Jody Franklin interview with John LeKay


Jody Franklin

No Depression

John LeKay: Your film "No Depression" is incredibly realistic and quite visceral. For many people in that industry and others like it, I bet it's even more anxiety producing. I find it really quite depressing, but also very funny in the sense that when things happen so fast and get out of hand like that, it's hard not laugh, or cry or know what to do.

Parts like the intellectually challenged woman with the cat-eared hat are hysterical and is also like rubbing salt in a wound. I like the way you have interlaced these moments with all the high pitched catty screaming and frenetic chaos.

What inspired the making of this film?

Jody Franklin: The setting of the film is the day a software firm goes belly-up when the bubble bursts. At the time I had many friends who were losing their jobs and businesses during the big tech downturn. I wanted to put myself in that situation and try to imagine what the carnage would look and feel like when a group of young, dedicated geeks suddenly had their futures yanked out from under them. In what is the only "true" documentary scene in the film, actor Dani Price comments upon her own real-life experience working in the tech industry.

JL: Was this film scripted or were some parts improvised?

JF: The storytelling method I used was, I believe, unique, though it certainly has a foundation in the Method school, and in the works of filmmakers such as John Cassavetes and Mike Leigh. It was important to me that everything seem spontaneous, real, so that if you didn't know any better you'd think you were watching a real documentary. I workshopped all of the actors in the weeks before the production in order to get them into character, they had to be able to react as their characters might in real life.

I wrote out a storyline but I shared it with none of them. Before every scene I directed each actor individually by pulling them aside and telling them what I thought they needed to know in order to play the scene successfully, to give them some fuel that would propel them to the next point in the story. The actors never knew exactly what they'd hear from each other, they couldn't anticipate reactions and had no idea where the story was going to lead them. The story itself was tightly controlled from my perspective, but from the perspective of the actors it was being authored as we went along, just as we author the events of our own lives every day.

So when viewing this film, you feel what the actors feel because the chaos, the emotion, it is all so very real, it rings true, hits home. There is as much humor as there is anxiety. I think humor always exists in situations where people take themselves too seriously; in this case, dark and slightly ironic humor.

JL: Why were most of the employees women? How do you think it would have differed if it was mostly all men in the same circumstance?

JF: The gender imbalance was not conscious when I went into pre-production, so it is interesting to analyze it in retrospect. I chose actors I wanted to work with, and it just so happens a majority of them were women. But we do see the male in the dominant position, which is quite appropriate, as he is in many ways a typical, culturally-defined alpha male businessman. Perhaps we can see the women, who are in the majority at this place of business, as somehow representing the new economy. Whatever the case, there are two female characters who rebel against the impossible situation forced upon them by the patriarch in the film, while there are the others who fold to the male power broker and attempt to placate everyone else, to squash this rebellion. I believe the last scene, in which the character of Minerva (played by Koralee Nickarz) is out on the street hawking her resume in the business district (which she suggests might be seen as prostitution by some), is the key scene of the film, it ties all of the concepts together in a punch line that can be interpreted in many ways.

I can't imagine where the story would've gone if I had an all-male cast, but I know it would've been a much different film. Humans are culturally programmed, there are certain sets of memes that strongly influence gender roles. Revisiting the last scene again, I don't think it would've been as powerful to have a man in the Minerva role out on the street, unless he felt or projected a feeling of emasculation, or the profound loss of male pride. In reaction to a man, the paths of interpretation the audience could explore might lead them to places far from where Minerva took them.

To see "No Depression" visit www.eschatonmedia.com/jody

The Lines I Draw Upon My Body

By Jody Franklin and Dena Ashbaugh

JL: The Lines I Draw Upon My Body is a film you made with Dena Ashbaugh which is a deeply personal account of a beautiful woman's 20-year struggle with eating disorders. In this film you have included images from her childhood as well as her modeling career, interwoven with medical slides, images of raw meat/flesh, which are projected onto her body as she tells her story. The outcome is a brilliant and very disturbing abstracted representation of a mind and body split, "a divided self" or an altered perception, what seems like a never ending internal conflict. What I also find interesting about this film is that I sense it's not just about eating disorders, but points at something else, as well as the social and psychological causes.

What was this experience like from a filmmaker's and personal perspective working on a difficult subject like this?

JF: This was a very courageous portrait of Dena which is quite chilling if you let it really sink in. We met through mutual friends when I was casting for a feature film. I was immediately drawn to her very honest style of acting, so we began talking about working on projects together. She was an anthropologist (as well as being an accomplished model and actor) and had done this spoken word piece accompanied by a slideshow at Simon Fraser University. When she told me about it I had this concept of creating a video piece merging her words with her naked body in this moment draped with images from her past, as well as pictures of raw flesh, some of which she had used in her presentation.

The portrait we see of Dena is authentic, which is why I think it strikes such a nerve with people. We can see her as intelligent, beautiful, strong, but also as someone who has been infected by this modern-day malady that destroys so many people. Reflections, perception, imagery: we're casting mirrors back on her past, we're casting mirrors out into the culture that created this monster.

As to Dena's mind and body split, we had her internal psychological conflicts in this piece manifest themselves upon her skin, her body became a canvas I was painting. We see her as a little girl, as a model in Japan, as someone frail and weak, perhaps even exploited and ignored, a silent person crying out. The closing imagery we see her holding her head up as a proud warrior (with pseudo-Maori markings), a strong woman who, no matter how much this has ripped her apart, can stand and tell the world her story. We know it isn't over, but there is light in her new kind of self-awareness.

In terms of my role in the project, I feel I helped her bring out her personal story in a more powerful and effective way. We worked well together, quite intuitively, and that afternoon we spent in the studio together was powerful, and I think that comes across in our creation.

I'm extremely critical of my own work, so I was genuinely shocked when the producers who commissioned the piece from me were sobbing while viewing the rough cut.

JL: What has the feedback been like so far - from showing this film in Canada and elsewhere?

JF: The film has been well-received in Canada, where it has played film festivals (winning some awards), a mental health film festival, art galleries, a videopoem festival and a women's festival. It has also been used as an educational tool by health care professionals and counselors who work with persons with eating disorders. And, once again to my surprise, it has apparently been added to some university collections and been studied in an experimental film program.

Curiously, I don't think it has ever played anywhere outside of Canada. We had an extremely tight budget for this, so we weren't able to disseminate it as far and wide as we wanted to. We tried knocking on a couple of American doors, but we weren't taken in. I think this could partially be explained by cultural differences. In general, Canadian cinema is more muted, subtle and slowly-paced than American film. I think Americans have been immersed in a much splashier cinematic culture: on the nose dialogue, fast cuts, violence, linear storytelling with clear resolutions. Even on an independent level a lot of American film has not strayed from this basic language. You have to look at the real experimentalists like Maya Deren in order to see something alien produced within American culture.

JL: What else are you working on and do you have any longer projects or documentaries in the works?

JF: I spent over a decade working in the film and television industry, and working with video as an artistic medium. Right now, I'm on a bit of a hiatus (two years now, actually), although I do have a couple of films that I intend to make when I'm ready.

Despite the fact I love working in video and film, and see them as engaging, powerful, expressive media, I am not a fan of the film industry. This has always informed my artistic perspective and methodology. I turned away from the industry to working on documentaries with small crews, and on intimate, highly personal short works. Most of my art, no matter the media I'm working in, is honest, gut-wrenchingly personal. I really expose myself to the world. I have to do it that way, it's the only way I feel I can really connect with people, with the world at large.

When I was in my early twenties, I acted in a few "Hollywood North"-type movies and TV shows. I was actually repulsed by the way they were made and made the decision that I would never make films this way. I wondered, how can any of these shows hope to connect with people on a deep emotional or intellectual level when you have a cast and crew of dozens, sometimes hundreds? How can personal vision cut through this when there are so many hands in it, especially when most of the hands are just there for a paycheque, and they have absolutely no passion for what they are creating? And the caste system, the hierarchical culture of film production, is very repellant. I don't take well to top-down environments.

Of course, the point of most of these productions is not to create art that makes people think and feel, it is all about consumption, finding something that is an easy sell to people. There is a real supply and demand mentality in the film industry. Hollywood is run by marketing gurus who want to dumb everything down because they believe it is the only way to get people to empty their pocketbooks. I have more faith in people than that, I feel that most people would respond to great works of art if given the chance. Jim Jarmusch is one of the best filmmakers of our time, and the popularity of his film work continues to expand.

Another reason I'm taking a break from film is because I got tired of running after money. While the digital video revolution has made it a lot cheaper, it is still the most expensive artistic medium in which to work. I have actually abandoned a couple of feature film and documentary projects because I was unable to piece together enough funding. My work is a tough sell, anyway, given the subject matter I choose and my non-conventional methods of working and presenting my material. I've actually had more success getting money as a producer of projects initiated by other primary creators. I didn't want to have to be a businessman, a salesman, a schmoozola, it's not naturally where I'm at. I did it because I had to, but I'd much rather spend my time and energy creating art rather than selling it.

At this point I'm concentrating my creative efforts on artistic projects in other media, particularly literature and performance. I'm currently co-publishing MungBeing, a unique online magazine exploring art, culture and ideas, as well as The Misfit Library, a collectively published, peer-edited literary journal. I'm also getting ready to sit down and write a book that will be either straight up autobiographical gonzo creative non-fiction, or essentially the same material using a fictional facade as a masque. In the realm of performance, I'm working on both solo and collaborative performance art acts I intend to take on the road. And I've been working with July Fourth Toilet for the past eleven years. We're an offbeat, lowbrow, high concept musical troupe with theatrical flair. We're in the recording studio right now trying to conjure up the most listenable unlistenable album possible. We are novelty junkies (and you can take that both ways), as each performance we do is very different in terms of music and presentation, no two shows are alike. We tend to defy easy description when journalists write about us.

I will return to film when my passion for it inflames me once again. I still have many things I wish to say using this medium, and I will get back to it when the time is right for me.

To see "The lines I Draw Upon My Body" visit www.eschatonmedia.com/jody To see Jody's magazine please visit www.mungbeing.com

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