Moongazing

Kyle Molzan: "If you ever meet Jerry Lewis, send him our movie!" Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Georges Simenon, Charles Laughton in Burgess Meredith's The Man On The Eiffel Tower, Cédric Kahn's Red Lights (Feux Rouges) with Carole Bouquet and Jean-Pierre Darroussin, The Day The Clown Cried, Jerry Lewis, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's In A Year With 13 Moons (In Einem Jahr Mit 13 Monden), Christian Petzold's Phoenix, John Cassavetes' A Woman Under The Influence, Kurt Weill, Brian Wilson and Moonriders were unearthed in my For the Plasma conversation with co-director Kyle Molzan.

Helen (Rosalie Lowe) having a meal

Keiichi Suzuki's score informs how we meander through the landscapes filmed dream-like by Christopher Messina (Dear Renzo). Charlie (Anabelle LeMieux) arrives at a house in Maine where a pal from the past, Helen (Rosalie Lowe), has a job monitoring forest fires and where she also miraculously predicts shifts in global finance. Unforeseen visitors from business- and netherworlds bend the frames of their interactions.

The moon - in the shape of a Shoot The Moon game and its real-life equivalent - must have some kind of influence and questions abound. There is the riddle of the clock bug drawing and meals that look as though the ghost of a long-dead housekeeper provided fresh flowers for breakfast and quartered lemons with parsley tufts to decorate the dinner plate. The girls who don't mind beer after red wine and fill their bowls to almost overflow with Cheerios wouldn't care about such things, or would they? Sense is where you find it.

Anne-Katrin Titze: How did you and [writer/co-director] Bingham [Bryant] meet?

Clock bug drawing inspired by Kobo Abe's The Ark Sakura: "In a way it's like a cut-up method"

Kyle Molzan: We met at a movie theater called Film Forum in the city and we were both ushers there. We started talking about our own interests and became friends. Then we could basically sit side-by-side and take tickets and talk about all we want for our future movie.

AKT: Did the kernel for Plasma come from there?

KM: Maybe, maybe not. Bingham had an idea for a book, a novel. I think that was a bigger kernel than a lot of the things we came up with. It was more logistical things that we came up with together. He always had the location, I guess.

AKT: Did you discover Maine through this project?

KM: Yeah. I'm from Florida. I first went there location scouting. Maine was totally new to me … Mostly we were consulting each other and also Chris Messina.

AKT: Whenever the two women in the film are seen working together - whatever you may want to call the work - they seem closest. I liked the newspaper/ bug scene. Charlie's bug drawing enters and interferes with Helen's work. It's a drawing upon a drawing. Is this how you and Bingham were working, too?

"Maine was totally new to me"

KM: I'm trying to think who is writing the bug and who is circling the words.

AKT: Did you ever think of showing us the paper? I at least was curious, what is she crossing out, what is she circling?

KM: I remember doing that scene. In a way it's like a cut-up method, or something like that. It's like a surrealist game. It works if what you want is abstract. I don't know what words we picked, but obviously she is trying to deal with money.

AKT: If I were the actress, I would have kept that paper.

KM: It was a big deal because I only bought one New York Times for that. We only had one go at it. It was like an hour away to get The New York Times from where we were.

AKT: The Port Clyde General Store didn't have it? Some of the ghostliness of the film came from the way they ate. Flowers on the table, lemon slices with parsley decoration - as if some ghostly old-fashioned aunt had come in and served the food. Also the over-full cereal bowls added to the disconnect. With a story like this, strange details jump out at the audience.

Charlie (Anabelle LeMieux): "I think the actresses might have set up that meal, I can't remember."

KM: Wow, I wish. It was probably a constraint on our imagination, I think. It's a sad answer, making movies, but true. I think the actresses might have set up that meal, I can't remember.

AKT: It's a bad idea to drink beer after red wine…

KM: That's true. I think it was a different day?

AKT: No, it's the same night. Talk a bit about the music. It creates very different moods for different scenes.

KM: That was part of it - variation. It kind of goes with the narrative being so different, like rabbit holes of plot and things like that. It's not that it's different narrative styles. It wasn't like we just turn into an exploitation film but the tone and the look and stuff changes a little bit.

AKT: At times it felt very child-like, as if we were watching a children's show.

Gottfried John as Jerry Lewis In A Year With 13 Moons

KM: Oh, yeah. Him [Keiichi Suzuki] as a producer. In this Japanese sphere, he has his band [Moonriders], he has his solo career and then he has his producing work that goes from J-pop to TV anime, television commercials from the Eighties, or something like that. Suzuki has so much music that is little ditties for toddlers. That sort of comes into whatever possibilities he can do. There's so many light parts in it - that he intrinsically kind of knew that. Our notes were kind of general - people we wanted to sound like. There were some tone things but more like we would tell him references of music that we wanted it to be similar to.

AKT: There was one moment where I thought of Kurt Weill.

KM: Really?

AKT: A few notes from "Speak Low." Did you see Christian Petzold's Phoenix? The whole film is structured around the song.

KM: I didn't see it. But I know Kurt Weill. We referenced more people like BrIan Wilson or the whole sphere, the Japanese stuff from the Eighties that Keiichi was involved with. There was a lot more technological things, electronic noises and less rock. These guys are rock but especially Brian Wilson, that's more orchestral and different.

A businessman (Ryohei Hoshi) with an offer Helen can't refuse

AKT: I saw that you are now working on a project about Georges Simenon in America.

KM: The story is for me related full-circle wise. Being from Florida and Maine and finding a way to trip the two together. His life - he stayed in Canada while he was in America - he would go to New York where he met a secretary of his who became his second wife in New York. And he would travel back and forth. Then they started to live in Maine. It was him, his wife, his child, his secretary all in one house. Eventually, they wanted to go down Route 1, all the way down to Florida. During this trip they took two different cars. It's the dissolve of the relationship. His wife is in the car behind them.

AKT: He and the secretary are in the first car?

KM: Him and the secretary and his first child are in one car. And in the second car his wife and a chauffeur and they don't meet along the entire path. Then they meet in Palm Beach, they get through a hurricane. I want to do something along the trip down - talk about their relationships, get the new relationship together and find out about the old and then also he imagines narratives through what happens in his life. And what he sees while drunken driving or whatever happens on his way down. It's split between a visionary and a reflective thing.

AKT: Do you particularly like one of the films based on Simenon?

On the score: "It kind of goes with the narrative being so different, like rabbit holes of plot"

KM: Anthology [Film Archives] plays a lot of the Simenon adaptations. I think movies that would influence me, like about the loneliness of the road would be better than the Simenon adaptations. I don't love them. There's a Charles Laughton one, The Man on the Eiffel Tower. That one I think is a little silly.

AKT: Red Lights?

KM: Red Lights, I want to deal with, for sure. I haven't seen that adaptation, the French one.

AKT: Cédric Kahn's film is great. Carole Bouquet and Jean-Pierre Darroussin are wonderful in it.

KM: I want that movie to be in America. It felt weird that that movie is in France. But at the same time, I'm sure it's good.

AKT: What road movies were you thinking of as inspiration? The two cars are a strong image.

KM: Yeah, it seems weirdly cinematic and almost non-booky. I want to make it a period piece.

AKT: Around what time?

"It wasn't like we just turn into an exploitation film ..."

KM: Around 1955. I think this type of man is almost lost in today's world. That second wife, I think he made her go crazy based on his own jealousy. His daughter committed suicide after finding out more and maybe the beatings he might have given her. It's not going to be a beating movie. I'm more interested in the psychological things and maybe the verbal abuse.

AKT: It sounds like torture all around.

KM laughs: It's very Fassbinder-like. I mean, really, that's the only reason I'm doing it.

AKT: What is your favorite Fassbinder film? Or does it change every week?

KM: No, no it doesn't. In A Year Of 13 Moons. It's like Cassavetes for me - Woman Under The Influence is big. I can't get away from that pain sometimes. In A Year Of 13 Moons is such a tragic movie.

AKT: The strange thing is, when I am thinking of In A Year With 13 Moons, the first thing that comes to mind is when they are re-enacting the dance scene from the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movie.

KM: Yeah, that's a huge influence on this [For The Plasma] too. Bingham told you about the Jerry Lewis thing, right?

AKT: No.

KM: Well, in the introduction of Jerry Lewis's filmmaker handbook there is something like: Why do you make films? And he basically answers: "For the plasma of it." If you ever meet Jerry Lewis, send him our movie! Because he is a huge influence on us, too. My next movie is supposed to be emotional. That can comprise a problem in a way. Making, like, real emotions and things like that, that people, like, don't laugh at.

AKT: That is a challenge.

KM: Yeah. Everybody makes drama and it's not successful half the time. But physical comedy and something like a Jerry movie is very like brainy. It calls for many things that would be harder to do. I hope I am going to do that one day. Jerry Lewis is not a very popular person theses days. He says women can't be funny, there's a million things he has done to piss off the world.

AKT: Did you see that just emerged snippet of The Day The Clown Cried?

KM: Yes. There were two snippets, the French documentary that showed footage, I thought was a lot more interesting than the German re-enactments. It conduced the movie and kind of ruined it in a way. You know what's going to happen but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I don't think it's going to be a masterpiece. I mean everybody in the world wants to see that movie. I've heard that he hasn't even seen it.

AKT: That was a very interesting circle how we got to Jerry Lewis. i would never have known about the title.

Read what Bingham Bryant had to say on For The Plasma.

For The Plasma opens in the US on July 21.