TIM MCCANN INTERVIEW

“THE ABSENT MINDED DIRECTOR”

Q: Your male protagonists have quite a hard time, don't they?
A: I guess so. I never thought about it.

Q: In “Desolation Angels” he has his heart broken. In “Revolution #9”, he loses his mind, and in “Nowhere Man” his penis is cut off.
A: Okay, you convinced me.

Q: How did “Nowhere Man” come about?
A: I was toiling away on this script for hire, and after months and months, and starting to go in circles, I started to develop this idea. It came on pretty quick, and I was excited about it. I took a break from the other script, and wrote this one, just kind of spat it out really, in about a week.

Q: One week?
A: Well, to get the idea out. And the first draft was pretty weak, and of course you rework it for months afterward. But yes, I wrote the initial draft over a weekend, went to visit my girlfriend for a couple days, and came back and finished it over the next weekend.

Q: How did you finance it?
A: I think every independent film has it's own unique path there, getting people to pay for it. At the time, I had no money and no idea how I was gonna make it. I had some of the cast in mind – Rodrick and Olivier – but had never heard of Debbie Rochon. I gave the script to a couple friends, and they thought it was pretty funny. When Larry O'Neil and Mark Tchelistcheff came on board to produce, I knew it might actually happen. We all pooled our resources and made the film very inexpensively. Shot it on an Ikegami 7W, industrial level DV. Cut it on a G4, final cut pro 3. Took a year, the most frustrating of my life, that system sucked ass. FCP3, Mac OS 10.1, firewire drives – a big nightmare, it would crash every day. I have a G5 now, FCP4, and, most importantly, Mac OS 10.2.7. Much better. Mac's first try at Unix, with 10.1, was a disaster.

Q: How did you meet Debbie Rochon?
A: I saw her on the cover of a genre magazine, Phantom of the Movie's Videoscope. I read an interview with her and saw that she had worked with a friend of mine, Matt Howe, on another film. I called Matt up, he said she was the best actress he'd ever had on a set. I called Debbie on a Friday night to audition on Monday morning. That weekend I watched a couple films she was in. I was not impressed. But I figured, whatever, I might as well see her anyway. And I have to tell you, she was so powerful in the audition. She took dialogue, tough to make work, dialogue which sounded trite and false and embarrassing coming from other girls, and she made it really, really strong. Ten minutes into the audition I was in love with her and knew we would cast her. But I couldn't tell her for a couple weeks, I had to see some other actresses.

Q: What was the shoot like?
A: We shot it over twelve days in august, most of it in Nyack , New York . Hot and muggy. Frantic pace. Solving problems all the time. Always yelling at people, ‘we're three hours behind!', it was hell on Mike especially. He barely got a break. But he had prepared for a month or two. He was very intense, very prepared, and I depended on him. I leaned on him the whole shoot. If he hadn't been so prepared and consistent and tireless, we couldn't have done it. He also got us some great locations. And then of course, Frank Olivier. Sheer charisma. I've had him in every single film I've made. We grew up together.

Q: Let's get to the subject matter. You have a lot going on. Talk about the socio-political aspects of the film.
A: What does that mean?

Q: Well, you have pornography, inter-racial sex, you have macho behavior, an abusive relationship, you have a man being emasculated physically and psychologically-
A: Sounds good to me.

Q: What is your view of the Debbie's character in the film? Is she victim? Avenger?
A: Uh, to me, the film is not an “I Spit on Your Grave” manifesto type thing, it's a story about two emotional and flawed people, who are in love, and who, when the guy, Conrad, discovers this thing about her, he cannot control his behavior. His emotions take over his intellect, and his behavior becomes barbaric. And she responds in kind, she's not perfect, and she doesn't really win, in the end. They both lose. They both end up angry and bitter and self righteous.

Q: Rodrick's character is similar to the role he played in “Desolation Angels”.
A: This is a much better performance, a great performance I think, and yeah, the film is a more mature rendering of that same idea.

Q: What idea?
A: Well. This film came about… When I was fourteen years old, I was sitting in a skin doctors office, waiting to get some acne medication or something… And a patient came out, a kid, he looked about eighteen. And after he left, I heard these nurses talking about him, how he had to have his penis removed because it had cancer, how sad it was and all that… Now, to me, to a kid at that age, it was an almost unbelievably horrifying thing to hear. And I thought about that kid, how he could go on, what kind of life he was gonna have… That's where that part of the film came from. Second, when I was in college, I was in love with this girl, and one day, I guess she felt secure with me, and close to me, she told me this story about how when she was thirteen years old, her psychiatrist had raped her… My reaction was immediate, and emotional, and selfish. And I could see myself, I could see my behavior, but I could not help it. I was jealous and angry with her. I didn't talk to her for days. I completely shut her out. This was somebody I cared very much about and, despite my awareness, I was being irrational. And this happens everyday in marriages, friendships, during business decisions, in courtrooms, everywhere; emotions, anxieties, jealousies, they all can get in there and fester and infect and control and pervert our behavior and affect the situation. This is what makes life interesting. Our personalities are hot wired towards a certain behavior, and what for each of us causes our circuits to get crossed, what aggravates us so that we fail to behave logically? Now, I mention this because I think it really is central not to the subject matter of the film, but to how it is treated. In one sense this is a sensational act, a penis being cut off, and one might expect a smirking cheesefest or something. But this film is more a character study of two emotionally disturbed people.

Q: What advice would you give young filmmakers?
A: They should understand that the whole independent scene, in fact the film industry in general, will not be what they expect it to be. There's a lot of false hope, there's a lot of empty success, there's very little integrity, most people become very frustrated. The sooner you get centered and focus on your own little situation and what you like, the better. Take the micro view, evaluate success on your own terms. Work with friends, develop long term friendships. And vote Democrat.