Stian Hafstad on "Small Penis"

Where did the idea come from to make Small Penis?

STIAN: It all started with the first scene. I was watching a series where one of the characters was going to an AA-meeting. It suddenly struck me that it would be funny if instead of doing the whole "my name is .. and I'm an alcoholic", he would rather pull down his pants and say "I have a small penis".

At first I did not really believe that it could amount to anything, but the more I thought about it the more I liked the idea.

First of all because it has a big comedic potential. Secondly because a small penis in my opinion works great as a metaphor for the insecurity I wanted to address with this film. Everyone has a part of their body that they're not satisfied with, and for some this really weakens their quality of living because they worry so much about it. And last but not least because the subject still, in 2009, is quite taboo.

What was the process for writing the script?

STIAN: I made a first draft which in many ways are quite similar to the final product. Then I had some sessions with a tutor who gave some grate advice on how to improve it. 

The biggest problem for me was to choose if I wanted a external or internal conflict, that is when in the film to introduce that the group leader had a normal sized penis. If the main character had found out about it earlier in the film we could have had a bit more drama between the two, and the main character could have threatened to expose the leader to the rest of the group. In my opinion this would add a lot more tension to the film, and a better dramatic structure. However I also liked the idea of the internal conflict, where the main character gradually learns to accept himself as he is. To me this just seemed to work better with the genre, and in my opionion resulted in a funnier film.

How did you create the song for the film? It's very catchy.

STIAN: The song was written by our sound guy, Erlend Myrstad. I told him I wanted a gospel song, and that I wanted to use the groups mantra as basis for the lyrics. So he created this brilliant song that I really love. We know some people who know some people who sing in a choir, so we got them to come and sing it for free. 

If any of your readers by any chance would like to download it, they can do so here for free:  http://files.me.com/erlend.myrstad/cw6t88.mp3

How long did it take you to shoot the film? And how long did it take to edit it?

STIAN: It was shot in 5 days over a 7 day period. We had about 14 days to edit it, but we did not use all of them, because our footage linked up with the storyboard very well. 

What obstacles did you have to overcome to make the film?

STIAN: As I mentioned, the subject is a bit taboo. I remember a phone call I had with a potential actor.

Stian: “Hi! My name is Stian Hafstad, and I’m calling from the University of Bergen. We’re making a short film and I was wondering if you would be interested in auditioning for us?

Man: “Yes, sure. I’d love to. I really enjoy acting. What’s the film about?”

Stian: “The film is called Small Penis, and is about a support gr..”

*click*

Stian: “Hello? Hello? Are you there?”

So we had many encounters with people who did not like the subject. 

Also, we had to postpone the shoot for one day, and reshoot some scenes, because the guy who played the youth version of the main character punctured a lung in the filming period. But luckily we managed to find a replacement quite quick so we got the shots we needed. And that is why the main character looks so different when he's a teenager and when he's an adult.

Now that you've completed your graduation film, what's next?

STIAN: My bachelor's degree is in film and televison production, but we have only done fiction for the last year. The two years before that focused on documentaries and televison, and media science theory. So I am hoping to get in to a good film school where I can continue developing as a filmmaker and get some more experience. I am also writing on some new scripts, so if I could get funding for one of them, and just skip the film school step, that would be great:)

Small Penis from Espen Hobbesland on Vimeo.

John Gaspard on Low-Budget Filmmaking

Here's an excerpt from an on-line interview I did recently.

You're the author and co-author of several books, most notably Digital Filmmaking 101. Tell us about them. What inspires you to write?

JOHN GASPARD: We wrote Digital Filmmaking 101 originally as a series of notes to ourselves, to remind us of the steps we took to make a feature for very little money. We later expanded those notes into a complete book to provide beginning filmmakers with the tools they would need to make a feature for what most Hollywood films spend on coffee and rolls.

My second book, Fast, Cheap and Under Control: Lessons Learned From the Greatest Low-Budget Movie of All Time, was designed to help keep new filmmakers from re-inventing the wheel every time they go out to make a feature. There is a wealth of knowledge in the low-budget movies that have come before ours, and it's a foolish filmmaker who doesn't heed those lessons. In the book I talked to both old-school low-budget filmmakers (like Roger Corman) and people from the current generation (Swingers, The Blair Witch Project, Open Water, etc.).

The latest book, Fast, Cheap and Written that Way: Top Screenwriters on Writing for Low-Budget Movies, does just what the title suggests. I spoke to over twenty top screenwriters who had previously worked on low-budget films and got their secrets on how to write for a tiny budget. Interviewees included George Romero, Tom DiCillo, Stuart Gordon, Bob Clark and Kenneth Lonnergan, among others.

Your films were made on very low budgets. Grown Men cost under $13,000. How did you manage this?

JOHN GASPARD: Well, as soon as you realize that you won't be paying anyone, that cuts your costs significantly. Second, you should write the script to conform to locations and props that you can get for free. Third, you should shoot as quickly as you can -- 12 to 15 pages of script a day is not uncommon.

The main reason to make a movie for such little money is not just to save money -- it's also to help you maintain control of the movie. Without backers breathing down your neck, you can make the movie you want at the pace you want. You may never see that money again -- a high percentage of low-budget movies never see the light of day, let along turn a profit -- but the satisfaction of making the movie YOU wanted to make greatly outweighs the cost.

Do you have any advice for the amateur filmmakers reading this?

JOHN GASPARD: See as many movies as you can -- low-budget independent films, Hollywood films, classic movies from the Golden Era. You can learn something valuable from every movie you watch, so the more you see the more you learn.

Read scripts to learn how to write one. And I mean real scripts, not transcriptions of finished movies. Learn what the words look like on the page and how that gets translated into images on the screen.

And, most important, don't ever try to fund your movie with credit cards. Don't believe what you read about other filmmakers doing this -- it flat out doesn't work.

Adam Lefevre on “Tadpole”

How did you get involved in Tadpole?

ADAM LEFEVRE: I worked on Tadpole for two days.

This was not one that you do for the paycheck. I think I got paid for Tadpole about what I got paid for Secaucus Seven. But I was very drawn to the script; I liked Gary Winick very much when we met. And with that cast, it was hard to say no, and I didn't want to say no.

The scenes that I was in were shot in Gary's mother's apartment in the city -- and I guess it's safe to say this now, because they can't come after here -- the day before my first day of shooting I got a call from an AD saying, 'Don't come to the apartment. There's a Starbucks across the street, and someone will come meet you, because you have to be snuck up the service elevator,' because the Condo board would not give them permission to shoot in her apartment.

It was sort of like a CIA operation; I waited at the Starbucks and an AD came over and said, 'Are you Adam?" I said, 'Yeah.' He said, "Then come with me,' and we went up to the room.

How was the experience, shooting this as a digital movie?

ADAM LEFEVRE: This was the first digital movie I'd worked on, and it had very much the same kind of feeling as working Secaucus Seven. The budget was very limited and the script was tightly written. And it was great fun.

There were no trailers to go into between shot. When I was waiting, I sat on the couch in Gary's mother's apartment and chatted with Bebe Neuwirth. There were no frills; hair and make-up were done in one of the bathrooms.

When everyone is doing that, it's clear that they're there for some reason other than the paycheck, and sometimes that can be very helpful. There's less of a hierarchy that you feel on a big-budget movie with big stars.

In this case, everybody is basically working for peanuts and suffering the same kinds of lack of frills. You're doing it because you believe in the project, and, quite frankly, because it's fun.

What are the advantages of working in the digital realm?

ADAM LEFEVRE: One of the advantages of digital is that you don't have to wait for it to be developed. You look at it and see what you've got, right then.

The pressure that you have to get it right the first time is a terrible, paralyzing thing to foist on oneself or have anyone else foist on you. As an actor, what we learn to do -- both on stage and screen -- is to be as prepared as you can be, in terms of knowing who this person is that you're playing. I don't exactly know what 'getting it right' means. You don't want to fuck up your lines, but if you are honestly in the moment and just go with that, trust your own instincts as an actor and be just as authentic and present in the moment, you can't really fuck up.

Even if you're working on a film where you may get only one take, if you are playing it honestly and comfortably in the moment, that's maybe all you need.

Lesli Linka Glatter on "The West Wing"

You've directed a lot of great TV shows. I tried to narrow down just one of the shows you've worked on. And since I'm such an Aaron Sorkin fan --

LESLI: Oh my God, so am I.

Then I hope you'll indulge me and talk about your experiences on The West Wing.

LESLI: I think the reason The West Wing was amazing to do, on a directorial level, was because the producing director on the show -- Tommy Schlamme, a fantastic director and a wonderful person -- encouraged directors to come in and make it their movie.

There are many people who work in TV who want it to look like everybody else's show. But I really think the best shows do what Tommy did. To say to filmmakers, "Come in and make it your movie." And that's what he did.

That's very evident on that show. They're all different.

LESLI: They're all different. As a director, you were encouraged to do what you wanted to do. If you wanted to put five scenes together and do it as one shot, you could. It was great.

It was very intimidating the first time I got Aaron's script and I looked at the first scene I was going to be directing on my first day. It was a seven-page scene, with about ten or eleven characters, and the only stage direction was "He enters."

I just thought, "Oh my God." I had to read it about ten times to figure out what the scene was about: What's the subtext, what's the text, what's really going on underneath here.

It was thrilling and terrifying and exhilarating and amazing.

What is your preparation process like in a case like that? You get the script and then what?

LESLI: The first thing I do in any prep process is I start breaking the script down in terms of what is the theme? What is this really about? Once I figure out the theme, I start to figure out how I'm going to deal with it visually. But until I really know what it's about in a deep way, I can't even begin to figure that out.

How long does that take?

LESLI: That's ongoing. The first couple of days I focus on the script as much as I can. You're going to have to deal with production stuff no matter what. You have to start the casting process and have a concept meeting about if there have to be huge sets built. A lot of The West Wing episodes I did were really big, so there were tons of locations, so there was a lot of scouting. Plus half of the show shoots in Washington, DC, so there were all sorts of production issues and decisions.

Usually what I would do in terms of actual shot lists is that I would come in on the weekend. And I still do that, even though I'd love to have my weekends to myself. I find that during the week, with a TV pre-production schedule, I don't have time to do that. So the weekends are my creative time.

If it takes place on a set, I'll go to the set. I'll walk around, I'll imagine the scene, I'll figure out the angles, I'll see the scene.

For me, it's completely about standing in the space. That's what I do.

I have a lot of director friends who wouldn't even consider going in like that. They think I'm insane. But for me, that's my process. For other TV shows, they just want you to come in and fulfill what they've set up. That doesn't seem too interesting to me.

In the case of The West Wing, how much rehearsal time did you get with the actors?

LESLI: You only get it on the set. That was a show where they would rehearse a lot. This is unusual in TV. You'd get probably an hour. That is considered a long rehearsal. It's not like doing a film.

But then, these actors know the characters. So you have to direct them in the scene, but they're not figuring out who their characters are. They're figuring what their behavior is. So that is a different process.

During post, how involved were you in the editing?

LESLI: Very involved. You have a certain amount of time, per the contract with the Directors Guild, to go in and edit. I didn't have my cuts changed very much. Ultimately, the final cut is Aaron's and Tommy's. When the buck stopped, it stopped with them. But they were respectful. I think they want you to come in having done it well, so that they don't have to re-do it.

Stephen Belber on "Tape"

Where were you in your career before you wrote Tape?

I was not highly far along. I had just quit my day-job to work on The Laramie Project. It was the year that we were researching the murder of Matthew Shepard. I was going out to Laramie every couple of months and then coming home. So I was just starting to get paid. I had been writing plays for a long time, I'd come out of the Playwright Fellowship program at Julliard, but I was sort of adrift and not sure.

And then Tape came along. It was not one of the big plays I was planning on writing or was working on. It was something were two old friends of mine came along and they wanted to showcase themselves as actors in the New York theater world, and they said, 'Can you write us something that can really show what we can do?"

So I really wrote it for them and then one of the actors was dating this girl, so I added her because it got boring with two guys after awhile. So it wasn't like, "I'm going to write this big play." I was just doing it because I liked these guys and I liked their work and it was fun.

What was your day-to-day writing process?

I guess I'm pretty intense when I come across an idea and I don't sort of do an hour a day. My wife is French and we were living over in France, in these guys' apartment while they were out of town. She was working on a job, and I was transcribing tapes for Laramie. And as soon as I got done with my current load, I dove into this.

I remember trying to describe this idea: A comedy about date rape was how I was forming it at the time. And she sort of laughed me off and said I should come up with a different idea. But I was able to keep writing; I remember starting over at one point, fairly early on and scraping what I had when I came up with the idea that she might show up. I was writing by hand at that time. I like to get really into it when I'm writing and get a first draft done as soon as possible, and then go back in and work on it.

And you're able to do that even if you don't know exactly where you're going?

Yeah. I had, at the time, a philosophy that when you're dealing with those types of tight friendships, where you don't know yourself where the conversation is going, that it would be truer and more genuine to write within that vein and to have a general goalpost that you were headed for, but to let the turns happen.

If you're writing quickly enough in your mind, and keeping up with your pen, let those twists and turns come at you, almost as quickly as they're coming at the characters. At least for this type of play, where it's sort of down and dirty.

When you were adapting it into a film script, was there ever any talk of "opening it up"?

There was briefly talk about it. That would be the first instinct for any filmmaker. That's the great thing about Linklater. We talked a little bit about opening it up, but his inclination was definitely not to, that it was going to be more interesting to keep it enclosed.

The problem was how do you not repeat the theatrically that comes when you try to film a play, because so often it doesn't work. Because of the DV cameras that were sort of new at the time, which allowed you to go into a motel room or a soundstage that really felt like a motel room, that he was going to be able to capture a cinematic way of telling the story. So, very briefly only did we talk about doing some exterior stuff, which made me delighted, because I was worried that they were going to ask me to write stuff that didn't fit this play.

What I love about the movie is that it raises more questions than it answers, and most movies aren't willing to do that.

Well, that's the golden rule is to tie it up and provide those answers. And even in playwriting, I think, it's a very fine line. Audiences will feel ripped off if you're intentionally ambiguous for the sake of it. If ambiguity serves a purpose, at the risk of sounding pretentious, it's to turn it around and challenge them to ask themselves, 'What would I do in that situation? What have I done in past situations? And what have I done about those things?' That does seem to serve a purpose, and if nothing else the movie does poke it back at you, and it's so pointed at a particular generation were the words date rape just became a phrase.

My wife translated it into French and there is no expression for date rape there in that country yet. And it's relatively new to America. So I think the people who respond to this movie are people who have grown up with those words.

So, in terms of adaptation, it sounds like you basically handed Linklater the script to the play and said 'Have at it.'

Yeah, he was great that way. It was the opposite of what you expect the Hollywood machine to do to your work. Basically, the put it in Final Draft form. Robert Sean Leonard's character was originally Jewish; he makes a crack about himself being Jewish, but we didn't think we could pass off him as that. We also changed his name. There were also one or two cultural references which we thought would potentially date the film, so we cut a couple lines, one about David Hasselhoff.

Do you ever put a script in a drawer for a while?

Oh, absolutely. I have about twenty-five things in a drawer right now.

I think if I had put Tape in a drawer at that point I would never have gone back, because it's not the heftiest play. But I know that it hit a chord with people, because it was compact. I always complain when I see plays that are successful that they aren't as deep and profound as they should be, but that's not what audiences necessarily want or connect to. It has a tightness that is very satisfying and a compactness, and at an hour twenty, it definitely had that.

Did you learn anything from this process that you've taken to other projects?

Yes. I think letting a degree of spontaneity into my writing, which was something that I had excised at Julliard. Learning to let that back in. And knowing that that makes for better writing.

I learned that there is a market and an audience out there for dialogue-heavy films and character-driven films, and that this fast give-and-take actually can work. Everyone says it's so theatrical that it doesn't work, but if you put it out there, an audience will follow it. It's not particularly complex, it's not Tom Stoppard. But we're used to it and we can be conditioned, as filmgoers, to follow and like it.

And that drama doesn't come from just visuals. Drama comes from classic dramatic structure and shifts in emotions.

Dialogue that's fun and appropriate to the contemporary world is something that audiences will respond to.

Roger Corman on "Targets"

How did you come to produce Targets?



ROGER CORMAN: As a result of various complications in a contract, Boris Karloff owed me several days' work. So I wanted to do a horror film, starring Boris Karloff, in which he would only work for those days.



Peter Bogdanovich had been my assistant. (My assistant before that was Francis Coppola and after Francis had worked for me on a few films, I gave him a chance to direct.) I did the same thing with Peter. I said, 'Here's the problem: The picture must star Boris Karloff, but he can only work for these days.'



And Peter came up with the idea of Boris as an actor doing a traditional horror film, and in that way we could take some footage out of some of the horror films that Boris had done for me before, and also cut away to the boy and tell a parallel story.



The film has a couple of really long, continuous takes, which seem to go against your rule of getting proper coverage.



ROGER CORMAN: It goes a little bit against my rules, but on the other hand, all rules are made to be broken. I do like to get coverage, to get as much coverage as possible. Yet, at the same time, when you're on a very tight schedule, sometimes you have to sacrifice coverage. And when you do that, sometimes you can make a virtue out of necessity.



What was it that made you feel Bogdanovich could pull off this directing debut?



ROGER CORMAN: Peter is highly intelligent, and he had a great knowledge of film. He had written some added scenes for me on previous pictures, and had directed some second unit, so I was aware of his ability as a second unit director and his ability as a writer.



I had the feeling that he had the talent.

John McNaughton on "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer"

Where did the idea for the story come from?

JOHN MCNAUGHTON: I had done this series of documentaries for MPI, called Dealers in Death, which were about American gangsters, primarily from the Prohibition era. We had scoured the archives for a lot of public domain photographs and footage, got Broderick Crawford to narrate it for us, and made a little money on that project. I was getting to produce and direct another documentary piece, based on professional wrestling because I'd found someone who had a collection of wrestling footage from the 1950s and 1960s, with Bobo Brazil and Killer Kowalski and Dick the Bruiser and Andre the Giant, from the period of wrestling before the WWF or the WWE.

I lived in the city proper, but I was journeying out to Oak Forest where MPI was located. It was two brothers, Waleed and Malik Ali, who owned the company. I went out to meet Waleed, to talk about doing these wrestling documentaries. When I got to their offices, I sat with Waleed and he informed me that he had contacted the person who had the footage for sale, and what happened was that person with the footage had quoted a price and when the Ali brothers approached him, saying, "Okay, we'll negotiate on that price," the guy realized that the brothers had money, so he increased his price. The Ali brothers were not to be dealt with in that manner, so Waleed informed me, "Listen, we're not going to do business with this guy. He's a crook."

Early on in the video business -- and they got in at the beginning -- the major studios weren't interested in video rights, because there just wasn't enough money involved. So they were selling off the rights to their films. A couple of companies, like Vestron and Pyramid, became wealthy for a short period of time, until the studios saw the potential in the video market and started creating their own video divisions. And those companies went out of business.

But in the early days of video, you could buy the video rights quite cheaply for low-budget horror films, and since a lot of sort of "b" horror titles hadn't been seen widely, they were very successful on video. A "b" schlock horror film that people may not have been interested in going to the theater to see, they were more than happy to rent because they're a lot of fun.

So what was happening at this time was that those titles were becoming so popular that the rights acquisitions were becoming more and more expensive. And so Waleed had determined that it would make sense for them to fund a horror film and thereby own all rights into perpetuity, rather than just buying the video rights for a limited period of time. So he proposed to me that we should join forces and make a horror film.

I went in thinking I was going to be doing these documentaries and, instead, it was the day that my dream came true, completely unexpectedly. I was kind of in shock and after concluding the meeting with Waleed I was walking down the corridor, and in an office down the hall was the office of an old friend of mine who I had grown up with, Gus Kavooras. I had gone to grammar school and high school with him and we had been friends throughout childhood; in fact, I was the one who introduced him to the Ali brothers, which is how he came to have a job with them.

Gus was always a collector of the strange and the arcane and the weird. I stopped in to see him and I was kind of in shock. I said, "Gus, Waleed just offered me $100,000 to make a horror movie. I have no idea what my subject will be." And he said, "Here, look at this." He took a videocassette off the shelf and popped it in the machine. It was a segment from the news magazine show, 20/20, and the segment was on Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Elwood Toole, who were serial killers. The term "serial killer" was coined in 1983 by the FBI. In 1986 I had never heard the term before and this was something new to me, the idea that there were these random murderers going around.

Most murders are committed by people previously acquainted to the victim. Husband kill wives, wives kill husbands, husbands kill wives' lovers, wives kill husbands' lovers. Most murderers are committed by people who are known by the victim. But this was a new trend in murder that there were these individuals who were just randomly murdering strangers. It was, indeed, very horrifying. There were some interviews with Henry and a lot of photographs; he was really a creepy character. And so that became the germ for the story.

Was the budget an issue while you developed the story?

JOHN MCNAUGHTON: The budget was written in stone. That was the mandate from Waleed, "Make me a horror film for $100,000." So the budget was always a consideration.

Did you set out to make such a controversial movie?

JOHN MCNAUGHTON: I intended to make something very shocking. I remember, in my youth, pictures that sort of crossed the line. Back in those days, there would be these incredibly lurid radio advertisements that if you listened to rock music on the radio a lot -- like most kids in my generation did -- they had these incredibly lurid campaigns for pictures like Last House on the Left and Night of the Living Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Those pictures were sort of watersheds, alongside pictures like The Wild Bunch. The Wild Bunch was incredibly shocking; up until then, in a Western, if somebody got shot they fell down. There was no squib work, there was no spouting blood.

If was like, "Okay, you've got $100,000 and a chance to do a film and it's going to have to be a horror film, so let's make a horror film that is going to horrify." (Co-writer) Richard Fire and I set ourselves a goal, and it was if we're charged with a horror film, a. Let's redefine the genre, and b., Totally horrify the audience.

Like many things, the words "horror film" is like "liberal and conservative." The original meanings of the words have gotten lost. One would think that conservatives would be interested in conserving the environment, because the word comes from conservation. When you think of "horror film" now, it's a set of conventions and we meant to defy those conventions. Monsters, creatures from outer space, ghosts, the genre often includes the supernatural or something beyond reality. But we didn't have a budget for any of that, so we set ourselves the goal of, "How can we most completely horrify an audience without using the traditional conventions?"

What advice do you give to someone starting out on a low-budget project?

JOHN MCNAUGHTON: I would tell them, especially with the technology that's available today, is to make a movie. They're making fewer films today then they were back when we did Henry. And there are fewer directors being hired. And it costs a lot more money to make movies and so there's a great fear factor.

I went to Columbia College, and in my day you could check out a Bolex 16mm camera, but you still had to pay for the film and pay for the processing which could get expensive. They had rudimentary editing facilities at the time, but it was rather daunting. Now at Columbia College I don't know how many AVIDs they have, an amazing number of them.

You can now buy a HD video camera for around $3,000. You can go out and shoot a film that looks reasonably decent. You can cut it on your Mac. You can do a picture pretty cheaply today and if you have friends and know actors and everybody wants to make a movie, you can get by pretty cheaply and make a movie. And I think that's the most important thing, because to move out to Los Angeles and try to break in is a really hard way to go.

But if you make a film and get on-line and see what festivals will be interested in your film, the opportunities are much greater now then they were. I was just very fortunate that these guys were willing to put up $100,000. Just trying to work one's way up is a tough way to go.

It makes a big difference when you can get an hour's worth of shooting for $20. It's become incredibly cheap, while film has never been cheap and never will be cheap.