Last night Pedestrian met Father/Son film making team David and Jordan Miller who were in Sydney for the screening of their film My Suicide, a “self-inflicted comedy” about the oft-twisted relationship between modern youth and digital media. We serendipitously met after the Millers accidentally walked into a Ping Pong tournament hosted by our digital media bros at Sound Alliance then decided to stay (and compete) when no one objected to them being there.
The day before, David later told us, the duo had walked into Massive Attack’s sound check after flashing a Nepalese Film Festival pass to security then left when they had completed a few laps of the backstage area. We told them that this was referred to, in Australian parlance, as “blagging” and that in our country this was perceived as a favourable skill. They concurred. Seeing as they’re screening “My Suicide” at 6PM tonight at Billy Blue College in North Sydney, we decided to catch up with David to discuss the relationship between young people and the internet, their forthcoming Daniel Johnston biopic and how to convince Radiohead to donate a track to your film.
Hey David, for those who don’t know can you tell us a little bit about how you conceived the film and what it’s all about?
I conceived the film six or seven years ago with my son Jordan. We had formed a youth group called Regenerate through a grant that he received – he was this freaky young extreme sports filmmaker at thirteen years old and he became known as the X-Dance Kid at Sundance. And we were approached by concerned citizens wondering if there was something he could do to reach other young people through film and media about important issues like car crashes and suicide which are the leading killers of kids. So we formed this youth group Regenerate and we would sit around at film festivals and think “what movie could we make that would fit the mission of the youth group but also be a bad ass picture?” And that’s how we came up with the concept for “My Suicide”.
And have you fulfilled that mission? What’s the response been like from young people?
It’s been humbling and inspirational. We premiered the film last year in Berlin in their Generation Division and won the Crystal Bear and that kind of launched us on this year round festival circuit where we won like 19 Best Picture prizes but the response from young people has been the number one inspiration for us. We experience repeat viewers wherever we go like at Berlin at the fifth screening there were twenty-five kids who saw it for the fifth time in ten days and that really is the most important measure of success for us.
The music in the film plays such a large part and music obviously is such a large part of youth culture can you explain the role that music plays in this film?
We have amazing artists in this film it’s really incredible. Some of our favourite artists wrote original music like Devendra Banhart and Bright Eyes and MGMT but then we got a My Morning Jacket track and a Radiohead track, TV On The Radio, Animal Collective, The Pixies it was all really amazing. We also worked with Mark Mothersbaugh because there’s a lot of film spoofs in the movie so he did eleven movie spoof tunes for us and that was really exciting and I love the stuff he did for Wes Anderson. And then our score was done by Tim Kasher who’s in Cursive and The Good Life and founded Saddle Creek Records with Conor Oberst. And Tim’s score is just really haunting and beautiful and the music is really key.
So what process did you have to go through to actually obtain these tracks and convince these incredible artists to contribute original music to the film?
It really hinged on this amazing Music Supervisor named Karyn Rachtman and she did Boogie Nights, Pulp Fiction, Moulin Rouge, Reservoir Dogs – and she has relationships that are great. She basically bought Interscope Records in who became our biggest investor and once that happened it enabled us to get the music. Then when the bands would see the film we would hear that they’d watch it two times in a row and were genuinely blown away by it so what ended up happening is they gave us amazing deals because they were into the mission of the picture – connecting, ending narcissism, families bonding and just giving in life – and they just really dug the picture. So Radiohead were the first band we went after and when Radiohead agreed everyone pretty much agreed.
So what’s next in the pipeline for you work-wise?
I’ve got a few things going – we’re doing a Daniel Johnston biopic and I’m Producing and Writing and Gabriel Sunday our star [from My Suicide] he’s going to be Directing and playing young Daniel. It’s going to be an epic super hero story and it’s going to be a narrative biopic so it doesn’t really cover any of the same stuff that the famous “Devil And Daniel Johnston” Documentary that won Sundance in 2005 covers. And then I’m also making an animated remake of the the classic Sci-Fi picture “A Boy And His Dog” – a great post-apocalyptic story. Then I’m doing a small project with Tim Kasher who wrote our score and he a band called “The Good Life” and we’re making a movie called “Help Wanted Nights” that he’s going to Direct based on a script he wrote while he Produced and recorded the album. And the plan is to do a tour, possibly with Saddle Creek, where we don’t mix the music to the movie and The Good Life plays live to the movie as we’re touring.
How are you going to portray older Daniel Johnston?
That’s a really good question. We’re either putting Gabriel in a fat suit or there’s so many people that are reaching out that are huge Daniel Johnston fans. Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly for example, Johnny Depp’s a big Daniel Johnston fan though we’d like him to play the older brother. But we haven’t really arrived at that yet – we’re just in the scripting process at the moment but once we get the script finished we’ll be able to get a better handle on what the budget will be.
