Back from Austin!

As mentioned in my previous post, "The Quietest Sound" screened at the Austin Film Festival on October 21 and 23. I flew down for Saturday's screening. There was a great crowd because of the enticing synopsis the AFF wrote for their program and website (see previous post). The Q&A following the screening was pretty lively, too. Also attending the screening were my Austin friend Kristi and her neighbor Maria, who I developed an immediate crush on. Wait a minute. This is a film blog, not some kind of personal blog. So forget that last bit.

Before the festival I was interviewed by the festival marketing director, so I've included the interview below for what it's worth.

Next up is the Queens International Film Festival in November. Wait, that's "Two Harbors" I think. Having two films screenings gets a little confusing. If I go I will report back.

Speaking of reporting back, the highlight of Austin was again the LBJ Library on the University of Texas campus. I love that place. There was a special exhibit on rural electrification of the Texas hill country and believe it or not it was fascinating. I could almost live in Austin I think, red state stuff notwithstanding. The other highlight was the new art museum on the UT campus. Kristi and I spent a couple hours there on Sunday. Great 20th century American and Latino art especially. Maybe I'll post a report just on that museum. Anyway, here's the interview:

How did the initial idea for this story come about? How did it develop?

In the summer of 2004 I was in the process of finalizing the edit on my first feature, "Two Harbors." That had been a typical no-budget indie shoot, with multiple locations, many of which were shot on the fly, shooting around everyone's work schedules, etc. That film also starred Catherine E. Johnson, who was terrific, and I sensed in her work a capacity for a really subtle and heartbreaking quality that was not fully explored in "Two Harbors." I also wasn't crazy about the way the final film looked. I mean, it looked okay, but it didn't look like film and it didn't look like video exactly, either. It looked like we were trying to emulate a film look. Which of course we were. So the three criteria for my next film were: the simplest location possible, starring
Catherine, and a film that justified being shot on video. That all came together with the idea of a long videotaped interrogation of a mother whose daughter has disappeared.

What made you decide to do the entire story in one take? How did your actors feel about the challenge?

The idea of the long videotaped interrogation pretty much mandated the format. The actors all rose to the challenge, realizing that we would need to rehearse it much more like a play than a film (where you often have little or no time for rehearsals). We rehearsed for two and a half months in the room we knew we were going to shoot the film in, so the cameraman and I had plenty of time also to try different lighting and sound schemes. I videotaped most rehearsals so I could review exactly how it looked and sounded, and adjusted accordingly. We picked a date we thought we were all able to get through the 75 minutes of the script flawlessly, although that had never happened yet. After one mishap about one minute into the first take, we started over and, miraculously, got the entire 75 minute film in the second take.

Has the finished product caused you to see what you wrote in a different way?

I've learned that actors always bring much more to a script than I ever saw in it when I wrote it, and this was no exception. I can't say I really directed Catherine at all. I wrote it for her, knowing she could create a memorable and believable character. And that she could pull off a 75 minute monologue on film. But I was constantly surprised by the character that emerged. She was much more than the words on the page. Acting is very mysterious to me. But I'm lucky enough to keep
finding actors like Catherine who fill in the blanks between the words.

Were there other films that inspired you when making this one?

Two very different - but equally great - films resonate sort of in the background of "The Quietest Sound." The more obvious one is Carl Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc," a silent film that consists almost entirely of close-ups of Maria Falconetti as Joan of Arc as she is questioned at her trial. The other is a famous avant-garde film from the sixties, Michael Snow's "Wavelength," which consists of a single slow 45 minute zoom in a New York loft. It sounds like an empty exercise in film technique but it's actually full of life and mystery and everything else you watch a movie for.

"Two Harbors" is also a mystery, though different in subject matter and tone. What draws you to mystery stories? Are you likely to continue making films in that vein?

I once read an interview with Wim Wenders and he was asked the same question, and I've always liked his answer: "Every story is a mystery."