Originally released in 1992, it follows a group of neo-Nazi skinhead youths in Melbourne who have targeted the local Vietnamese community. Led by the charismatic and frightening Hando (Russell Crowe) and his second in command, Davey (the late Daniel Pollock), they meet up with the drug addict Gabrielle (Jacqueline McKenzie) and a love story of sorts begins. As the violence escalates around them, Wright ponders whether or not they can ever get out of this endless cycle.

Throughout the interview, Wright talks about the inception of the film, its controversies, the Australian film industry and finding the right time to re-enter it. We need to thank Roadshow Entertainment/Reel for this opportunity, and of course, Mr. Wright for his generous time and answers.

Romper Stomper is released in Australia on Blu-ray on 3 October 2012 from Reel.

It was a very different time for Australian film then. How difficult was it to get the film made?

Well, I suppose at the time we thought it was difficult, but compared to what would be faced now. They were not so intimidating as what they would be now, because generally speaking it was a less politically correct time in the funding bodies – and in general, anywhere, any aspect of society. I remember someone from Film Victoria saying to me ‘Well, the project scares us a bit, but we’re really obliged to put money into stuff that’s breaking new ground. So we’re going to give you the money’. And I was very grateful. I think there’d be a lot more angst and second guessing if you tried to do it these days.

It was your first feature following short films. I understand it was Dane Sweetman’s story that attracted you at the time. What was it in particular about that inspired you to make the film?

Well, Dane Sweetman was something that we looked at, but it probably didn’t begin with him. It began earlier, we just noticed a shift in some of the street gangs. Some of the street thugs had taken on certain political ideas and drew inspiration from their counterparts in Europe, and we saw it happening here in Melbourne. We thought this was interesting. We started doing a lot of interviews. I’ve still to this day got a box full of 1/4″ tape, of dozens and dozens and dozens of these characters that we spoke to, who were either on their way into it or on their way out. We were very rarely able to speak to people who were in the cutting edge of it in that moment. Of course, the ones who were into it, were either on the run, or didn’t want to talk to us or were suspicious of us, or what have you. But Dane Sweetman’s story became known to us, and we met people who knew him. So that got rolled up into the general research of the thing, but I wouldn’t say that the Dane Sweetman story was the sole inspired to make the film, it was a number of things.

I mean, his story is so horrific and ridiculous. He killed someone on Hitler’s birthday. I remember thinking should we put something like this in the plot? But it seemed so absurd, that anyone would think that we’d just made it up. It was so crazy that you couldn’t even put it in a plot, because it just seemed so contrived.

At the time, obviously you were responding to something that was happening at the time, and a culture of change. There was a lot of reaction for and against the film. Magazines like Premiere listed it in their 25 Most Dangerous Movies. What do you make of that?

[Laughs]You know, to me the whole thing got summed up locally by a guy who was an old fogey back in the ’90s, and he’s still an old fogey, except he’s got a new suit, and he’s had a haircut and a beard trim, and that’s David Stratton. David Stratton led the charge against the film, came out swinging, and was quite hysterical…on the basis that the editorialising in the film was not, in his opinion – according to his taste – overt enough, loud enough and had enough condemnation of its characters. But to us it was very clear that, if you’re watching the film, and you see what happens to these people and how the plot plays out, it’s very obvious that two and two equals four. If you do bad things to other people, it comes back at you and your whole world falls apart.

This is how Shakespeare works. I mean, Shakespeare made Richard III out to be an engaging figure, a compelling figure, a character with a lot of physical courage. Yet certain aspects of him were commendable, but that didn’t make him a commendable man. Just because we said that Hando had certain attributes as a leader, that didn’t make him a commendable young man. I always resented the fact, especially in this country, that if you wanted to tell a story about bad people, the editorialising and commentary had to be screamingly loud and blunderingly crude in order to justify the making of a story. We thought it was much more fun – in terms of being storytellers, in terms of the delight in the complexity of what we were doing – it would be a lot more fun and engaging to say to the audience we’re going to put you inside the gang, we’re going to give you a character with certain things about him that would be positive in different circumstances. And yet you can still see where this all leads you. It’s a but like saying ‘Was Hitler cruel to domestic animals?’ The answer to that, for the most part, was no. He has an Alsatian called Blondi that he loved. He ended up poisoning the dog because he wanted to test the poison he was going to use on himself and Eva Braun. What I’m saying is that if we’d had scenes where Hando was a dog-kicker, or something like that, then David Stratton would have approved. But that wasn’t what we wanted to do. It was of no use to us in our intentions of saying to the audience ‘Come inside the middle of this gang’, experience the rush and adrenaline of it all, and see how it all turns to hell.

Which is why the film is back on the slate 20 years later. If we’d have done it his way, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. That’s the route that got taken with movies like American History X (1998). They’re good films, but they’re also films that you can stay at arm’s length. They’re easy to stand apart from, and they’re not controversial. I thought it was necessary to be controversial. The delight as storytellers that we took, that we had a taboo theme, we wanted to explore it, this is the way we do it.

You just touched on this briefly, but do you think that notion of Australian films having to be seen in a particular way, or having a particular voice. Do you think that’s changed in the last 20 years?

No, not really. I think that it would be very difficult to make a film like Romper Stomper these days. I think that there would be too many questions in parliament, [laughs] on a state level if it’s Film Victoria. I think these days, people are much more inclined to be politically correct. I think that’s too bad, because it means that things around you in pop culture tend to be pretty predictable, and they tend to be disposable too. They tend to be things that you can put in little boxes and stack neatly and put away in some vast warehouse, and move onto the next thing as if the last thing never happened. Everything is kind of disposable. If you take the approach we took, which was controversial in its day and still is, then it’s not so easy to dispose of it.

In trying to be controversial, and you’ve mentioned Shakespeare, were there any influences you looked at? Were there any classical or film influences you looked at when you were moulding that film.

I think Quadrophenia was probably something we took a good look at, because of the big fight scene on the beach between the Mods and the Rockers. That would have definitely factored into our thinking. In terms of using the camera, and the decision to use Super 16 because we wanted to go handheld, because we knew how much action we had, and we knew that we wanted to engage the audience. Any movie made around that time that had a lot of mobile cameras, we were very interested in.

Of course, one of the things that a lot of people will want to talk about now is the casting, which may seem like incredible foresight given the career Russell Crowe’s had in the last 20 years. My understanding is that he wasn’t your first choice, or wasn’t an immediate choice for you anyway.

Well, he was my first choice, but there was some debate amongst us. We had a discussion with the producers, and what we’d done is created a shortlist of possible young male leads. You can probably imagine whose names would have been on that list back in those days. People who are in their 40s now but were just starting out would have appeared on that list. There were some good people. But I saw Russell in Proof, and I thought that’s the man. Forget about the list, this is the man, this is the guy. So there was some wondering, but it all ended when I saw Proof. I just knew it had to be him.

What qualities did you see in him?

I think there was a brooding and intense quality about him in that film, which may not necessarily been entirely appropriate to that film [laughs], but it was certainly highly appropriate to our film. So I thought he’s going to be a lot more at home in a movie like Romper Stomper, and I thought we can use these qualities that he seems to radiate that weren’t necessarily being used to the greatest effect in a movie like Proof. Because it didn’t have to be, the film wasn’t about those kind of things he was radiating. All of a sudden all of that 12-cylinder power can be put to good use.

You’re worked in various markets, and I’m looking at something like Cherry Falls. Is there anything we as an industry can learn from the US?

I think the mistake we made up until recently is that we didn’t develop writers, we didn’t develop enough of them. We certainly developed a lot of good actors, and in the old days especially a lot of good DOPs. We’ve always developed a lot of good actors, because they’re very rugged individuals. The men and the women do well in the British and American scene because they have a ruggedness about them. They take on projects in Hollywood that I think their American counterparts would be worried about. Our people grasp these opportunities with both hands. What we haven’t done, in my opinion, there is a strategy to empower producers in this country. If that was a way to achieve some kind of sustainable success, let there blossom one thousand production companies. We empowered a lot of producers. I think, and I still think this is wrong, the principal and primary thing to make a movie is a script.

That’s the stuff that goes into the factory and gets turned into a movie. Without it, without the raw material of the script, nothing is possible, and I don’t think we’ve ever paid enough attention to screenwriting. I don’t think AFTRS pays enough attention to screenwriting. In Victoria, although there used to be more attention, there’s less attention now. I think that what I’ve noticed with Screen Australia and Film Victoria, and the New South Wales equivalent of Film Victoria, is they’re much more inclined to defer to American or British script editors to judge work. That’s all very well if you’ve got people trained in Hollywood, or writing in Hollywood, but we don’t. We’ve neglected training wholesale in my opinion  So we’re putting them through this Hollywood filter, but we’re not giving them this Hollywood technique to begin with. Neither are we even encouraging them to develop particular techniques that are peculiar to our own situation. Writers in this country have traditionally been paid the worst in terms of profit participation. They’ve been abused, overridden, ignored and otherwise toyed with in the process, and I think now, the chickens have finally come home to roost. You’d have to be completely out of your mind to want to be a screenwriter in this country. The pay is so awful, why would you want to do it?

We’ve already touched on this, and not to labour the point, but I guess the culture of fear in Australia is even more prominent than ever now, as world events impact on local policy. Is a Romper Stomper needed in this current climate, and if you were making that movie now in the current climate, what would your message be?

That’s a pretty big question. Every era brings about its own situation. The complexity of it would require you to be occasionally ambiguous. I think these days to be definitive about something in a way that I wasn’t definitive about certain things in Romper Stomper. It’s a very different situation in many ways. Back in the story about Hando, he was railing and rebelling against a population of people who turned out to be very good merchant stock, who knew how to make money, who knew how to start a business. If you had a Hando these days, contemplating confronting  say, a Middle Eastern people, what’s the beef going to be there? In a strange kind of way, what’s Hando going to be defending? Is he going to be defending Western liberal democracy? Or is he going to be – there’s an outfit called the Social Political Alternative, who’s actually quite supportive of the radical Islamic protests, because they see it as a way to make friends with people who can be as angry or as tumultuous as they would like to be. So they can see them as strange bedfellows, which I think is really interesting and really bizarre. A film today with Hando dealing with Middle Eastern people – is that the presumption? I guess so too. Hando would have to have a much more complex game up his sleeve, because there’s so much more grey areas these days. So he would have to have more grey areas. That’s what I mean. What’s he going to do with this situation? Whose side is he going to take, and what is he going to embrace? What does the extreme Right have to say about the extreme Islamic point of view? I suppose the extreme right would take the opportunity to be seen as defending the West. But does that mean defending Western liberal democracy? Well, you might pay lip service to it, but ultimately you don’t want that either. So in a strange kind of way, you don’t want that, and the radical Islamic protesters don’t want that. So it all becomes quite complex and strange. To answer your question, it’s not a plot I’ve flushed out in my head and I don’t have all the answers for you…

I don’t want to put you on the spot!

The bottom line is that Hando would have to play a much more complicated game than what he did 20 years ago.

To wrap up, it’s been a few years between projects, I guess. Is there a particular reason for that, and have you got anything planned?

Ok, the reason for the long gap is very simple and it’s the GFC [Global Financial Crisis], right? I just find that independent films, just forget about it. The last couple of years have been a disaster. I’ve got a project that’s tied up in London, but you can imagine how difficult it is to get money out of Europe for a project. I think that even if things go well, you’re looking at 4 years. So for things to come up against the wall of the GFC, it is very difficult. Having said that, I’ve got a local project I’m hoping to get up next year called Australian Gothic, so maybe that’s what I’ll be doing next year. But I’ve also become a father, and I’ve also dealt with other developments in my own family which were less positive and I’ve done other things with my life. So for all those reasons, I’ve been off the scene for longer than I want, but the time is right for me to come back. It’s time for me to make a movie.

Mental, in Australian cinemas on 4 October 2012, follows the lives of five out of control children emotionally rescued by the outrageous Shaz (Collette) when their mother Shirley (Rebecca Gibney) has a mental breakdown. Their unavailable father Barry (Anthony LaPaglia), a local politician running for reelection, finds Shaz hitchhiking and she changes the lives of the kids. The film, as the title suggests, is suitably mental.

We need to thank the good folks at Universal Pictures Australia for the opportunity, and of course, Mr. Hogan for his time and generous answers.

To start off with, I’ve got to say that as a child, my mother made me watch The Sound of Music countless times…

Then you know.

I know, and I’m starting to suspect that she should have gone to Wollongong.

Well, my mother did go to Wollongong. My mother would always cry at exactly the same time too, the scene I put in the movie. I was very specific about what scene was going to be in the movie. It had to be that scene where Christopher Plummer sings with his children. That was the scene where my mum always cried. They said what scene do you want from The Sound of Music, because you have to be very specific. I know exactly: that scene. When you’re a kid, we had no idea. She would go off like clockwork at that scene. We’d go ‘She’s gone again, shoot us now’. What it was, she wasn’t crying about The Sound of Music, she was crying about the fact that it was a dad bonding with his kids, bonding with his family, and we couldn’t get our dad to come home from the pub. He was a very absent father. Can you be very absent? Yes I think you can.

Yes you can.

He was a very absent, underline, father.

Just short of completely. 

[Laughs] Just short of completely. So my mum wanted nothing more than my dad to show up, pull out a guitar and sing Edelweiss, and we’d all cry. But that never happened. He wouldn’t even come back for dinner. So that’s why I put it in the film.

You’ve just alluded to that, that this is a very personal story for you…

Oh yeah. I should stop saying that it’s a story at all. It’s a documentary really.

So why now? What was the impetus?

Well, I’ve known the original Shaz since I was 12 years old. That’s when she came into my life. You know, my mother had a nervous breakdown when I was 12, just vanished, and when we asked our dad where she was he said she was on holiday. That’s the story, and you’re going to stick to it. He was a local politician, up for re-election, so he didn’t want it getting around that his wife had ‘cracked up’, because as he said, nobody votes for a bloke whose wife’s bonkers. So that left him us: five kids that he didn’t get on with, had nothing to say to. To be fair, we were a bunch of ratbags, and I think my dad snapped. He stopped for a hitch-hiker. He picked up this woman from the side of the road, he trusted her because she had a dog, and when we came home from school one day, there she was sitting on the couch. Rolling a cigarette, hunting knife sticking out of her boot – that was the first thing I saw – and she just looked around and said ‘Bit of a mess in here, isn’t it?’. Got us cleaning, sorted us out. That was the original Shaz. To this day, she remains the most inspiring, outrageous and craziest person I’ve ever met.

So I always thought there was a movie about her, about that story, I just didn’t know how to tell it for a very long time. It took a lot of talking out with people I knew, because the original Shaz stayed in my life right up until I was about 30. So there was a lot of rope, story rope. It was which part do you use, which part of the rope do you cut? When I figured out it should be the beginning, how I met her and what she did for us, then it gelled.

There’s a fine line between telling a story about mental illness and comedy…

Actually no. Comedy is always present when you’re dealing with somebody with mental illness. Always. I think people have, and I speak from experience here – my sister has schizophrenia, my brother has bipolar, I’m the father of two autistic children – people just have this image of mentally ill people being depressed all the time. You can’t be depressed all the time, nobody wants to live like that. You’ve got to laugh. Laughter is what helps with the pain. My sister, my schizophrenic sister, one of the things about her when we go out is that she talks really loudly, and people stare at her. She goes ‘Oh, sorry I’m talking so loudly, I’m a bit mental! Bit mental!’ She’s hilarious. So I couldn’t tell the story any other way, because that’s how I’ve experienced life living with my mentally challenged loved ones.

The other thing I can’t imagine is this story being told is anything other than Australia. I think Rebecca Gibney called it “unashamedly Australian”. Could you have told this story in any other place.

No. I guess you mean America, because I’m not going to be making it in France, obviously. The Americans wouldn’t make this. They’d go, ‘Oh no, you can’t do that’. And ‘Can there be an American in it? Can you change it?’ I talked to a few people. As I finished a draft of the screenplay, I showed it to a few friends that I’d worked with. To raise money for it, they said ‘Well, an American will have to play Shaz. Could you set it here too? And that Harold Holt stuff will have to go. We don’t know who he is’. Basically, it destroyed [it]. It would have lost everything. It would have been meaningless. So I knew it was going to have to be a low-budget Australian movie. So that’s what we did. To make it, we all pretty much sacrificed our fees, and I can just tell you that everybody involved in it did it for love.

And is that the difference between making a film in the US and making one here?

I know in the US the films that you’re most passionate about are always the most difficult to make. The ones that you would make for free, you end up making for free. The ones you don’t really care if they get made or not, there’s usually bucketloads of money next to them. I don’t know why that is. It’s just the way the industry works. So I think that any indie film that you see from the USA, that you liked and really worked and had risky material, was probably really difficult to raise money for and to pull off. So when I say difficult to make, I mean difficult to make in the studio system. But it also would have been difficult to make raising money independently, because even the independent world in the USA has got more cautious. Budgets have really been crunched down. Thank goodness for digital now, because at least that’s allowed people to – the audience now accepts things that have got a rawer look, allowing filmmakers to work on a lower budget.

On the flip side, having worked extensively in the US, is there anything the Australian industry could learn from what they’re doing. Is there anything we could try to emulate, I guess?

Look, I’m not sure about that. I’m often asked if we should emulate the Americans, and I just don’t think we should. What are we going to emulate?  We can’t blow things up better than they can. We’re never going to make better superhero movies than the Americans. I think that we underestimate the importance of our own cinema. They steal from us all the time. If they’re not steal our actors, or our directors, they’re certainly watching our films. I for one think that if it wasn’t for Dark City you wouldn’t have The Matrix, I can name dozens of others. They see everything, and they’re always on the lookout for new ideas, new people, new talent. What the America film industry be, what would Hollywood be, without just our Australian actors. There’s almost an Australian actor everywhere you look. So I think we should do exactly what we’re doing, I think we should be telling Australian stories. Concentrating on the stories that are meaningful to us, and telling them well. My surprise with Muriel’s Wedding was that it travelled, because I didn’t make it for anybody else but a bunch of Australians. It too was an unabashed, unashamed Australian film, and somehow it connected with people all around the world, not just the USA. I think you make a mistake if you direct looking at America. If you try to do an Australian story,  but you really hope its a calling card with the USA. If you don’t connect with your immediate audience, you’re probably not going to connect with that audience either.

Coming back to Australia, was Toni Collette an obvious choice for you, or did the story lend itself to that?

Because I’d met the original Shaz when I was so young, I was talking to Toni about Shaz on the set of Muriel’s Wedding. Toni would say ‘Why are we making a film about this Muriel chick when we should be making a film about Shaz?’ Every time we’d meet, she’d ask ‘How’s that script going?’ Even when it didn’t have a name. I’d say, ‘Slowly, but I’m thinking about it’. I was just trying to find a way into it, so it wouldn’t be Muriel’s Wedding 2. Finally, because the real person was so vivid in my mind, I didn’t hear Toni’s voice, I heard Shaz. But when I read it back, I went ‘Wow, Toni would get this’, because she’s from the western suburbs. She’s a Blacktown girl, you know, she knows those tough broads who’ve been through a lot of shit in their lives and come out stronger and a little broken. She won’t condescend, she won’t do the bogan send-up. Then I got nervous. I really wanted Toni to play the part, but in the interim Toni had become very famous, and could have said no. Luckily for me she didn’t, she committed very quickly.

As you said, you are halfway through this junket now, but do you have an eye on your next project at this point?

I’ve got several projects on the boil at the moment. I don’t know which will come first because they all involve actors whose schedules are very tricky. I used to just concentrate on one thing, I was very obsessive about my projects. I pursued, I refused to do anything but Peter Pan for years. I turned down a lot of things because it was always so close to going, and I ended up waiting years to make that movie. I’ve since decided that my resume is going to be very short if I continue to be that way, so I’ve got three or four things going and I’ll do the one that comes first. I’ve pretty much decided that’s what I’ll do. If I name it, I’m sure it won’t happen. If I go ‘this one’, it will be the other one.

You can follow ‘Shaz’ on Twitter via @shazismental

John’s long career has afforded him the opportunity to play opposite Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune in TV’s Shogun (1980), a leading role in Victor Victoria (1982), General Leonid Pushkin in the James Bond film The Living Daylights (1987) and the diminutive Gimli in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001 – 2003).

We’d like to thank Paramount Australia and Free Publicity for the opportunity to speak with the star, and of course, Mr. Davies for his generous time and answers. Indeed, the actor is a font of information, and a genuinely likeable fellow. Mr. Davies took the time to sign an autograph and snap a picture with us after the interview. If you ever get a chance to do the same, watch out: he tickles.

Following the suicide of a much-loved teacher, who hanged herself in her own empty classroom, a class of fourth graders struggles to come to terms with the tragedy. Bashir Lazhar (Mohamed Saïd Fellag), an Algerian refugee, is quickly hired to replace her, but he too is battling his own demons. Despite his cultural differences, and a grief that nobody at the school is willing to talk about, Lazhar begins to reach the class with his idiosyncratic style of teaching. In particular, Alice (Sophie Nélisse) earnestly tries to please to overcome her sadness, and Simon (Émilien Néron) – who discovered the body – continues aggressively acting out.

We need to thank Palace Films, who are distributing the film around Australia on 6 September 2012, and of course, Mr. Falardeau for his generous time and answers. [This interview contains minor spoilers for the film].

This is an adaptation, and you’ve worked with adaptations before, but what was it about the source material that attracted you?

Well, the key thing is that the night I saw the play, I was not scouting for a subject. For me, it’s always a relief when the subject finds me, and not the other way around. The fact that it was a solo play kind of helped in a way, because I started imagining the other characters around the main character of Monsieur Lazhar, who was just there on stage talking to people that we didn’t see or hear. Just imagining their responses and who they were. I guess you could say that in a way I was drafting the first script for my film, but what really got to me was his humanity, his dignity, his fragility also. I had been looking for a topic, a character that was an immigrant for years, but every time I had an idea it was too in your face, too didactic. This time, I had a real person in front of me, and it was not about immigration, although immigration was part of the issue. So I just turned to my producer, who happened to be sitting next to me that particular night to see the play, and said ‘Alright, we’re doing this’. He smiled and said ‘We’re doing what?’ [Laughs] I said we’re turning this into a film, and he was sceptical at first, but after my first synopsis he embarked with me and so here we are.

It sounds like you took your own direction, so how closely did you work with the playwright in developing the script?

It was important to me that she be my first reader, and I didn’t want to go astray with the main character. I didn’t want to turn him into something that was not in her mind. So I wanted her to be the guardian of her own character, but it was agreed from the start that I would be scriptwriting. She didn’t want to participate in the screenwriting, but it turned out that she gave me a lot of ideas when I painted myself in the corner sometimes. We would bounce back ideas, then I would go home and I would have a flash. She was really instrumental in my work, although I wrote alone.

When you were looking for your leading man, did you have someone in mind from the start, or was that a long process?

I had a few people in mind who are French from Algerian descent that work in France, because of the relationship that France and Algeria had, there’s obviously more Algerians in France than back home in Montreal. I saw a couple of actors in Montreal, but I knew that it wouldn’t do. So I had a few people in mind, and I made some auditions and some other people weren’t available for the auditions. In the meantime, someone told me to check out this guy [Mohamed Fellag] on YouTube. What he does is very different from Monsieur Lazhar. He’s a comic, he’s a stand-up comic, he writes monologues. His type of humour is really old, burlesque, candid humour with a sub-political text. It’s quite funny actually when you know the context, and very far from what I had in mind. But I liked his face, and I liked the fact that he also went through what Monsieur Lazhar went through, because he had to flee his own country back in 1992. So we met in Belgium where he was doing a show. With a lot of work, especially on his part, he was able to use a lot of restraint to achieve what he did in the film.

You say that the humour was far from what you had in mind, but there is a lot of humour in the film, which is interesting given the subject matter. Was it important for you to have someone with that sense of humour in there?

Yes and no, because I was precognisant that it was going to be the situation, and the way that I crafted the scenes in the film would make the humour pop-up. You often laugh in the film, but there’s no jokes. Apart maybe from that scene where the big guy wants an extra point and gets a dictionary also. That was really a joke on my part. Apart from that, we smile a lot, but the person didn’t have to have a comic background to do it.

The classroom itself feels very organic, and the classroom is a very complex beast in itself. How did you capture that? Did you have to go and look at modern classrooms for example?

Yeah, I think that’s a nice part of my job [Laughs]. When I find a subject, you have all kinds of reasons to do some research. I just phoned some teachers and asked them if I could spend some time in the classroom, and I was sitting in the back of the classroom taking notes on how the school worked nowadays, because the last time I was in an elementary school had been more than thirty-two, thirty-three years. It was just odd observing the children move on their chair, the children talk, the children drawing stuff, passing notes and stuff that you would not necessarily be able to write on your own. You capture some ideas, and you want the film to feel as organic as the class. The classroom is a place where a lot of young humans move all the time. There’s always someone dropping a pen, or moving or hitting someone. So with my assistant on the set, I made sure that everyone had something to do every time, that they would not just sit being idle doing nothing.

This of course leads me to asking about working with children. This is obviously not the first time you’ve done this. How do you have to adapt your style to work with them, or is it the other way around?

It’s a mixture of both. I try to install a playful atmosphere on set. Often when you’re shooting, it can be a military organisation. There’s a strong hierarchy, you give out directions and orders are brought down. With children you have to make sure that it’s more playful, so they don’t tire as easily, and you take more breaks. Also, before that I make sure I take a lot of time during the audition process, and not just see them for five minutes. Not one take and that’s it. You want to make sure they’re there for the right reasons. It’s funny, because when you’re auditioning a kid, you’re also auditioning the parents. So you want to make sure the kid is there not because their parents want them to become a movie star. So it’s a combination of a lot of things, but at that age what I found out was they do understand the psychology of the character. You don’t have to say do that faster or slower, you can talk about what’s happening in the mind of the character. They have an opinion on that, and they use different words, but they can understand the concepts.

Speaking of that understanding, this is very heavy subject matter, especially where the film starts. Did you have to explain those concepts to the children, or was it more about them reacting to a scenario?

Well, it’s a long process, so they have time to see it coming. I often get that question in Q & As, from people who just saw the film, who just experienced the drama in real-time with the characters. The children who played the characters go through a really long process 3 to 4 months before the shooting starts, so they can discuss it with me, the parents and their friends. There is a moment, a very important one, where we read the script and we stop at every scene, and we talk about what’s happening in the scene. The education of the parents is paramount here. Eventually, a huge responsibility lies on their shoulders to decide if they want their children to be in that film. But certainly I was always, always at any moment open to discuss what was happening. For instance, the scene where he discovers the body hanging, I made sure he met the stunt woman. ‘This is Suzanne, she’s flesh and blood. As you can see she’s doing well. She’s going to be hanging with this harness, this is how it’s going to work’. Then when it was hanging, I showed him what it looked like, because it could be very striking to see that body handing motionless. I’m not a big partisan of trying to scare or shock the actors on stage, it’s not a documentary it’s fiction, they can act.

Touching on that, one of the things the film is about are those structures between children and adults. Not only a very structured place, but one with very definite rules guarding the relationships between adults and children. Do you feel personally that there’s too many institutional barriers between adults and children?

In researching the film, that was a surprise to me. How many rules and regulations and protocols there are. I know why we’ve come to that, sometimes for very good reasons, but the theory is that no matter how careful we are, we will never be able to predict and prevent all bad situations. Let’s take for example the topic of child molesting, which is always a big paranoia thing in North America. Not matter what you do, things will happen. Bad stuff will happen. So now we have a decision to make. Do we want to dehumanise the relationship between the children and the adults to the point where nobody can touch anyone just to prevent that maybe someday something will happen? Or do we just let life take its course between normal human beings. I still say that we have to be vigilant, but go back to a situation where people can encourage children with a gentle tap on the back or hugging. Hugging, certainly, if a child is crying! On the first day of shooting, it’s funny Vincent Millard  - you know the kid who plays the chubby kid, the blonde chubby kid - after the first day, he came and hugged me so hard. I was looking left and right, looking at people to say ‘I’m not touching him, he’s touching me’. I was totally paranoid, it’s completely ridiculous.

I’m obviously not the first to say this, but the two lead child actors are brilliant. Where did you find them? Looking at my notes, they both largely did commercial work, so what qualities were you looking for?

That’s a nice way to ask the question. “What qualities?” With her [Sophie Nélisse], what I liked was her eyes and her baby face. She has the eyes of an adult or an old soul, and a baby face, and the contrast was quite striking. I needed eyes like that because her character is very mature and precocious. Him [Émilien Néron] I needed someone that was more nervous, edgy, more erratic. He had that quality, but he tended to overplay sometimes. I tended to hear the text, so we worked a lot…but he does have the most amazing performance in the cathartic scene where his guilt comes out. I think it’s a situation where the environment has to be readied, and we have to be ready, and he has to dig inside to give us that moment. He trusted us. I wish I could say I had a special gift, or a special trick  to make children act like that, but its a situation where you have a real life moment and I was there to catch it.

One of the things I’m also interested in is how much of you is in the script. There’s a certain nostalgic element, so how much of your own experience of being in school, for example, is in that film?

I would say that all children are composites of who I was. I’m a little bit of Alice or Simon at the same time, or Marie-Férdérique [Marie-Ève Beauregard] because I used to be the one who would say to the teacher that he couldn’t do this or that. I was a pain sometimes. I was a little bit anaemic like Boris [Louis-David Leblanc]. So I was all of them at the same time. But often also I dug into my own memories to find some really concrete solutions to some problems. For instance, I needed the young boy to find the body before everyone else. So while I’m writing, I’m thinking  why is he in class before everybody else? The milk. Then I thought, I used to carry the milk before the class started. So I used that for a very specific reason, and it turned out dramatically to be very interesting, because at the end, he says that ‘she knew I was going to see her like that because she knew it was my day to take the milk in’. So I would say that I took a lot of things from my own childhood thematically, at least to try and seed the script.

One last thing I wanted to ask is, obviously the touring process has been going on for some time and you are now here in Australia, but have you had time to think about what projects you’ve got coming up next?

Yes. I was writing a script before this all started. I had a first version, my producer liked it. It’s always a long process of re-writing the scripts. Normally I write my ninth or tenth version, and I’m only at my first draft, so I need to get back at it. I haven’t had too much chance lately. But also, I’ve been getting some scripts from the United States, and if I am to do a film in English not written for me, I want to make sure it makes sense. I have no – my objective is not to go to Hollywood. If a film is presented to me, and I think I can do a good job with it, and it has something to say, and it is not just a studio film, but it has a social or political balance, I would certainly do it. It’s a long process to write and direct your own film. I’ve done four in 12 years, so its 3 years process every time. I think I’m ready in my life now to direct a film I haven’t written.

In this form of a fairy tale, Zeitlin echoes Terrence Malick’s eye for nature in his lingering study of the green and brown wetness of a sticky bayou community called The Bathtub. Sitting outside the levees of an unnamed Louisiana city, it might well be New Orleans but this rapidly becomes irrelevant. We glimpse this world through the eyes of Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis), a young girl who lives in a ramshackle house near her alcoholic father Wink (Dwight Henry). When disaster strikes, the community rallies together with a sense of hope belying the inevitability of their fate.

We need to thank Icon Film Distribution Australia for allowing us time with the filmmaker, and of course, Mr. Zeitlin for his generous time and answers. Beasts of the Southern Wild is released in Australia on 13 September 2012 from Icon.

To start off with, congratulations on the film. It’s such a beautiful film and I sincerely don’t think I’ve been moved so much by a film in recent memory.

Thank you.

I guess that’s something that a lot of people have been saying. There’s been this overwhelming response to it. Now that the film is out in the public eye, I believe it just came out in the States…

Yeah, about six weeks ago.

Did you ever envisage this kind of response to it at all?

No, definitely not. You don’t even think about it. You think a lot about audiences, and wanting to communicate with people, and wanting to make sure the film works, you know? Showing it to lots of people before we put it out, but I never even thought for a second past the moment of getting the film done while I was making it. You know, we finished the film two days before Sundance and there was no real time to sit around, twiddle our thumbs and imagine whether people were going to like it or not, or what would happen. It was all very foreign to me. But I’m learning about it as I go. Basically, I didn’t know any of this existed. [Laughs]

The film itself discusses a lot of real, and very recent, world events. There’s obvious parallels there. It does it through a fantasy perspective, and certainly that of a child. Did that connection between loss and place come from Lucy Alibar’s play or was it something you came to later?

The play and movie are very different. It was more like an inspiration than an adaptation in some ways. I do think that one thing that came from the play – the play wasn’t about Louisiana or current events, it had nothing to do with storms or water or anything like that. It really focused around this little girl whose father was sick, and as the father got sicker, nature itself started to come apart and the end of the world started to happen. The apocalypse was in sync with the father, from the little kid’s perspective. That sort of sense that idea of connecting a tangible event to a more fantastical epic, fable event was something that came from the play.

Many people are still dealing with the aftermath of Katrina, an event very much in living memory. Was that approach of combining those concepts the logical way for you to deal with that kind of tragedy?

You know, the film wasn’t specifically attached to Katrina as much as it is, especially south Louisiana, south of New  Orleans. Katrina was sort of a very urban phenomenon, and south of there was much more effected by storms that happened two years later, Gustav and Ike. The film was really trying to take all the things, all the factors that are going into the collapse of South Louisiana as an environment and express them in a way that wasn’t documentary, that wasn’t actually getting into the actual tangible events that happened. It just wasn’t our interest. We wanted to tell the emotional side of the story and not the social issue, or the current events or the documentaries. There’s lots of great documentaries, and we were trying to get into what does it feel like to lose a place, and what does it feel like to be living on land that’s disappearing. That was really our focus. To get at that, we really needed to take a step away from reality and think about the story more as a fable.

And when you started thinking about the story as a fable, were there particular stories you looked at that were parallels?

There wasn’t a specific story on this one, which I’ve done in the past a lot. I made a short film that sort of jumped off  the Orpheus myth [Glory at Sea]. This one just had more of a sense, because the events of the story aren’t actually fable-like or epic, but the actual tangible things that happen are quite realistic. It’s more coming from the perspective of a girl who think of her world as a story, and is creating a narrative between herself and the cavemen, and herself and these extinct animals. Understanding her own world in this epic context. So we always tried to think ‘What is the tale that Hushpuppy is writing about herself?’ as opposed to kind of adapting a different story in the broader sense.

I was at Sundance London earlier in the year, and one of the things that a lot of the filmmakers there spoke about was the importance of the Sundance Labs in crafting their story. Could you talk a bit about how much the Labs changed the story, and how much it developed in that period?

It was massively. We showed up at Sundance with a really raw first draft that I’d written in the two weeks preceding submitting it. So it was really like a burst of ideas when we went there, and the Labs are great because they really discipline you and force you to examine choices, and examine why it is you set out to make the story in the first place. A lot of times, ideas just come to you and images and lines. It’s really a disorganised grab-bag of thoughts, and Sundance really helps you examine where those thoughts come from, and what it is you’re trying to say with them. It really helped us come up with a structure around which to make choices. The film, just from that early point, because a lot more focused and I think we started to understand what it meant and how to tell this story which was really and emotional story rather than a narrative story.

And how much of that changed again once you had your leads in place?

A lot. You know, we sort of start with this kind of fable, and there’s all this realism that comes into it. We set up a system in which these tangible things are actually on-screen can effect that story. Just every line in the film, I would ask the actors, ‘How would you say this?’. Put this in your own words, and all that language got rewritten. Even actions characters take and scenes in the film come from interviews I had with the actors and their experiences, and their lives become very much part of the story. Not that anybody is playing themselves, but we really tried to cast people whose experiences are reflected in the story we’re trying to tell. It gives us a tremendous amount of material that I could have never thought up just comes from the actors.

Was there always the intention to cast non-professionals, and from the area, or did that also come out in development?

It was always supposed to be a combination of non-professionals from the area and professional actors, and that isn’t what ended up happening. We ended up casting all non-professionals. You know, it was sort of surprising that’s how  it ended up working. It just had a lot to do with our casting process, where we’re really looking for a lot more than acting ability, or what somebody looked like, kind of fitting into the script that’s been written. A lot of times, we were finding people and meeting people that we found to be extraordinary and who also had this ability to perform, and then also have these amazing lives that we can draw from to incorporate into the story. So we really tried to create a process in which we were able to adapt people coming into the story, and able to create an environment where even if you don’t have the acting training, there’s a way to work within the way we make the film.   It’s all very much part of the process that we tried to create.

This is something that has been touched on in countless interviews I’ve read with you. The fact that over 3500 kids were looked at for the lead role of Hushpuppy. Was there a particular quality that stood out in Quvenzhané, and did I pronounce that correctly?

[Laughs] Almost. Kwa-ven-jen-ay. There was a lot of different things. It was just how advanced she is for her age, and how she just had a self-reflection that most people that age don’t have. Or she really was able to understand how to go into character and how to learn lines and how to focus. Also, she had a very ferocious sense of self, where it wasn’t that I could tell her to do anything. She was ‘No, I think it would happen like this’. Or ‘No, I won’t do that. I’m morally opposed’. [Laugh] I would ask her to throw something at someone, and she would say ‘No, that’s not right, you’re not supposed to do that’. She had a very strong sense of herself, and that is what we wanted. We didn’t want a puppet. Someone who was really going to take a hold of the character, the way an actor would, and she really brought all those qualities.

You touched on your shorts before, and Glory at Sea seems to be a stylistic forebear in some ways to Beasts. Did you consciously look at other cinema influences going into Beasts?

We did some, they were very all over the place. We looked at a lot of documentary photography for the cinematography, the Les Blanks docs from the ’70s. There was also this Australian short film that was a big influence on the cinematography called Jerrycan. Narratively, we looked at a lot of children’s films, the structures of Disney stories. The sort of things that a kid would have in their head, try to figure out how Hushpuppy would understand things. Just a lot of things like [Emir] Kusturica’s films, and Bob Fosse’s films, and Milos Forman and [Federico] Fellini that has this come of vibrance that extended past the serene in some ways. We looked at a lot of films like that. So lots of different things for different elements of the movie we looked at and studied.

So many productions have gone through Louisiana in the last couple of years, so what was the reception like that you got from the locals?

We were in a very different part of Louisiana from where films get shot. There’s a big studio up north and out west that most of the films go to that are in the city, and this was a totally different region. So certainly I was the only person with New York licence plates driving down the road. It was a very warm, you know – once people got used to the idea of me, and realised they could make fun of me all they wanted, it became a lot of fun to be the outsider in this very remote place. It’s incredibly hospitable. We were living in people’s houses, and their campers, and were really taken in by the community. We never would have survived the film if we hadn’t. We all would have very quickly sunk into the swamp and been bit by rattlesnakes and never made it out of there. So they really protected us and collaborated with us and guided us through the film.

The last thing I need to ask, and certainly after this very long tour that you’ve been on with the film, what plans do you have for your next picture, or do you still have your mind in the publicity for this?

Well, I’m trying to find time to write the next thing, but it’s going to be another big folktale. I’m hoping to shoot it in Louisiana, and we’re really trying to keep the same team in tact. Just really trying to continue this method of making films and not let that change but hopefully having more resources will allow us to do even better and just keep on improving.

The writer/director expands the Bourne universe created by Robert Ludlum with an original story that introduces us to a new hero (Jeremy Renner) whose life-or-death stakes have been triggered by the events of the first three films. For The Bourne Legacy, Renner joins fellow series newcomers Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Stacy Keach and Oscar Isaac, while franchise veterans Albert Finney, Joan Allen, David Strathairn and Scott Glenn reprise their roles.

We need to thank Universal Pictures Australia for allowing us time with the filmmaker, and of course, Mr. Gilroy for her generous time and answers. The Bourne Legacy is released in Australia on 16 August 2012 from Universal.

The film has become part of a national, and indeed international campaign, called The Bully Project, and aims to be a self-sustaining movement to aid the voiceless in the fight against bullying in all walks of life. Prior to this, Hirsch was best known for his award-winning documentary Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony, which examined the struggles of black South Africans against Apartheid through music.

We need to thank Roadshow Films for allowing us time with the filmmaker, and of course, Mr. Hirsch for her generous time and answers. Bully is released in Australia on 23 August 2012 from Roadshow Films.

Featured Photo Credit: Boston.com

Welcome to Sydney. Congratulations on the film. It’s a wonderful film, and I loved watching it. Meant a lot to me as well.

Thank you.

On that, as a stated victim of bullying yourself, how did you find the right approach to it as a documentarian?

Trial and error. [Laughs] That’s how I always find the right approach to these things. Fail and get up. You know, I started out with a really broad idea for the film. It would be the life-cycle of bullying from the playground to the workplace, to politics to the way nations treat each other, and there would be experts and we’d look at behavioural studies. It was going to be this big broad thing. Once I began talking to these families, we started doing pre-prod and started getting on the phone, just everything kind of fell away. It felt like this is the movie, very simple and in the world of these families.

You just touched on it, that bullying doesn’t stop with the schoolyard, it extends into the workplace, and everyday life. Do you hope people will get something out of this beyond schoolyard bullying?

Oh yeah, I totally do. The things that we hear from our audience connect across all those ideas. Particularly we hear a lot from people still processing the bullying they went through as kids, or they’re dealing with it at work, or they’re an educator and they don’t know what to do about it. It does have lots of intersections. It’s about empathy ultimately, it’s about the bigger question of how we treat each other, and I think people are finding different parallels to it.

The people that you chose, the kids and parents in particular, how did you go about finding them, and was there a larger group that you originally looked at?

There was. We followed probably double the amount of characters and families in the film, so I was out there a lot, travelling all over the place. In the cutting room, it became the film that it is. We found a lot of people through social media, or they’d written into a blog. Kelby’s parents wrote into Ellen [DeGeneres]‘s blog  looking for help, and her producers were kind enough to connect us. Some things we found through the news, particularly the stories of suicides. Ja’Meya we learned about because it was a national story. I immediately just got on a plane and tracked down where her mum lived, knocked on her door and said “Please, let me tell your daughter’s story”.  Alex we met because we had access to the school, and that was a big piece of our work, to find the school that would let us make the movie and do it in a way that we had editorial control. They understood that we were looking at bullying, and they were willing to be transparent, which was really extraordinary to find that.

What about the willingness of the participants. Was there any hesitancy?

There’s a lot of people who wouldn’t be interviewed. Counterpoint elements to Kelby’s story, Ty Smalley’s school. Again, with all the other stories that didn’t make it into the film. There were a lot of opposing forces that didn’t want to participate, but from the victim’s side, from the family’s side, they were really keen to participate. I think ultimately the administrators in the school, in Alex’s school, were kind of reluctant participants. I think they were kind of stuck in it, and I don’t know that they wished that they could make it all go away at some point.

That’s interesting, because the authorities, particularly the school authorities, don’t come off as well as they probably would have hoped. Apart from your relationship with them by the end of the film, how have they responded since the film’s come out?

Well, my relationship with the school’s really good, with the community’s really good, and the superintendent. We filmed in two schools there, and one is not in the film, but our relationship with that school is really good. I went back to East Middle School once after the movie was done. Kirk Smalley and his wife actually did one of the programs, Stand For the Silent, at the school and we came back to film that. I think it’s been a really cathartic thing for them. The editor of the Sioux City newspaper wrote a front page, full page editorial about bullying and how to stop in our community which got picked up by papers across the country. It’s just been a very powerful thing. I think they’ve kind of eaten some mud, and felt like they had mud tossed in their face, but they’ve also been nationally recognised for their courage and leadership. So, I’m just happy that they stood by the film.

I guess the kids as well. Being in a situation where they are already being bullied, the presence of a documentary crew…

Don’t think it’s like a big documentary crew. It’s just me and my producer.

What I’m really asking is did you ever feel your presence changed the way other kids were looking at them?

While I tried really hard. It was only really in Alex’s world that there was the possibility that kids would know. So we had a lot of decoy kids, and tried really hard not to make it apparent that Alex was the subject, although I’m sure some kids eventually figured it out. Alex has been very clear that things weren’t better or worse when I was around, that this is what his life was like. I really believe that, we just became wallpaper really quickly.

Since the film has come out then, since he’s been the focus, have you kept in touch with those kids?

Oh yeah. I talk to them all the time. I see Alex and Kelby in particular all the time. They come to lots of screenings and do a lot of public speaking, they’ve become advocates now. Alex is now a night and day different kid, he’s confident and outgoing. For viewers, it brings them a lot of joy to see the footage of him now, which you can Google and find. It’s really great.

I saw recently an article where he’d moved school…

He moved school. There’s a great piece in The Des Moine Register with a video of him. Just two weeks ago, he got this youth award in San Francisco, it’s called the Great American No Bull Challenge. He was on the stage with Sean Kingston and he took the mic started freestyle rapping. Sean gave him a beat. He just killed it. It’s been awesome watching him grow up.

It’s terrific to hear. With this film, this is obviously something you want as many people as possible to see. Was there ever any thought of releasing it freely, making use of the channels that the youth would possibly be into. Say YouTube…

The South Park argument?

Well, I actually only read about that argument this morning.

At the end of the day, the movie is going to be on those channels anyway. Without these guys [Roadshow Films], I wouldn’t be talking to you. People bitch and moan, but we know about a film because a distributor is pushing it, and doing word of mouth screenings and printing posters, booking it in theatres. Putting people like me in front of people like you. I don’t really buy the argument. I also don’t really buy the argument that there’s anything to be gained by watching the movie by yourself on your iPad or your laptop in crummy quality alone, without anybody to process versus seeing it in a collective environment. I believe in cinema. I believe in the power of cinema. It always takes economics to get movies into cinemas.

Well that leads into this community that you’ve built as a result of this film as well, and I think that’s really important. What’s been one of the most surprising things that you’ve found that’s come out of this film, or perhaps while shooting the film?

I think that the universality of story. That this is a story that’s really universal. I don’t go through a day, it’s not just because I’m out doing the Bully thing, but if I just mention it. My cab driver has a story. Or the other day, I was crossing to see it in Canada, and the customs guy said ‘What do you do?’. I say I’m working on this movie about bullying. He says ‘Oh my god, my son. We’re just beating our heads against the wall’. It’s like, Meryl Streep stood up at a screening in New York and talked about how she was horribly bullied. How her bullies chases her into a tree, and beat her legs until she bled. It’s just so universal. That’s been pretty amazing.

What do you think is the next step after this film then? Beyond the film and the communities that you’ve built?

My hope is that one the DVD is out, it’s going to pretty much be evergreen required viewing in schools. We built a huge campaign with resources, and support for educators and a facilitation guide. A special needs guide, webinars and tons of support. To date we’ve been getting whole school districts to go see the film. Seen over 126,000 students that we’ve been able to fund-raise for and pay for them to go see the film and do the training, to take a bus and get a movie ticket. That’s really sweet. I think we’re going to do a couple more hundred thousand. My goal is to get to a million. Then hopefully see it become that idea that hopefully it will be evergreen and get it out into schools for next to nothing, and they will be able to utilise it.

Thank you so much for your time.

These days, Crispin concentrates on the output from his Volcanic Eruptions production company, through which he publishes books and his films What Is It? and It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE! According to his official site, “Crispin celebrates the evident uniqueness and wonder of all individuals and the mystery of the universe. Crispin believes people should think for themselves”.

We need to thank the good people at Perth’s Revelation International Film Festival for arranging this opportunity, and of course, Mr. Crispin Glover for his generous time and wonderful answers.

You can still catch Crispin in Melbourne on July 13 and 14, then in Sydney on July 20 and 21.

Welcome to Australia, and congratulations on the success of your films at the festivals.

Thank you! I am glad to be here and all has gone well at the Revelation Festival.

Your slide shows and travelling shows mix your own personality with literature, images and other elements. What is it about this intertextual relationship that fascinates you?

The live aspects of the shows are not to be underestimated. This is a large part of how I bring audiences in to the theater and a majority of how I recoup is by what is charged for the live show and what I make from selling the books after the shows.

For “Crispin Hellion Glover’s Big Slide Show” I perform a one hour dramatic narration of eight different books I have made over the years. The books are taken from old books from the 1800′s that have been changed in to different books from what they originally were. They are heavily illustrated with original drawings and reworked images and photographs.

[quote_left]“I had always written and drawn and the books came as an accidental outgrowth of that”.[/quote_left]I started making my books in 1983 for my own enjoyment without the concept of publishing them. I had always written and drawn and the books came as an accidental outgrowth of that. I was in an acting class in 1982 and down the block was an art gallery that had a book store upstairs. In the book store there was a book for sale that was an old binding taken from the 1800′s and someone had put their art work inside the binding. I thought this was a good idea and set out to do the same thing. I worked a lot with India ink at the time and was using the India ink on the original pages to make various art. I had always liked words in art and left some of the words on one of the pages. I did this again a few pages later and then when I turned the pages I noticed that a story started to naturally form and so I continued with this. When I was finished with the book I was pleased with the results and kept making more of them. I made most of the books in the 80′s and very early 90′s. Some of the books utilize text from the binding it was taken from and some of them are basically completely original text. Sometimes I would find images that I was inspired to create stories for or sometimes it was the binding or sometimes it was portions of the texts that were interesting. Altogether, I made about twenty of them. When I was editing my first feature film “What Is It?” There was a reminiscent quality to the way I worked with the books because as I was expanding the film in to a feature from what was originally going to be a short, I was taking film material that I had shot for a different purpose originally and re-purposed it for a different idea and I was writing and shooting and ultimately editing at the same time. Somehow I was comfortable with this because of similar experiences with making my books.

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When I first started publishing the books in 1988 people said I should have book readings. But the book are so heavily illustrated and they way the illustrations are used within the books they help to tell the story so the only way for the books to make sense was to have visually representations of the images. This is why I knew a slide show was necessary. It took a while but in 1992 I started performing what I now call Crispin Hellion Glover’s Big Side Show Part 1. The content of that show has not changed since I first started performing it. But the performance of the show has become more dramatic as opposed to more of a reading. The books do not change but the performance of the show of course varies slightly from show to show based the audience’s energy and my energy.

People sometimes get confused as to what “Crispin Hellion Glover’s Big Slide Show (Parts 1&2)” is so now I always let it be known that it is a one hour dramatic narration of eight different profusely illustrated books that I have made over the years. The illustrations from the books are projected behind me as I perform the show. There is a second slide show now that also has 8 books. Part 2 is performed if I have a show with Part 1 of the “IT” trilogy and then on the subsequent night I will perform the second slide show and Part 2 of the “IT” trilogy. The second slide show has been developed over the last several years and the content has changed as it has been developed, but I am very happy with the content of the second slide show now.

The fact that I tour with the film helps the distribution element. I consider what I am doing to be following in the steps of vaudeville performers. Vaudeville was the main form of entertainment for most of the history of the US. It has only relatively recently stopped being the main source of entertainment, but that does not mean this live element mixed with other media is no longer viable. In fact it is apparent that it is sorely missed.

Still from It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE (2007)

I definitely have been aware of the element of utilizing the fact that I am known from work in the corporate media I have done in the last 25 years or so. This is something I rely on for when I go on tour with my films. It lets me go to various places and have the local media cover the fact that I will be performing a one hour live dramatic narration of eight different books which are profusely illustrated and projected as I go through them, then show the film either What Is It? Being 72 minutes or It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE being 74 minutes. Then having a Q and A and then a book signing. As I funded the films I knew that this is how I would recoup my investment even if it a slow process.

Volcanic Eruptions was a business I started in Los Angeles in 1988 as Crispin Hellion Glover doing business as Volcanic Eruptions. It was a name to use for my book publishing company. About a year later I had a record/CD come out with a corporation called Restless Records. About when I had sold the same amount of books as CD/records had sold it was very clear to me that because I had published my own books that I had a far greater profit margin. It made me very suspicious of working with corporations as a business model. Financing/Producing my own films is based on the basic business model of my own publishing company. There are benefits and drawbacks about self distributing my own films. In this economy it seems like a touring with the live show and showing the films with a book signing is a very good basic safety net for recouping the monies I have invested in the films.

There are other beneficial aspects of touring with the shows other than monetary elements. There are benefits that I am in control of the distribution and personally supervise the monetary intake of the films that I am touring with. I also control piracy in this way because digital copy of this film is stolen material and highly prosecutable. It is enjoyable to travel and visit places, meet people, perform the shows and have interaction with the audiences and discussions about the films afterwards. The forum after the show is also not to under-estimated as a very important part of the show for the audience. This also makes me much more personally grateful to the individuals who come to my shows as there is no corporate intermediary. The drawbacks are that a significant amount of time and energy to promote and travel and perform the shows. Also the amount of people seeing the films is much smaller than if I were to distribute the films in a more traditional sense.

The way I distribute my films is certainly not traditional in the contemporary sense of film distribution but perhaps is very traditional when looking further back at vaudeville era film distribution. If there are any filmmakers that are able to utilize aspects of what I am doing then that is good. It has taken many years to organically develop what I am doing now as far as my distribution goes.

Still from What Is It? (2005)

Your films seem designed to provoke discussion on taboo issues. Do you think it will ever be possible to have these discussions in a more mainstream context? In addition final instalment of the ‘IT’ trilogy, I believe you are currently building sets for several other projects. What determines the direction of your projects?

Corporate media control waxes and wanes in terms of discussion of taboo and genuine questioning. The last 30 years has had a particular constriction on the kind of discussions that are able to happen in the corporately controlled media. It is possible that constriction could loosen, but that is hard to tell.

[quote_left]“For the culture to not be able to ask questions leads towards a non educational experience and that is what is happening in this culture…”[/quote_left] I am very careful to make it quite clear that What Is It? is not a film about Down’s Syndrome but my psychological reaction to the corporate restraints that have happened in the last 20 to 30 years in film making. Specifically anything that can possibly make an audience uncomfortable is necessarily excised or the film will not be corporately funded or distributed. This is damaging to the culture because it is the very moment when an audience member sits back in their chair looks up at the screen and thinks to their self “Is this right what I am watching? Is this wrong what I am watching? Should I be here? Should the filmmaker have made this? What is it?” -and that is the title of the film. What is it that is taboo in the culture? What does it mean that taboo has been ubiquitously excised in this culture’s media? What does it mean to the culture when it does not properly process taboo in it’s media? It is a bad thing because when questions are not being asked because these kinds of questions are when people are having a truly educational experience. For the culture to not be able to ask questions leads towards a non educational experience and that is what is happening in this culture. This stupefies this culture and that is of course a bad thing. So What Is It? is a direct reaction to the contents this culture’s media. I would like people to think for themselves.

Steven C. Stewart wrote and is the main actor in part two of the trilogy titled It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE. I put Steve in to the cast of What Is It? because he had written this screenplay which I read in 1987. When I turned What Is It? from a short film in to a feature I realized there were certain thematic elements in the film that related to what Steven C. Stewart’s screenplay dealt with. Steve had been locked in a nursing home for about ten years when his mother died. He had been born with a severe case of cerebral palsy and he was very difficult to understand. People that were caring for him in the nursing home would derisively call him an “M.R.” short for “Mental Retard”. This is not a nice thing to say to anyone, but Steve was of normal intelligence. When he did get out he wrote his screenplay. Although it is written in the genre of a murder detective thriller truths of his own existence come through much more clearly than if he had written it as a standard autobiography. Steven C. Stewart’s own true story was fascinating and then the beautiful story and the naïve including his fascination of women with long hair and the graphic violence and sexuality and the revealing truth of his psyche from the screenplay were all combined. A specific marriage proposal scene was the scene I remember reading that made me think “I will have to be the person to produce/finance this film.”

As I have stated, I put Steven C. Stewart in to What Is It? When I turned What Is It? in to a feature film. Originally What Is It? Was going to be a short film to promote the concept to corporate film funding entities that working with a cast wherein most characters are played by actors with Down’s Syndrome. Steve had written his screenplay in in the late 1970’s. I read it in 1987 and as soon as I had read it I knew I had to produce the film.

Steven C. Stewart died within a month after we finished shooting the film. Cerebral palsy is not generative but Steve was 62 when we shot the film. One of Steve’s lungs had collapsed because he had started choking on his own saliva and he got pneumonia. I specifically started funding my own films with the money I make from the films I act in when Steven C. Stewart’s lung collapsed in the year 2000 this was around the same time that the first Charlie’s Angels film was coming to me. I realized with the money I made from that film I could put straight in to the Steven C. Stewart film. That is exactly what happened. I finished acting in Charlie’s Angels and then went to Salt Lake City where Steven C. Stewart lived. I met with Steve and David Brothers with whom I co-directed the film. I went back to LA and acted in an lower budget film for about five weeks and David Brothers started building the sets. Then I went straight back to Salt Lake and we completed shooting the film within about six months in three separate smaller productions. Then Steve died within a month after we finished shooting. I am relieved to have gotten this film finally completed because ever since I read the screenplay in 1987 I knew I had to produce the film and also produce it correctly. I would not have felt right about myself if we had not gotten Steve’s film made, I would have felt that I had done something wrong and that I had actually done a bad thing if I had not gotten it made. So I am greatly relieved to have completed it especially since I am very pleased with how well the film has turned out. We shot It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE. while I was still completing What it? And this is partly why What Is It? took a long time to complete. I am very proud of the film as I am of What Is It? I feel It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE. will probably be the best film I will have anything to do with in my entire career. People who are interested in when I will be back should join up on the e-mail list at CrispinGlover.com as they will be emailed with information as to where I will be where with whatever film I tour with. It is by far the best way to know how to see the films.

Crispin Glover as Thin Man in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003)

After Charlie’s Angels came out it did very well financially and was good for my acting career. I started getting better roles that also paid better and I could continue using that money to finance my films that I am so truly passionate about. I have been able to divorce myself from the content of the films that I act in and look at acting as a craft that I am helping other filmmakers to accomplish what it is that they want to do. Usually filmmakers have hired me because there is something they have felt would be interesting to accomplish with using me in their film and usually I can try to do something interesting as an actor. If for some reason the director is not truly interested in doing something that I personally find interesting with the character then I can console myself that with the money I am making to be in their production I can help to fund my own films that I am so truly passionate about. Usually though I feel as though I am able to get something across as an actor that I feel good about. It has worked out well.

I admire films and aspire to make films that go beyond the realm of that which is considered good and evil.

I would say that description applies to both “What Is It?” and “It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE.” I generally answer with this sort of description of the films when is a moral question about making the films is asked.

Films that are currently financed and distributed by the film corporations and distribution corporations that currently exist must sit within the boundary of that which is considered good and evil. What this means is if there is a so called “bad thing/evil thing” that sits with in a corporately financed and distributed film it must necessarily pointed at by the filmmaker so that the audience is dictated to that the only way to think about that so called “evil thing” is that one way. And to repeat it that one way of thinking about that so called “evil thing” is only that, “evil”. Any other way of think about that so called “evil thing” would be considered wrong and it must be made in such a way that they audience understands that the filmmakers feel that this “evil thing” is only that and no other way of thinking about that “evil thing” could or should be possible. A film that goes beyond the realm of good and evil may have this same so called “evil thing” but the filmmaker may not necessarily point at that so called “evil thing” so that the audience are not dictated to and therefore can determine and think what for itself as to what this so called “evil thing” really is to them.

I should not go in to detail for “IT IS MINE.” yet and I will not shoot that next. There are other projects outside of the trilogy that I will shoot next. The Czech Republic is another culture and another language and I need to build up to complex productions like “What is it?” and the existing sequel “It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE.” IT IS MINE. Is an even more complex project than those two films were so it will be a while yet for that production. I will step outside of the trilogy for a number of films that deal with different thematic elements.

[quote_left]“It seems plausible that my own film making may coincidentally align to the interests of corporate distribution…”[/quote_left]The sets for my next film productions have started construction. The next production will not be part of the “IT” trilogy. I have been working on the themes that are part of that trilogy for many years so I am looking forward to stepping outside of those themes in my next productions. At the same time the sets are being built I am in the process of continuing to develop the screenplay for myself and my father to act in together on these very sets. He is also an actor and that is the next film I am planning to make as a director/producer. This will be the first role I write for myself to act in that will be written as an acting role as opposed to a role that was written for the character I play to merely serve the structure. But even still on some level I am writing the screenplay to be something that I can afford to make. There are two other projects I am currently developing to shoot on sets at my property in the Czech Republic. The cost of the set building will determine which one I actually shoot next. I am not concerned whether my next films will ultimately be distributed in the way I have been self distributing my films or if I will sell them to be corporately distributed. It could be at some point that my films will be corporately distributed. I am not against corporate distribution I am only against the constrictions that tend to happen when people are specifically making films to be corporately distributed. It seems plausible that my own film making may coincidentally align to the interests of corporate distribution and if that should happen and it makes a mathematical sense to sell to distribution company then I would do it. I that did not happen and I continue to self distribute in the way I am that would be ok as well. The most important aspect is to make my own films that I am passionate about.

Crispin Glover as George McFly in Back to the Future (1985)

A number of your characters have been outsiders in some way, everything from George McFly to Rubin Farr and of course, Willard. What attracts you to these roles, and what do you look for in a character?

In the last decade I have been specifically funding my films with the money I make as an actor. So I almost think of the roles I am offered as acting assignments. I mean that in a positive way and I am grateful to get those assignments.

Usually what I’m trying to do is to find the psychological truth of the characters I’m playing. Perhaps “outsiderness” is present but it usually manifests from what seems appropriate for the psychology of the character.

I do not try to and I never have tried to make a perception of being an outsider in the corporately funded and distributed film world. I don’t feel like an outsider in the corporately funded and distributed film world. I understand why there is the perception of me being an outsider but it is not a perception I am attempting to have.

I see myself as someone who has been raised with the understanding of how corporately funded and distributed film business works. I have had a certain amount of acceptance within that business. While I am grateful to that system to have made a living in it for about thirty-five years I have also had a certain amount of question about how to make the corporately funded and distributed film business more truly educational. There may be reasons why the corporately funded and distributed film business does not want to be truly educational and anyone who does that may be questioned back in multiple ways.

Within the corporately funded and distributed film world I see myself as an actor for hire and am grateful to that system to have made a living in it for about thirty five years.

You’ve recently shot your scenes for the thriller Motel. Was there a challenge you wished to pursue in this role?

This role was fun to play and the dialogue was well written. I am looking forward to seeing the film.

Crispin Glover motion captured Grendel in Beowulf (2007)

From an actor’s point of view, is there a difference to a traditionally filmed performance and motion capture? Has making your own films informed or changed your approach to acting and your other artistic endeavours?

The technology for Beowulf is different from standard animation. The motion capture technology used for Beowulf is an excellent technology for acting as all actors are surrounded 260 cameras so every actor is in a simultaneous wide shot and close up so the actors do not have to do off camera acting and it makes for excellent performances to play off of on every take. I would definitely work in that technology again if it was offered to me. When working on Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland there was more green screen technology used and very little motion capture that was a different sort of technology from what was used on Beowulf.

Acting in front of a camera does help quite a lot behind the camera particularly if one has been studying what everyone does on the set while one is acting. But I would also say an extremely valuable thing is to physically edit one’s own film which I did for What Is It? This is extremely valuable for knowing what is actually necessary to shoot and what is helpful and not. That in turn is also good for acting. Particularly giving variation in performance for an editor.

You have said that your filmmaking is the most important thing to you. What advice would you give to people trying to break into the industry?

I liked what two of my favourite filmmakers answered when asked “How do you become a film director?” Stanley Kubrick answered “By directing films.” Werner Herzog answered something to the affect of “Steal a camera.” Even though they are seemingly different answers to me they are virtually the same. What it means is you must manifest directing films. There is no other way. It seemly is something that must be and you will make it happen. That is all.

In Not Suitable For Children, Jonah (Ryan Kwanten) is quite literally the life of the party, hosting large-scale house parties with his companions Gus (Ryan Corr) and Stevie (Sarah Snook). When one of Jonah’s many hookups discovers a lump on his testicles, his worst fears come true as he learns it is testicular cancer. The operation is straightforward, but the news he will be left infertile shocks him into action. With frozen sperm not a viable option, he sets about trying to find ex-girlfriends willing to have a child with him before the deadline of the big snip.

We caught up with Peter just after the film’s debut. We need to thank the good people at Icon for arranging this interview for us, and of course, the lovely Peter Templeman for his generous time.

Not Suitable For Children is released in Australian cinemas on 12 July 2012 from Icon.

Congratulations on the film’s debut. You’ve been working on this for five years. Now that it is out in the public, how are you feeling about that?

Almost out in the public. That was a blessed kind of entry to the public arena, I think. There was two and a half thousand people in that theatre, and that was daunting to begin with, but they were a really generous audience as well. Same with the second screening, I thought they were really generous and they got the film. The majority of people there at least. It’s a good start, but who knows what’s going to happen out there in the real world when its trying to stand on its own two legs. Poor little guy. I’ve looked after him for so long, and now he’s on his own [Laughs].

That’s the thing: you’ve spent five years on this, but is it difficult to get a movie like this made in Australia?

It’s a hard question. It’s certainly not like for five years we’ve been banging on doors or anything, we’ve just been holed up trying to make the script good. Mike [Lucas] and I are our own worst critics. Even when Jodie [Matterson] the producer came to us and said ‘Ok, it’s been a few years and I think the script’s looking pretty good’, we’re like ‘Yeah – nah, nah, nah – it’s not yet’. She thought we should start looking at cast and getting some cast attached, and we were very skeptical and sent it off to Ryan [Kwanten] to see if he’s interested in auditioning for it. He was, and once I went over there and auditioned him and he auditioned me, I offered him a role.

Once he was on board, that sort of got some investors interested in looking at the script. They were keen and before we knew it, we were going to make this thing in a year or in six months or whatever it was. So we just went hell for leather working on the script, making the biggest changes we made in that last six months, just about. Maybe not, but certainly the last couple of years were the biggest changes. So we had a reasonable budget for a first film, for my first film, we weren’t making it for just one million dollars or anything. Even that, it’s a huge amount of money. In light of the amount of money spent on these things, it’s hard to think of it as so hard.

What’s hard is getting something really good on the page, and every stage of the process directing the film is fraught and a big challenge in getting your vision coming across and filter the input you’re getting in line with what you’re trying to say and do at any particular point of the film. I don’t know if I’ve answered your question, is that alright?

I think you answered it quite comprehensively.

[quote_left]“In an early draft, he was in love with a sperm bank technician and ended up having an affair with her…”[/quote_left]Without any real ending [Laughs]. I guess what I’m saying, the hard part is getting something that you are happy with creatively, and aligning with what you think the film should be. Then just even whether your own idea of what the film should be is any good. [Laughs]. They’re the hard questions, that’s what’s elusive about the craft. Certainly after that amount of time working on the screenplay and stuff, it gets better every draft we do. It does get better, the characters get richer, and more real, and the story certainly has changed a lot over the years. From the very beginning, Michael’s idea of a young guy with his body clock ticking, getting testicular cancer and yearning to be a dad. That concept remained, but the characters themselves and the situations they were in changed continually and developed in a positive way right throughout the process. But even in an early draft, he was in love with a sperm bank technician and ended up having an affair with her, and was a completely different guy to what he ended up to be.  Each time, the names would change as well, as we changed the nature of the characters in each draft. So through a couple of drafts, we’d go ‘No, Lockie was the old guy, the old Gus or whatever’. It’s an evolving process over the years, and that’s the main difficulty I think. That’s what’s fun about it as well, that’s why we do it.

I understand that you went through a number of title changes as well.

Yeah, Mike’s original draft was called “The Twenty-Somethings Survival Guide”. That’s because it was about this website. This gang of kids ran this website about being in their twenties, and gave anecdotes about what it’s like being in your twenties in a share-house…We sat with that title for a long time, and it’s really just in the last couple of years that – we kept trying to shake it, but we just couldn’t think of something better. I don’t know if we have thought of something better in this current title, but this is the one we ended up with. There’s another one we had on the table for months which was “The Final Fertile Month of Jonah”. Maybe that’s better than Not Suitable for Children.

It’s sounds very epic.

What do you think of the title?

I think the title’s absolutely appropriate for it.

Ok, cool.  I thought it might be too much of a pun.

Ah, I love my puns though. Moving onto that subject matter of comedy, this is obviously based on Michael Lucas’s own experiences and knowing him during that time. So how do you take that potentially sombre and serious subject matter and balance it out with comedy?

[quote_right]“It was always really important to me to root it in truth all the way through”.[/quote_right] It wasn’t a very serious thing in the real world, really. He had a three-day scare. He had a little lump on his nut, and freaked out for three days. Then was told it was nothing. He got it tested. I guess it was when he went in and said ‘What’s this?’ and he was expecting them to say it’s just a pimple, but they said no we better get it checked. Then he had a couple of days of panic thinking ‘What if?’. Then the results came back and it was a benign cyst or whatever it was, but he was certainly left with the notion of maybe there’s a movie in this. But it was always such an absurd premise, as well as having that heavy subject matter, to think that someone could go around in three weeks and convince someone to have a baby with him. However, the original incantation of it was that he was after his girlfriend, his ex-girlfriend specifically to have the baby with him,. So that changed a fair bit beyond that.

In terms of the comedy, it always seemed quite absurd, so it always seemed like a comic premise to us. It was always really important to me to root it in truth all the way through. Even more so because of the absurdity of the premise, it was crucial to have real people with real motives, and to make sure the humour is rooted in truth as well. It comes from the flaws in the characters, and the contrasts between the characters, not gags. Generally, when we work on something, that stuff comes easily to us, the comedy. The hard work is in getting the real soul and the message across that we’re trying to convey. That’s where you really dig deep and be honest with yourself, and with the characters to reach that core truth. That’s generally most of the work. For us, we throw away reams of gags. Mike’s very prolific as well, he just writes pages and pages of stuff. Then we’re ruthless with it, him as well, we just ditch that stuff that doesn’t feel completely true to the character or develop the character in some way. If the comedy isn’t doing that, then it’s too light and fluffy and we ditch it.

I imagine a lot of that discipline would come from your extensive television work. Firstly, did that influence the writing of this, and secondly, did you look for specific cinema influence when you were working on your first feature.

Not consciously. Certainly the television work that I’ve done – I don’t know if I’d call it extensive – but it certainly has improved me as a storyteller at least. However, for me the process of making a film was more like returning to the short films that I’d done than television, even though I hadn’t done a short film for a few years. It was more like that, because the short were always vividly conceived in my mind before I began shooting and before going on set. Of course, the film evolves during shooting, during the filmmaking process definitely. With a film, I was afforded the time to conceptualise it on that level before beginning. With TV it’s far more organic, you just don’t have the time to conceive it like that. You have a few weeks in pre-production, and if you’re doing a half-hour episode, for me anyway, I design meticulously three set-pieces in the episode, and the rest of it I’m improvising and flying by the seat of my pants. So making the film was like the former, like making the shorts.

Influences – not consciously. I’m sure if you watch the film you could tick influences at every turn and juncture, it’s not conscious because I’m just trying to make choices that appeal to me. To my own instincts.  Certainly the films that I love are films that I guess have a real heart at the core of the comedy, and have a darkness to the comedy. That’s why the subject matter of the comedy appealed to me, the fact that is that stakes of cancer floating around and losing a testicle, and love at the core in the end. In terms of names, I like everybody from those big storytellers like Milos Forman and David Fincher, who just have beautiful design and shooting style, and performances. But I love the Charlie Kaufman films as well: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, Being John Malkovich. You know, that kind of bizarre world but rooted in very real situations and characters.

The reason I asked that is because I often felt as though Sarah Snook’s character occasionally stepped out of a screwball comedy. That sort of forthright Katherine Hepburn thing going for her at times. You mentioned casting with Ryan Kwanten, but did the rest of the cast fall into line fairly quickly, or were they in mind from the start?

No, not at all. Six months of casting it was for the rest of the cast. Lots of auditions. A really challenging task for me, because there’s so many great actors in Australia. Especially females of that age group. There really are. We’re spoiled for females of that age group.

There were only two roles that I offered straight up. The first was Susan Prior, who plays Marcie, from Stevie’s work…and Lulu McClatchy who plays one of the lesbian couple, the less attractive of the lesbian couple [laughs]. Those two I offered, I’d worked with those two people before and love working with them. Everybody else, there were lots of auditions, especially for Sarah Snook’s role. However,  Sarah was the standout from the beginning of the process and I did screen-test her a number of times. I spent hours with her in fact before she was cast [laughs]. But right from the beginning, she really was exceptional. I was saying to someone the other day, one of the things that really sold me on her, it was in the second audition I think, when she was playing a particular scene with Jonah – which was just a reader off-screen – was not just how much she embodied the character of Steve, which was very close to how Mike and I had imagined the character, with all the nuance and detail of that person – but also how much you could tell the type of guy Jonah was from her reactions to him.

She understood the character and the relationship with Jonah just as well as she understood herself. That was clear. It like that thing where you get to know someone through their friends, or how their friends talk about them or how their friends act around them tells you more about who that other person is. That’s just a testament to how immersed she gets herself into the role and into the reality of the fantasy.

From that, talking about the surrounds of people, this is a very Sydney film, particular Newtown and its surrounds. Was it written that way, or was it ever envisaged to be in another city?

[quote_left]“Once we knew we were going to shoot it in Sydney, there was no choice. I definitely wanted to make it in Newtown and Erskineville”.[/quote_left]Yeah, definitely was written that way. When we were writing it, Mike and I had very different reference points. He being the main writer, writing the first couple of drafts, was always referencing his own house-sharing experiences which were, he’s from Melbourne so he was also thinking around Fitzroy, but his house-sharing experiences were in Epping and Ryde, and for a short time in Glebe. Mine were in Perth, in the coastal suburbs of Perth, but that certainly didn’t make a difference. There was no conflict in writing a story together in that way, having those different reference points, because they were very similar. However, the parties I used to have in my 20s with my mates I hoped to really try and capture the essence of those parties in the film, and certainly Newtown… Once we knew we were going to shoot it in Sydney, there was no choice. I definitely wanted to make it in Newtown and Erskineville. That’s where I lived for a year of making the film, just because it’s a treasure. That area is fantastic, and should be on film more. It’s got that uniquely Sydney thing where its urban, but it’s got trees and green, and street art and a lot of the architecture is still retained, even in the gentrified areas. It’s just got a great image.

And sense of community as well, I discovered. We used to hang out there when I lived in Sydney, but I used to live in the Eastern Suburbs. I used to go to Newtown and hang out a bit. I wanted to capture it as authentically as possible, and it certainly is a main character in the film.

Just a couple of other things. This is a very male-centric film, and a lot of rom-coms have been trending that way the last few years. Now this isn’t necessarily a rom-com…

Oh, I like the way you say that. Everybody’s been saying its a rom-com, but I’ve never really thought of it as a rom-com, I’ve thought of it as a coming of age comedy. But with love. Love emerges as the main currency at the end, for sure.

Yeah, there’s elements of ‘bromantic’ comedy in there as well. Do you think that there’s something in that we’ve been craving for years? We don’t often do it a lot here either.

I don’t know. For me, I just don’t like chick flicks. So with me making it, it was never going to be that. I just wanted to make something I would want to go and see. Every choice I make is based on that, so it’s going to end up being for the blokes as well, I would hope. Either in its tone and style or subject matter. I don’t know about the wider vibe, or if people are leaning that way. I think it could go any way at any time, it depends on who is making the film. When you start a project, it’s hard to think ‘what does the world need right now?’. That’s kind of the last thing on my mind. Does this really get me going, could I live with this story for a few years [laughs] and develop it into something that I like.

Have you got anything lined up for your next project at this point?

Mike and I are back writing on a project about the same amount of time we’ve been working on this one, that we started together called Karma. We’re in the process of writing another draft of that now, we’ve done about four drafts of that over the years. It’s a black comedy. We’ve got two other feature scripts after that to attend to, so for the next year I’ll just be writing.

Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you then.

Yeah, but it’s nice to be back to that actually after the mayhem of filmmaking. Even though it was years of development prior getting to make a film, and it was a brilliant experience for sure, but it is nice now to not have my time scheduled by other people. Although it may not be conducive to being productive either. We are moving fairly slowly into it, just easing into it,  but once it gets going and the deadline looms, we work pretty hard on getting that draft in. It’s going to be good just having a year back to the page.

Hopefully we can chat again as that develops along. Thank you so much for your time. It was really good to chat. And good luck with the proper release of the film next month.

Thank you. Cheers.

When an unusual classified ad inspires three cynical Seattle magazine employees to look for the story behind it, they discover a mysterious eccentric named Kenneth, a likable but paranoid supermarket clerk, who believes he’s solved the riddle of time travel and intends to depart again soon. Together, they embark on a hilarious, smart, and unexpectedly heartfelt journey that reveals how far believing can take you.

We need to thank the Sydney Film Festival and the folks at Cardinal Spin for organising this for us, and of course, Colin Trevorrow for his time and answers. We also need to thank him for being patient during some technical difficulties we had with the recording!

Safety Not Guaranteed is released in the US on 8 June 2012 from FilmDistrct and in Australia on 20 September 2012 from Rialto.

First of all, I just wanted to say how much I love Safety Not Guaranteed. 

Thank you.

I think it’s rare to find such an unapologetically magical film, and a romantic one for that matter. I saw it in Sundance London in April, and the audience reaction there was indicative of how universal this film is.

I imagine you were at one of the screenings I was at. It was a lot of fun.

Is it difficult to get something that unapologetically magical and romantic made today?

You know, I think in this scenario, I wouldn’t necessarily connect that to money, but I think that the fact that we made the film for so little money gave us a lot of freedom in all aspects. We just got to do something that didn’t necessarily stick to the rules of storytelling that are prevalent right now. I was a studio screenwriter, which I had been for many years which is why my IMDB just falls off a cliff for a while. You know, I’m very acutely aware of what you can and can’t do in a studio film, and how stories that need to be told with less structure. So for Derek [Connolly] and I, it was very liberating to just to do what felt honest and truthful and good and build something that – I agree, it does feel magical, and that wasn’t a calculated thing. It wasn’t a manufactured thing, it was something that came very naturally out of the process and what we were trying to do. So it’s an earnest sense of magic.

One of the things that warmed my heart to hear you say at those screenings was your influences from the Amblin films from the 80s, particularly Zemeckis and Spielberg of course. Can you talk about those influences a bit in terms of that sense of awe you get in the film. Or ‘hope’ even.

Yeah, I think for me what I was conscious about the whole time was not making it too derivative of my influences. I know where I live, I know where I come from, and I think the part of the goal was to make it feel like, you know, a new version of that. To evoke the feeling that you got when you watch those films, but to not be a carbon copy or a mirror of those films. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to bring Mark and Jay Duplass, and cast Mark Duplass. Those guys have a very naturalistic, honest way of making their films, and they bring a certain tone to the table that is different than those films, but it does kind of harken back to those films. Especially E.T. [The Extra-Terrestrial], I was watching that recently, and it’s such a loose film…That scene where they are all around the table eating pizza and talking like its, it almost feels like a Altman film at times. I’d forgotten that, so when I look back I realised that the films of Spielberg at that time were not as far removed from the tone of Duplass brothers films as I thought. I feel likes it’s an interesting match and an interesting mix.

Yeah, I feel like one of the things that connects those films and your film is finding that truth within the fantasy, and the truth in the characters as well. So how much time did you and Derek spend researching that original character?

Kenneth came completely out of Derek’s imagination based on the way that the classified ad was written. He had a very specific way of speaking and that reminded Derek of a lot of guys he knew growing up in Florida, who were just these mad loners who believed that whatever they were building in their garage was going to work. You know, he created that character which was very consistent, even though we change the script a lot as we developed it together, Kenneth himself did not change much. There a lot of scenes, especially in the first half of the movie that are just verbatim from the very first draft that Derek ever wrote. In filmmaking, the odds of that happening are pretty slim, and yet it did. Derek just knew that guy, so the research had been happening his whole life in rural Florida.

So this sounds like it was very much Derek’s idea initially. So what were your thoughts when you were first presented that idea as a film?

I didn’t even know what the idea was. I read his first draft of the script, that was my introduction to it. It was a very different film, but the bones of it were there, and the same characters were there and my reaction was very simple. I felt this was an iconic love story that that script wasn’t necessarily addressing. So we worked together to tease out that love story, and look at some of the more metaphorical and thematic elements of time travel that we address in the movie. So everything that Jake Johnson’s character goes through, with his attempt to time travel through the only way we can, which is find somebody on Facebook who you used to love. Then also Kenneth and Darius’ relationship forming, over the course of their time together. We really worked to make it a more emotionally satisfying film without losing the comedy and the mystery and that sort of fun road trip that the original script had. I think that Derek did a fantastic job. He wrote every single word, even though we obviously still had the same kind of story debates that we had, he was still very open to evolving it to a place that made us both very confident.

I understand that you and Derek have obviously worked together and known each for quite some time. One of the things I was reading about was your time on Saturday Night Live together. Obviously it’s a very different style of writing, did you find that there was anything from that, and the studio screenwriting you spoke of before when you came to this project.

The Saturday Night Live thing is, there’s a very small detail there, that we were interns. We weren’t working there in any way that anybody working there at the time would probably remember. We were the guys in the corner making sure they had their coffee, but what it would allow both of us to do was to see what the actual professional entertainment world is. I think you grow up and you have these very idealised, glamourised dreams of what it’s like to be a professional writer or a professional director, and to actually see that these are real human beings who are fallible and flawed and really just trying to make something great and sometimes failing and sometimes succeeding was very eye-opening to me. I think that growing up with all the people I admired, I imagined that they were these god-like figures who shot lightning bolts out of their hands, and then you get these magical films.

What it really is: this trial and error, and I learned that even more in my time as a studio screenwriter. I was very lucky in that the first script that I wrote was purchased by DreamWorks and was produced by Walter Parks who is a brilliant, brilliant story mind and one of the great narrative figures who I think has ever played the game. I know it’s high praise, but the man wrote War Games, and he produced Gladiator, and Minority Report and all the Men in Black films and Catch Me if You Can. Just great stories, great worlds. At that time for me, it was about a five-year period when I was writing other films, but I was working for him. It was pretty educational on a pretty high level. It was really a masterclass, or a grad school to a certain extent. Both of those experiences have made me constantly want to seek out really brilliant people, and try and learn from them, and take their super powers and plug them into my brain and use them for my own kind of evil.

On the flip side, working outside the system I guess, is there anything you found you weren’t able to do in making Safety Not Guaranteed? Is there anything you would have liked to include that you couldn’t?

I would have loved to have more time. Part of me wants the movie to look and feel like a ‘bigger film’, but the other part of me looks at the film and realises that because it looks so scrappy and rough, it actually helps the narrative in a certain way, because we’re sort of lulled into this feeling that we’re watching this little independent film and as it goes along and grows more cinematic. We’re really slowly sucked into it. It’s kind of like the shark not working to a certain extent: at first you wished it worked, but because it didn’t you’re forced to be resourceful. You’re forced to do things in a way that could be a little more economical that it otherwise would have been. So yeah, my god – we shot in 24 days, so if we’d had twice as many days I would have love it. I probably would have been less exhausted, but also I like what we have. Its got its own scrappy little quality to it. That’s a time-travel question really: would you go back and change anything. [Laughs] If you go back and change something, some things might not work and the wheels come off, you know?

I think you said in London, somebody asked you what was the most American quality about the film, and you said something along the lines of the audacity of someone believing they could build a time machine in their garage.

It’s pretty American. A man with no education [laughs], no proof whatsoever that he can do what he says he’s going to do, yet he believes he can do it.

Just in terms of the casting, and it’s hard to imagine that film with any other cast, I understand  that two of the roles were written specifically for Jake Johnson and Aubrey Plaza. Would you have made the film without them?

Would I have? Probably. But I didn’t want to. That’s one of the reasons we did it for the amount of money we did it for. If I had made it without them, I could have made it for millions of dollars more, and the reason that we did it for so little was not because nobody would give me the money, but nobody would give me the money with those actors. I believed in those actors, and I believed this movie needed them to work in the way that I wanted it to work, so instead I made it for a quarter as much…in order to have those performances, and I do no regret it.

Following on from that, Mark Duplass is a filmmaker in his own right, and I’m sure you get asked this all the time, but how much influence on the script or did he sit back and be an actor for this role?

He didn’t have any influence on the script that we shot, not because we didn’t want it, but because he was very respectful of what we had built, because he’s a filmmaker himself. He made it very easy for us to make the film we wanted to make. He very slyly did have a lot of influence on the tone of the film by the way that character was played. He made a lot of choices that made Kenneth less broad and less silly, and less easy to make fun of than he otherwise could have been. It’s something we talked about a lot. You could talk about it all day, but it comes down to the choices he makes when the camera’s on him. Mark defined the tone and really set the pace for the rest of the film tonally that allowed us all to find a more emotionally tonal level than we all thought we were going to get. I remember the first time I showed the film to Peter Saraf at Big Beach, and the response was ‘Wow’. That’s a lot more emotional than we ever thought. I think that’s a combination of mine own instincts, and Mark’s to really bring out the human side to the time travel story. The time travel story’s been told a million times and that was going to be our way of standing out is to do something that is a little bit more emotionally true.

I’m not sure there are enough time travel stories actually. I think it’s a lost art form.

I agree. I don’t know why there aren’t as many time travel movies as there are alien movies. They’re both as preposterous. I would argue time travel is a little bit more slightly, but not really. I wish there were more of them. I’d go.

Absolutely. In terms of the time travel, the ending – which I won’t spoil for anybody when I’m writing this up…

I appreciate that.

…but I understand the ending was changed. How hard a decision was that to make?

It’ s a very hard decision. It was one that was really put on me. Everyone was really supportive of it, but I knew that was something I had to own and that I was going to be held responsible for it. I thought about it, I pitched it to the producers and I said ‘Look, this is what I’m thinking of doing’ and I showed them how I would do it. We debated about it for a long time, and we all decided to go away for the weekend and think about what we wanted. We came back that Monday and everyone had that same feeling. Let’s go for it, and it made us feel good. I think that movies are by nature so calculated and thought and manufactured in a lot of ways, and it was one of those rare opportunities that you were almost able to treat it as you would a song. You can end the song any number of ways. You can slowly fade it out, you can end on a very pleasing chord or you can smash the guitar and set it on fire and drop the microphone. We decided to go with that last option.

Judging from the audience reaction, it was a crowd-pleaser.

Yeah, very grunge. Seattle style.

Just looking ahead, and you’ve probably still got your head in the tour for this film, do you have something lined up next for yourself.

I do. I have a few things. The opportunities that have come my way as a result of this thing are alarmingly larger in their scope and scale than this film, and budget than this film. Based on agreements I’ve already made, I’m not really allowed to talk about them yet, but agreements are already made and the kinds of conversations I’m having for films to direct, there is going to be a pretty big leap in budget from the first to the second one. It’s something that I’m conscious of, and a little bit wary of. I’ve seen a lot of really promising directors given these huge films right away. The things the studios are doing, they’re doing it for the right reasons because they want to infuse these big movies with the kind of interesting, fresh nuance that directors from my generation are bringing to movies. What I worry about, and what has happened in some cases, is that voice gets lost beneath the massive requirements that these big movies have. So the challenge I have in taking this on is to stay working with Derek, we’re certainly not breaking up, this is a true partnership and it’s going to remain so for the duration. To continue making these movies honest, but to be able to take some risks even in the context of larger scale stories.

I’ll look forward to whatever comes next and thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you.