Take One (Jan 1979)

scenes are mostly with Keith Gordon, the young boy playing Dennis. He finds Dennis spying on his father, tells him he’s nothing but an extra in his own life, hiding behind trees spying with his binoculars. Kirk gives him a camera and says, “You must shoot your life. You must make yourself a star.” In Dennis’ film diary, he becomes an important figure, a major star in his own life. All of Kirk's stuff is shot cinéma vérité, and his own Star Therapy is to have cameras running on him all the time. He’s constantly directing the camera crew that’s shooting him, telling them to come around for closeups, over here for a medium shot. When the lab saw the stuff, they thought Kirk was directing the movie. Like in Hi, Mom!, there are three different film forms in Home Movies. There’s the Star Therapy form, which is making the viewer conscious of the film as it is shot. You see the mike and the lights. Kirk talks to the cameraman—giving him directions. Then there’s Dennis’ diary, which is as if you had an 8mm camera and were talking into it. Then there is the body of the film, which is sort of like Hi, Mom!, with the character falling in love with the girl and their affair developing throughout the movie. Dennis’ diary film evolves into what Kirk’s film is, and Dennis’ conclusion is sort of the ultimate dramatic conclusion Working on the set made me excited about film again. I’ve always loved movies, and from the time | was a kid wanted to act in films, and now to direct them, but NYU grad film school depressed me. By the end of last year | was ready to say, Okay, this is not working—! guess film is not for me. But by being on the set | remembered and didn’t want to disturb of the film itself. I mean all the films come together in one big resolution, when he finally gets the girl and takes over his own life. Is this film based on your personal experiences? Well, there are a lot of autobiographical things. The Birds are somewhat reminiscent of my own family, the brother, the parents. I’ve never done an autobiographical movie before, but this is a very, very zany look at the family. What was the fanciest shot you tried? We have a 62 minute tracking shot. It took us a day to do, and we stopped at Take 28 or something. But I was amazed that we pulled it off. It’s a scene where the girl comes to the family’s house and she walks from room to room, running into one member of the family after another. The dialogue had to whip along, everybody had to be in the right place as the camera moved around, hitting these marks. It wasn’t the greatest tracking shot in the world, but it played. = I have a very good shot of James lecturing Spartanetics theories to his students by a fire in the woods. That's done in one long shot with very funny material there. I just have a few cutaways to break it up, in case I want to go from one take to another. You have said you learn something specific and pragmatic with every film. What about Home Movies? Course Evaluations PR ay ae _ a te, > Pe! BS a hs detec om I hadn't done just a straight-out comedy in a long time, just letting an ensemble do really good character acting, having them carry the movie as in my earlier pictures. I like the kind of mad story of this lunatic family, something I haven’t ever done before. Hi, Mom! and Phantom of the Paradise are the most idiosyncratic of my movies and this one, too, is very idiosyncratic. But I think we made a fabulously funny movie. I think Home Movies will be very successful. And I think it might start a whole new generation of lowbudget filmmakers. Can you compare the experience of making Home Movies with university training in filmmaking? I did take a one semester course at NYU in production, but that was the only real film school experience I had. The biggest mistake in student films is that they are usually cast so badly, with friends and people the directors know. Actually you can cover a lot of bad direction with good acting. The real trouble with film school is that the people teaching are so far out of the industry that they don’t give the students an idea of what's happening. Students should be exposed to the best people in the profession. If you study surgery, you study with the best doctors working in the hospital. You don’t study with the ones who couldn’t get a job. some students suspicious of the entire project and was wearing on. student morale in general. Laurie Newbound One of the most important things | learned during this project was thoroughly intangible, but so important precisely because it was intangible. When any group Photography for this story by Bradley B. Battersby 18 that film school is not film. It doesn’t feel anything like the real thing—and | got excited again. | was thinking and observing and making movies in my head. | began reading and writing and seeing films again. Rachel Feldman Home Movies was the crash course to end all crash courses. I’ve never worked harder and learned more in any seven week period in my life. At first | felt intimidated by the professional crew members TAKE ONE /JANUARY 1979 them to let me look through the camera, but right away in the first week Brian made me assert myself. | was Cleaning the side windows of a phone booth that was being shot head on. Brian said, “Karen, what is the camera going to see?” And | felt pretty silly. Then Brian said that | shouldn’t feel reluctant to tell the cameraman that | need to look through the camera before each shot. Karen D’Arc The most frustrating aspect of making this film was the consistently inconsistent way in which the students were treated by the three executive producers. In the same hour we were treated as fully responsible professionals and conversely as children who rated no respect whatsoever. | would work days and days assembling, typing, editing and mailing out contracts; a contract problem would come up and it would be kept from me. This kind of thing went on all the time in every area of production. This kind of secrecy made of people get together to work on a film, their egos will inevitably come into conflict. If the film is to be made smoothly, these conflicts have to be bound and gagged for the duration of the shoot. The mind of the director must be free to deal with the problems of the film, so he must have the ability to deal with conflicts in a manner not disruptive to his thought process, or else have someone—a producer, assistant director, etc.—who can do it for him. Gregg Horowitz