Weekend Watchin' - Danilo Parra

Remember back in school when you were studying to get that liberal arts degree that was going to guarantee you a job somewhere where people would refer to your section as "creative"? Then you graduated and were instantaneously bombarded by a fleet of letters from Sallie Mae demanding the thousands and thousands of dollars you owe her? Well, Danilo Parra figured out the solution to that quandary, the one that comes only to those whose brains have balls big enough to think things through all the way to the end: Drop out.

After throwing in the towel at the Academy of Arts in San Francisco, Danilo moved to New York where he started making films, free of the seemingly never ending (and, in the case of most people with a liberal arts degree, un-paybackable) debt many of his classmates are still in servitude for. He also worked at VBS for a good click, where his vegetarianism and drug-free lifestyle were the subject of much accidental forgetting on the part of invitation-offerers.

Danilo recently finished Closeness, a documentary examining the plight of an aging subway saxophone player. Danilo followed Kalaparusha Maurice Mcintyre around for three months, gaining intimate access to his life and finding out some pretty wild stuff along the way, like how Mcintyre used to play with Miles Davis. Closeness recently screened at the National Arts Club, and will be showing at the Rooftop Film Festival in the East Village on June 18th.

Danilo's also an accomplished photographer, and a photo he took of Duke Riley doing some weird shit with a submarine in Red Hook (more on that below) graced the cover of that wonderful rag, The New York Daily News.

Vice: Hi Danilo. Tell me a bit about yourself.
I was born in San Jose.

That's quite the autobiography. You live in New York now, why'd you make the cross country move?
Well, I went to the Academy of Art in San Francisco for a couple of years and then I dropped out. I wanted to feel like I was moving forward, instead of just being an art school dropout, so I moved to New York, and then a lot of stuff happened that made me feel like this was the place to be. One of the first things that happened was I was taking photographs of my friend Duke, he took a submarine out to Red Hook. On a whim I went with him to shoot photos, and it turned out that the New York Times was out there filming it and I was the only other person there. So after the whole incident, he got arrested and a bunch of helicopters and shit came out and then the Daily News got ahold of me because they wanted to use my photos for their paper, so I sold them a picture for a lot of money. That was just one of those things that made me feel like I was in the right place at the right time, being in New York.

Um, what the hell are you talking about?
Oh yeah, I should probably give you some backstory. So this guy named Duke Riley, he's an artist, he does a lot of art projects that have to do with water and history, almost all of his work revolves around those concepts. He made his own submarine and he took it out and wanted to get as close as he could to the Queen Mary Cruise Liner. I guess back in the day in Germany, they would have submarines and they would get as close as they could to these huge cruise liners and blow them up. I forget what war, probably World War II, but Duke's thing was supposed to be a reenactment of that. So he was getting really close to this big cruise liner, and all of a sudden the Coast Guard showed up, and the police showed up, and helicopters were flying over him and guys in boats with machine guns were all over the place because they thought he was going to blow up this boat. I was taking photos of the whole thing, it was an event. I guess the Daily News just knew that would be an interesting thing to put on the front page of their paper.

So he made a submarine?
Yeah, he made a submarine and he went out to the ocean. He had a little paddle too, he was never fully submerged, he was sticking out a little bit, so he was paddling over to this huge cruise liner.

What was the submarine made out of?
It was made out of wood and fiberglass and I think it had a lot of lead. Yeah, there was a lot of lead in the bottom of it that helped submerge it.

Wow, I just want to talk about submarines now, but I'm going to try to steer this interview back on track. What's Closeness all about?
I had just gotten back from filming that Mexico skate thing for VBS, Doin' it Baja, where we took Harley Davidson motorcycles into Baja, Mexico with a bunch of skateboarders. I didn't have any more work lined up, so I figured I'd do a personal project. I went out looking for this mariachi band who I used to see in the subway, I wanted to do a story on them but I couldn't find them, they're the type of guys you can only find when you're not looking for them. But I found this guy playing the saxophone who looked really cool. There was just something really interesting about him, and when I talked to him he was really nice. So I did an interview with him and I found he was kind of a legend. He played with Miles Davis back in the day and he had an album he was trying to make. He was trying to raise money to get a new saxophone and I just thought it would be a cool story to follow this guy up to the recording of his new album. He's a guy who plays in the subway but he's got a lot more history to him.

Did he end up making the album?
Yeah, I wasn't allowed to film the recording of the album, but in the film I show him rehearsing with the band.

Is he homeless?
No, he lives in a senior citizen project housing building in the Bronx.

How long did you follow him for?
About three months.

A lot of your earlier stuff is filmed in San Francisco. What's it like shooting in New York versus SF?
I guess in San Francisco it was easier to find locations. It's big and no one's around. There are a lot of old abandoned military spots, and you can take pictures with no one around. I placed a lot of my more surreal films in San Francisco, it just seems more magical because you're not surrounded by people. Once I got to New York I was doing a lot more documentary stuff.

I like the Torture Room, is that your cat?
No, that's my friend Peter's cat.

Oh, my next question was, "Can I have him?" but I guess you don't have that authority. He seemed relatively calm for a cat in a bath. Every time I've ever tried to bathe a cat I end up with bloody arms.
Yeah, he has a gimp leg, so I think it's tougher for him to put up a struggle. Plus he's really old.

You're like Kathy Bates in Misery!
Haha, well he gets a bath like every month, so I don't think he minds too much. We almost dropped one of the lights into the bathtub though, so that would have been more than torture.

Why'd you decide to film that?
That was just the most interesting cat I had ever seen. He just seemed really old and wise, and he had so much character to him with his limp and his hair and his old face. I just thought playing some really sad music and filming it in slow motion would bring all that out into a story.

What's up with Laundry, is that something that actually happened to you?
Yeah, it definitely happened to me. I don't really hit on girls much, not at all actually, but one night I had just gotten back to San Francisco after going to all these parties in Berkley and I was like, "Man there were so many cute girls and I didn't hit on any of them. I'm just going to be alone for my whole life if I don't make any effort." So I went out to do my laundry and while I was waiting I saw this cute girl smoking a cigarette. I had never smoked a cigarette before but I thought if I asked her for one that might be a good way to strike up a conversation and it actually worked perfectly. The rest of the story didn't actually happen though, she didn't stick around. When the bus came she just got on, but for the film I decided to make it like she wanted to stay, I thought that would be funnier.

You turned it around and made it look like you were in the driver's seat.
Haha, yeah, I made it look like I was on top.

Have you tried to bum a cigarette from a girl in New York? People are rabidly protective of their smokes up here.
No, I haven't, that was the only time I ever tried it. I don't know why I haven't tried it more though because it worked and sparked the conversation.

None of your films have any dialogue, and Laundry is the only one that has any narration. Why is that?
I don't know. Laundry grew out of a voice recording. I was lying in bed thinking about what happened with the laundry incident and I just freestyled the story, narrating it into my tape recorder. That first take was the one I used for the film. So the visual stuff came after with that one. But most of the films aren't a personal story that happened to me, I think that's why I don't narrate them. Also, I don't really like my voice.

You did the cinematography for the Appaloosa video and Patrick O'dell directed it. How'd that collaboration work?
Pat came up with the concept and I was working the camera and coming up with different ideas of how to film it. I threw some smoke bombs into some of the shots and stuff.

Smoke bombs?
Yeah, well Cat Power filmed the live footage of Appaloosa because they were on tour together. So I had this idea of having smoke bombs going off, and then superimposing the footage that Cat Power filmed of Appaloosa, because the footage was really really low quality compared to the HD stuff we were shooting. But that didn't end up happening, we just used them in the scene where Max is skating down the street. I just had different friends throw smoke bombs at him as we were filming.

I see that kid skating around the city all the time.
Yeah, he's a cool kid, pretty quiet. The make out scene was one of the last things we filmed and Max and the girl hadn't met each other. I thought Max was going to be kind of nervous because he's quiet. I thought the girl was going take control of the situation, but I think Max had smoked weed and drank right before we filmed that scene. I had also bought a thing of whiskey so that they could talk to each other before, and then when they made out they would like, really make out, but I didn't know that Max had already been drinking and he totally took control. So they were making out like crazy, just falling in love with each other while we were filming. Even after we turned off all the lights and said it was done they were still making out on the bed. Then we all went to the bar and they ended up going somewhere else together.

What a stud. I really like how that video combines horses and skateboarding.
Yeah, that's was Pat's concept. It was a good one.

JONATHAN SMITH