go down death

GO DOWN DEATH
A Film by Aaron Schimberg
PRESS KIT
Go Down Death
USA, 2013
Written & Directed by Aaron Schimberg
Produced by Vanessa McDonnell
Co-produced by Caroline Oliveira
Cinematography by Jimmy Lee Phelan
Edited by Vanessa McDonnell
Technical Information
Format (presentation): DCP
Shooting Format: Super 16mm
Sound: Monaural
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Running time: 88 minutes
B&W
CONTACTS
GO DOWN DEATH
Press, festival, sales
and other inquiries:
Vanessa McDonnell
Post-Original Films
103 N. 8th St. #1
Brooklyn NY 11249
[email protected]
Tel: +1 718 916 9897
Legal
George Rush
220 Montgomery St #411
San Francisco, CA 94104
Tel: +1 415-393-8005
Website
www.godowndeath.com
Go Down Death
Superstition, disease and death run rampant in this experimentally structured collection of
macabre folktales penned by the fictitious writer Jonathan Mallory Sinus.
Synopsis
Go Down Death is a wry, sinister realization of a strange new universe, a cross-episodic
melange of macabre folktales supposedly penned by the fictitious writer Jonathan Mallory
Sinus. An abandoned factory in Brooklyn stands in for a decrepit village haunted by ghosts,
superstition and disease, while threatening to buckle under rumblings of the apocalypse.
Soldiers are lost and found in endless woods, a child gravedigger is menaced by a shapeshifting physician, a syphilitic john bares all to a young prostitute and a disfigured outcast
yearns for the affections of a tone-deaf cabaret singer.
Highlighted by offbeat narrative construction, stunning black-and-white 16mm cinematography
and immaculately detailed production design, Go Down Death is a distinctively original film
informed by American Gothic, folk culture and outsider art.
Aaron Schimberg
Aaron Schimberg is an independent filmmaker living in New York. Go
Down Death is his first feature film.
Director’s Statement
Go Down Death stems partly from a fever-dream I had at NYU hospital
while hopped up on morphine after a serious medical procedure. I
hesitate to say too much about the dream in particular because it
happens to infringe upon certain copyrights held by a large and
litigious media conglomerate. The world of dreaming, for the moment, has a sufficiently liberal
Fair Use policy, but all bets are off when you transpose the material to film. After I wrote the
script, I excised most of the offending content, leaving a fragmented narrative. These
fragments seemed to me to resemble "folktales" and this idea further informed the fractured
structure of the film.
I wanted Go Down Death to seem like an artifact from an unfamiliar era or place, giving the
viewer the uneasy feeling of being a stranger who only slowly becomes acclimated. The
experience should be like listening to a recording of music from a lost culture, where the sound
retains its visceral and emotional impact even if the instruments cannot be named and the
original social or formal context is irretrievable. In this way, the film is not a puzzle that is
meant to be solved, but rather a collection of mysteries to be contemplated. Certain ideas and
themes recur in nearly every scene - the frailty of the human body, the fallibility of memory, the
unknowability of other people, and the human capacity for denial - of our own demise and of
the suffering of others. The frequent presence of sickness, disfigurement and medical
catastrophes is based on some of my own experiences.
Many scenes in the film revolve around interactions between various pairs of characters, but
their relationships to each other are often ambiguous. There are power struggles between
them, but we are not always certain who wields the power. In the scenes between Dr. Moth
and Butler, for instance, we might fear for Butler's safety because he is helpless, small,
vulnerable, possibly sick, and it is difficult to know if the doctor wants to help or hurt the boy.
But we might also sense that it is Dr. Moth who is threatened by Butler, for reasons that we can
only infer. It is as if the doctor must dominate this child out of some feeling of dread, suspicion
or insecurity.
I hope the film's peculiar rhythms encourage the viewer to surrender to its enigmas and to
forge his or her own connections. In any case, I would like to wish the viewer, whether awake
or asleep during the film's duration, very pleasant dreams.
Production Notes
Go Down Death was shot in 14 days,
entirely in an abandoned former paint
factory in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Aaron
Schimberg (writer/director) and Vanessa
McDonnell (producer/editor) travelled to
several ghost towns around the east
coast but locations were either
artistically inappropriate or unaffordable.
Because of the large local cast & crew, it
proved more feasible to shoot in
Brooklyn, and this provided the
opportunity to create the netherworld of
the film from scratch. The construction
of the set was overseen by production
designers Kate Rance and Sia
Balabanova, without air conditioning in
the middle of summer and amid a colony of resident feral cats (the space is located one block
from the largest sewage treatment plant in New York City and next to the Newtown Creek, one
of the most polluted industrial sites in America, now a Superfund site). Several sets were built
and dressed and then shooting began, with the rest of the construction continuing with pauses,
hammers in mid-air, while the camera was rolling. Production was nearly halted when an EPA
inspector from the nearby Superfund site entered the factory and saw a pile of antique drums
full of 80-year-old paint (or other miscellaneous chemicals) propped precariously against the
wall. He threatened to padlock the warehouse but settled for being an extra in the film. The
front-half of a bifurcated NYC taxicab that had been abandoned in front of the factory on the
last day of shooting served as the car seen early in the film. The "exterior" shots come from a
scale model of the entire village, about the size of a ping-pong table, that model-maker Seth
Shaw built in a corner of the factory during the length of the shoot.
Because Go Down Death was shot on super16mm film, which had to be sent to Los Angeles
for processing (there are no surviving labs doing B&W in New York), with a week-turnaround,
there was no way to know if any of the final week's footage was correctly exposed until after
the set had been demolished. Fortunately, most of the footage was intact, with the exception of
one sequence featuring a brief appearance by an EPA inspector.
Although Go Down Death has a handful of professional actors, most of the cast, found on
subways or the streets of NY, had never acted before. Bryant Pappas (Dr. Moth) is a police
lieutenant in Yonkers and a middleweight boxer (record: 13-1-1), Tony Droz (Dr. Carey) is
Schimberg's landlord, Jon Wenc (Saul) is a kindergarten teacher; Roy Scranton (Roy) is a
novelist ("Fire and Forget") and Iraq War veteran; the cast also includes a US Postal worker, a
911 operator, a NYC Parks Department ranger, a brain surgeon and Schimberg's
psychoanalyst.
Cast of Characters
Lee Azzarello
Lee ! !
Doug Barron
Emil ! !
Burton Crane
Capt. Auld !
Brandon deSpain
Boris ! !
Rayvin Disla
Butler
Anthony Droz
Dr. Carey !
Melissa Elledge
Accordionist
Kara Feely !
Kara !
!
Carrie Getman!
Carrie ! !
Avi Glickstein
Hugo
Lucy Kaminsky
Ramona !
Sean Kryston
Sean ! !
Eric Magnus
Leopold
Adam Hocherman
Prof. Prince
Travis Just
Travis !
Morris Mandell
Remus !
Sammy Mena !
Rosenthal !
Tavish Miller !
Crispus !!
Benjamin Minter
Demby! !
Ricardo Molfa
Guitarist
Gina Murdock
Theodosia !
Aphrodite Navab
Mother ! !
Henry Packer !
Mr. Wolf !
John Pamer !
John !
!
Kerrilynn Pamer
Lynn
Bryant Pappas
Dr. Moth !
David Regelmann
Frederick !
Alexis Rothenberg
Alexis ! !
Roy Scranton
Roy !
!
John Henry Soto
Puny Man
Liliana Velásquez
Elsa ! !
Jon Wenc
Saul ! !
Simone Xi
Milda ! !
Johnny Zito
Seamus
Crew Bios
Vanessa McDonnell, Producer & Editor
Vanessa McDonnell is a filmmaker and editor based in New York. She produced and edited the feature film Go
Down Death and directed and edited the feature documentary John's of 12th Street. Vanessa has created short
experimental and documentary work on 16mm and 8mm, produced short works for director Jonathan Caouette
and was a director & editor for the Lower East Side Biography Project.
Caroline Oliveira, Co-Producer
Caroline Oliveira produced the short film The Chair, which was part of the 2012 Cannes Film Festival Official
Selection, Short Film Competition, and winner of the Best Narrative short at SXSW’12 and at LAFF’12. She is a
co-producer on the feature film Go Down Death and a producer on the upcoming short film Edge of the Woods.
Caroline is currently developing the Lebanese feature film Tramontane with the support of the Sundance Institute,
Venice Biennale College Cinema, IFP and Doha Film Institute. She is a Sundance Creative Producing Fellow
2013. Jimmy Lee Phelan, Director of Photography
Jimmy Lee Phelan's most recent work, the short film The Chair, was in competition for the Palme D'Or at the 2012
Cannes Film Festival. He has photographed several features films including Five Time Champion, Mulberry
Street (directed by Abel Ferrara) and Go Down Death. His work has screened at film festivals around the world,
winning awards in both the US and Europe. Phelan is from Memphis and holds an MFA in Cinematography from
NYU.
Kate Rance, Production Designer
Kate Rance has worked extensively within a range of media in both London and New York including feature films,
television, dance and physical theatre, classical theatre and even illusion shows and puppetry. Kate also loves to
teach and has taught and run workshops across her fields of expertise.
Sia Balabanova, Production Designer
Sia Balabanova is a Set and Production Designer for film and TV, based in New York. She received her MFA from
the Department of Design for Stage and Film at NYU. Her recent credits include production design for
independent films like Organizer, which received a production design award at the First Run Festival. She was a
set designer in the art department for the independent science fiction feature Europa Report, designed by Oscar
winner Eugenio Caballero. Currently she is a set designer for the network TV series Blue Bloods, assisting
designer Mario Ventenilla.
Stacey Berman, Costume Designer
Stacey Berman is a New York City-based costume designer. Her recent feature film credits include Electrick
Children featuring Julia Garner, Billy Zane, Rory Culkin and Liam Aiken and Happy Baby featuring Bill Heck,
James Urbaniak, Alex Karpovsky, and Monica Raymund. Music video credits include Electric Band (Wild Flag)
and Rat A Tat (Fall Out Boy) featuring Courtney Love. In theatre, Stacey has worked with Richard Foreman,
Object Collection and Performance Lab 115.
Virginia Cromie, Line Producer
Virginia Cromie has over a decade of experience in film, non-profit and arts administration, from managing global
participatory art projects for TED Prize winner JR, to producing award winning documentary films such as The
Square and Rafea: Solar Mama, with director Jehane Noujaim. Based in Brooklyn, she began collaborating with
artists while working at Galapagos Art Space, producing a large scale video art piece titled Schachfeld with Swiss
artist Katja Loher.
Press for Go Down Death
“An astonishing, out-of-nowhere film. Amidst all the cookie-cutter indies, Aaron
Schimberg’s Go Down Death casts a mysterious spell. A dreamy, highly stylized affair recalling
early David Lynch. Highly recommended.”
– Scott Macaulay, Filmmaker Magazine
“A unique, strange, unforgettable film, a half-remembered dream that will trouble and beguile
the subconscious long after you’ve moved on. (A-)”
– Gabe Toro, Indiewire’s The Playlist
“One of the best films of the year! An uncompromising feast of vision and atmosphere.” – Kentucker Audley, NoBudge
“Robert Altman meets Tod Browning…an immaculate, offbeat triumph. Rarely do homespun
independent filmmakers convey such a distinctively original vision.”
– Jon Dieringer, Screen Slate
“Irresistible! Evokes the great novels of William Faulkner, even as Go Down Death offers us a
resolutely modern filmic experience. Schimberg appropriates the language of cinema and
obeys only the rules he sets out for himself. The result is a thrilling leap into the unknown.”
– Simon Laperrière, Fantasia
“A singular work of DIY punk filmmaking.”
– Lisa K. Broad, Tativille
“A work of latter-day Dadaism…an expression of the same humanist-horror that Tod Browning
imparted in his pre-Code classic Freaks. Go Down Death is as eccentric and daring as
American indie cinema gets.”
– Matthew Campbell, Starz Denver
By Gabe Toro
Jonathan Mallory Sinus is credited as the
“folklorist” responsible for the vignettes that follow at the beginning of “Go Down Death,” the closing
film at the Fantasia Film Festival. What follows is a beautiful woman applying makeup and a man on
guitar. Some of the world’s greatest filmmakers would argue that these are the only elements one needs
to make a great film. The picture continues through its opening credits, introducing us to a doctor that
overshares to a kind-eyed boy, and a double-amputee emphasizing liberation from his own legs as if his
body were originally a vessel for a lie. Director Aaron Schimberg’s credit appears over the screams of a
woman trapped inside a car, fighting for her life. This is a filmmaker with a very specific sensibility in
regards to mortality.
The picture slowly reveals itself as existing in a limbo between life or death, with a cast of characters
waiting out what feels like a temporary state of mind. Some bicker at a table while playing cards. Two
soldiers stalk the woods while fighting an unseen war. A woman sings about being “too young to die,” a
song that consists of only those lyrics as if heard in a dream. Most speak in dialogue that sounds like
detached song lyrics. “Go Down Death” isn’t necessarily about speakers, but about listeners:
Schimberg’s camera enjoys capturing the furrowing of a brow, the quiet serenity of the thinking mind.
continued on next page
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A shapely prostitute recoils nude after intercourse, sharing company with a comfortably naked older
man, who has a greater interest in smoking while discussing long-forgotten memories than comforting
her. His nudity seems indicative of the vulnerability of his age; she, younger, covers up in the fetal
position, not interested in exploring a past, one that involves a dead twin sister. She is beautiful,
wounded when we meet her. His shaggy hair and comfort within his skin suggests he’s shed the world
beyond him. A classroom of children illustrates the same; kids who casually mention two of their group
have passed on, before they trade passages of poetry concerned with death.
The characters speak of haunting frequently. One describes himself as being mistaken for a demon, one
who recurs in dreams. Later, two characters utter the same line about being haunted, but never being
allowed to haunt another. Most seem to just be passing through: they act as if they have fully-established
relationships with each other, when it seems clear they are merely grafting past unions onto partial or
complete strangers. One character speaks of Sinus as if he were a fellow soldier, returned as a ghost; he
says it’s a “story.” It leads to a breakdown in communication, suggesting the artist is aware of his own
shortcomings from within the text.
About fifty-something minutes into “Go Down Death,” which is largely plotless, the film begins to jump
in shorter, darker bursts. The camaraderie between each character slides away, replaced by an adversarial
mistrust, until the story is accompanied by the flickering of a film, projected onto the side of a barn for
children. “Go Down Death” closes with a bewildering fifteen or so minutes that may or may not be
related to the previous seventy, a passage of film of which I am eager to hear multiple interpretations
from a variety of voices.
Sinus, of course, is not a real person, and there is no evidence of his “writings” in the real world. And
yet “Go Down Death” seems like a tribute to a false creator, teaming all of his creations in a purgatory
where their stories, already ended, are permitted to go on. When one character loses her senses before
sex, another remarks that it has happened to him before. It’s the tapestry of death, one where our
creations mingle in the mind long after our passing, the idea of artistic permanence in the afterlife. This
is a unique, strange, unforgettable film, a half-remembered dream that will trouble and beguile the
subconscious long after you’ve moved on. Fans of “Eraserhead,” or the avant-guard eccentricities of
Crispin Glover’s infamous traveling art projects, will have found a kindred spirit in director Aaron
Schimberg. [A-]
Indiewire, August 5, 2013.
Full article @: http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/fantasia-film-festival-review-go-downdeath-20130805
By Steve MacFarlane
I was exposed to Aaron Schimberg’s cinema
before we actually met. Aaron submitted work for
the first-ever screening my work, a spread of
short films curated with Showpaper in 2009.
Among the usual thumb-sucking Coney Island
mope-core and corporate-ready thesis films,
Aaron’s trio of miniDV shorts (made with his wife
and producer Vanessa McDonnell) immediately
stood out, made with both a knowing physical
lightness and utter precision of tone.
Unpredictably hitting new note after new note
whenever I thought my eyeballs had settled back
down, the films were playful, dark, conversant
with death, never enamored of their own beauty,
but not self-flagellating either. (The whole trio is
available as a standalone short, Late Spring/
Regrets For Our Youth, here.)
Later on, I heard murmurs that Aaron was
making his first feature, holed up in a former
paint factory in Greenpoint. That film became Go
Down Death and has been in production for more
years than I can count on one hand, filmed
entirely indoors (no ceilings) on Super-16 with a
cast of dozens-if-not-hundreds. Death would
have an uphill battle on its hands even if it
weren’t excellent: under the reference points cosmetically affixed to Schimberg’s mise-en-scene (David Lynch, Tom Waits, Guy
Maddin) lies an almost terrifyingly bleak worldview, served up in a final scene that knifes straight through the preceding 80
minutes and makes you reconsider everything you just watched.
Aaron Schimberg So you’re gonna fix this to make me sound like a genius, right?
Steve MacFarlane (laughter) Uh, let’s start with all the comparisons to name directors. The homage is more in the look of your
film than in the actual substance of it.
AS I consciously was trying—and telling everybody when we were making it—that we were trying to avoid any specific
references. It’s not supposed to evoke the 1920s, or expressionism, or any kind of specific period, real world or cinematic.
You’re not really supposed to know when it’s from. It’s not too realistic either. Striking that balance was one of the hardest
things. People at the first screening thought that we really shot in it in a forest; to me, it’s completely phony, it looks fake. But
it’s sort of hard while you’re watching the film to tell what’s real and what isn’t.
SM Even the timbre of one character’s voice, or the choice of a spoken phrase, can come off as totally contemporary.
AS Exactly.
SM So instead of talking about what you wanted to avoid, can you tell me a little bit about what you wanted to make happen?
This wasn’t written as a “period” film, right?
AS Well, the script called for a kind of rural setting. We visited a few villages initially. But they were mostly unfeasible. For one
thing, I’m lazy and I didn’t want to leave my cat. The main reason is, I’m from the city; I’ve always lived in the city and I didn’t
want to go to some rural place and pretend I was Walker Evans, or be exploitative like Shelby Lee Adams, or whatever that
guy’s name is.
This film is—maybe not on the surface like Sweet Smell of Success or Driller Killeror anything—but it is in fact a very New York
film. It was shot in industrial Brooklyn; everybody in the film is from New York, everybody’s got a sort of a New York dialect or
accent. It’s kind of a running joke, you know, that a guy playing a farmer is really a bookie. He hates the woods. He’s afraid of
lyme disease. He wouldn’t know the first thing about farming. That incongruity is part of the film’s character, and the skeletal
garden in the film is a nod to that.
The dialogue in the script is stylized, it’s not colloquial. It’s kind of austere. And so initially I wanted everybody to be speaking in
a uniformly stylized way. When we were casting, and building, it dawned on me that I couldn’t rehearse to that degree, we’re
putting out open calls and casting a lot of non-actors, so what I started to look for was people who could take this dialogue,
and interpret it in some personal way. So even though all the dialogue was very homogenous, everybody is performing it in
wildly different ways. And it lends the film a kind of vaudevillian aspect.
SM Well, making a movie is vaudevillian in and of itself sometimes—no matter how rigidly you have what the scene’s going to
be like set up in your mind, shooting changes everything. New flavors get brought in, often forcibly, and you have to improvise
—“Oh, this character has an accent now!” In my experience, you never figure out if you prefer the original dream-version or the
tangible, final one. Deep down, do you wish you had had more time to rehearse?
AS I think I grew to appreciate it, and having those limitations gives the film a chaotic feeling. Frankly, I’m amazed that we
pulled it off, and we had forty speaking roles, and we were still casting as we were shooting. It was all done on the fly. I like this
combination of complete chaos and fastidiousness.
SM There was a conscious decision to avoid naturalism at all costs? I assume the sets were constructed way ahead of time.
AS As much as we could in a week, before shooting started. Literally between takes we would be taking down or reorganizing
or rebuilding the sets to become other rooms or spaces.
SM Really? The amount of texture in the film is nuts. The card table has a shag carpet, for instance, that probably appears in
like two shots. Is this level of art direction going to be a signature of yours in future films, do you think?
AS No!
SM I don’t actually think of the film as trying to hide the fact that it was made in New York.
AS Well, I can’t hide it, because I need my New York State film tax credit. The film is constantly referring to “the city.” We were
playing with that. There are a lot of films about, you know, nature breaking through the thin veneer of civilization, but in some
ways this film was about the opposite; civilization keeps breaking through the veneer of nature. Which we built. Until the last
scene, when that veneer falls away completely.
SM This slogan that appears in the film, “NO PITY FOR THE PAST.” Is that something you wrote originally, or did you hear it
somewhere?
AS That’s an original slogan. I think.
SM It’s great.
AS In this city, we show no pity for the past. Did you interpret that as a positive thing?
SM No. I wouldn’t recommend that attitude personally or historically or whatever. But it’s prevalent. We pride ourselves on
being “forward-thinking,” but it can be actually closer to spite.
AS Yeah. To me it’s like a Bloombergian mantra. Bloombergesque? I hope this doesn’t interfere with my tax credit.
SM In the opening of Go Down Death, a woman is screaming while something awful happens to her, and you see it through
the rear-view of a car—I think it’s a taxi cab. It’s not a horror film, really at all, but it you seem to be playing with that vernacular.
I felt like something terrible was happening at all times, but information was always withheld.
AS The looming presence is unspecified. It was inspired by something more specific, which is alluded to obliquely, but to me,
it’s about the people in this village who are living under the threat of crisis. And, you know, we also live under the constant
threat of crisis.
SM I guess I’d call it the threat of the feeling of constant crisis.
AS Right. Somebody asked me why the characters are so apathetic when explosions are going off all around them. I guess to
me, that’s not unusual. It might seem unusual to us, because for us the explosions are occurring “over there.”
SM Would you say that’s apathy, or denial? Not that they’re mutually exclusive.
AS It’s denial. I think that people in any kind of crisis or catastrophe—existential, political, environmental, something a little
more immediate—can learn to adapt to those situations with denial. Well, I can’t speak for others, but I’ve got a highly refined
denial mechanism. Of course, denied emotions resurface as ulcers or irritable bowel syndrome. Maybe that’s why everyone in
the village seems to have medical problems.
SM The first time I saw the movie I thought it was more—pardon this term—miserablist than I do now. These scenes and
setups suggest that tone, but the individual scenes are actually really spontaneous. Somebody will say or do something eerie
and ominous and then it’s almost deflated by comedy, so you have these weird tonal shifts.
AS The tonal shifts are very built-in. It’s unclear to what extent the film is comic or tragic, even to me. I’ve watched it and found
some part of it hilarious, and the next time I see it, I find that same part depressing or disturbing. And screenings are that way
too—there’s resounding laughter at one, and dead quiet at another. I find a way to be devastated either way. Even when
people are laughing, it’s always the other half of the room; they’re laughing at different things. I think that’s the difficulty with
marketing this film—it’s none of those things.
People looking for a horror film have approached me and inevitably been disappointed, but people have also picked up on the
tragic side and talked about how miserablist it is; other people are surprised by the sheer amount of comedy. But it can play
differently and I was encouraging that as we were shooting it. Again, this is reinforced by the different acting styles: you’ll have
somebody completely melodramatic, or self-aware and comedic, and then somebody who’s practically Shakespearian. The
first scene we shot was written to be more comedic, but the two actors played it in the most serious possible manner, and I
found it affecting—but then I might watch it again and think that the scene is even funnier because it’s so inappropriately
melodramatic.
SM It does seem some of the actors interpreted a “period flavor” that you may not have slathered on top of them.
AS Some actors wanted to know what their method needed to be. I was evasive, or I would tell them conflicting things. I
wanted everybody in the film looking a little bit confused and lost. I was encouraging that.
SM The looming, kind of mounting dread you’re talking about is, in my opinion, achieved more through the acting, images and
edits than maybe through the screenplay itself. Is it fair to say the character of the kid, Butler (Rayvin Disla, above), becomes
aware of something that the rest of the town is oblivious to?
AS Perhaps he’s more aware, but on the other hand, maybe he’s less aware, and therefore less apathetic—he’s trying to do
something constructive amid all this destruction. Although maybe that’s just another form of denial.
Butler’s curious, he’s active. He does all these jobs—he’s a gardener, a tailor, he writes poetry—and his doctor is maybe trying
to discourage that, for whatever reason. He’s trying to get Butler to do clerical work.
SM He’s discouraged by a lot of the men in the village.
AS In the script, Butler was one of many characters, but when you see a cute child onscreen, you’re immediately drawn to
him. He becomes a protagonist. I actively set out to not have any protagonists, but it’s a difficult task. The characters were not
supposed to stand out from one another, and they may represent different things, but you don’t shouldn’t necessarily favor one
over the other.
This should have been obvious to me, but once you put it onscreen people are drawn to one person for some reason or
another, because one actor is taller or something. It became an editing challenge, to try to guide the audience into not caring
about one person over another. Not wanting one person to live over another, specifically.
SM In the movie theater scene, he’s the only one who’s not enjoying the violence. The other kids are laughing. That gets into
what you’re talking about. It’s literally a scene about people—children—preferring to watch one type of man over another.
AS That scene is the most distilled example of this power struggle between two characters. You have a guy who’s a
strongman and you have another guy who’s smaller and weaker; the film-within-a-film is manipulating the audience within the
film to side with one, and I think almost every scene in the film contains a variation on this dynamic. Almost every scene is a
dialogue between two people and there’s always some kind of power struggle.
It’s not always clear who’s winning out. I think the film questions whether the need to dominate comes from insecurity or
weakness and also whether suffering silently—as other people do in the film—comes from some kind of inner strength or if
that’s weakness unto itself.
SM Entering into a scene, your edits are all over the place spatially. For example, when the kid is in the doctor’s office, you
pingpong from the signs on the wall to the guy who’s speaking to the kid in the chair to the tools on the table, then kind of
settle down on a perspective. This is especially sweet in the epilogue. Why do you like that activity so much?
AS We sort of figured it out as a way for us to establish the rhythm of the film, that we’re not sticking with anybody for too long,
that what follows might be confusing. If we started it with a scene that was five minutes long, as I did initially, you might get too
comfortable; we tried to make the first ten minutes as hectic as possible so you wouldn’t become too emotionally engaged in
any one person, so it was clear that we would be jumping around.
SM Other people who’ve seen the film questioned the validity of “blocking” the viewer from getting into any one specific
character. Is it a specific style of narrative you wanted, or…?
AS Again, if you become too attached to one person, you might not care about the others. If somebody died, I didn’t want you
to prioritize one death over another. Care about everybody equally, even if that means you can’t care about anything.
SM A question of proportionality.
AS Well, yeah. On the subway, when you’re observing people around you, you don’t know them, you can’t. They might be
talking to each other, but you don’t know what the nature of their relationship is.
SM It’s probably better to assume you don’t know.
AS This film asks you to relate to the characters in a similar manner. I think between every character—almost—you can’t quite
tell what their relationships are. Some people may have known each other for 20 years, or they could be strangers. I don’t
know if that makes it hard to relate to what’s onscreen, but it helps to view them as you might view strangers you’ll see in real
life. You’ll catch yourself assuming things and building stories for them, but they’re still strangers.
SM Is this a problem you saw in other films and you wanted to do your bit to amend it? Or is it just how the script shook out?
AS It wasn’t meant as a hostile gesture, but I don’t like the Syd Field method or whatever, in which you need to know the
character’s psychological history, that their father was an alcoholic or whatever.
SM Which makes their background replicable in some weird way.
AS You shouldn’t need to know backstory, or psychology, in order to empathize with or relate to people. If you meet somebody,
in a split second you’ll have a connection to them—good or bad—fair or unfair—without specifically knowing anything about
them.
Viewers have occasionally empathized with somebody, but you know, the difficulty is that there are other people that they
don’t, or can’t, empathize with. They’re too remote. I’ve found that different people relate to different characters when they
watch the movie. A lot of people are drawn to Butler, but other people are drawn to other characters entirely. I worry that it has
less to do with the characters and more to do with external factors—how attractive they are, how kind or unkind the actor
seems.
SM You found yourself choosing a scene more based on its depiction of the village as whole.
AS Well, it becomes more like a musical structure. It’s balancing the tonal shifts and trying to give enough plot information to
allow the viewer to keep following it. There are so many characters, so many things are so brief that it’s hard to keep track of
people sometimes.
SM It’s murky. I definitely understood more the second time I saw it.
AS it’s hard with a film like this to know what the audience will easily pick up on or what they will never pick up on. There are
things in the film that to me were extremely clear, but went unnoticed and prevented people from understanding the film and
things that I never noticed were what everybody wanted to talk about. It made us try to create a more experiential film.
Now, for people in some of these reviews to say I’m just fucking with people, or trying to be weird—I mean, you don’t spend
seven years on a film that you’re making in bad faith. You just don’t. The film is personal and there’s nothing in it that
intentionally doesn’t make sense. Now, that said: specific explanations about why this is happening, about individual
characters . . . I was truly hoping that viewers would be willing to fill in the blanks.
SM Not just able but willing to try to do that. It reminds me of pre-screening for certain unnamed film festival festivals. Anything
that seems to pose a threat to your movie-processing faculties, might not make it. It has to be, you know, legible.
AS Which is a scary thing, because it discourages filmmakers from experimenting, or if a filmmaker does experiment, he or
she does so at his or her own peril. The thing that makes film different from other art forms: you write a novel, people read it,
they don’t like it, you put it in a drawer, you rewrite it, you do another novel. If you’re a painter, you slash the canvas. But when
you go into making a film, you don’t know how it’s going to turn out, but it has to get out there either way. There’s money on the
line, there’s time, there’s a lot of people’s efforts. In most cases it’s already public knowledge before it’s done.
SM You have to trailerize the movie before you’ve shot it.
AS And it’s been announced, so it’s going to get out there. There’s nothing you can do if you can’t afford to reshoot the
footage. Filmmaking is hard and risky because each film is an experiment and they’re all going to escape. It’s not something
where you say “Oh, this isn’t working out so I’ll go make another film, then.” You can’t say, “Sorry everybody.”
SM It’s bloodsport, but the most you’re competing for is three hours of somebody’s time, tops. But probably more like 65
minutes.
AS Exactly. For some reason people want their films to be as short as possible, now. New films are not allowed to be over two
hours unless it’s Batman.
SM Your film reminds me of McCabe & Mrs. Miller. You spend time with a ton of people but you probably have more empathy
for the people you spent less time with. They’re just not as weak. There are moments in Go Down Death where you want to
judge a character but you can’t—you just don’t know enough about them.
AS Yeah, we’d screen it to people and they’d say, “I hate that guy. Don’t show me that guy. That guy comes onscreen, my
brain shuts down.” What do you do with something like that? Often, people would say “more Butler.”
There was a scene in the first cut that was everybody’s favorite—I immediately cut it out. It was not because I wanted to be
aggressive, or as punishment; it was because I felt that that scene—which was sort of a comic relief bit—was hurting the film
because it was influencing the way people were watching the film. It wasn’t right; people enjoyed it as they were watching it
but that doesn’t mean it was good for the film. And nobody missed it when it was gone.
Bomb Magazine, November 21, 2013.
Full Article @: http://bombsite.com/issues/1000/articles/7435
Go Down Death
Cast & Credits
Lee..........................................Lee Azzarello
Emil..........................................Doug Barron
Captain Auld............................Burton Crane
Boris.................................Brandon deSpain
Butler........................................Rayvin Disla
Dr. Carey...........................Anthony M. Droz
Kara............................................Kara Feely
Carrie................................... Carrie Getman
Hugo.......................................Avi Glickstein
Professor Prince..............Adam Hocherman
Travis..........................................Travis Just
Ramona................................Lucy Kaminsky
Sean........................................Sean Kryston
Leopold.....................................Eric Magnus
Remus...................................Morris Mandell
City Advocate................Vanessa McDonnell
Rosenthal...............................Sammy Mena
Crispus......................................Tavish Miller
Demby.................................Benjamin Minter
Theodosia..............................Gina Murdock
Mother................................Aphrodite Navab
Mr. Wolf...................................Henry Packer
John..........................................John Pamer
Lynn....................................Kerrilynn Pamer
Dr. Moth................................Bryant Pappas
Frederick.............David Joseph Regelmann
Alexis...............................Alexis Rothenberg
Roy..........................................Roy Scranton
Puny Man...........................John Henry Soto
Elsa...................................Liliana Velasquez
Saul...............................................Jon Wenc
Milda.............................................Simone Xi
Seamus......................................Johnny Zito
Written & Directed by........Aaron Schimberg
Produced & Edited by...Vanessa McDonnell
Director of Photography..Jimmy Lee Phelan
Production Designers..........Sia Balabanova
Kate Rance
Costume Designers.............Stacey Berman
and Kara Feely
Marie...................................Sia Balabanova
Accordion Player.................Melissa Elledge
Student 2......................Christopher M. Gray
Student 1..................................Michael Iuga
Guitarist..................................Ricardo Molfa
Bartender...................................Kate Rance
Gorilla.....................................Ramsey Scott
Beulah.....................................Alexa Tibulac
Puppeteer......................Lisa Van Wambeck
Villagers...........................Carmen Angelica,
Joe Barlam, Stacey Berman, Zachary
Broat, Daniel Burke, Mark Camas, Kevin
Collier, Virginia Cromie, Michelle
DeWyngaert, Taylor Derwin, Moira Eden,
Natasha Faye, Marie Fernandes, Darren
Fields, Patrick Gangemi, Andrew Gelardi,
Dylan Goodwin, Barry Greenblatt, John
Heneghan, Michael Higgins, Joseph Jagde,
Sophia Khan, Isabelle Kohler, Elizabeth
Logan, Gwen MacKay, Vanessa McDonnell,
Rachel Minter, Ringo Offermann, Casey
Pratt, Francine Renee, Givanna Robbins,
Jessica Rothman, Uptin Saiidi, Marc
Slanger, Joy Song, Flannery SpringRobinson, Kristen Swanbeck
School Children......Kayla Ayler-McCormick,
Kayli Gural, Mikayla Halpern, , Lauri
Kennedy, Angel Latvenas, Bobby Lundon,
Paul Miller II, Jeffrey D. Petrauskas, Grace
Randall, Nicole Sack, Benjamin Slater
***
Co-Producer.......................Caroline Oliveira
Line Producer.......................Virginia Cromie
1st Assistant Director..............Molly Cooper
2nd Assistant Director............Zachary Broat
Script Supervisor.........Alexandra Torterotot
Sound Recordist..........................Doug Choi
Boom Operator.....................Dylan Goodwin
Art Director & Scenic Painter....Brian Tubbs
Hair & Make-up..........Michelle DeWyngaert
Propmaster.............Amelia Freeman-Lynde
Prop Artisan............................Marc Slanger
Scenic Charge.........................Monica Wille
Model Maker............................ ..Seth Shaw
1st Assistant Camera................Sam Ellison
2nd Assistant Camera.........Kimberly Parker
Gaffer........................................Tristan Allen
Rigging Gaffer......................Zelmira Gainza
Key Grip.....................................Daniel April
Dolly Grip.........................M’Wasi T. Berkley
Grips..............Igor Ibradzic & Nathan Milette
Assistant Costume Designer..Ramsey Scott
Wardrobe Assistants.............Taylor Derwin,
Kevan Pike
Make-up Assistant............Carmen Angelica
Art Department Interns........Eric Brathwaite,
Kyle Casper, Lisa Green, Amanda
Hammett,Ting Liu, Maggie Melchiorre, Ruth
Orrellana, Gwen Roach, Elia Roldan, Paulo
Sabatini, Lisa Van Wambeck & Carly
Whitaker
Production Coordinators....Desiree N. Byer,
Lula Raven Fotis & Christina Fontaness
Production Assistants.............Joseph Allen,
Maha Awad, Megan Collins, Nicholas
Defeis, Lorna Faverey, Natalie Jonah,
Isabelle Kohler, Mo Madono, Erik Marika,
Hope Anne Nathan, Michael Peterson,
Craig Tannenbaum, Elyana Twiggs, Rickey
Waymer, Adam Weglarz, Navah Wei &
Onika Williams
Additional Sound Recording....Scott Anderson
Max Cooke, Brooke Swaney
Additional Boom Operators...Joshua Johnson
Alex Kestner
Additional Photography.......Giles Sherwood
Additional Grip......................Joe Catanzano
Additional 1ST AC..................Erik Kandefer
Additional Gaffer..............Kristen Swanbeck
Music by Aaron Schimberg
Arranged, interpreted & performed by:
Quentin Tolimieri........Organ/Piano
Ricardo Molfa.....................Guitar
Melissa Elledge............Accordion
“I'm Too Young to Die #2”, “How Long How
Long How Long #1”, & “Mr. Severe the
Overseer”
by Eric Magnus & Aaron Schimberg
“Got a Horse His Name is Boredom”
Sung by Kara Feely
Sound Design..................Chris Foster,
Vanessa McDonnell & Aaron Schimberg
Sound Mixer..............................Chris Foster
Special Thanks......Linda Schimberg
Henry Schimberg, Alexis and Jason
Rothenberg, Seth & Alisa Gersch, Barry
Greenblatt, Sam Humphries, Laraine and
Peter Rothenberg, Leo & Martha Twiggs
Produced on KODAK FILM
Cameras by PANAVISION
Lab by FOTOKEM
S
P
Filmed With The Support of the New York
State Governor’s Office for Motion
Picture & Television Development
"Go Down Death" © 2013 Post-Original Productions
LLC. WGA #1244607. This motion picture was
created by Post-Original Productions LLC for
purposes of copyright law in the United States. All
Rights Reserved.