While most have their eye on Kat Dennings in this weekend’s new big release Thor, the actress also has another film making its US theatrical debut, Daydream Nation, a film from first time director, Michael Goldbach. Goldbach wrote that piece that features Dennings as Caroline Wexler, a big city girl who recently moves to a small town and isn’t happy about it. However, soon enough, her boring new existence is spiced up courtesy of a local industrial, serial killer and, of course, boys. Well, in Caroline’s case it’s a boy (Reece Thompson) and a man, her teacher, Mr. Anderson (Josh Lucas).
In honor of Daydream Nation‘s Los Angeles and New York release, Goldbach took the time to tell us all about this lengthy yet rewarding eight-year process, developing his idea and seeing to fruition. Check out everything Goldbach had to say about the inspirations for his story, casting and working with Dennings, Thompson and Lucas and much more in the interview below.
This is your directorial debut, so can you tell me a little bit about how you got here?
Michael Goldbach: I wrote this movie about eight years ago, so I was in my mid-20s, and because it was my first feature film it just took a really long time to get going. It’s obviously very independent, slightly eccentric material so when you’re trying to make a film like that it’s going to be an uphill battle and it sure was. [Laughs] It took the bulk of my 20s and early 30s to make.
How did the idea for the story come to you? Did it stem from any personal experiences?
Well, there’s a bunch of elements in the script that are slightly autobiographical, obviously in a very sort of exaggerated surreal form. For example, some of the things that might seem most crazy are real, like the industrial fire; I grew up in a small town in Canada, just outside of London, Ontario, and when I was growing up there was a huge tire fire that burned for months and that’s kind of where I got the idea for the ever present industrial fire. And then also, while I was in high school, there was a serial killer, the Bernardo killings, and that kind of influenced that element. The character of Caroline Wexler that Kat Dennings plays, the influence for that was there was always that girl in my high school class who was really beautiful and really intelligent and paid absolutely no attention to me and always seemed to be in trouble with older men. I never really understood that girl when I was a teenager, so it was really fun to revisit that character as an adult and try and figure out who she really was.
How about structuring your screenplay? Can you tell me about what it took to combine all of these elements in a cohesive manner?
I wanted to tell a story that gives a little bit of a portrait of a town. Obviously it’s narrated by Caroline Wexler and, forget the feeling that she’s remembering it and it’s a little bit inside her head, so it’s very subjective, so I wanted to make a movie that had a kind of bi-polar teenage feeling where it’s zigzagging in and out of different stories and reflecting her mood swings. I think that’s why the film plays with tone quite a lot.
And what about the visual techniques? Just as much as your script pushes the conventions of the standard narrative, so does your visual presentation of it.
We worked really hard [for] something that I thought would be visually beautiful but still have an edge to it. We shot this whole movie in 22 days, no pick-ups, we couldn’t go back and reshoot anything and we shot the whole thing on an HD camera. It’s a very low budget movie so that forced us to be really creative. Me and the people around me, the producers and the cinematographer and the production designer, we just worked incredibly hard to be as visually creative as possible given the extreme limits presented to us.
What was it like working in a high-pressure situation like that? You’ve got some pretty daring shots here, so what happens if you don’t nail it the first time?
[Laughs] Not always! Let me put it this way; there’s very little on the cutting room floor. You know, you watch something on DVD and there’s a bunch of deleted scenes? I don’t know if we have any deleted scenes because we really used everything that we shot pretty much. And it’s just the nature of it. Obviously we waited till we had it right. We never moved on if we didn’t feel we had nailed it, so I don’t think that we compromised, but I do think that what it did was it focused us.
What is your process like on set? What type of actor’s director are you?
In terms of directing actors, it’s kind of funny because I always thought, ‘Oh, I need to be the kind of director that rehearses with the actors for weeks in advance and we all become best friends and we workshop it and then we go onto set.’ That’s kind of how I dreamt of making this film, but the reality is some of the actors show up the night before their scenes, so I quickly adapted to the situation and I think it became more about channeling their performances than it was about getting to rehearse. And that’s great. I actually learned to love that because you’re taking what the actors are offering and doing your best to shape that and it made for a very playful environment.
How did you get this cast? Did they audition or did you seek them out individually?
It depends who. I wrote this film before I even knew who [Kat Dennings] was, but when I saw her in The 40 Year Old Virgin, I was like, ‘This girl is perfect! She’s beautiful and she’s intelligent and she has an edge to her and she’s going to do a great job as Caroline Wexler.’ So I really wanted Kat Dennings for the film. And then Reece Thompson, who plays the character of Thurston, he’s an actor that I’d met with years ago and I’d been following his career for years and I’m a huge fan of his, so he was something that I was tracking for a long time. But then when it came to a lot of the other actors, the way this film worked is we cast mainly Vancouver actors and most of them were people who I wasn’t aware of beforehand. So yeah, there was a very long casting period as we found this young cast.
How was it working with Kat? This is a big weekend for her between this and Thor.
She’s great to work with it. She loved the material. She knew that this film gave her the chance to show a different side of herself and I think she found that exciting. So she was a joy to work with because she was so eager to take on different material. And Josh Lucas, that guy is one of the most amazing people you will ever work with. He’s a tremendous actor and he just wants to dive in and get his hands dirty. He’s just up for anything and when you’re a first time filmmaker and you have actors like Josh Lucas and Kat, it’s such a gift because, like I said, it becomes about channeling their energy. You know that everything they’re doing is fantastic and is going to be on a very high level.
Can you also tell me about working with your cinematographer? You’ve got a very active camera here, almost always moving. How do you decide when’s the right time to use those techniques?
We were really specific on how we wanted [it]. Jon Joffin is an amazing cinematographer and he and I had a very close relationship during the shoot and I think a very fruitful relationship. But, like I said, we didn’t have a ton of time to find the movie, so it was about going in with our ideas and implementing them as carefully and specifically as possible. A lot of the time you’re watching indie films and there’s a style right now to be this sort of faux vérité style and we wanted to do the opposite. We said, ‘Yes, this is a small movie, but let’s push ourselves to make it feel as big and cinematic, invincible as we can.’
Even beyond the camerawork, you’ve also got some other visual elements like your title cards. Did you know you were going to use those prior to shooting?
There was the title cards, there was the industrial fire and the skywriting. I think that covers it. Again, because of the limited budget, everything was in the script from the beginning. There wasn’t a lot of major changes. I will say that when it came to the title cards that the guy who did that for us had some really creative ideas. We spent a lot of time going over the different ideas to find the right title cards.
So as a writer-director what is your process? Is there a certain point where you’ve got to move on and leave the writing behind and focus on these visuals?
Oh, totally. I really feel like you get to a point where as a director, you just have to deal with what’s in front of you. As a writer, you kind of deal with the ideal and as a director, you deal with the pragmatic day-to-day reality on the factory floor, which in this case is the shoot. But I will also say that the fact that I was the writer made it so that when we were in trouble on set and we had to cut something or improvise or whatever it may be that I had a really strong grasp on the material and it allowed me to be more flexible as a director on set.
I’m in film school now and while watching your film I couldn’t help but to think of one of our class assignments, which was to compare Bordwell’s definition of art cinema to In the Mood for Love.
I think it’s really interesting that you say that. [This] is a Canadian film; it’s not your typical Hollywood film and in some ways it probably does feel more foreign in terms of the approach to the story and the visual style and the tone. People like Kar Wai Wong certainly influenced me and I think have freed me up as a writer and as a director to take an unconventional approach to structure. But at the same time, I try to hit the major beats that a more mainstream film might have. I feel like that answer might have been very confusing. [Laughs] I think what I’m trying to say is that it is kind of halfway between those worlds.
So, what’s next for you? You’re adapting Castaway on the Moon, right?
Yeah, exactly. It’s a remake of a South Korean film called Castaway on the Moon and it’s a great film, and I’m so happy to be working on this project and it’s for Mark Waters to direct. Mark Waters actually did Mean Girls and Freaky Friday and Mr. Popper’s Penguins with Jim Carrey coming out this summer. So that’s just been a great writing gig for me and as a director, I have a script called The Jaws of Life that I’m trying to get made right now. I just wanted to keep working and creating. The funny thing with Daydream Nation is I did write it like eight years ago, so it’s kind of a relief to have it almost done and I can be moving onto things that are closer to where I’m at emotionally right now.
By Perri Nemiroff