JAInterview4

Director Jason Apuzzo

Right now everything in Hollywood is high-def, 3-D, IMAX, RED Digital, whatever. So while everyone else is going hi-res, I suppose I'm going low-res. I thought that for this film, that was the only way to break through visually and reach people.

ML: I know you follow film technology very closely. What is your attitude about where filmmaking technology is going?

JA: You know, I was reading the other day about James Cameron's AVATAR, which he's doing in this new form of 3-D, with all these elaborate CGI effects. He's always been such an innovative filmmaker, and I'm interested to see what he comes up with. At the same time, I wonder whether as filmmakers we're becoming too removed from everyday reality. I mean, the question when you're evaluating a film is: was an interesting character created? Were you emotionally engaged in the character's fate? Those are really the important questions, because technical innovations fade over time.

KALIFORNISTAN, for example, is a relatively low-tech film. But I spent a lot of time - years, actually - working on the central character, the terrorist. Characters are everything. If you don't get that right, the rest doesn't actually matter.

ML: Let me switch subjects for a moment and ask you about who your filmmaking heroes are.

JA: Well, the people who have had the biggest influence on me by far are the great Bay Area independent filmmakers George Lucas and Francis Coppola. I've had the chance to talk to George a few times, and I've made a few trips up to Skywalker Ranch and the Presidio - which is like visiting Valhalla for filmmakers. Just fantastic. Years ago I got to sit in Coppola's editing room when Walter Murch was re-cutting APOCALYPSE NOW, and that was incredible.

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ML: Tell me more about the style of the film. It has an unusual look to it.

JA: The challenge on this film was to depict insanity. The film had to look like the private journal of a madman. So I decided to make the film as fragmentary, mashed-up and degraded as possible. You can't really depict madness and do it in crystalline, hi-def clarity. So I shot KALIFORNISTAN digitally, but then I degraded the image so that it looked like a mash-up of 16mm black-and-white, night vision, and security cam video. I think there's even some Flash video in there.

“You can't exactly pitch this kind of film in Hollywood .... The industry's ... too shiny-happy for that.”

What I like about the Bay Area guys is that they're romantics about the cinema. They're innovators, first and foremost. That's the essence of what makes them special, and so different from what you see in Hollywood. Every independent filmmaker should be inspired by what they did in the early days of American Zoetrope.

The person who really mentored me through the shooting of KALIFORNISTAN, however, was Irvin Kershner. Kersh is probably best known for directing THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. He really pushed me to go the independent route, and not become another industry clone.

ML: As far as Lucas and Coppola are concerned, what aspect of their work has had the biggest influence on you?

JA: I think it has to do with the depiction of evil ... in all its glamor and complexity. When I was little, I was enthralled by those characters Lucas and Coppola created like Darth Vader, or Michael Corleone, or Colonel Kurtz, Emperor Palpatine, Boba Fett ... you know, these incredibly sinister and glamorous villains.

One of the things I found fascinating about the "Godfather" films, for example, was the way they were based totally around Michael Corleone - who is this exceptionally villainous character. I mean, he's murdering people right and left - including his own brother - yet we find Michael Corleone fascinating, because he has such a strong emotional life. He's a human being who's struggling with big moral questions. KALIFORNISTAN is obviously a tiny film by comparison, but I tried to take the same approach with respect to the terrorist.

One of the problems Hollywood has right now actually is that they don't believe in evil. And if you don't believe in evil, and everyone's just a victim, then you can't actually create any drama. What was it Hitchcock said about 'the greater the evil, the greater the film'? One reason Lucas and Coppola's movies were so compelling and successful during the 1970s was that they were committed to the idea that evil exists, and that it can be very seductive in terms of giving people what they think they want - which is power.

ML: You've also mentioned to me before that Italian films have had a big influence on you.

JA: One of my favorite periods of time for filmmaking was that moment in the mid-1960s when you had guys like Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone and Gillo Pontecorvo all working at the same time. The vitality of their films during that time was incredible. I can't imagine how exciting it must have been to go to the movies and see something like 8 1/2, or FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE, or THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS - all during that same period of time.

Those films had an experimental quality, and a tremendous sophistication in terms of cinema style.

At the same time, they're dealing with very basic, primitive emotions. That's why the films work so well.

ML: As a fellow Italian-American, what is your opinion of Tarantino?

JA: [Laughs.] I admire his independence. It would be very easy for him to sell himself off to the system, and just do stupid franchise movies. He doesn't do that. Every project of his is basically sui generis, which I think is really admirable.

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Actor Nick Rish as the boyfriend in KALIFORNSTAN.