INTERVIEW WITH BUDDY GIOVINAZZO
Friday August 7th 2009

By Mathieu Li-Goyette et Jean-François Vandeuren

The cinema of Buddy Giovinazzo (4 movies in 25 years) is barely known to moviegoers. Nonetheless, his gloomy vision of America has since became well known for it's ability to change narratives and conventions in a non-classical way. Using space (Giovinazzo likes narrow spaces) as antagonists to his confused anti-heroes, he certainly demonstrates an overwhelming talent at screenwriting while we could compare his work with the one of Paul Schraeder. Cursed poet from New York who has been living for 10 years in Germany where he can at least direct, he has done over 10 thriller and crime films for german television. Convinced that cinema should be expressed as a privilege, because going through the making of a movie is too painful, he maintains that a movie should express honestly and without concessions the views from the world given by a particular filmmaker. We should soon hear from him again since his novel Potsdamer Platz had it's rights purchased by Tony Scott who is now working on an adaption that, if everything goes according to plan, should include Buddy Giovinazzo in the process of screenwriting the movie which should star Mickey Rourke... and maybe Gene Hackman.

Pano : What do you think of Fantasia willing to show your very first movie?

Buddy Giovinazzo : It was only screen one time back in New York City in a nightclub. I think it's great and I've always wanted to be here in Fantasia. I was in Vancouver about 9 years ago at CineMorte Festival and everybody was going to Fantasia after and I was always so jealous. This is the audience for my films. They never have been accepted by mainstream audience so what happened is they find them on DVDs, websites, underground channels. Over the years, it builds up and I realize there's a lot of people that like the films but when I make them, they are not comercial at all and don't really succeed. Being there is great because it's the audience that generally likes these kind of movies. In America, when you have a screening in front of 1000 people, you only have 10 or 15 of them who are really into those kind of movies. The others are mostly into entertainement and commercial movies and they wonder why I'm not entertaining them! It's only because I don't feel it's my job to do it. My job really is not to be boring, but I don't want to make an entertainement out of it only neither. It's so hard to make a film that you have to make something you truly believe in. Something you are willing to make sacrifice for and this is what it is all about.

Pano : Concerning Life is Hot in Cracktown, how did you manage to adapt the content of the novel from 1993 to the reality of nowadays. Did you change anything in the 16 years that divides the two time period?

Buddy Giovinazzo : That's a crazy question! No! So many people have said to me that it's more important now than ever expecially in America. The book came out in 1993 and I adapted it the same year. From 1994, 1995 until now I've always tried to make the film. I've always believed in this vision of poverty and poor people... I grew up in New York City so I saw a lot of these things and people on drugs and violence. It was always there but now because of the economy it matters especially and it becomes almost commonplace. In America, so many people are losing their jobs, they're affraid of their jobs, nobody had enough money and they all live from one paycheck to another basically. Everybody is living from one paycheck to the next and also in America people tend to be addicted to credit. I've been living in Berlin for the last 10 years and there, when you don't have the money to buy a car, you simply don't do it. But in America, I have a lot of friends who are making really good money but they are always broke because they have big houses, 2 cars and eat sushis every evening. We have a different lifestyle and the economic crisis hits us in a very different way. For me, Life is Hot in Cracktown is really just an "in your face, this is were we're going" and it is scary for some people. It's the same with Combat Shock when people come see me saying they are traumatized just thinking about the other useless war we are currently experiencing. I think that's just my interest in those characters that have nothing and fall through the cracks of society. I find them much more interesting than rich people. To go back to your question [laughs]... No, I didn't change anything to the script.

Pano : And you've been doing television movies in Germany for the past 10 years... when did you wanted to go there and start filming?

Buddy Giovinazzo : I never wanted to go to Germany to do filmmaking. Basically, I was living in Los Angeles from 1995 to 1998 and I just completed my second feature film No Way Home with Tim Roth and I was pretty happy. Unfortunately, the film didn't make any money and when you do a film that don't make any money in Hollywood, you just stop working. I didn't work for 3 years and I began living out of my credit card and I couldn't take it. I didn't like the lifestyle and I had the chance to go to Berlin for a few months for free. I went there and tried to get a job and I realized that No Way Home, that didn't make any money in America, was very successful in Germany! So a producer called me and offered me a job to work with him. I didn't speak any German at the time and I learned on the top of working on my first german feature film that was very successful. Since then, I've already done 10 of them because their TV movies last 90 minutes and get a 1.2 million euro budget for each one of them which is basically 1.5 million dollars. Each time I'm doing one of them, I feel like I'm doing an independant feature film in America and without having the experience of doing them I couldn't have done Life is Hot in Cracktown. I had 10 films that I've already done so I knew when everything was going wrong, how to maintain the situation in a good way and somehow we managed to get through it.

Pano : It shows off also in the movie that the aesthetic is working pretty well while you can tell that the movie had a very limited budget and that also must be because you were used to work with very strict budgets.

Buddy Giovinazzo : In fact, I had a completely different style in mind. I wanted to shoot the film really slick with dolly moves, steadycam so that the camera would be very elegant. I finally realized with my operator on the first day on the set that the filthy scenes that I was going to shoot that I couldn't shoot them that way. It didn't feel right and it wasn't true to the material. We had no money with only 1 million dollars and it's nothing in Los Angeles. During most films, it's what they spend on lunch. I knew we had to go down on the streets and the more we shot, the more I got a hold on the look of the film. I wanted the audience to see life as if they were here. The film, as a director, directs itself. My job is supposed to tell the truth. When I'm working with my actors, I just watch what they are doing and I'm just asking myself if I should believe what I'm seeing and from that we work on the scene to find what the characters would really do in a given situation. Most of the time, when an actor is asking me "why am I standing by the window and not by the door?" and that I don't have any reason, I have to think about it and maybe the character should stand by the window in fact. I worked with Evan Ross that plays Romeo and he's Diana Ross' son. He's just this beautiful kid that never played the bad guy, he always played the little good guy that was always in school and playing in the streets, being polite and all. He wanted to play this role and I didn't think he could do it. So he taped himself in New York doing 2 scenes and then he sent them to me and I realized how this guy was fantastic. I cast him even though he never had an idea of this life... he grew up with 100 million dollars! He's Diana Ross' son, he grew up with the best a kid could possibly have and he had to play this lowlife guy on the streets.

Pano : You were able to assemble a really great cast with Brandon Routh, Shannyn Sossamon, Kerry Washington, Lara Flynn Boyle, how was that difficult?

Buddy Giovinazzo : It took 9 months just for casting. We paid them practically nothing and it didn't matter how big they were or how small. All the main characters were paid all the same amount of money. It was Kerry Washington that was the first to say yes and then I was able to get Illeana Douglas to say yes and then from now on the agents of the other actors wanted more money. But from that point, we were able to say that Kerry Washington and Illeana Douglas are doing it for a certain amount of money and that we can't pay more. Ultimately, one by one they all began to say yes and they really loved the script and they loved the fact that I'm an actor director. I'm not mean on the set with them or anything and I want to know what they think and I think that a lot of their ideas are better than my own so that opportunity also helped them to say yes. Most of the time, someone like Shanny Sossamon doesn't get the chance to play a part like this; Illeana Douglas too. Brandon Routh is Superman and the way I caught him was when I was at a party and somebody said to him that I was doing this movie. He asked me what part he could play and I didn't believe him at first so I just made a joke about it (in Hollywood you don't believe anything anybody says [laughs]) and he simply answered that he was serious because he wanted to get out of thights. I realized he didn't want to be Superman for the rest of his life and he wanted to act. His part was originally writtent for a 16 years old kid and then I decided to change it as a psychopatient that just comes out of the hospital and it was also better for the child that began hanging out with that adult who acts like a child. Actually, it was better than having another kid playing that part of the story. That's how we put it together piece by piece with a lot of luck.

Pano : How did you begin financing the movie? Was it a studio or an independant movie company?

Buddy Giovinazzo: I tried to get money from Germany but the themes were too hard for the Germans to finance it. We were trying to sell it for 13 years and everytime I had a meeting in Los Angeles once or twice a year hoping to get my career running in America and people just thought it was too hard and that I was crazy. Some of them really liked the script but they didn't think they'd make money with it. I had a producer who is a friend of mine and he receivred the script 10 years ago and finally he presented me to a friend of him that he would give me 1 million dollars to make the film. The funny thing about the financing is that the guy is a conservative republican so it's really the type of film he would never ever want to make or even see... So much so, he retired his name from the movie so that the republican party couldn't see it. He gives a lot of money, he supported Ronald Reagan, George Bush and the fact that he made this film is pretty surprising and it's also the last thing on Earth he would want to make.

BUDDY GIOVINAZZO

Pano : I read that Tony Scott was interested in adapting one of your novel... What's the status of the project for now?

Buddy Giovinazzo : Status of the project is that they just picked up the option for the book on July 1st and Tony was supposed to make a movie named Unstoppable and after he was supposed to do this project which is called Potsdamer Platz. But Unstoppable got cancelled so he's hoping to do Potsdamer Platz and he needs to find a studio that will finance the project. He's already cast Mickey Rourke as the main character and he's actually trying to convince Gene Hackman to come out of retirement to play one of the criminals.

Pano : About Combat Shock, Troma is releasing the director's cut version of the movie...

Buddy Giovinazzo : It's fantastic! It's actually from my 16mm answer print and it's completely untouched. There's no Troma footage or Troma titles on it, it's simply the student film that I've done. There's also all my short-movies so that you can kind of see where I started before doing Combat Shock and there's also a couple of interviews with filmmakers who are talking about the influence of the movie. You know, Combat Shock was a student film. It cost me 40, 000$. No thinking it was ever going to be a finished film because I was prepared to make it as a short film as soon as I ran out of money. But everytime I ran out of money I realized they were more things to do so I worked and save up so that I could shoot two months later and it was finished over two years. The DVD really has something cool also and it's the locations back then with the locations today. You see were the appartment was and you see it today as a big business, a big mall! Troma really did a great job with this DVD and it couldn't be better.

Pano : And besides Combat Shock and Life is Hot in Cracktown also released this year, any other of your films we should be waiting for?

Buddy Giovinazzo : It really bothers me that No Way Home isn't released on DVD. Maybe it's here in Canada and I'm sure it exists in Germany, I have it. I don't know why because it was also successful on cable TV and it never had a release on DVD. I just don't know what they are waiting for and there's no plan for anything else. Anyway, two films are enough for me and enough for the audience.

Pano : What are you working on right now?

Buddy Giovinazzo : I'm actually working on a thriller from a script I've written a long time ago and I'm trying to do something with the producer of Life is Hot in Cracktown and it's called 123 Depravity Street and it's a really sick thriller movie. It's going to be really low budget because you can't even raise a million dollars because of the economic situation. And it's fine by me because it goes with my other films like Combat Shock and No Way Home where I didn't have any money to do them and it's why I live in Germany. It's because there, I'm working as a director while I couldn't even survive in America without having another job.

I have a question for you... did you see the uncut version of Cracktown?

Pano : Yes, the one with the pretty disturbing rape scene at the beginning.

Buddy Giovinazzo : And it's practically why we put it at the beginning because chances are that if you're able to sit through it, you're going to understand and like the film. It wasn't planned or cut like that at the beginning (same as the ending) but at the end, it did more sense to me to intertwine stories at the end with emotional responses between each other.

Pano : In fact, during the rape scene, what is the most disturbing is not the rape itself but the fact that the boyfriend gives his girlfriend to his mates to rape her. The loss of humanity in this couple is pretty hard to sit through when you think about it.

Buddy Giovinazzo : It's interesting because the rape isn't about sex. It's about destroying this woman. People asked me why she doesn't come back or why don't we see her having revenge on him and my answer is to be realistic. Violence is senseless and when you're living in a bad neighborhood, you know that violence takes place as a robbery or as a jealousy or hatred situation for no reason. It's senseless violence. When you're talking about a crime movie, there's a motive and a reason. Here, there's nothing but someone who is so completely nuts that he wants to destroy her. She agreed to do it and she knew what was coming. It wasn't working on set and then I suggested that she begins to fight back in every single moment. Then, she had a certain dignity, she wasn't a victim because they were four, she was alone and she tried to do something about her condition. It's a very hard role and I think she did a great job.

Pano : How did you manage to get to work with the actors on the real locations?

Buddy Giovinazzo : The problem there was that everybody had guns. If you have a driver's licence, you can buy a gun. It's really scary... So we could go on to the streets and we had to assume that everybody around us had guns so we had to be really cool and smart. We had almost every nationality on the crew so that helped and we also had police on set because sometimes it was too dangerous when we were shooting during nightime. One night, we had to shoot a scene on a street that cops were just cleaning the sidewalk from blood because somebody just got killed that same night. It was that type of situation, just senseless violence all over again. But nobody was attacked and we didn't have any problems besides of being freaked out and certainly more for the actors who weren't used to that. But for them it was a real acting experience as oppose to go to a movie set where everything is planned, designed and fake. We were shooting in a way that we didn't knew what was going to happen next and I liked some mistakes that happened because it actually feels a lot more real.

Pano : I was actually thinking about italian neorealism when they had no budget, they had to shoot in the streets of postwar Italy and were trying to get a hold of doing a fine picture. In regards to this, the statement of Cracktown was pretty great for being universal because the suburbs of Los Angeles can also be the ones of New York or Paris or even Montreal.

Buddy Giovinazzo : It's great you mention that because I love neorealism. If the film looks at all neorealistic, it's more from Rosselini while my favorite would be Visconti which is completely different. Visconti is always so elegant when you think of movies like Ossessione (1943) or Terra Trema (1948) about the fishing family that starts their own buisiness. That was my vision of Cracktown. Somehow, I tried to begin the shoot looking at the film as if I was trying to make a Visconti picture and I ended up doing a Rosselini's one. Rosselini's films are really dirty and not slick whatsoever and that's what the film should have became.