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Restless

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : The story of a terminally ill teenage girl who falls for a boy who likes to attend funerals and their encounters with the ghost of a Japanese kamikaze pilot from WWII.

Opened September 16, 2011

Runtime:1 hr. 33 min.

 

Interview with Director Gus Van Sant, Producer Bryce Dallas Howard

(Q): How did you get into this project?

(Gus Van Sant): I saw the script 40 drafts later, or however many. It had been developed over a couple of years. It interests me partly because I usually look at story, character, settings, and I liked the settings of the memorials and the funerals. I liked that this guy was not invited but he was going. He had a schedule and he was attending; it said something about him. I know some people that do that. Usually it's to get free food.

People don't really need to be doing that but somehow they have an obsession. They can't pass up the free whatever. The Enoch character was all about being in his world and that Annabel was pushing him, like "I want to be your friend. I want to be your friend." She had her agenda; it was so separate from his. His was to stay wrapped up in his sorrow, and hers was to let loose and have fun. And choosing him, just grabbing him and saying "I select you to have fun."

(Bryce Dallas Howard): Jason Lew, who wrote it, is one of my really good friends. Wevwent to NYU together and we've been friends for like 12 years. And when I read it it was a very, very, very early version of it and he had been kind of thinking about it as a play and then was considering making a shift towards a screenplay, and this is the first thing that he's written. So he gave it to a few of his friends to read and I was one of his friends who read it, and the first time I talked to him about it we talked for literally four and a half hours. I think that the things that drew me to it, it was the opportunity to work with Jason, we had done several plays together and he's a very dynamic, creative, intelligent, sensitive person and I really wanted to work on something with him.

Not in any kind of a professional capacity but just in a creative capacity. And then I think the other thing specifically that drew me to it was I knew that it was such a personal story for him. His father is a pediatric oncologist, and so many of his friends growing up were his father's patients who were battling terminal illnesses. And so the fact that I knew that it was so close to him I just kind of felt like okay this is going to be a process that is going to be one that's very honest and true and poignant. And I think that's why anyone wants to get into a creative discussion is to bring out the more truthful things underneath and drives all of us to be creative.

(Q) : The film is very much based on the performances of Henry and Mia. I was wondering if you could speak about how they became attached to the project and were you happy with the performances?

(Bryce Dallas Howard): I had nothing to do with that. That was all Gus.

(Gus Van Sant): We were casting with Francine Maisler, who had done "Milk." Mia was well known at the time for being on the show "In Treatment," and a lot of people talked about her. She kind of was making waves, which is hard from just a small show like that. But I guess everyone's on the lookout for the new person, the new girl. I heard about her from my next door neighbor who was a filmmaker but who is also somebody who is really into casting. He belonged to all these casting clubs and he made movies. He makes films with large casts of girls, so he of course was on the case. And then Henry was more of a person that Francine knew about because she knew his manager, Ilene Feldman, and Ilene was saying that Henry was going to come over from Berlin.

He was painting, he really wanted to be a painter but she thought he would be reallygood for this movie. And when he finally came over he was really good?and we really liked him. Both of them could really take the script, because they were so good, and make it their own very fast without seemingly too much trouble. You can sort of tell how much work they've done beforehand, and they weren't completely off the page, so that meant that they hadn't done too much work on it but they were able to make it sound like they were saying lines as opposed to saying lines that Jason had written. Sometimes you even cast people when it's not quite fluid, like you say "We'll get it." But in this case both Mia and Henry were sort of able to do that. They just had the ability to do that.

(Q) : Could you talk about casting someone who initially wasn't born in the United States, Japanese actors who don't speak English initially. Talk about the casting process of hiring the other actors.

(Gus Van Sant): We had some people come in and I think there were a few Japanese actors that had been sent to us from Japan. There was a connection we had in Japan that was doing a little bit of casting, and Ryo went on tape. He didn't really want to go on tape for some reason, but we said "You've got to because there are too many people wondering." I knew him socially, which was interesting. I knew him because whenever I would go to Japan, I think the first time was in 2003, he was a friend of my interpreter.

And so one day he came to lunch with us and I didn't know who he was, he was just like the friend, and he was this guy, and I said "What does he do?" and he said "He's an actor." So then the next time I went back he came by my hotel and he brought some DVDs that he wanted to show me. And the communication was always very broken between Ryo and me. He's much better now, but at the time it was very hard for him to speak English. He would speak very slowly. So I knew him and I think I had seen one of his films as well; I can't remember what it was called. Is there one called like "I'm a Wardrobe" or something about a wardrobe?

(Q) : Yes.

(Gus Van Sant): I think he's in that one, which is a strange film. He was the only one that I knew and I really liked him. He also had a presence; he had a name in Japan. He wasn't like a pop idol but he was a respected actor and working a lot in Japan. So we offered it to him.

(Q): As your producing debut how was it behind the camera instead of acting?

(Bryce Dallas Howard): A thousand percent frumpier. It was an incredible experience for me and definitely a creatively defining experience for me. But I don’t think honestly, while it was profoundly educational, I don't think I could actually apply a hundred percent kind of what the day to day was like on this to anything else because just Gus being the filmmaker that he is, he's masterful and all of that, but he's also from a production standpoint a kind of insanely efficient filmmaker.

We came in so under budget, which I had nothing to do with, because of the way that Gus works and because of the way that Gus works with his crew he's worked with a lot. And so if I turn around and produce an independent film with a first time filmmaker I think I'd be in for a bit of a disappointment. So it was a great experience.

(Q) : What were some of those fires that you had to put out? Sometimes everything comes down on the producer.

(Bryce Dallas Howard): About two years into the development process I partnered up with Imagine Entertainment, which was sort of an interesting thing because the script was done, we'd done a bunch of workshops and read-throughs of it and we knew that it was ready to take meetings on it. And the moment that the script kind of went out into the industry it was on this thing called the black list. It's a list of movies that come out each year which are unproduced movies, screenplays that are considered the best screenplays. So it was on that and people were really interested to be a part of it. So I met with a bunch of independent producers and production companies, and the production company that I felt understood it the most was actually Imagine Entertainment and these two executives that I met with.

And then it was this weird thing where they needed to talk to my dad and Brian about it and then my dad called me and said "Well who exactly are these other people that you're talking to about with this project? I think Imagine would be a good home." And it's true. The moment that the project was set up there they just completely took it to the next level and facilitated bringing it to Gus and to Sony.

And so when you mentioned the fires, I was never alone in anything I was doing, and the people that I was relying upon were people who had been working for years and years and years in the business at Imagine Entertainment and also at Sony. So that I think is also a very kind of specific experience that if and when I produce again I just need to remember that so that I don't set myself up for some kind of disastrous situation thinking I can do something that I can't.

(Q) : There's a little bit of a poignant line in the movie: "You have so little time to say anything." I seem to find there's a fascination on the kamikaze pilot that you have so little time to do anything. It was in the script, obviously, but what's your view on that about the kamikaze pilot?

(Gus Van Sant): You mean the metaphor?

(Q): Metaphor. I'm sorry I couldn't describe it well.

(Gus Van Sant): I always thought of him as an imaginary friend of Enoch's.Instead of really a ghost I think he was really more like a ghost for Enoch, from his imagination. I think it's an interesting thing because she also has a limited time as a kamikaze may, if he's in line to actually send a plan into the enemy battleship. But I think it was one
of those little metaphors that are in there that Jason created.

(Bryce Dallas Howard): He was reading a book, I'm going to probably get the title of his book wrong, but I think it was called "The War in Japan" or something like that. It was about kamikaze pilots. So he was reading that at the time when he was writing this, and those stories and kind of reading the letters that the pilots had written for their loved ones before they went up and all of that, he just felt like he wanted that to be a part of this story somehow. And I think metaphorically what he identified was that there are three characters and they're all in these liminal places in their lives.

And Henry's character, Enoch, is someone who did die, who was in a coma and came back to life, and is not able to find a way to live yet, hasn't been able to really come alive yet. Annabel's character is a character who is very, very alive, but who is going to die in three months. And then Ryo's character, Hiroshi, is a character that has died and hasn't been able to move on, is still here on Earth. And then they're all in each other's lives, and because of their friendships with one another they're able to help one another move on and transition to that next phase. So I think that's kind of how he worked, or he justified the character from a narrative standpoint.

(Q): Shooting in Portland, which you're familiar with; is it your hometown?

(Gus Van Sant): Yes.

(Q) : Was this sort of a homecoming for you? How did the shoot go? How long was it from the beginning to the end and did you find working in an environment that you were comfortable with helped the setting of the movie? Because you do get a feel for the neighborhood and in the mwoods and stuff. There's definitely a scenery aspect that's nice.

(Gus Van Sant): I've done a lot of films there, so it was one in maybe a group of six films that I've shot there. And yeah, you get to work at home, you get to find places, some of which you know about.

(Bryce Dallas Howard): Like his backyard, where a lot of it was shot actually.

(Gus Van Sant): The park stuff was off the back edge of a field where I live out on Sauvie Island. But then you see new places in your own community, which is nice. And you're finding new people to work with. But yeah, I was already there so it wasn't really like a homecoming.

(Q): Speaking of scenery, you worked with the DP, Harris Savides for a couple of movies. Could you talk about the aesthetic approach on this location and how you achieved that?

(Gus Van Sant): Every time we shoot we kind of have the same sort of discussion, which is we start out being able to shoot any way we choose, we have people that we like, films that we like that we reference. Harris has standard films and I have standard films that we like. At this point we know what they are. We have things that we've tried before on other films that didn't work out that we try again. With this film though I think we were just going to shoot either in 35 format or else digital, and we tested out the digital and it wasn't really fast enough as far as seeing it in graveyards at nighttime, where film could actually see more. So we were back to our standard format of 35mm film.

(Q) : I heard Harris Savides hates shooting in digital, so I was curious.

(Gus Van Sant): Well he really likes film, but film is becoming less and less manufactured and less and less maintained in labs. He had shot digital on "Zodiac." He was happy with the digital, it's just that it was so big, the camera was so big. It was a different project because it was more money, and the shooting schedule was like a 110 days or something like that, where ours was 28 days. It just made it all easier shooting on 35. We wanted to shoot digital, it's just we didn't have the money to put up big lights and stuff. He often wants to shoot in 16 because it's grainer, and the grain of 35 is so good now.

He usually thinks of "The Godfather" as the gold standard of a look of a film, so in order to get that look Harris claims that you have to shoot 16 because the grain structure of 16 is more like "The Godfather" in 1971. "The Hurt Locker" was shot in 16, now it's a little more accepted. However, I think that digital is taking over so fast that even shooting in 16 is problematic as far as the upkeep of equipment. I have a friend who just shot 16 and it was hard for them to find lenses that were operational in the right way. And just the processing, like things are being processed less because so many people are shooting digitally that it's kind of overtaking, especially this year.

(Q): Did Jane Adams have a larger role at any point?

(Gus Van Sant): No, it was always the same.

(Q): Do you watch "Hung"? Are you familiar with that series?

(Gus Van Sant): I've never seen "Hung," no, but I knew she was on it.

(Q) : Gus, one of the things you're known for is you do a technique called the silent take, which brings out the best naturally of your actors. I understand that you basically learned that a little bit from Malick. I'm just wondering when did you start using that technique and why do you think it's so important for you to use it when you're working with your actors in terms of getting that performance from them?

(Gus Van Sant): I used it on "Milk," and it was really something Sean Penn told me about because he had worked with Terry Malick. It's not really about getting a performance because we do the silent take after we've done the scene. Like we do the scene maybe three or four times and then we get it right. The silent take is just like an extra little added on piece, which is just so that you have the take silently so that even if you need to have silence for a little bit you can have it. Sometimes during the middle of a long five minute dialog scene you just need a little bit of a break where people aren't talking, and if you haven't shot that the only way to get it is to cut back and forth really fast so it becomes frenetic.

You kind of need a silent take; you need something to patch in there. So that's the way I was using it. We were shooting it just in case. Like in "Milk," where Scott, Harvey's boyfriend, says "Goodbye. I'm leaving. This is too much. Your running again and again for office is breaking us up and I'm leaving." There used to be a whole lot of dialog, a lot of discussion, a lot of back and forth, and then he leaves. And then we did a silent version and it was in that part of the movie you kind of just needed a scene that didn't have dialog.

And him leaving was stronger if he just sort of did it while they looked at each other. It was more touching rather than discussing it. So I mean in that case it was worth it to shoot the silent takes just so you had it for that one scene. And so you never know when that one scene is going to be the scene that you want. So it's like a safety. Malick I think is using it a lot differently. He's using silent takes in very artistic places. He's sometimes having things be silent or sometimes he's putting voiceover. I realize in "The Tree of Life" his use is quite different.

(Q): Yeah, I was just going to say, there's like a whole half hour where nobody says a word in "The Tree of Life." How do you think an audience reacts to something like that where there's no dialog? And then there's "The Artist," which is a silent movie. How do you think audiences will gage that?

(Gus Van Sant): I think they like "The Tree of Life" a lot. I suppose it did well. I wasn't following the numbers.

(Q): But do you think it works?

(Gus Van Sant): Yeah, I thought that film was great.

(Bryce Dallas Howard): I mean I think people are all very different and have very different tastes, and like anything, audiences feel differently. It's not like everybody feels similarly about a certain movie. There are certain people who love certain movies and other people that a movie doesn't resonate with them or whatever. But I think "Tree of Life" is definitely making a very significant impact for sure.

(Q): Could you talk about the collaboration of working with Danny Elfman, who's really known for the soundtrack and using very specific
timings?

(Gus Van Sant): I think we worked together like three or four times. Or maybe five times. "Psycho," "Good Will Hunting," "Milk," "To Die For." So five times. "To Die For" was the first time I worked with him. I had worked with a composer on "Drugstore Cowboy," Elliot Goldenthal, but Elliot kind of, I think he was working in another city, so he just sort of would send over the cues. For Danny, when he worked on "To Die For," I said "Well you know, just go make the score and just surprise us," and he's like "No, no, no. I have to play you samples." He had a method, which was he would make different things on a keyboard that would suggest different ideas for places that you spotted music, so you could choose from four different attitudes.

In spotting one A he would play you four things and he'd go "Pick one," and you'd pick one and he'd say "Okay," and write it down so he'd know the direction to go. So it was very interactive. With this it was similar. He plays you cues, he evaluates what he wants to be doing, he relies on inspiration to create stuff. He has to allow his inspiration to guide him, but at the same time he wants to check with you to make sure that where he's going is okay. It's kind of great. So I would go down there, he was working on Vermont and Santa Monica and I would go down to his studio.

(Q): Bryce, would you say probably if there was any disappointment in making this film is the fact that you didn't get to work with Gus as an actress?

(Bryce Dallas Howard): No. PS, I do want to work with you as an actress. You're going to see me harassing you in various auditions until it happens when I'm like 50-something. But because I wasn't acting in it I was able to focus all the more on what my job was, which was a very new job for me, and I think I needed that focus. I think if I was acting I would feel like I'm not doing both of these jobs to the best of my ability because I have to do both of these jobs. If I was some veteran or something hopefully I would be able to kind of juggle the two, but definitely at that point I needed to be just doing one job.

(Q): So from the very beginning you were always intended on being a producer; you weren't acting in it?

(Bryce Dallas Howard): Yeah.

 

(Q): I'm curious, with young actors, especially Henry Hopper, who this was his film debut, do you become a different director with younger actors? Are you still giving them the direction but you're realizing they're sort of in the sandbox a little bit? I'm curious how you dealt with young actors.

(Gus Van Sant): I think I just deal with everyone the same. The age doesn't really matter and the level of professionalism I don't think makes a difference either. I'm kind of listening to them and commenting, or suggesting things, like what I was thinking, or they would talk to me about what they were thinking. If they're less used to it they won't be talking in the same way if they're novices. Novices have often been in films where there is no script, so they're able to just sort of be themselves. I remember there are these twins in "Last Days" who are Mormon, like sort of call guys that knock on your door. They came in and they just gave a whole talk about their religion in hopes that the people listening would read some of the pamphlets. And they just sort of did it all on their own and they weren't actors.

(Bryce Dallas Howard): Not like this is something you're going to want to quote or anything, but just based on your question it dawned on me I'm about to direct something in a week and a half. There are two actors in it, a seven year old and an 11 year old, and I did a lot of auditions just to kind of find the right person. And at the beginning I had all this energy because I'm a mom and wanting to make them feel really comfortable, and by the end of it I was just treating them exactly the same as I treat all of the adult actors, and having the exact same expectations as well, which is probably inappropriate. And the two young girls who were hired were the ones who they felt very mature in their ability to handle being in an adult work environment.

(Gus Van Sant): A week and a half you start shooting?

(Gus Van Sant): In Vancouver?

(Bryce Dallas Howard): No, in LA.

(Q): What's it called?

(Bryce Dallas Howard): It's untitled right now. I like to go into shooting with untitled projects. I don't know what that's about. Ours is untitled.

(Q): What's it about?

(Bryce Dallas Howard): It's going to be like a 30 minute film and it's about these two sisters who are in their early 30s and it's kind of clear that they don't really have a relationship anymore. And it just takes place over the course of one day where one goes to find the other, and most of the movie is in flashbacks flashing back to the day their mother died where one of them had this very supernatural experience that kind of divided them forever. So it's about kind of them trying to revisit the experience like 20 years later. It'll be fun.

(Q) : Did Henry used to go over to his father's set or something? Because even his first film he seems to know a lot about the film, so I was curious if he was walking around his father's set?

(Gus Van Sant): I think he probably did. I think he'd done a certain amount of theater work as summer classes in Santa Monica. He didn't seem to know sets very well. But I'm sure he had been on sets with his dad.

(Q): Do you know who his mom is?

(Gus Van Sant): Yeah, we know his mom.

(Q): Can you tell us her name?

(Bryce Dallas Howard): Yeah you can just look it up. Her name is Katherine.

(Q): Because he looks really young.

(Gus Van Sant): He's 20.

(Bryce Dallas Howard): He just turned 21.

(Q): He must have been from a later marriage or something I guess.

(Bryce Dallas Howard): I'm sure if you just do like a Wikipedia search. I didn't really look into the specifics of his parent's relationship or anything like that so none of us should go on record saying anything. But yeah, I'm sure that you can find that info.

(Q): This is actually something I've always wanted to ask you, Gus. We were talking before about Malick and history and "The Godfather" and also for you Bryce, because of the history with your father and growing up around the film industry. Let's just say that both of you instead of being filmmakers you're both professors and you're teaching the history of film and you just have a certain amount of films to show in your curriculum. What films would you show and why? When I asked Dennis the question about three years ago he just said "I'll just show 'Easy Rider' like 10 times." So you can use your own films if you want.

(Gus Van Sant): How many films? 10?

(Q): Let's say like five. We don't have a lot of time.

(Gus Van Sant): Three. I don't know, it changes all the time so it's hard for me to answer those questions because every year is different. There was a party in Toronto and they were showing on the wall "Luna." Do you know this film? Jill Clayburgh; it's a Bertolucci film. And it's one of my favorite films so at the party I was just watching it. I'd probably show that one. I don't know; it takes too much time to think them up.

(Bryce Dallas Howard): For me?

(Q): Yeah, do you have any?

(Bryce Dallas Howard): It's not the answer you want though. If I was really teaching a class on filmmaking what I would do is I would show the students old "Popeye" and Road Runner, like those kinds of Bugs Bunny cartoons, and I'd make them watch it with sound and because they're very simple break down the narrative and the storytelling because you don't get confused. You can really understand what the different acts are and what the sequences are and whose point of view it is and all of that. And then I would have them watch them all and study them all without sound so that they can understand what filmmaking went into it.

Because when you watch a movie without sound you can see what the setups are and you can see how the camera's working and that becomes more apparent. And so once they kind of graduated from that then I would probably just focus on different genres, and probably the first genre would be like an adventure movie like "Indiana Jones" or something, and do the same thing with one of those movies, or like "Star Wars." Just very genre specific films, because I feel like you understand filmmaking when you watch movies like that ,whereas when you watch movies that are masterpieces I think they're inspiring, but from these very basic, or like silent films or something, you really understand what the filmmaking is.

(Q): I don't know why you say I wouldn't like it. I'd sign up for your
class in a heartbeat.

(Bryce Dallas Howard): I think about these kinds of things. I don't know why.

(Q): The kamikaze pilot uniform seems very well designed and very specific, like some of the elements look really handmade. I was curious how they worked on that, how you actually hired them to work on that.

(Bryce Dallas Howard): This was Danny Glicker. He worked with Gus before.

(Gus Van Sant): Yeah our costumer, Danny Glicker, made it. I mean we had pictures.

(Q) : Did they see any videos, or basically just a picture?

(Gus Van Sant): They were still pictures that the kamikaze pilots that were in the book that we had. They had different styles. They had different flair, like Starbucks workers. Like some of them rolled up their
sleeves, some of them put their hats back.

(Q): So when you go to direct in a week and a half have you taken
away anything from Gus?

(Bryce Dallas Howard): We're doing the silent take.

(Gus Van Sant): Really?

(Bryce Dallas Howard): Oh yeah.

(Gus Van Sant): Well I mean it makes sense because you just find yourself in editing room and you all of a sudden have to go back and shoot over again just because you can't get the person to walk to the window without their mouth moving.

(Bryce Dallas Howard): It was amazing just observing that, how it seems like such an obvious thing to do and it's so weird that only a handful of filmmakers are doing it.

(Q): You were talking before about the option of shooing either on 35 or on digital, and you were saying how less and less film is being used.

(Gus Van Sant): They're not making reversal 16mm [plus x 39:27]. They're not manufacturing stuff.

(Q): We're also in a time right now where it's kind of like a YouTube generation where anybody who's anybody can make a film. My look at it, it kind of feels like this year the studios are starting to pick up on it, and I don't know if you agree with that, but do you see a point where maybe some of these lower budgeted films and some of these digital films can overtake the studios or at least compete with them?

(Gus Van Sant): Oh because of the cost?

(Q): Because of the cost and because of the fact that anybody can make it.

(Gus Van Sant): Yeah, I totally think so. It's a great thing; it just makes it more democratic. On your iPhone you can make a film and get it on
iMovie and edit it and it's pretty much all you need.

(Bryce Dallas Howard): When self-distribution becomes a legitimately viable thing, I mean it's already happening, but particularly self-distribution, not just digitally but in the theaters, then everything is going to shift significantly.

(Q): How do you feel about people watching your films on such a tiny
little screen?

(Gus Van Sant): Well you can project it; it can be big or small. Just because it's on YouTube or made with a camera doesn't mean it has to be on a small screen.

(Q): But I mean people actually watching it on an iPhone. I see people on the train now watching movies on their iPad. That's not a great experience; I wouldn't like to watch a movie that way.

(Gus Van Sant): I mean I think the iPad is fine. It's really, really clear, and as long as you have earphones it's pretty good. I think it's fun. Like people have home theaters that are screens almost as big as a theater. I don't know; I think it's all fun.

(Bryce Dallas Howard): I mean it's definitely making cinema more accessible because there are these devices that exist that you can watch films at your own convenience. One of my dad's favorite movies is "The Graduate," and when he saw "The Graduate" I remember him saying "I saw it 20 times in the theaters," and I was like 20 times in the theaters? That doesn't happen anymore. But it was because at that time you would have to buy probably a print of the film in order to screen it yourself afterwards in order to watch it again because they didn't have home video and of course laserdiscs and DVDs and all of that.

So the fact that people have access to movies so much more readily I think there's a massive audience that storytellers are able to reach that probably wouldn't because they are really busy and they've got a lot of kids at home and they just can't go out to the theaters or whatever it is. Now they're able to watch movies, which is probably a good thing.

(Q): But growing up with that do you enjoy watching movies on a little, tiny screen or do you like the whole experience of it?

(Bryce Dallas Howard): I mean I like the experience of it, but to be totally honest I feel like I'm a more discerning audience member when I am watching it on a really small screen because if the story is great it will captivate me no matter what the experience is like. Sometimes I've gone to screenings of movies when all my friends are  a part of it or something and I'll leave the movie and I'll be like that was the best movie I've ever seen.

And it's actually really not a good movie but because of the cinematic experience I kind of got swept away and I was not a very discerning audience member at that point. But when I'm watching something and it holds up and I'm watching it by myself on a screen that's this big, again this wouldn't be ideal. This is not ideal, and I am always taking a stand for the communal cinematic viewing experience. But what I will say is I've noticed there are some movies that I watch on a screen this big, and when they make me cry that is a really good film. It really speaks to the quality.

(Q): As much as it would be easy to make a film these days at the?same time obviously they have so much competition because it's easy to?make a film. When you look at the Sundance Film Festival, 10, 15 years?ago it was a thousand or 1500 submitted, but right now it's a couple?thousand or even more than that. Obviously unless you are attached to?or hire some well-known actors or you've submitted to the festival?previously it's kind of hard to get the selection in the first place.?What do you think about that kind of eliminating filmmakers?

(Bryce Dallas Howard): Tell me if I'm wrong; what you're saying is that because there's?such a huge quantity of movies how does the cream sort of rise to the top.

(Q): When it comes to that many filmmakers it's kind of hard to get a selection in those festivals unless you've been selected previously or have a well-known actor attached to it.

(Bryce Dallas Howard): It makes a difference.

(Q): Because it used to be Sundance was more for the amateur filmmakers.

(Gus Van Sant): I mean it's about curating. I mean there's a curator. We have a film festival in Bend, Oregon, and I noticed that the first year the curating, even though they were the same films from the same festivals, wasn't as good as the second year because they were learning. It's really about curating, like curating an exhibit in a museum. The festival programmer programs it as opposed to just allowing anyone in. Supposedly they're the ones that are discerning.

(Bryce Dallas Howard): Yeah it's like a benevolent dictatorship.

(Q): I understand that but the question is if you have a programmer, like at the New York festival they have like five people there and the selection is very small, but when it's Sundance Film Festival they have hundreds of movies and the submissions are like a couple thousand. Who has the time to watch anybody unless your name is attached to some well-known actors or a well-known producer or you made a film previously that Sundance people recognized?

(Gus Van Sant): Well supposedly they have a system.

(Bryce Dallas Howard): Specifically Sundance, they have a pretty large infrastructure to get through all of the material, and that is how a lot of people still get discovered is through that. I think where it becomes I think even more, and I think you're right, where it becomes even more of an issue is more what films get bought, because sometimes it's hard to market films unless an audience knows whether or not they trust the people involved. The first thing people ask is who's in it? And you're just like oh, it's all unknowns. Well who directed it? It's a first-time filmmaker.

I guess then the next thing that you go to is who's producing it or who's releasing it? If it's Fox Searchlight or Sony Picture Classics you'll be like okay, I'm sure it's really good. But it's kind of important to have one of those elements in order for people to show up initially. Otherwise it needs to be more of a grassroots campaign, and that's a lot of work for the filmmakers, and there are movies that have been very successfully done in that kind of a way. But yeah, I agree with you. There are certain elements still that define whether or not someone is going to invest their time and money in seeing the movie.

End.