OEL POTRYKUS (JP): Michigan
is the only place where I
know how to make movies.
I couldn’t do it in any other
place. In all the other cities I lived in, it
was totally impossible.
Nathan Silver (NS): I’ve lived and worked
in New York for going on 18 years now.
Even when I make movies in other places,
I think of New York as my home and I
always come back.
28 WINTER 2019 MOVIEMAKER.COM
HOME VERSUS AWAY
Should you live and work in a big city or a small town? Should you
stick close to your native geography, or build a new creative home
elsewhere? Two indie moviemakers debate the pros and cons
BY JOEL POTRYKUS AND NATHAN SILVER, AS TOLD TO CALEB HAMMOND
ILLUSTRATION BY GEL JAMLANG
JP: In my twenties, I moved around every-
where—Prague, San Francisco, Chicago,
New Jersey. When I moved to New Jersey,
I moved there with the idea that “Maybe
New York is where I want to make movies.” I
lived in Bayonne and would commute to the
city every day. After 10 months, I said, “This
sucks.” It took me just as long to get to and
from work as it took to work my shift.NS: The trains run so erratically. You never
know when the line is going to be down,J
so traveling to New York has become awful
the last few years. To and from New Jersey,
it takes two hours to get to New York and
another two to get back. By the end, it feels
like someone’s beating the shit out of you.
That’s the most exhausting part. There’s a lot
of discomfort in this city, for sure.JP: In every other place I’ve lived, I was
always blending in, waiting for someone to
discover me. I soon realized that’s not how a
moviemaking career works, so the only way
I was going to make it was if I went back to
Michigan where all of my friends were, and
where I had access to free locations and free
gear. That’s still how it works for me—making
movies for little to no money with friends—
except it’s now on a larger scale.NS: I grew up in Boston and I made my first
short and my first feature in Massachusetts,
because that’s where I had access to loca-
tions and friends who were willing to put up
with me. My friends and I shot my second
feature in my parents’ house. (My dad was
on boom a lot of the time.) In an environ-MOVIEMAKER MELEE