5Q: JARROD WHALEY / HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE
Posted by CQ Central
Jarrod Whaley
The core concept of the film–that it would be built around an inscrutably shady character who makes his meager living by working out of his vehicle–came out of a conversation I overheard somewhere. The details of the conversation elude me given that this took place nearly four years ago now, but one of the “conversationalists” was telling the other about an experience he’d had with a weird computer repairman who would only meet his customers in liquor store parking lots in a beat-up old van. Something about that scenario suggested to me the potential for some rather dark and awkward humor. That being the kind of humor I’m attracted to, I stole the idea and started trying to flesh it out with my own details.
I had been making short films for a number of years, and was beginning to feel the itch to put together a first feature. I was looking for something I could do with little (or nothing) in the way of budget, and this idea was perfect for that. There would be a minimal number of characters, it could be shot almost entirely in public places, it could be produced on an extremely flexible schedule, and so on.
2Q: You were living in Tennessee when you made this film, about as far away from Hollywood as you can get, and yet you have also completed another short film, PASSION FLOWER. How did you arrive at the decision to enter the film industry while living in Tennessee? Do you think that your next film will be easier to make now that you are in the Bay Area, or were there benefits to filming in Tennessee?
I never really made a conscious decision per se to be a filmmaker at all, much less to be a part of any “industry.” I began making films as a teenager, even as I was also working as a musician and fooling around with all manner of other creative pursuits. There really was (and is) very little for an intelligent young person to do with his or her time in a place like Chattanooga other than finding one’s own creative path. There’s a kind of vacuum–both cultural and experiential–in which one exists, and all one can do is to try to fill it oneself. It just happens to be the case that I stuck with the filmmaking and let the other things fall away gradually as time went by. I suppose I always wanted to be a filmmaker, even if I never knew it on any completely conscious level.
It’s hard to say whether making a film in California will be easier or harder than making one in Tennessee—mainly because I haven’t done so yet, but also because there are certain kinds of trade-offs inherent in changing one’s environment. It can be very difficult to find willing collaborators in Chattanooga; I don’t know if it’s something in the air there or what, but people seem never to want to leave their homes. There’s a lot of talk about doing this or doing that, but the doing part of the equation often ends up going nowhere at all. Part of the reason why Hell Is Other People ended up taking three years to produce was that I’d keep having to re-cast every time some previously-cast actor would flake out at the last minute. For example, Richard Johnson (who does such an incredible job of acting in playing Morty in the film) was the third person I’d cast in the lead. And on a project like this one–one which is so loose and improvisational, and whose characters are almost directly imbued on a basal level with qualities evinced in the personalities of the cast members–re-casting entails re-writing, sometimes from the ground up.
I think the atmosphere in California is far more goal-oriented, and that I’m going to have no trouble in finding enthusiastic, talented actors with whom to work. There’s an energy here that pushes one toward doing. Talk for talk’s sake has very little (if any) currency. My friends and colleagues who work here seem on occasion to encounter the kinds of problems I’ve struggled with in the past, but far, far less often, and with less severe consequences. On the other hand, there’s no longer that essential vacuum of cultural stimulation that pushed me into making films in the first place. I may have to rely on what motivation I’ve already stored up—initially, at least. We’ll see how that goes.
3Q: What was your best and/or worst experience while making HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE?
Most of the “bad” experiences occurred during pre-production…all the false starts and casting issues I was talking about were for a time making it seem as though this project would never get off the ground. Production itself was largely a breeze. I’d structured my production model to allow for a leisurely schedule, and on top of that, the drawn-out pre-production stage had the (unintended) benefit of allowing me a very long time to refine my ideas. I was so well prepared for shooting that we were able to produce entire five-minute scenes in as little as three hours. There was remarkably little stress on the set. On one occasion that comes to mind, we were shooting outdoors in a tricky location, and I wasn’t able to resolve some technical issues I was having with the audio before a cast member’s window of free time had expired. So Richard (Johnson) and I just calmly packed everything up and went to eat some barbecue. It didn’t feel like a setback to be losing a shooting day, because our schedule was so loose. These are pretty extraordinary working conditions, and it’s going to feel a little disappointing if they turn out not to be replicable in the future.
4Q: Festival audiences often have to make hard decisions about what to see, and the catalog descriptions sometimes run together. In your own words, why should people see your film?
This is no-budget cinema, but it’s different from other no-budget films you may have seen. The characters are aimless, maybe, but the film is not. It takes aim, I hope, at all those countless recent films in which nothing happens apart from privileged middle-class kids grumbling and whining about the banality which comes with their privilege. Beyond that, Hell Is Other People is funny (I hope), even as it sows discomfort. I’ll leave it to others to take the direct salesmanship any further.
5Q: The current market for independent films is fractured, to put it lightly, and existing distribution models grow more ineffective with each passing moment. What are your hopes or plans for distribution?
It almost seems foolish to have any hopes of any size in this climate. I may have an iron or two in the fire when it comes to distribution, but as yet there’s no need to hang too much expectation on any one seeming opportunity. And plans may be even more foolish than hopes. I think the thing to do is to get the film seen, and to try to build a little critical buzz around it. Beyond that, it’s mostly just a matter of networking and crossing one’s fingers. If the film is good (I can say with all due self-critique in play that I truly think it is), and the right people see it, there’s no telling how things might unfold over the next year.
Tags: COMEDY, CQ20, Hell Is Other People, Jarrod Whaley, Richard Johnson, world premiere.
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