the discipline of d.e. (gus van sant, 1982)
"How quick can you take your time, kid?"
This all happened some time ago, in the past, but it's relevant to the now. So come with me on an intoxicating journey to the 'then', accompanied by a warm glow that could be the result of you having just finished your second glass of champagne.
The idea was to create a round table discussion on video with five independent filmmakers which would then go up on YouTube, a popular web streaming site. I was invited along, and the initial email I received was met with my usual internal schizophrenic response of:
1. You're inviting me? But I'm just little ol' me?
and
2. Of course you're inviting me. I know more about film than anyone.
Classic.
When I arrived at the venue I was introduced to the four other filmmakers, and although they're going to know who they are (naturally), I'll preserve their anonymity by giving them pseudonyms. So there was Frank, David, Ken, and Tom. The introductions were all made very quickly, and although I may have looked calm and relaxed on the outside, I was a flurry of activity inside, executing a series of mental memory games and mnemonics so that I'd be able to put names to faces without being prompted or asking questions. Studying dress, manner, body movement, intonation - whatever I could to make clear distinctions between the other participants.
Frank - In a word, 'positive.' Very smiley, all of his clothes were clean and well looked after, something I can only dream of. He was the only one who rose to his feet to shake my hand. Sometimes you meet 'happy' people who are clearly hiding a great deal of pain or doubt behind their eyes, but that wasn't the case with Frank, he was happiness and positivity all the way down.
David - The oldest member of the group, and although that was enough for me to remember him I went further. David was dressed 'like a man.' Professional, but also masculine. You could imagine him being used in a commercial for Davidoff, or Lacoste or something. His voice had a gravelly timbre to it that clearly identified him as a smoker.
Ken - The the joker of the pack. He had to make a joke about everything, all the time. Gave out a nervous chuckle at the end of every sentence. Unlike Frank, Ken had something desperate and sweaty and insecure behind his eyes. A reservoir of anxiety. His need for the laugh meant that he sometimes missed cues of politeness, courtesy, etc.
Tom - Visibly the youngest filmmaker in the room, both in terms of face, dress, and language. He wore clothes with cartoon characters on, had a haircut that you'd find hard to pull off if you were over 25, but was also very affable, and friendly throughout.
Yes, they were all male.
And then the discussion started. Our interlocutor asked questions, open questions, and anyone who wanted to jump in was welcome to jump in. I don't know how you would respond in this situation, but I decided to hold back. I would wait. See what the others were saying. Find the temperature of the room. And then start talking. Tom was the only filmmaker other than me to take something of a back seat, with Frank, David, and Ken leading, but perhaps that's no surprise when you consider how young he was. We had started with the broadest questions, such as 'What makes a great film?' and 'What drew you to film?' and although I knew that I was going to have to contribute at some point, I was enjoying getting a sense of who these other people were, and what cinema meant to them.
The answers were as you might expect them - people spoke about their favourite films, the ages at which they'd been when they saw them - the impact they'd had on them, and so on. There's nothing wrong with this, but I was keen to move things on to somewhere else, so when the interlocutor turned to me and said 'How about you, Ben, what got you into film?' I decided to take a different path. I told them about my lack of ability with drawing, and how I thought in pictures. How as the years went by I'd had to turn more and more to writing to get these pictures out, but how it was an insufficient medium for what I wanted to do - turning pictures into words which are read lacks so much. I told them how I'd become more and more of a wordsmith in other people's eyes, and how dissatisfied I was with this role. And how cinema had given me a way to take these pictures out of my head and to show them to people, in the most direct way imaginable. But what was greater than this was the fact that I was always surprised by these images - how the real world throws something at you that can't be replicated in planning or preparation. The thrill you get when you finally see these pictures, when you put them next to each other, when you add sound to them, all combining to create an internal musical note of utter joy that is so hard to explain. And then I went on. I talked about how what I wanted to look at didn't just revolve around story and characters and what we often end up talking about when we talk about film, but around moments, experiences. How cinema gives you an opportunity not simply to describe a moment, but to capture it. To allow people to experience a moment for themselves. To live it. Breathe it. Feel it. Instead of simply telling people about a walk through a forest along a lake, or describing it using words, they got to do that walk along the lake. To listen to their feet on the ground. To somehow become a better person by contemplating nothing but the wind and their own breath and their spiralling thoughts about what all of this might mean.
After I'd finished there was a silence, I looked around at the other faces and you could feel a shift in the room. This is what happens when you deviate from the path, when you take a risk, when you replace cliche with honesty. Again, nothing at all against any of the other participants - they were talking about what 99% of people in their situation would talk about. But you could feel the space that had cleared, and they were eager to step into it.
The conversation continued, and although there were brief moments when other cliches drifted into the talk (such as 'film is like a war,' 'a battle,' which I responded to [as I always do these days] with how film is far more like a game, one in which you are creating the rules as you go along, rules which form without speaking, which everyone in the cast and crew learns and more than that, learns to love) the rest of the debate was far more enjoyable. Everyone let their mask slip to some degree, there was less front, less posturing, more honesty, and more love for the more abstract qualities of filmmaking which are unknown to those who only watch.
And then we had a break. Obviously, I went straight outside to smoke. The only other smokers in the room were David (Marlboro lights) and Tom (one of the first vapers I had ever met). And, as only smokers will know, the conversation we had outside dwarfed the one inside in terms of honesty and warmth and togetherness. David's facade of a form of masculinity that already has all the answers opened up to the possibility of not knowing, and Tom came out with insights that belied his youth, insights that he confessed had never occurred to him until that moment. Perhaps it's something to do with the unspoken agreement between smokers that you know you are pursuing an activity that will put you in the ground, that in some way you've made your peace with your mortality. Perhaps it's this which draws you together and carries you somewhere different. I don't know. But it was an unusually special ten minutes.
After that we went back inside, and the talk continued. The main topic of the second section of the conversation was money, and this time it was my turn to be naive, to know nothing. I listened to them all with something verging on admiration as they went into detail on the funding they'd received, the forms they'd filled in, the meetings they'd had. It was so very alien to me that it became foreign, thrilling. Money is something which is perpetually 'over there' for me. Not here. Somewhere else. Behind glass. I've never been able to access money, and I find the idea of turning my own ideas about cinema into something that produces a profit to be distasteful. But that doesn't mean I don't respect those who do. They understand something I don't. Can speak a language I can't. And because of this they're able to create films that garner more attention. Yes, my ineptitude with money did come up in the conversation when it was my turn to talk, and yes, instead of being open to what they were suggesting I stuck to my guns on the point (which a large part of me truly believes) that I'd rather make my films in the way I make them than have someone looking over my shoulder, silently guiding me to somewhere more commercial. But maybe I should have made more of an effort to listen. After all, another part of me is not sure about any of this. Another part of me would like to make more films, to ease the pathway, to have more attention. Wouldn't we all?
The talk ended and we all swapped contact details and disappeared into the world outside again, as you do at these kind of things. There's an initial reticence for a collection of people to disband after you've pulled together so closely no matter how briefly the group existed for, but there's also an inevitability to these moments that becomes easier and easier the more you experience it. I received one call from one of the filmmakers which ended up in a coffee and a chat, and nothing more. But then I didn't expect anything more to happen anyway. As you might have expected by now, the video of the discussion never appeared on the internet, and the record of this moment appears to have been lost forever, but perhaps that's the best thing that could have happened to it.
On my walk home I saw an old woman trying to negotiate her way through her front door with one of those shopping baskets on wheels. The door was old, peeling paint, clearly far too solid and heavy for her, and she was having no luck in getting past and continuing with her journey. Every time she tried to take a step and move the shopping basket out she had to let go of the door, which would then close, sometimes on her, sometimes on the basket. And then she would use all of her strength to push the door as hard as she could, but it was never enough. Although this was clearly a situation she'd faced several times there was no sign of a method or a process to her actions. Her face was gripped with the sadness and surprise and exhaustion of it all. The weight of the door, the basket, the years. Before I could step in, two young men approached to help her, both of them wearing clothes that hadn't been washed very often, if at all, vibrant with colour and form. One of them held the door open while the other took her arm and guided her and the shopping basket out and into the street. The woman's face brightened here, and as her face brightened into utter gratitude she revealed a network of wrinkles that showed that in fact she often smiled, that her previous expression of tightly wound sadness and anxiety had been an exception rather than the norm.
I don't have to tell you what I was thinking about while I watched this.