5 Questions with Paul Johnston
The amusing meta documentary from Toronto, “Beginning to End,” directed by Paul Johnston, concerns a self-doubting filmmaker and his attempt to document his father’s art project and win back his ex-girlfriend. We asked Johnston how the project began, and his hybrid format and artistic process…
1) Can you talk a bit about the origins of the project?
I've re-written this answer maybe 10 times in an attempt to bring some brevity to the origins of this film, but that seems to be a bit beyond me at the moment.
My Dad - Alan, who essentially plays himself in the film, actually does build these structures on the beach every year. I thought there was something cinematic about the loneliness of these structures built on a frozen beach that no one visits in winter, and I also thought maybe I could help bring some attention to the nature of the project itself.
At this point I'd also been sitting in post for months on a feature length doc and was desperate to get out and shoot something, I didn't really have much of a plan, and naively felt I didn't really need one. Photogenic art works, cool location, interview some people, I could figure out the story in post. I got excited, started telling people about this 'interesting' idea I had. I would just show an image of the structures to people, they would say 'cool!', and I'd have some mild sense of validation that I was making something cool, without really knowing exactly what I was making.
I proposed the idea to my Dad, who told me someone else had already been following them around for weeks with a camera, had done some 'neat things with drones and go pros' .... I instantly chided that approach, and muttered something like 'meh, well thats not really the style of film I would make'. I caught myself in this moment, suddenly going from supposedly confident to basically childish, and began to think about the idea of why I was even wanting to make this project, and I had to admit there were a few self involved reasons motivating me. What would I tell everyone who I had told I was making this film?? The idea then came to me to put a documentary within a larger narrative about someone struggling to make a documentary, and not wanting to lose face as everything began to implode. Also the idea of someone failing to make something that matched the pedigree of the films subject matter really began to interest me.
So while it all began in a fairly self-indulgent place, after I sent the first draft of the script out to some filmmakers/cinematographers and other people who base their identity in making stuff, everyone wrote back with comments about how they'd all experienced some aspect of what I was exploring in a personal way, and admitted to sharing some similar pitfalls in their own work. This made me feel that there was something a bit more universal I could explore here, the idea of why we even try to tell stories to begin with, what are the more self indulgent motivations driven by an image we want to project, and how desperate we get when we don't want to lose face… and this is what all lead to “Beginning To End.”
Ultimately the visual style came after a cold call to a cinematographer I admired, Jordan Kennington, and our mutual appreciation for the tedious feel of Reuben Ostlund and Roy Anderson's films. Using the camera as the quiet observer of this mans downward spiral on a cold and empty beach.
2) The hybrid nature of this intrigued me. This narrative about the son being wrapped up in a documentary about art installations. How did the development of this occur?
I've done the reverse in some of my doc work in the past, inserting narrative elements into doc stuff, to try and tell a larger story using some playful meta style elements. And I thought that the reverse could be to fun to explore. At the core of things, I still wanted to document the Winter Stations project in a way that did them justice, and brought awareness to the project, but I wanted to see if it was possible to insert the 'information,’ the documentary aspect, into a story that could entertain as well as inform, in way that maybe made people think about the various reasons people even try to make art to begin with...and I ended up focusing on some of the more self involved motivations that can consume artists when they are first starting out and struggling to figure what they are even doing.
Having made two films as well with artists and their work as the subject already (“Content With Content” with Matthew Frost, and “A Kid From Somewhere”), I had dealt with the idea of making work that risked not matching the pedigree of the subjects and their own art, which was a fear that constantly haunted me. I wanted to play with this idea and poke some fun at it, and then see if I could add a third layer on top with this narrator, and subvert things further.
3) It’s really funny about the artistic process. Procrastinating or getting involved in art for the “likes,” or acclaim, or to win back the approval of someone. Can you talk a little about your relationship to artistic inspiration?
I feel like I have a cycle I go though constantly…have an idea, get excited about an idea, talk about an idea, start to doubt an idea, start wonder how I could ever execute and idea, start to hate the idea, and then abandon the idea.
I'm getting better at breaking this cycle, or so I like to think, as I'm learning that ideas grow and evolve and change, and filmmaking is a collaborative process with so many moving parts and I just have to put things into action sometimes, and stumble forward and see where it goes, or else I'll just stay in that loop forever. Its hard, and it takes resources like time and sweat equity and money and begging for favors and trusting people…and not everyone has the same opportunities available to them, so there's a variety of reasons that can lead to self doubt…but like anything worthwhile, I think you need to endure a bit of pain and misery and second guessing to get anywhere, to form convictions, and I think having a bit of a sense of humor about it can go a long way to help deal with a bit of that struggle, and if you can joke about it, I think that helps with an understanding that nothing is finite, artistically, there will always be failures and successes along the way.
Validation from social media and strangers online…likes, view counts, staff picks, thats all a part of our reality, especially if you grew up with it, and it is very hard to ignore a desire for instant validation, but it can't be your motivation for creating work. I was able to explore that in the feature doc I made, and what I discovered is that, from my perspective at least, the people making the most meaningful art work are the people still motivated by the same things that have motivated creatives for centuries, a bit of deeper need to say something, or express how they see the world rather than say 'look at me, me me me'.
4) What are a couple of your favorite films you would consider “hybrid”? What do you like about them / what speaks to you about that format?
Im a big fan of anything that subverts expectations of a conventional format. Its fun to see 'rules' broken in a meaningful way that tells a larger story and offers some introspection.
I feel Hybrid stuff goes two ways, Documentary's with real people shot in a way that feels more visceral and intimate in style, like you're watching an immersive narrative play out rather than a clinical doc…and then there's the documentaries that subvert the format and have narrative elements to them.
In terms of the latter, Kirstofer Borgli's “DRIB” is one of the more recent examples that come to mind. It's a retelling of an energy drinks marketing ploy gone wrong featuring the real life subject, a semi-unreliable narrator, a loosely veiled fictional energy drink brand and whole lot of playing with truth and fakery.
And I guess Orson Welle's “F for Fake” would be the ultimate classic example of that.
In terms of the other form of 'hybrid,' docs that play out like narratives, there's a Polish film that came out a few years ago called "All These Sleepless Nights” that I really enjoyed.
And then there's Martin Bell's “Streetwise,” which is one of my favorite documentaries, and is extremely powerful how deeply it immerses you in the lives of a group of kids living on extreme fringes of society in Seattle in the 80's
Rueben Ostlund's short “Autobiographical scene number 6882” may not really be a hybrid film, but it was a big influence on the style this film was shot in, and definitely sparked some ideas. Its on YouTube, definitely take the 8 minutes to watch it.
5) What’s next for you?
I'm currently in post production on a short documentary about an eccentric art world Consiglieri and his Salon, and the role it has played behind the scenes in the Canadian and International art world. This summer I'm hoping to shoot my next short which should ideally, if it doesn't self implode, act as a proof of concept for a feature - a drama/comedy about a young girl experiencing the fall out of her fathers public shaming.
Contact Info:
www.paulsamjohnston.com
https://vimeo.com/pauljohnston