Interview with Jonathan Caouette

by Joshua Sanchez

Joshua Sanchez:   How important do you think it is for films considered to be documentary to be absolutely truthful? Where does the story stop and reality begin? Were you concerned with that in making Tarnation?

Jonathan Caouette:   I can’t objectify my answer in regards to other documentaries because I know there is a whole slew of them popping up where those kinds of questions are coming into play. I don’t think that there really is any truth. Really, what is the truth? I can say my truth, from my point of view, but I bet my mother’s point of view is going to be completely different. I can say in regards to my film, that everything was from my point of view even with the reenactments.

I was so urgently desperate to tell the story no matter how I had to tell it that I had to get really creative. What appears to be Super-8 film footage of me in the foster home is actually my son. It’s actually video footage that I treated to look like old Super-8 film to evoke children in a foster home or a child who would resemble me in the foster home, which is actually my son.



JS:   How big a role does performance play in your work in general?

JC:    I guess I’m a performer and an actor. That was one of the initial reasons I came to New York. I came to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which is a really egregiously expensive school that I actually learned a lot from, but I was always first and foremost bitten by the film bug. I wanted to make films but it just so happened that I wanted to perform as well and integrate that in my work. For some reason, when I came to New York, I didn’t know anything about the film industry so I thought I could somehow finagle my way in as a filmmaker by way of acting. That certainly never happened.

I was on tour doing The Rocky Horror Show for a couple of years in Europe, which I also documented and have hours and hours of footage of, and there was a moment when I was with all of musical theater people, whom I never had much in common with anyway, and I said, “What the fuck am I doing?” I’m 28 years old; I need to be making films. It was around the time that people began to say, “One of these days you’ll be able to sit in your apartment and make a movie.” I never realized that could happen. When I came back from the Rocky Horror tour, home video editing systems came into the forefront and I just jumped on it. I had all this VHS and Beta footage and started digitizing everything. It was around 1999, when I transferred it to Hi-8 so I could import it via Firewire into my computer. That’s when all this started. All this madness. All these montages. Trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with all this footage.



JS:   How much do you consider the writing of Tarnation to be about the editing process?

JC:   It was all about the editing process as far as I’m concerned. I still argue with the notion that people are calling me a director because I see myself more as a crazy artist who assembles things. Although I can take what I learned acting wise and just reverse them. I don’t think I’ll have a problem working on a set anytime soon. Up to this point I’ve found myself as someone who really gets off on editing. I love the idea of doing things very frenetically. Even though I’m against the whole A.D.D., MTV generation, in the way videos are put together because I think our attention spans get shorter and shorter every year and I’m really a big fan on cinema veritè , I have to be a bit of a hypocrite because I thought for this particular piece the editing was a way to evoke an atmosphere for this kind of story. I was also getting off on the fact that there was possibly a whole new way to tell a story.

This Italian journalist out in Cannes was asking me what my objective was in making Tarnation. I told him that it was sort of based on this experience I had as a child where I had a really high fever. Like a 104 degree fever. I woke up, took off all my clothes and ran down the street in my suburb naked. I started counting very frenetically. I was out of my mind! I had walking pneumonia and pneumonia. Another experience I had that mimicked this as an adult was when I’m half asleep and half awake and I’m right about to go into dreamland and there is this whole plethora of information that comes into your mind’s eye. Almost like a waking dream. It’s like a story, or a poem, or a song. I can’t explain it, but it rushes into your mind’s eye for just a moment, makes sense for a second, and then dissipates out into the universe somewhere.

All in all, in terms of editing and use of music and the text being thrown at you in an almost Dada kind of way, so quickly that you can hardly read it, doing that was a way to lucidly transpose that experience as a child and my experience as an adult cinematically. I thought it was such a strange experience. I don’t know if a lot of people have it. Maybe I’m just insane. It’s something that happens in the mind that gets under my skin. My life and story every other day gets under my skin. The darkness of it. The beauty of it. The sadness that makes you feel good about it. Everything about it gets under my skin and I wanted to tell a story that would get under people’s skin also.



JS:   The film seems to have this organic quality to the animation and music. How long did it take you to come up with a style that matches those thoughts you were having about what you wanted to see on screen?

JC:   I don’t know how to answer that because I honestly wasn’t thinking when I made it. It was more to evoke a feeling than to intellectualize what I was doing. I would start with a simple thought, like: If you were going to make the story of your life, what would the first song be? The movie kept changing. Before my mother overdosed, the opening scene of the movie was the Nick Drake song. It was the “One little, two little, three little Indians…” in the graveyard, and that’s what started the film. When I had to go back to rescue my mother the movie changed. The subplot changed. The ending happened. But at the time it was Nick Drake. I would just stick the CD in the iMac and start cutting to the downbeat. I got off on the fact that you could put one word, or one video image on this one cello note that would evoke this completely beautiful feeling. My objective was to match visually what I heard with a lot of these songs. Someone was asking me, if cinema didn’t exist what I would do? I told them I’d be busking on 6th Street in Austin or something. I would probably be a hobo with an acoustic guitar.

I always knew and I don’t know how, subjects should always be to the right or to the left. I had seen so many movies up to that point. Inappropriate films that eleven year olds shouldn’t be seeing. That was the one good thing about growing up with my grandparents without the lack of structure was that they would let me be gone for all hours of the night and they would take me to any damn movie I wanted to. Looking back on it, I don’t advocate that. That can seriously fuck a child up and I was. I saw a lot of movies, so I always knew I wanted to be a filmmaker. I always had this aesthetic for film, somehow, someway. I can’t explain it.



JS:   Who are some of your favorite filmmakers?

JC:   David Lynch, I love. All of his stuff. His short stuff and especially Mulholland Drive. Alejandro Jardonowski who did those great epic, psychedelic films. I like Paul Morrissey, John Waters, John Cassavettes, Stanley Kurbick, Brian DePalma.



JS:   How much did the landscape of Texas influence you?

JC:   There was something about Gus Van Sant’s films that I saw when I was sixteen. I saw Mala Noche at the River Oaks Theater (in Houston). There was something on a psychic level that I could personalize about his work. I don’t know if it was gay, street kid culture that I could personalize. Not that I was ever a hustler but I was always around that world. I always felt like I couldn’t wait to get out of Texas because there was so much repression.

Also, even though I couldn’t wait to get out of Texas, I knew that filming all my stuff in Texas and having there be this Southern sensibility was very, in a weird way, homagging to Gus because he dealt with Middle America craziness. I was young when My Own Private Idaho came out. I would say, “I wish I was in Portland.” It was amazing that he came on to endorse Tarnation. I’m glad; I’m out of Texas. I’ve been here for seven years and it’s the best move I ever made.



JS:   I thought it was really interesting because a lot of the time in movies, especially, when somebody moves to New York, it’s almost the reverse. Something really bad happens when you come to New York. In Tarnation all the freeing parts of the film are when you’re here.

JC:   There are certain parallels in the movie with scenes. Like comparing and contrasting. The scene when I’m eleven parallels with the pumpkin scene. The audience reacts the same way, almost verbatim time wise when they see the two scenes. They start to laugh a little, then they start to laugh a little uncomfortably and then they stop laughing. They don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. I think the montage when I meet David is sort of the flipside to Wichita Lineman because you’re seeing all these horrific, sad texts thrown at you with this very foreboding, sappy Glen Campbell song. It’s the same montage in New York later in the film with a Magnetic Fields song. I like that.

JS:   How important is it for you to connect with a gay audience? Or is it important?

JC:   I think this movie is accessible to anybody and everybody. I never thought of it as being a gay film. I think it has been appealing thus far to a large gay audience. I think it’s important to me that Tarnation is accessible to everyone.

That was apparent at the Roger Ebert Festival. It’s a college town where the festival is held. I was anticipating that it would an audience of all college kids, which would be great. They’ll probably get it and understand and be really open to it. We walked in during the screening and like 70% of the audience was in their 70’s or 60’s. I was like, “Oh shit.” They’re not going to get it. They’re going to slam it and walk out. Everybody loved it.

JS:   Although it’s quite heavy at moments, there are some moments that are very funny.

JC:   I definitely tried to break it up as much as I could with the Blue Velvet scene. What are some aspects of my life that I can show to break this up a little bit because it was just going to be too much. I definitely kept that in mind as I made it.

JS:   Do you have any advice for low-budget filmmakers that are making movies on the same scale?

JC:   There should be no more excuses. We do live in a day and age now where you can pick up a camera and do anything. Make your damn film! I think if you have a good story to tell and you have Firewire and a camera, you can do it. I think anyone can do. I made this movie for nothing. It’s no longer a $218.32 film now because of the rights and clearances but if it’s any consolation, the later part of the film was made on a consumer camera from Best Buy that I got in Houston, the one by the Galleria. It was like $700 and had Firewire. Anyone can do it, really. Make a movie. Please. I hope it can lend inspiration to anyone who thought that they could never make a movie for financial reasons. There really should be no more excuses. We really do live in a day and age where you can do anything.



© Joshua Sanchez 2004

For more info on Joshua Sanchez:
http://joshuasanchez.net/

For more info on Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation:
http://www.i-saw-tarnation.com/