5 Questions with Danny Garfield ("Living My Best Life in Hudson Yards")
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
When I was 14 I made my first documentary about this new kid named Eric. It was mostly a re-creation of a dream he had about a shoe commercial and interviews with random kids in the hallway. It was my first time trying to construct “reality” on video, and may have inadvertently been cyberbullying.
For years I made narrative shorts and comedy sketches, but after college I got a grant from the Chinese government to fly me out for a month and make a short film about an oil painting factory. The goal of the program was to have American students who knew nothing engage in “cross-cultural communication” but the film I made was mostly a travelogue of how overwhelmed I felt. The process was super rushed (we were told if you didn’t complete your film you would not get a return ticket) but I discovered something there was something spontaneous about capturing myself in as both subject and filmmaker.
2) What was the initial idea for this project and how did it evolve from there?
Looking back, this project was gestating for years. It began on college breaks waiting for the Megabus on 12th ave before there were even any buildings around. It was so funny to me they were trying to build a luxury neighborhood in a place that was so obviously haunted. The project formally began while I was at the School for Poetic Computation and was reading news about appalling surveillance in Hudson Yards. There was a (since revoked) policy where any photos taken of the Vessel formerly belonged to the company design company that built it, which just perfectly articulates the cynical logic of the place and its hollow claim of being public space. From there, I began investigating the marketing materials for Hudson Yards and the weird form of enlightenment they promise their ultra wealthy residents. From that kernel I just started hanging around Hudson Yards to try and understand how the developers tried to make good on that promise. Since it's completion, the film has taken on a darker meaning with all the horrible stories of people committing suicide by jumping off the Vessel.
3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And the easiest part?
The biggest challenge was working finding the tone of the film. I had a couple of failed shoots where the footage felt incredibly smug. The turning point came in learning to approach my subject with sincerity, even if ultimately I was making a critique. Once I became a subject willing to have the full “experience” of Hudson Yards, there was no shortage of compelling encounters.
The easiest part was probably capturing the end of the film. I was walking by the river trying to come down from the rush of touring a multi-million dollar condo that I pretended I had cash to buy, when this black helicopter descended from the sky and a group of Wall Street goons rushed into an Escalade that drove directly into Hudson Yards. I don’t know who the men actually were but it was this perfect personification of the lifestyle I had been gesturing toward – and it literally appeared out the sky.
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
Recently my friend Max showed me the film Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SBLf1tsoaw) which is an incredible documentary about the invasive Cane Toad in Northern Australia. The film tells the story from the perspective of the Toads, and does a wonderful job of complicating the notion of “invasive” vs “native”. It brilliantly weaves the narratives of an indigenous landscape violently soiled and the ways contemporary people adapt and create cultures around a damaged ecosystem. Also, I have to mention the show How To With John Wilson, as well as John’s earlier film The Spiritual Life of Wholesale Goods which was a big inspiration to this film specifically.
5) What’s next for you?
COVID has been a big disruption of course. It’s brought me back to living in my home city of Philadelphia. When I arrived the city was overcome with an infestation of the invasive Spotted Lanternfly. The news of COVID overshadowed the whole event but it got me thinking about invasive species and the gentrification of ecosystems across global supply chains. The film is still gestating (as are next years Lanternflies) but I am hoping to make a film around that topic. Does anyone know someone who works down at the docs? Also I have been making lamps.
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https://dgarfield.co/ | IG: @dannys_zone