Gas Food Phantasms: 5 Easy Pieces w/Allison Anders
5 questions, not a single one [sorta] about film, that's the deal.
Radar is a funny thing. Especially when you’re restless. That is, in a creative sense. Singers want to be writers. Writers want to act. Actors want to go to rehab. Or direct. Whichever comes first.
But it’s funny because of how it makes you see the world and how you see the world is as a series of searches for those who share an affinity that will make it possible for you to do everything at all times that gives you some small amount of creative pleasure.
So we pay attention and being into punk in 1988 it was noted when a movie called Border Radio used a lot of music made by people you knew/know. Even better that it involved people we know/knew. And then a name: Allison Anders.
Then Gas Food Lodging and then the name was ALLISON ANDERS and we were in. As a consumer, but if that’s your entry point well, yeah, you’re welcome.
Years go by. People forget people. Then a name and a face through the mist commenting on some pic I posted on IG. It was almost a rock and roll fantasy moment because for the third time now it was ALLISON ANDERS!
I don’t know how she got there or why but the firmament gets tired of repeating itself and we were tired of not paying attention to what it was repeating.
Which brings us here to FIVE EASY PIECES…five questions, not one (sorta) about the discipline/art for which the person is known, five answers.
Enjoy.
[ONE] As someone who had a fractious relationship with his father — who also left after a divorce when I was 5 — that petered out to having only heard from him once since I turned 19, I find that having kids of my own has hardened my heart against any kind of possibility of reconciliation. How'd you manage this?
ALLISON: Wow, so glad to be asked this actually. I think for everyone it's different: that forgiveness for abandonment. Well, deep forgiving is not possible unless we can empathize with the person who trespassed against us -- and who they were at that time when it happened. I managed to forgive my dad in bits and stages. I first tackled it in my first feature script I wrote while a student at UCLA film school called Lost Highway (not the David Lynch movie!). And it involved a guy who abandoned his daughter and she went on to have a child with a man who abandoned her.
But now JUSTICE -- justice moves me, then I feel like life can move forward if justice is done. And justice has very little to do with revenge.
She needed to heal that for her daughters sake. I, too, was a single mom to two daughters whose fathers were out of the picture. I needed to resolve it too, for their sakes. The script won two big screenwriting awards The Sam Goldwyn Award and the first year of the Nicholl Fellowship. And my dad read it and was deeply touched by it.
Later I worked it into my script and film Gas Food Lodging with James Brolin playing the Deadbeat Dad. My father, forever vain, was very pleased I cast someone as good looking to play him. And when my dad was dying, I drove to Vegas (well, of course, he lived in Vegas where else?) and stayed with him two days and let him talk to me about his life, about everything.
When he died, I was at the Venice Film Festival with my film Grace Of My Heart. We were good with each other. There was still more to be done. And I think the biggest thing was going back to my hometown of Ashland, Kentucky and seeing the crappy little apartment we lived in when my dad walked out. He hadn't meant to be gone for good -- he was looking for an opportunity in California. He was 24 years old. Just a kid. A dirt poor kid with little education and no possibilities in that town. He never made much of himself. But at 24 years old he at least had the hope he could.
I empathize with that kid and what he was probably thinking when he left. It helped me to understand, and to realize that he was the one he ultimately abandoned. Not me.
I love that you are a dad and can right what was wrong in how your dad parented you. This is our great hope right? It’s to make life better for our kids, and they will make it better for our grandkids.
[TWO] I was chatting with John Waters in Marfa, Texas a few years back and his take on filmmaking currently was dark and cohered around the stunning fact that he'll probably not make another movie again despite wanting to. But there are ways to make inexpensive movies that people will/can see. Is there a place you get to where making those kinds of movies just doesn't feel good/useful?
ALLISON: I was having this very conversation with my friend John Taylor from Duran Duran. I was on a hike when JT called and I had just passed by some young filmmakers shooting something along the Arroyo in Pasadena. They had simple gear, four-person crew, and one actor in hilarious ‘70s work out clothes. They were laughing and stoked to be shooting.
I gave them a smile of utter glee and envy and said, "And your director has arrived! What're we shooting?" Well they laughed. But I didn't stage a coup, though it was mighty tempting. They had full freedom and fun ahead.
So I was telling that to John, "Oh to be able to shoot like that again!" He said yeah he gets it -- there are times sure he thinks “oh that freedom of playing gigs in a club, making a record that's stripped down”.
But if your vision is larger -- and I'm sure those filmmakers on that highway I had envied have bigger goals too -- at some point it's impossible to do that on your own. Even if you could bankroll it yourself. You want Harry Styles in your movie (uh yes -- I do!) then you are not making a four-person crew flick.
BUT -- then again -- if want to keep your hand in, when no one is giving you permission (budget) to make the movies you want to make then by all means pull together that four-person or 10-person crew and make something satisfying. Harder for me cause I don't shoot and I don't edit. But if you are a filmmaker who can do that -- why not?
[THREE] Longstanding argument between Andre Braugher and myself...I maintain that acting is not a real art, it's a craft. Real art is the creation of something out of nothing and unless you're an improvisational actor, you're reciting lines that were written by someone else. It's a friendly argument, but as a director, how are you seeing this?
ALLISON: Well I have often wondered how actors do it: put themselves at the service of the script and the director. It is a fact that makes me that more in awe of what actors contribute and the courage it takes to TRUST the writer and director. Interestingly, I think we would all make better work if we put ourselves at the service of story and character as the best actors do. This probably doesn't answer your question as to whether it is an art or a craft, but I think it's a higher calling than either -- that it's being of service. (I also feel that fame itself is a spiritual call to service and the best of our celebs recognize that.)
[FOUR] How strong was the temptation to take all of that MacArthur Genius grant jack and do something totally not genius with it like buy a souped up 1965 Chevy Chevelle muscle car?
ALLISON: Hahaha!!! Damn! I so wish I had done that! Seriously I shoulda bought every stupid thing I ever wanted for myself and my kids. I would've at least remembered as we sit here today what I spent that money on. I remember my first year at the MacArthur reunion (yeah it's a thing!) a fellow "Fellow" (a quite old African American jazz musician) was telling me at lunch, "You want to do stuff with that. I got my teeth fixed." And yeah his teeth were pretty! But did I take his advice? No I didn't. And my teeth bear testimony.
[FIVE] As someone with a strong punk scene framed sense of justice and revenge, how did you handle what for me would have been (is) an irresistible urge to level the karma of the people who attacked/raped you when you were a kid?
ALLISON: Ha! Well believe me it's tempting always. You can always make a loser character based on people on wronged you -- and sure I've done that plenty! But beyond that I'm actually not that into revenge, I'm more interested in being done with it. The heat of revenge keeps it going on inside, you know? It's just not very satisfying to me personally. I don't find revenge movies or TV satisfying either.
But now JUSTICE -- justice moves me, then I feel like life can move forward if justice is done. And justice has very little to do with revenge. Revenge is only temporarily empowering. Justice is forever. And it's a much more kickass narrative in storytelling whether it's a movie, an epic TV series or a two and a half minute pop song.