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A number of films have been shot and located in Cherbourg, mostly famously The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Eric Rohmer’s The Green Ray. Virtually always, Cherbourg is used as a location because it is famously and proudly a city on the ocean, and because it looks like a city on the ocean, and its seaside locations are inevitably and heavily emphasized in the films that are set there. We’re shooting Cherbourg as though the ocean isn’t there at all. We think that effect will be something.
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One of the initial inspirations for what became Permanent Green Light was the story of Jake Bilardi, an Australian teen who ran away from home in 2014, joined ISIS, and wound up on a suicide bombing mission where he failed and only managed to explode himself. What interested me was not the ideology or terrorism aspect of the story, but rather the fact that his wanting to do that and then doing that made no sense to anyone who’d known him. I started wondering if perhaps he had just wanted to explode and/or disappear, and if ISIS and terrorism could have been nothing more than a convenient and very glaring, depersonalizing context that he decided was a good way to do that. Ultimately, our film ended up having nothing to do with him and that story in particular, but he and it were a definite seed.
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Even though our film has really nothing to do at all with Tim Hunter’s 1986 film River’s Edge, I keep thinking about it for some reason, which I guess means something.
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Zac was sent this GIF a few years ago by a friend. It was one of the original things that wound up setting the idea for PGL in motion.
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When I was a kid, I saw a photo in Life Magazine that really disturbed me and apparently stayed with me. It was a b&w photos showing the roof of a building that had a strange, human shaped shadow on it. When I read the caption, it said that a man had somehow fallen out of an airplane, dropped a great distance, and landed on the roof of that building. The impact was so intense that it completely disintegrated him and his clothing, leaving just the black shadow. That story wound up occupying an important moment in PGL.
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When Zac and first wrote the script for PGL just under two years ago, we wanted a particular song to heard playing from a window in one scene. The film is full of feeling, but the feeling is mostly hidden, tenable but unexpressed. The song we wanted, and the scene in which it appears, were intended to be one of the rare moments in the film when feeling is expressed clearly. Very happily, the artist Destroyer (Dan Bejar) is letting us use the song.
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James Benning is a director that Zac and I both revere, and I think we both are always in some way thinking about his work when we think about making our films.
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Location: “Tim’s” house
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At one point, our film’s main character Roman is walking down a street and comes across one of those spontaneous, collectively made shrines dedicated to someone who had died in a car accident on that spot. My friend the artist/writer/model John Tuite plays the enshrined victim via some slightly younger photos of him that will be components of the shrine.
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The design and many of the ingredients of the aforementioned shrine as well as a number of drawings that our main character Roman makes in the film are being provided by the great artist and long time DC’s d.l. Kier Cooke Sandvik.
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In one scene, one of the main characters goes to a dance club and has an emotional breakdown there while dancing. We haven’t chosen the final ‘dance music’ for the scene as of this writing, but we know we want the tracks we use to be very complicated music with a beat that is technically possible albeit difficult to dance to. These are some tracks we considered as examples of what we’re looking for, and it’s possible that one or two of them might end up in the scene.
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37 piñatas, some custom designed, manufactured by and/or borrowed from this place.
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In one scene in PGL a MetalHead girl tries to teach a dance music aficionado to head bang. This is the track we’re hoping to play in the scene, but we don’t have permission to use it yet. We’re hoping we will.
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Camera test featuring Sylvain Decloitre who plays ‘Guillaume’, one of PGL’s four main characters, plus Michael Salerno (Director of Photography) and Zac.
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Location: Fête foraine
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Location: “Roman’s” apartment
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In one scene, the main character Roman visits an explosives dealer. For that scene and one later in the film, we need realistic looking explosives props. These are some real explosives, mostly handmade, that we’re considering as models for the props.
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At one point in PGL, two of the main characters play a board game called Niagara.
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Location: Parking garage
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p.s. Hey. ** Steevee, Nice to see you first, but at what cost! I’m always sorry when I try taking sleeping pills. No, I have not gotten the new Wire album due only to having no time right now, but it’s teetering on the edge of my supply. I think people who think recent Malick films are either crap or masterpieces are both completely missing the point. Apart from ‘Tree of Life’, which I think could be argued is a masterpiece, the goals of his recent films have zero to do with largesse and definitive-ness. I can’t speak to ‘Song to Song’ ‘cos I haven’t seen it yet, but I do really think the haters of recent Malick just absolutely don’t get it. To say ‘I’m not into them’ or ‘they’re not thing/interest’ is obviously legit, but the vehemence seems like an unearthed conservatism regarding form or it’s a take that seems overly wrapped up in the ‘I don’t care about privileged straight white guys’ concerns’ thing, which only reminds me of the practically lifelong occasional beef with my work, i.e. ‘who cares about fucked up teenagers’. I think the severe divide about recent Malick is telling about the here and now but not about the films themselves. The main way I keep up with new music these days is via The Wire. Its focus/tastes and mine are pretty close, i.e. forward thinking and very multi-genre. I read it religiously every month, check out the artists they cover that I don’t know, and listen to many of the records they review. I either found Dominowe there or maybe at the Tiny Mix Tapes site, which is also very helpful. Those are the main sources in addition to sharing tips with friends who are on the same basic musical trajectory as me. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. I love Mary too. I used to hang out with her in LA, and I really miss doing that. Thank you so much for the guest post! I’ll set it up and get back to you asap! Awesome and very kind of you, David! ** Mark Gluth, Hello, Mr. Gluth! A pleasure of stratospheric superbness to see you! I am way fried, but good within or underneath that or whatever. Yes, you can imagine my mind blow and heart scrunch at finding out Dan Bejar likes my work. I would love to get Meghan Lamb’s book. I’ve been eyeing it wantingly. Uh, I’ll send you my new address via Facebook, I guess. Yeah, later today. Thanks, pal! ** New Juche, Hi, Joe! So I finally set up the ‘welcoming’ post, and it’ll appear here on this coming Saturday. Yeah, my blog assumes a lot about the abilities of its viewers’ signals. I do sometimes try to reel in my desire to make big, complex posts, but it never sticks. ‘God Punish the Perfidious Albion’ is the name of the book? Is that right? What a hell of a great name, if so. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Well, they basically have to get the contract thing done because there is no choice, and we start rehearsing with him on Wednesday, so I assume that’s something we don’t need to worry about. The band seems to be blowing me off for some reason. I’m going to wait until tonight, and if they still don’t respond, we’ll have to rush into an immediate Plan B, ugh. Sure, waiting until I’m post-film is a good idea if that works for you. I will be kind of a wreck until that’s over anyway. I can’t wait, though! My weekend involved lining up a performer for the last uncast role — a very tiny one — and laboriously organizing and planning out the schedule for the rehearsals this week and weekend. We’re going to need to polish the performances as much as we can during them since we’ll have very, very little time to work with the actors during the shoot, which is going to be so hectic that I really wonder how we’re going to manage it. That was my weekend. Relative to other days recently, it did have a bit of a relaxing vibe at times. How was yours? How was Monday? ** Jamie, Hi, Jamie! I’m burnt like toast above the neck, but hanging in there and basically good. My weekend was work-filled as usual but not bad, not bad. The Cherbourg trip was very useful. We go a lot of things decided. We had to abandon the quarry location. It was too restrictive and not amazing looking enough to warrant that. We switched that scene to a kind of amazing looking (at night) parking lot on the top of a giant mall, and I think that’ll work better ultimately. A bass guitar! Sweet! What kind? What have you done with it so far? How was Monday in your hood? Discombobulated love, Dennis. ** Misanthrope, For the next while, Restorer will be my middle name, for better or worse. Thank you. I see that The Undertaker retired. That’s so sad. Luckily islands disappear very slowly, so you would have time to call in the helicopter brigade, albeit maybe via smoke signals. Ha ha, the guys you recommend that I check out on tumblr, etc. always look kind of like that guy does. Which is not a problem, obviously, I’ll see what he has to post when I get a break. Thank you for that. Morning of mornings to you, George. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hm, I think I’ll not go out of my way to see ‘Aquarius’, so thank you for that. There was talk back in the day of Cheap Trick doing a movie or TV series or something, which was a golden idea. I wondered what happened. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. My weekend was maybe 1/8 restful, but it did not involve any umbrellas, and that was a boon. Ooh, I so, so like your characterization of the new thing you’re working at. I like doing battle with precise processes so much. Yikes, it’s already Monday here. Time flew. ** Okay. I made kind of a post that’s kind of a scrapbook type thing related to the film I’m working on, for whatever that’s worth. I might try to do another one before we start shooting. We’ll see. See you tomorrow.
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