The most talked about film at Slamdance this year was Kurt Kuenne’s Dear Zachary, a devastating account of the filmmakers’ admiration and grief for his murdered friend Andrew Bagby, who was almost certainly murdered by his girlfriend Dr. Shirley Turner, who later fled to Newfoundland before she could be brought to trial and remains in custody of their child, born months after Andrew was slain. In a Sunday Los Angeles Times article Kuenne, formerly a Filmmaker Magazine “25 New Face in Independent Film” and currently doing the festival rounds with his short Slow, expressed his hopes that the film, which opens in New York this Friday, can influence Canadians (who recently elected a new parliament) to change their extradition laws in hopes of catching Turner.
We caught up with Kuenne to discuss more trivial matters: his great affection for Wall-E, feeling over analysis as a guide to filmmaking and finding inspiration in children’s books.
What films or television shows have you seen recently?
I’ve recently seen mostly older films — Frank Capra’s Lady for a Day, John Huston’s The Misfits, an old English movie called The Brothers from 1948 — almost all projected in a theater, which was great. In recent release: Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Wall-E.
Which ones stuck with you and why?
Wall-E really stuck with me, I saw it twice. I love how the characters’ emotions are conveyed through the objects they choose to keep and share with each other, like Wall-E’s desire to share his old VHS tape of Hello, Dolly with Eve. It’s also just incredibly poetic in its execution. I love the “dancing” scene between Eve & Wall-E when he powers himself through the sky with a fire extinguisher. Lady for a Day also stuck with me, as it’s a terrific fairy tale that completely sucked me into the emotional life of Apple Annie, and her tragic need to pretend to be someone else in order to insure her daughter’s happiness.
Does your interest in them have anything to do with your own work as a filmmaker? How, if at all, do your cinematic influences affect your own style and preoccupations?
Wall-E reminds me a lot of my favorite film, E.T., which was one of the films that made me want to make films. They both share that they are love stories told almost without dialogue. Capra’s films celebrate the dignity of the human spirit, which is something I certainly try to do in my own work. The aesthetics of older films have influenced me a lot, particularly in the short film comedy series I currently have playing festivals, as they’re all done in a romantic, retro black & white negative style. I don’t tend to over-analyze my own filmmaking choices that much or where they may have come from, because I believe that if you think about it too much you can end up frozen in indecision or ruin the sense of spontaneous energy; I just do what feels right to me.
How often do you read literature? Do you wish you read more?
I’m always reading something, though I’ve tended lately to read a lot of non-fiction. I just read Frank Capra’s autobiography, The Name Above the Title and re-read Cameron Crowe’s Conversations with Wilder. I love hearing about artists’ experiences directly from their own mouths. I’m reading a collection of Preston Sturges’ original screenplays right now, currently reading “Down with McGinty”, which he re-titled The Great McGinty when he made it. I’ve had “The Grapes of Wrath” sitting next to my bed for a while but haven’t jumped into it wholeheartedly for lack of time. I would like to find more time simply enjoy “full meals” like that and not feel like there’s too little time to tackle something big.
What would be your ideal literary adaptation and why?
This is a hard one to answer; I don’t believe, as a lot of people seem to, that a book’s ultimate potential is to be turned into a dramatic feature film with actors. It can just be a great book, an idea that’s expressed best in book form and that’s enough. I have enough of my own stories rattling around my head to keep me busy making movies for years, so I want to get my own stories told before I spend years of my life re-telling someone else’s.
How, if at all, has reading informed your filmmaking?
Because prose and poetry are so different in their construction from most films, they inspire me to approach cinematic storytelling in ways that might not ordinarily occur to me. I find that the strongest influence I take from reading is a desire to tell stories in a different way and find a new approach. I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from shorter children’s books, i.e. Dr. Seuss. Their simplicity and economy are very inspiring to me.
What are you listening to recently?
I’ve been listening to a lot of scratchy old LPs of old movie scores on vinyl recently: Max Steiner, Dmitri Tiomkin, Bernard Herrmann, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Now, Voyager, Lost Horizon, Carousel, etc. In more recent music, I’ve been listening a lot to Gabriel Mann, both his solo work and his new band “The Rescues”.
If you could collaborate with one musician on a film, who would it be and why?
I’m a composer and tend to score my own films, but I have collaborated with the aforementioned Gabriel Mann before and look forward to doing so again. I think he’s a genius songwriter, arranger, orchestrator and has a singing voice like no other — his voice has a distinct personality and its power can also put you through the wall when he chooses to use it that way. I would love to have Huey Lewis sing something for one of my films someday, his voice and energy just click with me in a way I find hard to explain. On the orchestral front, I would love to have met and learned from Bernard Herrmann before he died. John Williams and Ennio Morricone are my favorite living film composers. I derive great joy from scoring my own films, but I would love to spend time with and learn from those two.
What would be the ideal pairing of filmmaker and musician for a concert film. Why?
I prefer to see music live.
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