Ridley Scott Options Brave New World

I suppose we can call this the second entry in our interview series about mumblecore, to be snooty and high-brow about it. Well, we’re not Film Comment, so we’ll just say this is another interview. Aaron Katz is my favorite of the mumblecore filmmakers (and so he is forgiven for wearing a Mets hat in that picture). He’s made two films so far, Dance Party, USA and Quiet City, which landed at #6 on my 2007 top 10 list.

The films are hugely different, but bear the same marks of a gifted filmmaker. Dance Party, USA is a challenging film about, oh, how to put this…the pitfalls of suburban teenage malaise, whereas Quiet City is a more serene and improbable Brooklyn love story. Both films were released as part of a two disc set from Benten films in January.

Rob: How did the whole meet-up between the key guys, you, the Duplass brothers, Andrew Bujalski, and Joe Swanberg happen?

Aaron Katz: I met Joe first, at SxSW 2006. I had Dance Party, USA there and Joe had LOL. I met a bunch of filmmakers there, and then I went around to other film festivals and you sort of end up running into the same people. [The Duplass Brothers and I] had been exchanging emails and then they were in New York for the Puffy Chair premier at the Angelika. I met them there. But, SxSW really. I had Dance Party there in 2006 and Quiet City there in 2007.

RS: Did you go to film school?

AK: I did. I went to North Carolina School of the Arts. Pretty much everyone who worked on my movies went there also.

RS: How did you get to Portland to shoot Dance Party?

AK: Portland is where I’m from. I was born there, grew up there. When I was 18 I went off to North Carolina for school. I want to give you a back story, because I was writing the script for Dance Party while I was there in 2002. So it was written with Portland in mind, and also because I grew up there, I had a lot of connections with friends and family and it made it a lot easier to shoot there.

RS: Would you say you have any kind of driving influence from the film world?

AK: Yeah. What I really remember from around the time of Dance Party, I wouldn’t say that necessarily the style came from this and then we incorporated it into the movies. The movies I associate with each film end up being things that I just happen to watch around then. I think “inspiring” is maybe a better word than “influential.” I remember around Dance Party, all the crew was living in the same house and we were renting movies. We rented two films that I think about when I think about Dance Party. One was Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love, which I saw for the first time. Brendan [McFadden], one of the producers, kept telling me “you gotta see this film, you gotta see this film” for a while, so I was like all right, and I really loved it. But, I can’t say that — the style of Dance Party is very different from In the Mood for Love. Maybe in terms of influence, it’s maybe more the process of shooting. For example Y Tu tu Mamá También, just in that it’s a lot hand held [camera work], a kind utilitarian approach and stripping away of the artifice.

RS: Would you say emotion and character are more important to you than story?

AK: I guess so. But, I would say that story, for me, in both of those films arises from characters — the story is motivated by who these people are and how they interact with each other, rather than me having an idea for a particular story and then filling it up with people who fit that.

RS: Do you have any films in the works?

AK: I haven’t made any other films so far. I did a short for this guy’s video art project. I’m working on a couple of new features. Kind of working on ones for all budget levels, because I really want to keep working and not be stalled out waiting to raise money. I have one that will cost in the $50,000 range, that I’m hopeful could get made. And then there is one in the $5-10m range that wouldn’t get made for a while from now. And then one that’s a lot more than that. Making films for very little money, you can do a lot of really exciting things, but also there are limitations. You sort of have to limit yourself to things that are very close around you. Including the actors and the locations, but while I’m very interested in all of those things, there are other things I’m interested in, like one of those things I’m working on is a western that I’d really like to do. On a limited budget, you really can’t appropriately do a western.

RS: What is your take on the current independent film scene?

AK: I think there are a lot of good films coming out. I think the good news is that because technology has gotten to a point where cheap equipment and equipment that’s of fairly high quality are now getting closer together, I think more and more people are going to be able to make films. And that’ll result in, you know, probably some films being made that aren’t very good, but I think it’ll result in films that are made that will be different from things we’ve seen in the past, because all it will take is someone deciding ‘I will do nothing but this’ and make it happen, because it doesn’t take that much money. Clearly there is an element of uncertainty right now, with studios wanting to be cautious and some things that — I think maybe the most problematic point right now are things that maybe would cost a little bit more money but are still very independently minded. I think studios and mini-majors are becoming kind of cautious about those. It’s only achievable for filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson. There Will Be Blood is a project that’s highly uncommercial, but very exciting, but, almost because it’s Paul Thomas Anderson, he’s able to make a film like that, that is expensive to make and also very artistically minded.

RS: Do you you feel that now you’ve put this certain kind of sense of story out there that they’re calling mumblecore, as more people connect with it it, do you think it will grow beyond what you guys have done?

AK: I think that’s already happening, and in fact, none of us had anything to do with each other until recently. Besides Joe, everyone is still kind of working independently. I think that, hopefully, the positive effect is that as these films are seen people will realize that we made these pretty cheap and maybe people will be inspired to go out and make a film on their own.

RS: What are your thoughts on the term “mumblecore”?

AK: I wish it didn’t sound quite so crappy. I’m sort of in two minds about really, besides the name itself. I think it’s useful, or can be useful, to raise awareness of the films in general. There were probably some articles to be written that wouldn’t have been written without the films being perceived as similar to each other. From there, hopefully people will become interested and go watch the individual films, and hopefully have responses to each of the films on their own. I think the danger is for people to perceive the films as the same thing. Some of the production methods are similar and I think there is a similar interest in getting at real human relationships and how they function in the films, but I think that Joe’s methods are very different from mine. I think there is a danger in all of the films being lumped together and people seeing one film and thinking “well, I’ve seen one, and if they’re all the same why should I see the others?” and then also, in the future, I think there is a danger of being categorized this way, and making more more of the same film. Hopefully that won’t happen. I think the important think is for the filmmakers to expand on their own.

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And that’s how the interview went. Sort of. He had a bit to add about the collaboration between the crews on his films, most of which he met during film school in NC, being more important than the collaboration between other mumblecore filmmakers (though, Swanberg was one of the actors in Quiet City). But, naturally, my tape is garbled beyond repair and I could only make out fragments of the sentence. Not enough to transcribe faithfully, so I didn’t try.

Like the Joe Swanberg interview, this was original done for an article I wrote last November for URB Magazine about mumblecore. As well as being the first national magazine piece I’d ever written, it was the first piece I’d ever written, period. And it was very, very rough around the edges. Beyond that, it was the first time I had to interview anyone as well. Interviews are like anything else, really, and the more you do, the better you get. This was the second I’d done via phone (Swanberg’s was via e-mail, as he was in Sweden at the time). Justin Rice from Mutual Appreciation and the band Bishop Allen was the first, but that went so horribly I deleted it after I pulled some quotes out of it. So, my “ask stupid questions” wasn’t so much a questioning style as it was inexperience and nerves.