New Low: Interview with Director Adam Bowers
Saturday, 23 January 2010 21:44
New Low: Interview With Director Adam Bowers
Interview with 2010 Sundance Film Festival director Adam Bowers about his movie New Low by Todd Konrad
First-time director and Gainesville native Adam Bowers has hit the jackpot as far as the independent film world goes with his feature debut, New Low, earning a premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival in the new NEXT selection series. A sharp comedy hidden in loose, low-budget visuals, New Low is a meditation on modern romantic relationships that poses the question: do you actually deserve to be who you want to be with? While, on the surface Bowers’ film may invite comparisons to meandering, mumblecore flicks, it is instead closer to the sharply scripted fare of early Richard Linklater films.
Bowers stars as Wendell, a Gainesville slacker who ends up caught in a bizarre love triangle between Joanna, a sweet, selfless aid worker and Vicky, a drunken, belligerent bar tender who insults him at every turn. Wendell is forced to choose between who should make him happy to be with and who actually makes him happy. The dialogue is dry and fun as are the performances. I spoke with Bowers upon his arrival at Sundance to discuss the film’s origin as well as production.
Vegas Outsider: First things first, where did you get the idea for this film and thereafter decide to not just write it but also direct and act in it, as the lead no less?
Adam Bowers: (laughs) Yeah, I came up with the initial idea unintentionally because I met a girl at a protest rally for farm workers rights and she was really, really giving and selfless. She did a lot of volunteer work and charity, that sort of thing. And I really, really wanted to like her and date her because I was so amazed over how good a person she was; but after hanging out with her a few times I realized we didn’t really have much in common, including her being a good person. At the same time, I had gotten along a lot better with girls who were jerks and just really, terrible people. And so while I wanted to date this girl who was very sweet and giving, it just didn’t click for that very reason. I thought that was a funny story for a comedy, a story about this guy who is trying to figure out if he is a bad person or not based on who he’s dating. I thought of that and then did a short film version of it in college which was forty minutes; and that was even cheaper and more run and gun than the film now, but people seemed to like it. 
So then I graduated and was about to move out to Los Angeles; when I was out in LA visiting I saw Paranoid Park, the Gus Van Sant movie. I learned that he makes a lot of his movies in Oregon and that made me realize that I should make something where I’m from; not only because it’s a place that a lot of people haven’t seen; but also because if I move out to LA I won’t be able to do it on my own because it’s a lot harder, you have to get permits for everything. Whereas in Gainesville, everybody’s excited that you’re doing something so everybody there was really cool. I stayed for a couple extra months then before moving out to LA, and I turned the short script into a feature, got my friends together, cast it from people I knew, and shot it. The main reason why I’m in it is because I couldn’t find anybody to do what I needed them to do, and who I knew I could have that much access to because I had to shoot around peoples’ work and school schedules. I knew that if I was also the lead, and in every shot, I would not have to worry about that one actor; I wouldn’t have to work around their schedule because it would just be me. So that’s why I took the reins on that role, along with the editing and producing; basically because no one else would. But it’s cool; it gave me more control over everything so I was fine with that.
VO: Right off the bat, I noticed the incredibly dry and tight performances you got from not only yourself but the other actors. Given that the material is such that if it was played just off then the whole movie wouldn’t work. I'm wondering how you worked with the actors in terms of getting their performances together and how collaborative that process was?
AB: I think a lot of it was casting. I knew that Valerie Jones, who played Diana, could do that sweet thing and I knew the girl who played Vicky, who’s actually an ex-girlfriend of mine and we were really close, could play that girl. She’s not that person at all though; she’s just a really good actress. And then with the friend character Dave, Toby Turner is a YouTube celebrity with around 80,000 subscribers. You can go online, watch any of his videos, and see he’s pretty much that guy. But then he amped up the debauchery and dickishness for the character. I think, with the exception of Jayme Ratzer, who played Vicky, everyone was playing pretty close to themselves. I was also a part of this small comedy scene in Gainesville as well where I knew a lot of comedic performers; so I pulled from that after seeing all their performances and being used to what they did. I basically had a good idea of who I could cast for most of the roles when I wrote them. It’s interesting how you note it being tight because a couple of people have compared it to a mumblecore-type of movie that’s a little more tightly scripted. I myself don’t think my movie is like mumblecore at all…
VO: I could see that comparison from a visual standpoint maybe but that’s about all.
AB: Yeah, of course. I mean mumblecore is looser with a lot being improvised and many times it comes off as real like that and that’s awesome. I wasn’t really concerned with that though, I would rather have the movie be as funny as it can be as opposed to being another movie that’s “real”. So I was trying to make sure to pack with as much stuff I thought was funny as I could. Because those are the kinds of movies I love, just really good comedies, that’s mainly what I’m interested in.
VO: I'm curious to know how the film's presentation of relationships fits into your own worldview on that subject?
AB: The movie deals with who you belong with, not who you want to be with; and that’s something I have thought about a lot. Obviously as I was writing it, but I have thought about it besides then as I have been involved with various girls and the film’s asking something I’ve wondered about which is you see members of the opposite sex who are so successful, kind, attractive, and everybody wants them but who should actually be with them? And even if those people were with them, it probably wouldn’t be as great as they’d want it to be because they don’t belong with each other. I think that the person you’re supposed to be with probably isn’t the best person you know; like why would you deserve to be with the best person you know because you’re probably not the best person yourself? So that’s my attitude towards it, but obviously you want to be with a good person. And you want to be with somebody who is a winner, for lack of a better term, not in terms of success as much, but more just a solid human being as opposed to a mess. But yeah everybody is meant for somebody, there are so many people out there that are so different that they have to sync up.
VO: How was it in terms of the physical process of getting the production together, i.e. budget, equipment, crew, etc.?
AB: It all kind of pieced together. The people were not professionals, they were all friends, almost everyone was under 24 and most people didn’t know what they were doing. So I had to guide a lot of people except for the director of photography, he was pretty competent. But with everybody else I had to guide them, tell them how to do things, and help them out with what they were doing because they were all learning as we were shooting it. As far as the equipment goes, the camera was a Panasonic DVX we got from Toby that he had for his YouTube videos, so we used that. And then another friend of mine had a film lens adapter that we put on the camera, it was more just another thing for us to use because we could. Everything else were things we had to figure out to do because we couldn’t afford the actual equipment. For example, almost the entire movie is lit by a China ball lantern which is one of those round, paper lanterns you can get at Pier 1. We didn’t even have a stand so we had someone hold it on a broom stick most of the time and just hold it in front of the actors’ faces, which made lighting a tricky issue when I was editing; but I think I was able to make it match for the most part hopefully. So we just did what we could. Another thing we had was an adaptor for my car battery so we could plug it in while we were on the street, and we had a couple little, white cards we’d use to bounce light into and change out bulbs for practical lighting. And we’d also try to shape the light with aluminum foil, things like that, so it was definitely figuring it out as we went.
Actually the moving shots were all outside; the first week of production was all the scenes with Joanna, played by Valerie Jones, because she was moving back home afterwards so we had to get them all out of the way first. So we were really trying to figure stuff out during that time and in a lot of scenes I had to cut away, because we hadn’t figured out this dolly technique I’ll tell you about in a second, or we hadn’t figured out the best way for the cameraman to hold the camera in terms of keeping it steady because we didn’t have a Steadicam. A lot of those scenes are a little shakier, because we were trying out all these different things and literally tried a dozen different idea before we figured out something the director of photography was comfortable with. So we had a wheelchair that we would put the cameraman in and wheel him down and pull him back during walking scenes, but as we’d walk down the street but for some reason it was still bumpy. I then figured out to put him into the trunk of my Volvo; we had people then push the Volvo and it actually turned out pretty smooth.
VO: Looking back at it now, from idea to Sundance, what are your thoughts on the overall experience making this film, how well it turned out from what you wanted it to be?
AB: Yeah, its gone way, way beyond what I thought it would ever do; I made this film on the feeling that I just needed to make something. I wanted to make something as good as I could though of course but I never expected it to get here. I wasn’t even going to submit it to Sundance but a friend of mine convinced me on the last day and I dropped in the DVD a couple hours before they stopped talking admissions. So this has been such a huge surprise since all the Sundance stuff has happened and it’s opened a lot of doors for me that hopefully will allow me to keep working. I was probably realistically assuming that I would be self-distributing it online and maybe utilize Toby Turner’s audience and just try to find some way to get the movie out there so hopefully a couple of people would see it. So the fact that it’s at Sundance is crazy. This place is so much bigger than my movie deserves I feel like (laughs) not whether it’s good but more in terms of just the scope of production at least where I thought it was going to go. I can’t imagine it being any better right now so I feel super, super lucky and happy.
*To learn more about this movie, go to www.newlowmovie.com
*Photos courtesy of Adam Bowers
