Jonathan
Caouette (Tarnation)
September 2004
San Francisco

Jonathan Caouette’s name shot into the spotlight this year at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival when his debut film Tarnation broke all the rules about genre and technology, having been completed for $217 using Apple’s iMovie software and a lifetime of photos, home movies, and (unlicensed) music pulled from his favorite CDs.

Part documentary, multimedia scrapbook, and music video, Tarnation presents the precious ups and horrific downs of growing up with a mentally ill mother. Wellspring picked up distribution rights for Tarnation and took it on a whirlwind festival tour, including Cannes and the Los Angeles Film Festival, where it was awarded the $25,000 prize for best documentary. Prior to its Sundance debut, the film attracted the notice of acclaimed writer-director Gus Van Sant and Hedwig and the Angry Inch's John Cameron Mitchell, both of whom signed on as executive producers to help propel the film to new heights.

Having been cleaned up a bit (including clearing all those pesky music permissions), Tarnation begins its limited U.S. theatrical release in October. During the process of spiffing up his revolutionary movie, Caouette called from San Francisco to break down the whole story.

Are you doing something specifically film-related in San Francisco right now?

Yeah, we just actually finished our sound mix at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, which is pretty unbelievable. Now the whole movie sounds like Star Wars. (Laughs) We heard it all the way through a couple of days ago for the first time and it's amazing. I never dreamed that the film could catapult to this level. We have all kinds of really great whooshes and hums and drones in places that were still there originally but now they're really enhanced. The sound was always an integral part of the film but now it's really gonna be an integral part of the film!

That's great! Did you have to pay for this? If so, did you get a discounted rate at least? I imagine it was pretty expensive.

Yeah, we did but it was like a really low cost. [Asks someone in the room, "We paid for it, right?"] They gave us a really great deal, yeah.

Cool. To get to the meat of things, I identified with Tarnation on quite a few levels, not only as a filmmaker, but also as a native Texan. I grew up in El Paso –

Oh, wow! I've met so many talented people that come out of El Paso. You know, John Cameron Mitchell was born in El Paso.

I know! I love that about him.

(Laughs) It's so funny. So you live in Los Angeles now.

Yeah, yeah - much like John, I ran away as fast as I could out of El Paso. (Laughs)

Yeah, I hear you loud and clear about that.

There was a lot of that exact sentiment in the film about being in a backwards place that I totally identified with, along with parental issues. As I kept watching, there were more and more degrees of feeling myself enfolded by Tarnation. It's really incredible that you never wavered from letting film be your outlet, and I felt that very powerfully, too.

Yeah, and I can't explain it or why I assumed such a specific kind of aesthetic for film at such an early age. I don't know if it had to do with having a general interest in film and wanting to perform or being gay or what my saving grace was as far as that's concerned, or how that sort of became my sole means of escapism, but, you know, thank God! That's all I have to say, because I was right on the brink of being in situations where I could've gone the other way. I was institutionalized myself, I was in the Waco Center for Youth at one point when I was 14...just all kinds of scenarios that with a few more pushes in the wrong direction and could've been a really wrong direction. So thank God for film, you know?

Yeah, exactly - hallelujah! (Both laugh) And now you're doing things like hanging out at Skywalker Sound – who knew!

I know! Now I consider this film as more of a collective sort of thing now than just taking full credit. Although it was initially created on iMovie it's so many other things now! But it's still an iMovie – I mean, you look at there's only so many effects you can do, there's only so many boxes you can create for so many different moments.

But it's been such an experience, it's like, what's next? I can't believe we've done what we've done! I can't believe we've gone to Sundance, I can't believe we've gone to Cannes or won best doc out in Los Angeles. It feels like some sort of virtual reality trip, it really does. It's like, wake me up! There must be some implant in my brain right now, like I'm just living out some kind of crazy fantasy, because there's been so much magic that's encompassed this whole experience on so many different levels that it's almost borderline supernatural. I can't explain it. (Laughs) There's so many good people working on this, too. There's not one bad person involved in this.

It could be that you racked up some good karma in your early years and now you're being repaid for it.

Yeah, I agree - I believe in karma very much. It's definitely paying off, I suppose, in a very bizarre way, because on one level I'm letting it all go, and then it's still very hard. I still cringe at some scenes and sometimes there's little windows in my heart that say, "What is it that I've done here? What am I trying to say, what am I trying to prove?" And there are other instances when I'm like, "This is a really, really important, beautiful thing that people just need to know about; it's a side of Americana that we often brush under the carpeting."

Tarnation is about more than just mental illness in the general sense. As a subject that's explored cinematically, particularly in the Hollywood system I think it’s just so whitewashed and candy-coated, and I really wanted to kind of show what it really was like. For instance, some filmmakers will...I don't know if you want to print this verbatim – I'm not trying to trash Ron Howard or anything – but take A Beautiful Mind for example. I think they had to be really careful about the way they felt they had to play the idea of what they thought the audience would understand as far as the subject of schizophrenia. They created these fictitious characters and the thing at the end is that all these characters are in his mind. But mental illness is so much more complex and real and there's so many more dimensions to it than that.

A lot of people ask me, "Why did you keep the camera on your mom during the pumpkin scene?" Basically, on one hand I wanted to evoke an expression of what it was like to live and breathe this, and on the other hand that scene isn't really as dark as people think it is. We're actually having a really good time there. Behind the camera I'm actually making faces at her and making her laugh, which is a little manipulative on my part. But when I was filming it, it wasn't like, "This is good stuff for this movie," you know – I didn't even know then I was really going to be piecing [the movie] together. But the context of how it's placed in the film is really to just evoke an expression of the human condition of mental illness.

Right – that there is humanity behind it, that it's not just some clinical diagnosis.

Yeah, that it's not this one-dimensional stance that you can put on somebody and say, "This is this because of this and this." There's just so many facets and complications about it. And at the end of the day I'm hoping that people can empathize a little more with the mentally ill because we just don't acknowledge those people very much as I think we should, or give them credit for being survivors as opposed to these nut cases that nobody wants to have anything to do with.

I think you've brought up a good point – there's more of a ubiquity about mental illness. It's not just the John Nashes like in A Beautiful Mind. There are all sorts of people that are affected.

Yeah! I agree.

Tarnation is a very beautiful, down to earth story, the complete opposite, in a very good way, of something like A Beautiful Mind – I'm glad you brought up that example. You’re being hailed as a trailblazer both for confronting mental illness in this way and for the technology and the artistry behind Tarnation. Because of that, do you feel a certain responsibility or have you received any sort of negative reaction from people, like, 'You didn't do things right!'?

Yeah, I'm sure I'm gonna get all kinds of reactions, but it's mostly been great. I had my doubts, especially when we went to the Roger Ebert film festival. I was anticipating that it was going to be primarily a college crowd because it's a college town. Then when I went into the theater during the screening and 75% of the audience was people in their 70’s and 80's and I was like, "Oh, shit, they're gonna walk out! They're not gonna understand it...” I didn't know what to expect. But that was the kicker that made me realize that this film will touch people from every walk of life on every level.

I've gotten a few of the hoo-hahs on the IMDB [Internet Movie Database], a couple of bitter anonymous people who trashed me and John Cameron Mitchell and Gus Van Sant all at once by saying we were all miserable and misery loves company, you know, that kind of stuff – stuff that is just coming from a really bitter, vile kind of place. And I'm so not miserable! (Laughs)

As far as being hailed, I don't even know what's going on, to be quite honest - I haven't read a lot of the reviews. I know a lot of them have generally been good, but if that is what's happening, that's pretty bizarre, especially when this was initially just a private, cathartic thing. But I always knew somehow, in some way, it would have an audience one day, but that was more on a grandiose, delusional level. My biggest goal for showing this film to people was at best to have a night at the Anthology Film Archives or a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop that had a video projector. I never realized that it would run the festival circuit and then get received the way that it has. So, it's a trip! (Laughs)

There is a huge responsibility and I didn't realize that because it was me who put this together, I'm the one inevitably responsible for doing all the press and traveling with the film and getting on airplanes, which I hate to do - I really hate flying! So much that I can't even tell you…

So, there's all kinds of responsibilities on all kinds of levels, but it's great. I'm not particularly a public speaker, either, and I'm being asked to do forums and seminars and speaking to kids. Mind you, I'm coming from outside of the system completely, because I never went to film school and everything is from a real grassroots-y area, so I'm still a neophyte in all of this. But it's been a really great experience all in all. I still can't believe it's happening and it's been happening for a year now. It literally wakes me up in the middle of the night sometimes with butterflies in my stomach. I go through the whole thing: "Oh, my God, Jonathan, you made this film, your mother's in it, you're in it…." (Laughs) It's as strange for me as I think is for people to watch it, you know?

I can only imagine. Speaking of the responsibilities and the fact that your family is in it – not just your mom but your grandparents play a big part – did you worry at any point when you were assembling the material and trying to make that first deadline for the MIX festival in New York that maybe you might hurt or offend your family?

Yes! And I still do, I still do. My grandmother isn't here to fend for herself because she passed away. I showed it to my grandfather – he had to sign the personal release, but... You know, this has sustained a certain kind of hype and praise from what I hear on the film festival level, and that's great and that can coax me along thinking that everything may be okay. But then upon the release of the film to the public, it may be a totally different response, you know? It may be crazy, it may cause mass hysteria – I mean, I don't know what it's gonna do! (Laughs)

Right - riots in the streets!

(Laughs and screams) Ahhhhhh! Yeah, I would be totally lying if I didn't say there's always been doubts about how my mother's going to be affected by this. But she has told me that she loves it and that she's always known at the end of the day that her and I have a very poignant story that we've always wanted to tell. I was originally going to do it by way of a completely fictitious narrative, which I'd written a script for. I wrote two scripts, actually, because the film has gone through about five incarnations in the past three years. The film was sort of writing itself because the first screenplay was written before my mother accidentally overdosed on lithium in Texas. The movie has been this kind of living thing, literally, that has changed – the beginnings and the endings have changed, the stories have changed...

Well, it's like life.

It is, it really is! It's literally art imitating life. That's a real 80's thing to say I guess but it really has been.

Speaking of which, I loved all the footage of you with that 80's hair - that was such a flashback to the glory of New Wave.

A lot of people have been saying that they like all the hairstyles. (Laughs)

That's what it really comes down to – it's a portrait of hair.

(Laughs and speaks to someone in the room) She's saying it's a portrait of hair also! I thought we were the only ones that were making an inside joke about that. That's so funny!

To get serious again and go back to this whole trailblazing thing, by virtue of the fact that people made such a big deal that this was done on iMovie and done so cheaply, it seems to have opened the door to a whole new wave of what will hopefully be good and poignant self-made films.

God, I would love to think so, because I had years of discouragement. I was initially bitten by the filmmaking and performing bug as an actor; I came to New York originally as an actor and I went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. The discouragement of not diving into film directly came from the whole business side and cutthroat aspect of it. It was so fucking intimidating to me that I bypassed it by thinking that I could go into acting school and finagle my way into the film world as an actor. I don't know what I was thinking, but what is happening now is so outside of the norm and I really would love for people at the end of the day with this movie to be inspired that they don't need a million dollars. Well, with the rights and clearances now, it's no longer a $217 film at all anymore! (Laughs)

But if people want to do it really grassroots and not use an exorbitant amount of video clips and Bob Dylan music and all this kind of stuff that I was doing without even thinking, then they can do it! Anybody can make a film now; I think it's as easy as picking up a pen and paper these days. The iMovie program and all these home movie editing programs are blessings and curses all at once for people; for the industry, too, as it should be, because people should be able to be accessible to all forms of expression.

Yes, it shouldn't be a classist thing that has to do with how much money you have.

Right, right.

You mentioned the clearances – have you had to get rid of a lot of stuff?

Believe it or not, thank God, we've actually been able to retain about 80% of the songs.

Cool!

I know! And we got these two brilliant composers to do the underscoring for the film, all original work that I had a lot to do with. It was so great! We had to get rid of the Nick Drake stuff, unfortunately; it was really hard to see that go. But there's this guy by the name of Max Lichtenstein who has emulated some Nick Drake-esque stuff and it's so great that we use a lot of his stuff in the movie now and it serves as the scroll for the closing sequence. It's like one of the most beautiful tracks in the movie now.

When you have stuff taken away from you and you have a limited amount to work with, it makes you push harder and work harder for it and get really, really creative. We couldn't get a lot of video clips, either, so I had to go through a lot of archival tapes and find stuff that was going to say the same thing. We couldn't get The Exorcist, we couldn't get Wonder Woman, we couldn't get all that kind of stuff, but the stuff that I was able to use is really interesting, so I think you'll enjoy seeing the newest cut.

The film is being classified as a documentary, and genre or boxing things is always hard to deal with, but it makes it easier for people –

Yeah, I've never considered it a documentary at all. It's always been a sort of non-linear, experimental thing. They just had to stick it somewhere, I guess. It’s actually more of a documentary now than the original cut, which was way more ridiculously impressionistic. If I would've submitted it to the festival circuit, it wouldn't have been anything because it went on this whole impressionistic hybrid where we hurl into the future and my grandfather pulls a gun out on me and shoots me and the camera drops and goes into my mind and my brain is dying with flashback/flash-forward stuff and then [boyfriend] David is an angel we're naked in Heaven and he's healing me. (Laughs) It was a little ridiculous and kind of cool at the same time. I'm glad it is what it is now.

You can save that for the Broadway musical interpretation of it.

That's right! (Laughs) Or the opera!

In literary form there seems to be more of a fitting genre – Tarnation could be considered memoir, an autobiography, or a personal essay.

Yeah!

But hopefully this will break new ground not only on a technical level but maybe open people about that.

And generate optimism about film, yeah. I would love to think so. I would love for this film to go down in the history books saying, "Look, you can make a movie for nothing! You really can! And you don't have to succumb to any rules about anything or try to structure anything in a specific way to appease other people or other ideas of what genres are. You can really just do your own thing!

Maybe this is opening a whole new can of worms, but you talk about your own struggles with a mental disorder during the film. I'm not trivializing it all but hearing your description of depersonalization disorder, it's really curious to me how much that could describe a lot of artists and storytellers, people who are always kind of detached from reality and thinking about how things could be fictionalized or how stories could be told. It's a power of imagination that allows people to create two hours of suspension of disbelief or a really engaging novel or a really powerful album.

Sure.

It's made me wonder whether maybe one of the reasons you're such a powerful artist is this condition.

I don't think it is at all, actually. I think that what I've done with the film is perhaps a subconscious expression of it – a very slim expression, because it's part of what I've been since I was 12 and I smoked this horrible cocktail [PCP-laced marijuana in joints dipped in formaldehyde]. But I couldn't honestly say if I would've been able to put this film together the way I did if it wasn't for that experience or for this condition that I live with, which is really not quite as dramatic as it sounds. Have you been to the website about it?

About depersonalization? Not yet.

Yeah, there's a whole forum about it, and I didn't stumble upon it until about five years ago and it blew me away. I was reading like these verbatim testimonies and essays from people that have gone through this exact same scenario that I've gone through. (Sighs) I don’t know…. We as humans can acclimate to anything, I think. It’s been like adjusting to a new pair of glasses. It's just a different interpretation sensory-wise, but you're still like…. It's very difficult to put into words because it's not a psychotic disorder – you're still very, very cognizant – but everything seems real trippy. I don't really know what trippy in like The Cure sense is like because I've never done acid or anything like that, but it's the only word I can use for it.

You should check out the site. I’m hoping that it'll raise some awareness for research for it.

Yeah, and it would be wonderful to see the movie as a help to so many people on so many different levels.

God, I hope so. (Laughs)

And I congratulate you for having channeled all of this into art and into something constructive.

Thank you! Because it certainly could've gone in the other direction, I'm sure. (Laughs)

More about Tarnation on the official web site, www.i-saw-tarnation.com.