L'Amérique vue par un australien / Reckless Kelly (Yahoo Serious, 1993)

Franscope and American Color

One tradition we've sadly lost: the "first film in color." That second debut that usually marked the moment a director became more commercially viable (though nowadays we have a new tradition, exclusive to older filmmakers--the "first film on video"--that usually marks the beginning of a looser, less commercially-minded period). As The Red Desert, as in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, so in L’Aîné des Ferchaux (sometimes called Magnet of Doom in English), Jean-Pierre Melville's first film in color, a film set largely (and largely unknown) in America. Melville's other color films are designed in this sort of funeral parlor hue that gives everything a sense of twilight. A haze, a prolonged decay that permeates the image and brings out the green in a person's skin.

The images all have exclamation points, as if Melville's thinking "America! New York!" The excited way street signs and motels are framed gives it a sort of home movie quality: a little movie and a big one, at the same time. That sort of mad love for American culture only a foreigner (usually a Frenchman) can have, the kind that leads Jean-Paul Belmondo, in the scene above, to punch out two GIs for calling Frank Sinatra a "wop." Melville is a man of symbols, but they tend to be symbols of a fairly minute nature: clothing, cars, the way objects (cigarettes, pistols, hats) are held and handled. L’Aîné des Ferchaux seems to be working on the largest level of any Melville movie--the symbols it works with are fairly large: cities, popular references, thousands of dollar bills raining down into a canyon. The landscape shots look like sketches for the Western Melville always hoped to make; the project was never realized, but with L’Aîné des Ferchaux we get little glimpses of, like in the sequence where Belmondo kisses a beautiful hitch-hiker against the backdrop of a stern blue sky and imposing rocks, a river rushing along nearby.

Six Great American Films, 1978 - 1988

...All the Marbles (1981)
This was Robert Aldrich's last movie, and I like to believe that Aldrich died happy, knowing he'd made it. Along with Abel Ferrara's Cat Chaser, made, at the tail end of the decade, this is one of the last true examples of film noir. It's simultaneously shadowy and colorful, in every sense. But what do you expect from Joseph Biroc, who gave the world the image-monuments of Forty Guns and the careful delirium of Confessions of an Opium Eater? And you end up wondering the kind of movies Peter Falk would've been in if he was born 20 years earlier--him and Harry Dean Stanton. How many bits of 80-minute grit could they have cranked out in the post-war years?

Big Wednesday (1978)
History, tugging like a hand on your sleeping shoulder. John Milius's best film, and one of the few epic films. The mise-en-scene is Vincente Minelli and John Ford arguing about a decade; you're never sure if the 1960s were a tragic romance or some great folly. Waves crash, punches are thrown, mistakes are made and lived through. Grandly sincere, or sincerely grand, this is Milius's attempt to make The Great American Movie. The attempt is a failure, but the result is a success regardless. That's the funny thing about movies: though the intentions behind them play a role, intentions aren't the final result. Yes, a film is a gesture, but it is more importantly a film. The writer only writes what he or she thinks up, while the moment you start running film through a camera, you let the world in. What language can't communicate, cinema wholeheartedly accepts, sometimes without us even noticing.

The Driver (1978)
The vague and the painstaking. The soundtrack is a terse musique concrete composition for voices, squealing tires and slamming doors. The driver of title is played by Ryan O'Neal, an actor without temperature, neither cool nor warm. Maybe that's why Stanley Kubrick managed to put him to such good use: Kubrick's cinema is climate-controlled, which leads many people to wrongly assume that it's cold. Walter Hill is an abstractor (this film, 48 Hrs.) and a parabalist (Streets of Fire, Crossroads, Johnny Handsome), which is more or less the same thing. To take something complicated (a history, a morality) and turn it into a parable is not very different from taking a real thing and, through its image, making something direct: a color is easier to understand at first glance than a street, the cold light of a headlamp is simpler than an oncoming car. But, of course, no two things are completely alike: the parable has only a limited meaning, while the image is bottomless.

Modern Romance (1981)
The present hasn't been too kind to Albert Brooks, but history will be kinder: we'll someday say "Brooksian" with the same ambiguous clarity as "Hawksian." Fed by a distinctly American sense of compromise, that sour taste that accompanies every sweetness, Brooks' cinema is not one of contradictions: the world is complicated, but it isn't fractured. Every happy thing is sad, and every sad thing is a little funny; there is no clear separation in our experience of things. It's through focusing on certain elements, through the sieves of our memories (or the editing of a film), that we are able to look back and distinctly say that an event was tragic or that it was good. It's the basic premise of Brooks' later Defending Your Life, in which the newly dead must argue that scenes from their lives display their strengths, even though it can just as easily be said that they show them at their worst. Absolute happiness is an illusion: it's just something you claim to win an argument. Modern Romance is a rejection of traditional dramatics, a serious approach to comedy. And always unflinchingly intelligent.

The Moderns (1988)
An incomparably passionate film by the most brilliant American director of the 1980s. The Jazz Age is to Alan Rudolph what the Belle Epoque was to Jean Renoir: an era of creativity that inspires more creativity through reflection. A film about the ideas of an era more than its specifics. Or, to rephrase, a film that takes inspiration from the ideas of an era to create something new. Keith Carradine is Keith Carradine is a painter, Wallace Shawn is Wallace Shawn is a gossip columnist, John Lone is John Lone is a businessman and Kevin J. O'Connor is some dream image of Ernest Hemingway. Here the elements that are used haphazardly or lazily by other directors become rigorous and expressive. Rudolph stands with Fassbinder--and now Hong Sang-soo--as one of the few poets of the zoom lens: what is done with a jerky hand-operated zoom in a brief sequence in The Moderns is more beautiful than most directors' camera movements. The use of black-and-white historical footage is genuine quotation instead of a lazy attempt to set a mood.

Paradise Alley (1978)
I refuse to believe that any movie directed by Sylvester Stallone isn't at the very least interesting. Sometimes, as in the curious case of Paradise Alley, the movie's much more than that: it's great. Case in the sense that Paradise Alley is isolated from its contemporaries and seemingly the rest of film history; curious in the sense that every film is the result of a set of choices, and the choices here are, as if often the situation with a great movie, infuriating--certainly more infuriating than Big Wednesday, and possibly more infuriating than The Moderns. A movie that seems to belong to no time and no mindset. Lit with the kind of neons that bathe a body but designed in the earth tones that make every character feel like a part of the room they're in, it's set in 1940s New York--more of a location than a period, just one of those places any story can be set as long as it's costumed accordingly (like "Morocco").

As a director, Stallone is always acting. Every one of his movies isn't directed by Sylvester Stallone, but by Stallone playing some directing archetype; he's clearly playing a different character behind the camera of every film. So maybe Paradise Alley is his best movie because Sylvester Stallone, Director of Paradise Alley is his most original character, the ordinary visionary he'd re-use for the first half of Staying Alive.

A Conversation with Usama Alshaibi About Nice Bombs

Usama Alshaibi smiles frequently. Luckily, he’s got a beautiful, toothy grin. The lower half of his face is covered by a black forest of stubble that’s too short to be called a beard but too thick to be called anything else.

If it were any other season, we would call it a Friday evening—but it’s summer, so we say Friday afternoon (the Sun, after all, isn’t setting for a while). Alshaibi’s 2006 documentary Nice Bombs begins its first theatrical runs next week, and I’ve come by the apartment he shares with his wife and frequent collaborator, Kristie Alshaibi, to talk about the movie. I’m early, and one of the Alshaibis’ neighbors lets me up, asking whether I’m here for the party.

After a brief tour and a demonstration of Kristie's Theremin, Usama and I sit down in the living room, which is spacious and neatly kept.

Nice Bombs has had a longer gestation than a lot of your other work.

Oh, yeah absolutely. I mean it’s my trying to branch out beyond dirty basements and underground fests. Nothing against dirty basements and underground fests, but always with this movie I was trying to appeal to a broader audience. I mean, I still make all sorts of films that I know are not gonna have any commercial success or theatrical distribution—but, eventually, they get in other festivals and on compilations. But with Nice Bombs there’s an immediacy I wanted. I wanted to get it out there and I wanted other people to help me out.

Maybe it doesn’t have a longer gestation, maybe there’s a kind of inverse relationship: some of [your short] films were made very quickly but it took them a very long time to…well, they’ll play at festivals for years. With Nice Bombs it took you a long time to make it—you started it in 2004, so it took two years and now it’s getting theatrical distribution a year later.

But, as you know, as film business goes, it’s not unusual in my time frame. It’s pretty normal. I mean, if I were a big production, it would take the same amount of time. What we spent so much time on was post-production. I was really able to do a lot and focus on things in a way I wasn’t able to before. I had access to real studios and engineers and a full ensemble of musicians who were writing music for specific scenes…and that was weird…what was the question?

Well, it was more of a statement. It seems like a lot of…well, for example, King for a Day seems to have come together very quickly.

Well, King for a Day, that musical I was doing kind of quietly until it was out there because I wasn’t sure it was gonna make it.

Going back to Nice Bombs—with Nice Bombs the first time we showed it in Chicago it was a much longer cut, and since then I’ve edited it down to 76 minutes, which, to me, has made it an even more powerful film.

Was this the one that was screened at the Music Box?

Yeah. So, from that period on, I got distribution and now it’s getting a theatrical release…I think also it is technically my first feature. To have this kind of success—for me, it’s great. Some other filmmakers will be like, “Whatever.” But for me, a ten day run at the Pioneer and a release at the Gene Siskel [Film Center] and hopefully more…well, I’ve never gotten that before. I think it’s a testament to the film and everyone who’s worked on it.

Even though I do use my story and myself, I’ve also made it very accessible. People who have always disliked my work, relatives who just don’t go near my stuff, it’s very appealing to them, and I like that. Even my wife’s relatives, who live in the Midwest. Regular folks. Americans from suburban neighborhoods. Republicans watch this and they really dig it, they’re really into it. They get attached to the characters—the people in the movie. So I think that’s something new that I’ve discovered about myself and what I’m capable of. If I just take these risks and put myself out there, and get away from these boundaries, these artificial boundaries that we set for ourselves when we make any form of art, you know?

I think making films oftentimes involves leaping in, leaping into something. We have, I guess, the myth of individuality, but you have to let the world in, not shut it out.

Absolutely. And to me it’s also gotta be exciting. If it scares me, if I’m, like, nervous, if I’m like “I don’t know if I can do this,” that means the project is good. I’m on to something. If it’s like, “Oh, I know this, this is easy, this is already done in my head”—well, why go through the process? I guess I like discovering things.

The documentary element is not necessarily new, because I also approached my narrative work like that. Some of my early shorts had no script, just a very abstract idea. Or I’d be writing as I was shooting. But with this, it was even more abstract. I was able to kind of take all of that and put it into something coherent. But the experience and the film are almost two different things. Experience inspired me to take the camera and do all of this stuff, but my internalized experience and its connection to the film is something I have that makes things exciting and significant for me. So now I’m approaching everything like that. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Part of it and part of what I do is a mystery. It’s a dark tunnel I’m walking into and I only have a little light. Stuff might come out…[laughs] Open to the unexpected.

Do you feel like Nice Bombs was a continuation of your work or do think it’s more of an expansion? Because it doesn’t…to an outside observer it seems odd. To someone who has never met you and has only seen your movies, it seems like a strange direction to take.

Well, what was the longest film I did before that? Muhammad and Jane. All about a European-Iraqi character who comes back to the United States. He was just in Iraq and the United States in the movie is preparing to go to war. It’s this fictional aspect to real life, to something that was happening politically in the street. In fact, we shot part of the movie at an Iraq war protest, and, I think it was on my mind.

Ignatius, I always had this idea that I would go back to Iraq before I picked up a camera and started making films. It seemed like a natural progression. I don’t really think I have enough work out there on this scale to say I have any set way of doing things. I like to surprise myself. I don’t feel like I’m locked down in any sort of genre or form of filmmaking.

Well, maybe it’s best not to have a set way of doing things. Maybe it’s best just to approach everything as if you’ve never done it before.

It’s funny that you say that, because my next film, which is called Baghdad, Iowa, sort of takes what I love about documentaries and takes what I like about fiction filmmaking and blends it in this not really noticeable way. Because documentary is also a form of fiction-making. People don’t realize that. You’re still manipulating information to convey something.

Tell me about Baghdad, Iowa.

I started this a while ago, sort of quietly, because I don’t know what I’m doing sometimes until it’s forming. It was really a sort of organic process. It came out of wanting philosophically to explore more of Nice Bombs, but also realizing that I had to end this movie and couldn’t keep going on and expounding for hours. And so Nice Bombs was in a way looking back to the Middle East, to my past there and then returning—completing something. Baghdad, Iowa is my returning here. And I came from Baghdad, Iraq and landed in Iowa, which is the first place I lived in the United States. My father went to school in Iowa City, Iowa. So my impression of the world was very Americanized but also was Iraqi. And the movie is an exploration of that, in a very surreal way.

You said earlier—I think at the very beginning of the interview—that to you Nice Bombs was a film with a broader appeal, a movie that was meant to be shown more theatrically, rather than at small festivals.

I guess I wanted to make something accessible, I wanted to make something that didn’t have…I guess what I’ve saying is that, since my experience is so unique, I didn’t have a very good perspective on it. Because it was so much about my experience, I needed outside eyes. So I got producers and I worked with editors. I even had a test audience. Just to make sense of it. There was stuff that I just assumed people would figure out. I was very careful—you have to keep in mind, Ignatius, that were a lot of Iraqi docs that came out around that time and before mine, very quickly. And I didn’t want to make something that just lasted until the war ended. I wanted to make something specifically about the situation, but also universal. I think that’s what I learned—a certain mythology that applies to everyone, then you’ve created something more powerful than the specifics of a narrative.

Do you think that Nice Bombs is an American film?

I would have to say that [long pause] it is an American film, because it's about a journey that ends in America, and I think that a lot of immigrants have restless blood in their systems and in their families because they’re not content and something, politically or socially, brings them to places like the West, or America. But at the same time, there’s that great pride in heritage—which is very American. Returning to a place and realizing that you don’t belong is an American story. It’s played in a very literal way—because there’s war, it’s very dramatic. I wouldn’t dare to say I’m an “Iraqi” Iraqi. But at the same time, I am from Iraq. Being an Iraqi American is a closer citizenship title. I feel American.

You can make an American film without being an American. There are more great American films than great American filmmakers.

I do like this idea that things can be international and I always strive to make things that can be appreciated on an abstract level: no dialogue just sounds, visuals. I do feel that Nice Bombs has an international appeal, and I want to make more films like that. I do feel that I have an American vibe that comes out in the movie, especially some of my ignorance and stupidity. Being in a place and just…“What the fuck am I doing?” And being very self-indulgent in that approach. That’s the only way I know how to be; I can’t pretend to be this Arab man, because I’m not. I think my cousin in the movie reflects a lot of that in me…
I think there’s a cowboy attitude—an adventurous, risk-taking quality about Americans. A lot of my cousins that live here thought I was nuts. They were the ones that protested the most, telling me I was crazy.

I remember your mother in the film threatening to disown you.

That we actually cut out. We’re gonna put it on the DVD extras.

She still remembers that, and was still mad after I got back. I don’t know if I’ve told you this, but she had a picture of me near her bed, and she set it [motions placing a photograph face down] so that she didn’t have to look at me. What I went through to make this film! [laughs] Everything’s cool now, though.

You talked earlier about the other Iraq films that came out from 2004 to 2006. For me, what separates your movie from them, is that, in documentaries, especially in American documentaries, there’s a tendency to play dumb, to make a movie to “explain” something rather than document it. Iraq is a situation that’s very hard to explain. Instead of having an explanation and using images to back it up, you’re going out and showing us something, and because of that we might draw a conclusion.

In some ways, I’d say it’s your most subversive film, not in the sense that it’s actively trying to subvert us, but that it is subverting us. I’ve seen it, and I’m infected, I’m sick with Nice Bombs, because there are moments in it I’m going to remember any time I think about Iraq for long enough.

Is it because you felt like you were taken there?

It’s little things. The cat with the flies swarming around its face, and then the old man comes and throws it off screen. Or your father playing with his camcorder. It’s little moments like that that make it a much more human film.

It also makes it a more complicated, a more contradictory film. There’s a tendency to streamline statements, to make sure there aren’t any contradictions in them…

You’re tapping into something there, because, yes, on one layer I’m constructing this portrait, but my internal linear narrative is based on something slightly mysterious to me. There’s no logic or rationale. So, when you remember those flies—I reacted the same way when I saw it and shot it, but I had to bring that emotion in, I had to leave it up there for a little bit and make sure that it worked each time. Because I was reacting to something, and I was hoping that others were [as well]—and they were. I don’t know what’s inside of that, and that meaning keeps changing.

Which is, I think, what makes it better, because you’re not something concrete to each moment. It’s an image that’s mysterious, and as an audience, we project something on to it.

I think any time you are watching a film, you start asking, questioning these basic things inside yourself. Like, for example, people who are sympathetic to the cat: does it bother them? Do they ever ask themselves: “Why do I care about this cat? There’s war, there are all these things going on, why do I care?” There’s a dilemma, there’s this draw, this emotional pull. We can’t help it.

I was also very conscious of animals throughout the whole movie.

Well, it’s not the first cat we see…

There’s a monkey, the dogs…[laughs] I guess I was looking for things that reminded me of my childhood but, in the context of war, were really quite alarming. You almost wouldn’t look at it, but, if you understood animals…the way that dog was behaving, with his tail between his legs, you know this dog has been severely beaten. When dogs have been abused, they’re so terrified to be near you.

The only dead people that you see [in the movie] are from when I was shooting the TV screen, on the news.

Otherwise it would just turn into a Frontline documentary. That’s fine. That’s their job and they’re good at it. I couldn’t do that, and, instead of fighting it and spending 20 years on it, I just let go and allowed everything to unfold, almost treating it like I was on vacation…

It feels like it’s assembled from home videos…well, it is assembled from home videos. I mean, you’re shooting it with your family. To me, that’s one of the contradictions of it: there’s a grimness to it, but people are still being very playful. It’s not all gloom and doom.

And that would have been a bad idea. I can show a situation, and I can show a mood that was there, but it’s up to…well, I there were some parts were the music was little melancholy and that was on purpose, but I didn’t want to be too over the top.

There is humor. I have a morbid sense of humor--my cousins, my relatives have it. That, to me, is like coping. What else can you do? What else but crack a joke. It seems like the obvious conclusion.

The name of the movie is a joke itself.

Yeah, my sister got mad. She told me to change the title, until I explained it. I think it’s fine.

I’m really proud of it. If I was assassinated tomorrow, I could say, “At least I made Nice Bombs…and some of these smaller, perverted films…”

Now you’re doing the radio thing…

…Vocalo…

Is it something you would’ve pursued if you hadn’t made Nice Bombs? Did making Nice Bombs open you up…

Totally. Opportunities, grants, [jokingly] celebrities, V.I…V.I...V.I.Ps…

I was considering going back to my old skill, washing dishes as a prep cook. I’ve done the most disgusting jobs imaginable. Migrant worker, slave labor. So getting work at Chicago Public Radio, being able to go out and make these mini audio documentaries, it’s great. I love it, I’m getting good at it—they don’t have to be these serious things, I can just make profiles…

I like audio. I always used to seek out other professionals that were good at audio, and now I’m getting better at it. It’s like training. I’m digging the job. It keeps me fresh and it makes me more excited about my work and it makes me delve deeper into things.