What was the starting point or the initial idea for this film?
I was tired of working on projects that I'd been thinking about for a long time. For instance, I'd thought up the three song sequence included in my 2008 film False Aging in the mid 1990's, and then spent the next 13 years looking for the right imagery to collage to it and the right emotional moment to create it.
When I began my new film Wednesday Morning Two A.M. I wanted to create something that was more spontaneous and immediate.To take the temperature of the creative moment so to speak. When I first heard the Shangri-la’s song I'll Never Learn in late 2007, I was transported. I felt compelled to immediately begin to work with it, so I did.
This work is one of the first in a series. Can you tell a bit more on this project?
Wednesday Morning Two A.M. is the first completed film of a new series entitled Couplets. These will generally, but not exclusively, organize themselves around the pairing of various pop songs and, just as in the song's lyrics, the theme of love. Couplets, however, is a sub-grouping of a larger series titled Prolix Satori, which as it’s title implies will contain works of many durations; the five films I created last summer for this series range from 55 seconds to 22 minutes. Both series are open ended and ongoing which is different from my previous work in series as Picture Books For Adults, Tales of the Forgotten Future, Engram Sepals, The Aperture of Ghostings, Daylight Moon (A Quartet) and The Two Minutes to Zero Trilogy, all of which had definite sequence orders and end points.
Can you share an important/funny/moving/surprising anecdote of the making-of this film with us?
I enjoy film because it is a journey of discovery for me. I really love to improvise, to let the film surprise me. However, when I was making Wednesday Morning Two A.M. this became almost too exhausting.
As I stated above, I wanted to be very spontaneous so I followed my impulse: fully. When I shot the first imagery I thought would go with I'll Never Learn (1960's romance comic book characters), it was too illustrative of the song, too close. Not enough friction to create the elliptical narrative tensions my films thrive on. I took this imagery and put it to a different five minute song - thereby creating a second act - and then a third act, set to a 22 minute symphony emerged. Suddenly this little film set to this under 3 minute pop song wasn't so little anymore: it had ballooned into an epic!
As I continued to work the 3 act structure started to fall apart. First to spin off was the symphony. I agonized for weeks over whether these sections were individual films or went together in some configuration I couldn't quite determine. Finally, it became clear that they were all individual works but all part of the same series Prolix Satori. But it was a rough few weeks: too much of a good thing!
What do you do when not making films?
I teach at the California Institute of the Arts, spend time with my wife and our 11 year old son, hike in Griffith Park, bike on the Los Angeles River, absorb as many films, books and music as time permits.
What would you like to say to your audience before seeing your film?
If after watching my film you can't immediately translate your experience back into words, don't worry, that's a good thing. I aim to create an experience that lingers for it's audience-- a kind of time release that takes a period of contemplation both conscious and unconscious to digest.
Is it important for you to show your work on a film festival like the IFFR?
Yes very. First of all: The Netherlands is one of my favorite countries to visit. But I also like that my films travel (often without me) and meet people that I never will. A kind of long distance dialogue that gives me hope about the world and the communication necessary to solve the problems we face together as a planet.
What project(s) are you working on this year? Could you please tell us something about your future projects?
I will continue making new films for Prolix Satori. This includes more Couplets some of which I have thought about for over two decades, and also a feature length crime film The Pettifogger. I have always been prolific but am in a particularly fertile period where I feel like some of my deepest and earliest impulses I now finally have the aesthetic maturity and chops to articulate.