Tripping with Caveh Zahedi

By Craig Phillips
GreenCine, May 2004

"It's a process of searching and flailing."

Drugs are one of the taboos in this country, and sex - and those are two of the things you're primarily dealing with. How do you feel about the way other American films have depicted drugs?

There have been really great depictions of drugs in movies, in various ways. I mean I thought Contact, which is not one of my favorite films, had an incredible drug sequence, when she meets the aliens - that's totally like a drug trip! Whoever made that had to have tripped, it was such an accurate evocation of the experience of tripping. The sudden shifts, and the bliss.

Drugs have been very helpful to me in my life, but I'm only interested in hallucinogens. I'm not into heroin or anything addictive. I can see why people are down on addictive drugs. I don't drink or smoke or anything. But hallucinogens get a really bad rap in this culture, and yet they're an effective way of attaining spiritual insights. So I think that part of the equation needs to be spoken.

I was interested in the way you depicted hallucinogenic experience because I once had a strange, interesting trip that I tried to write about, but I had a really hard time recapturing what the experience was like. Writing is probably even harder than film, but I thought you captured the experience well in I Was Possessed [by God]. After you watched the film did you feel it was close to how it actually felt for you?

Well, no. I mean it's impossible to film a drug trip. It's such an internal experience. I've been making the same film for years of tripping and filming it; every year I'll do a drug trip and then I'll film it. It's been going on for ten years now for a film I want to do about drugs. But every time I think, "I've finally captured it, this is it." And people will see God, or whatever was so clearly visible to me as it was happening - and then I look at the footage and it looks like a crazy person gesticulating wildly. I'm always really disappointed. So I actually don't think I do capture them very well, but think there's something that comes across in the physical seeing that is valuable. But it's just a fraction of what's going on.

Did you see Terry Gilliam's trippy Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?

I didn't, no. But I was thinking of [Finn Taylor's] Dream With the Fishes - there's a very well-done drug scene in that film. And there was a scene in Go that was pretty good, where the cat's talking! [laughs]

Do you go back and watch your old films?

I don't. I don't like watching them. Well, occasionally there'll be a screening, and if I haven't seen that film in a while, I'll watch it just to see how it holds up.

How do you feel you've changed as a filmmaker? Have you come into your own?

A lot of people still think of the first, A Little Stiff, as my best film. I like it, but it's my least favorite because it's the furthest from my current preoccupations. Do I get better, do I get worse? I don't know. I try not to repeat myself too much, try to do new things. With the new film, I've been trying a lot of new things, and some of them don't work very well because I've never tried them before and don't know how to do them. It's a process of searching and flailing. That's why it's taking so long. I know how to do A Little Stiff and could make another film like that pretty easily, using little tricks to make it work and make it easy, or to deal with limitations. But I don't want to do that twice.

Are the "new things" you're talking about technical things?

Yeah. A Little Stiff was done entirely with master shots. One way to deal with the fact that you don't have dollies and therefore can't move the camera very smoothly is to not move it at all. You just set it down somewhere and let the actors move. And it works - as long as you make that your style. It comes out of poverty, but it works. Then you also avoid continuity issues and sound editing issues. And if you have people play themselves, then you avoid certain kinds of "acting issues" where you have people not playing the character properly. So there are things you can do to really minimize the downside of not having much money or experience.

I was interested in the piece you did for the Underground Zero film, particularly because it confronted a lot of the issues without being direct about it. Have you thought about doing any other pieces about 9/11 in the three years since?

I did that piece because I was really angry at the media and fearing World War III. I do think that the personal is political and that's what that film is trying to say, and my other films are getting at the same basic problem in their own ways - just not as overtly.

How did the class react to that piece? Did you ever go back and watch it with them?

The class actually ended before the film was finished so I was never able to show it to them. So I don't really know how they reacted. I've heard different stories, that some people really liked it, and some didn't.

Did any of them write to you?

I got a few nasty anonymous letters and emails.

Are you going to collaborate with Jay Rosenblatt on anything?

I would like to. I like working with him and we've been talking about doing something together for a long time. But I've been so busy. Anyway, it's on the table.

I enjoyed listening to the commentary that you and Greg Watkins did on A Sign From God's DVD - you guys sounded like you were having a good time and I picked up a few things.

We did that on the fly in one session because it's really expensive to rent the studio time. You just kind of do it and then regret it later, thinking, "Oh I should have said this!" or should have said that. But [commentary] really is an art form all its own. I think for my next one I'm really going to take the time to really think it through and do different takes and try to construct it more rigorously. It's a lot more work but worth it because it's there forever. I'd like to do commentary for all my films. That's in the works, too.

Do you remember hearing any DVD commentary you liked on other people's films?

I remember thinking the Trees Lounge commentary by Steve Buscemi was great, very down to earth and unassuming. Scorsese's commentary on The Last Waltz DVD is fascinating. Everything he says is fascinating.

So you're not going to do "the all-midget Little Women"? That was one of your pitches in Sign from God.

I'd like to. They have these annual little people conventions and this year's is in San Francisco, so I'm going to try to go and come up with a script based on what I see.

The pitches that you made in that scene, it was hard to tell whether the people you were pitching to knew beforehand what you were going to pitch, and then they laughed. Did they know?

No, they didn't. That's why they kept laughing. We thought we'd surprise them and let them react spontaneously. It works in the scene. It's kind of how it really was, where they really did laugh and then passed on every single idea. It was based on a real pitch session I had with American Playhouse, after I got a little attention from A Little Stiff. It was right after the First Gulf War and they were trying to do things on "Arab subjects." Because I'm of Middle Eastern descent, they asked if I had anything that might fit. So I went into their New York office with Greg Watkins, my collaborator, and told them all my ideas, and none of them fit at all. I think they were looking for more PC stories about, say, an Arab family with children who are getting picked on in school by other kids calling them names, and how they deal with racism, and of course, there's a well-meaning principal and a lesson learned by the bullies. You know, American Playhouse kind of stuff.

Could you ever conceive of doing a film that was farther removed from your reality? More fictionalized, or even a genre piece?

Yeah, I mean if somebody plopped a bunch of money down and said "Make (X)" I would do it - for the pleasure of exploring something different and, frankly, because I'd need the money. But in the absence of money, the things I naturally gravitate towards are the things that I do. And it's so hard to make a film that you really have to be excited by it. Money can excite you, or obligation can excite you or force you to do something. But as no one's made any offers, I'm just making the films that excite me. I've struggled with this a lot - I realized if I made more fictional-type stories I'd probably be doing better career-wise. And part of me really would like to and aspires to that. But when I get down to it there's always something within me that subverts everything and de-commercializes it.

Godard did Alphaville which was "science fiction" but more purely Godard...

Yeah, he's somebody who can't make a normal movie. And God bless him. He'd be a more popular filmmaker if he could, but those aren't the films he wants to make, or that he can make. He doesn't get excited by the same old narrative strategies. I'm starting to realize I'm not Hal Hartley or Todd Haynes. Both of them do their own thing. They have their own style - Hartley's style is a little more recognizable, whereas Haynes can straddle a broader spectrum of styles - but they're both true to themselves and are both really interesting filmmakers. But them being true to themselves is more accessible to most audiences than me being true to myself.

Some people don't find Hal Hartley's work very accessible either.

Right. But he's still more accessible than I am. The numbers prove it, I think. His films have made X and mine have made Y.

What about Alexander Payne? I know you had a small role in his first movie - would you want to work with or for him?

I knew him from film school at UCLA. I like him and what he's doing. It's not the kind of thing I would do. He has to make some compromises, he's trying to do good things within the system. I respect that. He's not somebody I feel especially close enough to cinematically to collaborate with. Except maybe we'd do drugs together.

I have this other film project called Tripping With Caveh. The idea is like Fishing With John, but instead of fishing, I'd trip with celebrities. I just did the first one, where I tripped with Will Oldham [singer from Palace Brothers, etc]. When I'm done putting that together I'll send it to a bunch of people and ask them if they want to be in the series.

I like it. And you, er, see this being on cable TV, or distributed on DVD?

I'd love to see it on TV but I can't imagine anybody showing it. I don't think television's ready for it.

Who else would be on your wish list for that series?

Everybody I like. I'd love to have Harmony Korine on it. I was reading an article about Charlie Kaufman and I was thinking he'd be an interesting person to trip with.

Yeah, although with him it's probably kind of redundant.

Hmm. I like Spike Jonze a lot, too. He's really great. And I heard Bill Murray trips - he'd be great.

I'd pay good money to see that.

Yep, me too.