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Griffin Dunne's
Famous
Griffin Dunne
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Is the documentary the best genre
to explore the strengths of the new digital media? Griffin Dunne certainly thinks so. The actor-turned director, who waded into narrative waters with his debut feature, Addicted to Love, is back with Famous, a "mockumentary"; done under the DGA Low Budget Agreement, freely exploits the intimate, home-movie quality of electronic filmmaking.
Dunne's new film follows a young New York actress (Laura Kirk) in her quest to become "Famous." Kirk bears an uncanny resemblance to already "Famous" actors Elizabeth Perkins, Penelope Ann Miller and Nicole Kidman. Her character, named Lisa Picard, is trailed around the city - from her best friend's sketchy downtown apartment, to midtown auditions, to the climactic moment in her young career in a featured role in a Melissa Gilbert Movie of the Week - by a documentary filmmaker obsessed with making
a film about the changes fame
may inflict. Griffin Dunne plays
the documentarian and, with great humor and wit, is shown to be entirely unreliable in both directorial skills and general decision-making vis-`a-vis his neurotic subject.
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"Documentaries have always inspired me in narrative filmmaking," Dunne relates. "I realized that with this new digital technology I could find out what this movie was about as I was making it. Although there was a screenplay, the actors never knew what questions I was going to ask them, and all of my character's voice-over narration and scenes were added after the fact. DV [digital video] allowed me to keep shaping the film as I was making it and that was a kind of revelation compared to shooting films, which are planned to within an inch of their life."
Dunne cites a "real documentary," The Lost Army, as one of the inspirations for Famous. That little-known film was about a man with no anthropological experience who convinces National Geographic to send him and a film crew to the desert to find The Lost Army of Egypt. "They got out there," Dunne laughs, "and you realize that the crew is actually The Lost Army; they have no idea where they are and the filmmaker is reduced to punching a camel in the face in frustration. It struck me that working digitally with a small crew, I could lay out a general plan for Famous and hope for mistakes which would create something more than satire and something less than truthful reality."
No one is immune to Dunne's roving digital cameras in Famous. Director Spike Lee, a friend of Famous' executive producer Mira Sorvino, agreed
to attend the play of Tate Kelly, Lisa Picard's best pal in the film and a
struggling actor himself. However, according to Dunne, both Spike and Charlie Sheen, who is also in the play's audience, were unsure what would unfold once the play finished up. "Spike was really generous," Dunne notes. "He had no idea what the play was about or what I was going to ask him with the DV camera after it was over. I intentionally fell racing down the aisle to interview Spike to throw everyone even more off guard and keep the scene as real as possible."
Dunne had only 14 days to shoot Famous, yet because of the enormous speed and fluidity of the digital medium, was still able to cull more than 80 hours of footage. Dunne cites the "mobility" of digital video as being one of the biggest rewards of the film. "I'd be in the editing room and suddenly decide I'd need a shot that would link me within a scene or as a transition. I'd pick up the phone and tell my cameraman to meet me at 32nd Street and before you knew it, we were outside shooting."
Dunne utilized two digital cameras on Famous. His DP, William Rexer, used Digi-Beta, while Dunne's character relentlessly filmed his subjects with Mini-DV. "It gave us two distinct looks for the film," Dunne notes. "All the crazy, jiggling stuff is the Mini-DV - my character getting excited chasing somebody or bumping into things. The Digi-Beta was more straightforward and provides an anchor, particularly the interviews I did with Buck Henry and Carrie Fisher after the fact."
The electronic post process
for Famous picked up right where Dunne left off with his experimental approach to production. The Famous company was the first feature film
to utilize Final Cut software to edit a feature-length movie, a program only previously used for amateur and home-movie applications.
"Like most real documentaries, this film was definitely found in
the cutting room," Dunne observes. "But, since we were going where no filmmakers had gone before, with respect to the software, it was much more problematic." Dunne describes his digital post experience as "falling on the sword" for many indie filmmakers to come with the Final Cut application. "It was like we had to teach the computer a whole new language to cut the movie," Dunne laughs. "Which is a good metaphor for the digital process. Every liability or mistake is a visual and thematic advantage."
Ultimately for Dunne, a theory expressed by his character in Famous - the mere act of seeking out the truth alters the outcome by the participant's observation - provided grist for his meditation on fame. "The exciting thing for me about making a digital documentary, or whatever you want to call this genre," Dunne concludes, "is the line between satire and reality the director can straddle. I was fascinated by how long people would sit still for my questions just because I had a DV camera pointed at them. I never called cut or action - I just kept shooting until the tape rolled out or the battery went down, and that was the end of the scene. It was a new and wonderfully uncomfortable process."
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