Gerry

[Grand Epic]

*SPOILERS*

With 'Gerry,' the biggest clue we get is the long, long scene of the two guys sitting on the hilltop, with Affleck looking at the horizon and Damon looking at Affleck -- I think that's sort of the key to the movie, but if someone hasn't been paying attention, they'll miss it. 'Gerry' is better because of its utmost simplicity.

Are you saying that this scene is implying that Damon is planning to kill Affleck, or acknowledging the fact that it may have to come down to a mercy killing?

[MacGuffin]

Barry Yourgrau rang up Gus Van Sant about his new movie, Gerry. This very indie film follows two young guys (Matt Damon & Casey Affleck) who get lost on a little hike in an awesome desert wilderness. And then the real trouble starts. Visually stunning, also mystifying, full of long silences, and then a final surprise: that’s Gerry.

The phone chat touched on all this, plus Casey’s shirt with a yellow star; Hollywood and concentrating; the World Trade Center; a couple Eastern European master filmmakers; Iraq; George Clooney. And more.

Two notes: this interview contains spoilers about Gerry. And all 45 minutes on the phone, BY was debating whether he should bring up the gangster-thriller script he’s written, a quirky script GVS might be just right for to direct. A tacky move, an uncool move… But here was the opportunity...

RING RING

Gus Van Sant: Hello.

Barry Yourgrau: Yeah, is Gus Van Sant there, please.

GVS: This is Gus.

BY: Gus hi, this is Barry Yourgrau. I’m calling to do the interview for Suicide Girls.

GVS: Oh good. Okay, can you call like in 5 minutes?

BY: I can do that.

GVS: Okay thanks.

BY: Bye.

RING RING (Take 2)

GVS: Hello.

BY: Gus hi. It’s Barry Yourgrau.

GVS: Hey. Are you guys local, are you in Portland?

BY: Well I’m not. Suicide Girls is based in Portland. But I’m calling from New York.

GVS: Uh-huh. It’s a big operation

BY: It’s nationwide! (Laughs) No, you know, it’s the Internet so it spreads bigger than its source. But it’s headquartered in Portland.

GVS: Really.

BY: Yeah yeah.

GVS: Are there actually girls?

BY: There are in fact Suicide Girls. The idea is to sort of, I guess, to make a kind of community. It’s both a, you know, a girlie-mag site and a naughty pictures site –

GVS: (Laughs)

BY: And also a community where people keep journals.

GVS: What’s the Internet address?

BY: Its suicide girls dot com. It’s sort of Playboy as a grassroots community.

GVS: Cool.

I HEARD THE EXLOSION. I WAS THERE.

BY: So anyway, how’s the weather out in Portland?

GVS: It’s kinda cloudy.

BY: Yeah? We’re loaded with snow here. You moved back to Portland after a while in New York, right?

GVS: Yeah, I’m back here.

BY: Why? New York just wasn’t -

GVS: Well, I had an expensive apartment, I was really close to the World Trade Center. I had an offer from somebody to buy it, like the month after it happened (ironic laugh) and I wasn’t sure about property values, whether they would stay the same.

BY: Where were you?

GVS: I was on Canal Street and Greenwich.

BY: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, that’s close to where the plane went overhead -

GVS: Pardon?

BY: Close to where the plane went overhead.

GVS: Yeah, but I didn’t hear that part. I head the explosion. I was there.

BY: You were?

GVS: Yeah, I was there. I didn’t see the plane but I heard the big explosion and it rattled all the windows. And then I didn’t see the second plane either, cause I was making coffee. It kinda happened right there out my window. I think if I’d had a different type of a place I’d have stuck around, but… I had lived here in Portland a really long time. I was learning about New York and it’s character hadn’t changed really from when I’d worked there in the 60’s and 70’s. I kind of was missing Portland. So I came back.

TWO GUYS WHO GET LOST

BY: So tell me, let’s plunge into Gerry. Which I have to say I found very extraordinary and powerful and a little mystifying.

GVS: Uh-huh

BY: But really kind of enthralling and one of the most genuinely beautiful films I’ve seen in a long time. Not just the landscape, but the fact that the film was relentlessly sort of (and pardon me for going on about this, I want you to go on) - it felt relentlessly improvisational and relentlessly composed. Both at the same time. It was a really interesting mix of things. And just stunningly beautiful to look at.

GVS: Cool. So -

BY: How’d the idea come of it?

GVS: By just the three of us like hanging out and talking about something that we wanted to do and we sort of arrived at this idea.

BY: And what was the first idea? Let’s put two guys wandering around in a magnificent desert or something?

OR HAD EATEN EACH OTHER

GVS: It was about two guys who get lost in some kind of wilderness. We didn’t really know what kind. But they get lost for three days and you know; there was the idea that one guy killed the other guy.

BY: Right.

GVS: But we didn’t know whether we were going to have that happen. Or not.

BY: And they were buddies going in and it sort of evolved that that happened?

GVS: Well there was a story about two guys who get lost and one of them kills the other. And there was other stories about people who had been lost that had either killed themselves or had fallen into accidents or -

BY: Or eaten each other.

GVS: Pardon?

BY: Eaten each other.

GVS: Or the Donner party eating each other. But just the whole, like, genre of two people lost in the wilderness was something that interested us. And I had some money to back a project that was not tied to any idea or anything, so we had the financial backing, we just scheduled it and went and did it.

NO PAPER ON THE SET

BY: And did you actually have a script? Or was there a lot of improvising on the spot?

GVS: We made kind of like an outline and were writing a screenplay beforehand. The screenplay became something that we didn’t really use on the set.

BY: Right.

GVS: Basically the screenplay was an extension of the outline, and the outline was something we kind of forged together. When we actually made the movie, we had it in our heads. We kind of used these things that were in our heads, but not like as if we had paper on the set.

BY: So you didn’t actually have a paper script as such.

GVS: No, not on the set. There was stuff like in the office. At some point there was a script in a computer. If we needed to we could go back and get it. But we didn’t really have it on the set.

WAS THAT DANGEROUS FOR HIM?

BY: And when you did scenes, was the dialogue actually improvised? Like, you know, the dream thing, where he (Casey) has the whole Greek dream, and the stuff when he’s about to jump off the rock, and the stuff when they go up the first time and do a mountain "Gerry" -

GVS: The rock was a scene that was written.

BY: Even the dialogue?

GVS: Yeah, essentially it was similar. But the idea of him going on a wrong mountain, that was new I think -

BY: Pardon me for interrupting: Was that dangerous for him, that "stunt," for want of a better word? Jumping off the rock. The rock looked very tall.

GVS: It wasn’t, you know, so dangerous that our insurance wouldn’t let us do it.

BY: (Laughs) Gotcha.

GVS: Movie magic… But it was sort of partly improvised and partly not. The "dirt mattress" and building the "dirt mattress" was in the script. At one point.

BY: Oh it was.

GVS: Uh-huh. The "dirt mattress" was. But some of the other things weren’t. They (Matt and Casey) were actually adding and subtracting as they went.

BY: Gotcha. I loved - I mean, actors improvising is something one sees on film; but there were times when the camera seemed to be improvising itself too. Like that whole sequence when they were marching along in rhythm, their heads close-up. And they fell wildly out of rhythm, like machinery that going against itself. That was a beautiful visual passage that looked like it was made up because the camera was following these guys, and it found them doing something really interesting and said, Let’s do that.

GVS: Well, sort of. That particular shot is in reference to another film.

BY: Which film is that?

WHO IS BELA TARR?

GVS: Werkmeister Harmonies, by Bela Tarr

BY: Who was very influential in the way you saw this film, right?

GVS: Yeah he was.

BY: I hate to do this to you, but probably a lot of our viewers don’t really know who Bela Tarr is. Who is he?

GVS: He’s Hungarian and he’s been working since the 70’s. One of his more like renowned films is called Satantango

BY: That eight hour thing, right?

GVS: Six hours.

BY: Six hours, I’m sorry. (Little laugh)

GVS: And he is about 47 I think.

BY: Pardon me for asking this stuff, but if one were to say what his genius was, what is it? To you - what draws you to his work?

GVS: Well I think the thing I was really excited about was just getting his philosophy, of just the Why and Where and What he took his shooting. He’s always been pretty amazing to me, always been uprooting in a really amazing way since even the 70’s.

WHO’S ANDREI TARKOFSKY?

GVS: I saw a retrospective of his (Tarr’s) work and there was one - I mean, I don’t know what his own particular influences are, but he kind of comes out of an Eastern European school that seems to be -

BY: Is it like a 70’s Eastern European school or an earlier one?

GVS: Well, 60’s and 70’s and 80’s and 90’s. It’s ongoing, cause he’s 47 now. But some of the original influences were - I’m just speaking for him cause I’m not positive - were -

BY: You’ve met him, right?

GVS: Yeah, I have - were Andrei Tarkovsky. He’s one of the sort of fathers of the way - he’s one of the more renowned Russian filmmakers.

BY: Tarkovsky? No no, indeed. What did you think of Solaris, of Soderbergh’s Solaris.

GVS: Well, I saw the original Solaris (Tarkovsky’s) just before that. I had never seen the original Solaris.

BY: Did you see it on video?

GVS: Yeah. They kind of stuck to the original pretty well. It was an interesting choice (laughs) to pick a Tarkovsky film.

BUT WEREN’T THEY ALL ENTHRALLED BY HOLLYWOOD?

BY: It was funny, I was just speaking yesterday to a friend who’s a Hungarian artist and she was talking about how influenced she was living in Hungary by their films of the 60’s and 70’s, how intense they were and stripped down and minimal and you know -

GVS: They were informed by the life that is led there - the political life that is led there and their own political oppression. And there' something that’s going on there that’s just somehow rooted in a different fashion. I mean we’ve grown up in the west world making films that you pay for tickets to go see it, ever since like the nickelodeon. And that’s formed a particular type of cinema in our part of the world; in their part of the world it was always funded by the government. So it was like decided upon by a different process and a different funding system, which wasn’t about, you know, people actually paying at the door.

BY: But weren’t they all still enthralled by Hollywood?

GVS: Not these guys (laughs).

BY: Not at all?

GVS: Well I wouldn’t say the Russians are. I wouldn’t say the Russians are. I think that lots of people have been. Like I suppose Satjayit Ray or Kurosawa. I mean different areas have their complete different flavors. Hollywood is something that’s kind of exciting and exists in the world and it’s beautiful -

BY: Right -

GVS: But I wouldn’t say that anything that Bela does is informed by Hollywood (laughs).

BY: I hear you -

GVS: I mean unless it’s like John Cassavetes.

DIVINE PART

BY: Yeah… Have you seen by the way this Palestinian film, Divine Intervention ?

GVS: No I haven’t seen that.

BY: You know what I’m talking about?

GVS: No.

BY: It’s by a Palestinian filmmaker, it’s just come out now, it’s gotten a lot of prizes in Europe. It’s not altogether successful, but it’s really interesting cause it’s very minimal, it’s a bit like Jacques Tati hanging out in Palestine.

GVS: Wow.

BY: Yeah, it doesn’t always rise to what it wants to be, but there’re moments in it which are terrific. And I must say it has spectacular music. And your film had spectacular music too, the Arvo Pärt . How did you get to that, have you been a fan of his work all the time?

GVS: No, that was music that was actually playing when we were first talking about the idea.

BY: Who was playing it?

GVS: It was a friend in California, we were at his house and we were talking about actually doing it and we asked what music it was. And he gave Casey a CD of it. And we actually played when we were driving in Argentina going to the locations.

GREAT GARDEN PLACES

BY: How did you settle on Argentina? I gather you shot in Argentina and then you shot in Salt Lake or something, or in Utah?

GVS: And in Death Valley.

BY: (Laughs) All the great garden places in the world!

GVS: Well we went there originally to get away from the SAG actors strike.

BY: Oh really.

GVS: Uh-huh. We were exempt, cause our funding was out of the states, so as long as we got out of the country it was okay for us to shoot. But then the strike never happened, so - and also it got too cold in Argentina. So we came up to Death Valley.

ALMOST LIKE A SIT COM

BY: Your work has always had this character of landscape - interstitial moments in Drugstore Cowboy, even Good Will Hunting. So it’s interesting to see this take center stage.

GVS: Yeah. You know, there’s a traditional way you write a script and make a film in the west, at least in our culture –

BY: Have you been spending a lot of time in other cultures?

GVS: No. But in our culture, the way we do it generally is to get the characters in the location and then they start talking and they usually talk for ten minutes (laughs) or so. And then you quickly get them to the next location, almost like a sit com. And that seems to be the way we deal with cinema. I guess the advent of sound kind of added to that. As soon as people could talk then we really wanted to hear them talk all the time, and we just never really tired of people talking. And I don’t know that will ever change. But in something like Gerry, we’re just sort of inverting that. So the transition period is really what the film’s about and the talking is less -

CASEY’S SHIRT; THAT DESERT FLOOR MUST BE VERY HOT

BY: I hear you. So how did Casey hit on wearing that shirt with a yellow star?

GVS: I don’t know. He had one when he was younger and he always liked it (laughs). So he wore one. He had it made.

BY: He had it made for the film?

GVS: Yeah. He had it made for him to wear. You know our costume and our production design and everything was quite ad hoc, you know. The guys were wearing clothes that they just owned.

BY: Was it a punishing shoot?

GVS: Yeah.

BY: Cause I remember like when they sat on the desert I thought Jesus, that desert floor must be very hot.

GVS: It was very hot, yeah. It was a 128 degrees.

BY: Jesus! How long did the shoot last?

GVS: It was about 25 days.

BY: And in Argentina was how long?

GVS: That was five days. And then we came up to shoot in Death Valley for an extra like 19 days.

BY: Oh Jesus: 19 days in Death Valley.

GVS: And then I guess we shot the last three days were in Utah. So Death Valley was probably like 16 days and then Utah, three days.

LOOKING & REMEMBERING, HIKING & DRIVING; THE ROCK

BY: And tell me, those were very long takes in the film, did you do several of them? Did you do like one day where you just do three takes or -

GVS: Yeah, once we got the shot set up. We did about eight or nine takes, and then that would be the morning and then we’d have another setup in the afternoon. However long it would take to get the scene, we’d do another eight or nine takes.

BY: And, again, the composition was astounding. I know those are very geometric landscapes. They set up strong shapes. But did you scout a lot to get your compositions?

GVS: Oh yeah we did that a lot. That was something that was sort of constant, we were always constantly looking and remembering where they were and hiking and driving. We did that a lot. Just to sort of piece it together because there were some requirements, because the rock, for instance, was very hard to find -

BY: (Laughs) Right.

GVS: Then we found a pretty good one. There were all these different choices but we settled on the one we were using. And it still wasn’t like the same type of rock that originally Casey intended. He was the one who invented that particular, you know, Man Getting Stuck on the Rock.

POST-ROCK SHOCK

BY: And how did they evolve their relationship, like Casey being the wounded one, the person who cried?

GVS: That kind of evolved as we shot. The nuances of the characters was sort of an ongoing project, that sort of came about -

BY: And was the ending supposed to be like a shock? Cause it seemed to erupt, kind of.

GVS: I think it was supposed to be very shocking, that was an intention.

BY: Also, I must say, there was that incredible scene (I don’t want to give it away to people who haven’t seen movie), the mirage scene involving Matt Damon was just astounding.

GVS: Oh great.

BY: What’s so interesting is when you pare a film down like that is the minimalism starts to resonate so each fragment suddenly has all this - you start to sift it as you watch it, what its reverberations are. It makes you concentrate harder.

THINK YOUR OWN THOUGHTS

GVS: It one of things I was hoping for as I was putting it together, that you would actually - I think that one of things I was curious about was whether or not you paid attention at the same time as you were allowed to think your own thoughts. As opposed to not paying attention and thinking your own thoughts.

BY: I would say that’s hardly a thing one would ever say about a studio film, right?!

GVS: (Laughs) Well, the object of lots of different producers is to not ever let the audience think what they want.

BY: No, exactly.

FEAR OF DRIFT; LOVE OF EGGLESTON

GVS: But I think David Lean - he was in desert (for Lawrence of Arabia), he talked a lot about having his shots go on for long and long and long. Because that’s what he felt when he was in the desert. And some of them (directors), they kind of got that feeling as they were making a big epic. And I don’t think that they were afraid of the audience drifting at all.

BY: Part of it (in Gerry) is because you’re not sitting in a parking structure underground somewhere. You’re out in this astounding landscape. As you find your thoughts, you have something glorious to focus on. I mean, do you look at William Eggleston much, for photographers?

GVS: Yeah, he’s one of my favorites. He actually did some still photography on a short film I made called Easter.

BY: Yeah, cause your light is a lot like Eggleston’s.

GVS: Yeah I think he’s one of the people we referred to in our discussions, Harris the cinematographer and myself. Harris Savides. We made another film called Elephant recently. It’s almost finished. In that one particularly we were referring occasionally to William Eggleston.

BY: And Ansel Adams?

GVS: Not a direct influence.

BY: Cause Adams is so much black and white? This is about color?

GVS: Yeah, he wasn’t someone we talked about or referred to. But I guess what we did talk about was maybe how we were going to shoot outside, with no extra lighting. We wanted to do it so that we were shooting with just natural light. Which was, you know - there was always like a lot of light -

BY: I would say there was probably an overabundance of light!

TINY LITTLE NUANCES

GVS: (Chuckles) An overabundance of light. Because of that, we were dealing with how to capture an image of the outdoors in the same way that all the major photographers have been. There were tiny little nuances of adjustments, on how you’re exposing what type of film, how you’re processing it. Which Harris is very attuned to. Plus you’re looking for locations that argue a certain thing as well.

BY: Yeah. And also it’s not like you have people running around with guns and helicopters to distract people from what they looking at. It’s a movie, but still you’re attending to it with some of the visual concentration that you would with a still photograph. I imagine it’s very technically demanding to get it right.

GVS: Yeah. It is.

CLOONEY COOL?

BY: What do you like that’s around now, just to open up the discussion? Any particular film that you’re drawn to these days, that’s around in the theaters? Have you seen City of God yet?

GVS: No, I want to go see that. I’ve heard a lot about it.

BY: Yeah it’s terrific. Wasn’t perfect, but it was shot with tremendous jazziness.

GVS: Yeah, I want to go see that, it’s playing here now in Portland. Um, let’s see, um -

BY: Have you seen Confessions of a Dangerous Mind?

GVS: I have. I’ve seen that.

BY: What did you think?

GVS: I had read the script a long time ago. You know it’s nice to see George Clooney directing a film. It’s cool.

MADE FOR SCHOOLCHILDREN

BY: Was A Taste of Cherry, the Iranian guy (Abbas Kiarostami), is that someone of interest to you?

GVS: That’s his new film?

BY: I saw it on video, I think it came out last year or the year before -

GVS: You know mostly his older films that I’ve seen in retrospectives. Which I actually prefer to his adult non-schoolboard films.

BY: Name one of them, it might be of interest to our viewers.

GVS: Jeez, I’d have to go look it up -

BY: That okay -

GVS: They were films that were made all thru the 80’s. I think that -

BY: Okay, people can look them up then -

GVS: One of them’s called The Jar, which was about a jar that has crack in it at school. They were made for schoolchildren.

BY: Oh they were?

GVS: Yeah. In Iran. So they were made with government funding for a specific purpose. They weren’t necessarily Kiarostami making something of his choice. But he was amazingly, you know, great with the stories, they were sort of anti-Shah in political overtones.

IRAQ ON YOUR MIND?

BY: Let me seize then on, just to make this freewheeling - and I really appreciate your time here - are you politically sensitized these days? Is Iraq very much weighing on your mind?

GVS: Oh yeah, definitely. I think it’s a tragic sort of joining of events that’s everyday kind of marching closer to like doom (little laugh) or something.

BY: Did you take part in any of the anti-war rally stuff?

GVS: I haven’t actually partaken in any of our Portland anti-war rallies, because of either being gone or (little sorry laugh) being misinformed when they were happening.

BY: But you were in Berlin just now, right? Did you get a sense of German -

GVS: No I wasn’t in Berlin.

BY: I’m sorry, I understood you were.

GVS: I was in New York. But no I didn’t - I was actually in St. Barths.

BY: (Laughs) You were on vacation.

GVS: I was on vacation. Where was I was? I was someplace where I felt - maybe it was St. Barths. I’m not sure. But I’m sure it’s a lot easier to feel the anti-Americanism in Europe today than like last year.

BY: I’ll bet.

GVS: I was in Europe last summer, that’s kind of the last time I was over there.

BY: But no, I mean - me and many people I know are completely disoriented and what’s the word, our attention is rattled all day, on the Internet reading the latest - trying to figure out what’s going on, and figure out how to get one’s voice heard. You know.

HANDFUL OF PEOPLE WHO WANT WAR

GVS: Yeah, it feels like there’s a handful of people that want war. And then everybody else doesn’t. Except for the people that are just reacting I think to the World Trade Center, just saying, Go get em, you know. Which I think is a very simple reaction. If they really thought about it they might change their minds. But that could be a large percentage of the US, but that’s almost because either they’re not thinking clearly or they’re bored and "Why not?" Whereas the people that are really wanting war have a specific objective of Why - which are probably evil (laughs), whatever those objectives are.

BY: (Laughs) No no, I’m gonna put in the interview that your laughter underscores that they may in fact be that (evil).

GVS: There’s no other explanation, except I mean, unless they’re personal. I guess they could be personal. As in like George Bush avenging his father, you know, the attempt on his father’s
life -

BY: You mean the attempt on his "daddy’s" life, I think -

GVS: Yeah. Which I was unaware that even happened (laughs).

BY: (Laughs)

GVS: Maybe they uncovered a plot or something. I mean, do you remember that?

BY: Only after - at the time, I hate to say it, at the time, if I saw it, I probably said, Well there you go, that’s what you get for - no, I didn’t know about it until people started piping up about it pretty recently.

NICE TO FEEL WORLD HAS MATURED

GVS: One thing I think is really interesting, it seems to me that the world has matured. I mean, it seems to me, I could be completely misled. But it seems that the world is mature enough to realize that it’s just completely wrong, you know. And the only people who think it’s right are the immature ones who’re controlling Washington sentiment. It’s nice to feel like the whole world really has their heads screwed on better. It’s nice that France and Germany were telling Bush, No, we’re not doing it.

WHATS NEXT? PORTLAND HIGH SCHOOLERS

BY: Gus, what’s next for you? Are you cutting a new film? You’re doing a film, Elephant, you said?

GVS: Yeah, it’s done. It’s about high-school violence

BY: Is it a studio film again or is it -

GVS: No it’s a smaller film, it’s about the same size as Gerry. We shot it here in Portland.

BY: When’s it due out?

GVS: We’ll probably start playing in festivals as soon as we can.

BY: And who’s in it?

GVS: There are basically just students from the high schools in Portland.

BY: Wow wow. Do you have any other projects coming along, like studio films – or whatever, I don’t mean to keep harping on -

GVS: I don’t actually. Nothing’s on the boards.

GEE… EVER THINK OF MAKING A GANGSTER-THRILLER SCRIPT??

BY: (About to get uncool?) Have you ever thought of making a gangster-thriller script? You know, an action -

GVS: (Loud laugh) Um, hmm , Gangster-Thriller. You mean, like from the 50’s?

BY: Yeah, like, you know, Sexy Beast - or whatever -

GVS: You know I never have. I mean, except on the level of Drugstore Cowboy, they were sort of, they weren’t gangsters, they were criminals. On the level of people that we have here in Portland, sometimes you meet characters, you think, wow, there’s a story.

BY: (Hope fading) Right.

GVS: Also there are certain things that are intriguing that happen in our town, that you could put it under that label of gangster-thriller, but not a literal -

BY: (Being a literalist) Gotcha…

GVS: So far at least.

BY: (Oh well) No I understand…

CHINESE MAFIA WITH HEAVY BRITISH ACCENTS

GVS: But Sexy Beast. I didn’t see the movie, but I’m imagining the type of guy, and I remember when I was in London there were these Asian Brits that were seemingly gangsters that looked like they came out of Pulp Fiction. With very heavy British accents. But they were Asian. And they were in Chinatown. And you could just tell that it was Chinese mafia. And it just was intriguing because everybody had such you know British accents.

BY: No no, I hear ya, I hear ya.

GVS: There are certain things you see there. I mean you see different types of things here in Portland. And so the types of things that occur to me that are along those lines are usually because I’m there, you know. So when I was in London, witnessing these people, it’s like very interesting to try and capture their world. But -

BY: But let me ask you, have you seen Amores Perros then?

GVS: Yes, I have.

BY: Are you a fan of it?

GVS: Oh yeah, I really liked that movie. It was very very good.

BY: Yeah between that and Sexy Beast, I must say. If you haven’t seen it (Sexy Beast), if I may say, it was an extraordinary film.

GVS: Really.

BY: Yeah. I think it is. And done with this intensity and modesty. And Ray Winstone is a terrific actor.

GVS: So Harris Savides who did Gerry is working on his next project.

BY: On (director Jonathan) Glazer’s next project?

GVS: Yeah.

BY: And shooting in New York, right?

GVS: Yeah.

BY: Whadda ya know. Listen Gus, I think, you’ve been very generous I appreciate it.

GVS: Thanks.

BY: And our readers will be much obliged. And best of luck and congrats on the film.

GVS: All right thanks. See you.

BY: Okay, bye.

[Jeremy Blackman]

Sweet Jesus, what a terrible interviewer. Just compare the bold with the plain text. He doesn't know when to shut up.

These are some great moments:

BY: Gotcha. I loved - I mean, actors improvising is something one sees on film; but there were times when the camera seemed to be improvising itself too. Like that whole sequence when they were marching along in rhythm, their heads close-up. And they fell wildly out of rhythm, like machinery that going against itself. That was a beautiful visual passage that looked like it was made up because the camera was following these guys, and it found them doing something really interesting and said, Let's do that.

GVS: Well, sort of. That particular shot is in reference to another film.

BY: But really kind of enthralling and one of the most genuinely beautiful films I've seen in a long time. Not just the landscape, but the fact that the film was relentlessly sort of (and pardon me for going on about this, I want you to go on) - it felt relentlessly improvisational and relentlessly composed. Both at the same time. It was a really interesting mix of things. And just stunningly beautiful to look at.

GVS: Cool. So -

BY: How'd the idea come of it?

[Sleuth]

Sweet Jesus, what a terrible interviewer. Just compare the bold with the plain text. He doesn't know when to shut up.

These are some great moments:

BY: Gotcha. I loved - I mean, actors improvising is something one sees on film; but there were times when the camera seemed to be improvising itself too. Like that whole sequence when they were marching along in rhythm, their heads close-up. And they fell wildly out of rhythm, like machinery that going against itself. That was a beautiful visual passage that looked like it was made up because the camera was following these guys, and it found them doing something really interesting and said, Let's do that.

GVS: Well, sort of. That particular shot is in reference to another film.

BY: But really kind of enthralling and one of the most genuinely beautiful films I've seen in a long time. Not just the landscape, but the fact that the film was relentlessly sort of (and pardon me for going on about this, I want you to go on) - it felt relentlessly improvisational and relentlessly composed. Both at the same time. It was a really interesting mix of things. And just stunningly beautiful to look at.

GVS: Cool. So -

BY: How'd the idea come of it?

it reminds me of these posts we just made

[Pubrick]

that is by far the worst interview from this suicidegirls series..

this dude must be on coke, he is the kind of person who thinks he is the life of the party but everyone just can't wait for him to shut up and die. wow. poor gus. that's just disgusting.

[Garam]

Finally saw it, and sweet Jesus i loved it. Even more so than Elephant, in fact. I really wish i saw it in the cinema.


Reminded me of an episode of the Comic Strip Presents...; "Four men in a Plane".

[modage]

i'd say it's probably the funniest film since Barry Lyndon.

[tpfkabi]

after enjoying Elephant a lot, i sought out this film. this takes long camera takes and minimalism to the extreme, and it was a bit much for me. maybe i will revisit it later and enjoy it more, but i would place Elephant before Gerry (unlike most of the prior posters in this thread).

i think someone else mentioned the DVD cover - it is one of the worst i've ever seen. it looks like one of those dvd covers you see when someone becomes big and then movie studios dig up previous movies no one has ever heard of and release them to cash in. they should have used the poster above.

[Pozer]

damn.  upon first glance, i thought they was supersizin' the dvd or somethin.

[The Sheriff]

but then how will we know that the movie contains action? like them running and shit

[Pubrick]

or that it's a sequel to Stuck On You.

[Pozer]

haha!