Reining Nails | Blog

I’m the artist of the week at the iotaCenter in Los Angeles, California. This makes me tearful.

http://www.iotacenter.org/

In about 12 hours, I will be sending Jamie Stewart his promised password-protected Vimeo link entitled “House Sparrow.” If you would like to receive this link and a downloadable version of the video for your iPod as well, as opposed to waiting for the video to officially premiere, e-mail me a picture of you staring out a window looking sad (cell phone quality is fine).

Offer expires at 8 AM Central time on Friday, July 16th, 2010.

jasonlkeener@gmail.com

I was scheduled to appear at Cleveland, OH’s new indie art/film/music festival, Weapons of Mass Creation, two weeks ago but was unfortunately rear-ended on a notorious road in Birmingham, AL, the day before I was to fly out, so I couldn’t make it. The festival’s creator, Jeff Finley, asked me to address some specific things about myself and my films to compensate for my absence, and I’m honored to do so. The comments section of this blog can also serve as an online post-festival Q&A.

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INSPIRATION
One of the most important goals of these short films was to make my thought process tangible. I don’t typically sit down to write a film like Hallelujah! Gorilla Revival. Instead, the ideas just come at their own pace at the oddest times. I was putting price stickers on DVDs at Hollywood Video when I imagined scorpions lost in a landscape of mashed potatoes (for safety and financial reasons, it became a turtle). The basic premise of a screenplay I’m working on now came to me while re-examining my testicles in a warm bath after I’d discovered a lump I feared to be cancer (it wasn’t). I don’t know where these images and concepts come from. They just happen without much intentional effort. When I have enough, I make a film and then wait for more to accumulate. These ideas have largely been fueled by caffeine abuse, hypomania, stress, insecurity, hatred, nightmares and sugar.

Sometimes the ideas are absurd nonsense; at other times, they’re pretty easy for me to decipher, and I’ll know what real-life event triggered them. It’s the same with dreams. Nonsense and anguish-inspired symbolism. Nightmares. Depressing nightmares. They inspire me.

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DISTURBING AND SCARY, NIGHTMARE INDUCING
Jeff has informed me that many viewers at WMC were scared by the shorts, with some even claiming the films gave them nightmares. This is a pleasing reaction. The typical audience reaction has always been laughter, and that’s never been entirely satisfying for me. I’ve always preferred the screenings where the audience seemed confused, unsettled or saddened in spite of the intentional dark humor. I’m interested in Hitchcock’s notion of playing the audience like a piano, which is why there are so many conflicting moods and images in the films. It goes with the hypomania influence; it’s how my brain has operated for a large portion of my life: an absurd and silly sense of humor at war with depression and violent nightmares. Ideally, these films function as Jason LaRay Keener: The Rollercoaster, with peaks and valleys of hilarity and melancholy.

At Indie Memphis, filmmaker Kris Swanberg told me she had to cover her eyes during one of my films because it disturbed her. This is the kind of reaction I cherish.

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ATTITUDE ABOUT FILM
I take film very seriously. I like entertainment, and it was John Carpenter’s Halloween that gave me the passion for cinema, but the most important films for me have been the ones that were more than just a movie. By this, I speak of the films that alter your perception of the world and change your life, even if only on a small level. This doesn’t necessarily mean message movies or political films. In general, I prefer cinema as 25% intellectual and 75% emotional. As Bresson once said, “It’s not a question of understanding, it’s a question of feeling, which is not exactly the same thing.” Art, music and poetry have long been celebrated for this ability to touch audiences on a purely emotional level.

It seems that the general population has a harder time accepting this with cinema, preferring it to stay restricted to telling stories in a narrative form. The short films of Derek Jarman and Man Ray were the first I’d seen that were free of narrative. They were literally moving pictures and nothing more; they lacked sound and plot. It was a revelation and an inspiration to follow in their footsteps.

Another dominant attitude about film that I disagree with is the superiority of the theatre experience. I see prints of the movies I love as often as possible, but I feel equally strong about the home-viewing experience. I think the ideal viewing scenario for something like The Brown Bunny or Le Feu follet is at home in solitude, not in a public space with cell phones bleeping and blooping. I think certain films work better in one format or the other, and I feel the kind of cinema I aim to make is best suited for home viewings, preferably with the viewer alone. I think this creates an intimacy similar to listening to an album in your bedroom with headphones or reading literature in bed. I don’t consider straight-to-video an inherently bad thing.

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THE FUTURE
In December of 2009, I attempted to make my first feature film, Natalie Natasha, which had been in a pre-production void since 2006.  It was a disaster and annihilated what little self-esteem I’d finally built up. But failure is a good thing. It can be a humbling experience that helps you evaluate your talent and goals and work harder at improvement, which has been the case with this particular project.

I plan to go on hiatus for a while and study up on technical aspects of filmmaking. I have definite ideas about new paths I’d like to take, and this will require a degree of conventional craftsmanship. I’m satisfied with the strange little shorts I’ve made, but there’s no room for surrealism or nonsense in these upcoming projects. In the meantime, I aim to become a better videographer, sound designer, writer and director of actors. The world will spin just fine without me for a while.

I’m pleased to announce a new blog to canofzebras.com. Paused Motion will serve as a source of inspiration and influence to filmmakers through examples of exceptional film composition and lighting. The film theory-themed blog, Opinions on Filmmaking, will be moving to canofzebras.com soon, as well.

The exciting new art/film/music festival I’m excited to be a part of is a few bucks behind on their goal. Donate here if you can.

Love,
Jason LaRay Keener