He just wanted to make sure that it was a personal vision, that it was from the heart, that the vibe was what we wanted it to be and that the performers were all given amazing respect. And that we created the scenario for them to work in that was free and respectful and appreciative. As long as those things were in place, he wanted the vision to be mine and I’m spoiled for life. I can’t ever imagine being in a position where the guy who put up all the money actually says to you, ‘You know what? You need to go further with this. I want it to be more about your voice and I want it to be less about you hearing voices in your head about what anybody’s going to think.’ Awesome, awesome creative possibilities and artistic opportunities.”
On Dealing with the Aesthetic of a Talking Heads Movie: "Well, like every other aspect of the movie that moviemakers generally concern themselves with like, ‘Is it in focus and how does it sound?’, we really decided early on that content was king. That by going to where people felt comfortable, by sometimes just having 15 minutes to get in and get out and get the shot because they’re in between shows or something like that, that we would only concern ourselves with content and creating a context where people could be free and loose, and basically just hang out with friends, not make a movie.
All we concerned ourselves with was the work that was being done. After all is said and done, we think that’s the right choice and that should always be the choice. So given the fact that this was done, really, without the intent of making a full length feature that would be seen on screens in 35mm all around the country, the world actually at this point because we sold it in foreign markets as well, but given that that was never really our intent, we weren’t concerned with those things so we would have just the talking heads movie. And just like every other aspect of the film, our answer to whatever problems were was, ‘We’ll just make the best movie we can out of what we can get.’ There was never a question of it because that’s what we had. And I just knew that talking heads, if they happen to be brilliantly funny, who cares? We don’t need a car chase if people are being brilliantly funny from start to finish.”
Figuring Out the Structure of the Film: "Well, we had about 140-150 hours of footage, all nonlinear. And I just watched the footage for months and months and months. I loaded it all onto hard drives, external hard drives. I took it with me when I was on the road and I would sit in hotel rooms all day and all night watching and listening and watching and listening. Eventually, I transcribed it all myself, so I knew the footage intimately.
I really immersed myself in it and I found that ideas and throughlines were emerging because while each individual performer’s footage was brilliantly funny and stood on its own, I had to figure out what in the aggregate it all was saying. And in immersing myself in the footage, these ideas kept emerging. I kept noticing certain things coming up sometimes in contrast and sometimes in unison. So the structure kind of emerged.
We decided that when Emery Emery and I - that’s his real name, Emery Emery who edited the movie with me - when we sat down to cut it, we decided that we would like the audience to have that same experience, for the ideas to emerge. So we never actually point to anything in particular. We just let it emerge, let the audience discover it. And that gave us a structure.”
