by William Goss
The "Woodpecker" Pitch: "Much like the bird itself, "Woodpecker" stylistically explores the twilight of uncertainty between fact and fiction and the ways expectation and context can manipulate our notion of 'reality'."
Describe your movie using the smallest number of words possible.
"Woodpecker" is an existential comedy about a pair of strange birds lost in America.
Is this your first trip to SXSW? Got any other film festival experience?
This will be my first trip to SXSW. My first feature film, "The Hole Story", was lucky enough to play in about two dozen film festivals. My favorite part of the festival circuit is meeting new filmmakers with similar sensibilities. That, and being able to run away from myself for about three days. If I stay any longer, I usually get found.
Back when you were a little kid, and you were asked that inevitable question, your answer would always be "When I grow up, I want to be a..." what?
Stand-up comic. I was funny for a while.
Not including your backyard and your dad's Handycam, how did you get your real "start" in filmmaking?
By editing karaoke videos for five long years.
Do you feel any differently about your film now that you know it's on "the festival circuit?"
Yes, it’s not strictly ‘mine’ anymore. It’s something I’m now sharing with others, and that has produced a distance, which is a relief and also a bit saddening.
Of all the Muppets, which one do you most relate to?
Gonzo.
During production, did you ever find yourself thinking ahead to film festivals, paying customers, good & bad reviews, etc?
No. My mind would occasionally drift to these places while I was making my first feature a few years back. Not surprisingly, I found this to be a generally unhelpful process and have been relatively effective in shutting it down. Brief morning meditation jam sessions help with all of this…
How did this film get rolling at the beginning? Give us a brief history from writing to production to post to just last night.
I wrote a script. I sent it to labs and to the very few contacts I thought I had. There was little movement and sadness was setting in. I went down to the Sarasota Film Festival where my first feature, "The Hole Story", was playing. I saw a documentary called "Johnny Berlin". It was great and I felt its subject, Jon E. Hyrns, could play the main character in my film. He was there at the festival, we met, I asked him if was interested, he sad yes, I was rejuvenated, and we began shooting in January 2007 down in the bayous of Eastern Arkansas. In June, the film was invited into the IFP Narrative Rough Cut Lap, which was very helpful, and then it participated in the IFP Market in New York last September. We did another small round of re-shoots in the early winter of 2007 and are currently scoring and tweaking as we prepare for our SXSW premiere next month.
If you could share one massive lesson that you learned while making this movie, what would it be?
Remember to have fun and remember that we’re all dead in about three seconds.
What films and filmmakers have acted as your inspirations, be they a lifelong love or a very specific scene composition?
Hal Ashby, Robert Altman, Peter Bogdanovich, Jim Jarmusch, Pedro Almodóvar, Stanley Kubrick, Jonathan Demme, R.W. Fassbinder, Michael Winterbottom, Louis Malle, Terrence Malick, Ross McElwee, Billy Wilder, Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, Nicholas Ray, Lars von Trier, Andrew Bujalksi, Mike Nichols, Jacques Tati, P.T. Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard, Tim Burton, Andrei Tarkovsky, David O. Russell, David Lean, Coen Bros., Michael Haneke, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Mike Leigh.
What actor would you cast as a live-action Homer Simpson?
Paul Giamatti is getting closer and closer.
Say you landed a big studio contract tomorrow, and they offered you a semi-huge budget to remake, adapt, or sequelize something. What projects would you tackle?
I’ve got a script about a young man trying to fund his nose job. I’d like to make it for a few million bucks. There’s also, of course, an adaptation of "Catcher in the Rye".
Name an actor in your film that's absolutely destined for the big-time. And why, of course.
Jon E. Hyrns, because he can dive extremely deeply and extremely quickly into a character, can nurture an utter disregard for the camera, and is one of the most unique improvisers I’ve ever seen. He’s a tremendous talent.
Finish this sentence: If I weren't a filmmaker, I'd almost definitely be...
...an actor.
Who's an actor you'd kill a small dog to work with? (Don't worry; nobody would know.)
Chevy Chase.
Have you 'made it' yet? If not, what would have to happen for you to be able to say "Yes, wow. I have totally made it!"?
No, I haven’t made it because I am in debt. I can say “I’ve made it” when I’m able to support myself off my ideas and wit.
Honestly, how important are film critics nowadays?
To me, a film critic’s “importance” is based on the relationship between my sensibility and his/hers. With the explosion of blogs and internet-based film criticism, I can now find opinions and cinematic cosmologies that are very specific and nuanced and which thus can reflect and deepen my thoughts on a film much more powerfully. So, I feel film critics are more important than ever right now.
You're told that your next movie must have one product placement on board, but you can pick the product. What would it be?
Pete’s Coffee. I’m believe in it very strongly and so the moral qualms would be minimized.
You're contractually obligated to deliver an R-rated film to your producers. The MPAA says you have to delete a sex scene that's absolutely integral to the film or you're getting an NC-17. How do you handle it?
I would make my outrage as public and outlandish as possible and then agree to edit the sex scene – not cut it out but edit it. If it can’t visually be cut, I would keep the audio and play it over a shot of a fat guy walking around.
What's your take on the whole "a film by DIRECTOR" issue? Do you feel it's tacky, because hundreds (or at least dozens) of people collaborate to make a film - or do you think it's cool, because ultimately the director is the final word on pretty much everything?
In terms of narrative films anyway, I think it depends on the director’s relationship with the script. Joe Swanberg works without a script and the actors seem to contribute quite a lot. On his last film, "Hannah Takes the Stairs", the poster read “a film by” and then it listed all the actors as well as Joe and Kevin Bewersdorf, who did the sound. I thought that was kinda interesting and noble. I think you can definitely make an argument that everyone working on a film is fulfilling a vision that comes from the dynamic between a script/story and the director. So, if someone wrote or co-wrote a script and is directing the picture, I have no problem with him or her having “a film by” next to their name. It gets tricky, for me, when you have an egomaniacal director working on a film that he had no hand in writing and insisting that it’s ‘his film”.
In closing, we ask you to convince the average movie-watcher to choose your film instead of the trillion other options they have. How do you do it?
I’m not sure if the “average movie-watcher” will enjoy my film and so I don’t think I would try and convince him or her. If, however, someone is interested in witnessing a hilarious and troubling existential crisis quietly screaming from the heart of the American bayou in the shadows of a glorious bird that was thought to be extinct for the past 60 years, then I would say you may find those elements in this story and I sincerely hope you can come by and check it out.
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Alex Karpovsky's Woodpecker will play as part of the 2008 South By Southwest's "Emerging Visions" slate. For more information, click here.
link directly to this feature at http://hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=2430
originally posted: 03/05/08 09:04:28
last updated: 03/05/08 09:05:55
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