Image Icon Entertainment: How did you get started as a filmmaker?

Jonathan Caouette: Oh, gee whiz. Well, it was one of the more idiosyncratic ways one can get started. Really, there's a whole plethora of answers. I've been inadvertently making films for most of my life, and I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker at four, five years old, prior to VHS or VCRs. I would go to the cinema with my grandfather, record the soundtrack audio, run over to the drug store and he would pick me up a pack of drawing paper, and then I'd draw out makeshift storyboards of the movie based on the audio. I had like 25 of these.

They were sort of my equivalent of GI Joes. In a really sort of autistic way, I endlessly entertained myself by looking at my drawings and then listening to the soundtracks. I knew then and there that I wanted to be a filmmaker.

I'd pretty much been inadvertently making films since eight or nine, shooting stuff on Super 8. I asked my granddad to buy me a camera, and this was about '83 or '84. We were able to pick one up at a pawn shop, and Target had electronic film, so I started making films then. It was during the time when camcorders were around, but for some reason I always preferred the look of film. Tarnation is my first movie, my only movie so far, but I've been inadvertently making it for 20 some odd years now.

 

IIE: How has it been working in New York ?

JC: There's something very bizarre about New York that makes a person want to take the day and use as much of it as possible. If there's any down time, there's a sense of guilt if you're not doing anything that's proactive. There's something really disturbing about that. [laughs] It's a different rhythm here, that's for sure. I still talk about it as if I've just moved here. I've been here 11 years, and it never ceases to amaze me how much stuff I get involved in. I guess I made a splash with the movie and that's attracted quite a few people into my life.

 

IIE: Talk a little about your film Tarnation . What made you decide to turn these home movies into a film?

JC: I don't know if it was a real… It was a decision and catharsis and urgency to do it. It was also having the technology available; I was sort of waiting for home editing software to be available. As soon as my boyfriend's aunt got an iMac, I started editing everything at that point. Photographs, video, I was just cutting and pasting components I had been saving for my entire life. I compiled everything together before my mother's overdose, but I was still sort of constructing this thing. I ended up with 35 minutes of film that exist sequentially in the movie.

I happened to meet this intern from the Mix Film Festival, he was the new roommate of a friend of mine who lived around the corner from me in Queens . I showed him this 35 minutes of film that I had come up with, and he told me that I should finish it because there's a deadline for a film festival in the next three weeks. I had come into contact with John Cameron Mitchell during this time too, through an audition I had, and six degrees of separation later, found out that he was friends with the director of the Mix Film Festival, Stephen Winter.

So while I was in Texas helping my mother recover, they had been talking about possibly screening my film. Long story short, I had been working a day job as a doorman, and at night I was cater waitering, and I quit both, took a big risk, and finished the film in three weeks, just in the nick of time.

Stephen had decided to centerpiece the film for the festival, but I was informed that I would have to cut the film down to two hours; at this point, I had two hours and forty minutes of film. I was then lucky enough to have both John Cameron Mitchell and Gus Van Sant to come on as executive producers, and Stephen Winter also came on board as a more sweat-equity producer.

He utilized a lot of New York contacts to champion the film, and he was really an integral part of getting the word out about Tarnation . After Mix, we got into Sundance, and between those two festivals I had to cull the film down to 90 minutes. It's a conventional film in the way that you can sit down and watch it in a theater setting, but, initially, the two hour, 40 minute film definitely had more experimental form elements than it does now.

It has everything that it has now, but there were transitions and spots between what you're seeing now, some completely impressionistic things. But the cool thing about the film was, because it was already all there structurally, I just had to pluck out some key moments. I ended up cutting it down and actually changing the ending four days prior to Sundance, threw it into the movie, took a train from New York to Sundance and just walked the film in.

It was really the first time that people that people in the real film community saw Tarnation . A few days later, Cannes saw it, but they had a stipulation of one 35 mm print of the film with French subtitles for one or two screenings. They haven't really gone digital the casual way a lot of other festivals have.

You shoot something on Super 8, Super 16, or anything, you have to make a 35 mm print. So I had to scurry around to find a film distributor that could help me out with this; I had all of these new friends all of a sudden. That alone became $50,000. It got to the point that Gus and I were actually talking about taking a VHS copy of the film and plug it in outside of Cannes and, in a kind of guerilla way, show it. I eventually took it to Wellspring, and they really sort of saved the film and distributed it worldwide.

I had originally shot Tarnation for 217 bucks and some change. For the soundtrack, I just used music from my own CD collection. Clearing the rights, making prints and all that cost the distributor about $500,000, which is actually pretty cheap for an indie film. And the rest is history.

 

IIE: Tarnation has been screened at a number of film festivals and has won ‘best documentary' at GLAAD Media Awards, the Glitter Awards, and the Chlotrudis Awards, among others. Which of these would you say means the most to you or was the most memorable?

JC: Some of the more memorable ones was one called the Stanley Kubrick award from the Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Festival, and best documentary from the National Society of Film Critics. We also got a Target Award at the LA Film Festival, which came with a cash reward of $25,000. That came in really handy at the time.

I had really sold the farm on this film and hadn't made any money at that point. I have to say that the Sutherland Trophy from the London Film Festival was an interesting one. It's this award that you don't take away, but they engrave you name on it, and it's been around for however long. It was pretty surreal to say the least.

 

IIE: Tarnation was edited using iMovie, a program which comes free with Mac computers. Do you think that the new available technology for filmmaking hurts or helps the film industry?

JC: I don't know. It's certainly a new ilk of something nobody's ever thought of before. It's hard to penetrate a monster like Hollywood ; it's a really tough place. I personally am content making films on home video cameras and editing them on consumer editing software programs for the rest of my life. I think that what's really lacking in movies today is the ability to convey real characters and stories. Depending on how you do it, you can make a good movie just by using really nothing, as long as you have a good story to tell.

 

IIE: How difficult is it to work on a piece like Tarnation which is such a personal experience? Ever have days where you thought it couldn't be done?

JC: Yes, yes there were. Initially, it was a very private, cathartic thing I was doing. I had only anticipated putting the movie out there in a very grandiose way. I sort of fantasized about my film going out there, but when it did it was a very frightening experience because it was so personal. The distributors exploited it in a way that was indescribable; but that's just their job, that's what they do.

But it was very gutwrenching. Sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night with butterflies in my stomach, wondering about what I've done. But in other ways it's also been very healing. It's started dialogue about things like mental illness that people would mostly just sweep under the carpet. It's been very good in that respect.

 

IIE: What is the message that you hope your movie will get across? What do you want an audience to take away from it?

JC: I want my film to send two messages: first of all, from a sheer technical standpoint, that the idea of making a film in this way can encourage would-be filmmakers to know that they can make a film, there should be no more excuses. You can go to Best Buy, get a camera, and make a movie. Secondly, that I think people in general should have more empathy for people who suffer from mental illness. That's sort of it in a nutshell.

 

IIE: Any upcoming projects?

Well, right now I'm working on fast-tracking three simultaneous projects right now. Fortunately, they're all really happening, their not toppling on one another. Hopefully two of these projects will come out around 2008-2009.

The official site for Tarnation can be found at http://www.wellspring.com/tarnation/