Mark Borchardt
director of Coven/subject of American Movie

 

February 2004 on the Madcap Telephone
Interview by: Andy King

AK: So, we’re not like Tom Schneider you know.

Mark: That dude is cool.

AK: Ever watch Charlie Rose?

Mark: Yeah, he’s sittin’ there smokin’ cigarettes on television.

AK: They don’t do that anymore.

Mark: No, they don’t.

AK: Carson did that, but not actually on T.V. He would come back from commercial sometimes, quicker, and there would be a cloud of smoke, and he would be waving it away.

Mark: Beautiful…

AK: Are you in a hurry? How much time do you have? I thought you had something to do right after this.

Mark: No dude, I’m not in a hurry. I’ve got a couple of things going on, but that has nothing to do with what we are doing, because what we are doing is why we are doing what we are doing, and we want to take our time doing it man. Hold up, let me go to the bathroom real quick so I can concentrate. Give me half a minute…

AK: Ok…(Time passes.)

Mark: Thank you for your time and patience. I believe we can proceed.

AK: Talk about your earliest influences, when you knew you were going to be involved in doing what you are doing today, and the things that inspired you to do that.

Mark: When I was about five years old, I didn’t get into television or anything like that. I remember distinctly at night sitting on the street curb, looking up at the stars, and thinking, “Isn’t life a trip? Isn’t this cool?” And that’s basically when I started loosing touch with other people. And it seemed like there wasn’t gratitude for being alive, but rather let’s talk about mundane, superficial things…So, that’s when I started loosing contact with the normal way of thinking. So, I was thinking about my life, and all of that, and by the time I was 14 and saw this dude with a movie camera, I realized that I’d just start recording some of this, and putting it up on the screen. But my influence wasn’t watching the T.V. and thinking, “Man, I want to make this kind of stuff,” but rather it was, “Wow. This is an extension of my journal writing, and this is great.” I also started watching stuff like Taxi Driver and Orson Welles films, and thinking you can do a lot with camera angles. Camera is character, and with the editing process, I really, really started getting into Cinema. Again, it was not to make Hollywood films, or to emulate them, but rather to do my own thing. And that’s basically how it started.

AK: Sounds like you made a lot of early films. Talk about some of those. What the plot was, or equipment you used.

Mark: I got my first camera when I was fourteen. It was a Super-8 camera. I started shooting in 1980, and that was the year of the slasher films. And also, you have rebellion, annoyed with the parents, and you do things like make bloody movies and so forth. So, some of my seminal experiences with filmmaking is with horror, and we would go out in the cemetery and we’d drag Uncle Bill down the sidewalk to somebody’s apartment to be in the film, we’d shoot in the backyard, shoot in the garage, and I started out with the camera on a tripod and be very conscientious about shots I was doing and how they would end up being edited and so forth, so it wasn’t like some dude walking around with a camera just shooting whatever, but it was rather planned out. The shots matched from shoot to shoot, and so it was kind of advanced filmmaking if you look at it compared to other films that were being made or whatever. I just took it seriously.

AK: How many films did you do? How many short films did you put in the can in that period?

Mark: Probably around 8 or 9 of them. I could have done a lot more, but I was drinking and a whole lot of stuff like that too, so I could have been very productive. Immensely productive. But when you are not one with yourself, you go over the border and stuff like that.

AK: Talk about some of your early casts.

Mark: When I would cast my films it was just my friends in the neighborhood, and that’s all I ever used. I never thought about going outside the neighborhood to do any casting, because these films primarily were about things that were happening in the neighborhood. It just entailed using the people in it. When I got in the late eighties, that’s when I started using 16mm film, and that is a different story.

AK: You started using people involved in the theater?

Mark: Absolutely. Absolutely. When I started doing “Coven,” that’s when I got into actors from local film and primarily local theater. That’s when I left the milieu of the neighborhood, and you were doing a silent film, and doing it on a higher more advanced level, so you would actually need seasoned actors.

AK: Where are you with “Northwestern?” Are you continuing on that film?

Mark: Absolutely. It’s far too complex to get into, because when I make a film, it’s not, “Oh what a neat idea,” but rather, “What have I experienced in life? What is my reaction to it? Where would I like to see my life go? How could I transcend this emotional and narrative information to these characters?” And as you go through life, your ideas change, your experiences change, and then if you’re starting to make a film, the film needs to be modified to this new way of thinking. It’s just very complex levels. The main character, I never really had a relation to, and so how do you get into that and also the great thing about “Northwestern” was the peripheral elements, when we go into the city, and the neighborhood guys and that when I’m with them in real life that truly inspires me to write the dialog. It’s such a joy, such a religious joy to be around them and to hear all of these great, great things that they say. That’s what inspires the script is that I’m really not in that world, so in order to get into that world for the film, I have to get into that world in real life, There are many different worlds to deal with and that’s part of the process of the “Northwestern” film. And as I grow older, that doesn’t come off sounding right, but I really don’t care about, I’ve never cared about being in the business or industry, or independent films, or Hollywood films. I’ve had nothing to do with that at all. I’m just this guy in my own world, doing my own thing, you know, and when I go out in public it’s just like this façade about an independent filmmaker, and that’s not me at all man. I just happen to write and make films, and it’s so personal that it’s really almost no one’s business. That’s an odd thing to say, but that’s just the way sometimes that it comes off.

AK: I really liked some of the clips that were in “American Movie.” I believe there were “Northwestern” clips in there that were really nice. The one with the junkyard, was there a wheelbarrow or something like that in there?

Mark: Yeah.

AK: I love the way that looks.

Mark: Well, that’s thanks to watching films at an early age, and ingesting those images, and I would just think about it, and study books, and look at the stills of films in books, and it’s just like an education. I mean, Orson Welles didn’t come up with what he did, I think some chick gave him a book in interesting angles you know, for him to study. So much of life is just mythology, and people are really equal and it’s all mythology for the most part. There are great people who do great things. If you look at a body builder you can determine immediately that that individual put so much into his work; that’s incredible. And some do it on a literary or cinematic level too. Put that amount of work into it.

AK: Andy Warhol, in one of his books, “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: from A to B and Back Again,” said never to confuse your work with your aura.

Mark: That is true; I’m taking your advice, as I count coffee cups, quite seriously, what’s the book called? Is it an autobiography or is it essays? I’m very interested in people like that, and what they think. I do a lot of reading of biographies, and what inspired me even more was that good film, “I Shot Andy Warhol,” which I just saw, and so I’m quite interested in that book. That’s news I can use.

AK: Is music a part of what inspires you as well?

Mark: Oh yeah, that stuff is interesting, it’s deep and it’s interesting, and no one knows what I listen to. Everyone has these bizarre assumptions. They saw me with an Iron Maiden shirt twenty years ago, and that was the style in the neighborhood at least, was the black rock t-shirts. My musical tastes were always all across the board, and I never was influenced by the mob. When I was growing up, I watched everybody, and they were all the same, listening to the same music had the same mowers and all that stuff. And I just couldn’t understand that. So, you know, when I get into the car, I just have jazz going on, because I don’t want to have five different people saying, “Oh that’s a cool song,” it’s mind boggling, plus the music is just like noise to me. I like to listen to music when I am alone in the car, going from station to station, trying to get into this emotional groove, so I can’t get into music with other people. When I was drunk, you know I would listen to rock. I grew up in the seventies, and that’s basically my music. I also grew up on space music, so I don’t go buy any music, man. For that matter. If I’m drunk I listen to rock or seventies music, and when I’m writing I listen to jazz or space music, because there’s no lyrical content, there’s no emotional history attached to it where you stop writing and start getting into the song, or anything like that. So, I don’t drive down the street blaring new music with a bunch of guys, or something like that. That’s extremely not the case.

I mean, everything that people think of me is completely wrong. It’s all just a collective assumption that turns out to be completely invalid.

AK: People assume that if you’re wearing a black rock t-shirt, black pants, and black tennis shoes, that you are very narrow in your taste, and if they ever see you one time with that image, they never forget it.

Mark: Absolutely. I found that out. It’s very powerful; It’s no different than advertising. It’s no different than anything, man. You can make a lot of money also, in that line of thinking, because people can be very influenced and manipulated. So if they can derive that from one false image, wow, that sure has a lot of impact in many ways.

AK: Outside of your film, is there an experience that happened to you that you believe was something that not a lot of people experienced?

Mark: No. It’s an ongoing series of events. No profound incidents that I am aware of.

AK: Talk about Slow Fear.

Mark: Slow fear? I don’t know. Wasting your life. You gotta’ get a grip on your life, man. You gotta’ slow down on the days, and be one with yourself.

AK: Lamppost and Television.

Mark: Outside underneath the streetlight, and not inside watching the T.V.

AK: The Perfect Word.

Mark: No dice. It ain’t going to happen. I don’t believe in any singular thing being the ultimate, or anything like that. There are always variables, and nothing is perfect, and nothing is ultimate.

AK: Modern Orange Sky.

Mark: Sounds like a poet gone berserk.

AK: The White Room.

Mark: A place for you to hang out, man. Hopefully you have a Heineken.

AK: Porch Light.

Mark: Pretty good place to have a beer and some good conversation. And you can look out at the sky, and dream and think deep, and feel the alcohol go down your throat and back up into your mind, and engage in some cool conversation on a night, and maybe a little bit of good music playing in the background. Or maybe not…

AK: Adopt-a-highway.

Mark: Something that people do every two miles.

AK: Can you talk a little bit about the things you are doing now, and a little bit about the future?

Mark: The most significant thing was to stop drinking. I had tried many ways and many forms, and all kinds of plans and actions, and so on and so forth, but when it came down to it I was drinking all the time, drinking every day, and I didn’t’ stop over health or anything like that, which is a great reason to stop. But that wasn’t obviously good enough. But I stopped simply because I said, “You know, you are throwing your life away, and you are never going to see what you need to see in life.” When I realized that, that’s when I said, “Oh, I’ve done it for 25 years straight now, and that’s enough of that.” So I stopped on a dime basically. I wish that was my big obstacle in life, but it certainly isn’t. The great people who have peace of mind, and personal success are one with themselves. They don’t have an ongoing battle. So my biggest thing, people always come up to me and are like, “Hey, what’s your next movie? What’s going on?” And to me it means absolutely nothing because I have to become one with myself. And I’ve never been that. I am trying to achieve that in life. That is the most important thing, and nothing will come out of me until that is continually worked out.

But, anyway, I did eleven rough drafts of the next script for “Scare Me,” and that’s what I’m shooting. I shot a major scene, and I’m about to start shooting on that. See, most of my time, 95 percent of my time, it’s all an illusion, is spent psychologically just drifting around in my mind. I don’t want to understate what I do, bit I could be doing quite a bit more and certainly need to get there. But my focus in life will always be foremost writing and then also doing some film work. And “Scare Me” is a horror film about an alcoholic writer who has to write a horror novel to get out of debt, but evil forces intervene. It’s something I do to get out there, and get some income, so you take your feelings and put them in a genre, and you put it into horror which is quite accessible in my life. It certainly doesn’t revolve around that genre, but a very quick, simple way to do a project is to do a genre project. But my rivers run a lot more deep and wide than that.

AK: It is hard to focus yourself and deal with trying to accomplish something. You get caught up in different little things, and I think every creative person deals with that, you know?

Mark: Yeah, I’m not very community oriented. I’m only like that when you make a film. You have to have people behind and in front of the camera. When it comes to my work I am quite a loner, and my work revolves around what I have experienced, and experience, and what I hope for. So I don’t go pitching ideas to people I don’t care about, all it is, is like material from my work. It’s not important to me, I wish the best for everyone, and will help out anyone in dire situations and circumstances, but as for collaborating or this great communal experience of art, that’s all crap to me. I understand that it’s beautiful, it’s valid, but it just ain’t for me, man. I’m an individual, and it’s a trip to every day live in a world where you’re treated as this dude, that’s making movies, but it’s great material for the writing that I do, and I will publish and have it out there, and that’s that.