The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

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fourteen-course meal composed entirely of desserts.” What do you
suppose sparked those diverse emotional responses?
Smith: That film had the possibility layered throughout the movie, that if
these dudes in Bumblefuck, Texas—at that point I didn’t know Austin was a
cultural fuckin’ epicenter—could make a movie, I could.
Linklater is one of the few directors who have been able to harvest a
local film scene. He’s stayed in Austin. When you and I first met and
talked years ago, you talked about wanting to do the same thing for
New Jersey. But what obstacles exist for directors wanting to film in
their home state and nurture a film production industry?
Smith: New Jersey is so close to New York that most people just gravitate
there. Who would want to hang out in Red Bank, New Jersey, when an hour
away they could just go to Manhattan, where there’s a much bigger film center?
Also, I was kind of a victim of my own success at a very early age. It was
impossible to get people to work for nothing after a certain point, because
we were backed by Miramax, and Miramax is backed by Disney. So it was
kind of like, “Hey, man, can you come in and pitch in, give it the old college
try, put on a show?” And at a certain point, people would just be like, “Dude,
you have Miramax money. Clearly you can afford to pay people.”
I also didn’t live in a college town, so I wasn’t surrounded by young energetic
zeal. Those were the kinds of hurdles for me and my group. Some movies
just completely dragged us out of state. Mallrats was cheaper to shoot in
Minnesota, so said the studio. So off to Minnesota we went. With Clerks
nobody gave a shit, nobody knew who we were, and Chasing Amy was following
the failure of Mallrats. So we’d been pretty written off at that point.
There was no expectation, and we were so low-budget that we could stay in
our hometown and shoot the movie. When we get to Dogma, ten million
bucks, suddenly we can’t stay in New Jersey because to shoot union would
have been more expensive in Jersey. So if we go out to Pittsburgh, or western
Pennsylvania, it’s not nearly as expensive, and you could shoot nonunion.
Both you and Linklater have used nonprofessional or first-time actors,
and for your second films you both worked with professional actors.
What are the benefits of both?