Milwaukee’s Wes Tank unveils In Clamatore

Wes Tank is something of a local Renaissance man, dabbling in music (as the one-man hip-hop group Stumblesome), theater (with companies like Pink Banana, Insurgent Theatre, and Alamo Basement), and film. For the past five years, Tank has been busy perfecting his debut film, In Clamatore, a surreal look at a declining post-apocalyptic community that manages to combine almost impenetrable non-narrative storytelling with a truly human story. Before the film’s first screening Friday at UWM Union Theater, The A.V. Club sat down with Tank to discuss In Clamatore.

The A.V. Club: So for the past few years, Milwaukee has primarily seen your musical and theatrical output. Did these works have any effect on the creation of In Clamatore?

Wes Tank: Well, yeah, because I was working on them all while I was working on In Clamatore, and so they all affected it. When I write the dialogue, it’s similar to writing a play. I don’t really see too much of a difference when I am writing dialogue for theater or for a film. The developments I have made in production musically have all been applied to sound design. So it all kind of informs itself. It all starts with just writing poetry and stuff, from a continuous feed, and basically when I do something out of pure creativity, I will siphon it to films, rap music, plays or whatever.

AVC: Were there any specific examples of cross-pollination, where you'd be working on a play and something from that play would show up in In Clamatore or something from In Clamatore would show up in a hip-hop song?

WT: I made a rap song called “Citizens Of Clamatore,” that was written during the shooting of the film, that was sort of like an anthem for the people of Clamatore. Also, when I was shooting it, I did that play with Insurgent Theatre [Cracks In The Floor] that involved a lot of improvisation, but it had a script. So the film used this. I would have a really tightly written scene and it would be really long, with the characters just bantering, and I would let them go on a tangent after that. And I would use the second half of the written scene and the first part of the improvised scene.

AVC: In the five-year process of creating this film, is it any different now than when you started?

WT: I started it by walking around and thinking, which turned into a lot of scrambled writings—and that turned into a script. And during each part of the process—the writing, the shooting, the editing—it became a completely different film. Even in the editing, it became a different film with every edit. The film involves the death of a son, and in every version thus far I had never shown the son, but in this edit I do. Yeah, it’s a far cry from what it was in my initial moments of inspiration; but really it’s not, because each step of the way I have been making decisions, and every decision is made with the intent of proper creation.

AVC: A lot of the story is told through visuals. How did these visuals become a part of the writing process?

WT: Really early on, Kipp Zavada, the cinematographer, and I would drive around the backwoods of Spring Green and Dodgeville, and we would find all these old, abandoned houses. When I was first writing it, it wasn’t post-apocalyptic, but I kept seeing these houses and I was like, “I have to shoot something in these houses.” So I took the relationship stuff I had been writing, and I said, “That totally has to go in here. That would work so well.” Also, I’ll say that the script mentioned ghosts a lot. It would say, “A ghost walks by” or something, and everyone always asked, “How are you going to show the ghosts? How is that going to work?” and I was never quite sure how I was going to do that, but then I realized that when I am showing blank nature, it creates this ghostly atmosphere. The longer you hold that shot, it invokes something.

AVC: It seems like the ghosts are there more for the people making the film than the audience. Is there anything else in the film like that?

WT: The film requires a lot of ambiguity for it to make sense. [Pauses.] I could leave it at that. [Laughs.]

AVC: One thing that stands out about this film is that it holds an abstract quality, but it’s still rooted in very personal and human themes. So why choose to have this dense, abstract outer layer when there is a very relatable core?

WT: Because it’s about how Earth will outlive us. While the people are important, it’s about the last commune on Earth, and you are watching these deteriorating relationships in this deteriorating environment. They are dying out, but the Earth is steady.