Up With Me: At SxSW '08! |
by Jason Whyte
“Up With Me” is about a teenager (Francisco) from Harlem who is admitted to a boarding school in upstate New York. However, Francisco still has allegiances to his girlfriend back home, as well as his jealous best friend (Brandon). When Brandon intentionally gets himself into debt – and plenty of other trouble – just to get Francisco’s attention, Francisco must save Brandon by turning himself in prep school into the one thing that he resisted becoming in Harlem: a drug dealer. “Up With Me” was made as collaboration between several non-professional teenagers from the Harlem area, and a film crew.” Up With Me director Greg Takoudes on the film “Up With Me” which screens at this year’s South By Southwest.
Is this your first film in the at SxSW? Do you have any other festival experience?
“Up With Me” is the first feature film that I directed. When we found out that we were accepted at SXSW, we were thrilled, of course.
Will you be coming to Austin to attend the festival? If this is your first time, what do you expect to discover? If you have been here before, what do you love most about the city?
I’m coming to Austin with most of my crew, two of my actors, and a few intrepid friends who are coming out to support the film (and maybe have a beer or two). I’ve only been to Austin once, for a friend’s wedding, and it reminded me a great deal of the city where I went to college, Madison, Wisconsin. Coming out to Austin, the barbecue and the Mexican folk craft are big lures for me.
Could you give me a little look into your background (your own personal biography, if you will), and what led you to the desire to want to make film?
I moved around a lot. I think about half my childhood memories are of looking out the back seat of a car, with the landscape going by. That seemed pretty filmic to me early on. One of the places I lived was Greece. I was six. I spent maybe a year there but never learned the language; I had three older siblings and I could always rely on them to ask directions, order food, and do the kinds of things that usually force someone to learn a foreign language. It gave me a funny experience, living in a place for a whole year and never knowing what anyone was saying. I just remember watching the Greeks living their lives around me, and my having to read their expressions for any kind of meaning in it all. Therefore, their seemingly simple lives took on grand, dramatic proportions.
Someone can say they’re going to the corner to buy a beer, and you barely notice; but if you don’t know the language, and someone just leaves a room, and you don’t know if they left because they were mad, or late for an appointment, or anything, then it all becomes quite dramatized and complicated in your head. Every experience was mysterious, grand, and dreamy to me during that year in Greece, which is very much the experience of watching a good film, and maybe laid some kind of foundation for me.
Growing up, you were no doubt asked the eternal question “When I grow up I want to be a …” Finish this sentence, please!
Pizza man. My dad was a pizza man, and they didn’t come much better than my dad, so for a while that seemed to be the right profession for me.
While you were making the movie, were you thinking about the future release of the film, be it film festivals, paying customers, critical response, and so forth?
While making the movie, I didn’t have time to think about the release of the film. I was focused on getting through each day. Our schedule was so tight – often shooting for just an hour or less after the actors got out of school, and before the sun dropped – that just getting from one camera set-up to the next felt like an unlikely and massive achievement. What guided us wasn’t a preconceived notion of what kind of public release we might have; rather, what guided us was a directive to shoot the script as we had it, and to find as many true and human moments along the way as we could catch. We felt that if we stuck to that narrow game plan, that everything else – like festivals and distribution – might fall into place.
How did this project come to fruition? If you could, please provide me with a rundown, start to finish, from your involvement.
I spent three years working in Hollywood at a production company that made big budget movies. And in a lot of ways, I loved the job. It’s hard not to be swayed by the experience of regularly running into celebrities in the office, and being immersed among so many creative people. However, I started to feel a bit stale, because for many of the movies, I was returning to the same creative place in my head. I wanted to shake things up, so to speak, and got interested in what would happen if I tried to make a narrative feature film while injecting as much chaotic reality as possible into the process. That meant working with real people, in real places, and using plenty of improvisation – not only for the actors, but for the crew, as well, to accommodate real events and moments in the movie, while not relinquishing a strong narrative thread to keep the story making sense. That desire for a creative challenge was matched by a populist impulse in me to want to make a movie that was somehow socially responsible.
So, I headed up to Harlem with the idea of making a movie with teens that were disadvantaged, and had little access to arts, and collaborate on a movie with them. Much like the old story about how Gregg Toland was able to teach Orson Welles everything about cinematography in one weekend, I wanted to turn these teens into filmmakers, to teach them film skills, and make our movie in a way that the creative responsibility for the film rested as much with the teens, as with me. I thought that if they understood this responsibility, that they would rise to the occasion. And they did. I started with a premise for the movie – about a kid who leaves the inner city for boarding school, where he gets kicked out for becoming the one thing he resisted becoming in the city (a drug dealer), and having to come back home to face the music with his friends. Then, I ran a writing workshop for several months with the teens, helping them to open up and write and talk about their personal experiences, in order to shape the characters and details and back-stories of these characters’ lives. Finally, we shot the film with these teens playing the roles that they wrote for themselves. We shot it in their real apartments, and in the streets where they hang out, with their friends and families playing roles in the film.
What was the biggest challenge in the production of the movie, be it principal photography or post-production?
Keeping up with the kids’ lives was very difficult. Because we shaped this production around using real teens, and incorporating their actual lives and families in the production, we were – essentially – making this movie in real time with their lives. And everything for the teens was changing quickly. One of our actors became homeless during the shoot, and was living in shelters. We mostly shot the movie on Tuesdays and Thursdays, after school let out, and worked until the light disappeared or the teens had to return home for dinner. Real life friendships and romances between the kids strained, and changed our shooting schedule – and script – on a dime. One actor’s girlfriend was supposed to appear in the film, but they broke up the day before filming, and she refused to be on camera with him; we had to scrap the day, and eventually lost that entire subplot of the film. Another time, we were shooting with an actor on a very sketchy block in Harlem, when we were thrown off location by some drug dealers. They didn’t want to have their faces accidentally appearing on camera in the background. However, the drug dealers threw us out by telling the actor (who’s black), and not my DP or myself (both of whom are white). Later, I asked the actor why the drug dealers hadn’t addressed me directly, and he said it was because we’re white, and they didn’t want to cause any problems with white people. It was a strange experience, carrying thousands of dollars worth of film equipment through this very sketchy area, and on the one hand being totally exposed and vulnerable, while on the other hand being somehow impervious to trouble for reasons that we felt totally uncomfortable with.
Please tell me about the technical side of the film; your relation to the film’s cinematographer, what the film was shot on and why it was decided to be photographed this way.
I have known Matt Timms, the cinematographer, for many years – we went to high school together. I trust his creative sense totally, which was helpful because it meant that I didn’t have to hang on his shoulder and watch how every frame was being shot. Before production, we’d spent a long time discussing what films we would use as a model (from Cassavetes to Terrence Malick), so we had our own, intimate language for how to stage various scenes. We could communicate quickly, and nearly read each others’ minds. I knew he’d get the shots the way I wanted, which allowed me to concentrate on my work with the actors, which is where I most wanted to be, anyway. Of course, Matt also acts in the movie (he has a small role near the end), so for his scenes we brought in a second camera operator. To Matt’s credit, he was able to quickly and precisely convey to the new operator how to achieve the look of the film, and some tricks to use with handling the camera to get certain effects, and the operator – also very talented – nailed it.
Talk a bit about the festival experiences, if any, that you have had with this particular film. Have you had any interesting audience stories or questions that have arisen at screenings?
SXSW is my first festival. After Austin, we’ve got some more festivals on the calendar that we’re getting ready for – Vail, Wisconsin, Sarasota... My only experience so far, then, is the surprising amount of work there is to get ready for them!
Who would you say your biggest inspirations are in the film world (directors, actors, cinematographers, etc)? Did you have any direct inspirations from filmmakers for this film in particular?
My cannon of filmmakers is probably similar to other filmmakers at this festival. For me, it’s impossible to sidestep Cassavetes. He’s a tremendous influence, and I always had to contend with his influence in making “Up With Me.” I like movies that are about people -- and I’m speaking about narrative movies, not just docs. But it’s a rare thing to see a movie about actual people. Cassavetes did that, and we tried to put some of that in our movie. On the other side of the coin, formally I’m hugely inspired by Kubrick and Malick. Their obsession with environment I think also shows in our movie – but an environment that one doesn’t usually see in movies about Harlem. Specifically, we went for the beauty of the parks, and the beauty of the light on the buildings, compared to the harsh florescent light inside the projects apartments. One filmmaker who’s working today – David Gordon Green – seems to me to be an amazing combination of Cassavetes and Malick, and I’m a huge fan of Green’s, as well.
How far do you think you would want to go in this industry? Do you see yourself directing larger stories for a larger budget under the studio system, or do you feel that you would like to continue down the independent film path?
Soderbergh has the right model. Each movie, he does one for “them,” and then one for him. But it only works because regardless of who he’s making the movie for, Soderbergh always makes them great.
If you weren’t in this profession, what other career do you think you would be interested in?
Hard to say. I can’t say I’ve cared to think about it. I’d rather be thinking about my next film.
Please tell me some filmmakers or talent that you would love to work with, even if money was no object.
David Gordon Green and Paul Thomas Anderson top the list, as do their cadre of talent with whom they usually work. But I’m willing to watch or work with anyone in order to learn – just so long as they’re willing to be as creative as possible on the film. On my film “Up With Me”, my DP, co-producer, and I were scratching our heads for a long time trying to figure out how to stage a certain scene. Nothing was working. Then one of the actors – a 16-year-old with no film experience, mind you – came up and provided the solution in one quick answer. After that, I realized that I’m willing to work with anyone just to learn from them.
Do you think that you have “made it” in this profession yet? If you don’t believe so, what do you think would happen for that moment to occur?
All I can really say about this is that I mostly just care about getting on to the next movie.
How important do you think the critical/media response is to film these days, be it a large production, independent film or festival title?
I think most people like to know what they’re in for when they go to see a movie, so the media response serves a sort of important duty there. My guess is that blockbusters barrel right over critical responses and don’t really need to look back; but indies can live or die by the critical/media response.
If this film could play in any movie theatre in the world, which one would you choose?
I’m partial to the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s theater here in Brooklyn, NY.
What would you say to someone on the street to see your film instead of the latest blockbuster playing at the local goo-gooplex?
I don’t know. I might join them at the goo-gooplex. What’s wrong with a blockbuster?
No doubt there are a lot of aspiring filmmakers at film festivals who are out there curious about making a film of their own. Do you have any advice that you could provide for those looking to get a start?
I’m certainly not in a place in my career to start doling out advice. But I will say that for me, the way I got the movie made was by actually starting to make the movie. It sounds stupid, but that’s how it worked. I couldn’t get any traction on producing this movie until one day when I just started making it. You know, I jumped off the cliff and started screaming for help – it’s the only way I could get people to make the movie with me, because by that point they had to step in and catch me. There’s a big psychological difference between my saying that I was going to make a movie, and my actually making it. No one believes that anyone’s going to make a movie. It’s too hard, too expensive, and impossible. But everyone believes in a filmmaker who’s actually doing it as best they can.
And finally…what is your all time favourite motion picture, and why?
Everyone tries to avoid answering questions like this! It feels limiting and strange to have to say. But I’m pretty confident to put my chips on “A Woman Under the Influence.” I might have some boring college essay I can dig up to explain the “why.”
This film is one of the many features that will be screening at SxSW this year from March 7th to 15th. For more information on this film, its screening times and for more information on SxSW, point your browser to the official website. – Jason Whyte, efilmcritic.com
link directly to this feature at http://hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=2423
originally posted: 03/04/08 13:38:45
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