Recently I had the chance to chat with Chris Smith, director of the acclaimed documentaries American Movie and The Yes Men. For his latest film, The Pool, Smith decided to switch it up and helm a narrative-based film—set in India, no less. (You can read my review of the movie here.)
Working with a small budget and in a foreign language, Smith manages to deliver a humorous, moving film that won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007. Eighteen months later, it’s finally hitting theaters across the country, and it’s surely one of the best films you’ll see in 2008. In part two of my interview with Smith, he talks about what it’s like to shoot a film in Hindi, how he made the movie look so good on a tight budget, and his bold plans to tackle the animation genre:
Ryan McNally: Did the cast members of The Pool speak English, or did you communicate through a translator?
Chris Smith: We used a translator.
RM: How was that?
CS: It was actually easier than you would imagine. There were three main challenges. First, the translator we were working with and our production manager decided it would be best to shoot the film in Hindi because it was the most common, universal language. But it wasn’t the first language for either of the kids [Venkatesh and Jhangir], so they had to act in a second language, which is incredibly difficult.
On top of that, neither of them could read, and I wanted to shoot everything in long, two- or three-minute takes. Consequently, we’d have to show up on set and try to rehearse the entire scene for a couple hours, and then shoot. It was difficult, because if you’ve ever tried to memorize something without looking at it on paper, it’s hard. So that was the second thing that was challenging to overcome.
The third thing was the fact that they didn’t know English, which made it difficult for me to convey specific thoughts or emotions that I was looking for from them.
All those things were challenges, but they weren’t impossible to overcome, it just made things go a little slower. In the end, I think the process of this film helped make it what it is, and as difficult as it was while we were there, I think in the end it helped the final film.
A lot of people have asked, “Is it hard to judge a performance in another language?” I think any time you see a foreign film, you can tell if the acting is working, so for me it was just trying to find a performance that felt like the energy was right. If we found a take where that worked, then we would just get a direct translation to make sure we covered everything and that the actors said what they were supposed to say.
As far as judging performance, I think it’s one of those things that you think would be a lot harder than it is, but if you go see a foreign film, you can feel if it’s working and if the energy’s right. You really just need to trust your instincts, and then it becomes fairly mechanical as far as just checking that the translations are correct.
RM: How long of a shoot was it?
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CS: We ended up shooting for 65 days over five months.
RM: It’s a beautifully shot film, and it’s high-quality throughout. How did you achieve that on such a small budget?
CS: I think part of the thing that helped is that we were shooting on 35mm, which inherently adds quite a bit. With the amount of time that we shot, and because we had a smaller crew, we would often wait for the light to be right. We tried to work a lot with the environment, waiting for the sun to get in the right place.
It took us a little bit longer, but I think the result was that we didn’t compromise anything in what we were trying to film.
RM: Roughly how big of a crew was it?
CS: It was anywhere from 10 to 15 people, depending on what part of the shoot we were in.
RM: The music of the film is very distinctive. How involved were you with that aspect?
CS: I got this idea to try to write the music before we shot the film, because I thought it would inform what we were doing. Again, the whole point in making this film was to try to experiment and do something totally different than anything I had done before, so we were trying a lot of things that we hadn’t in the past, and part of that was trying to create the score here.
We went through a number of different ideas, themes and directions, and finally we settled upon what ended up being the score for the film. The two composers I was working with hired an arranger out of Bombay who had retired. He had done a number of soundtracks in the ’50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, and he came out of retirement to do this because he thought it was an interesting project.
He ended up getting a lot of his friends who had retired to come back as well. It was this historic recording session where all these guys got together, and they found the last analog recording studio in Bombay, and they did the score.
It was interesting because it was done before we even started shooting. When I first heard it I wasn’t sure exactly how the film was going to evolve into that music, but it was something that we used as a guide of what we wanted to try to work toward.
RM: Tell me a little about going back to Sundance and winning the Special Jury Prize. What was that like?
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CS: Sundance has always been nice for us. I started in 1996 with my first film, which was American Job. I’ve been there with all five of my films, and I feel comfortable and at home there. I think after going through a [filmmaking] process like this, to be able to show the movie in front of an audience and get that reaction, there’s always something nice because it gives a sense of closure to the process. In 2007, we went with a lot of friends that had worked on The Pool, so it was a really great experience.
RM: So, The Pool shows at Sundance, wins the award, and then it’s almost a year and a half later before it hits theaters. Tell me a little about that process, from Sundance to theatrical release.
CS: I’ve always looked at festivals as a way to show a film and use the crowd as a test audience to some degree. When we left Sundance in January 2007, my editor and I and the producer felt like there was still a lot of work that we could do on the film, and we took most of that next year to continue to work on it.
We ended up finding a distributor called Vitagraph that wanted to put the film out. We wanted to open the film in New York at the Film Forum, and by the time we approached them at the beginning of 2008, September was when we could fit into the calendar.
It seems like a long time from Sundance until now, but the way it happened and evolved felt natural. I think when you look at movies on the studio level, they’re managed and put through the system in a more efficient way. When you’re working independently, things end up taking a lot longer.
RM: Had you done that in the past, where you tweaked a film in between Sundance and when it was released?
CS: Yeah, every film I’ve made. The cut of The Yes Men that was at Toronto was different then the cut that was at Sundance, which was different than the cut that was released. American Movie went to Sundance, and we continued editing for another six months until it Sony released it.
RM: With The Pool, was the running time much different between Sundance and now?
CS: Yeah, the movie’s actually about 11 minutes shorter than it was at Sundance. Our goal was to keep the feeling and pace of the film, but see if there was any way to get there quicker.
RM: Will we see deleted scenes on the DVD?
CS: Yeah, we’re actually just finishing the making-of film, which is about an hour and is really interesting, and then we have about a half hour of deleted scenes.
RM: Have you started thinking about what your next project will be?
CS: I have a lot of little things that I’ve been working on. The thing I’m most excited about is an animated film. It’s a script I started working on in January.
RM: Will the animated film be along the lines of Waking Life, or is it more traditional?
CS: A little more traditional, I think … we’ll see.
For more from Chris Smith about the genesis of “The Pool,” how he wound up shooting in India, and what it’s like working with first-time actors, check out part one of the interview here.
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