Matthew Schutt. "Cheer Up, Sleepy Jean"
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Life isn't ever all comedy or all a tragedy, it's both off and on (and most of the time just somewhere boring in between). |
Matthew Schutt
Where does your interest for absurdist comedies come from?I'm not sure. I grew up watching a lot of PBS, and so probably my early mind was shaped/warped by British-made television, particularly Monty Python and Douglas Adams. It probably all spawned from there.
How did the idea and the script of Cheer Up appear?
I wrote the first version of the script a long time ago for a college sketch comedy show, but always wanted to redo it in Los Angeles with a slightly bigger budget and better production value.
Then, we finished producing a feature-length movie called "While Supplies Last" that took almost two years to make, with over 90,000 frames of digital special effects, and which burned everybody out and then never really went anywhere.
After this, no one was in any shape to do another feature, so I dusted off the "Cheer Up, Sleepy Jean" script and decided to do it all relatively fast (three weeks from start to finish). We didn't allow ourselves to spend any more than three weeks on it.
Oddly enough, the "quick and easy" short that we didn't really take all that seriously ended up being better received than the feature. There's probably a lesson learned somewhere in there, but I'm not smart enough to know what it is.
In Europe there are many people who work in Family drama genre. Independent directors work with very gloomy and very painful themes like death, loneliness, illnesses and etc. How traditional are you for independent cinema in America with your views and your stories?
I don't think we're traditional for America or Russia or anywhere, really. When I first moved to Hollywood, I got a job as an editor, where I edited up-and-coming actors' demo reels. Through this job I probably saw hundreds of independent films and shorts... and they all seemed to be one of two types: either
a) a really pretentious, slow-moving film where two characters sat on a couch in a living room with white walls, talking about some really important taboo subject like incest or abortion, with lots of long dramatic pauses to keep things disinteresting
or
b) a Quentin Tarantino ripoff where people had a drug bust or stand-off with lots of guns blazing.
These both seemed terribly unoriginal to me, and so I vowed to do something different... still exploring many of the odder themes of indie films, but just not in a "traditional" way at all.
The way you are telling your story (both the story itself and the style you are using) is very “exotic” for Europe. What inspired you? What affected your views in general?
It's probably "exotic" for North America, too.
On past productions, I've had people tell me that it wasn't "proper" to mix absurdist comedy and sad drama themes in the same piece, which I don't agree with at all. Life isn't ever all comedy or all a tragedy, it's both off and on (and most of the time just somewhere boring in between).
So this short is something of an answer to that, but taking the concept to its extreme... a comedy about a funeral.
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Or was the film just a joke?
Nah, not a joke (although critics may call it that). More like a knowing wink to the audience, and reminding them to make time to laugh, even when things aren't going well (and maybe ESPECIALLY when things aren't going well).
How did you organize the film? Who financed it?
We approached the film very much like a sketch-comedy skit. I produced and directed it, and held auditions.
Natalie Williams choreographed the dancing part of it all. John Lucchese recorded and mixed the song a week or so before the big shoot. (and we couldn't find a microphone stand that day so we ended up singing into a boot).
Oh, and my credit cards financed the whole thing.
What was NOT funny on the set during the shooting?
It ended up being the hottest day of the year, so we were dancing around in suits in 102(38C)-degree sun!
Another dumb question… Ethics, being politically correct – it is ot about you, is it? What do you think about being politically correct nd other conventionalities?
Political correctness is for retards.
Did you sell your film? If yes, where? What does independent film distribution look like in America?
No, it's hard to sell a short. We intended this to be more of a "hey, look what we can do for almost no budget" demo to try to show off our skills for a bigger future project.
What do you think of Hollywood?
It's great in that there is a huge pool of very talented people that I really enjoy working with, and I've learned a lot in my nine years here. But it is very challenging to do the sort of offbeat things that we're doing... the industry is really slow to realize how commercial indie productions really can be, if they reach their target audience.
What do you do besides filmmaking?
Not much. As I get older, I'm finding I'm not really good at much else other than filmmaking. And a lot of people would say I'm not even any good at that!
What are your plans?
We had so much fun doing "Cheer Up, Sleepy Jean" that many of the cast and crew have reunited to form an ongoing anthology series of short "webisodes" for the internet called "The Future Dead."
The show is pretty manic... some weeks it's absurdist comedy, some weeks drama, some weeks sci-fi/fantasy... but all done by the same group of people. The plan is to have new material online weekly, on a new "telezine" called
wayside.tv. The scheduled launch date of www.wayside.tv and "The Future Dead" is July 3, 2006.
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Сейчас, во время окончания съемок первого сезона " The Future Dead " я чувствую только одну эмоцию в конце дня – довольную усталость. |
rushes
Anything you would like to say?
Yes.