Altamont Now director Joshua von Brown
The filmmaker so underground he shot a movie 20 stories beneath the earth
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Joshua von Brown: It’s true. I’m glad I never saw it, because I was able to think of Bucci’s play as a screenplay—a blank slate. Otherwise, I would have unintentionally stolen things from the production, and who needs the lawsuits? But it’s taken literally a decade to get this film made, so all the people who worked on it in Austin are now senior citizens. I really feel like this film is so “Austin.” Not just because it was born and raised here, but also because of the themes.
Joshua von BrownD: Were some of those themes also partially shaped by your day job in TV?
JVB: Yes, I support myself working in television. I admit it. I think the way it informs my work is finding the tension between the highbrow and the lowbrow. It also forces me to be humble. You can’t take yourself too seriously when you’ve had to do scratch voiceovers as Lil’ Kim for a reality show pilot. The absurdities of pop culture verses underground/alternative culture in Altamont Now are definitely informed by TV—which brings me to Why’s Daddy Actin’ Funny?, the fake sitcom in the film. That’s something new I developed from the play. It’s like a Diff’rent Strokes in reverse—a poor little white girl adopted by an African-American family.
D: You could easily see it being a real show from the ’70s.
JVB: I may have to pitch it to a network. That's the feeling we tried to get across: satirical, but possible. It’s a warped version of reality.
D: What was it like shooting inside an actual deactivated nuclear missile silo?
JVB: This was the reason it took so long to start filming: being totally intimidated about how we’re going to make a film that takes place in a missile silo. Luckily
we literally found one on Google by typing “abandoned nuclear missile silo.” It was our intern who found it, after we had exhausted a bunch of other options, which had once seemed promising—a nuclear
power plant on Long Island, the Biosphere II in Arizona. The intern showed me the e-mail from the owner of this upstate NY missile silo, and I totally didn’t believe her. This wonderful Australian architect bought it, because he’s passionate for industrial architecture. His plan is to turn it into a dance club, 20 stories underground. It’s near Montreal, so it just might work.
D: Sounds like a good place for the Canadian première.
JVB: I think the missile silo owner screened the film for his friends up there on his birthday. He’s the coolest guy ever. Who gives the keys to your missile silo to a bunch of filmmakers? But we left it in top condition. It was funny to be scrubbing the kitchen and vacuuming after the shoot and then stopping and thinking, “Wait a second. I’m hundreds of feet underground, inside a nuclear missile silo.”
D: You seem to have put a lot of thought into the trailer, which is unusual for smaller films. What inspired it?
JVB: For the film nerds out there, it’s a satire of Godard’s Contempt, which I think has one of the best trailers ever. It’s totally crazy, ridiculous, funny, and vague in a way that trailers aren’t supposed to be. I wanted to announce that Altamont Now is going to be a film like no other. That we’re going to try something different. I think there’s a sense of lowered ambition these days with indie film. Cute. Twee. Godard would not like.
D: How’d you wrangle the film’s soundtrack?
JVB: It started with Enduro, an excellent Austin noise-rock band that was around for quite a while. Bucci is one of the leads. They wrote the songs for the play, and they came back together to re-record at the Sweatbox in Austin. Enduro shares band members with The Crack Pipes. And the other bands, I'm really psyched about who said yes. Just bands that I love who fit that anarchic, noisy sensibility. Finally Punk—who rule—and Brooklyn's Awesome Color and Ex Models, etc.
D: What’s your next project?
JVB: We're busy readying The Man Who Would Be Polka King for festivals this spring and summer. It’s a documentary about a polka superstar who’s like the Bernie Madoff of the polka
world—suddenly incredibly relevant. I try to always have a documentary and a narrative project brewing. The narrative is like H.R. Pufnstuf meets Cassavetes, and the documentary is top secret. Though I promise it will not be shot in a missile silo.
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