Kissing on the Mouth and Everywhere Else: Intimacy in the Digital Age

BRAINTRUSTdv interviews Joe Swanberg

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Joe Swanberg's first feature, Kissing on the Mouth, was made by four film school graduates who also served as the entire cast, improvising their dialogue from a rough script outline. Kissing on the Mouth contains depictions of unsimulated sexual acts which are intended to redeem sexually explicit images from the realm of pornography. In the following interview, Swanberg rebuts the sort of criticism his work might face, and he goes on to address such concerns as self-distribution; the role of Internet marketing; the aesthetic disparity between DV and film; the decline of traditional film festivals; the beauty of the 4:3 frame; the durability of the theatrical experience; and the shifting context for short movies on the Internet.

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BRAINTRUSTdv: Kissing on the Mouth begins with a graphic sex scene which is worth describing in order to convey its rare intensity: a central male character slips a condom on his erect penis; we are offered several full views of the female character's naked body; and then as these two characters begin to copulate, the camera lingers on their point of intersection in a way that seems to scream, "There's nothing fake here." Talk a little about this in-your-face opening scene. Why was it important to be so overly literal? The phrase "leaves nothing to the imagination" comes to mind.

Joe Swanberg: I wanted to start with sex, simply as an act, and then reveal the complications. This scene absolutely had to be first because at any other point in the film there is too much external meaning to the sex. Once the audience knows the characters, they start to make judgments about them. I wanted to show the act, at least once, free from all of those judgments. This way, if you think about the scene later, you realize what must have been going through both of their minds, to find themselves in that position again. It becomes a totally different scene. You realize how much nervous energy there is. You realize how scared and disappointed Ellen must have been afterwards. You realize that it's the most complicated scene in the whole film. But the first time you don't know them and don't assume anything about what they must be thinking, so it seems like this kind of fresh, steamy sex scene. So in order to make that work, we had to put it right at the beginning, and jump right into it, without any words being exchanged other than the boy asking the girl, "Too much?" and the girl saying no.


BTdv: After the first few minutes, the nudity in the movie is decreasingly erotic. You start to emphasize pubic grooming and hygiene. The main character stands naked in front of a television deodorizing her lower abdomen, where she's just shaved, and then stands in front of a mirror evaluating herself. This banalizing of the human body seems to be intentionally juxtaposed with the "steamy sex" which precedes it.

JS: We were very interested in showing the body the same way we show everything else in films. We tried to make no separation between the way we filmed a body and the way we filmed a computer or a table. We left the imagination plenty of room to wander around when thinking about other elements of the film, but we did not think the imagination deserved anything in regards to the body. This film is only graphic by today's standards. We made no attempt to arouse, and it is my serious hope that in five years this film will not seem at all "in-your-face" but will seem quite normal and traditional. We did not try to shock or push the envelope. Nothing in the film is outside of the realm of everyday activity. Not a single thing. Everyday activities should not be shocking. That is how I feel. If they are, there is something wrong with the way we represent ourselves.


BTdv: If there's one indisputable achievement in the movie, it's the naturalistic acting. How did you go about casting?

JS: At first I thought that I would write a loose script, post flyers around college campuses looking for actors, and hold regular casting sessions. Slowly I started thinking about acting in it myself, but I was very hesitant. I acted in a student film a few years ago, and while I thought that my performance was passable, I did not think it was good. There was only one scene where I thought it was okay, and it was the scene where I didn't know the script very well, and kind of put everything in my own words. So I thought that maybe I could act in this film if I just barely knew the script enough to know where I was going, but was still able to put it all in my own words.

Kate [Winterich] was somebody who I had seen in a student film right before we all graduated from Southern Illinois University, and I knew she could act. But I did not know if she would be up for what I had in mind. So I just asked her, and she said yes. I told her that it would be demanding, and that the role called for some sex scenes, and other revealing scenes, and that I planned to shoot it in a way that would not be flattering or subtle. She did not flinch, and was excited about the idea, so I knew she was right.

Kris [Williams] is my girlfriend, and she was also the person who I bounced all the ideas for the film off of, and so she knew what I had in mind. She was hesitant to be in it, and probably was doing me a favor more than anything. I knew she would do a good job. I also knew she and Kate would be good together, and would not be shy about speaking frankly on camera.

Kevin [Pittman] was a friend of mine from high school, who I had kept in loose touch with, and seemed to cross paths with every once in a while. I thought about casting someone that none of us knew, because it might be easier for Kate to act intimately with a stranger, rather than a friend, but I also thought of all the problems that would present. Then I suddenly remembered Kevin. He was very hesitant about acting, but I was convinced he could act—that all of us could act—if we did it the right way. I knew he went to film school and that he was interested in cinematography, so it would be an added bonus to have another person on the team who was comfortable with the camera and could perform multiple functions.


BTdv: Sometimes you hear about actors who go to film school in order to star in their own movies, but I don't think I've ever heard of people going to film school only to wind up acting in a movie together—an entire cast of people who have no vocational interest in acting. Did you have any specific directorial approach which helped the performances cohere?

JS: My job as director, with Kris as assistant director, was mostly to strip away any sense of acting. I had to listen very closely to everything, and the second I got the hint of a "performance" I had to stop the scene. After a while, there was not much for me to do. It was the most challenging at first, when everyone was trying to act. Once we all realized that if we just talked to each other like normal it felt a lot better and seemed a lot more real, I kind of just kept everyone on course. By the end, we were fully improvising scenes, and the direction boiled down to where to place the camera. We shot a lot of the film chronologically, which helped us develop the characters better and work on the script as we went.


BTdv: How did you convince the others to perform sexual acts on camera?

JS: I think it was a trust issue. We were friends, and they trusted that I would not do anything with the filming or editing that would exploit them. We talked about the material a lot, and why we thought we should be graphic, and what we were comfortable with doing. It was a very collaborative and friendly process. The day that we shot the first sex scene between Kate and Kevin, everyone was very nervous. Once we started shooting, it was fine after about five minutes, and from that point on, for the rest of the shoot, we were very comfortable around each other, and had no problems shooting any of the other scenes.


BTdv: There is an emphasis on showing young women without make-up, mild acne enhanced by the unkind video image—there are even pimples on buttocks and thighs. Were these details intentional?

JS: Absolutely. In this way the film is political. We wanted to reclaim the young adult body. We did not try to look any better or worse than we would if you saw us on the street. If we had some pimples one day—or other blemishes—we did not cover them up. It was important for us to present these real images, especially for the women characters. Everything we see in magazines is Photoshopped, and the people we see in films are covered up with make-up, and we didn't want to do that. I don't think about how artificial everything is while I'm watching a film, and then I'm left with unrealistic images of what people look like. I think it's damaging to my mental perception of real people. It makes the people around me seem less beautiful because they aren't perfect. I don't want to add to these images of perfect people. I want to portray people as they are.

	Left: Kris Williams and Kate Winterich as Laura and Ellen. Center: Winterich shooting a scene. Right: Winterich in a scene with Kevin Pittman as Ellen's ex-boyfriend Chris.

BTdv: The movie works psychologically, as a quiet character study, but the plot is remarkably thin, and you seem to be aware of it.

JS: The story is extremely thin. There are a lot of reasons for this. Probably the biggest reason is because I was testing my own limits and seeing how much I could get away with. I wanted to know how bare-bones I could make the plot while still engaging the audience and making a coherent film. I'm not sure I totally succeeded, and I'm sure the plot will be too thin for a lot of people who watch the film.

I don't really like plot. I like characters, but not plot. I hate watching movies where everyone follows the same formula and you know what's going to happen. Life isn't like that. There are long stretches in life where nothing much happens. I'm not interested in filmmaking for the purpose of telling a story and letting an audience escape life. I would rather examine life very closely and never let the audience forget about their own life. For this reason, I didn't think the film needed much plot. I thought it could move in a more natural way, where things happened but they didn't always push the story forward.

I was editing the film while we were shooting and writing it, so I was able to monitor how well that idea was working. I came to realization that we were in fact telling a story with a plot, and it was better for the film if scenes did have motivation and did advance the story. I was a little disappointed in myself for being so conventional, but I was also finding that I was enjoying telling the story, and it was giving the film an emotional core.


BTdv: The supplemental off-screen interviews with miscellaneous young people seem to carry the movie thematically while contributing nothing directly to the four main characters. How did you come up with the idea for the interviews?

JS: The interviews were there as an idea from the very beginning. Kris made a film on Super-8 while we were at school, and since it was non-sync sound, she had visuals of a relationship and real interviews of our friends talking about their own relationships. I thought it was a really great film, but I thought the visuals were weak in contrast to the really strong interviews she got. It was great to listen to, but it wasn't always great to watch. So we talked about shooting something on 16mm that would match great interviews with stronger visuals. It never came together, but when we started talking about Kissing on the Mouth, that idea was still there, and there was a nice way to incorporate the interviews into the story.

The interviews were a way for me to veer off course a little bit, and explore the characters in ways that were unrelated to the plot. It allowed me to show a scene where Ellen helps Laura move, or Patrick and Laura paint her bedroom. I got to indulge my fascination with these kind of mundane, ordinary tasks that we all go through, while still giving the audience something captivating and engaging to listen to. It also gave me freedom to experiment with the photography. Something like the scene where Ellen drives from the city out to the suburbs was a lot of fun for me to shoot, and I got to try a lot of things that I wanted to with the video camera and the way it reacts to certain lights. I think these are the reasons the interviews play such a central role.


BTdv: Due to the omnipresence of the interviews, there's an unusual balance of fiction and non-fiction in Kissing on the Mouth. The characters on screen are fictional, but the disembodied voices we hear are the voices of real people talking about their lives.

JS: The balance of fiction and non-fiction that results from the real interviews is one of the most exciting elements of the film for me. I see no reason to draw a definitive line between documentary, narrative, or experimental filmmaking. I have made straight documentaries, straight narratives, and straight experimental films, and all three involve a lot of the same techniques, and the things that interest me as a person—and as a filmmaker—do not change with the type of film I'm making. So I feel it's only natural to combine all three techniques, and I would combine animation as well if I felt more comfortable as an animator. In my experience, documentaries often involve just as much manipulation and performance as narratives, so I do not have any ethical dilemma about mixing documentary footage with narrative footage or combining documentary and narrative audio. I think my generation is media savvy enough to know that as soon as you edit something, you have inserted yourself and your own views into it. There is no reason to pretend that a documentary is the absolute truth, or that a narrative is all fiction, so it leaves a lot of room to explore, to mix and match, and to find the best way to reach the viewer.


BTdv: There seem to be conflicting aesthetic agendae in Kissing on the Mouth. Your acknowledged influences range from Vertov to Lloyd Kaufman, but your movie looks more like Larry Clark meets Steven Soderbergh—the implacable frankness of Clark, the poetic devices of Soderbergh. You fuse the explicit and the implicit, directness and subtlety. It's an unusual arrangement, at times cacophonic.

JS: I have seen all of Larry Clark's films, and I have seen most of Steven Soderbergh's films, and I like both filmmakers, but if there is any similarity, it is only because we are all interested in the same things and must be approaching things in similar ways. I hope that someday soon there are plenty of films that deal frankly with the sex lives of young people and Larry Clark isn't the immediate association. I think it says a lot about the lack of these images that the natural first association is Clark.

Influence is something that was a concern to me while making the film. The people who I list on the Web site as influences are people who have motivated me to make the kind of films that I make. They are not necessarily filmmakers who I am very familiar with or whose styles I enjoy. Lloyd Kaufman, for instance, is one of my heroes and is absolutely an influence on me, but it has nothing to do with his filmmaking style. I have seen a lot of his films, but I'm much more inspired by his thoughts and ideas, by the essays he posts on the Troma Web site and his book. The same goes for Werner Herzog and Dziga Vertov, both of whom I am much more familiar with as theorists than filmmakers. I have seen work by both, but it is their words that turn me on much more and inspire me to be creative and personal and risky.

I really tried to avoid any kind of outward homage or references with Kissing on the Mouth. I'm not interested in using my films to show off my knowledge of cinema. I can talk about films on my Web site or in message boards. With my work, I want to try and do something new. I don't want to spend a lot of time quoting other people. The filmmakers I really admire do work that is surprising and original. Because of this, I feel the best way to pay tribute to them is to not copy them but to try and be equally surprising and original.


BTdv: You had three other qualified people working with you on this project. Did you find yourself being a "control freak"?

JS: For as much of a control freak as I am, I spent a lot of time trying to find ways of shooting that would result in accidents. I wanted everyone to be prepared but only to a certain point. I hoped things would go wrong, or scenes would fall apart, or something would break. These are the kinds of things that have to happen naturally, but as a director I felt that I could create the situations that would hopefully lead to these things. To a certain extent it worked. We have lots of things falling in our film. Laundry detergent gets knocked off the washing machine, a spray bottle falls off a shelf, a light gets knocked over during sex. All of these things happened by accident during the shooting, and I felt blessed and I naturally kept them all in the film, as well as some other moments that weren't intended. Those are the things I react to the most in films, those moments where as a viewer I think to myself, "There's no way someone wrote that. There's no way that was supposed to happen. That must have just been a happy accident."


BTdv: In your movie, evocative devices such as long shots of hands and feet are prevalent, even when you're not operating the camera. How were you able to control the visual schema while you were acting?

JS: We had the advantage of being able to edit the film as we went, so the other actors got used to my camera style and did their best to stay true to it when they were shooting. I shot almost every scene that I don't act in, so I was able to be in total control of most of the film's visuals, but it was very nerve-wracking when I had to let go of the camera. There was also some resistance to the way I wanted the film to look, but as with everything else, I told them they just had to trust me, and I would trust them, and it would be okay. As the editor of the film, I am very aware of who is shooting which scene because I notice all of the subtle differences between the different photographers, but I hope that the viewer is not able to tell the difference.


BTdv: What camera were you using?

JS: I have been working with the Sony PD150 for a few years now, and I'm finally feeling really comfortable with what I am able to get out of it. I knew how to get the most depth of field and how far we could push the exposure before it would blow out completely. I really wanted to push the camera as much as possible and try and get some photography that people might not expect from a small-format video camera. That was the goal. The viewer will have to decide if we succeeded.


BTdv: I was glad to see that you shot Kissing on the Mouth in the native 4:3 aspect ratio of video. The 4:3 aspect ratio is also native to film, though that seems to be the medium's dirty little secret. If you look at the early cinematic achievements of Griffith or Sjostrom, or the 1950s work of Kurosawa or Satyajit Ray, you can see the squarish aspect ratio used so rigorously that the dramatic and psychological impact is arguably without equal in widescreen compositions. I'm curious if it was the intimacy of the material in Kissing on the Mouth that inspired you to stick with a more contained image.

JS: I absolutely wanted to shoot 4:3 and never considered widescreen. I love the full-frame image, and until I have a very good reason to work in widescreen, I will continue to shoot this way, no matter what the format is. I think the intimacy of the film is certainly enhanced by the full frame, but I just like to shoot that way. I like the composition of it.


BTdv: What do you think of the tendency of much video work to be widescreen? Talk a little bit about the brawl between video and film and the tendency of DV artists and storytellers to want to emulate film in their work.

JS: The tendency of DV filmmakers to emulate film probably stems from the fact that so many people are working on DV only because they can't afford film. If they want to shoot film, but can't afford it, I can understand the desire to make the video look at much like film as possible. I think it's unfortunate, but it makes sense. Video will remain a cheap alternative to film, and the cameras will continue to be engineered to look as much like film as possible. When we reach a point where people feel like affordable Hi-Def images look as good as film, I don't think companies will push to take the image any farther. There are already problems with Hi-Def images being too sharp for television and costing producers a lot of money to get better looking sets and better make-up and wardrobes because the cameras see every little detail. So I think film is the standard, and as soon as video is affordable at that level, cameras will start changing shape and size, and features will change, but the image will stay roughly the same.

I don't know what this means for the filmmakers who are pushing for a separate aesthetic. I think the video cameras will remain extremely flexible, and post-production image control will only get better. It will be interesting to see if the MiniDV image becomes associated with a certain period of late '90s, early '00s filmmaking, the same way we associate certain synth music with the '80s. I have a feeling this will be the case. MiniDV had its time to shine, but the push for Hi-Def is very real, and cameras that shoot Hi-Def are quickly becoming affordable. I imagine that most people who are looking to buy a video camera right now are looking for one that shoots 24P and Hi-Def.

So the goal of achieving the film image affordably is still the point, and everyone who is interested in a separate aesthetic will just have to use the tools in new ways. MiniDV helped the new aesthetic because it obviously wasn't film and had its own characteristics. I don't know what will happen when I pick up a prosumer camera and the image is lush and rich in the exact same way film is, and moves at the exact same speed, and I am able to turn a knob and emulate any Kodak or Fuji film stock I want, with instant results. It might be too tempting to go that way. We'll have to wait and see, but we won't have to wait too long.


BTdv: What inspired or informed the delicate psychological precision of the Kissing on the Mouth?

JS: I hope that the psychology of the film is accurate because I really tried to stay out of it as much as possible and let the girls write their own characters and develop their own small details. We talked a lot together and worked on the general arc as a group, with Kris and I really deciding where the story would go, but from scene to scene I wanted people to be responsible for their own character and really inject life into it. We based some of the story on things that had happened to us or things we had seen friends go through, so we tried to be accurate in that way.

I was very concerned about making a film with a female lead character, because I didn't want to insert too much of myself into it. I told Kris and Kate that they had to do what they would really do, and that I couldn't write any dialogue for them, or else it would be phony. So the short script that we worked from actually said things like, "Ellen and Laura sit on Laura's bed and talk about things girls would talk about." I didn't know what they would talk about. I know what guys would talk about, but I never wanted to assume that these would be remotely the same things. So I told them to be really honest, and to really have discussions that guys don't get to hear usually. Let the male viewer into that world, and let the female viewer see something on the screen that she recognizes. I hate the way girls are portrayed in most movies, and I think it's because most of the parts are written by men. So I figured the best thing I could do was stay out of it and just document.


BTdv: I saw the film Closer with a relatively small audience. Everyone but me laughed at the psychosexual elements of the film—the more direct Clive Owen's dialogue became, the harder they laughed. I found it disturbing because what I perceived as intense, gripping, and painfully honest, the other audience members must have perceived as cloying, improbable, or simply ridiculous. It's unlikely that anyone will see Kissing on the Mouth in a mainstream cinema, but there's always a chance that some viewers won't know how to take it. After all, sophisticated Cannes audiences laughed at Antonioni's L'Avventura when it initially screened. How will you react if people laugh at your movie?

JS: I think that when someone laughs at a film, no matter what the reason is, it says a lot more about the person than it does about the film. I don't personally like uncomfortable laughter. As a viewer, it bothers me when I am trying to watch something, and another person's insecurities become a distraction. But I think that's part of the theater experience. If we show the film, and the theater fills with nervous laughter in certain parts, I will not be upset. I will know that we have done things that bring people outside of their comfort zone, and how they react is their own business. I saw Closer with a friend whose opinion of films I respect, and I thought it was really brutal and honest, and he thought it was lame, so I guess in the end it's just a matter of taste, or what mood you are in, or maybe some other factor that's impossible to calculate. I have seen enough films and been in enough uncomfortable screenings to know that as the filmmaker it's totally out of my hands, and one screening may be completely different than another, and the person who laughs uncomfortably at the theater might really connect with the film at home on a TV screen and that I just have to roll with the punches.


BTdv: You've said, "I learned that if you make a movie with a lot of sex and nudity, you should not wait until it has been accepted into a major film festival before you tell your parents about it."

JS: This project was kept pretty much under wraps for a long time, from everyone, not just my parents. I personally wanted to make sure that we were on target before I started telling a lot of people about the film. Because of the way we made it, we kind of developed our own little world between the four of us, and I wasn't talking to all that many other people during that time. There were a few people who watched cuts and advised me during the making of the film, but we had about thirty minutes of edited footage before we showed it to anyone or really started talking about the film. I think at that point we knew we could do it, and we had enough of an idea about where we were going that we felt safe mentioning it to people.

BTdv: It must have been difficult not to tell your family what you were up to.

JS: I'm very close with my family, and I see my parents quite often, but I didn't feel like discussing the project with them until it was finished.

This is probably something that all filmmakers who deal with risky content face. I don't want to hurt my family in any way, or complicate their lives, but I have to be true to myself. I can't spend my life only making films that my parents will like, and they understand this. It's a difficult situation, but I know that my parents love me, and I never worry that a film I make would jeopardize our relationship. They understand that my tastes and sensibilities are different than theirs. They have known this since I first became interested in films and showed them all kinds of strange movies that they probably wish they had never watched. They raised me as an intelligent, independent thinker and trust that I would not engage in a project if I didn't believe in it strongly. That's where we stand.


BTdv: There is a youngness to the movie, a sense that it hopes to speak directly to your generation. The movie deals exclusively with four people just out of college, and their turmoil and foibles are supplemented by the collage of voiced-over interviews which reflect the experiences, fears, and insecurities of people who are more or less the same age, race, and caste as the four main characters. In this way, the movie is very claustral, and it could be accused of narcissism.

JS: I am glad that you bring up age, race, and caste, because it's important to note, and these considerations absolutely affected the way we made the film. I would never pretend to know what life after college was like for someone of another race, or more importantly, another income level. Because of this, I have no illusions about the film speaking to my entire generation. What we tried to do was speak very specifically about the things we have experienced and hope that others can relate. I have never been a believer in making anything more general as a way to appeal to a bigger audience. I would rather be very true to the characters and hope that the audience appreciates this and still finds human similarities even if there are no superficial similarities.

For me, film is a way to explore the world and learn. I want specifics, not generalizations.

		I would hope that a film about four black college graduates would be very specific to their lives in the same way Kissing on the Mouth is specific to ours. I am curious how their attitudes would be different, what their relationship to family would be, how they would view purely sexual relationships, etc. I think it's bad wasting time generalizing or appealing to the lowest common denominator. I accept that some people might find this narcissistic, but I can't waste time worrying about it. I hope everyone who sees the film gains from it. That is absolutely the goal. We did not make it to entertain ourselves.
	Swanberg directing Kissing on the Mouth

I believe that the more specific you get, the more truly universal it becomes. I know it seems backwards, but as a viewer, I am fascinated by the details, not by the general story arc. The specific little details are what pull me into it. I feel that by trying to appeal to the broadest possible audience, you never truly appeal to anyone. I would rather make a film that deeply affects ten people than one that 10,000 people just kind of like okay. I prefer that extreme.

I totally understand how a film with a larger budget can't afford this extreme, and it makes sense to try and appeal to the biggest audience possible. I don't discount those films or the efforts of the filmmakers because if you are going to do something spectacular, something that requires a lot of time and money, you also need to make sure that people are actually going to come see the movie. I'm glad these escapist films exist because I often enjoy seeing them, but it's not what I want to do, especially not right now while I feel such a lack of individual voices in the cinema. Thanks to DV, I don't have to prove that my film will appeal to a broad audience before I get the money to make it. I can just make it with my own money and let the audience decide once they see it.


BTdv: Talk about how you've used a Web log throughout the making and marketing of Kissing on the Mouth.

JS: The production journal that I keep on the Web site is as much for me as it is for anyone else who might read it. I am always at the computer, and a blog was the easiest way for me to update and keep track of when we shot scenes, what we did, how we were feeling at the time. I wanted a way to remember the film later, so I made myself keep track of everything. The reason I have it available on the site for others to read is because I think it can be a useful tool for other filmmakers. When I was a freshman in film school, I read Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It journal that he published, and I never forgot a lot of the things he wrote. It was full of little pieces of practical insight, useful information about raising money, and just a lot of other cool things that were fun for me to read. It's not something I could recommend to most friends as a great book, but for an independent filmmaker it's fascinating. So I wanted to keep the online journal just in case someone found it useful. For my own purposes, I can reference it to remember when we did something or what was going on while we were making the film. I think I'll be glad I did it in ten years when I can't remember any of the details. I don't think it's necessarily fun reading for the general public, but it will be a way for friends and fans of the film to keep track of fun things that are happening. I will continue to update it as long as there are new developments in the film.


BTdv: Your biographical blurb on the movie's Web site states that you "developed an interest in emerging video technology and the creative possibilities of the Internet" while you were at film school. How did your interest in new media supersede an interest in film and traditional modes of exhibition?

JS: There was something about being at film school and talking about film all the time that really pushed me to broaden my horizons. The more I learned about film and filmmakers, the more I felt restricted, like everything I thought was interesting had already been tried, and there was not much left for me to do. I got burned out, and I feel like I didn't have a place in the world of traditional film production. I wanted to have some breathing room and experiment in new areas where there was still potential to create something amazing that nobody had seen before.

The Internet held a lot of appeal to me, because people were still experimenting with the possibilities. I started designing Web pages, and getting into the graphic elements. I suddenly felt a lot less restricted than I did with film production, and I was thinking a lot about what the Internet would mean to storytelling, film distribution, and all visual arts.

This whole time I was shooting and experimenting with video. It seemed like everyone around me was excited about video because the quality was getting better, and soon it would replace film and only cost a fraction of the price. I was much more interested in how video could stand alongside film and have its own distinct aesthetic.

In the four years that I was at Southern Illinois University, I went from barely knowing how to operate a computer to spending most of my day on one. I went from being intimidated and distrustful of technology to being completely fascinated and engulfed by it. I saw that there was a whole world of images to be explored with these new cameras. It's not that they could do anything specifically that I couldn't do on film, but the price of the cameras and tape meant that I could experiment in ways that would have been cost-prohibitive with film.

Suddenly I was excited about making movies again. I was excited that the images looked different, reacted to light different, moved different than film. The size of the cameras meant that the way the photographer held them was different, and suddenly the photography was changing in interesting ways. By the time I graduated, I was energized and happy to be working with new tools. I was also excited to see a lot of people my own age embracing the technology and moving in different directions with it.


BTdv: Your short movie Mikey is very atmospheric and contemplative, made up of images which have poetic value rather than narrative value. It is entirely unlike almost all movies made for Internet exhibition. It's remarkable how well I remember some of the sequences in Mikey, given that the screen size is only a few square inches. Mikey is one of ten or fewer movies I've seen on the Internet which prophesy the arrival of a true talent—it demonstrates a sensual facility with moving images, not just technical acumen. Why do you think so much Internet video fare tends toward flashy adventure, zombie movies, or "witty" post-modern satire? Why do you think "serious" cinema is so rare in this new medium?

JS: Well, first of all, thank you very much for the kind words. I'm very proud of the film Mikey, and I'm glad that you enjoy it.

I got the sense when I first started watching short films on the Internet, at places like atomfilms.com and ifilm.com, that people were using it for exposure. The films were flashy, funny, and seemed to exist in order to demonstrate the filmmakers' talent. A lot of people were watching the films, and I think there was the idea that you could be discovered. Shorts seem to have this tradition of existing in order to get the filmmaker a deal to do a feature. But shorts weren't being shown in theaters, and rarely on TV, so suddenly the new exposure of the Internet meant a lot of people watching short films again. It was fun, and as a young filmmaker, it was exciting to think there were all these places that were hungry for new content. But that all fizzled out rather quickly, and before I could even consider making a short and submitting it to one of the big Web sites, it seemed like they all disappeared and shrunk in popularity.

At the same time that people got kind of sick of watching flashy short films on their computers, it started to get affordable and easy to purchase your own domain and hosting space on the Internet. Without much computer knowledge, I bought a domain and hosting, and started a Web site for movie reviews. I'm glad I did it as early as I did because it gave me a few years to learn as much as I could before I started making the films that I wanted to showcase on the Web.

Where some people might have seen the opportunity to showcase their ability to direct a major motion picture, I saw the opportunity to showcase small little films that didn't belong on the film festival circuit or on TV. I thought it was great that with a little bit of money every year for hosting, I could produce the personal films that I was interested in and make them available for free to anyone in the world who wanted to watch them. That was where the true power of Web-hosted cinema was for me. Film festivals love to show flashy, funny short films. Audiences like them, and they are fun to see in a theatre with a lot of people. But now there was also a place for smaller, more personal films that may not be right for the big screen. I still think it's beautiful that someone can stumble across my Web site and watch a short film I made. Otherwise, these films would be sitting on a VHS tape and would never be seen. I don't promote my short films or solicit visitors to my site. I just have them up there, and if someone hits the site they are free to download and watch.

What's great about the Internet is that there is room for everything. Perhaps there is still the idea that if someone makes an action short, or a horror short, a producer from a studio might watch it and offer them the ability to make a big budget feature. I'm sure it happens. So for those people, they can make a Web site and show their zombie film. But I'm much more excited about the space it has created for the films that very few people are interested in. It means that a film that might only appeal to fifty people can be available to those fifty people. That's an amazing thing.


BTdv: GreenCine and other Web sites have begun offering feature-length movies for download. Would you be comfortable with someone watching Kissing on the Mouth on their laptop in a café setting? Do you think Kissing on the Mouth would be "significant" if viewed only on a computer screen?

JS: It's all very interesting, and I guess it doesn't matter to me how people view the film. I composed the film with a video camera using a 2.5" LCD screen. The images that became the film were conceived and decided upon using this tiny screen. So I suppose that any screen 2.5" or larger is a viable way to experience the film. If I could make the creative decisions about the photography in the film using that little screen, then certainly someone could view and enjoy the film on the same size screen. Why not?

The experience and circumstance of the viewing has so much to do with the perception that it's impossible for me to prefer a way for someone to view my work. If someone likes the experience of being in a theater with other people, then I hope they are able to view it that way, and if they would rather sit in a comfortable chair and watch it on their TV, I am fine with that as well. If someone has a coughing fit during the movie, or a cell phone rings, or the projector breaks, then it becomes part of the experience for those viewers, and might have a bearing on the way they perceive the film. If someone watches the film on DVD, and stops in the middle to go run an errand, and finishes watching it later that night, they might have a different perception of the film than had they watched it straight through. I'm okay with all this. It's not in my control and can't be a concern.

At this time, a theatrical release still says something about the work. Having it play in theaters legitimizes the film in a lot of people's eyes. There is a level of quality control that exists for films released theatrically. Someone saw it and decided it was of a certain merit. For someone buying a DVD from a Web site—of a film they haven't seen—there is the chance that it's going to be terrible. A viewer is taking a big risk. If the film has played in festivals, gotten some good reviews, and maybe won a few awards, suddenly the risk is not nearly as great. Because of this, I still see festivals and critics playing a very important role in the future of independent film distribution. These institutions serve as the quality control for films that go straight to DVD and self-distribute. Of course it's great if a film that is rejected from festivals can still go to DVD and be available, but they are going to need some way to assure a potential viewer that they aren't buying a terrible film.


BTdv: Having worked for major film festivals yourself, what do you see as the limitations and flaws of the festival circuit?

JS: Well, I'm very disturbed by the trend of focusing on premieres. I see the appeal of being the first festival to show something, but really it's just a superficial appeal. My nightmare is that a film will only be able to show at one festival, and then nobody else will want it because there are plenty of brand new films to choose from.

Studios are using festivals to showcase all of their specialty division products. Festivals love it because it means they get higher profile films, and every once in a while a movie star attends, and the studios love it, because they get to test the film, get some free publicity, and get the major markets interested. It's a win/win situation for the studios and the festivals. But for an audience who isn't interested in studio films that will eventually get an art-house or wide release, an audience that counts on festivals to provide content that they won't get another chance to see, it's another disturbing trend. It also means fewer slots for truly independent films that really need the exposure and filmmakers who could really benefit from the chance to interact with an audience.

I am also concerned with the lack of risk-taking in the festival world right now. It's a tough situation, and it's hard to know where to place the blame. It's a chicken-or-egg situation. Are filmmakers not taking risks, therefore festivals have nothing risky to program? Are festivals not taking risks, therefore filmmakers have no exposure for their risky work? Are audiences not taking risks, therefore festivals lean toward more commercial work? It has to be a delicate balance, but right now the trend seems to be festivals going with more and more mainstream product from studio specialty divisions, and as long as the audience keeps responding, the trend will continue. Festivals will basically become another outlet for studios. A film festival slot will be no different than an appearance on The Today Show. And it's obvious that the independent filmmakers suffer because there will always be an audience for movie stars and high profile films, but festivals used to cultivate an audience for the smaller work, and a lot of them don't seem interested in that anymore.


BTdv: No matter how far-fetched, tell us what you see as the ultimate long-term goal for digital video technology in terms of distribution, exhibition, and public reception.

JS: I don't know what the industry has in store for digital video technology. I'm sure there are a lot of smart people working on a master plan. I'm not really interested in fitting into that plan anywhere. I'm most excited about digital video allowing me to exist profitably outside of the industry. For me that's the real goal.

As really good projectors become cheaper and cheaper, and more and more independent-minded people create microcinemas to showcase outsider films, I can image a network that would allow a filmmaker like me to get in a car and travel around the country showing the film to audiences and charging for tickets at the door. As DVDs become cheaper to burn, filmmakers can start selling copies at film festival screenings in the same way bands set up merchandise tables at their shows. I think the independent music scene is a really good model for the future of independent film. Think about how many labels there are right now putting out the albums of independent musicians. As the costs of making a film become comparable to the costs of producing an album, I hope we will see the same thing happen. Groups will form film labels and start working with artists to put their stuff out. Filmmakers will tour the way bands tour, and microcinemas will operate like clubs, selling beer and providing a place for people to hang out and see films. Filmmakers will get some of the door money and supplement that with DVD, T-shirt, and poster sales. It's completely realistic and sounds quite fun and exciting. Maybe it's because I'm young, but there's something very appealing about hitting the road and showing the film. So that's my dream.