Placing Sherlock Holmes right where you would least expect him (modern day Portland, Oregon), filmmaker Aaron Katz‘s Cold Weather finds the mystery in the mundane. His Sherlock, a man named Doug (Cris Lankenau), works at an ice factory when he’s not trying to solve the case of the missing ex-girlfriend (Robyn Rikoon). He’s even got a crack team of slackers helping him out, in the form of his co-worker Carlos (Raul Castillo) and his sister Gail (Trieste Kelly Dunn).
TFS talked to Katz about moving Mumblecore into a genre plot setting, who makes the Kleenexes in the world and, of course, which Sherlock Holmes is best.
TFS: Your films operate a lot on what is not said. Being the writer, director and editor of your films, how hard is it to check yourself during the process?
Aaron Katz: The good thing for me is that my producers, Brendan [McFadden] and Ben [Stambler], are really involved in the creative process. From basically, as soon I’m done with the first draft they’re the first people I show the script too and through editing they’re there. So, instead of just being one person, who could easily fall into that ‘well, I thought I shot this but I’m going to try and make it this even if that’s not what’s right in front of me.’ I think having three people there is a good sanity check and I think it’s really hard to get away with any nonsense.
If you’ve got something together and it’s starting to look like it doesn’t work, it’s pretty obvious. We started, especially in the editing process, we started with a much longer movie. We put in everything that we shot. And what we ended up doing, what we ended up taking out, was a lot of stuff that’s exposition. There’s a scene, for example, right in the beginning of the movie that makes it a lot more explicit that they’re brother and sister, which in the current version you figure out through observation. And there’s stuff that delves more into Doug’s past: why he’s back in Portland, what happened in Chicago and things like that. And we just, we realized that the kind of movie we wanted to make was one where you come to the conclusion through observation rather than being told by the characters.
And that’s something that we talked about a lot and talked about ‘okay, what is this scene doing and is it telling people information they really need to know or can they figure it out for themselves?’ And I think that had I been alone and had people just come in…because one thing that happened when you cut stuff by yourself is you spend a lot of time doing stuff and get really attached to how it is. And then people come in and say ‘well maybe this isn’t working’ and you get really defensive. Having people just there and doing the process with you, I think that’s a lot less apt to happen and you’re a lot less likely to go off the deep end.
The setting is such a strange and interesting part of the film. Where did the ice factory [where Doug works in the film] come from?
I was just trying to think of a place to have him work and I knew there was an ice factory in Portland. Although, actually, we weren’t able to shoot in the real ice factory in Portland. The ice factory we shot at was a couple of hours outside of Portland. But it seemed like an interesting thing. In retrospect, I wondered if the idea of an ice factory was somewhat suggested to me through Tropical Malady. Which – have you seen Tropical Malady?
Yes I have.
One of the characters [in Tropical Malady] works at more of a block ice factory and there’s a great scene in that movie – I actually am not a huge fan of that particular movie – although I do like Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s work in general. Anyway, he’s like sliding blocks of ice on to a truck and I really remembered liking that scene and then I wondered if ice factories were on my mind because of that.
Also, I like those kinds of jobs. Anything that exists someone has to make it and you don’t think about that. There’s a cup factory somewhere, you know? There’s a Kleenex factory somewhere. It’s this thing you accept in life, but someone’s got to make them.
Not unlike the Duplass Brothers with Cyrus last year, Cold Weather is more accessible, some would say, than Quiet City [Katz’s first film] for audiences. What changes working in genre? What doesn’t?
Well, as an audience member, the kinds of films I really like are genre films. Especially action films from the late 80s and early-to-mid 90s. I’m a big fan of French thrillers from the 50s and 60s and American stuff like Bullitt and Point Blank. I really like all those [films] just as someone who enjoys watching movies.
And I also really like films that are about real, ordinary people. So making a film that combines those two things seems like, to me, something really enjoyable. That’s the kind of film that I would like to see. So it wasn’t really too much of a stretch to decide to make a film like that.
I would have to imagine there was more of a script this time around than there was for Quiet City? Or am I way off on that?
No, you’re not way off. Although, that’s true and not true. Quiet City did have a script. It was a normal script you could read like any other normal script. But when we shot it we used the script rather than trying to take lines from it verbatim; it was more like a blueprint. Like ‘okay, in this scene these three things happen and who knows what will happen after that.’ In this movie, some scenes were like that. For example, the scene where they’re [Doug and his sister are] throwing grapes off the roof was very much in the same vein as how we shot a lot of Quiet City.
But then there were scenes, for example where they’re moving ice from one side of the room to another and Carlos and Doug are first getting to know each other, that and maybe 75 percent of the scenes are pretty close to the script. But oftentimes people put things in their own words. In the past I have felt things needed to be one way or the other. Like on Dance Party, U.S.A., it was a really tight script, on Quiet City it was really loose. And both Quiet City and Dance Party it was very much hand-held. And in this one there’s quite a bit of hand-held but also a lot of shots that are a lot more formal with zooms and lockdown shots.
I sort of had this feeling in the past that combining things like that was somehow going to not be, you know, it wasn’t going to be seamless. You were going to be able to tell when one thing happened and when you were doing a different thing. And I always hate when hand-held is used in movies in indicate that things “are getting intense!.” I was worried that it would be perceived like that. But on this movie I don’t think I decided to do this; it was just the way it happened. That we did what was kind appropriate for each scene and we didn’t even necessarily talk about it. Whatever felt appropriate would kind of come to the surface and that’s how the actors and I would approach the scene and that’s how Andrew Reed, our Director of Photography, and I would approach the shot list. And try not to think about it on this level of ‘well, how are these things going to match up?’ and try to do it in the way made the most sense to us. And it all cut together in a way that did make sense.
In regards to that shift, there were moments in which the camera would cut to still landscape shots, as though buffering between scenes-
Just to briefly talk about those [shots], also setting the film in a specific place, especially a place I know as well as Portland [Oregon], is really important to me and I really wanted the audience to feel not only what these characters were doing but also what their surroundings were like. So I think it both works in that way and also, like you said, as a place to take a breath. It helps with the pacing of the film.
You’ve always operated on a small budget, and you were just talking about not being able to shoot in the ice factory in Portland. How much does a small budget hinder how larger grand the mystery can be?
It’s something we learn to operate with. But it definitely – I wouldn’t say it hinders it – but there are just certain things that aren’t on the table. You can’t have a car flip over. You can’t have gunplay on the light rail. There are things that are on the list of ‘things that are not feasible.’ But, I think for the scope of the mystery we were going for there was a lot that we could do and we certainly went through a lot of permutations trying to figure out how to make the mystery work.
Honestly, I think that having limitations is kind of a great thing. That’s not to say I am not interested in making a Western that would cost millions and millions of dollars, but I think that whatever your limitations are shouldn’t be viewed as a bad thing. I think working inside limitations, whether it’s the lines from script or what location you can shot at, forces you to evaluate what’s really there and forces you to be creative about it and make something really specific. Which I think is a good thing.
On a lighter note, Sherlock Holmes plays a big part in this film. What is your favorite Sherlock Holmes adaptation/who is your favorite Sherlock Holmes?
Well, by far my favorite adaptation is the Jeremy Brett/Edward Hardwicke BBC series from the 80s and 90s. Those guys are, especially Jeremy Brett…I mean my whole perception of who Sherlock Holmes is definitely informed by Jeremy Brett. Anytime I read Sherlock Holmes now I picture Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes. He’s perfect as Sherlock Holmes. And similar to Doug in the movie I have a lot of disdain for Basil Rathbone, I mean the whole…I feel like up until that BBC series there was a lot of getting Sherlock Holmes wrong. A lot of deerstalker caps, ridiculously large pipe, Watson being a bumbling idiot. There was almost like a cartoonist quality to the adaptation that are not at all what the books are about.
I’m sure you don’t love the Guy Ritchie version then?
You know I actually haven’t seen it. I’m afraid to see it. The casting seems all right to me but the idea of turning Sherlock Holmes into this over-the-top, outrageous…it almost has like a Pirate of the Caribbean aesthetic where there’s like crazy giants with sledgehammers and crazy explosions and stuff. I feel like that’s not what Sherlock Holmes is about. Sherlock Holmes is much more based, well not quite the real world, but more of a real world than that. A different kind of romanticizing of London. I feel like what Sherlock Holmes is is so great it just seems dumb to me to turn it in to something like that.
Smaller, bigger, what’s next for you?
Well, I’m not sure. Regardless of the size, I’m definitely starting to feel like it’s time to get going on another film. The scripts that I’m working on right now run the spectrum of something that can be made for what Cold Weather cost to a 1920s, gentle woman/rogue, cat burglar movie that would need many, many more times the budget of Cold Weather. I think whatever it is will probably be something that has elements of genre in it but that, you know, that the people in it are real people. That’s something I really enjoyed exploring in Cold Weather. I feel like that to me is something I always keep on doing. You know there’s a novel that’s a Western that I’d love to adapt. I doubt it will ever happen because of the book’s legal circumstances, even if anyone wanted to make a Western –
Hey, True Grit was a success…
Oh yeah, True Grit, This is the time! I should try and capitalize on that. But regardless of the setting I think what makes films interesting for me are the people in them.
Cold Weather opens this Friday, February 4th.
Do you know Katz’s work? Are you a fan of his past films?