Photos Courtesy Filmmaker

“You should never be asked or expected to explain why you do what you do, especially if it’s something that doesn’t give you rewards in a conventional sense.”

Almost a year ago now Frank V. Ross sent along a note via MySpace, a message to the effect of, “We have all the same friends, but I don’t know who you are.” A few days later, he mailed a copy of his features Quietly on by and Hohokam, and from that point on, my interest with his work began a slow simmer to boil.

“I just looked at some footage that we shot, and this is the first time I had seen it. As soon as it came up on the screen I got a really intense feeling of déjà vu, and I thought, ‘This is exactly where I’m supposed to be at exactly this moment.’”

“Everything that’s ever happened to me has been a step forward, and I haven’t lost a foothold yet. So maybe I made the right decision.”

When SXSW released its lineup, Ross yet again sent a message and quickly after a screener of his Emerging Visions premiere Present Company. The story follows discontent twentysomethings couple Christy (Tamara Fana) and Buddy (Ross) as they struggle to raise their son. Mixed in with the already messy emotional equation are Craig (Anthony Baker) and Sam (Sasha Gioppo), the pairs’ respective romantic interests. With its gritty, realist perspective and its emotional complexity broadened by its relegation to subtext, the film tears at its bitter bindings while wrapping itself ever more snugly in them. The ending particularly, volleying off Buddy’s tireless work throughout the film to fix up his vintage bicycle, the one passion he seems to have only for himself, roots itself in a strange dissatisfaction, a sense that any placed importance on a task or relationship proves worthless. For all its brief moments of sweetness, there’s nothing sugarcoated about Ross’ vision, one that in his hands as is fascinating for its brutality as for its tenderness.

“I keep everything; I hoard and reveal in moments that seem to pass other people by. I just think they’re really, really beautiful, and I try and write them down. I just feel like where I’m supposed to be when I’m writing, making a movie. I feel like this is why I’m alive. This is why I’m here. These are the things that bother me. This is why they bother me. These are the things that make me happy. This is why they make me happy. And, it’s all coming together.”

In attempting to understand what Ross undertook with this latest feature, what it was exactly that came together here, as he puts it, I needed to chart the development of his language, write for myself a report of the elements at play in his films. Shown in the crude diagram below, the following is a theory about the definition of an artistic voice as it pertains to the format of cinema.

Hence, the proposition here is that an artistic voice in film is composed of three distinct chords: the themes, also thought of as the concerns of the work; the approach, or aesthetic taken to achieve the work; and finally the message imparted by the work. These three key elements then are further divided. All themes/concerns can be understood on levels both visual and sonic and in terms of character, narrative and structure. So, for example, with this, Ross’ fourth feature film, it’s safe to say there’s a thematic character pattern of a protagonist dealing with anger that underlies a frustration about lack of control. Also seen in Quietly on by, in Present Company this pattern develops as Buddy lashes out against both his girlfriend Christy and his small group of friends. Or, take as another example, Ross’ fixation with sonic clutter. Characters often overlap or flat out interrupt one another’s dialogue. Much like and with an entirely different intent than Robert Altman’s fascination with multiple dialogue tracks interweaving, Ross creates a sonic playground for savages, challenging his audience to decide what, if anything, is important in any particular conversation.

The approach/aesthetic subdivision explains not only the technical background of a film but also the ideological standpoint from which it is made. Again, looking at Ross’ work for Present Company, there’s a penchant for a fast cut, an artistic staple that Ross explains is a consequence of his desire that certain moments be missed. Not everything, in his estimation, need be synthesized. It’s as if he wants to share only a glimpse of an emotion or nuance and then quickly move on. As for his ideological approach, which he’ll explain in great detail below, it suspends itself primarily on a trust of the actor and of the script’s clarity. “It’s all instincts and reactions. You either get it or you don’t,” he says, talking about his method of working with actors.

The last big piece of the artistic voice puzzle lies in the message of the work. While for some filmmakers that note, generally of a social, moral, philosophical or religious nature, is quite clear, Ross tends to be much more quiet about his. In fact, it seems as if deliberately his ideological approach eschews catering to a message at all. “I don’t want to get so needy for, “Somebody please call me an auteur; somebody please tell me I’m good,”—I would hate to long for approval so much—that I would use a movie as some sort of point that I need to make,” he explains. This is not to say Ross’ work doesn’t carry poignant messages. It’s only to say they’re quite unconsciously made and not in the least the focus of his attention. It’s his characters rather that own claim to both his flattery and judgment.

Over the course of more than an hour, Ross and I will further dissect his cinematic vision, looking closely at all these three elements: themes/concerns, approach/aesthetic and message. Sometimes we hit our mark, sometimes we lose our way and sometimes we question our path to the answers. “Even while we’re talking now, I just wish I could go back and rethink what I said, but I don’t,” Ross says.

“You don’t need to because usually you’re gut reaction is the best reaction,” I answer, and I hear on the other end of the line as I say it, a certain laughter in Ross’ voice, for that is exactly what he’s going, in so many words, to be telling me about his own work.

Part One: Themes & Approaches to Present Company

SM: Having seen three of your films, I can begin to look holistically at the themes of your work. While there’s a sort of quintessential sweetness to the films, it underlies a lot of anger and angst...What overarching themes do you see yourself drawn to, and why are you drawn to those?

FR: I don’t think I try to focus on any one particular theme. I try to make films about what I see but don’t understand. Ultimately I think life is too serious to take seriously. It all ends up being funny, which is what I think the overall sweetness is; like, any real story I have from my childhood, any horrible things that happen to almost anyone, you can retell as a funny story. I’ve never retold a story about, you know—getting hit with a broom that wasn’t in jest.

Is that what you’re asking?

SM: Part of it too, for me, is that in contrast the anger is a subtly explosive anger. I draw a lot of corollary between your characters in both Quietly on By and Present Company, although the intention behind the anger of each is different. Where in Quietly on By that character’s anger comes from an egotism, in this case we more or less get the sense that Buddy’s anger derives from the fact that he has no control over elements in his own life.

So, it’s interesting in that generally when (an actor) plays anger it’s hard to place nuance on where it derives from, and that’s something I’ve never had a problem figuring out with your films.

FR:…The nuance of it is coincidental because we don’t ever really deal with slap in the face anger, because I don’t ever really get angry as a person, and I’ve never really had anyone get straight up angry with me. I’ve never known anyone who I’ve just pissed off so much that they couldn’t even contain it. It’s usually a slow, brewing thing.

I often have arguments with my lady friend that erupt, but we end up not talking about the point at hand. We end up talking about what we always do. Arguments between people in long-term relationships are always like, “You always do this, and you always do that.”

The important thing to do in the script is to not say any of that. Just be like, “Okay, this is a long time coming, and let’s not talk about what each other always do; let’s not talk about the task at hand; let’s just be irritable with each other, and hopefully it will all play out.”

SM: What do you see happening to your (approach) as a director? You talked about this idea of looking around, seeing things you don’t understand and trying to make sense of it all, and so obviously that’s a part of it. I don’t know if there’s more to it that I’m missing.

FR: Probably, but there’s probably more that I’m missing too, or at least I would hope, that we’re both missing something. You need a bunch of different points of view to really start to take up all of these layers. I always try to layer everything.

I’m afraid of crafting a script that’s just an ideal. It’s just an idea and the characters don’t mean anything because I’m just using them to try and make some sort of point. I always try to arrange the script in such a way that it can have layers, and there can be different ways of looking at it. That way I can get the kind of performances that I actually like to watch…I can just get what I want which is action-reaction and avoid awkward moments along those points at all costs.

SM: There is a sense, particularly with the ending of this film, that the characters were going to do whatever they wanted [regardless of a filmic message]. Even from the very first frames of the film, you can plot the trajectory in your mind of where the story’s going to go and what’s satisfying is seeing the way in which that happens. Then, what throws that structure for me is the very end. It does feel like a character driven decision that has very little to do with the plot.

FR: Yeah, it’s not supposed to mean anything. It’s a non-thought out, pointless gesture. The idea is that the bike is just an object. It is a completely unemotional gesture. It doesn’t represent anything. It doesn’t mean anything. For me, it was about trying to stop people from focusing on objects so much as devices.

Originally the bike was a character. It was another one of Buddy’s love interests, and that character, it was another lady, ended the film, but ultimately she was very objectified to try to make some sort of point that I wanted to make. It disgusted me that I did that so I just turned her into a bike and just used that to say, “This is something else that Buddy does.” You can spend a lot of time on something, but ultimately it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a fucking bike.

SM: Which calls into question this idea of, “In the particular universe of Present Company, what does mean something?” The relationships are certainly the focus, although while the audience sees those as being terribly important, the characters seem to believe that those are trivial in one manner or another. The best example of that I can think of is Buddy’s reaction to Carter’s girlfriend Jessi, when he’s talking about her wanting to be a journalist but how she hasn’t published anything. There’s such a scathing note of trivialization, of the way in which he views her…That’s an interesting dichotomy, and I was hoping you could talk about its set-up, where the audience sees things as important where the characters either don’t or can’t.

FR: All audiences, when they’re watching a movie, they’re looking to be fed what they’re going to be seeing. So, you assume, “Okay, the kid is really important to them.” You assume, “She gets on his nerves, but he loves the kid and that’s why he stays.” You’re always trying to make up some sort of reason for why the people are doing what it is that they do, when really for Buddy and Christy, they’re trying to do the right thing in our moral point of view, what the norm thinks is the right thing to do. You knock up a girl, you give up what you got, you get a job and you raise a kid. That’s what you do. That’s the right thing to do, but there are consequences to ‘the right thing to do.’ You’re life is going to completely move forward, and you’re giving it up.

So, you go out and try to find another relationship to try and give you some sense of excitement, some sense of why you bother with everything. But, those people—Sam is not really concerned with Buddy’s life; she’s just hanging out with him. Craig is not concerned with Christy’s life, but Christy and Buddy both want something selfishly from them. That’s what the title means for me ‘Present Company’—you act certain ways around everybody, and everybody is talking, but it doesn’t mean anything. It’s all subbing out for a day or two. We’re all temporary friends.

SM: In the Spout interview, you said something to the effect that these characters didn’t have strong enough personalities to be themselves around different groups or individuals. How much of that then with these particular characters is about each not knowing himself and how much is about desperate attempts to be like someone else because each one knows entirely too well who they are?

FR: It’s neither. It’s a reaction. It’s not a conscious decision. Your own amount of self-knowledge has nothing to do with standing in front of someone who you have sexual feeling for, or standing in front of someone you admire, or standing in front of something that you hate. You’re self-knowledge has nothing to do with that.

SM: Really, really?

FR: No, it really doesn’t because then you start to double question everything that you do. What you’re thinking and how you think the situation is going is not what other people are seeing because the person that you’re talking to is going through the exact same thing. So, for the actor to be like, “Do I know who I am? Am I trying to hide from it?” or “Do I not know who I am, and am I trying to be something else?,” it doesn’t matter which one it is. They both have the same end, which is: you’re just trying to survive the situation; you’re just trying to get through it with the most amount of style as possible. Like, when Sam picks up the cigarette butt, she gives it back to Buddy, and Buddy throws it back on the ground again, that’s his personality leaking through. He’s a one-up man. He’s a last word freak. He wants this girl to like him, but that little bit in him doesn’t do what’s right. It’s clumsy, and no amount of self-knowledge or self-denial is going to change your reaction in front of that other person. You just need to throw that thing on the ground again and have the last word.

SM: In that case you reduce the characters to—and, this is a fine thing—a base instinct, where I feel like with Christy, Tamara Fana’s character, we don’t see that at all. We see a lot of restraint on her part, or at least I feel as if she might have a particular sense of self-knowledge but her reaction, even given that, is restrained by a particular set of circumstances that she knows will exacerbate or create a problem. Maybe I misread, but I did feel there was a certain self-knowledge on her part, a certain deliberate nature to her choices.

FR: I don’t see self-knowledge. I see conditioning. It’s all just wordplay, but really you’re talking about a male-female relationship where Buddy is not a whipped dog, and he has enough arrogance to make it worse. Christy is conditioned; it’s like a learned helplessness. If she brings this up, she’s going to get yelled at. So she doesn’t do that anymore, and she doesn’t get yelled at. That’s why I really like how Tammi laughs at everything. There’s this inkling of this confident person underneath there.

SM: It’s the difference then between a character having choices and a character being stuck with some predestined personality quirk. In the vernacular of the acting world people always talk about actor’s having choices, and if you ever see the DVD extras of On the Waterfront James Lipton goes on and on about Marlon Brando’s impeccable choices. So, here it seems that the acting is a direct reaction against choice.

FR: They’re being forced to react because of circumstances, not because of the story but because of the circumstance of the story. (Christy) has to react a certain way because she’s stuck in the basement with the kid, and there’s no way out of it. It’s an untenable situation.

Part Two: Working with Actors & Children

SM: In the Spout interview, I was glad you talked about working with Tamara. She has an amazing ability to convey a huge amount of intention with just a look or expression; she doesn’t have to say anything to do that. In fact, I think that’s something all of the actors you work with are able to do. And so, I was hoping you could talk a little bit about that, working with that nuance, working with those intentions.

FR: I wanted to work with Tammi because when I talk to her, I end up just staring at her. She just has a really unique rhythm; she’s always really engaged; she’s got really big eyes, and when she breaths, she always goes (quick intake of breath) “Hey!” Then she’ll laugh and bob her head but then look down for a second and then look back up, take a breath through her nose and be back in the conversation. But, for some reason, when she would look down for a second and then come back up, there’s just a poem of things that happen in that moment, and I think it’s all in her face. So, I was hoping that we could just shoot her face, do the lines and everybody else would see what I saw.

I trusted Tammi to know what she was doing by the time she got there, and she really, really did. Other people involved with the film were even a little wary about how Tammi was going to do…She doesn’t even want to be an actress, but she wanted to make a movie with me.

She read the script. She went over and over it, and we would tell stories to each other about just little things that other people would do that would just bother us for days on end. Just these little, tiny things. She would tell me a story about this time someone was walking ahead of her after they had invited her to come along. It just drove her crazy, and for days and days she was angry. So we would do a scene, and I was like, “Don’t try and be angry. Just think about being walked ahead of. Just think about someone walking ahead of you after they fucking invited you and how angry that makes you. Just think about that.” I feel like you’ll actually be there if you put yourself back in that kind of place. So, I think Tammi had it easy because she has a great face.

SM: (Anthony Baker, Lonnie Phillips and Allison Latta) you’ve worked with before, and so I do want to talk about the new faces, Sasha Gioppo and Michael Hammer. What were those relationships like, working with the two of them?

FR: I learned a lot from working with (Little Mikey). You know that scene where I’m fixing a drink and (Tamara’s character says), “Daddy doesn’t want to play,” and I tell her to knock it off and he starts crying? He did that every time. Every time I would say “knock it off,” he would look at me and just get upset, no matter how soft or quiet I said it...We could only do it so many times, and then it started to feel like abuse.

I think people give kids too much credit for being smart. I think that they’re instinctive. They have a non-verbal way of understanding things. (Mikey) grows up in a house probably with parents who argue every now and then. Who the hell didn’t? He knows when something is not good, and he just wants things to be good all the time.

So, I liked having him around, but then on the same hand, we got rid of him as soon as we were done. He actually lived coincidentally about three blocks away from where we shot all of that, and so the second we were done, we got him the hell out of there because it is frustrating to have a kid around. I never looked after him. It was always, “Cut. Here Tammi, watch the kid.”

SM laughs.

It was great to work with that kid because of just that one scene, was all that really mattered to me, and it was just fun to have a scene constantly that he was in be completely skewed. You know that moment when (Joe and Kris Swanberg) come over and everybody stops talking? That is the one thing that always happens with kids—everybody just ends up looking at the kid for a minute. There’s so much chatter, and then it just stops. That wasn’t written, but I remember talking about it beforehand, like “We have to try and make that happen.” And, we fucking nailed it; everybody stopped talking. I was like, “Great. We got that.”

Or, the scene where I’m cutting off the calluses and (Christy is) talking about going over to Craig’s, and the kid is there. That scene was never blocked the same way twice. The footage is just a mess, but everything was guided by what the kid felt like doing. So, that was great because it forced more on-the-feet thinking.

Sasha and I met because she was supposed to read for my previous movie. [That part ended up going to Present Company supporting actress Allison Latta.] She’s actually in Hohokam; she’s the loud girl at the bar. I’d talked to her on the phone, and she was really, really funny, and I liked her a lot. Then when it came time to shoot that bar scene, I called her because I just wanted to meet her…I wanted to take that chance, and she came in, and it was really fun to have her there. So I wrote that part in (Present Company) for her.

It was fun to take somebody who understands the way that we work, and she digs it, but then not give—we rehearsed a little bit with the blocking for the pool hall scene, but other than that it was just, “Let’s do this as fast as we can.” She also has my favorite monologue in the movie, the lemons monologue…I just really enjoy that nonsensical, “I’m kind of nervous” little bullshit; that “Bring on the snacks before bedtime,” I just really thought that was funny. I’m just really proud of that, that she had that. I was pretty particular about that, but getting back to what I was saying, it was fun to take somebody who understands that way of working and then just drop them in.

I don’t like to do too much talking about what we’re doing. I just want unquestionable trust in a scene. (Buddy and Sam are) supposed to like each other. Between action and cut that’s when we’re in love; that’s when we make each other’s hearts race; that’s where our world exists, is between action and cut. I don’t like to spend too much of it off camera because it just feels like a waste of time to me. It all feels hypothetical, inconsequential and all these things. I want to do all of that in front of the camera. (Sasha) was never like, “What are we supposed to be doing here? I don’t understand where we are.” She did her homework, she knew where we were, here’s what we’re shooting and then just played along. That’s what you need, someone who knows how to play and will come to play.

…I like to look at it as an understanding, sympathetic and compassionate way of doing things. I really feel like—this is a secret; don’t tell anybody—there’s not that much improv in my movies. (The actors) just make it reactionary because they don’t have a safety net. They lose their footing so often that they react, and every now and then, you’ll see one of them fall back on a line as a crutch, and the tone of falling back on a line is such an anomaly that its rings through so beautifully as, “Look at that. That’s acting.” So, I like to look at it as, “(The actors are) intelligent people, they understood what they read, and they’re going to do it and be done with it.” It’s a rewarding process I think.

Part Three: Loneliness, Jealousy and Pac Man.

FR: I meet a lot of people who want to make movies and make all these excuses about why they don’t do it. I just feel like so much of it is practical, just sitting down and doing the work. A lot of it is kind of lonely, and when you do something that’s lonely, you want someone to know that you’re doing it. It ends up being a crutch because you’re just trying to get all these other people involved so that somebody can see what you’re doing. We need to be acknowledged, but so much of the work is you by yourself. At least for me it is.

SM: That’s a bone of contention I pick on by myself all the time. If we’ve spoken of this before, you’ll have to forgive me, this idea that we make art because we want to be acknowledged. Or, do we make art for some other reason? I go back and forth on this all of the time.

I don’t think you can ever get those two things in the same place at the same time, have them be friends, sit down and shake hands, “Hi, I want acknowledgement.” “Hi, I want to be an artist.”…I don’t feel like for many people it’s a reality to get those two things to coincide.

FR: It has to be a grand aligning of things in order for that to happen. When I said [earlier] that I didn’t read any of those Spout [SXSW preview] interviews, I don’t avoid reading any of that for any reason other than the fact that a lot of it puts me in a bad place. I start to get really jealous of what other people have, and I think, “I want to do that too. I’m good. I’m good. I can do that too.” Then, I want to go out and do that.

I have to stay away from it because I do like, and have always just been, alone, and writing really just makes me feel good. It really makes me happy, makes me okay with leaving my room and going out and doing anything, whether it be having a drink, helping somebody else with their movie or going to see a movie. I feel okay in my room knowing that I have my own little world that nobody really knows about.

SM: I love Virginia Woolf. I don’t always love her writings but always her literary theory. Basically her concern was with writing for cadence, and if you look back at To the Lighthouse or A Room of One’s Own even, which is much more academic in its nature, all she’s paying great attention to is the way in which the words flow together on the page, as if she’s trying to make a song of her prose.

Many other writers have different concerns, and so as a writer, writing for screen, what is your concern in getting words on the page?

FR: For me it’s about having an idea of the circumstances and then writing out the words to have a between the lines…That’s what actors are looking for, trained or untrained. They’re trying to get a sense of the feel for these things.

I write a lot of sentences to be interrupted. “I don’t want to—“ and then the next line, “—“ Whatever you’re doing to say, I don’t want to hear it. So, it’s like, “What were they going to say?” Leaving off those important, buzzy words that would help you nail down what that person wanted to say, I get rid of all of those.

SM: With Quietly on by, we’d spoken about the newspaper and the importance of it having a date, this idea of your films being grounded in a particular time and reality by very small details. So, in this film, we see that reflected in the sequence about the puns and the numbers game, [a scene] which also leverages on that overlapping, interrupted dialogue. So, where Joe Swanberg, as a filmmaker, has a fetishism with quirky objects, you have a fetishism with quirky facts…Where does that come from, this idea of grounding a factual reality?

FR: It’s just an essential element. Film as art I think should represent the time and place that they were shot, so that they can be dated. Historical context is really important, whether it be gas prices or style.

For this film, clothes are really important…In the last scene, Buddy and all three of the kids are dressed identically. They’re all wearing cargo shorts and some sort of solid colored shirt with an animation on the front. I didn’t know what they were going to be wearing; when I got there, that’s what they were wearing, and it’s what I was wearing too. And, I thought, “ I fucking nailed this. Yes!” I was so happy. I was on cloud nine while we did that whole scene because they didn’t even notice that we were all dressed alike.

I spent about 100 dollars on cloths. None of the cloths that I wear in the movie are mine. I personally hate the way that I dressed in the movie, but it was important for me to be uncomfortable. I’m not wearing my glasses, but I’m also not wearing contacts, so I’m uncomfortable from that point of view. I’m uncomfortable in the cloths I’m wearing. I’m uncomfortable in all of these ways, but it’s just like an acceptance of, “This is the way people dress.” I was at a bar, and this guy was wearing cargo pants and this solid colored shirt, that same outfit. That’s how I knew it had to go [in the movie.] And, I hate my hair and all of these things, but I knew that if this was going to be grounded in any time and place, that’s the thing I wanted to remember. I want to remember how much I hate cargo pants and shorts, the fact that these grown people—what’s Buddy, 27?—he’s dressed like a kid. I just don’t like the way that people dress. It’s so immature.

Then as far as the fetishism with weird facts, it’s probably a crutch to be perfectly honest, but I also feel like—have you ever been in a room with a bunch of people playing video games? The video games, which are anti-social by nature, become the focus of that room. We’re all focused on this anti-social element.

SM: I’ve got to take a little issue with you. Just a little, little. I was recently talking with a game designer about this, and I think it’s true, video games are becoming more social. A Wii is a perfect example, but I see, I do see how the video game, this virtual world, becomes your social center. I get your point.

FR: I was going to address that, how they’re becoming social, because it actually terrifies me. Wii scares the hell out of me. It really does.

SM: Have you ever played one?

FR: No, no! Here’s the other thing I was going to say: I suck at video games. I am terrible. I can play the guitar. I played Guitar Hero, and I felt like I had palsy of the hands. I’m just not good at them. Something misfires. I was playing Pac Man once with a bunch of friends, and they were laughing at me I was so bad, and they’ll still talk about how bad Frank is at Pac Man, which is why I put Pac Man in Hohokam. I never want to forget how embarrassed I was that I wasn’t good at Pac Man.

But, any sort of object that’s introduced [in a film], you want to keep it from being an object. You want to make it a topic. Whether it’s politics, a riddle, anything like that, that becomes the focus of the conversation. Any topic that people have while they’re talking just to me seems so trivial, but there are also these things going on. I like to focus on people that aren’t talking while all these trivial things are going on because a lot of times their faces drop. We all enter these little modes where it’s like, “Okay, we’re talking about puns, riddles, and I’m done talking about these things, but I guess we can sneak by with a nice little subject change.” “Are you allowed to put holes in the wall?”

Now I’m thinking about Wii. This guy was playing Wii with his kids, and he bowled a 290 from the chair. That’s what he kept saying, “I bowled a 290 from the chair. A 290 from the chair.” You just have this image of the two kids standing up, and they’re like, “Okay, Dad your turn,” and he’s sitting in the chair bowling the 290, and everybody’s having so much fun with this game, and it is a moment that those kids will probably always remember, Dad’s 290 from the chair. To me, it’s like the same way that people get too caught up in religion, politics, all that stuff. It’s the same vice, and it’s like, “Nothing really happened there.” It’s just a memory, and nothing was really accomplished. Just a nice memory and all from this machine.

SM: What’s wrong with that though? What’s wrong with just a nice memory being accomplished? All of life is just a compilation of those nice memories being accomplished.

FR: I feel the exact same thing, but I can’t shake the idea. It’s just the way I see it. I’m not being cynical. I’m not even being skeptical. I’m not a know-it-all college kid who’s like, “What, your memories of your dad are of him playing video games?” I think it’s great that Dad bowled a 290 from the chair, but there still is an image there. It’s the image that can be cynical. I don’t see it that way, but in a way (the image) could never be hopeful.

SM: There is something about this idea of images that seems to be very powerful for you. In both our interviews, we’ve ended up talking about this one indelible image. Coming out of this film, is there that one image that is indelible for you?

FR: I bumped into this guy that I know. It was him, this girl and they had their kid in the stroller, and they were walking along. I didn’t really talk to them for long, but I turned around, watched them walk away, and then I went and started writing Present Company. I feel like that image isn’t in there, but (the film’s) inspired from it. That’s where it all started, that “I don’t know where they’re going. I don’t know where they’re coming from.”

Present Company screens at the SXSW Film Festival 5:00 PM, Monday March 10th and 9:00 PM, Wednesday March 12th at Dobie. For more information on the film and filmmaker, visit http://molehillindependent.com/.

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