Lilith.

Inherent Style and Taste.

It’s been a long few weeks as I wait for fest results for Lilith and start getting my feet wet for distribution. I’ve also immersed myself into writing, as I have a big announcement at a major event coming in October and I have to have things in place before that time. Doing lots of research and just writing, writing, writing.

When in search of inspiration I tend to let my mind wander into different things. I’ve been listening to a lot of new music, including the latest record from Shabazz Palaces, which is simply outstanding. I’ve been reading a lot, including a ton non-fiction forensic science reference manuals and also fictional police procedurals like Gorky Park by Martin Smith and Cop Hater by Ed McBain. I’ve also been reading the amazing graphic novel Duncan the Wonder Dog by Adam Hines, which is not a procedural but nonetheless is absolutely breathtaking.

Been watching a lot of Japanese crime cinema in prep for this next project, including Tetsuya Nakashima’s Memories of Matsuko, Sogo Ishi’s Burst City, Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog, Shohei Imamura’s Vengeance is Mine, Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Killer and Beat Takeshi’s masterpiece Hana-Bi (Fireworks). I’ve decided that the film will definitely have a very Japanese feel to it, which is completely opposite to Lilith, which was far more formal Russian and Italian in style. It’s a lot of fun to be able to jump around from style to style, and it keeps things fresh and exciting.

But being that this is an entirely new way of thinking, and having gone through the experience of making Lilith, I often seek the experiences of others, so I seek out books and articles that discuss the process of making films. But truth be told, I don’t know why I do it - the nature of filmmaking advice is so ridiculous in that it boldly contradicts itself at every turn, every question essentially a Catch-22, leaving the reader at an inert middle ground.

Take film financing, for example. You can’t finance or direct a film if you don’t have experience, and you can’t get experience if you can’t raise finance. The end result is advice that says just go out and do it. Which is kind of what I did.

I’ve been reading a book called Directing the Film: Film Directors on Their Art, which features anecdotes from over forty directors from Alfred Hitchcock to John Huston, George Cukor to Roger Corman, and William Friedkin to Steven Spielberg. It’s a wealth of information wherein each section of the book is broken down into the stages of filmmaking, and each director tells a story of their approach to each department.

It’s largely great advice, and I see a lot of the things that I did on Lilith and a lot of the things I didn’t. And herein lies the conundrum with filmmaking advice and instruction, which is that there’s no one right way to do things. In one instance you have Alfred Hitchcock saying that he storyboards everything and that the film is made in pre-production, and in the very same chapter a few pages later, you have John Cassavettes saying improvisation during filming is where the film is born. One page after another, the directors in this book contradict one another in the best way to go about making a picture. In fact the only constant advice is that the camera should be turned on when filming. Amazingly, even that tenet can be contradicted, as avant-garde filmmakers like Ken Jacobs and my mentor Stan Brakhage have made films without the benefit of a camera.

It’s confusing when you’re looking for that right answer, but my Yoda-like suggestion when seeking information of this nature is to let the right answer find you. Read everything and find the small nuggets of advice and insight that resonate with what you’re trying to say and how you wish to say it. I’ve realized throughout the writing of this blog that I’ve conveyed my approach to making Lilith, and it worked for me, in that moment. If you were to go out and make the film using the exact same methods and techniques I’ve written, it would be a very different film.

And that is what filmmaking boils down to, an honest style that is true to yourself. One has to make the efforts to determine their style and taste - maybe not definitely, but have some sort of nascent understanding of what we like. This is our style, a reflection of our true taste. If all the directors in the book agreed with each other and said the same thing, then we’d only have one kind of film, and filmmaking would no longer be considered an artform. It would just be a product. Some would argue that this is what is slowly happening to studio filmmaking today, where’s the director’s style is lost to the immensity of the casting and format. Can we tell the difference between who directed High School Musical and Wild Hogs? I recall an incredibly irritating conversation I had with a Hollywood producer who told me that I was being a pretentious artist when I insisted that I had a certain style that I wanted to shoot a film. I asked him in return if his handwriting doesn’t have a style, or the way he picks what girl he likes at the bar isn’t a reflection of his style and taste, or if the way he chooses his daily clothes isn’t a style. We are born with a style, and we take pains over our lifetime to refine and hone it, but we inherently know what we like and our job as filmmakers is to figure out how to make it a reality. Needless to say we didn’t work with each other, and he’s still struggling to find a director that agrees with him. I wish him the best.

The current crop of films coming out of the Venice and Telluride Film Festivals are indications however that the director’s style still has life, but it all seems to stem mostly from Europe and Asia. I’m highly fascinated by Sion Sono’s Guilty of Romance and Love Exposure, as his film Suicide Club is one of my top-25 all-time favorite films. Steve McQueen, a British painter and sculptor by trade, has firmly ensconced himself as a filmmaker of true, personal vision and style with his films Hunger and now with Shame, an intriguing story of sex addiction. I’m dying to see it.

All of these films are made in completely different ways, and they are fascinating because they are so incredibly different from one another, and scream of individual perspectives. One can only imagine if Godard made Star Wars, or if Akira Kurosawa was given the opportunity to film Godzilla, a property he was dying to film, but nobody allowed him to.

But how do we find our taste, our style? It’s simple. Just do what I’ve been doing. Read books, listen to music, and watch as many films as you can. You’ll find what intrigues you, what sounds and visuals that make you excited. And when something reaches out and grabs you, and furthermore inspires you to make something in that same ilk, then you’ve found the first bits of your inherent taste. And that taste may be nowhere near the mainstream, or it may be right in the middle of it. Some people like The Gap, others revel in Alexander McQueen. Some dig Katy Perry, others like Adele, and others still insist that PJ Harvey, or Florence Welsh or Neko Case are the definitive voices of female music. But it’s important to not think one is better than the other - all the aforementioned ladies are at the top of their craft, they’re just doing it in a different way. That’s not to say there isn’t bad music or films - there’s tons of it - but knowing what’s bad from good is different than knowing what’s a different style. You may not like the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and dismiss them as slow and plodding, but one cannot deny that his films are well made. And it’s okay not to like things. I like a lot of films that other people hate, and vice versa. I don’t understand or like the films of Woody Allen but I’ll never say that they lack style or substance. In fact they’re brimming with them, and I respect that. It would be ridiculous for me to say that Woody Allen or even Michael Bay don’t know what they’re doing. Bay likes to blow shit up and he delivers every time, in successively more spectacular fashion. He knows what his audience likes. I may not agree or like it, but it is his style, and his style is definitely his. We know when we’re watching a Michael Bay film.

So my advice is in tune with all contradictory filmmaking advice, which is to go out and find the style you were born with by looking at the style of others. Never copy that style, but rather use it to define your own perspective. We all need milestones and references, that’s what the basis of learning and growth is all about. And the minute we know everything we need to know about a certain style, that’s the time to throw it all away and venture out on our own. Create your own style, and back it up with the passion you have for it. You can’t go wrong.