DAY 7

Carl Colpaert and Patrícia Mota

I actually didn’t go to CineVegas on day seven, but decided to catch up on a few things. I wanted to write a more detailed “G.I. Jesus” review and wanted to post up the Q&A I had with the film’s director and one of its stars. Before I get to that, I wanted to share the email I got from Maurizio Farhad.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Chad,

Hey man, thank you for the kind words in your review of our little G.I. film. I really appreciated it.

The pix are great as well. I wish they had turned the lights on for us. LOL. But we’re not even “D” list stars yet. Haha!

Hey, I noticed you mentioned in your review that I called Jesus by his real name throughout the movie. Well, it’s true I called him Joe, but it was actually scripted that way. See my character believes all soldiers are from American pop culture so he refers to him as G.I. JOE. It’s just ironic that the actor they chose to play Jesus is also named Joe. In the original cut we had scenes in to explain that fact I mentioned but the final cut leaves it unclear.

You obviously have a keen ear and you asked great questions at the Q and A as well. Well I hope I cleared it up and thanks again Chad.

Maurizio Farhad (Mohammed of G.I. Jesus)

CCF Q&A WITH C&P

I shared this email for several reasons. One, I have no problem with fixing a screw up, a mistake or a misunderstanding that I post on the site. My initial short review and all it’s “idiotacracy” will remain the same, but my expanded review here, hopefully makes up for it. The other reason I posted his email is I don’t usually hear such kind words from any actors and Maurizio made my day. Thanks Maurizio! You could have emailed me and been all, “Hey idiot! Weren’t you paying attention?” By the way, “A” list, “B” list, “D” list, “F” list, “Z” list, whatever. I try to treat everyone with the same respect. The Q&A he's referring to was after the film. I will not be posting it up, but here is one I did with Carl Colpaert and Patrícia Mota. They just so happen to be walking around Wednesday in the CV HQ at the same time I was so I grabbed them for a sit down. Here is how that went:

CCF: First off, I’d like to talk casting a little bit. I thought you had a fantastic cast. The key players were amazing. Where did you get everybody from and how did the whole process go?

CC: I started with Patrícia. I met her first. She flew in for an HBO engagement. I really liked her spontaneity and her energy. Then we casted the male lead and it was the hardest. It took forever to find a guy who could pull it off. He needed to have strength and seem like he would be a G.I. and he had to be sympathetic. He needed to be of Mexican decent and speak fluent Spanish. We casted in New York, Texas and Los Angeles. It took like two months or longer to find Joe Arquette. The little girl (Telana Lynum) was easy and the Iraqi soldier (Maurizio Farhad) we found right away. Once we found Joe everything seem to come a lot easier. Joe was the hardest.

CCF: I thought you, Joe and Telana were really great. Tell me a bit about working with them.

PM: It was a fantastic combination. Carl gave me the opportunity of choosing between the five actors up for the part. He said, “Tell me which one you feel more comfortable with.” And I said, “I feel more comfortable with Joe.” He said, “Ok. Let’s see how that works.” And it really matched. With Telana, it was amazing because I have a seven year-old-daughter and when we were doing the casting she jumped on me and she made me feel back like a mother. It was beautiful. It was such a great cast.

CCF: Some of the real emotional scenes with Patrícia and Joe were really solid. Was that scripted, improvised or what exactly?

CC: What we did was took a lot of takes. The good thing about HD is we didn’t have to worry about burning footage. The core dialogue was scripted and then they made it their own and then they went off the page. I felt like it had a little John Cassavetes’ immediacy to what they were able to portray. Sometimes in a take they would go too far off the page and by having alternate takes we were able to make it a very natural pace. Sometimes in improv it can get tiresome. It’s a balancing act. The natural talent those two have and how they understood each other early on was essential.

CCF: I loved the angle you took with the Mexican joining the military for his citizenship. Can you talk about that a little?

CC: There’s such extreme poverty across the border that many times people make desperate choices. The military does offer structure, but for him to improve his lifestyle by killing a similar family to his that’s what really screws him up emotionally and I think morally. I met a lot of guys like Jesus in San Diego. After talking to them... You know, after shooting little kids, that’s not going to go away. These soldiers are pretty screwed up. Some of them, I don’t think will recover from it. You can see that. A lot of them are Latinos doing it for their citizenship.

PM: There’s a lot of Latinos in general. I have a brother and he is 19 and there is no way I would let him go to Iraq.

CC: Some wars are worth fighting for. I mean, world war 2. There are causes, but this one is a hard one to wrap your head around.

CCF: This was something that was news to me. The whole offering citizenship for fighting in the war.

PM: Yeah and you even have to come back to work here. You’re not going to come back and have a house waiting for you. You’re going to have nothing and you have to work. You still have to finish school and you have to work well as a cop, a fire fighter or whatever it is you have to do. You have to keep on and on and it’s hard for them to handle it with all the psychological factors. Of course, that is the people who get to come back. The ones who die there I’m sure they stay there or maybe they come back in pieces. Or the ones who come back wounded with arms and legs missing or whatever, they come back and something as simple as surfing they can’t do anymore. We are just trying to see if we can help get a message to the world with this movie. Why the whole thing? We are for the people that go there and the people that are there taking the fight. We’re not against nobody and we’re not in favor of anybody. We just care about the people. The kids and the mothers and the families.

CCF: Were there any particular Vietnam movies that influenced you at all?

CC: I’ve seen them all. I love all 70’s cinema. That whole era. The style is more influenced by (Luis) Buñuel. It’s very surreal. The style is surrealism. That’s what I love as an artist. I love “Apocalypse Now,” but I wasn’t directly influenced by it. This is a way more complex war. At least Vietnam was a country. With this war, it’s like an American boxer being sent out not to fight another boxer, but instead he’s fighting a bunch of mosquitoes. Eventually the boxer is going to fall because he’s going to take too many bites. It’s just an impossible war. There’s no real enemy. It’s not going to be an Iraqi conflict for much longer. I think it’s going to be something else. It’s a stressful state of mind, here and in Europe as well. The world is tense.

CCF: The whole time when you came up with idea and were all, “I’m going to write this and direct it,” were you ever worried about backlash?

CC: Yeah. But I don’t think the film is anti-American. I don’t feel it’s anti-U.S. It’s just more of a personal journey through this military machine where the individual is doing their job and their job is to kill. If anything Stanley Kubrick would be an influence. Whenever he does a war movie, whether it’s “Full Metal Jacket” or “Dr. Strangelove,” you kill and that’s your job. That’s the question. Where does one sign up for that job? How do you motivate yourself for that job? To defend the country, I think I understand that, but this doesn’t have anything to do with that. If there is backlash, I don’t know where it will come from.

CCF: I didn’t get that it was anti-American at all. In fact, what I felt the night I saw it was it’s one of the most American films I have seen. This country was founded on immigration yet we want to close the borders, but if you sign up to invade someone else’s country then you are welcome. There’s not a lot of sense to it. What I mean by it being so American is it’s truth in dealing with the issues and it’s understanding of where our country is and what we say we stand for, while things like this go on.

CC: Yeah, we are here and we love it here and the system will change eventually. You know, the thing is in Western Europe the foreign policies are bad as well. The British, the French, the Belgians, the Americans, we’re all the same. We’re all manipulative governments.

CCF: I’ve always had the belief that the people involved in the war are there because that’s what they signed up for. I never believed in supporting the troops because I don’t support what they do. This movie has helped me see otherwise. I think if I thought that myself, I’m sure there are others as well.

CC: Yeah, a lot of people are angry and upset. You know, Saddam Hussein was very harmless. He couldn’t really do anything. They said, “Well, he was shooting at our planes.” What’s amazing is how the media almost convinced us all. It’s an amazing system.

CCF: What is you hope audiences are able to take away from the movie?

CC: I hope its humanistic and it’s a message for peace. I hope they come away with less desire for us to be involved in other countries. That’s all.

CCF: Well, it’s a great film and I hope everyone gets a chance to see it. Thanks for talking with me.

CC: Thank you.

PM: Thanks.

Carl Colpaert’s production company Cineville currently has a sequel to the documentary “Hoop Dreams” in production. Colpaert is executive producer on “Hoop Realities,” which picks up with Arthur Agee ten years later.

- CCF, June 16

(Day 8-9 - Cick here)