HUFFINGTON
06.17.12
CINEMA VÉRITÉ
who embarks on a road trip
across Armenia. “But they
are tremendously creative.
And where one producer
would say, ‘Well, we have to
cut this scene, we don’t have
it in the budget,’ Jay and
Lars will collaborate with
the director on how best to
obtain the values, the quality, the aesthetic, the mood,
whatever is needed, in a new
and different way.”
Foster got a firsthand taste
of just how committed Knudsen is to a filmmaker’s vision
during a day of shooting on
Armenia’s tense border with
Iran. The production had applied for permission to shoot
over the border into Iran, but
the clearances never arrived.
The scene called for Foster
to drive a truck along the
border, but the actor didn’t
have his passport, so Knudsen — who had been warned
that there could be trouble
with secret police active at
the border — stepped in and
took the wheel. Not shooting the scene, he says, “was
never an option.”
Others share a similar
fondness for Knudsen and
Van Hoy.
“There are a lot of producers who are jerks,” says the
Oscar-winning actor Martin Landau, who starred in a
little-seen Parts and Labor
gem called Lovely, Still, a
love story about two elderly
neighbors. “These two guys
are creative producers at a
time when most producers
are basically money raisers
and not filmmakers. These
guys care about the product.”
The philosophy of making movies, not talking
about making them, is one
of the things that persuaded
Mike Mills to sign up with
Parts and Labor. “Beginners
was such a personal film
for Mike,” Knudsen recalls,
“and a film that he needed
to make next — he couldn’t
not make it. And we said,
‘We’ll get it made. If we have
to make it for a million dollars in Portland, we’ll make
it.’ And I think that gave him
some reassurance that we
weren’t just going to play the
game of having to attach an
actor of a certain value to get
the film financed.”
They ended up getting just
WORDS TO
WORK BY
“WE
WANT
TO MAKE
FILMS,
NOT
TALK
ABOUT
MAKING
THEM.”
— Lars Knudson