ajor talents don't get recognized for making competent, or even pretty good art. It takes those rare works that are so unexpected and even confounding that, in the public rush just to find what it is all about, visionary new artists receive their first spotlight. And so the humble yet self-assured Texas native David Green has become a standout of the filmmakers' Class of '01 for his writing and directing of George Washington, his bright cinematic gem.
George Washington carries the spirit that independent filmmaking seems to have lost among the cell phones at Sundance: a story about a group of young friends growing up in the decrepit rural South, told with unconventionally loose and heavily symbolic narrative and a striking, carefully constructed visual style. The kids deal with adult matters of love, death and social responsibility in a manner at once childish and mature, finding beauty and hope amid the decaying landscape of rural poverty. But rather than force these themes upon the audience, George Washington balances its peculiar weights on a thin rope between absurdity and profundity; the side on which Green's film eventually falls will depend in large part upon each individual's perception.
Recess caught up with Green while he was in L.A. for the Independent Spirit Awards.
Your film's been out for about a year, but it still doesn't seem like people know what to make of it. Did you expect it to be held up to this level of scrutiny?
I didn't really make the movie with any expectations other than that it was going to be something that I wanted to see and spend two years of my life with. I didn't think of it in terms of marketing or what potential audience it had. We were just trying to get together a team that we believed in, and we trusted our senses to try to make a film that we wanted to represent ourselves, like a calling card. Maybe it wasn't the smartest movie to make-it's not The Grinch-but then, I wouldn't want to ever watch more than five minutes of that movie. So in a way, it is the smartest movie, because it's 100 percent us.
Is it true that you lived with the crew communally?
We had this house in Winston-Salem, and the cast and crew just piled in and lived out of it. A lot of people look at it financially, and sure it's a lot cheaper to do that. But it also brought a lot of psychological benefits to production in terms of getting the cast and crew on a more intimate level and to have
How do you think the film holds up to hype like this?
In September, when we won an award in Toronto, I think it was Time magazine that referred to what we were facing as the "burden of praise." It's kind of scary because we'd have 600 people piling into an auditorium hearing that Roger Ebert had called it one of the best films of the year. They're approaching it with all these expectations rather than thinking, "Here's a movie that came out of nowhere with no-name actors. What a fresh surprise!" It just plays on an entirely different level and our audiences are entirely divided between those that think it's slow and pretentious and dull and those that think it's slow and moving and poetic. It's a movie that I think is born to divide audiences, and that's not a bad thing.
Your film isn't like other U.S. indie films. How do you feel about your place in relationship to the other Tarantino and Smith knockoff indie filmmakers?
They play their game and I play mine. What Tarantino did with Pulp Fiction was groundbreaking, and it provided a lot of different avenues for people to open their eyes a little bit. Kevin Smith (Clerks, Mallrats) created the Special Olympics for film, which I'm not a fan of. There are very few "maxed out my credit card and spent my life savings to make this movie" movies that translate into quality films for me. My problem with most independent films is that they're just ultra-low budget versions of Hollywood films. They're not taking advantage of the fact that they have no one to answer to, but that's what independence really is. Look at those films that were coming out in the early '90s that were exciting, like sex lies and videotape, and Reservoir Dogs and Spike Lee's earlier films like Do The Right Thing. That's innovation, that's challenging the audience, that's waking people up and saying "Look what I have to say."
Almost every article I've found about you and George Washington has mentioned Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven in comparison, and you've cited it as inspiration. How does it feel to be compared to Malick in every single interview?
I could never compare myself to the guy, who I consider the master of filmmaking. He really does achieve in film what I would aspire to, and I haven't reached that by any means. In terms of balance of landscape and characters and music, kind of semi-naturalism yet still manipulated, I can kind of see that. But I think it's more in just my "accent" of making films, because that's what I grew up with. When other kids were watching Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars, I was going to get Never Cry Wolf and Badlands.
Do you feel like your film is looked at as a race movie?
My film deals with race in the mere fact that it doesn't mention race. That makes a statement, as anything will on a subject that people are touchy about. If there was a statement I was going to make, it was that it's not such a big deal to these kids; there's an unspoken relationship between them that is on a human level rather than black-white or old-young. This gives them a common emotional ground, rather than being hung up on these politics. I'm the most unpolitical guy, so I never would want to make something heated or controversial.
In your next project, do you plan to follow up on this style or will you branch out?
I always want to make movies where the landscape is a character, an environment that is new and unusual.... It's kind of frustrating because right now all these people are offering me movies about kids, and some of them are really good. But that would be about the dumbest thing I could do right now, to do something so similar. So that's why I really want to follow it up with a science fiction movie.
You know, it's about time that somebody will step up and do something real with that genre.
I find that so much philosophy in science fiction goes unexposed, and when it is exposed it's in something like Battlefield Earth, which is just boring and annoying.
Just so you know, this interview is very good news for you. We here at Recess have a history of giving future big names their big breaks. People we profile go on to win all kinds of awards. I interviewed Steven Gaghan a few months ago, and he just won the Oscar for Traffic's screenplay. We take full credit, of course, but he forgot to mention it in his speech. Just so you know who to thank when it's you up there.
[Laughs] I'm writing my acceptance speech now.
George Washington is currently showing at the Chelsea Theater in Chapel Hill. For information call: (919) 968-3005.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.