Q&A with Randy Haberkamp, Catherine Hardwicke, Todd Holland, Nina Menkes, Nancy Richardson

I'm Randi Hebert camp and I'm really happy you haven't seen my film yet so that's the good news I'm really really honored to be moderating this Q&A because when I was and we were all in film school at the same time and I was aware of all these people and as a kid from Ohio a little town of seven hundred people I was incredibly intimidated by these people because I was aware of their work and their you know really I think we have a really unique group of films here everybody has a different point of view so Katherine I I saw your film and I think Nancy's very early when I was starting out I saw Nina's a little bit shortly thereafter I was aware of her work as well and Todd I think we were in a couple classes together and and I didn't see your film until you know it was sent to me on a bike I think we all forget to how much of student films have changed because digital filmmaking now you know I mean we show student films through the Academy and I'm just like oh my god these are like polished professional slick things because the tools are there you know my films on super 8 you know and you guys are doing animation you know stop motion and and visual effects you know practical visual effects and you know shooting on sixteen millimeter and editing on film it's a whole different thing but anyway I wanted just to ask you a couple questions you've started in animation and had animation but you also ended up doing production design and then became a director so Todd can you tell me what at UCLA where your head was then and and and what what were you what were you what was the path you were looking for were you looking to direct or was that something that I was pretty random I guess I mean especially seeing my film very random but I had I was an architect and I had my degree from University of Texas and had worked as an architect before I came here I did not know anything about film clearly and so I didn't I think it's really fun super random I just worked on all over Christmas and just built that set and got people you know some of the professor's were dancing around and just like ridiculous stuff you know just for fun I think because architecture was so rigid that I just wanted to do something crazy and you know just try things I had no idea any categories in film or I hadn't even even heard of production designer and it was just all very wild I didn't have any structure at all I realized but after I did that then I needed to make money and so people said hey you used to be an architect then you could production design you know and so I you know Roger Corman like just production designer your families and you know making a pot feel you know so I was just open to anything you know and my herb and I wrote this project together you know everything was very random my path I say your story sense was so keen to me is such a satisfying journeyer film it had a beginning a middle and it was really so clearly told and your character you're the dog was such a specific attitude you know that was consistent I mean it was really smart animation and just a satisfying journey you know you had you really paid it off and lots of fun style I remember I went and you know photographed a real like pitbull and then I finally I can like studied it and then I found a guy that I thought had this like you know bad attitude an actor and so I studied him and make him into the dog you know I don't know I mean I tried to have it do it but I did not know what I was doing at all yeah so Nina you again coming from Ohio you know I knew Disney films we didn't there was this is before VHS even and and so the idea of understanding and having seen you know when while or Bergman or Fellini or any of these things that was all completely outside my realm and you clearly knew I could tell that you knew who you were and what you wanted to do and of course I'm like trying to figure out how to just get to school you know and so where did this where did your style and you because your films are very consistent what what where did the style where did your sensibility where do you feel that came from and what did the film school you know what did that do to I don't know where it came from it was very very strong in me you know I had just a very profound intuitive sense of what I wanted to do and I just did it you know and I I I remember feeling like I just I had done you know when I was a teenager I was a dancer and I've done photography and I had all these like my family's from the Middle East and it was I felt like I had all these diverse weird wacky things in my life but when I got to melnitz I just was like I felt like I come home and I just like I don't know it was really a kind of like sort of a very deep revelation I I just started like the the super 8 film that was my project one I remember when I shot it with my sister Tinka who then I worked with for many years going forward but we you know I was just I shot it at my mother's apartment with you know super a camera and Tinka you know try this try this try this and then when we looked at the rushes that we got back I mean I was kind of knocked out myself because I was like oh you know and I I don't know I can't say where it came from I it I always feel like I channel my films and I and you know I haven't changed my working style whatsoever since the first Super you know I just like do this like very weird idiosyncratic thing and I'm not sure where it comes from or why but it's sort of like I'm I'm a slave to whatever that is I'm not directing it it's directing me so but did you feel supported and what you wanted to do I first totally well I just wanted them to stay away and let me do my thing but I the great thing was when my you know memory was that it was a kind of a hippie school hippie atmosphere like basic camera basic editing go you know so for me like cuz I knew exactly not new in my head but you know I felt what I wanted to do so I just wanted people leave me alone which they did and so I I think I stayed a graduate student as long as possible like twelve years and I just kept me and then when I graduated I still kept making the films the same kind of way and I'm still kind of making them a same kind of way so I would love to have a big budget but I want to just say like I was so blown away by these films they're so incredible and like Nancy I think if she hadn't been a woman would be a major director today because she's a major editor I don't I know she's a major in there but I think if she if it wasn't for sexism I mean that film was incredible she edited characters I know but I think that fell most incredibly directed and that's that is a sign like both of us in different ways should have you know gotten more money and more a claim on the director level that's a feminist this year but I I remember at school as being a place where there I didn't feel that sexism in the classes I thought there was a really nice maybe I know no I'm just saying that I think it's really interesting that UCLA you know develop people like Katherine and Nance and you and and you know monopoly Spears came before and chicks tram you know there are others I just think it's interesting that UCLA as a school I felt had a really nice mixture of attitudes and people I I really learned from that I really felt that was a great incubator for a lot of people and I I felt that there was I think people celebrated the differences at that particular time I don't know what it's like now but so anyway and the professor's even you know we had Jorge / Lauren and Frank valor with his accent in his pointer and I thought it was a really interesting even though there was also a lot of dissent going on because things were kind of disorganized it turned out I learned that people I think people learned that the disorganization actually taught you what you know the studio and working was gonna be like you know anyway Nancy I agree your film was one that I saw very early thinking oh good god am I supposed to do something like that you know it you know and I mean that in a very compliment really because I think it's a film that you know where we were all learning and and for actors or your casting people who are working for free so I thought you found a good cast I thought you had a script that was well written and it's certainly well edited and it's a saying I heard you I think used the word slow when you were mumbling just so it was that you or thanks good I would probably make some yeah but I think at the same time you create a mood you have you know what you have a piece that really I felt it's a nice being part of the reason I would make the trips now is that styles have changed right that we just everything is based up in a different way now than it was then but I do remember it's interesting that you I don't want to really bring up sexism but I had none of the security that Nina has in her process and I was really like what am I doing here and I don't have any money in you know I had spent years working as a waitress and I thought this was a contained way to work in one location and I shot it in four nights and what's the Tomine with the cheapest film that anybody at my year had made but I do remember trying to get a crew and like it was guys who I was asking to work on it who were like the better lighting guys and grips and gaffers and they were like Nancy you know when I go out to breakfast I bring a newspaper cuz I don't want to watch the stuff the waitresses do and I felt very discouraged by that and I but I went ahead and and made the film so in what it was there there was some it wasn't from the professors but I do think that was there and that continues today definitely in terms of telling stories about women versus body movies with guys so I just I only just watched the film again last week and that was the thing that came back as a memory to me was there's sort of people kind of ridiculing the smallness of the film in a way I well I'm sorry I I remember thinking wow what a great intimate wonderful and you were one of the you know I was this kid coming in you were one of the people that talked to me in class yes you did and and you're you were you were very friendly not you weren't or really talking about it seems like you were very nice so just take it take it from me that meant something to me at the time so you know I came in to film school not understanding anything about filmmaking at all and like I remember being the only person in class saying you know raising my hand and saying doesn't this town already come on their film laughed at me and but but I always kind of okay asking these stupid questions like that so later people came up and said I didn't know that so Todd you were another one that struck me as being very confident in knowing what you wanted to do and you know again the way people appear and the way they are usually not always the same but I think your film shows a lot of confidence and and you know the fact that you design your effects and all that is what did you come into and what did you say like give you and what were the things that you were trying to accomplish with your film um ionically I think Nina and I wanted the same things we want somebody to give us the tools and get out of the way Macomb is a funny story because I started it and then my best friend at school committed suicide and I then felt I had to make something important I was had this idea already and I tried to make a film about his death and I shot it and like Bryan Cranston is even in it I never finished it because I got to this this pinnacle scene it was trying to be a Hitchcock he thing about knowing the truth about someone and I got to Griffith Observatory and with her for this and for the view it was totally sucked in and the metaphor is my shot list literally disintegrated in my hands because the moisture in the air all night at all I'd shoot and I realized in that moment I had no idea what I was doing I had no idea what I want to say with this the grief was too close and I and I literally spent the summer anguishing and said I'm gonna go figure out what I'm gonna do I'm not gonna forgive myself for making if I go back my whole career on a film that I didn't intend to make or am I gonna go back and make the thing that I loved and I literally forgave myself box that up and went back and started chicken thing and I realized and talking to a friend recently about it I realized I don't he said I know how you made chicken thing I don't know how you made chicken thing like and I realized I just couldn't fail because I kind of had already failed once it took three and a half years and make that movie and so many things went wrong I shot half of it because the lab called the first year with my friend nice to this day my friend Justin Clara back they call just stop shooting stop shooting it's all black it's all scratched it's all you know and just wads of film was destroyed you can see the emulsion building up on screen and so I said you know what I could do this I just learned so it took a year to build all the effects and I came back and and I shot this second half of the film with all their facts and I had something good was gonna build the effects and they failed me and so I just realized nobody cares more than I do and if as long as I have a time and UCLA gave me the time so I look at the time I can make 10 minutes a film that is all mine and done the way I want it to be and if I fail based on that at least I've failed on my own terms like I had to get 10 that's a film I said Nick no apologies is the best I could do I could not in that moment I could not make a thing better than this and for me this is the story of my origin when I was 5 I saw an episode of Jonny Quest which scared the [ __ ] out of me and I knew at 5 I wanted life to always be that exciting and like my end of the amorphous troubles in our home and my parents my parents marriage and all that kind of distilled into this invisible invisible electric blob and I fighting against invisible forces and for me it became who's in control is the media in control or my in control of my destiny what I became a filmmaker based on him seeing something that just imprinted on my brain so that's what I try to make with this but I wanted to have fun and that was my anarchist move at UCLA I wasn't political I wasn't social activist I wanted to entertain you know and that was hard then you had basically [ __ ] everybody I'm gonna make my little horror comedy you know and so I didn't think anybody would think any attention me for a long time and then when I came back the second year to shoot it people were starting to whisper about it was them you know but I literally just put my head down eyes made my movie cuz I knew that's what I had to do because it wasn't in vogue at that time you know USC was all about entertainment in Hollywood and I was the outlier trying to entertain cuz that's what I that's why I came into film I wanted to direct since I was five and then by the time I was I want to tell stories at five but how Mosin nine I knew I want to be a director even though I'd never met one or heard of I mean I would live a little tiny town in Pennsylvania so you see I gave me what I wanted they gave me the enough tools and his [ __ ] out of freedom and I decided to hang myself on that so real quickly is there can you name one or two or three people professors or fellow students who were really you're glad they were there or some you learned something from them maybe maybe you wish they weren't there but then found out they taught you or something yeah well in my film not I the credits Roach Wrangler is credited to Michael miner who went on to write Robocop and the punk guy who comes in with Dan adieus who you know went on to become a major television director and Jeff Gilmore was one of my like dot like grips who went on to run the Sundance Film Festival for 20 years [Laughter] same on yours and yours I I really credit Bob Nakamura because he did not understand he might kept my guides got my guy got my counselor Whitaker advisor and he did not understand my project one this is not it this is my project - he didn't understand it and then he didn't he advised against it I made oh I get it now and then I kind of earned his respect and he just was supportive and lovely and then of course every single person on the crew I'm grateful to we were I mean you're always so indebted to you you know and half of the murders studio-x to your presidents and and you know at this amazing the people Dan McDermott I just thought they worked with him on a TV series that for thirty years where our careers had never crossed again and we just did a TV show together a couple years ago so it's just there's lots of people you're dead and my re-recording mixer was another student Clark Henderson who became head opposed to Technicolor Abdul in the tech office anyway do we have time for a couple questions does anybody have a question I'd like to ask they're gonna give me notes anyway okay well I think is one of the things that I a lot of students are a lot especially asked right now is do you need to go to film school what's your answer to that which ah I mean I work at the DGA in diversity and we're always encouraging yeah but it you got a phone make a movie so I don't know what that answer is anymore I know at the moment I made this you know there's a lot of focus on film's goals to find talent but now people just I don't I don't know that answer anymore actually because you can make a great movie I you can but I I think there's a number of famous film directors they didn't go to film school like didn't Quentin Tarantino is long but at from the perspective my perspective of having gone to film school for me it was like the most incredible thing that ever happened to me in my life the perspective of being a teacher at CalArts I think that I I think that at least in a good program I think it's it's really amazing what you learn in film school I mean I friend of mine Mike plant he does the short selections he told me that before the whole digital explosion with you know everyone can make a phone on their iPhone so before they used to get let's say 300 films submitted to Sundance for the shorts and then there would be like 30 good ones and now they get three thousand films submitted and there's 30 good ones so you know the fact that everyone has an iPhone doesn't mean that people are making great work I mean I don't know it's it's a different world you know well I'm gonna say I think how many times I think film school gives you a community of people that you are probably gonna work with for the rest of your career and they become your best friends and your collaborators and they're you're there you're you know like I think education in general people are we saying just really does a degree really get you a better job and the education is the end in itself that's the experience of those years that you spend learning and in that environment is an experience that is invaluable and shouldn't be valued by some future paycheck and and film school is another experience like that and what people choose to do with it you know some people take a wrong turn and I see these things happen all the time and but I do see students coming out of film school and maybe getting entry-level jobs and then shooting up much faster than people coming and getting an entry-level job who don't have the phone school knowledge and training and and craftsmanship well and to be allowed to start over like Todd is talking about you know that doesn't happen and to fail safely yeah fail you get to fail safely in film school where you're not gonna get to fail safely up out there I'm what I always say one of the the best advice I was never given was go to film school in California because I was unhappy with LA and I looked at Boston in Columbia and Chicago and and but I stayed I said UCLA before I got you know I came in as an undergrad and you know came and declared and had to wait to get into film school and but go to film school California because all your friends get jobs and they become this network that helps bridge UCLA had it had been in the eighties a terrible gulf between school and the industry and you know and those friends that community that supported you through schools is then becomes that connection to they became assistants I mean literally my film went the same as Pilbara because Danelle black became assistant to Kathleen Kennedy and she said could you film she worked on the film it she could at getting to birth picking second season dressers for amazing stories get your film in and she personally put it on that stack of films but she she was a student with me you know so that Network would not exist I mean networking is one of the most important things I had this whole thing and of course I teach that kind of come from teaching that says joy it is protect your joy hone your craft expand your network repeat you know and you know we have to end the DJ we don't talk about joy but as filmmakers we have to sustain a career of long haul you have to protect your joy and then you have to consistently hone your craft no matter if you're working or you're not if you're employed or you're not working whatever you're doing have to hone your craft keep making stuff and the next biggest thing is expand your network because and so that's at film school became a network of friends and support but a network of also of connections I mean for me you know most everybody that I hire comes from a film school and they're just film schools because they've got all the skills that's right well I think we're supposed to go on if you have if anybody has a mess last comments they want to make you mean go away no yes I just want to say that one of the things UCLA gave me is I became aware of the film archive and the film archive is putting on this and the reason my film got pulled in is it was sitting on the shelf because I thought oh this is where films go so I gave a copy to that I'm perhaps you guys did too I don't know anyway I now work for the Academy Film Archive and that was a career transition that after I got tired of working with executives at CBS who only had none of whom went to film school that all had MBAs and had never really even like surprised when I got tired of that I went into the whole thing with some preservation so it was a great segue for my career that if the UCLA hadn't been what it was and structured the way it was I don't know where I'd be anyway so I'm grateful for that you're going to see my film I guess coming up it's a project one shot on super 8 and the one thing I discovered this week is that all my UCLA films are about paranoia and I think that that's my reaction to moving to Los Angeles and going what is going on and of course needing to be a serious filmmaker because you know that's what you know and again yeah I thought I was going to be an entertainer too and it was one of those things where okay maybe I should nurture people and and you know be like a producer executive that's why there were so many project ones about paranoia and is it yes what in look every we'd all just move to Los Angeles and I remember so many films I hope it's not yours where you know there's a minimal pose or people um people a mime is trying to give a flower to somebody on the beach you know I mean they're always trying to give to give acts of love I don't respond think it's a hard but we're all so lonely yes exactly exactly and yet you had to work with what you had so anyway there was something else I mean people are afraid of mines know so many moms in project was like oh what is the deal with mine but I the one thing and you're not going to believe it I'm seeing the film but the one thing that this film too taught me was John Baum was my adviser and he sat down with me in ten minutes and showed me because my film would have been about twice as long so you're lucky he got to it but he really showed me just really basic things that were wrong with my film and how to edit and that skill was something I carried on when I went to CBS and was trying to make cuts and things you know people say it's all perfect learn this nobody else knew so it was great to have that expertise not and just again it would sometimes with that type of thing it's just having somebody to post was the big mystery yeah then our technology was so arcane but yeah double system sound all I know Alex Cox was my teaching assistant makes my film so when you hear the sound on it it's not very good because he was worried about repo man and and working on other things anyway I'm really happy to see you all I'm really happy to see your films again and I'm really happy to to be able to you know think about thank God it's not all these films are 30 something they're not 40 something yet so anyway but we're the youngsters of this perspective congratulations to you all