Lost in the Wasteland Episode 225: James Kicklighter

Thanks for having me, Shane. It's a pleasure to be here.

I spent eight years directing a documentary called The American Question, which examines how America got polarized and lost trust in each other, and what we can do to make it better. What I was really trying to do with that film is make something you could sit down with your conservative cousin or your liberal aunt, watch together in ninety minutes, and then have a conversation about. To me, that was one of the things that popped out of the 2016 election: a lot of people across the country just aren't able to have these discussions with each other anymore. So I tried to make something that examined how this occurred and what you can do to make it better at home. With Thanksgiving coming up, I'm hoping some people might be able to sit down, watch it together, and have a more productive conversation around the holiday table.

That's largely because we've self-sorted quite a bit, even within our own families. You exit the group chat because you don't want to have the discussion, or hear someone rant and rave about a specific topic. One of the things we wanted to do with our film is ask how we can have those conversations again. Growing up in a town of 123 people in the South, and living in Los Angeles now, I'm acutely aware of the diversity of views we have in this country. So it was really important to me to ask what we can do to understand each other a little better, so we can have more productive conversations.

You can watch The American Question on demand on all platforms, everything from Apple to Amazon to YouTube, Google Play, cable, Blu-ray and DVD. Take your platform of choice.

My favorite film of all time is Network. It's Sidney Lumet's masterpiece, and I think it's a perfect film, from the way it's performed to the way it's written and shot. One thing that has always been an inspiration to me, as a director who works between documentaries, ads and scripted work, is that Lumet started out in documentaries and television. What he really learned doing that, especially in television, was the value of the lens. He could immediately tell you when he was shooting something: this needs a 50, this needs an 85. He knew that through his encyclopedic knowledge of changing lenses as a camera operator in the '40s and '50s. So when I watch Network, I'm drawn not only by how well executed the entire film is, but by how well shot it is. It's that encyclopedic knowledge, and his extensive collaboration with his DP, that creates that world.

The thing that's always striking to me about a film that's a classic, a masterpiece, is that it's just as relevant and in conversation with the present day as it was when it was made. Network is one of those films. At the time it was shot as a satire, and now you could argue it perhaps isn't one. Anytime a film can evolve with the times, that's remarkable. And as you say, shooting dialogue that has an almost stage-like quality, and making it compelling and urgent, with that sense of propulsion, is a really challenging thing to do as a director. I think he pulls it off beautifully.

I agree. He's someone people should examine, because he really took swings. What I always appreciated about his career, and Jonathan Demme's, the two of them have always been inspirations to me, is that they took lots of swings between different genres and different types of films. Some of them work and some of them don't, just like any other director, myself included. What I appreciate is that they were always trying to challenge themselves. Directors who do that are usually some of the best, because when you make your best work, it's because of the different swings you've taken.

I was racking my brain on this earlier, and I had to check the dates, because two films immediately come to mind. In 1994 there were two seminal animated films released. The Lion King is the first one people think of, but the second is Thumbelina. I remember when I was a kid we went to see Thumbelina, and somewhere halfway through, my dad starts snoring. My mom had to keep waking him up, because he kept falling asleep through the entire Don Bluth film. And then after that, of course, I remember going to see The Lion King and being terrified of the sequence with Scar. Those are my very first memories of going to the movies.

I have probably not seen Thumbelina in twenty or twenty-five years, minimum, and I still remember that music vividly. I can remember my mom jabbing my dad in the theater to stop snoring, repeatedly, because it was definitely a kids' movie. There's that delineation in animation between films that are for kids and films that are for everybody, and Thumbelina is not the one for everybody. I think that was my first observation of that, which I can put a name to now as a professional: this is not a movie that was made for adults, and my dad was bored to tears.

And then you go back and watch them as adults and say, oh, I see what that was. That's the fun part of films that have lots of layers. You've got one audience you're targeting, and then the broader audience that's also watching. It's an interesting lesson to observe.

I'm definitely a drama guy. I love a very good drama, but usually with a tinge of comedy. This year, for example, I've really enjoyed Saturday Night, The Substance, Challengers, The Apprentice and [inaudible]. Those are all dramas at their core, but they have a really nice, sharp sense of dark humor that's subtle underneath. I also enjoy a pure drama. Last night I saw Conclave and loved it. I really like a drama that says something about the human condition, and I've always been drawn to those types of films.

All those films have this psychological tension going on underneath. I'm very interested in the psychology of characters, so when you're able to craft a film that really digs into that, I'm always compelled.

Oh, it's Sidney Lumet, for sure. As I said, I appreciate a few things about him outside of his filmmaking. I think he also wrote the greatest book on filmmaking, Making Movies, which I believe is essential for any aspiring filmmaker. He really walks you through what he learned and how to do it, and not everyone does that so clearly. It's not just a memoir. It's also a tool. Any filmmaker who can be generous enough to give insight into their process, without bloviating, is someone you should pay attention to.

It's great. Like I said, it's not just a memoir, it's a manual, and it's really acutely written. I think you're going to enjoy it.

That's one of the toughest questions. I don't know that I necessarily have favorites, because it's always about the performance and what they're doing. But I will say there are two actors right now who I think are doing really interesting things: Adam Driver and Margot Robbie. One thing I appreciate about both of them is how they really take swings with their careers. Some actors prefer to play it safe, because of career trajectory, pressure from their representation, all the commercial things you have to consider. But over the last decade or so, the two of them have really done one for me, one for you, one for me, one for you. And they do it with aplomb. They both bring such a nice palette to their performances, which are very authentic to those characters. I've just been a big fan of their work.

Inside Llewyn Davis was the film that really captured me. And with Margot Robbie it's the same thing. People think about The Wolf of Wall Street, because it was such a strong, big debut for her on a large scale. But she's also done remarkable work in Bombshell, and in Babylon, which I personally loved. With actors like that, the general public becomes aware of them in the big films, like Barbie or Star Wars. But go back and look at some of their other work. They're doing really interesting things.

That's one of my favorite films of the last ten years. Brilliant.

And I have to shout out I, Tonya for a second. Craig Gillespie is a fantastic director as well. He does remarkable work. That was one of those pieces where you can see the machinations of a performer turning. An effective performer really embodies a role. They're not Margot Robbie on screen or Adam Driver on screen. They really become those characters, and I think both of them do an excellent job of that.

Absolutely. October Sky. I can watch October Sky over and over again. It makes me cry at the end every single time. It's a film that is earnest in the most authentic of ways. That story speaks to me as someone who grew up in a small town and aspired to do other things with my life. My father died when I was young, so the story of Homer Hickam and his father, and trying to make him proud, has always spoken to me. It's a beautiful film. The score is also one of the best things Mark Isham has ever written, and I sometimes play it while I'm writing. I could watch it all day. Laura Dern, all of them. It's just terrific.

It probably shouldn't be a huge surprise that I love politics. I've always loved politics. The American Question is the most overtly political thing I've made, but if I didn't work in film, I'd probably work in politics. Because of that, a favorite film people may not expect me to like is The Manchurian Candidate, John Frankenheimer's film. It is a wonderful film about the backroom deal, and Angela Lansbury gives a performance for the ages. It's a remarkable piece of filmmaking, and I think it sometimes surprises people. Again, it has those gears, and you can see them turning throughout.

I get it. The joke I always grew up with about Murder, She Wrote is that you don't want to go to Cabot Cove, because you're going to die. I nearly said Cades Cove, which is in the Appalachian Mountains in Tennessee.

The proportions are very high. The key is that you retire there, so you're going to die there, and the population is constantly replenished. I think there's maybe a good horror film in that.

The remake's excellent too. Jonathan Demme does something different with it. I think people sometimes knock it because it's hard to hold a candle to the original, but if you think of them as separate entities, they're both excellent. And again, I think it's really important for any aspiring filmmaker, or anyone who wants to work in film, to go back and watch those classics. To understand how film has evolved and how we've arrived where we are now, you really need to see how we got here. Films like The Manchurian Candidate are excellent examples of how to construct a beautiful film.

William Miller from Almost Famous. When I was sixteen, I was working on my very first project, a documentary. I was still living in my hometown of 123 people, and a college professor had gotten some money to make a documentary about a Western character actor named Dub Taylor. At that point I had not traveled very much. Over the course of two years I went to about eighteen or twenty states, and got to interview Dixie Carter and John Mellencamp and all these people who had worked with Dub Taylor. It was a very formative experience, and it felt a lot like William Miller's. There was a little bit of impostor syndrome, a little bit of "we don't know what we're doing," and being starstruck. David Zucker, who directed all these different things. I got to meet these people at a very early age, and it really set me on the trajectory I ended up on. So I think about William Miller a lot.

Almost Famous is another of those perfect movies to me. It always pulls at the heartstrings, but it also has that authenticity, which I think is the key to any drama of that kind. Cameron Crowe pours a lot of what happened in his own life into that film. When we're able to bring the authenticity of our own life experiences, it really bleeds through onto the film.

It does. Even down to calling your mom: "I'm okay, here's what I'm doing." I remember one day we had come back from filming. I believe we were in San Francisco at the time, and I was sixteen. Everybody cracked open some beers, and they passed one over to me, and then it was, "Oh, James is not twenty-one." I remember it so vividly. I don't think I told my mom that, so this may be the first time she hears it. I'm sorry, Mom. They really didn't mean to. It was an accident, and that was the end of that. I think they might have taken it away.

I think I'm a little older than you, but we didn't have texting to do that with at the time. It cost ten cents a text, so it was just phone calls. I had a TracFone from Walmart with a prepaid card and prepaid minutes, so you could only talk for so long. The pay phones were still around, but that was my primary form of contact.

I'm sure. But there's also a balance. Nothing too insane happened on my escapades doing that project, and it was so formative for me as a person that I was able to see things without having my hand held as much, and really develop a sense of independence. That was valuable. I think parenting now can sometimes be too much hand-holding, and then you get out on your own and you haven't really had that opportunity. In some ways I pine for those days, because you had the ability to explore who you were without all the pressure you have now from constant communication and the internet.

Across the Universe. I love Across the Universe. That's another film I can watch on repeat. What I love about it, again, is the swings. The film is so theatrically staged. Julie Taymor takes some massive swings with it. Some of them work and some of them don't, but the whole thing is such a fascinating viewing experience. How does this film even exist? It has some of the most stunning visuals I've ever seen in a film, coupled with Daniel Ezralow's remarkable choreography. I can watch it over and over again, and I think that surprises some people.

Across the Universe is one of those films where the story is actually pretty thin. It's not the psychological drama we were talking about earlier. But I have always been remarkably compelled by how well executed it is. It's a really hard film to pull off, and I think she does it very well.

We've touched on this a little, but for me it is always about exploring the human condition. I'm innately curious about people and different walks of life, and about how people come to see things the way they see them and do things the way they do them. Movies are a way to get inside that psychology. It's about figuring out how a character, or an individual, has become the way they are, and what I can do to convey that, to help us understand the human condition writ large. That's what movies are to me: taking elements of daily life, some that we see and some that we don't, and packaging them in a way where someone can understand something new about themselves or about other people. That, to me, is the magic of movies. There are very few mediums that can do that effectively, and it's one reason I've really enjoyed being a storyteller.

It's point of view. As a director, your job, in my mind, is to remove some of your own personal biases and sit yourself at a different vantage point. This is what I'm trying to tell, and this is how this person or character has arrived there. How am I going to understand that psychology, so I can effectively convey it to a viewer? The great thing about that is it allows you to understand the world and people in ways that I think not all professions give you the opportunity to do. It makes life a lot more interesting, because you become more curious about people and about the world itself.

For sure. That's why I like going between documentaries, scripted work and ads. You get to bring a little of each medium into the others. You learn about real people in documentaries and apply that to your scripted work, and so on. There's a lot of crossover between doing different things, and that's why I enjoy it.

That's a big responsibility. What was it that first made you feel passionate about movies? People have lots of different passions, sports or art or whatever it is, but people who get into movies usually get into them for specific reasons. So why movies? Why that massive DVD collection behind you?

I'm the exact same way. I watch everything. Some directors watch everything and some do not, but I really enjoy it, because it's informative about different processes and different storytelling methods, about using iconography and visuals to create moments. The more you watch, the more you're able to apply to your own work. Essentially, all films are a copy. The medium has been around long enough that we're referencing different shots and different ideas. There are the same seven stories you can tell over and over again. The question is how you're going to interpret them and tell them for an audience. That is the great challenge, and the great creative process, of filmmaking.

It was a pleasure. Thank you, Shane.