RABBIT PIX
Saturday 29 October 2005, at 7pm
London National Film Theatre NFT3

“Trust and offerings”

RABBIT PIX
James Herbert, USA-Italy, 2004, 35mm, colour, sound, 75 min

Carter Davis and Maria D’Amato, the couple with French toast, lived in my house. They were lovers. James Taylor, the blond boy lifting stone while in lawn chair (opening), was a painting student of mine. (His parents warned him that I would want to use him in a film … they are artists, former students of mine). Pier Nicola Bruno, the photographer, was in La Presenza (which has never been screened publicly). His girlfriend, at the time we began the film, a Canadian living in Cortona, appears against the tree with a local boy from Cortona, Edouardo Fracasso. The attractive couple seen often, detached and posing, are Alessandro, a former model from Milan home in Cortona, and his then girlfriend Lucia. The juggler is a street performer here. The young boy dropping the glass is an Albanian immigrant we found in a neighbouring town. I have known Coky (P. N. Bruno) for five years and talked him into a film when he saw the interview with me in the Oberhausen Festival catalogue. He has opened up possibilities to use local people … with trust … but I rely on core group of American friends to get the film underway here in Italy. (Language problems etc.)

Carter has appeared in a total of four films and can intuit exactly the right moves on his own, with no direction. I pay the actors, as well as offering room, board, transportation for the Americans. I’m currently working with Maria D’Amato and a Norwegian she met in New York City. Flew him here for the new project. She suggested him and I trust her. He is great. I occasionally will get someone sight unseen but not usually. Most people have exactly the wrong idea of who to select, except kindred spirits Carter and Maria. One time I saw a beautiful German couple visiting Cortona and boldly asked them if I could film them. They were very agreeable. I showed them my book ‘Stills’ to demonstrate some credentials. Once used a kid from a town near Lago di Como and a girl from Florence, a friend of a friend. Good results, as she would not have anything to do with the lower class nude boy. A successful tension. ‘Di Luce in Luce.’ A male renting a room in my house and a female model from the art school. ‘Alcove in the Palazzo Rosso.’ They became lovers.

My partner for seven years appeared in 14 films (two a year). She also helped cast others for her to be with. Once I filmed 10 young friends on a hippie commune outside of Athens, Georgia, for Night Horses. Carter’s best friend, Andy, was flown over here for Speedy Boys. I knew what he looked like as he also lived in my house. Over the years, many people who lived in the house (it averages 13 residents, a southern mansion) have been in various films. Occasionally I use students from the UGA ‘Studies Abroad Program’ – with great care. Scars, girl in Jumbo Aqua, James Taylor in Rabbit Pix. For the females in Speedy Boys I used Carter’s then girlfriend (the only person in clothes, her choice) and two female dancers connected to a local famous modern dance company. I never use theatre or film actors or students of same as their delivery is way too dramatic and over the top for the visual treatment I like. Also I like the flatter delivery non-actors have for my purposes (this is subject to criticism of course).

For a strange selection of models in John Five I used a principle’s lover sight unseen the famous teen gothic novelist, Poppy Z. Brite. She was plump but beautiful and worked well even though out of my canon. I have an elderly couple in Automan. They came with the house in John Five. Willing eccentrics. The lead in Automan was Graham Hacker, who lived in Athens as a town kid. I used him also in Trains with his girlfriend. The white dog was hers.

Automan girl in car was a model in the art school, obtained on the day of shooting as another girl bailed in fear. People are chosen primarily on looks and physical demeanour or affect. The age range is 18 to 26 or so, lean and somewhat free spirited. Usually art kids. It is essential that they not be talking head types disconnected from their bodies. In fact, a definite natural animal grace, a kind or organic movement that is supple and confident. I can tell whether I can use them by how they sit in a chair: brittle or sprawling. I can also usually tell who will trust me and themselves in a vulnerable situation. My new project came up short on one person I riskily thought would be interesting because he was a talking head … but he bailed on hearing the content of the piece.

No directing in the traditional sense. Figures are put into events, or grounds as the painter might say, and only vague notions of content are ever suggested. I would also not direct the placement of a leg, for example, or the explicit gesture of a hand. I just bore the models until they give in to the moment. Or, in contrast, accept the urgency of the one-take sound scene. Scenes in the features are sometimes storyboarded to get people in the right frame of mind. Mostly it’s about getting on my wavelength and rhythm. Carter is amazing at this; that’s why I’ve used him so frequently. Again, most things are one take only – and by financial necessity the 35mm is always one take – without rehearsal because non-actors go too flat if they rehearse.

Only once in Q & A have the subjects of voyeurism or pornography come up, but they come up in interviews frequently. The only time at a screening was for Speedy Boys at Edinburgh. Young-ish guy asks, ‘Is this the first time soft core pornography has been shown at the Edinburgh Film Festival?’ Actually, I told him that down the street they were screening [French female director who specializes in explicit sex scenes] but that I thought pornography could always be differentiated from art because porn was utilitarian and art was useless. I added that I was glad he got hold of the wrong end of a half-truth.

I do use explicitness as another layer or texture because it sits differently in the psychic space and, like violence, gives range to the total orchestration. It also allows for dynamic range in time-based medium. But to me dropping the glass, rubbing the rabbit, hard-on by a tree are all part of the palette and not a reason for the films being. Of course I recognise narrative implications and pushing buttons, but really am most interested in dynamic range tactility, as well as psychically. It’s all well known in long range of the human condition, storytelling, painting. Nobody cares what went on in the Parthenon; we just like the way the building looks.

Nudity is a lifelong fascination but also a voice. I do love the way people change their body language when they are nude: lots of opportunities for interesting motion and twists of limbs etc. that you never witness in the clothed. Then there is the mix of innocence and remotely, (mostly for men I have discovered) threat. Someone drinking a glass of water does it differently nude, believe me. The subtle difference is everything.

In about 50 short films I always shot in 16mm, then re-photographed onto 16mm using primitive hand-operated projectors, one frame at a time in still mode, like slides. Front projection onto a piece of paper 11×14 inches. The features Scars, Speedy Boys and La Presenza were all straight 35mm no re-photography. Jumbo Aqua is the first film to shoot in 16mm and then hand enlarged to 35mm. Rabbit Pix is different still in that all the colour is 16mm hand enlarged to 35mm colour, but the black and white is straight 35mm, no re-photography. Rabbit Pix has about three seconds cannibalised from Jumbo Aqua, not Speedy Boys. That footage is all from another source. But a lot of Rabbit Pix revisits my past work, in attitude, intentionally. I thought of it as an homage to film and grain and analogue before I tried my hand at digital in all its non-plasticity and coldness. That’s what I am currently dealing with in a new piece. So Rabbit Pix may be a kind of ending or coda … but never say die.

(James Herbert, from email discussions with Mark Webber, 2005)

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