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Q&A with Filmmakers Matt Johnson and Matt Miller
Students in the 窪蹋勛圖 School of Film (OUSOF) got the chance to talk with a couple of filmmakers from Toronto on Oct. 13, during the second in a set of visiting artists to the program. Matt Johnson and Matt Miller, the director/producer team behind the award-winning film, The Dirties, stopped by the film school via Zoom to talk with students about their career, independent film and the process of making a first feature film.
The Dirties, tells the story of two high school friends who decide to make a movie about getting revenge on the students who bully them. As the story develops, one of the students decides the friends should take actual guns to school and get revenge for real. The film won the Best Narrative Feature award at the Slamdance Film Festival in 2013. The films success reached American filmmaker Kevin Smith who then released the film through his company, the Kevin Smith Movie Club.
After the success of The Dirties, Johnson and Miller entered graduate school where they planned their next feature, Operation Avalanche, a mockumentary about the faking of the moon landing in 1969. The production team got permission to shoot inside actual NASA facilities where they staged scenes related to a moon landing coverup. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was released by Lionsgate in 2016. The team is also behind the web series, Nirvanna the Band the Show, which originally ran online in 2007 but was discovered and reimagined by Vice after the making of Operation Avalanche.
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Here is a selection of the Q&A with filmmakers Matt Johnson and Matt Miller:
OUSOF: What should film students prioritize during and after film school?
MM: Find your collaborators and find your people that you like and think you could work with and think you could develop relationships with. Its really the most valuable part of, especially undergraduate film studies, is finding collaborators and finding people because its really hard to make it alone.
MJ: At this stage in the game, people are going to be working on your sets for free or as favors or for very little money for the most part. So youre going to have to be dealing with big personalities who are going to be making demands of you because theyre allowed to because theyre not being paid a salary to work there and theyre, in a sense, doing you a favor. The flip side of that is your gift to them is that Hey, if this movie takes off, youll have a career, too. You need the right people. And you need people who, at the very leastmaybe they dont even understand what youre doing, maybe they dont completely get the idea the same way you get itbut they need to believe in you. And if they believe in you, its actually okay.
OUSOF: How did you approach making your first film, The Dirties?
MJ: I had just gotten out of film school and I was so sickened by the way the philosophy at film school had been propagated on young peoplespecifically, that there were a certain set of rules that you couldnt do when you were shooting movies that we were all forced to abide by. Things like not using copywritten music, not shooting in public, not shooting without location permits, not shooting with people who didnt know they were on camera, not shooting with minors. These are cliches in a way, they are the professional things you shouldnt do when youre making a movie. I was young and quite arrogant and felt like, Oh, these things are so stupid. I should make a movie that just does the opposite of all these things. Then that ethos pushed into this film. Then it was like, Okay, I want to make something that is intentionally very hard to pitch. Like a comedy about a school shooting. Its like how can I make something that seems so deplorable and wrong to do and the production techniques we would use to do it would also be wrong. So, I wanted to do something with a technique that was like, Oh, everybody is going to think this is crazy and stupid and that it shouldnt be done like this. But that really gave me and my friends energy to do it.
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MM: And just to add to that, that was actually incredibly important to how we approached it. Because we were never making a movie to sell or to distribute or to release, it was like, Lets really make this for ourselves and for our friends. What it allowed us to do and what it allowed Matt to do was really hone in on his voice and his vision and what that was going to be. Its my belief that thats the only way you can develop emerging and young filmmakers, is by giving them almost complete autonomy. And thats something the system doesnt allow for.
OUSOF: In The Dirties, how were the scenes set in high school constructed? To what extent did people know specifically what was really happening?
MJ: There was no script. We had no idea what we were going to say because as soon as you have a script and youre working with real people, you really get trapped because youre trying to make something happen verbatim and no human being who doesnt know theyre on camera is going to say exactly what you want. So we stopped planning what we were going to say and just went into environments and pretended to be high school kids. When we were in actual high schools, I would say it was some of the most painless shooting we did because the environment was so rich, and kids were just there, and everybody just thought we were new students or whatever.
MM: Administrators knew we were there and some of the teachers knew but most of the students didnt know. There were no formal announcements or anything.
OUSOF: How do you stay on track and see a project through to its completion?
MJ: With Miller and I, our rule is if we arent still talking about a project, then its over. Its the things that keep coming up, that we keep talking about, that maintain our interest over years. Its these things that youre excited to talk about and youre thinking about without realizing youre thinking about it. You need to figure out what type of work gets you motivated that way and how it can connect to you. So, how is it that your expertise on whatever that subject is, is really a weapon. You have to put yourself in a position where you, right now, with no money, could tell this particular movie or this story, whatever that is, better than Steven Spielberg and $100 million with the same story. Thats the challenge to all young people and to all young filmmakers. What is the thing that you can do, literally, and I dont mean this in the figurative way like, Oh yeah, I have a unique take on my grandmothers Alzheimers or something like that. It needs to be you, the things that make you, you mean that your movie will be better than the million dollar version of that movie. And if you can figure out what that is, then youll be on easy street for the rest of your life because that will lead to another thing which will lead to another thing and then youll just be on track. And youll have discovered your voice and youll be good. But the hard thing is figuring out that first question.
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OUSOF: How do you navigate getting into festivals and knowing what kinds of films get looked at?
MJ: Dont get trapped thinking about all these things like, Oh, when Im in the studio system or when I go to Hollywood or when I go to make a $10 million movie. That is a stress you dont need. As well as worrying about festivals and where youre going to play, etc. Thats also a stress you dont need. Theres a whole world out there. Right now, you need to figure out what your first feature is going to be, what your first project is going to be and thats the only thing you need to worry about and all the other noise is just a way to distract yourself. All the pollution around worrying about the film industry and worrying about the permission system of filmmaking is a huge barrier to entry that is more or less invisible because it doesnt exist. We didnt ask anybody if we could make The Dirties, we just went and made it for fun.
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Johnson and Miller are currently working on their next feature film which will be the first large-scale production not to feature Johnson as a lead actor. Both filmmakers are based in Toronto and teach film at York University. Their independently-minded approach, coupled with their DIY attitude and style has garnered them international acclaim.
Published
January 29, 2021