What inspires a film like Passenger Side? A road movie where the action is sparse, the conversation feels real and the end result is a profound meditation on family, brotherhood and sibling rivalry with a masturbating transvestite thrown in for good measure. Transplanted Canadian writer/director Matthew Bissonnette discusses the inspiration for his snappy realist odyssey, influences like Bruce McDonald and the kickass soundtrack two brothers play on a beaten old tape deck while driving around L.A. looking for…drugs or…something anyway.
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.
How do you make a road movie without leaving L.A.? 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.
Passenger Side has one of the most listenable Soundtracks since Dazed and Confused or Godzilla, except instead of Jimmy Page and Alice Cooper PS busts out the esoteric likes of Dinosaur Jr. and Superchunk, discuss: 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.
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.
Get tickets and read Matthew Hays' synopsis here: http://www.tiff.net/filmsandschedules/films/passengerside
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