GREG HARRISON

Looseness

I’ve been working on a new script recently, with an eye to shoot something quickly and cheaply, and have been thinking a lot about looseness.  Looseness not only in how I write, but in how I conceive the entire process: casting, running the set, and especially the performances.  It’s really about shifting where a film is coming from in me, from my interest in the craft, aesthetics and logistics of filmmaking (which is primarily where my first two films came from) to the expression of story, performance, behavior, and — for lack of a less overused word — truth.

A number of quotes from various filmmakers have helped me articulate what I’m after with this new film, and I’ve included a few below.  The modern-day genre most closely resembling what I’m thinking of is Mumblecore, which is just another point on a long continuum where filmmakers commit to making inexpensive personal films they control creatively, with the goal of capturing naturalistic performances.

This is a thread that goes through the French New Wave, the American New Wave of the 70’s, the films of Cassavetes, Neorealism…  For me, all of these share one thing in common: They strive to create a sense of reality with recognizable human behavior.  And in an age where empty sequels, TV show remakes, comic book and horror films dominate the landscape, I believe it’s actually what audiences are hungry for, or at least the audience I’m interested in.

And now, the quotes:

Sam Mendes, on changing up his approach on Away We Go, especially after the experience of directing Revolutionary Road:

“I was intent on letting people breathe in the frame a little bit more. Revolutionary was like trying to hold the viewers in a vice, and the actors, too. It was tense and claustrophobic and extremely rigid in the framing. [Away We Go]  is quite classically done in the sense that it’s very simply made, but the playfulness that’s there is because I wasn’t overly strict about how we were staging things.”

“I’ve just stumbled on something I think that’s probably quite true. What happened, I think, is it’s very easy when you’re a filmmaker to let the process lead you and not the material, not the actors. So you’ve got to get 17 setups in the day, and you’ve got to shoot this when the sun’s this high, and you’ve got to get out of here by 8:00 because tomorrow we’ve got a new location, and before you know it, you’re making a schedule and not making a movie. And I think that didn’t happen here, which is nice.”

“[Regarding rehearsal and pre-production], you want to fill people with as many ideas as possible, but without ever making them do it. Fill the gas tank with as much gas as you can, but never turn the ignition key. Because otherwise what happens is exactly that—they end up doing it well, because they’re all good, and then thinking when they come to shoot it eight weeks later, ‘What did we do?’  They’re trying to remember a performance, as opposed to just giving a performance.”

Milos Forman on making One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest:

“In Cuckoo’s Nest, the superintendent was a real superintendent of a mental hospital, a nonprofessional actor, and for his scene with Jack Nicholson I told him, ‘Just do your job with Jack, as a psychiatrist.’  And I told Jack, ‘Just react to what you hear from the doctor.  Okay, let’s shoot it.’  We did maybe four takes, and cut the scene from the best moments.  When you do it that way, you can get gems, unrepeatable moments.  It gives so much real life to the scene.  That’s what you want to get on film, unrepeatable moments.”

Michel Gondry on directing actors:

“You don’t want your actors to get too comfortable.  Because that’s when the shtick comes. If an actor doesn’t have time to think, they cannot do whatever they are used to doing. The visual must be predetermined, but the emotion can’t be.”

Steven Soderbergh on his shift to a looser approach in his film Traffic:

“This is not about perfection, I don’t want to give people marks; I don’t want them thinking about that stuff.  You don’t want them thinking. You want them being.”

RAWI 2010

(I originally wrote this blog post for the Sundance Institute website)

In the dead of night, the in-flight Mecca compass rotated left as the plane banked south somewhere over the Netherlands. Surrounding me, silhouetted by reading lights, a handful of Middle Eastern passengers quietly prayed as a movie flickered on screens above us: An Arab action-comedy satirizing James Bond in the style of The Three Stooges.

To say that my first ever trip to the Middle East felt surreal is an understatement.  Only a week ago I was staring at my laptop in a Silverlake coffeehouse, struggling with the outline for a new script I’m writing, trying to remember exactly why I was born. 

Luckily, an email from Sundance Institute’s Alesia Weston offered me an opportunity to trade my existential desert for a real one: “I wanted to reach out with a really random invitation in case you were free or interested…” she began, asking if I would be available as an Advisor for the 10-day Middle East Screenwriters Lab held at a world-renowned eco-resort in the middle of the Jordanian desert.  The short answer—after my wife agreed to 10 days of solo parenting in exchange for untold spa weekends—was, “Sign me up!”

I wasn’t exactly new to the allure of the Sundance Institute Labs.  I’d been a Fellow at the Utah Labs in 2006, and consider that experience a crucial leap forward for me as a writer.  So naturally I was excited to have another round of the magic, especially as an Advisor.  The idea of jumping into a new culture with filmmakers from all over the world sounded exactly like what I needed.  Or was at least the most inventive form of procrastination I had yet conceived.

With an 18-hour flight, a 10-hour time difference, and massive sleep deprivation, my memory of arriving in Amman is a fragmented blur: Gaba, our preeminent local guide from the Royal Film Commission, who greeted us with his beatific smile; the hundreds of Arabic campaign posters in downtown Amman (a big parliamentary election was only weeks away); Roman ruins interspersed amid mosques; the cacophony of Arab prayer calls mixed with street vendors hawking everything from produce to freshly pirated DVDs (yes, all our movies were for sale).

It took a few days to acclimate to the time change and for the rest of the Fellows and Advisors to arrive, but then we were off in a tour bus headed for the desert.  The route took us along the Dead Sea, stopping at a Bedouin town to transfer to pickup trucks for the 40-minute ride on unpaved roads to the Dana Biosphere Reserve.  Finally, the Feynan resort appeared like an oasis and the staff greeted us with homemade tea, cool towels, and the local camel, Two Reds.  It felt like the most exotic vacation I could imagine.

But of course, we were really in the desert to work.  The daily rhythm of the week went like this: Breakfast.  Group Advisor meeting for us to discuss the status of the scripts.  Three-hour one-on-one meetings with the Fellows.  Lunch.  More one-on-ones.  Dinner.  Screening.  Hanging out on the roof watching shooting stars.  Sleep.  Get up and do it again.  Okay, maybe “work” is too strong a word.

One of the aspects of the Lab that often surprises Fellows is that there’s no writing.  I remember going to Utah as a Fellow and thinking I’d have a new draft by the end of the week.  But what I discovered then, and now as an Advisor feel is the genius of the Lab, is that the focus is on a higher level of script discussion, namely: “What is it about?”  Sure, we also talk about writing dialogue, editing scenes, thinking visually, but these are just aspects of the craft.  The more I write, the more I see how the actual writing of the script is only a step in a process that calls you to continually ask questions about how you see the world and what truths about the human experience you are trying to express. 

These kinds of discussions were the most satisfying moments in the Lab for me. Over the course of days, I saw Fellows discovering and at times eloquently articulating what was really driving them to write their stories, regardless how far along their actual screenplays were.  Uncovering these sometimes hidden answers is like discovering an organizing force—a magnet—that you can drop into the middle of the draft and then watch as the pieces align and shift and are even repelled by its presence.  It can allow the writer to dive back into the ground level of the rewrite with more clarity about what should stay and what should go.  Not that that clarity comes immediately or easily.  It can be a harrowing time for the fellows to be asked to confront the deeper questions of their work, and to face the gap between what they intended to say and what they’ve been able to express on the page thus far. 

Luckily, there was a community of writers and mentors to support them throughout the process, and I can attest to the camaraderie and sheer buzz that developed among us over the week: Suha’s and Basil’s contagious laughter while telling each other inside jokes in Arabic; an inspiring screening of Motorcycle Diaries on the roof beneath the haze of the Milky Way; Wash and Bill bringing the rock with acoustic covers of the Beatles, with Mohammed backing them up on Arabic drum; and our intrepid artistic director Ziad, whose passion when discussing just about anything was utterly infectious.

But perhaps the deepest bond formed on our final night when Mohannad and Reem from The Royal Film Commission unveiled…International Video Karaoke, complete with hundreds of Western and Arabic songs.  And so, in the haze of shisha smoke (apple-flavored tobacco, people!) and red wine, we bid goodbye to the desert with half-remembered 80s pop songs (yours truly belting out Bon Jovi’s “Living On A Prayer”) and what was giddily described to me by Karim, one of our Fellows, as “the cheapest, lowest class Egyptian pop music available in the world.”  If this was not the zenith of cultural exchange, then I do not know what is.

I’ve often described the Labs to friends as summer camp for film, with a similar sense of intensity, bonding, and finally melancholy as it winds to a close.  As any Advisor or Fellow will tell you, it’s difficult to say goodbye to such an immersive experience.  And yet I was happy to emerge from the Lab creatively refreshed, inspired not only by the other Advisors whose work I’ve admired, but also by the energy and drive of the Fellows embarking on their first feature.  Staying in touch with that excitement, idealism—and yes, even a kind of naïveté—is critical to willing a project to life, regardless how long you’ve been making films.  And I for one feel grateful to have had the opportunity to dip into that well one more time.

Shukran, Sundance!

A fan of NASA, fed up with their crappy PR, decided to make this inspiring piece of social media to help them out.  With Carl Sagan reading his famous Pale Blue Dot speech.

1981.  Wow.

Making It Real

I recently directed a series of trailers for the LA Film Festival in which I interviewed people about their love of film.  First and foremost, the trailers had to capture the infectious passion people express when they talk about something they love.  It was a unique challenge, since I had only 10 hours to interview 28 people, which averaged to about 10-15 minutes per person.  Here are a few things that helped:

Pre-interviews: I had a great casting director, Alex Christopoulos, who wrangled the 300+ submissions that came from our call for real people.  From that group, he gave me about 100 people, all of whom submitted their stories by e-mail.  I called about 40 of those people and spoke to them on the phone for 15 minutes or so, to see how they were when a stranger started asking them about their life.  You could tell within minutes if the person would feel comfortable on-camera.  It also meant they got to know me a little and gave me the chance to take notes on the topics that lit them up.  This was 15 minutes per person I didn’t need to burn on set.

Listening: This is a buzzword that’s thrown around a lot in acting, but the same goes for directing.  From the moment someone stepped onto the set, I put my full attention on them.  During the interview, I tried to make it as much like a casual conversation as possible, standing by the camera (not in video village), making eye contact, and responding spontaneously to what they were saying.  Unlike other shoots, I didn’t worry if my voice overlapped their words, because I felt like me being present in the conversation was more important. 

Body Language: If someone is withholding how they really feel, you can see it in their body.  Often, people who would come in nervous had their hands in their pockets or their arms crossed.  A great technique to invite people to open up is to give them a simple physical direction like, “Put your arms to your side”, or “Don’t be afraid to talk with your hands.”  For example, one of the most gregarious interviewees (who spoke about “Leprechaun: Back To The Hood”) started with her arms crossed, giving one words answers.  These simple directions helped her drop the self-consciousness and let it rip, giving me some of the most honest and hilarious bits of of the day.

Cutting for feeling: In the editing room, I had 6 hours of footage and only a week to deliver four trailers.  I needed an approach that would lead me to the most honest and emotional bits of interviews quickly.  I find I get obsessive with editing choices, so this time around I wanted to be freer, editing more from the gut.  After doing my first round of selects (about 2 hours of footage) I turned the sound off and would watch the faces.  It was a great way to forget about what people were saying and focus on what they were feeling.  And if I ever felt indecisive about which of two similar clips I should include, I turned off the sound and chose by how the faces made me feel.

Working With Garry Trudeau

One of the projects I got involved with after Groove was a script written by Garry Trudeau called The E.T.C.  It had been around since the mid-90’s at Fox 2000 with director Alan Pakula attached (until his tragic death in 1998).  The script eventually found its way to Fox Searchlight, which is when I first read it.  

I loved that it had all the satire and humor and rich characters of Trudeau’s Doonesbury comic, but on a much larger canvas: The story was set in a speculative near-future, when a fast-acting virus is decimating the population of the country.  A group of doctors at the National Institute of Health are thrust into the spotlight like rock stars as they attempt to fast track a drug that combats the virus.  They do this by experimenting on thousands of terminally ill patients in a vast warehouse-like medical facility called The E.T.C. (Experimental Treatment Center).

After a year of script development with Trudeau and another year of casting and budgeting, the studio killed it.  In retrospect, as well-written as the script was, it was not an easy sell: A comedy but with harrowing life-or-death situations; an ensemble cast where no one actor could be the star; and a story with scope that had to be made for a price.

It was my first (but certainly not my last) painful experience with Development Hell, working on a project for years with the promise of making it, only for it to fall apart.  That said, I learned a ton about character and dialogue working with Trudeau, always marveling at his ability to express wit and humanity so effortlessly through his writing.

The images here are renderings I did with a storyboard artist during the budgeting process.

Happy Friday

Here’s a standing cat.

Pixels

I think 8-bit nostalgia can now be considered an official emotion for anyone born in the early 1970’s.

28 Weeks Later Animatic

After November came out, I pitched on a bunch of horror and thriller scripts.  Not that that was my interest exactly, but that’s was my agents’ best guess for selling me to studios.  Most of the scripts I can’t say I was excited to pitch on, but there was one I was in love with: the sequel to 28 Days Later.

As part of my pitch to the producers, I created this seven-minute animatic based on one of the scenes from an early draft of the script.  I used it not only as an opportunity to show my interpretation of the material but my enthusiasm for the project as well.

Given my two features, I wasn’t an obvious fit for the material, and in the end I think the producers had their heart set on director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo all along (who directed Intacto and ended up directing 28 Weeks Later).  But the animatic works as a short film of its own and I thought it’d be interesting to share here.

Goodbye, Jerry

Here’s another clip I found on an old VHS after cleaning out the garage: A music video tribute to the late Jerry Garcia I edited for director Wayne Wang.  

I had just moved to San Francisco when Jerry Garcia died in the summer of 1995.  Wang had recently directed Smoke and his improv follow-up Blue In The Face, and Garcia had done music for the films.  When Garcia passed away, Wang conceived this tribute from footage of an incomplete video he directed at the time.  This piece ended up playing in theaters before Blue In The Face.  

I have fond memories putting this together and love the last image we found of Garcia in a private moment, when he didn’t realize the camera was rolling.