Film

What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases

Search cinema listings

Browse cinemas A-Z

Search 20,000 reviews

 

Related films

Related people

Gus Van Sant: interview

Ben Walters talks to Gus Van Sant about shooting, casting and soundtracking his new film 'Paranoid Park'.

You chose non-professional actors from an open casting call for ‘Paranoid Park’, as you did with ‘Elephant’.
It’s because they’re set in high schools. I always thought teenagers are youthful enough that they’ve pretended recently; it wasn’t so long ago that they were playing war or trying to be Rambo. It’s play-acting. We tried it for ‘Last Days’ but those characters were rock ’n’ rollers in their mid-twenties, and none of those people would come to our casting calls, so we ended up casting our friends. If you put up posters around town for high-school kids, high-school kids will come. If you’re casting politicians, you can’t put up posters and have politicians come down. Also, with reality shows and ‘American Idol’, non-professionals don’t feel they’re excluded like they might have 20 years ago.

Most of your films are about lost boys of one kind or another.

They usually have male characters, lost boys, but often it’s ad hoc families that are interesting to me. Because I didn’t have brothers, I was always interested in the kids down the street that had four brothers in their family, so I became one of them – but it was not my family.
I’ve always been attracted to temporary families. They tend to be lost characters.

How did you and Chris Doyle develop the look of the film?

I’d worked together with Chris before on ‘Psycho’, but we didn’t get very crazy there – we pretty much tried to copy [Hitchcock’s movie]. So this was our opportunity to do something else. One of Chris’s films that I liked was ‘Fallen Angels’ [directed by Wong Kar-Wai], which used a wide lens. I knew that skateboarders often use a really wide lens [for skate movies] ’cos that way you won’t miss the action, so I tried talking him into shooting like that. But he had an aversion to directly quoting one of his films, so we kept going into what the story was asking us to do, what I wanted to do and what his choices were. He made a detailed breakdown of the script, about four notebooks long. Most of the time we’re just shooting a human being doing something; we’re very fascinated as audience members with ourselves. So it comes down to environments: coffee shops, country roads, fields.

The music and sound design are also important in giving us access to Alex’s headspace. Did you put much planning into that?

No, that came later. We were thinking about location sound during shooting, but not the music or sound design at all.

The music does a lot of work, though – sometimes it even replaces the dialogue. It feels like Alex is listening to his iPod.

Actually, a lot of the music came from listening to iTunes while we were editing. My assistant editor is sort of a musicologist so we would listen to different things from this massive inventory of his music. Shuffle was usually on and I would say, ‘What is this song? That works really good right here’, and we’d drag it over into Final Cut Pro [the film editing application].

There’s a moment of violence in the film that is very disturbing, to us as well as to Alex.

It was different in the book; I had the idea this would be an interesting graphic. The accident is the thing he’s keeping secret, but what you’re thinking about maybe as you watch it is your secret, or the thing you couldn’t tell anyone when you were that age. You’re forced to become an adult by keeping things in your own mind.

‘Paranoid Park’ is out on December 26.

Author: Ben Walters



What do you think?
Post your comment now

*mandatory fields





Top Stories

Hippies who work for The Man

Hippies who work for The Man

To celebrate George Clooney comedy 'The Men who Stare at Goats', we look back at six memorable onscreen hippies who fought the system from within

Roland Emmerich's guide to disaster movies

Roland Emmerich's guide to disaster movies

Ahead of the release of '2012', Roland Emmerich offers his ten tips on creating the perfect global catastrophe

Grant Heslov: interview

Grant Heslov: interview

Grant Heslov, director of 'The Men who Stare at Goats' talks about his old pal George Clooney, his interest in the paranormal, and his fond memories of working on 'Happy Days'

The Coen brothers discuss 'A Serious Man'

The Coen brothers discuss 'A Serious Man'

Masters of contrary comedy, Joel and Ethan Coen have struck gold again with their latest, ‘A Serious Man’

Ten inspirations behind 'Avatar'?

Ten inspirations behind 'Avatar'?

Time Out ponders the influences behind James Cameron's anticipated space-opera on the basis of the trailer

Michael Jackson's This Is It: review

Michael Jackson's This Is It: review

Kenny Ortega's posthumous concert film is a rousing eulogy for one of pop's great enigmas

Michael Haneke: The man behind the menace

Michael Haneke: The man behind the menace

From Cannes to Munich to London, Dave Calhoun tours Michael Haneke's Palme d'Or winner, 'The White Ribbon'

Lone Scherfig talks 'An Education'

Lone Scherfig talks 'An Education'

Danish director Lone Scherfig was an unlikely choice for a very English affair like 'An Education'. Cath Clarke meets her

How Jane Campion brought John Keats back to life

How Jane Campion brought John Keats back to life

Time Out gets Romantic with the ‘difficult’ New Zealander about her new film, 'Bright Star'

Time Out's 50 greatest animated films with commentary by Terry Gilliam

Time Out's 50 greatest animated films with commentary by Terry Gilliam

In celebration of the release of Pixar's 'Up' and Wes Anderson's 'Fantastic Mr Fox', read our rundown of fifty classic feature length animations