“Hoss”

I saw Ryan’s film “Human Resources” on Film Shortage as I was searching for filmmakers to participate in the 2018 Charm City Fringe Short Film Program. His film was both engaging and bizarre. I contacted Ryan around the time he was finishing up post production on his short film, “Bennifer,” which is one of my favorite shorts films. “Bennifer” is about Jed, played by Keith Poulson, who visits his mother on an island after a long absence, where they both have conflicting memories of their shared past. The moments in this short are big, almost out of a kid’s story, but beautifully hidden under brilliant performances, especially from Kristin Griffith(who played Flynn across from Diane Keaton in Woody Allen’s Interiors,) as she seems to struggle with a loose grip on reality, and delusions of becoming a star. The role of Bennifer is played by Keith McDermott. (McDermort played the lead, Alan Stang, across from Richard Burton on Broadway’s Equus. ) Bennifer reenforces Anne’s (Kristin’s character) version of her past with her son., as he pushes the son away in a brilliantly absurd sequence.

Ryan McGlade is a director, writer, and editor who received his BFA through NYU Tisch School of the Arts. He grew up in Pittsburgh and is now based in New York City. His films have been selected to screen at many festivals, including the Montclair Film Festival, Maryland Film Festival, Oak Cliff Film Festival, Athens International Film & Video Festival, and Chattanooga Film Festival.

Ryan has also been featured online on NoBudge, Film Shortage, Bureau of Creative Works, and 366 Weird Movies. He was the 2017 recipient of the Arkush Family Production Award from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts for his film Human Resources.

Instagram: @ryan_mcglade Twitter: @ryanmcglade http://www.ryanmcglade.com

Miceal:

What were your favorite movies as a kid? Movies that left an imprint, or that you reenacted during playtime? Do you still like them post film school, if you happened to see them since?

Ryan:

As a kid, my favorite movie was Space Jam. I loved my VHS copy of it so much that I washed the cassette in the sink to clean it, and destroyed it in the process, which was a devastating moment. I have seen it recently, and it mostly holds up.

Miceal:

A truly treasured item. That is awesome.

What are some of your favorite movies once you have become more of a discerning viewer? Has film school affected your taste?

Ryan:

Lately I've been watching a lot of Maurice Pialat's films, and going deeper through Ozu and Bresson to prep for a short I'm working on now. Definitely Barry Lyndon and Happiness were huge ones for me when I started watching more stuff in high school. One of the biggest takeaways from film school was getting deeper into more avant-garde and experimental work, like Brakhage, Jack Smith, Carolee Schneemann, and Jonas Mekas, who passed away recently. Also, many of my friends from film school have watched much more stuff than I have, so I get good recommendations from them.

Miceal:

Is there an identifiable moment where you decided to become a filmmaker?

Ryan:

Probably when I saw Space Jam for the first time.

Miceal:

Alright, so the truth is, I dismissed Space Jam when I saw the trailer. I had immediately categorized it as something that would be on the same shelf as Hulk Hogan’s Suburban Commando (no offense Mr. Hogan.) I will put it back on the watch list.

Earlier you said you’ve been watching a lot of Pialat, Ozu, and Bresson to prep for a short. Are you watching them for general tone, timing, shots, production design? Can you give us a sample of your viewing experience, and how it translates into the prep for you short.

Ryan:

The short is a bit quieter and more introspective than most of what I've worked on before, so I wanted to come back to Ozu and Bresson to get into a more rigorous and meditative headspace. I also just read Paul Schrader's book on transcendental style, and that also informed how I looked at those films going into production on this project. Pialat's definitely a different vibe, often really harsh and ragged (meant as a compliment), but there are moments in some of his movies that I've seen, particularly The Mouth Agape and Under the Sun of Satan, that I felt matched the kind of tone that I was hoping to strike with this new project, one rooted in a kind of uncanny religious or grief-based experience. So it wasn't so much that I was looking at exact compositions, and more that it was helpful to put myself into a certain kind of headspace that was closer to what I hoped the new film would be.

Also, the new film will be called Harrison City, and we shot it in and around my grandparent's old house in Pennsylvania.

*Note: film is now called Hoss.

Miceal:

Can you tell us who you had cast in your new film, Harrison City? One of the things I loved about your other films has been the casting, so I am curious. And how much of your personal prep do you share with the actors and crew (Cinematographer/ Production Designer) when you are prepping them?

Ryan:

Harrison City is thus far all non-professional actors (I may do more shooting for it depending on how the edit goes, so that's not set in stone). The main character is a friend of my grandparents from their hometown, where we shot the film, playing a fictionalized version of himself. My mom acted in the film as well, which was a unique experience.

Usually my personal prep and prepping the crew goes hand in hand – my DP and I watched a number of films that I had in mind and compared notes about the script as frequently as possible. A lot of the character stuff is more personal work, and on this project, I didn't want to bog the actors down with really any exposition that I might have had swirling around privately. I thought that was a good call, since the roles they were playing were so close to who they were, at least in the realm of mannerisms and certain small behaviors.

In this case, before I even wrote the script, I knew that I wanted to make a film in a certain location, with a very vague sense of the vibe that might work well with that location. Then, once those images sort of coalesced, it was a process of deciding who would be the best guide into that world, so to speak, and then the pieces sort of fell together further once I started to actually bring on members of the crew to share their impressions of the ideas I wanted to try out. The research on certain kinds of styles and how best to use them also is in the fabric of that process and is continuing now in the editing, so it's all sort of a continuum.

Miceal:

So this was a truly collaborative process from very early in the process.

I have seen three of your movies. In some ways, there are similarities. For example, they all push toward the absurd while keeping a straight face, and thematically, the characters have very disconnected perspectives.

Despite the similarities, they are all fundamentally different in execution. They range from being very classically structured, to being very tonal, atmospheric, and unhinged (under a structure,) to being straight improv. (again, under a structure.) I know that “On Showbiz” was a part of the Charm City Fringe Fest short film program, where the process started with Rick Szybowski’s finished score, so that would be one alteration in inception, but beyond that, how similar is the process between these seemingly disparate films when you first decide you are making a movie? Do they all start with prepping with your crew, and is that where the decision lies in how scripted the film will be?

Also, how and when do you decide when a movie requires the classically trained Broadway actors you have in some films, versus non-actors in others? And how does that change how you work with the actors? What are your rehearsals like in something like “Bennifer” versus “Harrison City” where there are non-actors?

RYAN:

Casting and working with actors is my favorite part of filmmaking, so for me, even if I have a script to which the actors are mostly faithful during production (as was the case with Bennifer and my previous short Human Resources) I always encourage the actors to take it in whichever direction works with their own conception of the character that they're playing. That's also why I like to work with actors who come from a variety of different craft backgrounds, including people who have never acted at all, as was the case in the short I'm now finishing post-production on. Sometimes, as was the case with Human Resources, we did a lot of rehearsals to establish a group dynamic, but rehearsal isn't something I always do – for my newest short, in which nonprofessional actors were appearing, we didn't do any rehearsal at all. A character as written on the page or as just an idea on paper at all can be an infinite number of things based on who is playing that part and where they're coming from as a person, and that's a really exciting thing.

I think that my work with the actors in most cases guides the film, from production through to the editing process, where I'm seeing tics and small rhythms that they brought to bear that I maybe hadn't even noticed on the set.

In terms of working with my crew, I usually work with the same cinematographer, Cody Powers, and lately we've been working on projects together that vary greatly in terms of their approach – it's been really interesting to use these shorts to experiment with a lot of different ways that a movie can be made, under a wide variety of conditions. I usually have an idea of how I want to approach it before we start shooting – whether or not we're sticking to a concrete script or to what degree, et cetera – but those things usually go out the window when we're actually making the thing or when I'm editing it.

I'm excited to synthesize a lot of the things I've learned from making these films over the last couple of years in future projects, and of course to make more mistakes and learn more from those, too.

Miceal:

Ryan, thanks so much for your time! As a final question, if you could give notes or advice to a younger version of yourself (or to any younger filmmaker,) what is one thing that you would tell them?

RYAN:

My biggest advice to myself would be to be less afraid of experimenting and not conforming to what the artistic/career paths of others have been – I think it's been easy in the past to let fear about not being able to make films any more (for whatever reason) supersede the actual making of more films, and I think I would tell myself to try to be aware of that and to stop letting it get in the way.