Director and Writer Craig Zobel was kind enough to do an interview with us this week about his new movie, Great World of Sound. The film is about a pair of scam artists who don't exactly know they're scam artists, landing jobs as fake producers who promise fame and fortune to any musician who comes to call.
We rang Craig up, and he switched over from the other line with Kene Holliday, who played Clarence in the film. "He just called to ask what's going on this Friday," Craig said, laughing. This Friday being the release of the film in NYC, where Craig resides for part of the year. His other home is in Athens, Georgia. He tells us the pace is much slower there, and he goes there to be sane.
(Random Craig Zobel Fact: He was one of the original creators of Homestar Runner.)
FABULIST: I saw your movie last week and it was really, really funny and heartbreaking, both.
CRAIG: (laughs) I guess that's kind of true. But that's good. I intended it to not just be a light-hearted comedy.
Well, we cover a lot of music at the Fabulist, so there's definitely that part of me that's a little bit, "Oh, God! Those poor people!" But it's funny at the same time. I read that your dad was once part of a similar song-sharking venture. What was that like growing up?
He only did it for a brief period of time, so I just heard about it. He kind of realized what was up, and was just like, "Oh, what am I doing?" He quit really quickly in. It's interesting to hear you talk about that, because I know my dad's not a bad guy, and you would think someone like that was a bad guy. I think a lot of me wanting to make the movie was the realization that the type of people doing these kinds of things aren't doing them because they're jerks, intrinsically. He just needed money, and this sounded like a job, this sounded good. Then he started rationalizing what he was doing, you know, in order to keep the job. I think that was a major inspiration for the movie.
I think that came across really well, that the main characters were just people too, and not bad at all. So you don't have a musical background in your family, you were coming from the scam artists' perspective when you were making the movie.
Exactly. I'm a big music fan and have been. But honestly I wanted to make the movie because I can't make music, but I can make a movie. I suck at music.
That's hilarious. Where did you find the bands that were trying out in the film?
Some of them are local. Do you know the hidden camera aspect of the film? We did this thing where we built rooms that looked like hotel rooms and we put ads in the local newspapers asking for people to come in and audition as if we were a real record company. We had hidden cameras in the rooms and they would walk in and meet the two actors and go through about a 45 minute long audition. Then at some point, either the actors would call it quits and say "maybe you need to talk to our friends," or we would just cut and invite them into another room and sit down and explain what we were doing. That it was not actually a record company, that it was this movie project.
Was that hard to do?
Yeah, it was really hard. It was multiple versions of being really hard, because you can do that thing where you snowball the people into signing the [release forms] and get them to leave. But we were trying to be as sincere as possible. This is where we're coming from, this is what we're trying to do. You tell us whether or not you want to be a part of this after asking as many questions as possible, we're here, and we will stay here with you as long as you want. We would take them backstage to look at the equipment, and to see us and eat with us. So it was multiple versions of hard, it was hard because we were trying to be sincere
We actually just two weeks ago were able to set up a screening in Charlotte, to show those people the movie. We set it up at a place where we could actually have bands play afterwards, that had a stage. It was really cool, I got to talk to a lot of them and get their feedback, what they felt about it. It was the best screening we've had of the movie ever.
For me, it would seem there would be the people who were really happy to be in a movie, and there would be the people who would be upset that weren't getting a record out of it.
It was hard, it was uncomfortable-- yeah, you're not getting a record out of it. And to go one step further, those things in the newspaper are never real. When I talked to people [at the screening] they'd say, "Yeah, I was kind of embarrassed that I didn't know, but now that I've watched the movie I can't wait for it to come out on DVD for me to own it." They were really behind it.
How did you get Joanna Newsom involved?
By mistake, kinda. I knew I needed Tricia Paoluccio, who plays Gloria, to a sing a song a cappella that would be really stunning and obviously an amazing song. I asked a friend of mine to help compose something and figure something out for that. The very first song in the film is scored by a band called Pyramid, and it was those guys. Ideally that was going to work out great. I sent him and Tricia the Joanna Newsom song as my example, and Tricia loved the song and memorized it. Because of schedules we didn't get her the new song until right before she came to shoot her scenes. We did it with the song Pyramid wrote, and it was good, but she was less comfortable singing the song. So I said let's shoot the Joanna Newsom song, too, and if it's good we'll go down that road and see if we can convince Joanna and Drag City to be cool with it. When we edited it, I thought it was obvious, it was so interesting the way Tricia sang the song. So I just started the process. I've never actually spoken to Joanna herself, but through Drag City Joanna saw the song and liked it and agreed.
Who was the guy who was making the trumpet sounds?
That's a guy named John Pfiffner. I really love that song. One of the camera operators said he should call this number and audition for this thing. He knew it was a movie, but he didn't quite know what it was until afterward. He wasn't necessarily a person that answered an ad. There were a couple of people like that. Like Cockpit, the band with girls that are dressed like stewardesses. A band named Cockpit that dresses up like stewardesses? That's hilarious. So we invited them to come in.
But the little girl who played Kyndra, she was an actress.
She was an actress, yeah. Mahari Conston.
You did really well, there was so much reality blurring into the fiction that I could honestly not tell which was which for most of the film.
Awesome, thank you. That's the best compliment I could get. Thank you very much, seriously.
So what's the next project coming down the pipe?
I'm trying to get something going hopefully for right after New Year's. We will see, if all the pieces fall into place. It's a comedy also set in the South, kind of dark. I've been recently referring to Great World of Sound as a really funny drama. So this is actually more of a comedy, that's about small-town politics, just interesting small-town South. Knock on wood, that will happen soon. **
