You are listening to the we need to Talk About Oscar podcast.

And this is our conversation with Eugene Kotlyarenko and Bart Van Courtright, writer, director and cinematographer of the Code.

Eugene's really, like, strict about, like, it making sense for the story.

All of these different cameras.

Like, it might seem ridiculous that we're using all these cameras, but each one, like, really has a place and there's an explanation.

It allowed for, you know, sorts of angles and camera work and image quality that would be unacceptable in a conventional film.

But feel completely in character, you know, in this film.

You gotta record from the jump, sweetie.

Exactly.

Because what if it's all done from here?

Yeah.

Because what if this shows up and he starts spitting John Waters tails and marketing schemes and shit?

Like pyramid schemes right now?

Yeah, exactly.

Marketing pyramid schemes.

Actually, I did.

Well, now the thing I'm about to say now we're being recorded is going to sound way more pathetic than the other stuff, but I have to share it anyway, which is all the stuff that wasn't recorded.

So this is kind of one of those lost films.

Kind of like the Day the Clown Cried or something.

Anyone listening to this would be like, oh, my God, I wonder what they were saying before.

Or not.

But I had a dream last night that I was invited to a commercial being directed by David Lynch.

Rest in peace.

You know, sometimes when these famous people die, especially famous directors, they kind of end up.

Or musicians, they end up in my dreams.

I don't know why.

Maybe because I know, oh, I'll never get a chance to meet them.

So it's in my subconscious because now they're dead, you know, and.

And he was saying, like, he's like, I invite.

I only invited you here because I love the Code.

And then he said, like, something really, like, nice about the code.

And I can't use that in a, like, promotional flyer.

And then he was like, yeah, that was my dream.

Pretty exciting stuff, huh?

Yeah.

Trying to just extract, you know, I tried to exploit the.

The spirit and ghost of David Winch.

That's where my mind's at.

And now you're here talking with us.

And now I'm here talking with you.

This is a promotional show.

What is the you.

Have you seen the movie?

I have.

Great.

That's great.

And I just joined the five star club, so, yeah.

Oh, nice.

Five star club.

Very good.

Well, guess what, buddy?

That club's growing.

We got that club growing, Aaron.

As for the film the Code.

Okay, yeah, we could talk about that.

And you mentioning legends such as David lynch, the Film open with a cold credit to or some Wells.

Yeah, this question is a stupid question either way.

But is that an actual well quote?

It is a actual Wells quote in that I made it up to.

So, you know, I.

It's completely fictional Orson Welles quote, which I attributed to him and would like people to think it's real.

And I like to think that, you know, he wouldn't have too much of a problem with that since he often fabricated his own backstory and even made an entire movie that was playing around with the idea of illusion and authenticity.

F for fake.

And so really I was inspired by.

So yeah, the answer question is fake.

I made it up.

In fact, there's some, you know, things in there that are quite obviously not common expressions, like, I don't know, like crack the code.

I think that's more of like a comic book expression in 1959 for children.

It's not really an expression that like an adult who was, you know, raised in the 1920s and 30s would say at the same time he was the voice of the shadow on radio.

So maybe he would speak in this sort of comic book vernacular.

But anyway, I was gonna say I was inspired by the Jean Pierre Melville movie Circle Rouge because that starts with a fake quote from the Buddha.

It's like, it's like one day the Buddha says one day and all is aligned.

The men shall once again meet in the red circle.

And then like the quote disappears kind of in the title of the movie is there, you know, And I just always thought that'd be nice.

Well, it's even funny.

Everybody that I've read to date, at least two professional reviews citing it opens with an awesome man squad.

Oh yeah, Good, nice.

So I'm winning.

Oh well, send me the professional reviews.

I don't think I've read like a single professional review of the film.

So you got to send that to me.

Will do.

And another thing is, which more so speaks to the state of cinema is one thing I read like I believe yesterday is that it's a Steven Soderbergh interview with the Independent where he discussed his latest Black Bag.

And it's somewhat, or at least to the studio, but to a point to himself as well.

A disappointing box office performance despite the star power and budget.

Then tow these mid budget films can't break even anymore.

Right.

And to me, you, Eugene, seem like someone who doesn't accept certain formats or approaches going out of style, but at the same time tries to capture cinema through the eyes of the current generation, the current climate.

So with that in mind, I'm curious, what's your stance on this and how do you fight the system?

Well, I'm just trying to.

I'm not really trying to fight.

I guess I'm just trying to make the movies that I would like to see, I guess, you know, I feel like the value of an artist is their perspective, you know.

And through my life I've connected deeply with art and artists, artworks and artists that sort of, you know, said for the first time things that I had maybe felt or thought, but not articulated.

And I guess I can just see this.

This gap.

And it's not strategic, it's just kind of like, oh, here's an observation I have.

I haven't seen anybody make this observation.

Whether it's formal or character based or, you know, the way people.

Storyline based.

I try to, you know, come up with situations and conceptual frameworks that are very much relevant to me and very much missing from cinema and can expand cinema and then just execute it, you know, try to make it happen.

That's why we have Bart on the show too, because this was a very challenging thing to try to execute, you know.

And yeah, I mean, the type of cinema I like is innovative.

By the way, I tried to get Steven Soderbergh to come, and first, I tried to get him to be an EP on the movie.

And second, I tried to get him to come to a screening and.

And actually I'm doing a series at the Roxy Cinema kind of related to the code, like a program.

And I tried to get the movie Full Frontal of his that I really like.

I don't know if you know that one, but he has the rights to it and it's not currently being put out there.

So it's.

He was the figure who really inspired me.

And he famously is one of the only ones that you can really look at over the last, you know, 30 years and say he has that system of one for them, one for me.

And especially in the early 2000s or throughout the 2000s, when he had that peak of like post Aaron Brockovich and Traffic, where he had these two movies that were nominated for best picture and one in the same year.

And all this stuff, he.

What he did with that is basically he went into his own, you know, Dogma 95 style direction, you know, where he made movies like Full Frontal and like Bubble and.

And on and on.

There were a bunch of films he made that were really in one for me, in a really avant garde and personal style, exploring DV and stuff.

And so he was inspiring to me when I was a teenager and continues to be inspiring to me because he.

He has really good commercial instincts and entertainment instincts, but he also is not scared to mess around with form and.

And alienate people or alienate some audiences for the sake of, you know, having fun with, you know, cinema.

So I don't think any filmmaker I like is about, like, you know, fuck you to the system.

It's just kind of like, well, there's gaps, there's problems with it.

So I'm just going to do what I think is relevant to audiences.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah.

And mentioning challenges and.

Yes, this is exactly why you have Bart here.

And as far as I know, you shot this with, what, 70 digital cameras?

Because that's unbelievable.

I want to hear you guys say that as fact, because that's a mad number.

Yeah, I mean, it was like, 70 recording devices.

Not exactly like cameras because there's, like, phones and drones and screen recording.

And, you know, technically, like, when you're recording anything, you have to, like, label it with a number for the editors who have to ingest all this insane amount of data.

So we started, you know, lettering them as you do.

And it did reach, like, 70.

70 recording devices.

Yeah.

It's important to distinctly label all the cameras in this film.

As you've seen, cameras signify different perspectives and kind of different purposes throughout the film.

So it'd be really important for an editor to know that this footage is, you know, a G.

Because it's unlike any other footage in the movie.

Even if it's actually the same GoPro that we used for, you know, m.

It means something else, you know, within the context of the storytelling.

So that's kind of, you know, but certainly we had many scenes where we were rolling up for 10 plus, 12 plus cameras, you know, and throughout the house.

Almost like a reality show, but with more control.

Obvious.

And what does and does not count as coverage?

What is and isn't blocking when shooting with over 70 devices?

Yeah, I mean, well, you know, the film is, in a way, a commentary about, like, the soft surveillance state that we all participate in.

And when I use the word state, I mean it like, you know, like the fourth Estate or the.

Let's call it the fifth Estate.

You know, it's not a surveillance system, you know, put upon us by an authoritarian regime.

This is a surveillance system that we have initiated and gladly comply with and participate with in.

And so we had to, you know, escalate exponentially the amount of cameras in play so that we could create a World where, you know, basically some characters are paranoid and other characters embrace it.

I mean, you.

You saw the film.

So there's many moments where people realize they're being surveyed and laugh and, you know, participate, which I feel is much more accurate reflection of people's kind of unspoken reality.

Right.

Because the most common thing, the easiest thing that you've heard a million times the last 10 years is we live in a surveillance state like this.

It's 1984 all over again, you know what I mean?

And.

And then people who say that still post online, they still, you know, take videos, they still have their uploaded to the cloud and stuff.

So you can't complain if you yourself are, you know, part of the Panopticon, you know, and.

And so I thought it would be more interesting to make a film that realistically explored the relationship to surveillance and the, you know, the narcissism that, like, facilitates it.

And for you, Bart, with so many different aspect ratios and anything like that, as a cinematographer in general, your number one goal always has to be, of course, serving the director's vision, but I believe with achieving pristine image quality following close behind.

So how did you balance these priorities with such an unconventional shooting approach?

Um, I don't know.

I mean, it's funny because, I mean, Eugene really wants everything to look as good as possible.

I would say I kind of was excited by kind of the lower quality, kind of like recording, you know, capabilities of like.

We had a lot of these, like, hidden cameras, like, camera and like a fire detector or a TV remote, which were like, fun narratively to like, tie into the story.

But I also liked the.

I don't know, I think it was like this weird thing that Eugene and I were constantly wrestling with was all these different mixed aspect ratios and resolutions and qualities and everything like that.

But, you know, Eugene does a really good job of Eugene's really, like, strict about, like, it making sense for the story.

All of these different cameras.

Like, it might seem ridiculous that we're using all these cameras, but each one, like, really has a place and there's an explanation to what.

You know, a lot of the time I just wanted to like, throw cameras in there to get other options, but, you know, Eugene's really, like, kind of strict about that, which.

Which is great.

And we'd have to kind of justify each one that we'd add or, or take away and.

Etc.

So, I mean, it was really just kind of like, just kind of making sure that they all kind of blended into the story at the end of the day.

But I.

I don't think we really worried that much about the mix quality.

I mean, we tried to get the best quality stuff that we could with the tools we had, but.

But yeah, it's.

It's a hodgepodge of stuff.

Obviously, actually on set, if you recall, Bart, I was so excited by how the remote control camera looked like, you know, it was completely low grade.

Everything was hinted purple.

You know, I thought it looked amazing, you know.

And, you know, when you make these diegetic films, as this one is, and my previous film spree is you make a contract with people.

When you're making a diegetic film or, you know, a found footage film, the contract is the things that they're looking at should make sense in the context of the characters who are filming, you know, and sometimes if you break that contract, it can take people out of the movie, you know, and so I just wanted to make sure that everything we did made sense in the movie.

But, you know, when you have a remote control cam and you can see that it looks cool as fuck, you have to figure out ways.

So one of my favorite moments is when Jay and Celine catch her cousin and the real estate agent having sex.

And then she's.

And then the cousin's like, oh, shit.

Oh, shit.

She grabs the remote control, which we as an audience know is, you know, just a camera, and she starts pointing it at the tv and she goes, are you guys having sex?

It's like, what are you guys doing?

It's like we're watching tv.

But we know as an audience that that's just a fake camera, remote control, you know.

But, you know, I think growing up, I really liked like Oliver Stone 90s films, you know, like JFK, like Natural Born Killers, that had all those different film stocks and angles on one thing that was happening.

And I thought that was, like, so cool.

And there was no other films like that, you know.

And, you know, later on you'd see stuff like mirror, like Tarkovsky's mirror.

Or even as a teenager also, I'd see like some Peter Greenaway films, which are very pristine and don't really mess around with stock, but, you know, they had multiple screens and kind of text on screen and stuff.

And I always thought those types of things looked amazing.

But then when I started becoming a filmmaker, I was like, but how can I justify them beyond esthetics?

Like, beyond just their, like, esthetic expressionism?

Is there a mechanism in which I can actually intentionally employ all these different, you know, types of cameras and stocks and aspect ratios and Text on screen.

Could there be a formal grammar that would justify that beyond the kind of, you know, cinematic expressionism?

And so that is kind of part of the motivation from my first film, Zeros and Ones, which is all graphic designed and animated over multiple camera angles to this film.

You know, just figuring out ways where it didn't seem random that it would go from something like 35 to 16 to Super 8 or whatever the equivalent is for the digital detritus that I'm doing.

This is probably one of the things you think about the least during production.

It's most about the doing, but it might be fun to reflect on.

So how do you guys manage and go about managing the multitasking and potential overstimulation you capture during production?

Well, I mean, the movie itself and, and most films, you know, are kind of in the final estimation, you know, saved, broken, elevated, destroyed in the edit.

Right.

And so luckily we had two editors on this film who are amazing filmmakers themselves, Tucker Bennett and Sabrina Greco.

And they were on set with us, so they were editing as we went, which I think was helpful, right, Bart?

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

And there are also things we had to edit in the moment.

Like, remember when we were up at the, the hiking area where, you know, they can.

They vomit and confess their love and vomit and stuff.

Like, I had to edit the video that Jay is then watching in because we were there for just one day, right.

So like when he comes back later in the story.

By.

By.

That was lunchtime.

That was before lunch with the two of them and after lunch with Jay by himself.

So at lunchtime you had to pick the take that you wanted, basically, and then edited on a computer and then throw it on the phone.

And I think you worked on that as well, right?

Or were you like in the mix on that edit moment?

I think a little bit.

I think a little bit.

Well, a lot of decisions had to be made because we had to pick like which take, you know, so it's kind of like, you know, weighing the advantages versus disadvantages and.

Yeah, but the reason we had to do that, Aaron, just to be clear, is like, you know, when you're watching a movie and there's like that like medium close up insert of someone looking at video on their phone and it's like super duper obvious that it's just a green screen on a phone that was then later is the fakest thing ever composited in.

You know, I desperately avoid that at all costs.

And I've never done that in my movies, which are very phone centric and so as part of the schedule, we always, you know, want to film the content that's going to be on the phones ahead of time so that actors are interacting with real footage and real material.

And so in that instance where we only had one day up in that location, the moment of deciding what to put onto the phone was really just 30 minutes of like, okay, this is the take out of seven takes and this is how we're going to edit it.

And that's it.

And then let's export a vertical MP4 that we can put onto someone's camera roll.

So, yeah, that's.

But yeah, like, to answer your question, you know, like, when you shoot with 12 cameras in a scene, your intention is to use all those cameras you're not going to roll, that you're not going to use, and your intention is to overload people.

And the arc, the kind of visual grammar arc of the film is that it starts very low grade and minimal, which is, right, him in the mirror with vertical camera doing a mirror selfie conversation.

And then by the end, you've arrived at like, you know, what kind of looks like traditional Cinema, like a 4K drone in like a desert sunset.

And then, you know, this was very intentional.

The final scene.

Spoiler.

Spoiler alert.

In the edit room.

You know, I asked Bart to shoot that.

I asked Bart to shoot just like a traditional film with, you know, sticks and like a cinema camera and a cinema lens and lighting and over the shoulders and, you know, two shots and just all the normal grammar and.

And I asked Dash and Peter to act in a way that is very, like, actory and not really naturalistic, you know, and there's an.

There's an arc to it, to the schizophrenia of all the different, you know, angles and overloaded stuff that happens as the movie progresses and gets to the climax, you know.

And yeah, the film layers this pandemic narrative with the documentary being shot by one of the characters, creating this meta framework of filmmaking during crisis.

Like the film itself wasn't meta enough already.

And so I'm curious, how did this multi layered reality, the actual pandemic, and capturing characters filming during it, affect your works?

So just to be clear, like, we filmed this film after Covid, right?

So we had to kind of recreate Covid after it had, like, just at the moment when it was all gone and everybody forgot about it.

Right, Great.

Now we're going to make the movie about COVID And of course, that's one of the themes of the film, right?

The characters say, like, this Is like a, you know, watershed kind of event that everyone's going to forget.

It's going to get memory hold, you know.

And so the purposes of Celine's film within the film and also my, the film itself is to kind of, you know, grapple with and process and make fun of that whole thing which did turn our world upside down.

You know, like every.

I'm on tour with the movie now throughout America and literally everywhere I go I was like, so will you just take me to like the cool diner or the cool movie theater or whatever.

And people go, oh yeah, like I would have taken you here but it like closed down during COVID or like it got fucked right after Covid.

It had to close down because people weren't coming back.

And it's like there is a world of, of things that disappeared, you know, like things that were special that disappeared because of lockdown.

And, and just it as a moment that we all experienced is valuable to me as a filmmaker.

The universal phenomenon of being locked down is one of the very few things that I can count on as an artist to express that I know other people will understand, you know.

So it seemed like a no brainer to me to deal with it.

Even though many, many people that I shared my ideas, the deal with ahead of time, we're like, no one wants to watch a Covid movie.

Don't make the movie about COVID Are you sure?

Can't you just set this in a normal, like a normal moment and not covet.

And I said no, that's my opportunity as an artist to make something good.

Like show people that you can make good, non cringe, meaningful art.

About this experience that we all went through, you know.

And did the two of you find yourselves incorporating any of the techniques that became necessary during COVID restrictions?

Not exactly, but I mean they're, I mean worse I would say because a lot of, you know, during COVID there was a lot of remote filming and there was a lot of like, okay, the actors are in one room and everyone else is another room.

We did have to do that just by the nature of the project being like a 360 environment that was constantly being filmed.

I went to a Q and A with Jonathan Glaser and he was like, yeah, like, you know, when we shot Zone of Interest, we were like, the crew is in one building and then the cast is in another building and we're monitoring.

And I said man, you understand?

Like, you know, we're making the same, the same setup, you know, that's how it was for Spree, too.

But unlike Spree, where we used like, you know, GoPros, which had like a.

And phones, which have like a reliable access point for this, for monitoring for this film, there were so many cameras that were, like, really challenging to monitor because they're not meant to be, you know, cinema cameras.

And so Bard had to figure out a lot of workarounds.

And in some cases, there was no ability for me or Bart to see what a camera was registering.

And so we would have to maybe do a test with that camera before we rolled, before we called action, just to see what, you know, what would happen.

We would do like maybe a quick rehearsal of actors to see what it looked like in the space if we had to adjust the framing.

And then sometimes we would just have to hide.

Hide in the room, hide in the trunk of the car.

You know, a lot of the driving scenes, we're hiding in the trunk of the car.

I mean, I remember, I think the one where I was by myself, Bart, was when Jay gets Celine, gives Jay, you know, Roadhead, you know, a blowjob in the car.

And that's the moment where I'm thinking, God, I hope those bozos over at Tesla really figured out the self driving.

Because, you know, Peter's.

When he's getting his dick sucked, he's got his foot right on the gas and I could tell the car was accelerating.

So now I'm in the trunk, no seatbelt, car's going probably like 90 miles an hour, and his hands are not on the wheel, you know, so that's the sort of fun danger we like, you know, when we're making this independent cinema.

And to steer our conversation a little towards the actors, their roles and everything around it, but still to a point.

Cinematography.

As for you, Bart, are you a DP who prefers to operate the camera yourself?

I'm of course asking this because you didn't have control over so many of the cameras.

Plus you at moments had to give it over to the actors, namely Dasha and Peter.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I really only operated like maybe like two days on the whole movie.

Like, I did some really crappy drone.

We had like a really crappy drone where I was kind of observing the other drones for the end of the movie.

And then I operated like the first shot that Dash is shooting through the crack because it was kind of complicated.

And then Dasha actually grabs the camera for me.

But I don't mind that at all.

I mean, I think it makes more sense.

I think if I.

Even if there was Some way that I could have, you know, magically been there and operating it.

I think it's more interesting to see what they do and, you know, mistakes and, and their just viewpoint of.

Of where to point the camera than what I would do.

I mean, of course, on like a.

Unlike a normal movie, I love to operate, but I didn't mind it.

And, and you know, I mean, I did talk to Peter and Dash a lot and we.

And Eugene and I would watch playback and we'd like give them our thoughts or what to focus on.

Yeah, I mean, it was, it was great working with them.

Yeah.

I think anytime you can figure out who a good director actor is, I would definitely not shy away.

And some of the best actors I've worked with, I can tell that they would be good directors, you know, and so the fact that both, you know, Peter and Dasha have directed films, I think was very helpful to their, to the film because they have an eye, you know, for what a good, you know, for Mise En Scent.

They have an eye for Mise en Scent, for what is dramatic.

And like Bart said, we would give them feedback and notes and stuff.

But I also think one thing that's.

That we also share, Bart, is that we do like accidents.

I think we embrace like accidents and, and quote, unquote mistakes and you know, and also in a film where for an audience, you were saying the quality of this film is dependent on the quality of the characters who in the film who are making it.

It allowed for, you know, sorts of angles and camera work and image quality that would be unacceptable in a conventional film, but feel completely in character, you know, in this film.

And what does it mean for your films, Eugene, whether you do or do not star in them?

Like, how intentionally do you write roles for yourself?

And does it change your approach when it's a cameo, like you're in the Code versus a lead role like in Vobal Palace?

Yeah, I am.

It's just dependent on resources really.

You know, so much of filmmaking actually creativity and choices have to do with the financing and logistics.

Right.

In the films that I'm in, it's probably because, like, the complexity and nuance of the character benefits from exploiting my actual real life production design, costume, and just understanding of where the character is coming from.

You know, if I plopped an actor into those roles, there would be a lot of things that they would have to be informed by to really have the insights that I have about like, you know, my experience in this milieu and this socioeconomic situation, this cultural Situation, this geographical situation.

And in fact, I'm extremely collaborative with actors.

And so my goal with actors is to try to explore the things that I can see in their behavior and in their personhood that feels like hidden or trapped or sublimated or, you know, kind of in the dark.

And that's my interest in performers actually to try to cast people who are not just explicitly appropriate for the roles, but actually subconsciously seem like they can make the role richer through, you know, exposing part of their selves that they maybe don't normally expose in, in life or in cinema.

And so anytime I work with actors, it truly does change the character from the page a lot.

And so that would be the major difference because that's what I like to do.

If I'm acting in the film, I also am like, okay, this is my chance to expose like the worst version of myself and people like me, you know, and make fun of it and let people laugh a little bit at their own insecurities or their own anxieties and stuff.

And I like to work with actors who are open to that and also open to, you know, a kind of personal exploration because that's where the best friction and that's where the best honesty comes from in a performance.

You know, the discomfort of self exposure.

And to wrap, the film explores this dwindling love and its fleeting nature.

And filmmaking is, I believe, one of those professions where it's something you can't really do without loving it, but at the same time it can so easily become a love and hate relationship.

So with that in mind, have either of you ever fallen out of love with either cinema or filmmaking?

No.

For me, I mean, but I think in a way you have to be not a glutton for punishment, but, you know, like in any art form, but especially commercial art forms, rejection is the name of the game.

So, you know, if, if you're going to be affected by, you know, nine out of 10 people telling you your idea sucks and don't do it and, and all that stuff, then you're not.

You will fall out of love with filmmaking because it's so full of rejection in, in just a general sense, from conception to release, it's full of rejection.

So you have to be comfortable with that.

But cinema itself is, to me at least, so full of potential and so barely explored that, like, it is the.

The ultimate frontier of synthetic art, right?

It can combine all the other art forms.

So the possibilities and excitement and enthusiasm I have and I can see in cinema are kind of endless.

So, yeah, I mean, that's love.

You know, like when you can just feel the endless potential of, of something or someone till the moment you breathe your last breath, you know, that's love.

And cinema is too rich and too vast, has too much potential to feel any other way towards it.

Yeah, I would just say too like, I think I tell like younger cinematographers all the time is this industry just has like high highs and low lows and you know, you can have like great years where everything's going well and your movies get into stuff and then there can be years where you don't get like any interesting offers and your movie gets rejected from festivals.

So you kind of just have to, you know, keep going.

But I mean, the other thing I'll say too is like I really loved working with Eugene for a lot of reasons, but one of them is just that, you know, as someone who, I mean, I really enjoy going to like a lot of rep cinema and seeing a lot of stuff and Eugene has just such a love for movies and can talk about so many different directors and you know, periods of cinema and it's just such a.

It's such a joy to work with people who really like love movies and are very film literate.

Love that.

Thanks buddy.

It was joy working with you.

Yeah, thanks Bart.

Eugene, it was a joy talking with the two of you.

Thank you so much for taking the time for the film and I definitely urge everyone listening to check out your previous works as well because yeah, it's 100% worth it.

Thanks Aaron.

Appreciate.