MOVIEMAKER.COM WINTER 2019 29
MOVIEMAKER MELEE
ment where you’re surrounded by people
like your neighbors and your girlfriend, you
can exercise some control over the chaos
inherent to moviemaking.JP: When I would come back to Grand Rapids,
people would ask, “Are you working on a
movie yet?” People were holding me account-
able, which I needed. Those people were all
interested in what I was up to, whereas no one
was interested in me in the other cities
I was living in, so why even live there? Be-
cause of some half-assed idea of “making it”
there, when you could be doing it all in
Grand Rapids? You don’t have to deal with the
commute. You can drive five minutes to get
a lens—from one side of town to the other,
there and back. I’m really lazy. If I need to
be at the location at 8 a.m., I can wake up
at 7:30, take a shower, and then I’m there.
I don’t want making movies to feel like a
struggle. It’s already a struggle enough, so try-
ing to dig around and find locations at the last
minute is just one more big headache. Also,
in Michigan, everybody is elated and enthusi-
astic that you’re making a movie. “Of course
you can shoot in this restaurant!” People are
more jaded on the coasts, but here, there’s
this geeky, Midwest excitement.NS: Yeah ... Just this past Friday I went
location scouting for restaurants, and every
place I asked to shoot in was demanding
something like $5,000 for three hours with
a five-person crew. Eventually we found a
place that agreed to let us to shoot there,
but when we brought the equipment, they
were horrified and made our shoot a living
hell. But there’s always going to be enough
restaurants that you’ll eventually find one
with no assholes.JP: But even going around from res-
taurant to restaurant in New York, just
to meet these people—that’s such an
expensive trip, too.NS: So you get a monthly Metro Card!JP: It wears you out. Every day is physically
exhausting. I couldn’t handle it. And when
you’re a stranger living in a big city, you
don’t have a community of people you can
run into over and over.NS: As an usher at Film Forum in New York,
I met a lot of cinephiles, and at most any
screening I’d go to I’d recognize at least three
or four faces. You do run into each other, and
then there’s always a bar that you’ll go to to-
gether. I used to want to be a playwright, and
while working in an experimental theater
in New York, the director Richard Foreman
recommended all these obscure movies to
me, and I would go to Kim’s Video to rent
them. Sean Price Williams, the manager of
Kim’s at the time, is now a frequent DP on
my films. Alex Ross Perry, Kate Lyn Sheil,
and a lot of other people who are now mak-
ing movies also worked there. One of my
main collaborators, Chris Wells, is Head of
Programming at the Quad Cinema, and he’s
always giving me suggestions on what to see
around town. When I first came to New York,
I wasn’t necessarily trying to make movies, I
was just trying to see them. Here, there’s so
much repertory cinema, so there are always
at least three films you want to see that are
playing at any given time. That’s certainly a
plus of living here. I go through periods of
moviegoing and periods where I won’t go out
to the theater for six months, but I know I’m
happier when I’m seeing movies.JP: I see the other side of that: Because
we don’t have something to do every
single night in the Midwest, I can stay in
guilt-free, knowing I’m not missing out on
something cool. When I was in L.A., I felt
like, “Oh, it’s so beautiful today, I should go
outside.” There are no temptations of
beautiful weather, amazing screenings, or
“Jim Jarmusch is speaking tonight” here.
With none of that, staying in your house to
write is the best thing you can do.NS: Any scene like that can feel clique-ish,
but I am working on about four projects
with four different groups of people at the
moment, and they’re all in New York.JP: One of my favorite things about watching
your movies is seeing all my friends pop
up. Outside of Michigan, New York is where
all of my other moviemaking friends are.
A lot of New York moviemakers work with
the same DPs and casts, and I like seeing
where these people are plugged in from
project to project. I love that familiarity.NS: I’ve never actually thought about
that. We have had to replace some DPs at
the last minute, but there’s a big pool of
people to pull from here. I guess I take
that for granted. I just push ahead with
each project, and whoever seems right for
a certain project, I’ll approach them and
we’ll talk about it over drinks. From there,
it becomes something concrete—that has
legs. Making smaller pictures that don’t
rely on massive amounts of investment
to get made is about knowing who to ap-
proach. I’ve now shot nine features, so I
know who to approach. I’m trying to make
films where my crew and I can actually get