Maddin mixes film, live music in tribute to Vertigo
Kronos Quartet and Guy Maddin combine their talents to create Green Fog
Guy Maddin doesn’t hold back when discussing audience response to his work. The Manitoba-raised director knows his offbeat and provocative films have some calling him Guy Maddin-ing. But with his latest work, he has found a happy place collaborating with a renowned San Francisco new-music string section, the Kronos Quartet, in a live cinematic experience.
Titled The Green Fog — A San Francisco Fantasia, the 65-minutelong experimental sound and visual collage is something of a cut-andpaste reimagining of director Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece Vertigo. Using none of the original film’s footage, Maddin and his spectacular editing crew of brothers Evan and Galen Johnson — part of his Development Unlimited production team — put together a homage to both the silver screen classic and the city of San Francisco. During the screening, the Kronos Quartet performs the score by Bay Area composer Jacob Garchik live.
“With the live element, it’s far easier to make a connection with the audience than what I manage with my non-live films,” Maddin said.
“The walkout rate is practically zero compared to the 80 per cent rates on my non-live films. I have truly had some Ruthian results, but not with these — and I also believe that film festivals should have such special events.”
Many would disagree with Maddin’s analysis of his creative output. From early black-and-white gems such as 1988’s Tales From Gimli Hospital to the exploding colours of 1997’s Twilight of the Ice Nymphs or 2003’s triumphant The Saddest Music in the World, his unique storytelling and meticulous directing have made his name an art-house, if not a commercial, favourite. This reputation for high-concept art is why he is a visiting lecturer in the visual and environmental studies department of Harvard University.
The project came out of a commission from San Francisco Film Society president Noah Cowan for the closing night of the 60th anniversary of the San Francisco Film Festival in April 2016.
“We started with a short feature about the city to go on film, something like a city symphony piece such as have been done about Berlin and so many others,” he said. “Evan, Galen and I sat down and watched hundreds of films set in San Francisco on fast-forward and I was looking forward to using footage from Vertigo, which is one of my favourite movies of all time.”
What emerged from viewing everything from episodes of MacMillan and Wife and The Streets of San Francisco to such lost camp classics as Chuck Norris’ Eye for an Eye, The Love Bug and even Dirty Harry, was that Vertigo appeared in films shot decades earlier and later.
“There’s always someone dangling or plummeting to their deaths, cars on steep hills and more, and that got us thinking, being precocious as one ought to be,” he said. “Why not remake Vertigo without any of the original film to tell the story, to challenge ourselves to see how Sister Act 2 and Crackers and Bullitt could all be put into place to make a collage in which the plot outlines of Vertigo are repeated and how Karl Malden, Steve McQueen, Michael Douglas and Chuck could become Jimmy Stewart.”
Yes, you would need to know Vertigo to understand this line of thinking. Really, what The Green Fog totally succeeds in doing is bringing reoccurring themes and images into a package that leaves you feeling essential qualities of San Francisco. Anyone who has been to the city knows that it’s indeed steep, its vistas dramatic and its neighbourhoods shaped by clear eras in its fascinating history. The unique assemblage techniques used to build the film are surprisingly effective.
Maddin said the credit really goes to the brothers Johnson.
“It was so much fun finding the euphemisms and facsimiles that we could force into service of our remake, if we can call it that,” Maddin said. “For my part, I spent a great deal of time working with the fair-usage law expert that San Francisco has to be certain we didn’t do anything wrong. But Evan and Galen really did most of the heavy lifting here.”
The editing craft is indeed spectacular with the vast array of film textures and grains that are a signature of other Maddin installations dating to 2003’s Cowards Bend the Knee commissioned by the Power Plant in Toronto. But The Green Fog — A San Francisco Fantasia wouldn’t be as entertaining without the passionate performance of the Kronos Quartet. The long-running group has been a big inspiration for the director for many years.
“They loom large in what’s important in my film-watching life, such as in Tod Browning ’s Dracula where they play the Phillip Glass score and an appearance I saw with them performing the score to the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” he said. “There is so much goodwill in the room when they are playing and the live performers can feel a room and make the people come to them, turn the dial one way or the other to make that audience connection. Kronos is so experienced at this sort of thing as well.”
Always a group happy to push itself to the limit, the quartet took to Garchik’s score with its signature passion. Experienced with cinema through such acclaimed soundtracks as Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain and 21 Grams, among others, the group will recreate the parallel-universe Vertigo at a Vancouver International Film Festival special event under the VIFF Live banner. It’s a big score for the festival to be able to remount the event as all the parties involved maintain somewhat crazy schedules.
Ultimately, Maddin said, he thinks the show is fun. He and the rest of the creative team had a blast putting the thing together and watching “way, way too many” movies and TV shows to arrive with the final content, he said. The list of credits at the film’s end is as long as the animation and VFX teams in a Marvel blockbuster.
As his time at Harvard nears an end, Maddin is preparing to jump back into the world of feature filmmaking. His time is up in summer 2018, and he and his team are working on a script he won’t discuss. He has only one regret about leaving the Ivy League institution.
“My greatest relief and crushing defeat was that Malia Obama didn’t take my first-year film-studies class, as it had been reported that she was considering film,” he said. “I think Barack and Michelle ran some intel on me and suggested a more straight-ahead, first-year arts program.”