Tyler Ross Starrer 'American Milkshake': Interview with the Directors, David Andalman and Mariko Munro [EXCLUSIVE]
American Milkshake is almost here. The 2013 Sundance Film NEXT selection film will debut as part of the Kevin Smith Movie Club on September 6.
Starring Tyler Ross, Shareeka Epps (Half Nelson), and Georgia Ford (daughter of Harrison Ford), the film follows the story of Jolie Jolson, a white inner-city teenager who dreams of making the basketball squad and desperately wants to fit into the black hood. Through its dark humor, the film deals with complex themes of coming-of-age, being the outsider, trying to belong, and the abrasive callousness that comes with being a privileged high school teenager. The film is set in Nineties suburban DC.
Enstars caught up with the writer-director team of the film, David Andalman and Mariko Munro, who talked about their inspirations, the current Nineties craze (which is a prominent theme in the film), and teasing out the complexities of Jolie's character ("reminds me of A Clockwork Orange").
EN: Could you talk about the inspirations behind the film. David, I believe your short, Takoma Park, had something to do with this.
DA: The idea that the short inspired the feature is maybe not exactly true, I think the feature idea was there and at one point, I made a short out of it, and that did help find a voice for the movie in some ways and really carve it out. But I think the idea of original inspiration was more growing up in the DC area and also being born in Mississippi , and the experience of stumbling and bumbling and figuring out my high school years and not really being grateful. I learned a lot of things the hard way basically, and that was funny to me and this was a chance to look back on it.
EN: Mariko, was this personal for you in some ways as well. Do you relate with certain characteristics of the protagonist, just that sense of confusion and being so terribly deluded at that age?
MM: Absolutely! I grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii -- and there was not the typical American culture. What was present was the Asian-American culture, but race and class was a hugely debated topic. It could be the Nineties, it could be just a part of growing up. I think it was a combination of both, but I definitely relate to this fish out of water kind of and also a naive kind of longing for something that you're not.
EN: About your collaboration, is this the first time you guys have worked on a project together? How'd it come about?
MM: Oh actually, my sister and Dave dated, so that's how we first met.
EN: Could you weigh in on your strengths as filmmakers and writers. Do you compliment each other in some way? What kind of dynamic do you share?
DA: Yeah, we compliment each other really well. I think we have an overlap of a lot of the same strengths. I think that maybe, I tend to go too far, and she tends to pull us back.
MM: Dave's been working in film for ten years, he has worked in all kinds of roles, he has edited, produced, and directed his own shorts. I worked in the art world for ten years so, I was the director of this gallery in New York, so I have worked more with artists. We come from different worlds in someways. I come from Hawaii, I come from a woman's perspective. He comes from a man's perspective, so I think there is a lot that, as a collaborative team, it helps each other out. I really appreciate his perspective and I think he appreciates mine, in a way it kind of becomes a super team.
EN: Another underlying theme of the film is its being set in the Nineties. Recently, this Nineties nostalgia wave has been taking over the popular consciousness. Is it is just a coincidence that your film is coming out at this time or did you actually intend to tap in to this new trend?
DA: No, I don't think that's a coincidence at all. To some degree, okay, maybe I wrote a movie which was inspired by the Nineties. There is a whole generation of artists that are just coming through, that are from that generation, so you get to see a lot of that right now. But on the other hand, I remember that Mariko was making very cool new videos for the band Salem as a project, and I had edited one of them. We even worked with the Dirty Projectors, which was a good way to first work together, sort of put your foot in the water before jumping in. But at the same time, Mariko was reading all these scripts and being in the art world, I think she has got a great eye for like things that are about to happen first in art or fashion or mediums that are quicker, then later they happen in the movies. So I do think that to some degree, she almost was like sensing that, I didn't even sense that myself, to me it was just like this movie about this funny kid.
MM: We are of this generation that grew up in the Nineties and we are the ones who are kind of trying to put our work out there as artists and filmmakers. We drew influences from our childhood and I remember when we were researching the movie I was coming up with a lot of directors who were of an older generation, like Linklater had done Dazed and Confused, Barry Levinson with Diner, a lot of directors I think make that one homage to their childhood. So I think for us, this as kind of our homage to our formative years.
EN: The voice-over narrative flows as if it were spoken word, sound-tracked to hip-hop beats, it almost evokes the slightly comical demeanor of white rappers like Vanilla Ice back in the day, were you taking a jab at that?
DA: That was definitely something that happened organically, I think. I can tend to do that voice very easily myself and there were many versions in the movie where I had done all those voice-overs, because we don't want to bring Tyler in every time we wanted to try different jokes and what have you. So part of it just came from that.You should have heard me back in the Nineties, my grandmother couldn't understand what I was saying, I had this little slur. I think it is Nineties influenced, but it is also regional.
EN: The thing about Jolie is, that you feel sorry for him at times but he can be this complete douchebag as well, you guys do a great job of humanizing him. Could you talk about his story arc and sketching out his character? Did you know someone like Jolie growing up?
MM: I can't speak for everybody but I do think that this kind of character is someone that a lot of people have known, especially in that time because of the influences of gangster rap and the media. I think there were a lot of things, in the suburbs and even in the urban areas that kind of idealized this culture that didn't belong to them really, that they could never truly understand but wanted so badly to be a part of it, it was so glamorized in TV and media.
EN: It can be very challenging to achieve a perfect pitch between the comical and tragic to work the kind of dark humor that lies at the heart of this film. Did you find it difficult to do that?
DA: Oh, yeah. There was a very fine line between making Jolie too offensive or too much of a jerk for us to care about. I remember there were very specific jokes, there was one hilarious AIDS joke that we had to throw out. There were a couple of them that we thought, even though they cracked us up in the moment, they might have been detracting sort of the greater character arc, and you have to be invested in the character to appreciate the jokes down the line.
MM: We definitely wanted it to also be an honest commentary and critique of this attitude in general, and reflective of someone who is from the outside, trying to emulate or trying to be accepted by something that they are not a part of. In the end Jolie gets away with it in someways, which might not be popular. I mean it's frustrating, often times these kids do get away with a lot, you can have a phase when you are privileged like that, hopefully you'll learn something from it afterwards. So in someways it's a critique and in someways it is a bit biting and cynical but hopefully it's fun along the way as well.
DA: It's definitely about this core desire just to fit in, which is like very universal, and he does get away with it to some degree, in that way it always reminded me a little bit of A Clockwork Orange.
American Milkshake arrives in theaters Sept. 6 and will also be available on VOD (Video on Demand) presented by the Kevin Smith Movie Club. The film will be playing at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema in New York, Downtown Independent in Los Angeles, Zeitgeist in New Orleans, and the Gateway Film Center in Ohio.
Watch the film's trailer here:
