Movies on a Big Screen…the blog!

Wow! We’re resurrecting MOBSblog! Trust us, the lack of posts here has not been intentional. But what better way to come back to life than with the initial entry of a new series of filmmaker interviews, done by key MOBS helper, Galen Howard! So please… read the first installment of Microcinema Spotlight with Galen Howard!

The new Austin-based romantic comedy Artois the Goat possesses a sort of delicately infectious whimsy that, much like the artisanal cheese it prominently features, may take time for the consumer to develop a taste for it. And yes, also in that same keeping, it’s well worth that period of adjustment. Further, director brothers Kyle and Cliff Bogart and producer Richard Reininger’s have made this impressive debut film with similar tenacity and limited resources as with which their main character Virgil Gurdies makes his one-of-a-kind goat cheese. The film is ultimately about the importance of following one’s destiny, even if it means putting your lovelife at risk and manufacturing illegal cheese. Reininger speaks candidly about how he and the Bogarts brought this charmingly off-beat tale to the screen, and for the cost of about five frames of Avatar.

Galen Howard: I read that co-director Cliff’s employment at a cheese shop was partial inspiration for the story. Are any of you as passionate about cheese as your main character, and was your general appreciation of cheese enhanced or depleted by the end of the film?

Richard Reininger: Cliff’s employment at a cheese shop really was what catapulted the film into what it became. Kyle had the story mostly laid out, he just needed the obsession that Virgil would dive into headfirst. Cliff was and still is passionate about cheese. He would always bring home cheeses from the shop for us to enjoy with beer or wine and would explain about its creation. When he told Kyle of the smaller farms around Central Texas that own goats and make artisanal cheeses for a living, it was plugged into the story and we began our research to make it as authentic as possible. My appreciation for cheese has certainly been enhanced. We’d certainly like to continue to explore it, but with depleted funds from making the film, we reserve it for special occasions.

GH: Be honest: was any actual illegal cheese used in the film?

RR: Hahaha. No. All of the cheese in the film is, in fact, legal to sell in the US. Though I’d love to get my hands on some of the illegal stuff…

GH: What was the time span from the film’s initial conception to its completion?

RR: I was brought on as producer in November 2007. Kyle and Cliff had been working on the screenplay for about a year before then. We premiered in March of 2009 at the SXSW film festival and finished the last of the music cues in early December 2009. So I suppose from conception to completion, it was 3 years. 3 and half if you count it until our DVD distribution deal

GH: I’d love for you to go into how the film’s visually sweeping, whimsical style was achieved on such a considerably small budget. Were any elements in the script revised in accordance with the available funds?

RR: The film follows the original screenplay almost to a T. We budgeted for what we needed to do, and then we were able to more or less stick to that. We tried to put as much money on screen as possible, which meant working with a very small cast and crew. It kept things easy to manage, control with the Bogarts and myself, and lessened the number of mouths on set to feed. Cliff and Kyle had a distinct way they wanted things to look, and our cinematographer, David Blue Garcia, worked himself to death to make it happen with the extremely limited lighting and equipment allocation I allowed. We were all on the look out for the perfect costume items, colored paints, and locations to give the film the look they had originally intended. Then, we took it upon ourselves to take what we had, and make it what we wanted ourselves, which is another way we kept our costs down. When something needed done, it was either one of the Bogarts or myself that made it happen. It really was a DIY sort of film.

GH: I understand most of your core team was formed during film school. Were you able to cast many friends and acquaintances, or did you cast more outside your circle?

RR: Kyle and I had met and then worked together all through film school. I, of course, met Cliff through Kyle. We had also made friends with David Blue Garcia, our cinematographer, and Martin Pedersen, our sound recordist, in various classes. Our actors we met at casting calls, and it just so happened that our two leads, Mark Scheibmeir and Sydney Andrews) were MFA acting candidates at the University of Texas at Austin. Many of our supporting roles went to their classmates (the UT acting program really held their own in our auditions). Our nefarious German baker, Stephen Taylor Fry, was a childhood friend of the Bogarts, and made his acting debut.

GH: I noticed many “Fake Shemps” (a term popularized by director Sam Raimi for actor doubles that are used when cast members are unavailable) are listed in the credits. Were they employed mainly for stunt purposes, scheduling conflicts, or other reasons entirely?

RR: All of the above, really. Just about all of the “hand modeling” was done by Kyle to get the action just right and to give Mark a break. He also wasn’t a pro at goat milking, so we brought in one.

GH: Finally, I felt the Brian Satterwhite’s music score really contributed to the film’s overall lasting impact. Did you always envision the score playing such a key role in the film, and being so rooted in the French style?

RR: The score was always to be a big part of the film, and it ended up a huge question mark towards the end of post-production. The Bogarts had temped the film with a number of fantastic (and fantastically expensive) musical cues. The images became entwined with the temp music, and we knew we were in for an adventure replacing them with original cues. Luckily, Brian was in love with the project and dove right into composing his own pieces. He was very receptive to Cliff and Kyle’s ideas for the film musically, and together we all came out of it with a score that we’re all very happy with. It gives the film such a wonderfully unique musical identity, and is certainly one of the things I’m most happy with considering the limited budget with which we had to work. As far as the French style, Kyle had been listening to 60’s French pop while writing and editing, so it found its way into the temp score. Brian loved it, and peppered it throughout his pieces. Where we needed songs, he found a local French musician, Olivier Giraud, who was generous enough to write original material for us.

Artois the Goat plays this Sunday, April 25, at MOBS.

You can contact Galen Howard at galen@moviesonabigscreen.com