Known in independent film circles as one of the leading filmmakers behind the sometimes-derided, sometimes-respected genre Mumblecore, Aaron Katz's third feature, "Cold Weather," a wonderful little independent film that works both as a genre exercise and touching brother-sister relationship movie, has been making the festival rounds since it premiered earlier this year at SXSW, and is influenced by films of the '70s and '60s, both American and European.It's easy to see that influence in his latest film, a big departure from his earlier Mumblecore efforts "Dance Party USA" and "Quiet City" — more so visually, as it's shot beautifully by DP Andrew Reed on the RED ONE digital camera, but also because it employs a genre plot to drive the characterizations and relationships forward. The genre is detective fiction (secondary to the film), and it's gracefully introduced through characters (primary) about halfway through the film. Seeing it a second time in Vancouver, I was struck not only by its originality, building of tension and humor (it's a very sly and funny film), but especially its depiction of a very specific time and place. Portland (my new city) is very much a character in the film. The writer/director, who grew up there, leaves no doubt as to where this city takes place.
"Cold Weather" was picked up in May by IFC Films and will begin rolling out to theaters in select cities while also being made available on VOD early 2011. We got a chance to sit down with the budding filmmaker in his hotel room in Vancouver. He was very gracious with his time, chatting for over an hour about everything from his love of baseball to his modest approach to filmmaking, preferring a "collaborative approach" and working still to this day with the same people he went to school with. We managed to get a few details on his latest script, a werewolf movie, that he's writing right now (he went back to work on it after we left the interview) with producer and friend Brendan McFadden, and also some cool insights in to the wonderful score for 'Weather' by Keegan DeWitt, who's worked on every film of Katz's.
"It's 100% Keegan [the score]," says Katz. "Because it's a genre film — in some ways — we wanted to have a score that was different from other genre films and so we decided to use instruments not commonly used or instantly recognizable. There's strings in there but also a lot of oddball percussion and harps and glockenspiels and marimbas and things like that."We detected a heavy influence on the score being Jon Brion, specifically his tension-building and propulsive work on P.T. Anderson's "Punch-Drunk Love." His response: "Yeah we both love Jon Brion. 'Punch-Drunk Love' is a score we really like. We also really like Alexandre Desplat, who did some great work on 'Birth', 'Syriana' and 'The Painted Veil'. There's a generation of composers, a bit younger, who are doing some really interesting work, and those are a few we really like."
On his latest script: "We're working on a couple of things. Brendan [McFadden], and I are writing together a sort of werewolf action-comedy set in the '80s. It's even more of a genre film than ['Cold Weather'], but still the starting place is the characters and we really love the characters. It's kind of a fun take on '80s action comedy aesthetic like 'Beverly Hills Cop' or something like that. Those are films we really love. I don't ever want to make a film where I'm just making fun of something. We really want to make films we want to see that are in the tradition of other films we like."
Katz also mentioned he's working on a couple scripts on his own as well. Look for "Cold Weather" when it's released early next year. Watch the trailer below for a taste of that awesome score. It accurately sells the tone of the film.
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