The experimental comedies of Taylor Cohan are anything goes affairs. In “Sorry For Farting So Much in the Car Growing Up”, a man makes a movie, but does he really? “Smoked Salmon” follows another man in a suit walking through a cemetery muttering to himself about the state of the world. We asked Cohan where the ideas came from, how they developed, and what comes next for him…

1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?

I first got interested in filmmaking after working in a kitchen for a summer job. I always thought that I wanted to be a chef, but I was very sweaty in high school and have severe body odor in the kitchen. There was one day where all of the other kitchen staff had a meeting in the walk in freezer about how bad I was smelling and they sent me home early. I swear I showered 2 times a day! Anyways... after leaving that job I was very lost and depressed. One night at home I decided to watch Punch Drunk Love because Adam Sandler was in it. After watching it I knew that I wanted to make films. 

2) These are wild rides - it’s hard for me to imagine how you form your ideas and execute them. Can you talk a bit about your creative process - how you come up with your ideas, how both of these projects started - can you remember the earliest seed from each?

For Farting, I remember coming up with the idea very vividly. I was walking to a coffee shop in NY feeling like a failure and I was listening to music on my iPhone. It was something ambient and beautiful,  that my parents would have also been into, or at least appreciated for its technical merit. I started to fantasize that I wrote the song and showed it to my parents and they were very proud of me. I'm very neurotic though even in my fantasies so I started to imagine my parents showing their friends the song and realizing that I didn't write it. I think I had made farting within 7 days of that walk. 

Salmon is a little more confusing, it was part of another short that got scrapped. I was just trying to shoot some filler pieces to make other other short work better but it didn't so I just decided to mush some of my favorite parts into their own thing. I had 2 cats which I was very allergic to, and I think it was affecting my memory + in the weeks before the shoot I kept having a bunch of weird coincidences (like running into my abusive landlord in a different state at a Mcdonalds?) and I was convinced that we're all on a computer and because the population keeps expanding that the computer was starting to glitch out because it couldn't handle the stress we were putting on it. 

3) How much you plan beforehand vs just feeling it out on set?

I usually don't really do shot lists but I'm trying to get better about things like that. For Farting and Salmon I definitely didn't. I like to go for walks to help myself think though when I'm attempting to be creative. 

4) What’s the funniest film you’ve seen, new or old, in the last couple of years?

Funniest film I've seen, hmmm, can I say a TV show? I watched Joe Para talks to you last year and it was my 4th favorite things made in 2018. 

5) What’s next for you?

I have a film Dream Center which is getting submitted to festivals at the moment. We haven't found a home to premiere just yet but I'm confident something will come along! 

Contact Info:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TaylorCohan

IG: @cohan.taylor