Exclusive: An interview with Chris Smith, director of 'The Pool' and 'American Movie'

November 5, 8:50 PMAtlanta Movies ExaminerRyan McNally

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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 one of my interview with Smith, he talks about the genesis of The Pool, how he wound up shooting in India, and what it’s like working with first-time actors:

Ryan McNally, Examiner.com: I wanted to start with talking about how The Pool came to be. You’ve worked primarily in the past with documentaries, but for your latest project you tackled a narrative film set in India. How did that come about?

Chris Smith: I think when I started making movies I always planned to make narrative films. The first film I made was a narrative called American Job, and it went to Sundance in 1996.

About four or five years ago I was in India helping some friends shoot a film, and we stayed in Panjim—where we later filmed The Pool—and stayed at the hotel that the film is partially centered around. I didn’t specifically think I would go back or try to make a film there, but there was something about the city that made an impression on me. I just thought it was visually stunning, and the way the city was laid out was really fascinating.

It had this low-lying area around this hill that was really bustling, and it had all this activity and chaos and grit and grime. Then you went up the hill, and there were these old Portuguese homes, and it was quiet and peaceful. I always thought it was interesting, but I never thought, “OK, I’ve got to find some story and come back here and make a film about this place,” it was just something that stayed with me.

After I finished The Yes Men, I was starting to think about my next project, and I read a short story by Randy Russell called The Pool. There was something about it that seemed like it could be an interesting jumping-off point from which to write a narrative project. Randy had written about a kid who becomes obsessed with this pool and tries to meet the family in an attempt to get closer to the pool, and I started thinking back to India.

I thought that by combining the two ideas it would open up the possibility for an interesting project. That was the jumping-off point, and at that time we started working on the script. Randy and I worked on the screenplay in the U.S. for three or four months, and we realized we could only write so much of it here, and the rest would have to be written and adapted once we arrived in India.

We set off for India in January 2006 and ended up being there five months. Our plan was to try to find people or actors to play the parts, and then try to integrate aspects of their lives into the story we’d constructed.

RM: So did you meet Venkatesh (Venkatesh Chavan) and some of the other leads at that point, or were they cast later?

CS: When we went over and started casting, we were originally working with a production team out of Bombay that was completely hopeless. After about two weeks we realized it was going to come down to trying to find these people ourselves, so we did a lot of street casting. Strangely enough, Venkatesh was in the short film (I’m Bobby) that my friends had filmed about four years earlier, and we just came across him randomly. We didn’t have any intention of using him in this project, but there was something so charismatic and interesting about him that as we kept looking for other characters, we kept circling back to him.

There was another kid who was supposed to play his friend in the film, and that kid ended up going to Bombay four days before we were supposed to start making the film, and he literally disappeared. He never picked up his phone again, never called back. We called his family, and nobody had heard from him. We were trying to figure out what we were going to do, and we were in this bar/restaurant that our location manager owned, and while we were there we saw Jhangir (Jhangir Badshah), who plays Venkatesh’s friend in the film.

Kate Noble, the producer, said, “This kid’s really interesting and charismatic, why don’t we try him out?” so we did a screen test with him the next day, and now I can’t imagine the film existing without him. That was the way the whole production went—there were always things falling through and disasters happening around us, but inevitably they would almost always lead to something that benefitted the film.

RM: How was it working with some of the less-experienced actors? You were able to draw some great performances from them.

CS: Whenever I’m looking to put someone on film, it’s really just looking for someone that feels comfortable and natural in front of the camera. That can be an actor or a non-actor. With these two (Venkatesh and Jhangir), they definitely had something in them that gave them the ability to perform in a way that felt natural and genuine and organic, and that’s what we were looking for.

It’s a funny thing to talk about. Nana Patekar plays the father in the film, and a lot of people won’t know who he is in America, but he’s a well-known movie star in India.

RM: That was going to be my next question, the contrast of working with some actors who had almost no experience, and then working with someone like him who’s a big figure over there.

CS: I think any time you’re casting a movie, whether you’re casting a real person or an actor, for me I’m just looking for some inherent quality in a person that will convey some depth to the character they’re playing. I think certain people, whether they’re actors or not actors, have an ability to be in front of a camera and feel comfortable and natural, and that’s what I was looking for. I wasn’t too concerned whether the people were officially actors or not. 

So when we found Venkatesh and Jhangir and did the screen tests with them, we could see they had the potential to be comfortable and do well. It took a little bit of extra work in the sense that they had to understand that they didn’t have to try, but they could actually just relax and be themselves, which is what I think almost all good actors are able to do.

But it’s not something you can necessarily train someone to do. We looked at hundreds of kids, and there were very few that even came close to what these two were able to pull off. It’s interesting when people say, “Oh, you were able to pull these performances out of these two real kids.” It’s true, but at the same time I think they inherently had an incredible ability to perform in front of the camera.

As we progressed in the making of the film, we still didn’t have the father or the daughter character, and at that point we were trying to cast them off the street in the same manner that we found the kids, but it was just proving more and more difficult. As we started filming more with the kids we became more invested in the film, and we were really excited with how it was turning out and the quality of acting.

Eventually we went to a casting director in Bombay who had just worked with Ayesha Mohan. Ayesha had only been in one other film, and he said, “You should try this girl, she’s really interesting, and I think she could be what you’re looking for.” We brought her down and did an audition, and the chemistry between her and the kids was so great that it just felt right.

We started filming with her, but we still didn’t have the father character. Then Kate Noble saw a picture of Nana in a newspaper, and she came up to me and said, “This is the guy.” She just responded to his manner in the interview, and his photograph had this quiet presence that we were looking for in the character.

The director who had done Ayesha’s other film got us a meeting with Nana. I think it was sort of a novelty to Nana, the fact that we even thought he would be interested in doing our film. It wasn’t until afterwards that we realized how preposterous the whole idea was, but I think we were so in our own world and so strung out in trying to make this film that we just weren’t going to take no for an answer.

We got there and explained to him what we were trying to do. We had 45 minutes of the film cut already, and we showed it to him, and he responded really favorably and said he’d do the film. Again, nothing came easy, but in the end it always seemed to help us.

Stay tuned for part two of this interview, in which Smith discusses how he navigated the challenges of communicating with the foreign-speaking cast, how he shot the film on such a tight budget, and what’s next on his filmmaking agenda.