5 Questions with Keaton Smith
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
I’m from a small town in northern Louisiana where the film Steel Magnolias was shot and the recently rediscovered film, Cane River. Cane River cuts through downtown but if you follow a thin tributary fifteen miles west outside the city limits you will run into miles and miles of uninhabited forest. This is where I grew up. I spent the first eight years of my life out in the woods without internet or a cell phone. I’ve always been into movies and the VCR was my lifeline into culture. I had Total Recall, Ghostbusters, Robocop, and Batman on VHS and would rewatch Total Recall over and over. It had 80% to do with the girl with three tits and 20% had something to do with memory. I eventually caught up with the ideas of Philip K Dick years later, but sci-fi got me thinking about movies in a more focused way. It didn’t take long to discover 2001 A Space Odyssey and the type of challenging literature that I love.
I didn’t know what a film director was until my second year in college. I fell into a depressive Utorrent hole before changing my major to fine arts. Somewhere there is a hard drive full of Kubrick, Hitchcock, Tarkovsky, Fassbinder, Bergman, and Antonioni. Maybe another hard drive with Buster Keaton, Chris Marker, Harry Smith, Jordan Belson, and Stan Brakhage. By the time I landed in a media art class, I already knew what filmmakers I liked and what kind of films I wanted to make. The visual storytellers and avant-garde filmmakers inspired my early short films and have shaped my taste and process.
2) What was the initial idea for this project and how did it evolve from there?
My step grandmother passed away in 2008. Her house was boarded up and left untouched over the years until I got access to it. She lived in the woods near a lake a few miles from where I grew up. I have always wanted to shoot something there. The house was built in the early 70’s and has a unique art deco interior and a haunting white brick exterior. It’s a readymade fully furnished haunted house. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I believe in memory traces. There is something supernatural about domesticity. At first it was Terrance Malick whom I shared this feeling with, but Apichatpong Weerasethakul is the true master at distilling memory and the sentiment I have for old familiar spaces.
I got full access to her house and the surrounding lakeside property, which kickstarted the writing process. I had been talking with Madeleine Knight who was part of my previous project “16 Rachels” about writing something just for her. Madeleine is diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder. She was featured on Viceland’s “Hollywood Love Story” which I feel exploited her condition. She felt the same way. I wanted to create an experience based on her fear of isolation and the transition into adulthood. Maddie and I talked a lot about the general uncanniness she feels on a daily basis.
My writing partner, Zakk Pollard, and I came up with the idea of a mystery man who leaves her behind at the house. There is no electricity or running water. Even a well equipped and resourceful person would have trouble finding a way back to safety. It was never our intention to make a horror movie. The horror came to us. We kept the elements simple and understated and stuck to our MO to keep the scary things suggestive and out of frame as much as possible.
3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And the easiest part?
An actress backed out at the last minute, so we had to rewrite the story during production. That was dreadful only because it was a new experience for me. Every project has its lessons and trials by fire. I’m glad it happened. I like problems because I know that it makes me better and faster at solving them. Since I don’t have any co-producers or anyone else above the line to help out, I’ve had to find my zen mode. It’s just a film—I know it will come together in the end.
I am on the lookout for producer(s) and above-the-line collaborators as I prepare for my next project. Send me an email at keatonrussellsmith@gmail.com if you’re interested in collaborating.
The easiest part of filmmaking is editing because I have control of everything at my finger tips. Editing is also the time where I get to start soaking up content again. I get back in touch with current events and start watching new films again.
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
I ran Lucrecia Martel’s “Headless Woman” on a loop at the camp house we all squeezed into during production. It played all day and night even when we weren’t there. I wanted that film to haunt everyone and seep into the film somehow. I would rob a bank if Lucrecia Martel asked me to.
I’m looking forward to Pablo Larrain’s “EMA”, PTA’s new film, and Sean Durkin’s “The Nest”. The Alamo Drafthouse is doing a halloween screening of “Mandy” that I’ve got tickets for. I’m excited as fuck about Jonathan Glazer’s upcoming film. His recent short, “The Fall”, is a masterpiece. Glazer is the most exciting filmmaker working today. Auteurs are more interesting because their films feel like visiting an old friend or meeting a soul mate. I don’t see them everyday but I have a craving to come back because and I’m never disappointed and I learn more and more each time.
5. What’s next for you?
I’m in pre-production on a sci-fi music video for Positive Centre. If you’re not familiar with Mike, then you soon will be. I feel lucky to have crossed his path and I hope to work with him again down the road. I have a blast every time I play a sample he sends my way. The right music is my favorite limitation. Visual storytelling is where I feel I can contribute something new or at least interesting that might rise to the top of the swamp of content on the internet.
My writing partner and I are closing in on the final draft of my first feature film. The story is about a fry cook who replaces his drug addiction with fried chicken. We are showing a side of the service industry no one has seen before through the perspective of our ideal working class hero. We’ve both worked in the service industry for years and it’s a world we know very well. Our hero is an amalgam of ourselves and all the different types of personalities we’ve come across in kitchens throughout the southern united states.
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https://cargocollective.com/keatonsmith | IG: @ownly.a.shadow