February 5, 1998
The story of Use Your Head goes something like this: about 6 years ago I
was depressed and living on my own. I had broken up with my then
girlfriend, Lee Skaife, and was living in a dingy apartment in Brooklyn.
The short films I had been making were getting into festivals, but there
didn't seem to be much to do with them after that.
One night I mentioned
to my friend, John Huss, that I'd like to work on a script for a feature with
him. He's a philosophy of science Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago, and we've always had a synergy between us. I thought we could have some fun writing, even if it wound up being a mere paper product. He said he'd think about it.
A few weeks later, I was talking on the phone with John again and he
mentioned that some friends of his were doing a drug study on campus.
While he was detailing the combination of weed and alcohol that was being
consumed in the study, an idea popped into my head: this was the structure
we needed for our film. I had been looking for something less strictly
narrative anyway, something that would allow us to bring things that we'd
just seen happening on the street to the script.
I was excited and decided to drive out to Chicago to interview some of
John's friends who had done the study and to spend some time writing with
him. I spent a week in Chicago during which time we decided not to model
our characters on any of the people we were interviewing. Several of them
had great stories, but we had too much we wanted to say ourselves to bother
with someone else's stories. We invented six characters of our own, some
modeled on people we knew and two modeled on ourselves, and began churning
out conversations.
When I got back to NY, I was much happier. I think Lee noticed. We
started spending time together again and gradually reunited. I showed her
the stuff John and I had been writing, and she laughed. She made some
suggestions and became a part of the project. Together we began trying to
fashion a script out of a pile of writing that had no particular order.
Somewhere in the middle of this lengthy process, Lee looked up and said,
"we're going to make this film." I distinctly remember being chilled at
that moment. I knew she meant it and that however it came to pass, we
would make it happen.
It took us several months to get all the different scenes on index cards
and shuffle them through several different orders. In doing so, we were
able to determine what new stuff had to be written to fill things out. By
the time we finally had our first draft, John and I had written about three
times as much material as eventually wound up in the script. And we cut 25
minutes out of the film on top of that.
Both Lee and I spent our film school years studying experimental film.
We've never been interested in classic narrative structure and find that
some of the experiences we've had watching unpredictable films to be more
powerful than those we've had watching Hollywood and Hollywood wannabe
product. We knew we wanted to create this kind of experience for our
audience. We describe the effect as a "guided meditation". Films like
Chris Marker's "Sans Soleil" are effective in this way. As an audience
member you lose the expectations and anticipations that stories inevitably
create and instead are seduced by other elements of the film, its visuals,
its thinking, etc.
In the case of "Use Your Head" we decided that we would seduce our audience
with humor and alternative takes on everyday life. We wanted people to
know that their lives were significant even if they hadn't been around a
gun lately. Still, much of what the film is ultimately about is up to the
audience because that's another important facet of the whole scenario.
Don't take your audience lightly. We know that intelligent people go to
see movies and people can put things together for themselves. A film is a
lot less powerful if it doesn't involve its audience in its eventual
conclusions. Simply laying what you think out on the table is a lot less
effective than having the audience participate in determining what the film is ultimately about.
We're excited about showing the film in cities like Orlando, which have
thriving indie film scenes. We're going to try to use our Flixtour
screenings to set up open ended runs at some of these theaters around the
country. We think "Use Your Head" has a lot of cult film potential and so
far a good percentage of the critics who have seen it agree. We say "let
the people decide". And, without all the advertising dollars needed to
shove a film down the public's throat, that's what we're trying to do.
By the way, Lee and I are now married. If you can co-direct a film and
then agree to spend the rest of your lives together...well, maybe this film
is worth seeing.
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