The Spine Director Chris Landreth - Interview
National Film Board, CORE Copperheart Entertainment Short
Jun 23, 2009
How do you top an Oscar-winning short film? Director Chris Landreth ("Ryan") decided to visit similar territory and produce "The Spine," a surreal look at dysfunctional relationships.
In Part #2 of this exclusive interview, he discussed where his visual sensibility for the film came from. In this installment, he goes more into the creative process, and why failure is more interesting than success.
Did you show the script to anybody before you went to storyboard?
“Yes, I did. I try very hard not to work in a vacuum. I went through 3 drafts in order to get it where it was more or less in its present state. And that was stepping off with people that you trust. You gotta be able to trust the people that you’re working with.
“There has to be a balance. On one extreme is the artiste, focused on your pure vision, not polluting your vision by getting other people involved with your work.
“And on the other extreme is the obnoxious stuff driven by focus groups to get your film to appeal to as many people as possible. I like to think I went through both extremes, but mainly staying pure to my own vision but nevertheless working with people I trusted so that I was not just off in a vacuum, creating something that wasn’t going to connect with people. I do want to connect with an audience, I don’t think it needs to be a cross-section of everyone but I do want to connect with people who like a story with some psychological depth to it.”
The ‘Lone Auteur’ myth is very alluring, and it's hard to open your work to any scrutiny. You’re exposing your own soul; how do you get past that?
“You have to get past that ego. That’s something I’ve tried to do a lot. Because the story is everything.
“I would like to say that this film definitely would not have happened without the National Film Board. No other country in the world supports filmmakers like me. I also have to thank Copperheart Entertainment, Steve Hoban who I worked with on “Ryan” and “The Spine.” This wouldn’t have happened without these guys involved in it.
“I worked with Seneca College on “Ryan” and I worked with them in a bigger way on this film. I didn’t animate anything on “The Spine,” I directed a bunch of student animators. At first I wasn’t sure if they could do it, but they produced better animation than I’ve ever done. And finally, CORE: nobody made a lot of money, if they made any money at all, and they were totally behind this film. It was just . . . wow.”
There’s one scene in “The Spine” I didn’t understand. It’s where Dan pulls off his arm and he hands it to a woman. What were you going for there?
“While I was working on the screenplay, I was keeping a journal and, in the journal, I wrote something about Dan impulsively tearing off his left arm.
"Like what Angela says in the film: ‘You study your left arm, you have to laugh because it’s from you, it’s God and you know you will never part with it.’ There’s a miracle happening there, and I’m not going to try to explain it completely to you because in some ways it is a gruesome scene but it’s about him becoming so beautifully reckless that he does that and not feel lost. There’s a spontaneity that I was trying to show Dan was capable of expressing. He gives this arm to a beautiful woman who has just complimented his painting. And the next scene is an over-the-shoulder shot of her not holding his arm, but the drawing that he just did. So he hasn’t actually torn off his arm.”
What’s next for you?
“After Melbourne, I’m taking “The Spine” to Siggraph, and that’ll be the US premiere. I love Siggraph: I’ve been going since the mid-80’s, I’ve shown all my films there, so it’s like bringing it home.
“I’m developing a feature film for next year, called Lovecraft, about the writer H.P. Lovecraft. He had this weird, f****d up life, a lot of psychological places I can go with that. It’s a great story.”
What draws you to these broken characters?
“I’m not trying to create a freak show. What I hoped not to do with “Ryan” was ‘Get a load of this f****d up guy.’ With Dan and Mary, it’s a similar thing.
"What I dig about these stories is not how uncommon they are, but how common they are. Superficially, Ryan Larkin’s story is this sweeping tragedy, but Ryan himself isn’t that weird a person. Where I hope people connect with these stories is how they see something in common with these characters.”
With both Ryan Larkin and H.P. Lovecraft, you see a lot of wasted potential. They were never able to–
“fulfill what they could've been.”
I’m noticing this common thread between all your characters. Is that something you feel in yourself? Where does this come from?
“There is an element of failure in all these characters, that tragic element. When I was starting “Ryan” a lot of people asked me, ‘Why talk about this guy and not someone who had a lot of success? Why not something about Norman McLaren?’ Norman McLaren his own fallibilities but no one said ‘What a shame about Norman McLaren, what a great director he could’ve been.’
“There is something bland about talking about success. When we do stories that have an element of failure or fragility or fallibility, you get into what makes us human rather than people who, superficially, have had nothing but great achievements.”
You empathize a lot more with the failures. Why do you think that is?
“Because I see failure in myself. I think people who see failure in themselves are often the most insightful."
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