{"id":2876,"date":"2013-07-24T00:00:10","date_gmt":"2013-07-24T04:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=2876"},"modified":"2013-07-29T01:04:36","modified_gmt":"2013-07-29T05:04:36","slug":"an-interview-with-james-merendino","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/an-interview-with-james-merendino\/","title":{"rendered":"An Interview with James Merendino, Writer\/Director of SLC Punk (But First, A Review Of The Film)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nSLC Punk<\/a> (1998)
\n<\/b>Written & Directed by James Merendino
\n97 min.<\/p>\n

I could never identify the groups in my high school.\u00a0 We certainly had some jocks, potheads, and even a few hanger-on goths.\u00a0 But punks, I don’t know.\u00a0 We had a kid with a mohawk; he was a fucking asshole.\u00a0 And we had a bunch of kids who loved punk music\u2014a lot of them had safety pins in their clothes and dyed hair, but they seemed to really like some band called AFI, which I always thought was the American Film Institute.\u00a0 By the time I was in high school, punk music had completely soaked into the mainstream and everybody had heard of Pennywise and Bad Religion.\u00a0 It was in vogue to go see Henry Rollins do his spoken word shows in Ann Arbor, and if you were really cool, you already liked Bad Brains and Minor Threat.<\/p>\n

I didn’t care about any of that stuff and I was tired of every local band sounding like Green Day.\u00a0 I was like the James Duval character in SLC Punk\u2014the social diplomat.\u00a0 I could be friends with anybody.\u00a0 I was too busy getting into movies and figuring out my own depression to bother committing to some specific clique.\u00a0 Plus, the fashion of punk seemed so childish to me.\u00a0 It’s music; I don’t wear it, I listen to it.\u00a0 But that being said, we didn’t have nazis or rednecks either.\u00a0 Well, everywhere has rednecks, but our <\/i>punks didn’t beat them with bats.\u00a0 Our punks were nice kids (except for that mohawked loser) and they got good grades and loved their parents.\u00a0 They went to Michigan State University and were proud to do so.
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\nBy the time I was in high school, punk was only fashion.\u00a0 But really, it always only was, even if you got beat up for doing it.\u00a0 I can’t relate to the universe of Salt Lake City as portrayed in James Merendino’s SLC Punk.\u00a0 But, on some level, I know those people.\u00a0 They’re familiar somehow.\u00a0 And it’s not because music and fashion are universal, or because we all grow up at some point, or any other Kumbaya shit.\u00a0 It’s because James Merendino wrote one of the best scripts in movie history.<\/p>\n

My partner in crime back then was my best friend Rob. (I was probably more like Stevo, but he was no Bob.) And he and I would show each other movies.\u00a0 I showed him Star Wars<\/a> and Rushmore<\/a> and he showed me Three O’Clock High<\/a> and The Wizard<\/a>.\u00a0 I showed him Taxi Driver<\/a> and Tremors<\/a> and he showed me SLC Punk\u2014a movie he watched everyday when he got home from school while eating hamburgers.\u00a0 I’m forever grateful.<\/p>\n

SLC Punk fits right in to that heyday of post-Pulp Fiction<\/a>, edgy independent cinema.\u00a0 From Trainspotting<\/a> to Go<\/a> we were constantly inundated with a barrage of gritty “indies”. Real festival darlings.\u00a0 SLC Punk is the good version of those movies.\u00a0 It’s everything you expect an indie to be: jagged, stylized, sardonic, funny, and filled with sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll\u2014but it all serves a story.\u00a0 A beautiful<\/i> story.\u00a0 While Go and Trainspotting and the like use style to mask their bland structure and shallow themes, SLC Punk is a reflection of youth; a rite-of-passage story and a hero’s journey.<\/p>\n

The universe in SLC Punk feels real, and that reality comes from a cinematic synthesis of writing, performance, color, lighting, music, and sound\u2014a culmination of elements that only a true master of the art form can wield.\u00a0 So let’s put it under the magnifying glass for a bit, because I want to understand why a movie I have no superficial connection to has such a profound effect on me.<\/p>\n

Style is what amateurs use to impress, and pros use to express.\u00a0 SLC Punk is Annie Hall<\/a> with balls.\u00a0 It’s a guy looking back on his life and analyzing it in order to find himself.\u00a0 The structure and point of view is exactly the same.\u00a0 I like Annie Hall a lot.\u00a0 I like that it’s actually a lot more stylized than people think, effortlessly going into subtitle jokes, cartoons, and continually breaking the fourth wall.\u00a0 SLC Punk utilizes the exact same style, but Lillard’s Stevo is a much more compelling chaperone than Alvy Singer.\u00a0 Alvy Singer never jumps up and down giving his parents the finger.<\/p>\n

Stevo literally takes you on a tour of his life, immersing you in the hardcore punk scene of the mid 1980s.\u00a0 Throughout the film he continually breaks the fourth wall to explain the minutia of his everyday life, from the inner workings of the music scene, to his theories about anarchy and his station in life.\u00a0 His delivery is not only spot-on but wholly genuine.\u00a0 Lillard is a ball of energy and Merendino has essentially let him run rampant through his movie.\u00a0 Lillard knows how to use his entire body to express a line.\u00a0 It’s difficult to carry a movie, but I suspect it’s more difficult to literally yell <\/i>at the audience.\u00a0 When he yells, he’s yelling at us, and when he’s sad, we’re sad.\u00a0 On the commentary, Merendino explains that during the acid trip scene he told Lillard that everyone on the crew thought he sucked.\u00a0 I saw the movie fifteen times before knowing that was the direction, but I could certainly feel where Stevo was.<\/p>\n

Lillard leans into lines. His face contorts and his eyes widen and his mouth curls.\u00a0 He is the living epitome of the hyperbolic intensity that dominates the life of a fashionable, angst-ridden adolescent.\u00a0 Teenagers, especially outsiders, are inherently pretentious.\u00a0 They think the world begins and ends with them and Stevo is no different.\u00a0 I continue to be amazed at how earnestly the writing expresses this without overstepping. The movie uses pretension, like a woman starring into emptiness in the desert and waxing cheesily about that nothingness, to its advantage.\u00a0 It depicts the reality of teenage pretension so honestly that it allows itself to be as over the top as a teenager.\u00a0 This writing allows the pretension to be dramatically effective and resonant rather than laughable\u2014which so many of its contemporaries are.\u00a0 (I’m looking at you, Prozac Nation<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

This clever use of pretension as a device is achieved not only through the writing and performances but also through a myriad of visual effects, “all of which I will gladly show you now”. (That\u2019s a line from the movie.) The use of classical music enhances the self importance of the characters and exposes it without having to say it.\u00a0 But my favorite trick is the use of green screen.\u00a0 The foundation is laid early on when Lillard takes us on a tour of a party he and Bob have thrown.\u00a0 He shows us things and talks to the camera.\u00a0 But SLC Punk is about reflection.\u00a0 It’s a story told by a wiser man.\u00a0 There’s a brilliant scene when four characters are sitting at a diner talking about their future plans.\u00a0 Jason Segel is brilliant here as a punk who’s gonna go off to Notre Dame to study botany and save the rainforest.\u00a0 In a brilliant and hilarious character moment, he then clenches his fist and smashes it down on the table saying “somebody’s gotta fight!”.\u00a0 (Segel is a scene stealer even at 18.)\u00a0 What’s brilliant is that Stevo then turns to the camera to address us.\u00a0 He appears to be in the scene, but all of a sudden the camera starts zooming and Stevo remains frozen in place, still talking to us, as the sound of the scene dips lower and we realize the scene is going on behind him.\u00a0 He was shot in the scene but then through green screen trickery and matched lighting he is suddenly above the scene and talking about it.\u00a0 This kind of stylistic choice has to be incredibly deliberate because it requires a lot of planning to get right.\u00a0 Matching the lighting is tricky.\u00a0 This effect is proof positive that the style in SLC Punk is very much by design and done with a deep understanding of how the tools of the art form can be used expressively.\u00a0 Effects like that are unique to cinema.\u00a0 Playing with them is a beautiful expression of high filmmaking IQ.\u00a0 It’s what makes movies fun.<\/p>\n

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\nOn the commentary, Merendino notes that all the jump cuts are not really a French New Wave nod, but just a lack of coverage.\u00a0 I suspect they’re neither and that he was just being modest.\u00a0 There’s a very meticulous design being exercised in SLC Punk that can’t be ignored.\u00a0 Not just in the camera and editing effects, but in the musical choices and writing, all the way down to the harsh, white highlights that populate the exacting and wonderful compositions.\u00a0 Interestingly, the movie was shot in 2:35, which is very wide.\u00a0 Merendino takes full advantage and uses many wide lenses, I suspect, to show the environments around the characters.\u00a0 Close ups can only be expressive if the information they contain serves the story.\u00a0 A wide shot can show you many things, and often a character’s juxtaposition to his or her environment is just as important.\u00a0 Also, the more you vary your shot sizes, the more impactful close ups and wide shots are by virtue of dynamic range.\u00a0 Think of all the jagged editing early on when Bob is ranting about drugs and compare that next to the very wide, single take shot later in the film when Stevo is hanging with Bob and Trish in the salt flats.\u00a0 The location itself is expressive and beautiful, but the shot size, composition, and blocking all express the drama.<\/p>\n

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\nBob.\u00a0 What a great character.\u00a0 Don’t we all know a Bob?\u00a0 Not only is he the perfect compliment to Stevo, he’s also one of the most wholly likable characters ever put on film.\u00a0 There’s a great scene when Stevo is yelling at Bob.\u00a0 Stevo is mad and taking it out on his best friend, whom he’s jealous of for finding love and subsequently becoming less depressed and more together.\u00a0 Like most young rebels, Stevo naively thinks that Salt Lake City sucks\u2014not realizing that you aren’t automatically cooler by living in New York City (the \u201chub and mecca of culture\u201d as he calls it) in a brilliant diatribe to his parents.\u00a0 Lillard is acting his ass off in the scene, and during his angry rant we never even cut to the reverse for Bob’s reaction.\u00a0 Instead, after Stevo leaves the scene, Bob turns around to face the camera, revealing a very hurt friend.\u00a0 His face is like a knife to the heart, and with that one look, Michael A. Goorjian has stolen the entire movie.<\/p>\n

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\nThere’s also a troupe of heavy-hitting character actors that routinely hit it out of the park, from the aforementioned James Duval and Jason Segel to the amazing Devon Sawa and the ever brilliant Christopher McDonald, who’s line “Fuck you, dear” is one of the most quotable in all movies. Til Schwieger is obviously a stand-out though.\u00a0 Not much can even be said about how fucking awesome he is in this movie.<\/p>\n

There’s a great scene between Stevo and his dad where they’re sitting in Mcdonald’s sports car.\u00a0 Stevo, unlike Bob, is a rich kid; his dad is a well-off former hippie.\u00a0 Stevo has never faced adversity, apart from always being a nerd and an outcast.\u00a0 Bob is a punk because he’s searching for an identity in a world he doesn’t understand, whereas Stevo is a punk because he’s angry that the jocks gave him wedgies.\u00a0 The scene between Stevo and his Dad is very telling.\u00a0 Stevo takes every opportunity to take digs at his dads career choice, but it’s clear that the two have a rapport and understanding.\u00a0 This scene very intelligently telegraphs the trajectory of Stevo.\u00a0 The writing is very tender and smart and allows you, the audience, the opportunity to be seeded with the drama\u2014the percolating confusion within Stevo.\u00a0 That scene foreshadows the inevitable ending.<\/p>\n

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\nThe path of Stevo is incredibly fluid, especially for a movie with such a non-linear structure and a free form, stream-of-consciousness design.\u00a0 Take the Devon Sawa character, for example.\u00a0 Early on his role is purely anecdotal and universe-coloring.\u00a0 Bob tells a story about this kid who had a bunch of acid soak into his leg and it made him freak out and try to murder his parents.\u00a0 It’s the kind of story you hear growing up about the kid two towns over\u2014all the details have been mangled by a gigantic game of gossipy telephone.\u00a0 But later in the film, Stevo encounters Sawa again, this time as a “fuckin\u2019 beggar”.\u00a0 And although the lines are hilarious, there’s a very penetrating sadness that shapes Stevo’s arc.\u00a0 This kind of clever positioning of elements, this set up and payoff, is a very advanced and mature brand of writing that cannot be ignored.<\/p>\n

Finally, in one of the most profound moments in movie history, Stevo makes his closing statements.\u00a0 He was a poser all along, and they all were.\u00a0 It’s impossible not to be.\u00a0 What follows is one of the sweetest things ever put on film.\u00a0 The sentiment rings true, and the scene with young Bob and Stevo encompasses the beauty of life: sharing art with your friends in your adolescence might be the best thing you ever get to do.\u00a0 I’m certainly glad my best friend Rob shared SLC Punk with me.<\/p>\n

1 out of 1 stars.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\nDid you always want to be a filmmaker, how did you get you start?<\/b><\/p>\n

I always wanted to make movies. That or Botany. I got my start making Lord Of The Rings in the forest and hills behind my house when I was 11. All shot on Super 8.<\/p>\n

How much of SLC Punk is based on your own experience?\u00a0 I’m very curious to hear about the journey that lead you to this movie.\u00a0 It’s kind of a real rags to riches, American dream kind of story if you think about it?<\/b><\/p>\n

Is it? I would think Riches to Rags. Stevo\u2019s a spoiled rich kid. He\u2019s kind of like Francis of Assisi. But the story is rather personal. It was not meant to represent any scene. Just a reflection on myself and my outsider friends. There were and are much cooler Punks in SLC than me. I set out to make a movie about my generation of outsiders. When I went out with the script, Hollywood was outraged by it. Baby boomers said, \u201cYour generation didn\u2019t stop a war. Who cares about you.\u201d\u00a0 I was surprised by the reaction.\u00a0 So I went to Germans for the financing.\u00a0 Hollywood doesn\u2019t like this movie. There\u2019s no clear happy ending.<\/p>\n

On the commentary you say the movie was shot for $800,000. How’d you get the money? You mention that Jan De Bont was involved.<\/b><\/p>\n

If I said 800K it was a lie. It cost 2 million. Jan was the only \u2018Hollywood\u2019 person that understood it. But then again, he\u2019s Dutch. So he was not intimidated by the subculture. It didn\u2019t challenge him or threaten him. So he lent his name to the effort.<\/p>\n

How’d you get the cast together?<\/b><\/p>\n

We auditioned a lot of actors.<\/p>\n

What was sundance like back in 98?<\/b><\/p>\n

I grew up skiing in Utah. Sundance is always Sundance. One week a year it is filled with Industry folk screaming into cell phones. The shape of the phones have changed. That\u2019s all.<\/p>\n

What were some reactions from the cast and people in your life who saw it?\u00a0 On the commentary Lillard seems to be very happy with it. Was that the case with everyone?<\/b><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know. I assumed everybody hated it.<\/p>\n

In the last ten years, SLC Punk has gone on to be a pretty polarizing cult classic.\u00a0 By the time I was in high school in the early 2000’s, it was already the bible for many of the punker kids.\u00a0 How does that make you feel, to have made something that many people really remember and cherish?<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cPolarizing\u201d. As in a movie that divides people. I think people may have taken it the wrong way. But if people cherish the movie, well that\u2019s great. But if it has become a religion, that\u2019s very, very bad. Because it\u2019s just my story. I did not mean to preach or suggest I represent \u2018Punk\u2019.<\/p>\n

I want to ask some questions about some things I mentioned in the review.\u00a0 You say on the commentary that the jump cutting was done out of necessity.\u00a0 I presumptuously put out that they were design, so here is your chance to prove me wrong.<\/b><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t have time for coverage. So, like the French New Wave directors, I used the jump cut trick. But once you commit to that, it becomes a design. It has to, or the movie falls apart. You have to do it with purpose, or it seems unnecessary. I try to use all my money limitations to my benefit and make those solutions become necessary to the style of the movie. Example: you want to make a horror movie. You have five thousand dollars. What to do? Pretend the movie was shot by the characters in the movie with a cheap camera. Now the poor quality of the movie is a necessary part of the movie.<\/p>\n

Along those lines, there is a lot of design in the effects shots, from the acid burning into Devon Sawa’s legs to the speed ramps, lighting gags, and green screen effects.\u00a0 Did you visualize these moments?\u00a0 Can you discuss in detail how you worked some of these out?\u00a0 I’m curious because it’s not just that these moments are ahead of their time but that they are things that not many people have ever even tried to do so I’d love to hear about their inspiration and ultimate executing.<\/b><\/p>\n

Those things were in the script. Once you have a moment in a movie that requires a visual effect, it doesn\u2019t take much FX acumen to sort it out. You put up a green screen, shoot your foreground action. Take it away and shoot the BG. I like \u2018in-camera\u2019 effects. So I compel my production Designer to build the duplicate of the corner of a fifth story apartment in a house. So when I shoot the scene starting in the apartment. I can dolly left and follow the actor right into a different location. I wanted to do these things to really separate Stevo from the story and support his role as the guy selling you a story.<\/p>\n

Was there any special reason for shooting in 2.35:1?\u00a0 Was it difficult to light and shoot on such a small budget?<\/b><\/p>\n

I love anamorphic. I like the frame. It does not take any extra lighting. Or special lighting. You just need brighter lights because anamorphic lens\u2019 do better at higher f-stop concerning focus.<\/p>\n

The lighting and compositions are both very expressive and deliberate.\u00a0 The lighting is often very harsh and the compositions and camera movements are big.\u00a0 There’s a great mixture of big wide shots and intimate, handheld shots.\u00a0 Talk about that a little. How closely did you work with you DP?\u00a0 What movies inspired the look?<\/b><\/p>\n

I like contrast and I want to burn the image into the film. I also think it\u2019s important to be ambitious and open up a picture, visually. I want to see the world they inhabit from God\u2019s POV and I also want to see it from their POV. So I switch back and forth depending on what feels right. I do not follow any rule as in wide, two shot, CU.<\/p>\n

You’ve announced a sequel to SLC Punk. What can you tell us about it right now and what inspired you to go back and mine the material?<\/b><\/p>\n

As I said, SLC Punk was a very personal story. I tell all kinds of stories. But if I am going to talk about my observations as a Gen X outsider, the medium and style that SLC Punk was set in is the medium I feel comfortable working in to talk about me. I invented that medium for this purpose. A sequel is misleading. It\u2019s just what I do. I use these characters and this style with this humor to express what my friends and I, or people I know, think and do. Once again, Hollywood is rather hostile to this subject. They are baby boomers or are following the rules of Baby boomers. They don\u2019t want to know about my outsider generation at any age. They don\u2019t understand the problems we face in our late 30\u2019s. They don\u2019t even want to. If it\u2019s not This is 40<\/a> and all about your money and babies and sex problems, it\u2019s irrelevant. So I\u2019m twisting arms.<\/p>\n

What’s your favorite movie?<\/b><\/p>\n

Really?<\/p>\n

What’s your least favorite?<\/b><\/p>\n

Really?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"heading\"
\n

\nSLC Punk<\/a> (1998)
\n<\/b>Written & Directed by James Merendino
\n97 min.<\/p>\n

I could never identify the groups in my high school.\u00a0 We certainly had some jocks, potheads, and even a few hanger-on goths.\u00a0 But punks, I don’t know.\u00a0 We had a kid with a mohawk; he was a fucking asshole.\u00a0 And we had a bunch of kids who loved punk music\u2014a lot of them had safety pins in their clothes and dyed hair, but they seemed to really like some band called AFI, which I always thought was the American Film Institute.\u00a0 By the time I was in high school, punk music had completely soaked into the mainstream and everybody had heard of Pennywise and Bad Religion.\u00a0 It was in vogue to go see Henry Rollins do his spoken word shows in Ann Arbor, and if you were really cool, you already liked Bad Brains and Minor Threat.<\/p>\n

I didn’t care about any of that stuff and I was tired of every local band sounding like Green Day.\u00a0 I was like the James Duval character in SLC Punk\u2014the social diplomat.\u00a0 I could be friends with anybody.\u00a0 I was too busy getting into movies and figuring out my own depression to bother committing to some specific clique.\u00a0 Plus, the fashion of punk seemed so childish to me.\u00a0 It’s music; I don’t wear it, I listen to it.\u00a0 But that being said, we didn’t have nazis or rednecks either.\u00a0 Well, everywhere has rednecks, but our <\/i>punks didn’t beat them with bats.\u00a0 Our punks were nice kids (except for that mohawked loser) and they got good grades and loved their parents.\u00a0 They went to Michigan State University and were proud to do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,21,15],"tags":[2318,2326,2317,804,2320,2333,2334,1546,2323,37,2319,2322,2311,2315,2328,2327,2332,2321,2329,327,2325,2331,2313,2312,2316,2314,104,185,588,2330,396,2324,706,2335,1516,579],"class_list":["post-2876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-gregsinterviews","category-gregsreviews","tag-afi","tag-alvy-singer","tag-american-film-institute","tag-annie-hall","tag-bad-brains","tag-christopher-mcdonald","tag-devon-sawa","tag-go","tag-green-day","tag-greg-deliso","tag-henry-rollins","tag-james-duval","tag-james-merendino","tag-james-merendino-interview","tag-jason-segel","tag-matthew-lillard","tag-michael-a-goorjian","tag-minor-threat","tag-prozac-nation","tag-pulp-fiction","tag-rushmore","tag-salt-lake-city","tag-slc-punk-2","tag-slc-punk-2-punks-dead","tag-slc-punk-interview","tag-slc-punk-sequel","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm","tag-star-wars","tag-stevo","tag-taxi-driver","tag-the-wizard","tag-three-oclock-high","tag-til-schwieger","tag-trainspotting","tag-tremors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2876"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2959,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2876\/revisions\/2959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}