cues that are completely off-kilter yet tuned into Lynch’s bizarre world The first of these is ‘Jitterbug’, a funky jazz number set against the film’s opening mix of live action and animation It is an oddly appropriate way to begin, hinting at deca-dence and mischief lurking beneath the surface

However, tonally at least, it is deceptive; Badalamenti’s more iar voice comes to dominate in ‘Mulholland Drive’: a brooding series

famil-of dark electronically-enhanced string lines, accompanying the credits sequence of ‘Rita’s’ car making its way along the titular road Accom-panied by Peter Deming’s lush night-time photography, Badalamenti and Lynch together set out their stall early in casting LA as a menac-ing landscape, both physically and psychologically The theme (if it can be described as such) is the flipside to its more beautiful cousin in

The Straight Story (1999)

Post-car-crash with ‘Rita Walks’ – as the character does so, fusedly, into the night – the score becomes even more unnerving: acoustic and electronic elements mirroring her confusion, the strings sinking lower into their registers ‘Diner’ is quietly terrifying – the growling, rumbling electronics building to the seemingly-discon-nected scene of a man coming face to face with the monster of his nightmares in Winkies The briefest of contrasts comes in ‘Betty’s Theme’, a quietly-uplifting moment as Watt’s character arrives in LA, ironically triumphant in tone prior to the score’s plunge back into darkness, as she and ‘Rita’ come face to face with a Hardy-boys-style mystery

con-Lynch though has always had an acute eye for absurdity and a dark sense of humour The inclusion of Milt Buckner’s ‘The Beast’ should seem out of place but, as with ‘Jitterbug’, it speaks volumes about Lynch’s satirical focus – accompanying the scene where movie director Adam (Justin Theroux), frustrated at having a different actress cast in his movie, returns home to find his wife having an affair with the pool cleaner The sly choice of song makes an ironically-jaunty mockery

of the Hollywood dream, as Adam’s paint-fuelled attempts to ruin his wife’s jewellery result in little more than a bloody nose Sliding comfortably back into a more mysterious groove is the main theme making a haunting re-appearance towards the end of ‘Dwarfland/Love Scene’ as things turn increasingly weird As identities are crossed and characters are confused, the composer, by using the title track to represent a new agenda, adds to the mystery by ‘merging’ Betty and

‘Rita’ during the notorious lesbian love scene

As Naomi Watts’ formerly apple-pie, blue-eyed Betty performs

a startlingly-bitter about-face in the film’s latter half, confusing our perception of her character, so Badalamenti mirrors our confusion with subtly-different musical textures However, rather than overwhelm the score and film with multiple themes and motifs, it remains monothe-matic and consistent in its moodiness – from the sleazy noirish trum-pet in ‘Silencio’ to the laid-back guitar vibe of ‘Pretty 50s’ ‘Diane and Camilla’ gives full reign to Betty’s identity crisis and is quite moving – the strings toiling with a mystery where the answer lies just beyond our reach

Scoring Cinema 31

Elsewhere there is more twisted humour in ‘Llorando’, an acappella version of Roy Orbison’s ‘Crying’, and a grungy, vaguely-apocalyptic rock track, co-written with Lynch, entitled ‘Mountains Falling’: an apt title in mimicking the collapse of reason and logic in the film’s climax where things end on an eerie note, with a reprise of the main theme and its counterpart, the love theme, hinting at the inscrutable mystery

we have tried our damndest to work out

What is most remarkable is how Badalamenti plays the mystery admirably straight in contrast to the incoherent nature of the film, crafting a psychological tone poem and ode to weirdness that

allows the listener to make up their own mind, just as the viewing audience is invited to Deceptively bland, for those who are willing

to dig deeper there are subtle delights to be found, but it is highly recommended that one watches the film first to hear the music in its proper context

Sean Wilson

Gordon: his debut Re-Animator (1985) is still a fan favourite, and

one of the best comedic horrors of the 1980s However, in the 1970s, Gordon held the position of Artistic Director of the Chicago Organic Theatre Company, which garnered a reputation for pro-ductions of experimental and challenging plays including the first

staging of David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago Despite

a further six horror films over the next two decades, Gordon has recently returned to his theatrical roots, filming dramas and thrillers with small casts, revolving around life-threatening situations and issues of morality

Gordon’s prolific output has varied in popularity and the relative success and failure of each project is often due to the director’s

level of artistic control His H P Lovecraft adaptation, Re-Animator,

includes dozens of zombies and mutated creatures, which shows

a unique mixture of Frankenstein-style experiments and the gore

of the increasingly-modern horror films of the early 1980s, such as

The Evil Dead (1981) The film is played straight by all involved, and

it is the absurdity of the blood-and-guts set pieces that provides the humour, not to mention the music, which has been accurately described as a disco version of Bernard Herrmann’s score for Alfred

Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) Gordon’s follow-up, From Beyond (1986),

is less successful Although another Lovecraft adaptation, with much

of the same cast and crew, this is a gorier film with less-sympathetic characters that favours spectacle over content

DIRECTORS STUART GORDON

Left: Edmond, 2005, Muse Prods.

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Gordon’s last two films of the 1980s, while both located within the fantasy

genre, varied in style and content His killer-toys movie, Dolls (1987), is

reason-ably entertaining but does not have the spirit or anarchy of the best example

of the genre, Child’s Play (1988) However, Robot Jox (1990) is a terrific movie

about men piloting giant robot fighting machines that never found the ence it deserved Gordon believes that a combination of the belated release of

audi-Robot Jox, which was shot in 1988 and gathered dust on the shelf when

pro-duction company Empire Pictures went bankrupt, and the dwindling popularity

of the Transformers craze lead to the film’s box-office failure, not to mention

that its Cold War subtext was out of date by the time it eventually reached

theatres Robot Jox cost $10 million, the director’s largest budget to date, and,

as it made only $1.27 million at the box office, his next film was Daughter of Darkness (1990), a TV movie made in Romania.

The director would remain in Europe for his adaptation of The Pit and the dulum (1991), filmed in Italy, with genre stars Lance Henriksen and Oliver Reed

Pen-adding some gravitas to one of the goriest Poe adaptations to date ing his professional globetrotting, the director made the futuristic prison movie

Continu-Fortress (1993) in Australia and brought the stereotypical homoerotic machismo

of the genre to the familiar motifs of sex crimes and the thought-police Gordon took advice from his mother when making his excursion into science fiction:

if you don’t have the budget to make it expensive, you should make it smart,

and Fortress evokes a convincing futuristic world outside its subterranean walls Fortress is let down only by an odd coda that sees the protagonists attacked by

a robotic truck, something which was sensibly excised from some prints of the movie

Gordon’s next project, Castle Freak (1995), was a considerably-more frugal

affair A tale of a psychotic deformed killer living in the bowels of an inherited

Italian castle, Castle Freak is a particularly incongruous film as it seems to exist

on a purely perfunctory level, which may have a lot to do with the main location

being owned by one of the producers Space Truckers (1996), however, while

uneven and episodic, is a terrific mix of science fiction, comedy and road movies which borrows heavily from the ‘Ace Trucking Co.’ strip which featured in the

British comic book ‘2000AD’ After dabbling with magical realism with The derful Ice Cream Suit (1998), Gordon returned to Lovecraft, but Dagon (2001), like Castle Freak, was shot in Europe out of financial necessity rather than choice

Won-and the dubbed performances of the non-English speaking cast do not do the end result any favours

Unperturbed by his failures, Gordon had earned a reputation as one of the modern film’s ‘Masters of Horror’, so it was appropriate that he found himself contributing to the TV series of that name He directed another Lovecraft

adaptation, Dreams of the Witch-House (2005), for the first season and another Poe adaptation, The Black Cat (2007), for the second These are reasonable

entries into an anthology series but the other three films made by Gordon

in the 2000s are all tight, stylish dramas that provide their actors with meaty

roles King of the Ants (2003), Edmond (2005) and Stuck (2007) all depict

people who are dehumanized by extreme situations, and present gruelling scenes of torture and suffering, thereby allowing the director to align his skills for directing both horror and theatre Perhaps working within the confines of fantasy and horror allowed Gordon to deal with these themes, but a return to his background in theatre shows that he does not need fantastical trappings in

Directors 35

order to tell tales with gravitas and intensity That said, at his most

conceptu-ally ambitious, as seen in Re-Animator, Space Truckers and Robot Jox, Gordon

can mix satire with special effects to great aplomb Working outside of genre

with high calibre actors, such as William H Macy in Edmond or Joe Mantegna

in The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, has garnered him a greater reputation with

cinéastes afraid of zombies, but the casting of Macy in the role of the American

President in the proposed House of Re-Animator may result in his most

enjoy-able film to date

Alex Fitch

Directors 37

Charlie Kaufman is the author of the screenplays Being John Malkovich (1999),

Human Nature (2001), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Adaptation

(2002), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), and Synecdoche, New York

(2008), the last of which he also directed He has a fondness for inserting himself

into his own work and writing about sex

When asked over the phone: ‘You do have a reputation for being reclusive, for

being extraordinarily shy, for refusing to have your photo taken and so forth Is it

all true?’ Kaufman replies: ‘There’s a bit of a mythology about me And there are

photos I was on a panel at Cannes They were snapping away.’ But he follows

what appears to be a factual statement with the caveat: ‘Then again, I am talking

to you on the phone, in a completely dark room with infrared goggles on.’ In

this interview, Kaufman plays with his public persona and, as he does in his films,

purposefully refuses to delineate the differences between various levels of

real-ity, truth and fiction

In Adaptation, when Charlie is having difficulty adapting Susan Orlean’s book

The Orchid Thief, he inserts himself into his own screenplay because he decides

that the only way to get past his writer’s block is to ‘write about what you know’

Apparently the screenwriter knows himself pretty well In interviews concerning

the film, a stock question put to Kaufman is, ’Why put yourself into your film?’

And, so far, he has always given the same reason as his fictional counterpart: it

was out of artistic necessity Kaufman also creates a fictional brother for his

fic-tional self called Donald Kaufman Donald represents the pro-Hollywood aspect

of the film industry that both Charlies claim to despise, but, as the film

pro-gresses, it become apparent that they have to incorporate Hollywood elements

into their scripts to get the green light If we were to assume that the real Charlie

is like the fictional Charlie, and vice versa, then we would be ignoring practically

every assertion made by contemporary film theory about narrative, genre, and

subjectivity

Kaufman performed in his high school’s production of Play It Again, Sam and,

in his yearbook entry, he ironically states: ‘At last, my dream had come true; I

wasn’t a victim of my machismo physique I was able to free myself, to be short

to be somebody!’ The desire ‘to be somebody’ and have an identity is as

evident throughout Kaufman’s work as his desire to subvert and question the

methods of obtaining and portraying such states Human Nature engages with

subjectivity as a system that is intimately connected with the self A deceased

Nathan declares, ‘What is love anyway? From my new vantage point, I realise

that love is nothing more than a messy conglomeration of need, desperation,

fear of death, and insecurity about penis size … I don’t want to be dead yet.’ In

Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, motives of love and a malleable nature/

environment are used to drive the characters into areas of themselves that are

equally disturbing and ‘messy’ so that narrative can develop askew to audience

expectations

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the most visually-complex film

from the most intricate Kaufman script The chaotic narrative, developed from

Adaptation, reflects Joel, the confused protagonist, who is accompanied by the

mental image of his past/future girlfriend Clementine as they travel through his

memories to stop her being erased Furthermore, Charlie’s professional

disap-pointment in the process of adapting Orlean’s novel is paralleled in Confessions

of a Dangerous Mind, where, on hearing that his shows have been cancelled,

Chuck Barris exclaims: ‘They killed my babies I pushed them into the world

through the birth canal of my imagination Lovingly Tenderly Where’s the

humanity of these people?’ Barris is a game-show host with a dual life as a CIA

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agent who finds his bi-polar strategy for living dissolving into a schizophrenic

morass Synecdoche, New York, is another example of the conflation between

artist and product, and the pains that the artist must suffer to elevate a creative act into something incredible (or merely credible) Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) builds a replica of his life on a stage, which becomes a matryoshka matrix for further simulacra, that eventually dominates and subsumes his life as his quest for the elusive ‘Truth’ is pushed further out of sight

According to Spike Jonze, ‘Adaptation had a great script … it was so

modular and non-linear, it was limitless since it wasn’t plot driven … Losing the momentum emotionally, as opposed to losing it plot wise is a much more abstract thing to figure out.’ Nevertheless, the emotional content of the mod-ules do not resolve or clarify the situation of the protagonists to themselves; they only emerge from one scenario to be shuffled into a new context that has been created from the emotional rivalry of an ‘other’ character Caden constantly rebounds off the mental inflictions he reciprocates with his numer-

ous paramours, and the same rebounding technique is applicable to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is, in many ways, a generic romance

but which strives to break free of the trappings of the genre This

seemingly-paradoxical binding to convention is evident in all of Kaufman’s films In Being John Malkovich, once Craig falls in love with Maxine, he becomes singularly

obsessed with sleeping with her He obsesses over the Maxine puppet, has mixed success in ‘wooing’ her, abuses everything (and everyone) so that he can take the position that he needs in order to seduce Maxine, and then adapts himself into his new role only to lose everything as, ironically, he cannot control himself Furthermore, Lotte and Maxine spontaneously become lesbian lovers and, in the draft script, Elijah (the ape) and Lotte also become entan-

gled – which is possibly too ridiculous to contemplate, until Human Nature is

In Adaptation, Charlie’s attempt to adapt the material is the central theme;

he starts the narrative incapable of having a successful relationship, and the last communication that he has with another person is that he now knows the secret

to having a relationship During the course of the film, he has various nary flings that devolve into masturbatory sessions; book sleeve photographs and waitresses are fair game for his imagination Once Charlie fixates on Susan Orlean as the subject of his work, he develops a crush on the image of her that

imagi-he has within his imagination As such, timagi-he diegetically ‘real’ Orlean does not adhere to his expectations; she is unhappy with her husband and engages in drug-fuelled romps on the settee with orchid thief, John Laroche Nevertheless,

unlike Human Nature, Adaptation is about trying to find love This can be seen

in the way that Orlean approaches the orchids and clings to Laroche This tionship is comparable to the one that the fictional Kaufman brothers share, as

rela-Directors 39

Orlean and Charlie are almost parasitic in their search to feel fulfilled and have

their narrative arc completed by others

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind attempts to be anti-romantic as the

film depicts a relationship being erased, with several scenes featuring ‘realistic’

disagreements until Joel and Clementine’s animosity is unbearable; although,

as the story progresses, Joel forgets each bad memory and seeks reconciliation,

which fits a standard romance genre The characters in the sub-plot all

repre-sent generic romance figures Mary is infatuated with Howard, an older man

who is her mentor, and Stan is subjected to unrequited love, but Stan and Mary,

together, fleetingly represent a youthful relationship which contrasts with that of

Howard and his wife, as Howard is a serial adulterer (with the same girl) Patrick

is the token comedy relief: a weird, panties-stealing pervert who will stop at

nothing to achieve what he thinks is love

For Kaufman, representations of the self can only be defined in relation to

the shaky representation of others that we endow them as having, and Kaufman

ably demonstrates that this method of understanding and directing our lives is

precarious and often prone to failure But he also suggests that it can ultimately

generate fleeting and fragmented moments of happiness, and that that is more

important for a satiated sense of the self than a fixation on an

impossible-to-reach stardom, orchid, ex-girlfriend or play

Carl Wilson

40 American Independent

DIRECTORS DAVID LYNCH

No career in contemporary American cinema has seen more re-invention than that of David Lynch His ten feature films to date have caused him to adopt more

personas than Laura Dern’s actress in Inland Empire (2006) Consider his and-white debut Eraserhead (1977), made on and off over five years before

black-becoming a staple of the midnight-movie circuit If this positioned him as an

independent film-maker of startling originality, his sophomore film The Elephant Man (1980) brought him into the bosom of the Academy with eight Oscar nomi-

nations – with a love story about a deformed Victorian circus freak

A flirtation with the mainstream that was as brief as it was bizarre, The Elephant Man was followed by the Dino De Laurentiis-produced science-fiction folly Dune (1984), Lynch’s wildly uneven adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel Then came the under-the-radar Blue Velvet (1986), which returned him to criti- cal adulation, followed in 1990 by the Palme d’Or-winning road movie Wild At Heart Two years later, he was critically vilified for Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

(1992), the prequel to the cultural phenomenon that was his ABC-produced

murder-mystery serial Twin Peaks (1990–91).

The remainder of the decade saw him becoming increasingly marginalized

The warmly-received road movie The Straight Story (1999) aside, he saw sion projects such as On The Air (1992) and Hotel Room (1993) either pulled or panned, while the quite brilliant Lost Highway (1997) was greeted with indif-

televi-ference Worse was to come when his pilot for the proposed television series

Mulholland Dr (2001) did not result in a network pick-up Little wonder, after

he rescued it from the ashes with a third act that turned it into a minor movie masterpiece, that this Hollywood-set story about a nạve actress who becomes

embroiled with a femme fatale felt like a nightmarish evocation of an industry

that had burnt him one too many times

By the time its thematic companion Inland Empire (2006) was released, it was as

if Lynch had looped back on himself in much the same way as Bill Pullman’s Fred

David Lynch.