NEW YORK STORIES: THE JUSTIN COLE INTERVIEW

Justin Cole was a passionate filmmaker with a vision – to revive the all-encompassing found-footage experience embodied by The Blair Witch Project, the original shaky-cam shocker that rocked every young filmgoers world in 1999 and changed the way independent cinema was seen and marketed. The result was The Upper Footage, Cole's terrifying genre piece that doubles as a blistering indictment of the 1%’s immorality. What the young, New York-based auteur (pictured: below, right) did not expect was behind-the-scenes turmoil that would become one of the most talked-about creative struggles of 2013. Here in full is the interview SCREEN-SPACE conducted with Cole, in which he candidly discusses the film that inspired him, the mythology and madness behind his debut feature and the monster of his own creation that almost consumed him… 

You’ve been very open about the influence that The Blair Witch Project had upon you as a young film watcher. How did its influence inspire The Upper Footage?

The best part of any film is the suspension of disbelief. There isn’t a more effective way for people to think the events that they are watching are real than convincing them they are real.

The Blair Witch Project was the first found footage film I had ever seen and the experience still sticks with me. Sitting in my dark bedroom alone and wondering if what I was watching was real was truly an experience. In the years afterwards, I would watch every found footage film I could find only to be disappointed. No one went for it like Blair Witch did. The films that claimed to be real would have a full cast and crew bio section on their web pages and a fully fleshed-out IMDB page. I felt that the genre had so much untapped potential. One thing a lot of these films had in common was fake newscasts and I always wondered, “what if I can actually get the media to report on a film as if it is factual.”

I knew what The Blair Witch Project did in 1999 wouldn’t work in 2013, so I set out to modernize the concept. I knew as soon as we pushed the project as real, people would jump on Google to debunk it. I wanted to make sure that when they did, our claims would be backed up by multiple independent media sources.

Movie-making and movie-marketing impact each other in films like The Upper Footage and The Blair Witch Project, which take the illusion to the ‘n’th degree. How tightly bound does your own mythology influence you in post?

The marketing was always in my head, even though I saw it more as performance art than marketing. I was unsure how far I would be able to take it, but as we had success I wanted to push it further. I wanted to blur the lines of fact and fiction to the point where it was hard to tell which was which.

I also wanted show that the media that convinces us to aspire to this lifestyle is full of shit and easily manipulated. If an indie filmmaker with no financial backing could fool the media into reporting on a film’s events and characters as fact, imagine what people with money, power, and influence can do.

Are the people that populate your film people familiar to you? Why do you inflict this kind of fateful destiny upon the rich, educated, socially mobile young people, the likes of which will influence America's future?

I grew up right outside of Manhattan in Queens, New York and always put the city on a pedestal. Even though I lived roughly 15 miles outside of the city, it might as well have been a different world.

As soon as I got old enough not to have my parents breathing down my neck, I was in the city as much as I could be. I met a young lady who came from affluent parents, and I was thrust into a world that was very foreign to me. I grew up an avid hockey player and sacrificed much of my social life in exchange for spending weekends on the road, following a dream. All of the sudden, I was thrust into a world that was the polar opposite – drugs, sex, alcohol, and debauchery quickly became the norm.

I had the misconception that people with elite money were devoid of the middle class pitfalls, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. The people I met and events I witnessed made my rowdy hockey player buddies look like alter boys in comparison.

As I got older, the media increasingly glamorized this lifestyle with shows such as Gossip Girl. I found it odd that people would think that the spawn of those whose greed has left our country in financial ruin would be anything like how they are portrayed on TV. I didn’t want to pander to the audience by making any of the characters likeable, because in reality they aren’t.

What sort of artifice were you looking out for when cutting the film? Why is this not just another found footage pic but more a carefully constructed clip compilation?

When I first viewed the footage I was thrilled, because I knew the film that I wanted to make was in there, I just had no idea how to get it. I went through five editors, ruining a few friendships along the way, before deciding that the only way I could get the cut I wanted was to edit it myself. I locked myself in my apartment for about four months and taught myself how to edit.

Before I even wrote the script, I took a trip with a buddy of mine to Sweden. I saw it as a perfect opportunity to give the concept of my film a test run. For two weeks, we put ourselves into a lot of awkward situations and I filmed everything. While at first people seemed a bit apprehensive about me having a camera, it was quickly forgotten and I was able to capture some stuff from complete strangers that you wouldn’t believe.

How do you stop actors from acting? How do you convince them to just keep going, to play out the emotion of the scene instead of following their instincts to play the subtext?

I used unconventional methods to get the performances I needed, perhaps most importantly getting actors that were similar to these characters in real life.

When shooting inside the found footage genre, it is important that everything is organic to some degree. With the long cuts, five actors could play a scene perfectly, but if one is off it ruins the whole bunch so I had to make sure the relationships and actions were based in reality.

I wanted the relationships in the film to feel authentic. The main cast of four spent as much time as possible together while I made sure to exclude the actress that played Jackie. I didn’t want her to be to comfortable with the cast or vise a versa. During rehearsals we made sure to have her arrive late and leave early, along with telling the cast not to greet her or say goodbye when she left. I wanted a stark contrast in the level of comfort between the friends and the newcomer.

On our first night of shooting we shot the whole script from beginning to end. Everyone felt what it would be like to go through a night that had all these events and they were able to pull from the experience on our later shoot dates. The actors began to morph into the characters as the shoot went on. Night after night of living within this lifestyle started to change them on and off camera.

Tell me about the backstory you so painstakingly created? Names and faces like Tarantino and the Entertainment Tonight people don’t lend their names to any low budget work. Where does the façade end and the truth begin?

No one in the media knowingly pushed our narrative for us. We set rumors and stories into motion and the stories built up a life of their own. We manipulated the media on several different occasions to weave our narrative.

We planted some of what was reported, while other parts were true. Others parts were made up by outside rumors and by the media themselves. We made an effort to build on each story that was run to keep the narrative going. We wanted anyone to be able to jump on Google and follow the narrative not through us but by what was reported by multiple media outlets.

The façade ended in March when I posted an open letter explaining the circumstances around the project and with the exception of a few details I have been extremely open about the circumstances around the project since.

Why didn’t your carefully constructed mythology play out? You’ve been very vocal about how the exhibition sector treated The Upper Footage, and how the role a high-profile personality connected to the film influenced its industry acceptance. How much faith can we put in your claims?

Well, the mythology did play out the way we intended. We took the film from concept to a theatrical release in NYC without anyone finding out it was fictional. We were met with online and in-person protestors because people thought we were showcasing an actual girl’s death. Would I have liked it to have a wide release with people all over the world leaving cinemas wondering if what they just saw was real? Of course, but that simply wasn’t an option for us.

As for my claims, I am assuming that you are referring to the actress that had her identity obscured in the film.

To give some backstory, an actress in the film has a famous mother, whom after she found out details of the film did not want her daughter associated with the project. The actress asked for changes in the edit which would have required re-shoots, which I offered to do but the actress refused to show up. I was later told that if the edits were not made she would disassociate herself with the project, but if they were made that she and her mother would promote the film. She then went on to inform me how popular her mother was, along with how many red carpets she walks.

The thought of this spoiled brat and her washed-up mother promoting my film didn’t appeal to me at all, along with the fact that I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be strong-armed by an actress who I was very accommodating to. I am not going to pat myself on the back but she and others in the production are fully aware of how I made sure to do right by her when a lot of other directors in my position wouldn’t have.

Anyway, I told her my idea of blurring her face throughout the film, she moves on with her career, I say nothing, everyone is happy. She agreed and I thought that was the last I would hear on the subject – unfortunately I was the only one who kept my word. As we started to get attention from studios and publications, this actress’ mother came up quite a bit. We were suspicious at first but brushed it off as a coincidence but then it became very apparent what was going on.

Along with the headaches this actress was causing we didn’t exactly get a fair shake from some of the studios we were in talks with. Being a first time director, everyone wanted to take advantage. I hate to sound like the stereotypical indie director but I was and still am extremely passionate about this project to the point where I put the project ahead of myself in every way. I walked away from more than a handful of “career advancing” opportunities to make sure the film was released in the way I wanted it to be released. I didn’t start this project thinking it was going to be a big studio mainstream film. At first I was wide-eyed by some of the names that were interested but the reality of the situation wound up disgusting me.

We decided that the only sure-fire way to have people see the film the way we wanted it to be seen was to release it ourselves. We also thought that with everything now being in our hands it would be harder for anyone to screw with us. We were wrong.

The theater we screened at was the most excited to showcase our film but, from day one, there were issues with them not letting it be known that our film was playing there. After promising to be showcased on their social media, website, and theater, we were hidden. 
The manager of the theater informed me that he did not understand what was going on but “corporate“ was making everything that had to do with our film impossible. We then noticed that the actress’ mother’s most relevant film, a 20-year-old film, was playing at the same theater, same time, same nights. When I brought this up, the manager said that the theater and mother of our actress shared the same publicist.

At this point, we were still promised the screenings would go on without issue, but we were completely sandbagged. The theater went back on their word and essentially hid the fact that our film was playing there, along with defacing our theatrical poster, having their employees bash the film on social media prior to it screening, people with comp tickets were turned away, and the list goes on.

Due to our treatment, I was ready to come clean after our first screening and make it known exactly what was going on but after seeing the response I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. The audience reaction was exactly what I dreamed about when I first conceptualized the project.

There was no sense in continuing theatrical screenings when we saw how easy it would be to sabotage us. Continuing to push the film as real left us open to these things happening without us being able to come out and call those responsible out on it. It put us in a position where we would have to lie to our fans to keep the illusion intact and that wasn’t something that felt right. Even though a majority of our fan base thought the film was real, it still felt as if they were in on it with us. We didn’t lie to them directly, just showcased the media we were creating around the project. With this event we were put into a position where no story outside of the truth made any sense. The project was never about what we were telling people but what we were creating in the media. When I released the letter it was at a point where it just did not make sense to push it as real any longer. I did what I set out to do and feel the performance was complete. We fooled countless media outlets, became the biggest story in celebrity media, had characters in the film recognized in character and brought the film to a theatrical release amidst real-world controversy.

I felt our fans deserved an explanation, as they are the only reason we kept afloat. After the media caught on to what we were doing, no one would touch us with a 10-foot pole. We were turned away from advertising and the only articles that ran were slanderous at a level expected from a bitter high school ex-girlfriend. We pissed off people in positions of influence and it’s because of our fans spreading the word (along with our recent push of critical support) that we have been able to have success with our online release. 

It is poetic that the films themes made their way into the project’s release. This is how the real world works; people who have more power, money, and influence than you, will always fuck you over if it benefits them. In the end I can’t be mad, as it has pushed us into a situation where I have a found a potential model for future projects. The paradigm of film distribution is changing. This whole process has given me hope that I will be able to continue to make projects I am truly passionate about, without having to deal with people who will make me lose that passion.