SpoutBlog on spout.com

Under discussion:

The Dungeon Masters  (2008)

Keven McAlester’s second documentary The Dungeon Masters, which takes a look at three people who run Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, was at the Toronto International Film Festival this week. It could have easily been a comedic film, poking fun at people who are generally called geeks or nerds, but it ends up becoming an intimate glimpse of personalities and situations that are often touching and tragic.

I sat down with Keven and talked to him about how he set about making this movie, how he got into documentary filmmaking and working with Lee Daniel, and how he was able to put together such a good look into the D&D lifestyle, despite having never played the game. Read on after the break for the interview.

So, I watched the film last night. And the first thing I was struck with was I read the notes and noticed you’ve never played Dungeons and Dragons. How did this movie happen?

Well, two things. One, the producers approached me and said they wanted to make a film, I think originally they had conceived it more as a history of D&D.

You mean Hay and Manfredi?

Yeah. And, we sort of threw the idea around and eventually realized it would be much more interesting to do it about people who play the game  not so much about the game itself, but sort of the fancy lives they create compared with their real lives. And then, what it ultimately came to was trying to triangulate the gestures in real life, however small they may be.

I think, that’s what really interested me is sort of the idea of creating a fantasy world or a virtual self. Obviously, it’s become a cultural currency. Or the idea has become much more prevalent in the past ten or fifteen years, starting with Snow Crash, and then moving on to like now, Second Life and World of Warcraft.

We also talked about maybe doing one about one of those games, but it seemed like it would be more visually interesting. And also, since D&D, people still play it rabidly. And there’s crossover between Warcraft, as you saw in the movie. That would be nice to sort of go back to the source.

And then, I thought for myself in terms of not having played before, I thought it would help in a way just to explain it to someone who had no idea, because I had no idea. I knew that they rolled dice, but I didn’t even know what that was for. I didn’t know any of the terminology and stuff. I thought would help to sort of explain it quickly to the lay person at the beginning.

Yeah. The good thing is, you didn’t get bogged down in that. You could have easily had 30 minutes about the history of D&D, and what it is to play, and what you do when you create a character, and that would have been I kind of boring I think. Instead you gave a pretty good set of layman’s notes for someone who has no idea about D&D.

Well, I’m glad that happened, because there were versions of the film where there was 30 minutes. Like, “When you roll the dice…” and it just didn’t work.

How did you find these people?

Right when we started we decided to make it about gamers rather than the game itself, we went to GenCon and found Richard and Elizabeth. And then, Scott lived in California. We found him at another convention there. We basically went to conventions and watched people.

We didn’t really ask people to be in the movie, we interviewed maybe 25 people, just to get a basic digital video, just trying to cast about. We didn’t ask them too many questions about their personal lives. We didn’t know any of that stuff that ended up happening in the film. Basically, we were looking for people who were passionate about the game and could talk about it clearly and interestingly. So, those were the three that really stuck out for us.

How many do you think you talked to?

I would guess 20 to 25. There was a fourth character that we had loved, who we had much less material on that we were sort of trying to fit in, and that didn’t quite work.

When you started was GenCon the first place you went to sort of explore the subject matter?

Yeah.

You don’t come from that world of gaming, so were you just blown away once you got there, or did you kind of know what to expect?

No, I didn’t know what to expect. I was excited, first of all, that that many people were, because with D&D, it’s an old game, and there’s so many iterations and sort of new versions of it, and Magic, and different kinds of games people are into, so first of all, I was excited that that many people were still into it. And also, I was excited that we would have, you know, such a vast set of potential subjects for the film. So, it was overwhelming once we started doing it, because we were like, we could interview everyone here. We might be missing the perfect person, but ultimately, the people in the film are the first few people we interviewed.

Did you just approach people, or did the word kind of spread that oh, there’s these filmmakers talking to people…

The spreading the word thing didn’t work at all. We had to approach them and kind of say, would you come meet us at three o’clock, and you know, a lot of times I talked to them before the camera was rolling, and just, it was, again, they were skeptical, as anyone would be. I can’t blame them.

I’m not quite sure how to word this question. A strange thing for me recently, I was at a party with a lot of younger people that were in their early twenties. I have some friends that work at a university in LA, and I go to their parties sometimes. And this guy and I bonded. He’s probably in his really early twenties, and we had a similar sense of humor, similar movie tastes, stuff like that. So, about all that, he adds me on Facebook and then, he sends me this email, he’s like, “Hey man, just wondering if you’d be interested in this. I dungeon master a D&D game one Saturday a month. We’re just getting started, and we’d love to add another character.”

And I was just like, what? I have not played since junior high school, which was a long time ago. And even then I barely played. I knew how the game worked, but we’d get together and kind of goof around, and not really play.

So, I was like all right. So, I started going. And everyone in this group is pretty nonstereotypical players. There’s an attractive girl who’s not crazy, not to call Elizabeth in the film crazy, but are you worried that, because you focus on these three people, that they sort of seem like the stereotypical D&D player? I don’t know how nonplayers see it, but, was there ever a moment where you were like, ok, let’s find people who don’t fit this mold. Or were these just people you found so interesting, and you though this is the story we need to tell?

I know what you’re saying. I don’t think we ever really thought of it in those terms. I’m not even sure what a stereotypical gamer or not is. But, for instance, the guy who was in the army and has a day job and a wife and everything, that seemed like just a relatively normal life.

I think, anybody that you dig into their lives, it becomes atypical, which I think is what’s great about making documentaries. There was a time where we considered finding famous people who played, things like that. But again, we felt like it would detract from the sort of like small victories that these people…

Well, you thank Patton Oswalt in the credits. And he’s kind of famously into this realm of gaming and D&D. How was he involved?

I know, him in LA, and we’ve talked extensively about the film, because he has a weekly D&D game. And he’s been encouraging the project from the very beginning. So that was really his involvement.

Have you shown it to him yet?

He was there at the premiere.

Oh, he was? Did he like it?

Yeah, he loved it.

At what point did it possibly come up, because like you said when you interview these people, you don’t find out everything about them. You’re only talking with them for a few minutes before you decide to focus on them. So, you’re in these people’s lives for a period of time. At what point does Richard say, “Oh, I’m a nudist, by the way.”

[laughs] That was… how did that come up? I don’t really remember when that came up. But, the great thing about him, is there’s so many different seemingly incongruous facets to his character. All of them interesting. I don’t remember when it came up, but I found it very surprising, in a way that I hope is accurately conveyed in the film.

Did you encounter any resistance in this, like, oh, you’re just going to do a piece showing us to be goofballs or something?

Absolutely. I think, pretty much every gamer is suspicious of any kind of media, and the older gamers especially because in the 80s, there was so much portrayal of D&D as like this satanic cult that would drive your kids to suicide and heavy metal. And so, they were definitely suspicious, but once I sort of… Especially, obviously, with the main characters, but even, once you sort of sit down with them and talk to them and the questions you ask, once they sort of see what you’re asking and you’re not asking those sort of, like, you know, “What does your church think of this?” Or whatever, then they’re pretty open.

Scott really seems to go through the biggest emotional arc in the film. How did that come about?

Well, also, for me, you know, I identified so much with his character in certain ways just because of the struggle of making something, and also, I think that, ultimately, that because he was in California, we had the most access to him, so we were able to sort of like build the film around that stuff.

I imagine the editing process took awhile for this. Was there stuff you had to, well, you said you had to lose one character. Was there other stuff with the characters that we do see in the film that you had to lose, that you had to cut out?

There was some great stuff, but all of it was essentially sort of tangential storytelling. There were no important character details or anything like that. Most of what was cut out that I would love to see in it is just Scott sort of telling stories about his life, because he has a way of telling almost any story like pretty hilariously, so, there were stories about him, you know, getting a vasectomy, and it was just the funniest recounting of that experience that you can imagine. But, other than that, at the end of the day, you sort of, like you watch a two and a half hour cut and you’re thinking, “I can never take anything out of this!” And then, you know, an hour of cuts later, you don’t even remember what was in there.

Were there moments where, you know, every documentary filmmaker I’ve talked to has always said there’s moments where they’re like, this is the dumbest idea I ever had, and no one’s going to want to watch this. And then there are those moments where you’re like, lightning strikes, and you’re just like, “Oh my god. Please tell me the camera was rolling on that.” Did you have any moments like that on either side?

Well, I think, in terms of the… like no one’s ever going to want to watch this, as you know, a game of D&D itself, very slow, and really, essentially, boring to watch. And we had to film an eight hour game just to get the 30 seconds that we use, so there were probably three or four of those shoots where Lee, or if it was, you know, occasionally we had like a second unit DP, they’d be like, “What are we doing?” I trust you, but I have no idea how you’re going to make this into a movie.

And then, in terms of the camera rolling, I would have been bummed if almost anything in the movie hadn’t turned out to be it. I don’t remember anything specifically that couldn’t have been portrayed in some other way, but let me think. I mean, I don’t think there’s anything that stuck out for me more than anything else. I mean, obviously, if the premiere of Scott’s show had not come out, it would have been a real tragedy. Because that’s really, to me, the emotional peak of the movie.

Have any of the subjects seen the film? Have you sent them the film?

Well, that’s a good question. I sort of feel like it’s a documentarian’s responsibility to show it to subjects first. Unfortunately, I finished the sound on maybe Tuesday of last week, Wednesday of last week. So, I didn’t have a chance to show it to them yet, but I’m actually going to do that next week. I feel, I mean, it sucks, but it’s only three screenings. It’s not the end of the world, but I do feel like these people have trusted you and you want to have their reaction first. So, I regret that that had to turn out that way, but you know, it’s better than showing it to them without sound.

Do you think they’re going to like it?

I think so. I mean, I don’t there’s anything in there that will be surprising to them or that they’ll feel inaccurately portrayed. It’s always hard to see yourself on camera. And we spent such a long time with them that I’m sure there’ll be points where they’re like, “That happened, really?” But, I think, the totality of the film portrays them in an accurate and, I hope, sort of conveys my affection/identification with them.

This is your second film with cinematographer Lee Daniel, who is kind of an Austin legend. How did you meet him and start working with him?

It was essentially because he was a huge Roky Erickson fan, who’s the subject of my first documentary. And we had talked to the Erickson family, and had agreed to do it, and we raised the money to do it, and we were like, who’ll we get to shoot this? It was my first film; I had no experience. I was a total idiot.

And our producer was like, “Why don’t we try Lee Daniel?” and I was like, “No way. He’ll never do it. Are you kidding?” So, I met with him, and he was totally into it and totally generous about the fact that I had no clue what I was doing. That’s actually why that film took so long, is because I was going to film school, because I had to screw everything up a couple of times before I even got it close to right. And then, we enjoyed working together, we worked on a couple of music videos, and I’d work with him on everything. He agreed to do this.

There are so many times the camera held for several beats after a line and that made so many of the scenes have much more impact. Like the only I can, I know there are many, but the only one I can think of right now is when Elizabeth is talking with her, I guess, boyfriend at the table, and he says, “Unless we break up,” and she’s like, “Oh, I don’t think that’s going to happen.” And then it’s silence, silence…

Heartbreaking.

And then, she looks up at him, and he’s not saying anything, and you’re just like, ouch.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s heartbreaking.

There are a lot of moments like that. Is that more Lee’s style, or yours, like keep the camera rolling for, you know, or does that just come out in editing?

We shot it on HD, so you have much more flexibility in terms of just like letting stuff go, letting the camera roll and roll and roll, which is both an asset and a liability because, we shot You’re Gonna Miss Me on super 16, and so we had to be very careful about what we did. And here, you end up with a lot of options, but you also end up with 200 hours of footage, you know.

But, it’s definitely like, for me, I love to have stuff, a lot of times the most important moments are when no one’s saying anything and when nothing seems to be happening, you know? And I also tend to like stuff that kind of sits on something longer, as you pointed out. I think, it was the combination of both of us, like Lee, it may be, also, that I’ve only, essentially, worked with Lee, mostly, in terms of documentary features, and that’s part of his style, too.

So, you grew up in Dallas. Went to Harvard and studied film there?

History and literature.

Oh, wow. At what point did you get into filmmaking and move to Los Angeles?

After college, I… You know, history and literature is the least practical major in the world, so I had no clue what I wanted to do. I went back to Dallas and worked as a music writer for a while. And then, I went to L.A. and did the same thing.

And then, that period was essentially, you know, getting up the courage to start making a film or figure out how I was going to do that. And it occurred to me that the best, the simplest way to convince people that I could make a movie was to have it be a documentary about a musician. And also, I was obsessed with Roky Erickson, and I thought it would be, I was shocked that it a film hadn’t been made about it before.

That was sort of the path into it, and again, I had a very naive and stupid view of making a documentary. I was like, well, you just shoot a bunch of stuff, and you edit it, and it’s, you know, and so it took quite awhile to get my head out of my ass. Not that I have it out now, but it’s a little further out than it was.

How did you learn about editing?

Essentially, I shot a bunch of stuff with Lee for You’re Gonna Miss Me. We had an editor, God bless him, who was there editing. And I was like, this is not, “You’re a terrible editor! Get out of here!” And then, I learned the software myself, and I realized, no, he’s not a terrible editor, I’m a terrible director.

So, it was in that, and that process of learning how to edit really was where you sort of start to grasp the idea of what it means to be a director, because you don’t have any sense of how it’s going to fit together or how it might fit together until you’ve tried to go and do it yourself. So, it’s essentially in the six months after the first summer of shooting You’re Gonna Miss Me.

Do you know what you’re going to be working on next, or have you thought that far ahead?

I don’t. I’m doing a short film on a totally different tangent. I’m doing a short for an art exhibit in Berlin about, basically, homeland security. I don’t know what I’m going to do for that. But, I have to figure that out pretty quickly.

Another independent film conference, another major missive diagnosing the state of the industry and the drastic need for filmmakers and distributors to shift gears in order to follow the changing needs of consumers. The above chart is attached to part one of a report at indieWIRE by distribution consultant Peter Broderick, published today to coincide wit the launch of Independent Film Week here in New York. Broderick says Mark Gill (the man responsible for associating the current trend of indie film hand-wringing with the phrase “the sky is falling”) was looking at the state of the industry “from the perspective of a seasoned Old World executive.” Broderick says he comes instead “from the filmmaker’s perspective,” and proceeds to layout ten binary oppositions between the Old World and New World of film distribution.

I’m already buried so deep in conversations online video, alternative marketing, the new self-distribution, etc, that much of what Broderick says seems so obvious that I really can’t come up with an immediate response. So: look at the chart, read the story, and tell me what I’m supposed to think. Thank you.

Under discussion:

Breathless  (1960)

Do the Right Thing  (1989)

Before Sunrise  (1995)

Friday Night  (2002)

Miracle at St. Anna  (2008)

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Barry Jenkins’ film Medicine for Melancholy, and we’re lucky enough to have Barry be big fans of Spout as well. His little film has had a long journey since it premiered in Austin at SXSW earlier this year, and it’s continuing to take him around the world.

We spoke with Barry in Toronto about the genesis of the movie, what has happened since that first screening in Austin, how he found the actors, and if this film represents a love letter from him to the city of San Francisco. Read on for the full interview.

Well, the first thing I was going to say was thank you for all the shout outs you always give Spout and Karina whenever you discuss the movie. That question about the de-saturation in the film always comes up. So your check’s in the mail for that.

[laughs] No, I always mention Karina, man. You guys were like one of the first people to publish about the film at South By, when nobody knew about it. So I was thankful and I pay it forward.

That’s good. The last time Karina spoke to you, you’d never been to Austin. You hadn’t been to SXSW before.

Exactly.

Then your film sort of became one of the most buzzed about and talked about breakout films at the festival. How did that change things for you and for the movie?

It was, making it with just me and my friends, this really small crew and not very expensive equipment. So we felt that once we did get in SXSW, we knew it was a good thing. But even still, we thought the movie would play there, and then maybe it would play another film festival. And then we’d sell DVDs off the website.

But I think having that buzz coming out of South By, I think it really made us all kind of take the project more seriously. We saw the potential that maybe it could catch on, and we could actually get it to audiences.
Having now been to Austin, what did you think of the city? Everyone’s always saying, oh Austin’s such a cool place, but no one can really say why that is.
The great thing about going to Austin is everybody who worked on the film, we all were students together at Florida State University, which is in Tallahassee, Florida, which is a college town with a great film school. I think we all dispersed and moved to all these different places.

Every now and then we’d all get together and have this nostalgia for this almost incubator kind of feeling that we all felt in Tallahassee. And I think premiering the film in Austin, we were all like, man this is just like Tallahassee, but much bigger.

There’s something that feels very possible in the air in that city. And I think that’s the reason why they can host a festival that large, despite the fact that the city feels so small. It was a really good experience.

So talking directly about the film, how did you find Wyatt and Tracey for this?

Well we tried to cast in San Francisco, but I guess it’s just the irony of ironies, when you’re dealing with a city that has a devolving or diminishing African American population, we just couldn’t find black actors just to come out and read for the parts.

So we went down to L.A. We used basically the actor’s equivalent of Craigslist, which is to post things on these things like NowCasting.com. And we didn’t have any money, so we got people who really didn’t have any credits. Tracey Heggins was the first woman that we saw, and of course, we then saw 50 other women. Because I’m an idiot, I couldn’t pull the trigger.

And then we actually saw about 50 guys, and we really weren’t satisfied or happy with any of the people we had seen. And a friend of ours just happened to know, she was like, “Oh, I know this guy Wyatt Cenac. You should audition him.” I was like yeah, sure, whatever. I’ll see anybody.

And so we called Wyatt up. He was doing a lot of stand up at that point in L.A., and so he wasn’t really committed to too many things. So he came out, read cold, and was just perfect.

In a way it was really great because I felt like Tracey and Wyatt themselves, they weren’t really the characters that I saw when I wrote the script. But they were so specific and unique in their auditions, that I realized these two people can make the movie go.

And so yeah, we went with the both of them.

Yeah and I think using actors that audiences haven’t really seen a lot of, I know Tracey’s done a fair amount of television, but, it kind of helps feel like they’re more real. They didn’t feel like this was a polished performance. It felt like these were real people.

Thanks, I appreciate that. You know, it’s funny, because now that Wyatt’s on “The Daily Show,” it’s like I was just screening the film for the staff of the Telluride Film Festival. Because I work at that festival, so we just had a little staff screening before the festival.

And the minute the first image comes up, they’re like hey that kind of looks like that guy on Comedy Central. I was like yeah, it is. But we made this movie before he was on Comedy Central, but I guess you can put it that way. It’s just fine. [laughter]

Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. Is he being on “The Daily Show” sort of a result of what is happening with Medicine? Or did that happen separate of the movie?

You know, I think it definitely happened separate. Wyatt is a great standup. And I think he travels in a completely different circle that this film doesn’t travel in, which is the standup scene in L.A. with UCB, “Upright Citizen’s Brigade.”

And I think, really, he had kind of been building momentum there, and was almost just like, I think, really I kind of believe in Karma. I think there was some really good positive energy with the film. Because after SXSW, he kind of got the audition for Comedy Central and “The Daily Show,” and we flew him out there.

And he did it. And they had never seen the movie, or even heard of it. But it was like all these things, the timing was right. He just nailed it. And now he’s on the show.

The movie has some strong words about the current state of race in San Francisco and the housing situation, too. Would you consider it to be sort of your love letter to San Francisco? You clearly love the city, watching this. Would you consider that to be true? Or would you just say it happens to be set in San Francisco?

No, no, no. I think it’s definitely, without a doubt, a love letter to San Francisco. Sometimes, depending on my mood, I’ll say it’s a love hate letter to San Francisco.

But when I originally got the idea for the film years ago, after watching Claire Denis’ Vendredi Soir, I kind of wrote a brief little paragraph about it. And the last line of the paragraph says could be set in Chicago or New York City. And it was just about two characters after a one night stand spending the day together.

But looking back on it, there was no way in hell this movie could have been set in New York or Chicago, because it’s just such a San Francisco movie. I really felt like what made the movie worth making, because I sat on the idea for about five years, was the fact that I felt like there was a real importance to the city as almost a third character in the film.

It really kind of drives, particularly the paranoia that the character of Micah is feeling. It’s like the environment is what makes the movie plausible to me.

Then the housing rights discussion, or the meeting that they stumble across, I found that personally to be a little bit jarring. It shook me out of the moment for a second. Was that on purpose? And how did you come to put that in the film?

You know, it is jarring, because it’s a definite narrative break from the rest of the film. It was something that I felt was important to really round out the A) the depiction of the city that we were giving. And then B) that we were all these things that Micah was consumed with.

Originally, when I first wrote the script, I wrote it as a conversation between the two leads. It just felt completely false. In thinking about it, I was like, this is just really important to me. It’s really important to capture this aspect of the City of San Francisco. So I thought, you know what, it’s worth it to allow a moment for the actual city to speak for itself.

We literally, we knew we were going to have the characters walk by and look in. We felt like the fact that these two people could be walking down the street and they could have passed this meeting and stopped and listened. We thought that was enough of an entryway for the audience.

Even though it was jarring, they would get into that perspective, the point of view of Joe and Micah listening to that meeting that they would just go with it and really hear the city speak for itself. We didn’t write any of that. That’s was a real meeting. We just set the camera in the corner and we just let it roll. We had our actors walk by. It’s one of my favorite moments in the film.

I think of all the sequences that are somewhat jarring because there are a few other places where we take a few liberties, maybe too many liberties. But we’re young so [laughter] felt people would give us leeway. But that was the one that stands out to me. I thought it was important to have in the film.

Well, since you mentioned other moments that stand out or that kind of shake the viewer a little bit, because you said, at least when you talked to Karina earlier in the year, you said this film is like Do the Right Thing meets Before Sunrise with a little bit of French new wave thrown into it.
Yes.

Does that still stand up for you, that analogy?

I think it definitely still holds up for me. Although I feel like the more I watch the film, the more I see those new wave influences from when I first went to film school. I kind of binged on Godard and Breathless and those movies when I first started learning about cinema.

I didn’t grow up wanting to be a filmmaker. I happened to stumble into film school and new wave was the first thing I was introduced to.

I do think that analogy still holds up. It’s something that I wouldn’t make, unless asked me to make it. So it’s not something that I openly push upon the film. But I definitely think, in a way, the spirit that we made the movie in. We shot it in 15 days with a five man crew. We shot it in November and it debuted at South By on March 6, which is a small gestation window.

I think that energy, that new wave energy, is definitely there. Before Sunrise, Sunset it’s obvious. The whole two characters walking. I really would have mentioned Claire Denis’ Vendredi Soir, which was the actual inspiration for the film, but I am nowhere near the filmmaker that Clare Denis is. I like to leave her name out of my mouth as much as possible. [laughter]

Well, we spoke to Spike Lee a couple of times, speaking about Do the Right Thing. We talked to him a couple of times in Toronto and he was there promoting his film Miracle at St. Anna.

St. Anna, yeah.

And then he at both of the times that I was scheduled to talk to him, he ended up speaking about Sarah Palin and Obama. Sarah had just given that inflammatory speech, like last week. He clearly had some strong thoughts about that. He said, “Obama needs to go on the offensive.”

With Obama, this is an incredible year for politics. We have Obama, the first African American nominee, which is pretty amazing. Although oddly enough, a lot of people are saying, well, he’s black but is he black enough?

Right.

Which is a weird statement in itself but that applies to Medicine for Melancholy as well. When you get into the issues of race then who Tracey’s character may or may not be dating, I like the fact that we don’t ever see him, so we don’t really know who he is.

Thank you very much, sir.

That was a great choice because I think that would have grounded it too much to be like, oh, well, now he legitimately has a reason to be so upset.

I agree with you. It would have made it more of a mission statement for me, which I don’t think the film is, one way or the other.

Right. Well, what are your thoughts about the whole… you may not even want to talk about this, but Obama, the possibility that he may be our next president and the whole issues that are surrounding…

No, no, no. Actually I would love to talk about it, because it is something we talked about. We didn’t really speak about it until after the film was in post. When I wrote the film it wasn’t this whole Obama mania. That stuff didn’t exist. It was a foregone conclusion that Hillary was going to get the nomination.

After we shot the film and we were cutting the film and we were doing South by Southwest and the primaries were going on, I think it was when Obama gave that whole speech on race and how we need to find a common ground and have those discussions and relearn how to articulate this issues that we are all so consumed with as Americans.

I feel like for the character of Micah, I feel like that’s truly the arc and I think why all the issues of housing rights and gentrification…. I think that’s why it’s important for him to have those discussions and go through this journey with Joe.

I feel like when he wakes up on that couch the next morning, he’s going to learn to better articulate the things that he was experiencing, which is for him everything is black and white. It’s like the white people are moving into San Francisco and the black people are being forced out.

But really, San Francisco is a small space and everything is driven by economics. What’s happening is the people who make six figures are moving in and the people who make five figures are moving out, whether they be black, white, Chinese, Korean, Hispanic, whatever.

I really feel like that’s what Obama stood for when the primary was going on and he was completely to the left. Not completely to the left but when the change was actual real change… I think in that way the film and this year in the primary election and the race for the presidential nomination, I really feel like that’s where the two come together.

Relearning to articulate this kind of black and white issue that has always consumed Americans since the “dawn of time” or whatever date you want to affix to that.

The title, I know you said at the Q&A at the film that the title was you saw the Ray Bradbury short story collection and you thought that was applicable. Now, would you say, in the film that the characters both serve as a medicine for each other’s melancholy?

I definitely think so. I think that’s why it felt OK to take Bradbury’s title. Even though the film wasn’t an adaptation of that actual short story, there are some similarities. I definitely think so. I don’t think it’s a cure for melancholy. I think it’s a medicine.

I think they both feel a little bit better about what ails them. Or, at the very least, they’ll have a better understanding of what it is that’s causing the melancholy and they can learn to work on it. And that’s why the ending isn’t a happy ending. It’s kind of an open ending. I like to use the term productive. I think it’s a productive ending, and it’s been a productive journey for the both of them.
American audiences are used to having a moment, particularly in independent films, where you don’t really know what’s going to happen   a moment where it seems like it’s going to turn sinister.

That moment in this movie, for me, was when they’re at the taco truck and those two guys come up. You’re like are these guys going to roll them? Are they trying to sell them drugs? But, then it turns out they’re extremely the opposite end of the spectrum. They’re hydration guys. Do those guys really exist in San Francisco?

When I first wrote the screenplay, it actually was going to be a kid who comes up and tries to sell them some pot, because that would actually happen in San Francisco. You’re right. After I wrote it and I read it, I said to myself exactly what you just said. I thought, you know what, I’m not going to do that. Let’s go completely in the opposite direction, and let’s just make this so ridiculous.

In looking back on it, I think it’s a great moment, because the film needs a little bit of levity, and I think those guys really provide it. And there are no actors in the film aside from Tracey and Wyatt. Those two guys don’t go around selling vitamin water, but they’re friends of mine. They hang together all the time.

They’re just a couple of really fun guys. When I thought about how to reconceive the scene, I was like it’s got to be a cheating yard. These guys will do this, and they’ll be really funny. They showed up, and it was just perfect. It’s one of my favorite scenes in the movie. And you know what, those guys always get the biggest laughs on the screen. Here’s this guy on the “Daily Show.” who has all these great jokes in the movie, and these two guys, my buddies, get the biggest laugh in the movie. I love it.

I know you had a notice in the credits that you had a music supervisor or coordinator on the film. Did that mostly come from you? Did it come from the music person?

I can say about 80% of the music came from me. And then the other 20% was between the editor, Nat Sanders, and the actual music supervisor. What the music supervisor did   my buddy Greg   was just make it all legal.

He had produced another independent film, and he knew that I had a list of songs that I wanted. And he was said, you just can’t put those songs in. You have to figure a way to legally get them, and that was really what he did.

I like to write to music. In most of the scenes, I think the reason why they cut so well to music is because I wrote them with those cues in mind. And we made the movie so fast that I couldn’t really be there with Nat while he was editing the movie. At least, not at first, because he was editing while we were shooting it.

And so, it was great to have those definite songs for those definite set pieces that had a definite energy. I could just orally communicate to him, and then come in to do the editing. They just totally worked out.

Yeah, it had a great soundtrack.

Thanks, I appreciate it.

Well that’s all I have.

Actually I have one thing I’d like to say.

Sure. Go ahead.

Because you touched on the housing rights meeting and that being jarring, I made the comment that there are a few other places where I think it’s drawing to. I felt that because we knew that it was going to be extremely jarring in that scene, we tried to work our way up to that. I think there are two other places where we jar the audience, almost in preparation for that meeting. We tried to earn the right to do that.

I think when they’re riding the bikes and the song is clipping, it’s a very weird audio cue. I think that’s the first place where we sort of break the rules a little bit. I think with the carousel, especially with the way it ends, with the diaject sound coming back in, after the store fades out, we took another step further towards breaking that wall.

And then with the documentary scene, dropped into the narrative, that’s when we completely go beyond. But hopefully, when audiences watch the movie, I hope it prepares them for that moment.

What’s next with the film? Are you going to another festival?

Yeah. We’re going to IFP Week in New York next week. And then we’re going to go to London, Vienna and Stockholm before we are finally released by IFC with the day and date model, in February.

Wow. Well that sure beats selling DVDs on a website somewhere.

You know what, it’s funny. It’s been a hell of a journey from South by Southwest. I am sitting on the 19th floor of a hotel in Toronto talking to you right now. The last time I spoke Sprout, I was sitting in my buddy’s studio apartment in L.A. in my underwear trying to work.

And that wasn’t even that long ago. That’s pretty amazing.

No, it wasn’t that long ago. It’s a charmed little film. Thank you guys for plugging us initially.

No problem. I hope at least you have pants on now.

I do. I’m not alone. Charlie’s here too. So he made sure I put the pants on.

Nice. It was a requirement. Well cool, Barry. I wish you much continued success. And hopefully, we’ll be talking to you down the line with your next movie.

Thanks, man. I appreciate it. And if and when I do make another movie, damn right, I will definitely come to Sprout. You guys have been very good to me.

Great. That’s so nice of you to say. Thank you. We appreciate that.

Thanks, man.