“South X,” is a somewhat scathing but still funny depiction of the state of affairs in indie music where musicians are forced to take highly demanding, ultra low-paying gigs to survive. We asking director JP Olsen how it began, working with his cast, and the harsh world of trying to be an indie artist…

1) How did the project originate?

 This was Tomek Miernowski's idea. Tomek is the guy taking the call from Hoops, the one you see talking on the phone. Tomek, himself and a lot of our friends, get this call each year leading up to South By. It's basically a gig that feels cynical, the money is below average and the tour routing grueling and all that. But invariably the manager or agent dangles playing at South By as a carrot and musicians end up doing it and regretting it, year after year. So he was getting fed up with that all and saying we should make a film around that. That's how it came together. It was a pretty natural evolution into what you see now.

 2) How did you approach production? How long did it take? How many takes did you do? How much crew? And then, what was the editing process like?

 We shot this in three or four hours at Chris Morrisey’s apartment in Greenpoint. Chris plays Hoops. And it was myself directing and running sound and my nephew, Alex Olsen, as dp. Chris came up with a lot of the lines and concepts. Then Tomek and I and Alex were bouncing stuff off him too, so by the end, it was a collaboration. But Chris was definitely driving a lot of what you hear. Then when it came time to edit I approached it like a verite documentary - which is the world I come out of - so I watched the footage and reduced and reduced all that riffing into a single scripted scene. That part of things took probably a week, but even then it was fun to work on because there was so much good material to work with. Then I handed off a script to my filmmaking buddy and ace editor, Kristen Nutile, who helped out hugely, as did my nephew, Alex.

3) Both performances are perfect. Who are your actors, how’d you find them? 

 Well that is very nice of you to say! We're all buddies from music circles, having played together and all that. When not being funny people, Tomek and Chris are heavy, heavy musicians. Tomek tours the world playing, as does Chris, who is the bassist in the Mark Guilana Jazz Quartet. Tomek is a world-class guitar player so that's him playing Bach at the beginning. He also wrote, recorded and engineered the Fay3 outro music, which I think is hilarious. So we got a really talented group of people together for this, but all are coming from different creative perspectives and different ways of looking at things, So as far as doing takes, a lot like music, we riffed through ideas on the spot. My goal was to get Tomek and Chris to be natural as possible. I remember hearing Harry Dean Stanton talk about how anyone can be a great film actor, as long as the director casts actors as themselves and they play themselves. I thought that was a brilliant process and took it to heart. So what you see in SOUTH X is the result of that. Tomek is playing himself, basically, and Chris, as Hoops, is playing himself when he's being an asshole. I'm kidding - but Chris is obviously super funny and can channel that kind of slippery music biz energy because he knows that kind of character very, very well. 

 4) What was your working process? Was Hoops in the same room / location? Or did he really just call in his performance?

After Tomek gave me the idea of the basic set up of a musician taking a call from an agent, the next step was figuring out who would be a good agent and my mind instantly went to Chris because we'd toured together some years ago and he was so funny in the van that I knew he'd be perfect. When we first started shooting we had Hoops on his cell phone sitting in the bathroom so we could isolate the sound. But there was an annoying delay in the phone signal that was throwing Tomek off, so I opted to have him be comfortable and we just had Hoops stand in the room next to Tomek. I knew then we'd have to work it out later with a sound mix but Rob Heath, who did our sound, did a great job. Rob is also a really good musician and drummer who we’ve all played with over the years.

 5) Even though the film is about the music biz, basically the same thing could be expressed about the film industry. It’s a harsh world out there, which your film comedically explores. Care to talk a little more about your thoughts on the modern music and/or film biz? 

Oh, it's awful. You have all these sensitive people here in New York and everywhere else being driven to their knees by the needs of industrial demand. I've been there myself many times, and you've probably been there too Kentucker or you wouldn't being doing NoBudge, am I right? So yes, it's a meditation on how artists aren't given proper respect by the industries that profit from them. I should point out that I know a number of people who didn't find this funny at all.

Bonus Question: What else are you working on at the moment?

I just finished an artists’ residency at the MacDowell Colony with Kristen, the editor of SOUTH X, whom I also make films with, including the documentary on Tav Falco that you posted last year. Up at MacDowell we were working on an experimental film based on an audio interview I conducted with a guy I met who had been a teenaged heroin addict in the late 1940s. He was one of an estimated 5,000 or so American teens caught up in what is generally considered the world’s first teenaged narcotic epidemic. So his story was unusual and quite sad as you can imagine. But in the end he overcame his addiction and became a contented person as well as a benefit to others. So I feel like even though the subject matter is the stuff of tragedy, there is also redemption there. Also the footage in that film is stunning, I have to say. It was shot by a Chicago filmmaker friend of mine named Brian Zahm. We did a lot of exterior shots in and around where this person, Stan, grew up, which is Brownsville and we shot the scenes with a tilf-shift lens, which gives the film a really dreamy effect. That film, titled STAN, should be out this year in festivals. As for SOUTH X, Chris and Tomek and I have been scripting a bunch of different episodes based around the character of Hoops, who you would see this time around in all his glory. So my plan is to develop this into a web series about the music business performed entirely by actual, truly working musicians. If there's any interest out there, give me a call!