[Movies] Tarnation

Ever since he was five, Jonathan Caouette wanted to be a filmmaker. Growing up in a dysfunctional Texas family, he found refuge in playing with video cameras and recording his everyday experience. With his debut feature Tarnation, the 32-year-old assembles two decades worth of personal footage into a remarkable portrait of his troubled upbringing and the unexpected relationship that develops with his mentally-ill mother. The film has been championed by Gus Van Sant and John Cameron Mitchell who helped it secure distribution (it opens in Vancouver in January). Oh, and the film cost about $218 to make.

Your story is incredible. How fast has this all happened? It seems like a whirlwind.
Oh, yeah. It’s been a whirlwind. The film has gone from my desktop computer to a worldwide distribution deal in less than a year. It kind of blows my mind, still.

In presenting such an intensely personal story, how worried were you about having to respond to the film? Usually a filmmaker has more of a critical distance but in this case your film is very much about you and your life.
I’ve always found it challenging. Initially, I couldn’t get a word in edgewise doing my first Q&As at the Sundance Film Festival. It was completely unexpected. The biggest challenge was trying to do a balancing act of justifying myself as a filmmaker while kind of severing my emotional attachment to the work, too. I just found I got the balance right after the first three Q&As. It’s still been a crazy, emotionally turbulent experience. I’d be lying to myself and other people if I didn’t say it’s been very challenging and up-and-down emotionally.

The film could’ve been seen as inaccessible. You’ve taken a huge risk.
I know. I don’t know what I would do with myself if the movie was getting slammed all across the board. I’d probably kill myself or something (laughs).

Can you talk about how you chose the music for the film and how big of a role it played?
I was initially cutting with iMovie. I would always start with the music and work my way out visually. Music has been a very big, integral part of my life and the life of this film. Somebody was asking me the other day if cinema didn’t exist what would I do and I told them I probably would be busking on 4th Street in Austin if I knew how to play.

There’s been a lot in the press about the film being done on iMovie. What’s your sense about this “do-it-yourself” filmmaking? Do you think we’ve reached a point in filmmaking where it’s a possibility for most people?
I think that the editing software that a lot of these companies have made, I don’t know if they’re cognizant of the monstrosity they’ve created. I think this is going to revolutionize everything. It’s going to be a real renaissance in the fact that it’s going to resonate and transcend all across the board and change filmmaking as we know it. I think the intimacy that’s established between the filmmaker and the medium is going to change everything.

What do you think about how Hollywood films have approached the issue of mental illness?
I think it’s terrible and it’s gotten worse and worse over the last 20 years. The last three films that I’ve seen, American films anyway, that have nailed it were all made in the 70s. I think these days a lot of directors take the subject and they kind of play the idea. They really candy-coat it. They play the idea of what they think the mass audiences are going to understand by having to spell it out to them in a certain way. It’s really important to me at the end of the day that people in general try to empathize with the mentally ill more.

I was reading that you’re speaking with David Lynch’s producer? You have an idea about re-editing some films from the 70s?
It’s still coming along. Actually, I’m going to be moving back in with my grandfather and I’m going to be in my old bedroom and I’ll set up an editing bay. I’ll just multitask by working on my film at the same time while taking care of him and my mother in a way I’ve never been able to before. With the next film, I’m taking three major motion pictures that were made consecutively from the years 1973 to 1977. They all starred this one actress — I can’t say who it is — she assumes the same aesthetic right down to the hair length. My fantasy is to get all three films free of underscore and free of music by utilizing just the split track dialogue that’s been derived from the master. I want to re-augment and re-mix them into a new two-hour film that hopefully will tell a different story.

Sounds like a really interesting idea.
Just for fun, yeah. Just a way to keep it between me and the computer.

Words: Sam Schachner