What was your inspiration for the film?

I originally came up for the idea for what was going to be the third part. [It] was based on being able to shoot on a piece of farm land that my Dad owned in central Illinois. I’d made a short film before that and had to deal with locations and things like that. So I thought it would be cool to just find a location that would be really easy to shoot on and then write something around the location.

I had been a bike messenger in Chicago for a little while [so] started writing something about a bike messenger. I like road movies and movies where someone shows up in a place where they don't quite fit in. So I thought that I’d make it about this bike messenger from the city who (for whatever reason) ends up camping out on this abandoned farm. [They] sort of flee the city and camp out on an abandoned farm that they just happened upon while riding a motorcycle.

So the first two [parts] were written to lead up to the third part (which we didn’t even end up doing). The first part was based on a short story that I started writing a while ago. I had a friend who bought a motorcycle after being dumped. We used to ride around together--I had a motorcycle as well. I just came up with characters that I thought would be interesting to see interact with one another. I tried to write what I thought would happen when these people crossed paths.

What is Motorcycle about?

I would say that it’s about peoples’ need for human connection, even when they think they need something else or want something else. A lot of times what they’re really needing or wanting is some kind of connection with other people or another person. I think that’s the underlying theme.

I was reading that you had made this film over a number of years. I know that you were doing the parts as projects in school...
Was that originally the plan?

It was a loose plan. Before I came to school I had the idea for that third part (about the person that ends up on this abandoned farm). I hadn’t really worked out all of the characters and details but had the overall idea. I wrote each section after I had already shot and edited the one before it.

So it was kind of a loose plan and I wasn’t necessarily sure I was going to go through with the whole thing. I did each one and I figured when I finish this one I’ll see how it goes. And I just kept on deciding to do the next part. But each time, I was going back and forth about whether or not I wanted to just do something totally new and forget about the three-part thing...

The motorcycle was yours right?
Did you have a similar experience when you bought it?

I’ve always liked motorcycles. I kind of wanted an excuse to buy another motorcycle. [The] first year of film school I bought the motorcycle to use in the movie thinking that I’d have the motorcycle if I wanted to keep making these films (parts). I figured I would just have it and I could ride it. I got rid of it recently, I guess you probably heard in the Q & A (after the screening at SXSW), I had to… I traded it to the sound mixer Bob.

So what’s the deal with the doughnuts?
Are they a metaphor for something?

When I originally did the first part there was a voice-over with the main character talking (which I got rid of). It goes into a little more detail about how his girlfriend was a real health nut. The voice-over is basically him being in denial and how much he likes being single, how he can do whatever he wants now. So the doughnuts were just one of the things that he always wanted to do that his girlfriend never approved of because she was into health food. That’s really just where it came from. I like doughnuts… they’re kind of a guilty pleasure I guess. When I was writing it I didn’t plan it as a metaphor.

Have you had anyone approach you with some outland-ish meaning for the doughnuts that completely took you off guard?

Yeah, I’ve had people, actually a woman thought it was sort of a sexual metaphor. I guess there’s some song… I guess it was a famous blues song or something… “Jelly Roll” something or other. I guess the song is about sex or something… anyway, she thought it was sexual. She thought it was a metaphor I think for the female anatomy…

What are your influences as a filmmaker?

Well, I think a lot of people probably compare my humor to Jim Jarmusch.  I do like Jim Jarmusch movies. I like Aki Kaurismaki, he’s a Finnish filmmaker. He’s also sort of similar to Jim Jarmusch—in tone...sort of dead pan style. I like a lot of the American 70’s movies because, among other things, a lot of [them] seem to have more of a verité style… where the audience is left to figure some stuff out. I like Hal Ashby. I like Ozu he’s a Japanese director, I like his stuff a lot.

Did you do any fundraising for the film?

I really didn’t do any fundraising. I pretty much paid for it with financial aid. You can still get the maximum amount of money when you’re TA-ing (teachers assistant) as you would if you weren’t TA-ing so… I would just keep getting the maximum amount of money. I’d end up with 4 or 5 thousand dollars extra each semester. That’s pretty much what I used.

What about casting? Was it hard finding a cast?

It’s mostly people that I know. I thought about people I know who would work for the parts. Pretty much everybody is a non-actor except for Paula Rester who played Ingrid. She’s an experienced actor. Chris is a good friend of mine, the guy who plays the main character. I feel like you can get really natural performances out of non-actors if you work it the right way.

\I noticed that you did a lot of improvising in writing and shooting the film. How was your experience improvising the scenes with the actors?

I gave them the script so they could see what was going on. I didn’t want them to memorize it… at least not until we had done a fair amount of improvising. So, when we were rehearsing during the weeks leading up to the shoot, I would just set up the scene and say: “This is what’s happening in the scene.” Then I would let them improvise it. And let them do it how they would do it. Then I would end up usually tweaking the script and (a lot of times) making scenes shorter.

And did you do a lot of these rehearsals?

We rehearsed the whole thing at least once. We didn’t do a ton really. I just wanted to make sure we had gone through the whole thing ahead of time. There were probably a few scenes that we had to spend more time on but… yeah we didn’t spend a ton of time. We would just meet for a couple of hours here and there and we’d go through a few scenes each time. It wasn’t super extensive. Then on the set, we’d run through it before we started shooting. I wasn’t really worried with them memorizing their lines or anything. I just wanted to get the main idea of the scene across and we could make adjustments if something wasn’t playing right.

What would you say were some of the problems you had to deal with in Production?

Well, scheduling is always challenging when no one is getting paid, so trying to schedule everything was kind of tough. Most of the people—pretty much everybody who worked on it—was in film school. So [it] was a lot easier to ask them to spend so much time working on this shoot without getting paid. And we shot it during the summer, so they didn’t have class.

The motorcycle tended to be sort of difficult [too]. It wouldn’t start a lot of times when I needed it to start. Even if I had gotten it running the day before (to make sure it would start), it still wouldn’t start. Yeah it was kind of like how it was in the film… and it really did leak gas. I didn't have to anything special to make it do that.

You shot different formats for the film?

Yeah. The first two parts were in 16mm. And then the last part with Brandi… I shot it on 24p video mini DV camera. But a lot of people actually liked the way that stuff looked better than the film stuff.

Did you make any steps to make the formats match up?

I did after the fact. I put a film effect on it and obviously took all the color out. That’s basically all I did to it. And I played around with the contrast.

So you shot 16mm… what kind of camera did you use?

It was an Arri-SR from school. We were able to do so much more improvising in the last part… because of the video. The first two parts were shot mostly with a static camera, not a lot of movement on the tripod. But the last part I wanted to have more of a lively feel to it. Like the first two parts are… I think of those more as static character portraits and the last part I wanted to be more lively and organic. So we actually shot with two cameras on mono-pods, so that we could quickly and easily move around the cameras. Shooting it that way really freed up the actors to not feel so much pressure. You know when you’re shooting film and the film starts rolling, you can just hear the film in the camera and knowing that every foot, every inch of film that’s going through the camera is costing you money—that’s a lot of pressure. You really can’t do all of the improvising we did and start playing around with things the way we did in the third part—if you’re shooting film, with a really low budget. With video you can just have them keep going and trying different things and let the camera keep rolling. There’s no way you could do that with film.

Did you have an editor? How did editing go?

I was the editor. And this is where I paid the price for all that improvising. I had such a huge mass of footage to deal with. On top of the added footage for improvising, sometimes I would turn around and find Luke, one of the DP’s, shooting me. We’ve got some great behind-the-scenes footage. I ended up with something like 28 hours of footage just for the third part, which is about 45 minutes long.

I did a study abroad in Denmark and basically just edited for a lot of the time I was there… I was in my room editing on my laptop, going through all that footage.

What are your next steps for the film? Are you going to hit more festivals or has there been any interest in terms of distribution?

I would like to get it distributed. Nothing’s been done with that yet. I don’t have a rep so I’m just sort of feeling my way through this and honestly don’t know the best way to go about it.  Right now I’m waiting to see which festivals it gets into from the last batch I submitted. If I don’t get distribution the way people normally do, I might do some self-distribution. But honestly I don’t know how extensive it will be because I’d rather focus on making the next film. Maybe I’ll sell some DVD’s online. The film seems to play well with audiences—especially at the Alamo(at SXSW). Maybe the humor—and the pace—work well with people eating and drinking.

You mentioned that you were going to send the film out to other festivals. How did you go about deciding which ones to submit to?

I’ve been sending short films to festivals for a few years now, so I kind of knew the main list of festivals. The festival season starts with Sundance so that was the first… Sundance and Slamdance were the first things I submitted to. Sundance is the biggest one—at least industry-wise. And everybody wants premieres. So I think most people start with Sundance and then start submitting everywhere else. I mean I’m happy to have the movie play anywhere somebody wants to play it. Right now I’m just sending it all over.

What kind of things do you think you’ve learned from working on your first feature?

Well, how to work with actors and how to direct actors. I feel like I learned a lot about that I got a lot better at it. Getting into more of the improving and sort of guiding the improvisation. Learning how to do that in this last part especially. We didn’t do as much improvisation in the first two parts and it was good to see the difference in what you can get.

Technical stuff—like how to cover a scene in the most efficient way—like learning how to not over-shoot a scene and shoot it where you can streamline the production side of it.

You’ve probably gathered that I’m not into a overly controlled style. So I learned a lot about how to be adaptable to your situation while you’re shooting and being open to discovering things while you’re shooting. I learned how to do that I think pretty well and be comfortable with that. Because I think you can discover some really great stuff actually while you’re shooting if you’re open to that. Some people would just consider that chaos or something you know? I mean it’s kind of scary I guess, but I like it and I’m getting comfortable with it.

So how did you feel at your first screening of Motorcycle?

I was really excited and really nervous basically. I wasn’t even really sure that… I was completely ready for it not to get into any festivals. I was just really excited and [I] almost couldn't believe it when they called me. When Sarah from Slamdance called me and then when they wanted to play it at SXSW… I couldn’t believe it because actually those first two parts… that I made as shorts got rejected from most of the festivals I submitted to.

So you sent in each of the parts individually into festivals?

Yeah because… I was never really certain the whole time whether I was going to end up doing the whole thing or not…

What would you like audiences to take away from the film?

I guess what I was saying earlier about the human connections. I feel like art and film can be... to me good art… expresses what it means to be human and… I would just hope that my film does that, and that people can relate to the humanity of it.

So what’s next for Paul Gordon?

I’m writing another film. I want to make another film fairly soon. It’s been almost two years since we shot the last part of Motorcycle. I feel like I need to shoot something. Maybe I’ll do a short or something— just for fun. Yeah, I’m writing a movie that has a tone and sense of humor that’s probably pretty similar to Motorcycle. My goal is to keep getting better and make each film better than the last. I’m pretty happy with this one that I’m writing and I think it’s going to be pretty funny...and extremely deep of course.

I’d like to keep making films but I haven’t figured out quite yet how to make a living off of it. I’m hoping that will happen—fairly soon, preferably. Between going to festivals and sending it out and trying to write a new script—it’s hard to have a regular job. I want to just focus on film stuff but every now and then—actually pretty regularly—real life kind of pokes at you and says, “Hey. Get a job. Get a job.” And I’ll be like, “Okay, I will—next week.” This summer I’m going to help my friend Melissa Pratt shoot her film in the Napa Valley, and then I’m probably going to stay there and work harvest at a winery. You work non-stop for a couple months and can save up a lot of money.

What kind of advice might you give to new filmmakers working on their first feature?

I would just say be adaptable to anything that happens during the shoot and leading up to the shoot and just get it shot. I think a lot of people get hung up when they have little setbacks. You know if somebody doesn’t show up or if the motorcycle doesn't start or something like that… Every time you have a shoot scheduled make use of... you only have people so long and you can only ask people to help you so much so you have to get stuff shot when you have the help. I guess if you have a bigger budget you have a little more leeway... But that would be my advice—just to be adaptable and get stuff shot. And don’t try to make a film that’s like another film or films. Make something original—something that only you could make. Otherwise what’s the point?