
Advertisement
Well, with everything I'd written previously I always at least considered it from the point of view of, "What is it that I want to do at this point in my life with film, or what kind of story do I want to do and how do I want it to look." And with Renegades I made a conscious decision not to do that at all. It was almost like dreaming up a story. Someone asked me at Sundance where the story came from and I really had no recollection at all apart from having spent a couple of hours once with a friend in LA who was talking about having sex with women off Craigslist. Apart from that it's very much a sort of stream of consciousness that I wrote down as a cathartic way of making a film and not really caring what anyone might think about it, including myself.Your other stuff looks a lot older than Renegades. Did you take a break from making films for a while?
Well, The Story of Max and Harper is probably eight or nine years old, and that was the first thing that I ever directed. I really didn't have any kind of technical knowledge or anything, which made it quite fun. I've never read books about how to direct or anything, I can't really stand that kind of slavish application of someone else's theory. But there are other ones like Work, which I did about four years ago, and then I did one for the Australian advertising awards about a year and a half ago. I've been spending the last three years predominately writing, just trying to get some features going, so yeah, there may have been a bit of a slow down, but I made another short when I was out in LA. I was doing a couple of commercial jobs and I did a short film at the end of that. Maybe it's good when you get in little spurts of activity, when you remind yourself why it's really good to work on your own stuff and how it sort of feeds off itself.
Advertisement
Yeah, I suppose there's some truth in it feeling pretty different from anything else that I've done. I Just wanted to do things in a quite simple, economic way with as few shots as possible. I also cast a lot of non-actors and experimented with some really long shots. I shot 35mm film and didn't have a great deal of film stock. So despite the long shots, I was quite careful about the number of setups that I was shooting. So I might decide to play a whole scene with just one shot, like the first scene when the two guys see the prostitute, that was just one slow dolly move in and then out. Just a way to keep it simple and also be a little bit economical I suppose.Those guys were non-actors? They seemed so desperate, but also stupid and really resigned at the same time. They did a really good job for a rag-tag group of amateurs.
Yeah, well I suppose what I mean is that there might be half of them who consider themselves to be real actors, but they have other jobs, or they don't really work, or they work very infrequently. But yeah, some people have told me that they find it very bleak, or quite desperate or quite depressing, whereas to me it was very funny.Oh, it was hilarious. I didn't mean the film wasn't funny.
No, but some people do find it really desperate. I just like the fact that the actors bring something of themselves to it, they're very raw and very real, and therefore it becomes quite believable in a funny way to me. When I'm watching them I feel like they become the characters, it's not like I'm watching a load of actors pretending to be the King of the Pimps or this or that. That's what the guy who plays the King of the Pimps is actually like, he has no social awareness. He kept calling the African guy who plays the sailor in the film "Chocolate Popeye."
Advertisement
I think he was just enjoying the fact that he was working and wearing a quite fancy costume.Renegades was in Sundance this year, can you tell me a bit about that experience? How'd it go?
Yeah, it was really interesting. I've seen other films of mine in different festivals, like Little Clumps of Hair was shown in the New York Film Festival seven years ago. I remember seeing that at the Lincoln Center with a huge audience and it was really well received. With Renegades at Sundance, we had six screenings and they were all packed but it was quite interesting to see how different the reactions were. One screening was at about 8:30 in the morning and it was filled with a load of older people who hadn't overslept or partied the night before and they didn't really react to it at all, but other audiences really seemed to enjoy it. So I think it really polarized people. I got an email from someone that tried to post a comment on my blog to say, "Renegades is the worst short film I've ever seen, it's an absolute disgrace that it got into Sundance, it was absolutely tedious to sit through." But also a lot of really positive stuff, like drunken, 30 year old men coming up to me and saying, "Hey man you made Renegades, you gotta keep doing what you're doing, you're changing the face of cinema!" It's nice to hear that stuff, but I have to remind them it's just a short film.
Advertisement
Yeah, when I was first thinking about it I liked the idea of it being a sort of dead time in their lives, like the only women they ever come across are women they have to pay to spend time with, or women who don't choose to be with them. I wanted them to just be involved in quite desperate and dead activities. And then I was thinking how there are those kind of guys who just hang out with each other in those places, you see them in strip clubs or whatever, and they never really talk to each other but sometimes they must, like when they go somewhere to have a sandwich or something they must say something to each other. Then I just thought it would be quite nice for one of them to be feeling trapped within his life and wanting to confess something to the other guy. He's trying to confess his sexuality, and then the other one, it's a bit ambiguous I suppose as to whether he's distasteful about his friend coming out of the closet or whether he's upset about having any kind of conversation that goes too deep. I like trying to examine the desire to connect between these two guys who, you really sort of feel like as soon as you see them, haven't got any other friends because they haven't got a great deal in common with each other, so why else would they be hanging out? I mean, they both wear slightly odd clothes and they're both bald, but that's about it.
Advertisement
Well, I certainly didn't do any of that on purpose. But it's been pointed out to me that right after the guy comes out of the closet and the other guy shoots the gay guy's ear off, it could be taken as a sign, like, this is what happens to you if your gay, so people see different things in it.It would blow to get your ear shot off for being gay.
When I heard that I was a bit worried about that character being perceived as homophobic, which is certainly not the case. But the characters are all a bit strange. I don't think of the King of the Pimps as a womanizer. I used to call my wife's dad the King of the Pimps because he was the squarest guy you'll ever meet in your whole life. You couldn't imagine him having sex, let alone being a pimp. So I called that character the King of the Pimps but he's not a pimp, he lives in a shitty little house and makes weird cakes.And he eats lots and lots of hot dogs.
Yeah, I was quite annoyed that there weren't enough hot dogs on the shoot. I wanted there to be about a hundred and to have them just littering the floor. But I suppose it's not too bad when your chief frustration is a lack of hot dogs.You have two films, Little Clumps of Hair and Doctor, that revolve around mustaches. What's your deal with lip plumage?
I don't know, I mean, I've certainly grown a mustache off and on for the last ten years, I really don't know why. Maybe it's because I was a late developer on the facial hair front so as soon as there was any opportunity to grow some I was right in there.
Advertisement
Haha, well one day my friend, one day.What's your favorite kind of mustache?
I don't really like mustaches anymore, but there's this one type in England we call a bum fluff. It's a bit like the mustache that Prince had during Purple Rain, really sparse and quite soft to the touch. I would say that's probably my favorite.What else are you working on now?
I'm working on a feature film that will hopefully be shot later this year, it's gonna star my mate Joe who's the taller renegade. He can catch fish in his mouth so he's going to swim naked and catch fish in his mouth.In a river or something?
Yeah, and he gets spotted by this girl who has developed quite an obsession with him. He's a wild woodsmen and it becomes a strange love story. It's quite a peculiar film.JONATHAN SMITHFor another helping of Jim, go to Maggot Operations, Inc.
