Slant Magazine

Slant: Broader in a bad sense?

IS: Broader in the sense that you've got to learn how to get the same kind of depth and density into mainstream material what you had in earlier, less mainstream work.

Slant: To subvert the system in a way?

IS: To subvert or to at least always pick really complicated subjects, to find a way to keep density. And that's why I'm now making a genre film because genre is a good way to try to work the system but still deal with issues of interest to you. The movie is called Marriage and it's a suspense film, but it's also a domestic melodrama. It's set in an unnamed Pacific Coast city in 1949 and it's about a very gentle, middle-aged man who's married and who falls in love with another woman. And he's such a gentle figure that he decides that to divorce his wife would cause her too much pain, so he decides to kill her instead. To him, killing is the better, kinder act. It's a sort of round robin about the nature of intimacy and what you know or don't know about the people you marry.

Slant: Coming back to your view of the industry, where do you think we are now? I feel like there's a sense of mystery that's been lost.

IS: I think mystery is a real key to moviemaking of all sorts. Mystery is sort of the key element to keeping people's interest and to making a film evocative. To keep a certain number of elements elusive is really central to storytelling, I think. Where we are now is that I think there are still people who are able to make brave films, but just fewer and fewer than in the past. I'm not the first to say this, but I think the nature of the blockbuster has clearly influenced the independent film. When I first started making movies, a gross of a million or two million dollars was considered a success. Now a movie needs to make 20 to 30 million dollars to be considered a success and I think that alone changes what's going to be made. I also feel like people look to television for identification and they look to movies for escape. People used to go see Antonioni and Godard and Visconti in the '60s and '70s. Now many of my friends go to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith and War of the Worlds because they don't really look to movies for depth. They don't look for narrative identification because television does that. Anytime you want to see someone who's in a domestic situation it's on television. So I think that there's just different needs people have for movies now and that makes working in the industry harder.

Slant: Does that sadden you, or do you see it as a necessary change?

IS: I think to be saddened by any sort of cultural evolution is a waste of time because you can't beat it. You just have to figure it out.

Slant: So what made the Sundance jury so damn smart this year?

IS: You'll have to tell me. [Laughs] There were a lot of actors on the jury and I think they responded to the performances.

Slant: I just feel like Sundance seems to have been overtaken by a tendency toward quirk.

IS: It's always had a little bit of that.

Slant: To me it took them a long time, I'd say since What Happened Was… in 1994, to award a film that I think is an experience. Pretty much all the other Grand Jury Prize winners seem so self-conscious and underwhelming.

IS: Well, I don't think it's a great time for American film. It's just not. And I don't think anyone can say that it is. At the same time, I don't want to be someone who romanticizes the '70s or something, because I don't think all those films are as good as they say. Some of them are good. There was an openness, obviously, to what was being made. I think the '40s were a great time. The '30s were a great time. The '50s were a great time. I think the studio system was really productive. It gave people a chance to do a lot of work and I think now the stakes are so high that you don't get the carelessness, you don't get the adventure, you don't get the mistakes that you had in the studio system or with an individual like Fassbinder. I mean Fassbinder would say to make a mistake in one film and fix it in the next, which I think is a great idea. You can tell there was a direct relationship between the artist and the material. Because of that directness there was a more expressive cinema. But I don't want to look back. It doesn't interest me.

Slant: Talk about the Sundance experience and winning the Grand Jury Prize.

IS: It felt a little like student council elections. I ran for student council in school and I wanted it. [Laughs] I arrived at the awards ceremony and it was just all these people in a room and it seemed like a really small little world. There was something really sweet about that on some level. I found that the high of winning the prize was something that lasted for a very short time. A high can only be maintained for so long. Then you're kind of like, "Now what do I do?" I and two of my producers went out for pizza afterwards because we didn't really know what to do with ourselves. In a way you get right back into reality really quickly. Still, there's a depth of acceptance that's sort of given you. It's like another floor has been built in your sense of identity and that floor is solid, at least for now. I feel that's sort of the gift of the prize. It's a recognition on a public and a personal level for the seriousness of your intent to make a good movie. I find that it's boosted my sense of confidence. I was always pretty confident, I think in that sense my parents did a good job. They raised an ambitious kid who thought that he could do things in the world. Maybe for better or worse. But I think there were times during those years between The Delta and Forty Shades when I questioned if filmmaking was the right choice for my life. I think winning Sundance, but even more than that, making a film that I like, makes me feel like this is what I should be doing.