SXSW Film Interview: Paul Gordon directs The Happy Poet

All of the locations were very generous with letting us shoot in their places of business—usually for free—and the City of Austin Parks Department was very hospitable as well; about half the film takes place at Auditorium Shores. And most of the customers you see in the film are people who just happened to be in the park when we were shooting and agreed to be in the film. It was a lot of fun running around Austin, and pretty much everyone we interacted with was cool with us shooting and often interested in being in the film.

What’s it like juggling acting and directing, and what’s it like to direct your friends?

It’s not easy juggling acting and directing. Casting is always very important, but even more so when you’re acting because you’re not going to be able to try to shape performances much during the shoot. With the tight shooting schedule and because I was acting, we knew we’d have to come into the shoot pretty much ready to go, so we rehearsed a fair amount ahead of time. We videotaped them and then I’d watch them and make notes before the next rehearsal.

The act of directing is contrary to what you want to be doing when you’re acting—you want to be in the character and not watching yourself or the scene from the outside. I guess it was a little mentally taxing, but the whole thing was so collaborative that I never worried about it much and was mostly just having fun. Dave Hartstein, the producer and A.D. was usually watching the monitor and helping out with notes.

You began as a fiction writer. How did that turn into a career as a filmmaker?

I used to write short pieces of fiction, and decided to make one of them into a short film. It’s called “Good,” and it’s basically a guy explaining why he’s a good person. I really enjoyed the creative collaboration involved in making it, and it played at a few places, including SXSW and the Chicago International Film Festival. That was before I moved to Austin. The collaborative side of filmmaking is what hooked me.

Did Austin’s passionate love for food stands have anything to do with your story choices or did a food truck just strike you as an appropriate film metaphor?

Living in Austin, with all the foodstands that have popped up over the past few years, I suppose foodstands are just more a part of my consciousness, but the explicit motivation to shoot at a foodstand was mostly practical; I thought of it as a mobile location that I could move around to different parts of the city, shoot for a couple hours, and then move on. We didn’t end up shooting the stand that way, but that was the original idea.

The foodstand in the movie would be my dream foodstand to happen upon when hungry and looking for healthy, tasty, reasonably-priced food. It’s a constant quandary when I’m deciding where to eat—assuming I’m not eating at home. I’m always trying to balance price, healthfulness, tastiness, and probably location and ambiance. It always takes me a long time to decide where to eat, which can frustrate eating companions—but they don’t realize how much math I’m doing in my head.

It’s so hard to figure out because in reality the perfect place doesn’t exist—a place that serves good, healthy, tasty food—and is in my price range. It’s one of the things I daydream about—having enough money to eat wherever I want, all the time, without any worry.

Since there seems to be an undercurrent of social justice and ethical behavior in your filmmaking, does that mean you go about your work in a particular way? (Do you try to be “green,” for example?)

I try to be generous creatively with other people during the process, stay open to what everyone can bring to it, and give people some autonomy over what they’re doing. As far as things like recycling and not creating more waste than necessary, I try to be conscious of what I’m doing in general, but often fall short of my ideals.

The shooting part of the filmmaking process would be one instance where I certainly have fallen short in the “green” category. Shooting a film is kind of like going into battle, and you have so many pressing things to deal with.

You’re attending SXSW in several capacities (actor, director, etc…) and you’ve been here before - does all of this make it less overwhelming? Are you looking forward to anything in particular?

It makes it less overwhelming in the sense that I know what to expect and won’t have the stress of figuring out logistical things like how to get around, where to eat, etc... But in other ways it might be more overwhelming. Since I live here, I feel like there’s more pressure for people to like the movie—kind of like when you show your family your work—what they think of it kind of means more to you.

I’m looking forward to meeting other directors, discovering some good films, and then relaxing and catching a few shows at the music festival!

Do you plan to make more movies using Austin as a backdrop?

It’s certainly possible at some point in the future, but I don’t have any plans to right now. Maybe in ten years or something when the skyline has doubled in size and we can look back and compare it to this film.

Thanks for chatting with us. Good luck and have fun at the festival!

Catch The Happy Poet on Sunday, March 14 at 2 p.m., Monday, March 15 at 5 p.m. or Thursday, March 18 at 6:15 p.m. Both showings will be at the Alamo Ritz. Find the full SXSW film lineup here.