KWMR 89.3 FM in Bolinas, CA *** GYPSY RADIO
with Stefano Resta: artist, poet and musical collaborator.

Sunday, July 11, 2004: Interview with Mack Polhemus (Director)
                                     and Ann Boehlke Polhemus (Producer)

Q: How did you evolve as a filmmaker and writer?

Mack: Well, I think my parents always encouraged me to do creative activities. They would much rather have me be a starving artist than a doctor or stockbroker. As I became older, writing became my main creative form because when you write, you’re alone, and I think loneliness is a human condition, and you’re really embracing your loneliness. When you’re writing, being alone is your friend, and I’ve always used that as a tool for life, and if something good comes out of it, great.

Ann: My film interest came to me more as I met Mack. I’ve always been sort of an aggressive-producer type, always very determined and not afraid of anything, no matter how crazy it might be. Unlike Mack, I kind of came from the medical family, so I was bound for medical school, and then I accidentally ended up in San Francisco, and then my true self came out working at recording studios and all kinds of singing, acting, and ACT. So all of a sudden I became this San Francisco artist, and in 1988 I was in a lesbian musical called Intimate Friends opposite Camilla, Mack’s sister, who is also featured in both of our movies. Mack saw through my acting, I guess, and from that point on we fell in love and our story started there. And then we continued our exclusive but artistic pursuits.

Q: You said that you were working on an upcoming movie. Can you tell the listeners what it’s about?

Mack: Okay, it’s a family comedy, as we mentioned, we have three kids.

Ann: It’s called “My Bad Dad.”

Mack: It’s about this loser, biker, kind of alcoholic who doesn’t know he has kids. But when he gets in trouble for something else, the judge says, “You know, your girlfriend died and you have to take care of these three kids.” And he doesn’t want to do it, so he does everything wrong so that the social worker will take them away, but as he does those bad things, like ride through the Bolinas hills with the kids on the back of the motorcycle, the social worker does take them away, but he learns to love them. So when the kids are taken away, he tries to get them back. By now the kids are in this perfect Martha Stewart-like household, which has everything right, but no love, and he has everything wrong, but the only thing he has going for him is love. So the kids are taken back and forth until they end up with one of them, and you have to watch the movie to find out which one they end up with.

Q: What’s the state of the film now?

Mack: In order to choose the music, we had several independent bands submit, so we’re almost done with the music but we haven’t got the music composed yet. So it’s shot, it’s edited, everything looks good, the only other creative part left is sound and music, and sound, of course, is a creative process too.

Ann: We did delay the editing almost a year and half or so when normally it should have taken a couple months under ideal conditions. Since the making of our last film we have had three children, so that is now our primary existence day-to-day. To finish it all is a major feat. We did have a little bit of setback with the editing while trying out various people down in L.A. But we did just come across a great editor, so that’s just one of the major parts. And like Mack said, there’s the music composing to the film, there’s the sound effects, dialogue, editing, the mix, and looking at bands that have submitted their material that would fit sort of a bluesy-biker theme on one sense, and on the other sense a lovely-childlike feel, like the kids bring to the movie. And it’s a comedy as well. So right now we’re sort of in the process of that.

Q: Do you work with music as a writer or do you need solitude to work?

Mack: I just don't need my kids around. But other than that, I can listen to music, but it's not a choice. It doesn’t bother me. I can write anywhere, even in my car--

Ann: Not driving, though.

Mack: When I’m reading, I can’t listen to music. But I probably wouldn’t listen to music while I am writing. It's not like I need solitude, but it doesn't help or hurt.

Q: For this upcoming movie, what is the basic theme in the sense of comedy, tragedy, romantic comedy, etc.?

Mack: It’s like a family comedy, and I want it to be genuine. I also want it to be heartfelt so when people finish this, if they have children, I want them to say, “I love my children,” and if they don’t, “I love my Dad or Mom.”

Q: Is love a motivating force in your work?

Mack: Yeah, truth, love. That’s what I can sit with for longest. And I can sit with failure too if something doesn’t happen in the business realm, I can still be satisfied. Like climbing a mountain, you learn to love that mountain and even if you fail you still enjoyed the process.

Ann: But it’s harder to sit with gunshots, sex, and violence and all those things that equate to success so we’ve never really even bothered to go there.

Mack: If you make a movie just to sell it, and you don’t, you feel empty. But if you make a movie and you love it, if it sells, great, if it doesn’t, you can still rest in peace.

Q: Is there an intent, on your part, as an artist, to try to somehow transform human behavior and bring people from one emotional state to a higher emotional state?

Mack: I'm just trying to entertain people and do the best I can at it. I want people to be inspired. I want people to feel like, it’s okay, if for instance, this dad is, you know, pretty much of a loser, I want people to think, you know, that it’s okay.

Ann: And that there’s hopefulness, that people can change, and that things that the worldly eyes don’t seem worth pursuing, love of the true, or finding the deeper meaning of what you are all about, and that it’s possible.

Mack: I’d say that love is more of an inspiration for me, and when you have passion for something, you can convince other people to do things so it has a practical value because people aren’t going to go along with you if you don’t care about what you're doing or care about their project. So what I always do is with the crew members is have them read the script, and if they love it, they’re going to work hard.

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Saturday, September 25, 2004: Interview with Mack Polhemus (Director)
by James Williams: author of the novel Out to Get Jack:

Mack: I wanted to incorporate some of the things that I cared about most my life into a film and I wasn’t really sure what those were. But I realized I was spending all my time with my children. And that was what I felt I cared the most about, so I thought I could make a movie about kids. When you make a movie, you might abandon it if it’s not at a level that you do care about at a deeper level. So I wanted to capture some of the funny and heartwarming moments in my life in film. And since I have the knowledge to put those moments to a plot, and I knew how to make a film, I could make a home video but make it seem like a real movie.

I don’t consider myself a bad dad, but I don’t always follow the rules. However, I know that because my heart is in the right place that the kids are going to be fine, and probably much better off than in a perfect home that has everything organized. The plot is to ping-pong those kids from one house to the other and hopefully play with the audience’s hopes and fears so that the audience hopes that they will ultimately end up with the bad dad and fear that they will end up with the perfect home.

I always have it in my mind that we will make a movie and, at this stage, having made a movie on film is extremely expensive, even a low-budget film. It was exciting that we could film on digital video, which looks good, is very portable, one person can operate it, and it’s very efficient. I always knew I could make another movie.

The advantage that I had was that I knew how to make it better than it was. Most people who shoot digital projection would not know the elements that goes into it. For example, I know that you need to establish depth in each shot through focus, through lighting, and through background, whereas other people might point and shoot, and that would look amateur. I also know that sound and music are essential in making a film go beyond the amateur level.

It took me three months to write the screenplay. I remember when I spent two full days writing it and I remember sitting down and when I finished, and I had a moment of feeling as if I was finished. This is a rare feeling with writing, because you can always go back and edit it, but I knew I had finished it because I had pictured every scene, I knew every character in the scene, I knew every actor or person who could play the part unless they were small parts, and it would easy to get somebody else, but all the lead characters were taken care of, all the locations were taken care of.

Before I could start filming, my brother Joe had to learn how to ride a motorcycle. What I also had to do was get the crew in place. I talked to a bunch of directors of photography and cinematographers and someone who knows how to do sound, and then I needed some people to help, and I needed, of course, someone to help on the production side. Joe could help with some of the casting, so that was good. Filming began in the summer of 2002. We shot the movie for 3 weeks, and then we went to Bolinas for 3 days to shoot “pickup shots.” When we were first shooting, we didn’t know if the movie was going to work at all with the kids. I remember the first shot. I couldn’t get everyone to do what I wanted to do, especially the kids, and I broke out in a cold sweat and I hadn’t experienced that before in my life. And then I walked away for a while and I thought, “Okay.” And then I said to Ann, “We’ll take this one day at a time and if it doesn’t work, we’ll stop.” And after each day we didn’t have another conversation again because obviously it continued working.