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“Something Sent to Me by the Film Gods to Break the Spell of Tragedy”: Ross McElwee on His Venice-Premiering Remake
Remake You don’t need to have watched Ross McElwee’s films over the years in order to be moved by Remake, in which his ongoing saga of art and life collides in freshly shattering ways with the unlikely prospect of a Hollywood deal and the unthinkable death of his son Adrian. But if you have been following along (or catching up) with his journey from Sherman’s March through to Photographic Memory, the personal loss can all feel that much more poignant, as if you know him personally. That’s a function of his incredibly skillful, essayistic voice (and voiceover), in movies that are—as he says—not about him per se but about how he sees the world, which in turn helps us feel through how we see the world.
Tonally alone a work of understated brilliance, Remake draws on easily his most wrenching subject matter: McElwee’s son died at age 27 on Christmas Eve 2016 after years of struggles with drug use. But the filmmaker’s thoughtful, tender, and searching approach keeps the film from being an exercise in darkness or regret, though there is plenty of the latter. His characteristically self-deprecating stance toward his filmmaking—embracing the absurdity of a Hollywood producer seeking to buy the rights to remake Sherman’s March—is fascinatingly balanced by deep questioning of his entire endeavor, and how it might have affected Adrian, who himself it seems was a natural and disarming chronicler. (When I told McElwee that I felt I’d grown up watching his movies across adulthood, he responded: “I hope there haven’t been any deleterious effects from that on your career.”)
The nature of Remake, like Sherman’s March, is defined by narrative detour: McElwee had started with a 60s-and-divorced theme, taken up the prospective remake, directed another film entirely (Photographic Memory), and then steered into the potential black hole of grief and reflection after his son’s death. The result (co-edited by McElwee and Joe Bini) is one of the year’s best documentaries. In McElwee’s first interview in Venice—where Remake had its world premiere—he talked about making the film, in the somewhat incongruous luxe surroundings of the Excelsior Hotel, flanked by his partner, filmmaker Hyun kyung Kim, who appears in Remake.
Filmmaker: Part of the origins of Remake are that a producer, Steve Carr, being a fan of Sherman’s March, wanted to buy the rights.
McElwee: I liked Steve, he was very, very easy to talk to, easy to be around, he’s self-deprecating, he doesn’t take himself too seriously, and yet part of it is taking himself very seriously in order to shoot a film that has a huge crew and lots of money riding on it. And he said, “I’ll always remember that film because I watched it with my mother on PBS when it was first aired in Brooklyn. I just happened on it.” I just came away from the meeting thinking, “Okay, let’s see where this goes.” I’m smart enough to know that probably nothing would happen. But thinking, even if it gets stalled out and becomes something else, it could be a chapter.
Filmmaker: And you garnered some fee for the rights to adapt?
McElwee: They paid me for the option rights, but in addition to that, the minute I had the fictional remake as part of the proposal for the film, I was able to raise money for the documentary.
Filmmaker: Then it’s a tricky timeline because you started making one film and then made another. When do you know you’re shooting your life for a certain new film, or when you have a certain amount of material to try to craft into a particular feature?
McElwee: It’s tough. It really varies from film to film. As I described, I couldn’t get to that point where I knew it was on to something, because the idea of being 64, looking for love, wasn’t panning out. And the idea of the remake of Sherman’s March had gotten stalled. It was the film I really wanted to make, but I didn’t think I’d be able to make it anytime soon. Because I met these people from ARTE, I wrote this proposal, and much to my surprise two months later they wrote back saying we’d like to make this film. So it’s balancing two films at once. That has happened before to me, and I think that it happens all the time, to people who are in my situation — making films with ideas that come to them.
Filmmaker: One thing I found really moving about the film is the parallel between your making the film and Adrian’s own self-chronicling. You’re really faithful to showing what he’s doing to express himself. Did you see that as a bond?
McElwee: It was a positive bond, but it also worried me because especially after he died, I started looking at some of his footage. I don’t know if it was clear, but I couldn’t begin to look at any of his footage for a couple of years. But [when I did] I wondered, was he in some way influenced by me and did he take it into the realm of experimenting with drugs and putting himself in the film as he experimented? I think it got out of hand and he lost control. In a way, the first time he mentioned he wanted to make a film, he was just describing a story about his friends who had come to visit. This was in Colorado, when it was really involved. And they took a drug, I can’t even remember which one exactly, but it had an immediate effect, and they fell out of their chairs onto the floor. But he starts off with filming street life, and then evolving into his drug use, his friends’ drug use, and his own drug use. And with his friends, too, it’s the way that I film—I film my friends, their activities, and I’m part of those activities. So I think it was an extension of that attitude. With that autobiographical component, I’m worried that I became an influence. But if I influenced him to take a chance and experiment with drugs the way he did, that would be a horrible thing to have to admit.
Filmmaker: I felt he was using a camera and showing you these things because that was a form of intimacy and communicating that he had with you, from your filming all these years.
McElwee: I think it was for a large part before he went to Colorado But then he left me behind physically, and I just wasn’t part of his life. He didn’t want me to be at that point. That was fine with me. It seemed like a fairly harmless thing to do, to film his friends, what was happening about him, the portrait of his life. I just had not expected it to be so wrapped up in tragedy.
Filmmaker: Remake feels like more of a letter than your previous films. Does that sound right?
McElwee: Yeah. It’s epistolary in the way that it’s written, and a lot of it is second person, second to him. I think in English literature they say that’s the apostrophe, addressing somebody who’s no longer there. I like this quote from Christian Metz: “The absence becomes presence.” And that’s really what this film deals with.
Filmmaker: Self-deprecating humor runs through your work, but here that’s not always something you can draw upon. Because how can one find humor in this situation?
McElwee: It seemed like a fairly harmless thing to do, to film his friends, what was happening around him, the portrait of his life. I just had not expected it to be so wrapped up in tragedy. How can you? I couldn’t. That’s what I worried about, that this thing would be so leaden and depressing and tragic that nobody would want to see it. And also, I didn’t want to inflict two hours of that on a viewer. And that’s where the Sherman’s March remake comes in, because it provides a little bit of humorous thing, that it’s a bit of an absurd quest to remake a film that seemed to work pretty well in the first place. I also think that’s why the opera [a sung interpretation of Sherman’s March set to music] turned out to be great, because at that point I was taking the viewer along for that very negative journey. And so, suddenly, this wonderfully absurd celebration happened that was totally unexpected — something sent to me by the film gods to sort of break the spell of tragedy that was controlling the film up to then.
Filmmaker: There’s an honesty in the absurdity, too, because it’s almost about the absurdity of trying to capture and recapture anything.
McElwee: You can quote yourself on that.
Filmmaker: The remake also raises the possibility of revisiting your former teacher, Charlene, since she was a star of Sherman’s March. When did she come into the mix of this film?
McElwee: Well, I had no idea she was going to be in the film at first, of course. And then when the Sherman’s remake was proposed, I knew at some point I had to get her opinion, and I thought that was such an important person in the original movie, so I did. But I had no idea she was slowly moving into Alzheimer’s. [drinks arrive: wine and an Aperol spritz] That is the most beautiful drink!
Filmmaker: Yes, it’s almost a shame to drink it.
McElwee: So the conversation I’m having with Charleen where she’s having trouble remembering things—I didn’t know that she was having that severe a memory loss. And she didn’t remember anything.
Filmmaker: Not even her teaching.
McElwee: Talk about spur of the moment — I said, “I don’t even know if I could film this, but then I have to film it.” And, you know, then there is the whole ethical question: Is this the way she would be remembered, as somebody who didn’t even recall experiences of her life? Is this the way my son was going to be remembered, strung out on whatever it was he was? I don’t want him to be remembered just as this.
Filmmaker: But you build so much around him and take us through so much. I was struck by how intent he is on clearly describing his experiences, like with his monologue about withdrawal.
McElwee: He’s very honest about himself.
Filmmaker: And for Charleen, I wondered if the fragility of memory felt in any way like a validation of what you’re doing there. It makes these movies feel even more valuable in that way, since we all lose memories.
McElwee: Well, it does, but you know, there are times when I question the whole enterprise of preserving these things for the future. I think the way the memory works, it cleans itself out. Of course, if you’re making films about the same thing, which is your own life over the long period of time, there are moments that you will ordinarily forget, vanish. I’m reminded of that when I go on the road and show films and talk. And people who have been in my movies come up to say hello, and of course I’ve got a scramble to remember who they are because they’ve changed, I’ve changed. Maybe it’s just better for memory to forget those things because they’re in the past, they’re way, way in the past, and if you haven’t had any contact, the continuity has been broken.
Filmmaker: Do you remember when you first showed your son one of your movies?
McElwee: I think the first time that he saw a film all the way through was probably the New York Film Festival with Bright Leaves. And that was a really wonderful experience.
Filmmaker: And did that give him a different understanding of what you do? As opposed to seeing you filming.
McElwee: I think so. He didn’t say much to me. I remember walking out of Tully Hall into the grand plaza with the fountains, and I said, “Adrian, you really haven’t said much. What did you think about this whole experience?” This is after sitting with me in the box suite [looking over the Tully audience]. And he looked around, and he said, “Well, Dad, I think this could be the greatest skate park in the United States if they allowed people to skate here.” He was smiling when he said it.
Filmmaker: The reason I ask about seeing a finished film of yours is because of the reflection that goes into it, after the raw process of filming, and what that does. Were you able to discuss with him what he felt about that—that there’s this period at the end where you look back?
McElwee: Well, you know, there are two films I can talk about in that way. One is In Paraguay, which is the story of the adoption of his sister. And I showed him a cut of that, and it was finished, and he said he thought it was really good, and he said, “This is good enough to be on HBO, dad.” Which was, in his way, congratulatory. And then in 2011, when we premiered Photographic Memory here in Venice. We hadn’t really talked directly about it, but at the press conference, he said, “You know, I was a little bit embarrassed about some of the things I said in it.”
Filmmaker: Yeah, he says it was sort of uncomfortable, but I thought maybe in a productive way.
McElwee: That’s right. I said [that] if something had really bothered him, I would have cut it out. We never really talked about it. To be honest, he was, by that time, becoming very distracted. I wasn’t really with him every minute. He was going to parties and things.
Filmmaker: That’s something that’s also very moving about the movie is the sense of being a parent through it, and I almost felt it most this time when you’re showing the footage of him skiing that he’s shot. It was like a quintessential parenting moment where you’re seeing someone taking risks and you don’t know but you feel you have to step aside.
McElwee: You should write about that, what you just said.
Filmmaker: While you’re here now, are you filming in Venice now?
McElwee: No. And I didn’t film when I was here for Photographic Memory. Which is why I’m glad the festival is covering [Remake] through a press conference.
Filmmaker: And then the other footage you have in Venice?
McElwee: That was shot by other people. I think at that point I was too exhausted with chronicling my own life. Adrian’s life was a little bit complicated, all these things had happened, and it was a plethora of stuff. And I just thought the film would be something that would bring us together and we had to get it done. We had to get it done too, because it was under contract.
Filmmaker: What was the last time that you were actively filming an autobiographically?
McElwee: Oh, I’ve been filming a little bit around the house. So, my wife here doesn’t like to be filmed. [laughs]
Filmmaker: [to Hyun kyung Kim] Could you talk about not wanting to be filmed? I mean, I absolutely understand, I don’t feel like being filmed around the house, but I want to hear your reason.
Hyun: I think I’m too selfish. I’m a filmmaker, so I feel guilty that when I make a film about someone. I asked permission and I made a film about their life, but I don’t want to be in it.
Filmmaker: What camera do you use? I guess there might be many answers for that.
McElwee: Yeah, there are multiple answers. Because when I began filming Remake, it was with the Sony EX-3, which was lighter than the 16-millimeter cameras I used to use: the Aton and the Eclair before that. But the EX-3 had the advantage of being able to shoot for an hour without even changing the memory card. Which was a huge difference and also the fact that you could look at what you shot immediately, especially in France when you’re in a little village. You don’t have access to a laboratory, you can’t wait for your rushes to come. All my other films, basically were shot in that way, so it was a totally different experience for me. In fact, I say in Photographic Memory, that this is a world my son actually knew much better than I do, the digital world. I was always worried I was going to do something wrong. But I don’t use the EX3 anymore. There are now lighter cameras. I use the Sony FS5, which is also half the weight. It’s like I get more and more decrepit, and the cameras got lighter and lighter. And I have one of these [iPhone], which I actually do use sometimes. But I find the controls on this are very difficult to use.
Filmmaker: To come back to Remake, I was really struck when you say you didn’t really know what to do with all the anger you had after Adrian’s death. Does this film feel like part of what you did with that, or do you feel like you didn’t get across your anger in the film to a certain extent?
McElwee: Oh, I don’t think I could ever get it across. All of my anger would be impossible. And anger is not a big part of my life. I’m pretty easygoing around for the most part. But what I was saying in the film is true, I had no idea how things would have been. I have a kind of shopping list of things that I can be angry at, and I think all the things that deserve anger on that list. Everything, including my son’s life. You know, a million people have died in America already. And you look at the crisis and that’s such a huge reality for them. Take everything I feel and you multiply it by a million. I think the film enables me to move on to something else, but I can’t really ever leave it behind.
I have no idea what the next film will be. I want it to be different. We have a president now [that could be part of the material], if I can only figure out how to put it into a context that’s more absurd than the reality that keeps being thrown at us.
Filmmaker: You mentioned before you were writing after your son died, when you couldn’t look at footage.
McElwee: I couldn’t look at footage of my son for a year. I really could not. I just couldn’t. When he was a little kid, I just… where did that go? Where did he go? What does this mean? Then I thought, maybe I should just try writing about this, and I hired a former assistant of mine to go through all my films. I said, “Just pick out three scenes, or three screen grabs from my son, and I’ll use those as illustrations and that’ll be my way of re-writing the idea of making a film of him or something.” So I actually did write a book that has seven complete chapters, and the eighth chapter is the chapter of his downward spiral, which I haven’t been able to write. I haven’t tried to write it. But I did that first, you’re right. That’s the whole sequence of things that happened after he died before I actually began trying to think in terms of making a film.
Filmmaker: Did any of that make its way into the voiceover?
McElwee: Some of it did. Most of it’s very different than writing. Maybe a couple of things that I first wrote as sentences for the book ended up in there.
Filmmaker: Is this something you hope to publish? How many pages?
McElwee: At this point, it’s 140 pages. Then I think I’ll need a really good editor to tell me what to take out.
