Q1. What inspired the story for Passenger Side?
In the spring of 2000, a friend and I drove my old Toyota Camry wagon from Los Angeles to New York City. I made a video of the trip, titled Long May You Run, which chronicled the dynamics of two old friends, stuck inside an automobile, with a box of mixed tapes, while America unrolled outside. That experience got me thinking about interior dialogues and exterior images, and as I’m often thinking about brothers, that eventually led to writing the screenplay; also, and obviously to fans of indie rock, I lifted the basic conceit from the song Passenger Side, by the band Wilco, which concerns itself with one friend driving another, who seems to have had his or her license suspended, around for the day.
Q2. Could you elaborate on some of the ideas in the film?
At the most basic and important level, that of the characters, Passenger Side is concerned with a couple of themes: the nature of family, brotherhood, and sibling rivalry; the merits of artistic success and failure; and, the likelihood of redemption though sacrifice; that said, the movie is meant to be funny, and all of these rather heavy matters are dealt with, hopefully, in a rather light manner.
On a social level, the film is concerned with outsiders passing through, and offering some sort of reflection of, or on, a foreign culture; sort of like Leopold Bloom wandering around Dublin in Ulysses, only a lot shorter, and much stupider; or Odysseus making his way home through ancient Greece, only a bit more epic.
On the geo-political level, I remember watching the film Crash, not the Cronenberg one, the other one, and then thinking to myself: “well, that can’t be right, that can’t be what driving around Los Angeles is about.” Then it occurred to me that both these films were made by Canadians, and that I was Canadian, and that I lived in Los Angeles, where I did a fair amount of driving, and since I’m not one to turn up the stereo when the universe is clearly speaking to me, I realized that I’d have to make a movie about Canadians driving around Los Angeles; so, in a certain way, the film is a different cut on the Canadian cinematic view of Los Angeles; that is to say, if the younger Crash were Nickleback, then Passenger Side would be D.O.A.
Finally, on the ever pressing “meta-narrative/fiction’s place in the end of the world as we know it” level, the movie does take a few seconds to think about the how, why and use of the story it is telling. Clearly, it’s a dull question, and there is no satisfactory answer, but as we travel ever further down the suck hole of contemporary events, on our way to that date with the apocalypse, as an audience member you can’t help wondering at which point – unending wars, unnatural catastrophes, economic meltdowns, daily plagues, rains of toads, three headed baby-a-thons – do we stop watching movies; conversely, as a filmmaker you can’t help worry that, for better or for worse, audiences are never going to stop, that Huxley was probably right, and that you’re probably just in the “Feelies” business; concerns that, at a certain level, are probably shared by the film and its characters.
Q3. Can you talk about the casting?
This was an easy film to cast. I had written the parts with Adam and Joel in mind, and since, so far, neither have been very good at turning down my propositions to work long hours for little money, we were, more or less, in business. Further, it was pretty important that they have a strong, brotherly relationship, and since Joel is my brother, and Adam is, sadly for him, in a bunch of ways, a lot like me, I felt we were starting ahead of the game.
For a number of the other characters, I had friends in mind, and happily they all agreed. And for the few roles I didn’t have someone, we did an open casting call at the FIND offices in Los Angeles, and some really wonderful, talented people walked through the door. Adam is an executive producer on the film, and he became pretty involved with the basics of cheap budget filmmaking, casting being one of those. He read with the other actors for the auditions, and it was helpful for me to have his opinions and perspective, and I think it was helpful for him to be on the other side of the table, and experience what it’s like to operate as a complete asshole.
Q4. How important was the location to the telling of the story?
Los Angeles was built around the automobile, and so if you were going to make a road movie that never leaves the city, it’s a pretty good town to go with.
Q5. Can you talk about the music?
Sure, in general I’m against loads of rock songs in movies, particularly when they are dropped like “cool” sprinkles on a “crappy” cupcake. The exception to this rule is when the songs are part of the characters’ lives; American Graffiti and Dazed and Confused are good examples of this, Footloose would be another; that was the type of combination I was hoping for in Passenger Side. Also, since Adam’s character Michael is a bit of a Luddite, I wanted the music to have a certain “mired in the mid-eighties to mid-nineties” vibe; conversely, there are worse musical periods to be mired in, like, for instance, now.
In terms of the specifics, I had a number of songs I wanted to use. Matt Hannam, the editor is a young dude, and he threw in a couple of the less dusty tracks; Corey Marr, our producer, had some suggestions; and then Mac McCaughan, who scored my first two films, was involved as the music consultant, and he had a bunch of good ideas too. Happily, the bands involved were very cool, and very easy to deal with, and, for me at least, it was a very good collaborative experience.
Q6. What is the tone you’re seeking in the film and how did you work to achieve it?
I was hoping it would be funny; in general, we used humour to achieve this goal, though sometimes we went with comedy; however, in a few critical instances, we pushed the envelope, and combined them for maximum impact!
Q7. What kind of visual style did you settle on for the film, and how does that speak to the themes you’re working with?
There are a number of films and filmmakers that I was thinking of when making Passenger Side. In general, I would see the film as some type of step-child of eighties North American independent cinema (Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley, Alex Cox, Bruce McDonald, Penelope Spheeris, etc). This period of filmmaking is something I’ve been referencing in my first three movies. I enjoy these films as works of art, but I also have this idea that they stand as a sort of last gasp of romance and mystery in popular North American cinema, and I strongly believe that art, romance and mystery have a place in that arena, even in light of all evidence to the contrary.
That said, this is my third film, and the second I’ve directed by myself, and I was certainly less concerned with the formal aspects of filmmaking than I have been. In Passenger Side the difficulties were how, on a limited budget, to make a movie that is set in a small static space (the car) feel visually dynamic. Another related difficulty was the format used. Previously I had only shot on film, but for financial reasons we shot on HD video, and this opened up a couple of cans of worms. First and foremost, I think most movies shot on video look like a pair of old man’s pants. Video is good because it’s easy and cheap and lends a kind of vérité, and it’s bad because it’s easy and it’s cheap and has the annoying habit of announcing “hey, look at me, I’m real, just like Survivor: Papua New Guinea.”
Generally speaking, I don’t think movies are particularly real, and I find realism a pretty overused style. In particular, I wanted this movie to have a slightly trippy or dreamy feel, since it ambles around like a dream; also, we would be using a fair amount of green screen and on our budget that was never going to look very real. To cut the lame “realness” of the HD video, and have that trippier/dreamier look, Jonathon Cliff, our talented DP, used an adapter and film lenses; sadly, this further restricts your visual options, as the camera and adapter set-up are fairly sensitive, and it becomes difficult to do hand-held work, and dollies are expensive, and so camera movement becomes tricky.
My answer to these problems was to get out of the car and have dialogue play over pictures. Goddard did this well, and quite a lot, Two Or Three Things I Know About Her is a good example; also, there is a bit in Manhattan where a whole scene plays in voice over as a car drives down a New York City highway, which I always liked; finally, and obviously, Terrence Malick is an absolute master of this gag. Anyway … the basic idea was to create a sense of movement and visual variation while two guys sat in a car and talked; I’m not exactly sure how that relates to the themes I blab blabbed about above.
Q8. What were some memorable occurrences during the making of the film?
We shot the whole thing in fourteen days, so I guess the end was the most memorable, in the sense that it occurred.
In particular, on our first day we were shooting without permits by the banks of the Los Angeles River, and someone called the cops, so this officer showed up, but rather than roust us out, he gave us half an hour, and stood by while we finished; then, on our last day we were shooting second unit stuff down at the Long Beach harbor, Joel and I were in the green car, while Jonathon (DP) and Marlene (1st AC) were in the van with a camera. Now the port is a strictly camera no-go zone on account of terrorism, and Al Qaeda, and so on, and so the van, with the camera pointing out the window, was quickly pulled over, and only then did I remember that Jonathon was Canadian and Marlene was German, and that they were probably going to get roasted, but again, the cops were totally cool; and so, I don’t know about the rest of the world, but from this little movie, the LAPD gets a big high-five.
Q9. What do you hope audiences take away from the film?
The will to live.
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