Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Thanks to the transcribing efforts of Muldoon we’re able to get these interviews up within a few days of them happening. Today we have Adrian Grenier, Shoshannah Stern and director Ari Gold for the fun as hell flick ADVENTURES OF POWER. And no, Ari Gold is not Jeremy Piven. You’ll see him below… he’s known the ENTOURAGE guys for a long while and one would assume they honor him with Piven’s character’s name. I hope you enjoy the interview. Keep in mind that Shoshannah had a sign-language translator if for whatever reason her answers read off. You can see her signing in one of the pictures below.
Quint: Well, you are going to have to forgive me, because I know almost nothing about the movie, but I’m going to see it tonight, so you are going to have to educate me.
Ari Gold: Did you get the press thing?
Quint: I read what’s in the guide.
Ari Gold: Oh wow.
Quint: So I’m completely under prepared and unprofessional right now.
Ari Gold: Don’t worry about it. I’m not awake, so we will make something happen.
Quint: We will make it work.
Shoshannah Stern: You’re not awake?
Ari Gold: Well, half awake.
Shoshannah Stern: “I’m not making any sense.”
Quint: The only thing I know is that there’s air drumming in it. That’s the limit of my knowledge of your movie, so far.
Ari Gold: Well it’s a movie about marching to the beat of your own drummer even if you don’t have a drummer and even if you don’t have drums and um… how’s that?
[Everyone Laughs]
Ari Gold: (looks at his tie) I just noticed another stain… I’ve ruined my tie today people!
Quint: Well now it’s your Sundance tie.
Ari Gold: [In a weird voice] “I’m falling apart here.” So yeah it’s a comedy… Should I ramble?
Quint: Ramble, please.
CLICK IT HERE TO LISTEN ALONG IN AMAZING SOUND-O-TEXT!
Ari Gold: Yeah, it’s a comedy about finding the drums within yourself and I think it has a completely wacky and crazy premise that is inherently funny to watch… Air drumming is funny, I think, but there’s a story about finding your voice and finding your language and standing up against adversity, which I think several people can relate to, so I think it will work on the comedy level as well as on a human level.
Quint: Can you guys talk about your characters a little bit? I mean these are all base questions, but like I said I haven’t seen the movie yet…
Shoshannah Stern: Ari is Power, so I guess… [To Ari] Talk about Power!
Ari Gold: Power is a copper miner. He works in a copper mining place in a place called Lode, New Mexico. I used to live in New Mexico, so it’s sort of built on that knowledge.
Quint: My grandparents are from Albuquerque, so I’ve spent a lot of time out there. It’s beautiful.
Ari Gold: Oh yeah? I lived in Silver City, which is like three hours south of Albuquerque and he loves music and he loves drums, but he’s never played drums. He’s never had drums and he feels deficient because of it, but he can’t stop himself from playing air drums and this changes the course of his life, because he gets fired while he’s air drumming on the job. He discovers this underground subculture of air drummers that leads him across the country where he ends up meeting all of these different crazy people and falling in love and ultimately doing battle with a brilliant air drummer, who also happens to be a drummer, who is a character named “Dallas Houston” and you know, Dallas has had everything… He has had drums. His father runs this copper mine that Power works in and, you know, it’s a David versus Goliath story in the end.
Shoshannah Stern: So of course (Ari’s) character falls in love with Dallas and that’s the love story… beautiful and very touching… Actually no. Obviously I’m the person he falls in love with, my character’s name is Annie and she is an evangelical Christian and she hands out Jesus pamphlets on the streets. Her mom’s very controlling and she lives her whole life according to her mother, repressed. And she tries to find something, but she doesn’t exactly know what that something is until she meets Power and she finds that something with him involves love and I think they both find out who they really are and they take that journey together.
Adrian Greiner: I am lucky enough to have played Dallas H. or Power’s arch-nemesis and I’m the son of a rich oil tycoon, who may seem maniacal and evil, except deep down inside he has a lot of commonalities with Power, because he too wants to become an air drummer.
Quint: Cool, well what do you guys think about the whole “air whatever” craze? There’s a place in Austin called the Alamo Drafthouse and way back in the day, right when air guitar became big, they started holding air guitar championships and that has morphed… They heard that there was a big thing in Asia called “air sex” and now hey have air sex competitions.
Ari Gold: “Air sex?”
Quint: Believe it or not…
Shoshannah Stern: What is “air sex?” Is it like miming?
Quint: It’s miming sex instead of a guitar or whatever, but what do you think of that? What do you think is going on?
Ari Gold: I don’t know what’s going on in the zeitgeist, where… I mean there is a disconnection in modern life between experience and the recreation of experience and I think the more time people spend in front of computers, the more time people spend having virtual experiences, the more these kinds of subcultures are going to develop because they are responding to the way the modern world is. CLICK IT HERE TO LISTEN ALONG IN AMAZING SOUND-O-TEXT! Why it’s all happening right now? I don’t know, but I think to some degree people are disconnected from normal experience and so it’s sort of a fun way to reconnect by embracing the fact that you are not actually doing something… embracing the fact that you aren’t really having sex I guess or the simple fact that you don’t know how to play drums or guitar and it’s a response to the modern world I think.
Quint: Now you did some short films that lead up to this, right?
Ari Gold: Well I made a couple of short films that trained me, I think, as a filmmaker and gave me some experience with Sundance and what not, but also I don’t know if this is what you are referring to, but yeah I made about five or six video shorts with this character of Power before I even wrote the script and I will probably put them out into the world at some point, but yeah I developed the character through making these videos, which is organic because I knew then when I wrote the script how he behaved a little bit better than if he was just in my head.
Quint: Making the jump from shorts to features, was the feature just the bigger version of you doing shorts or was it twenty times more complicated?
Ari Gold: In a way. It was about fifty times more complicated, maybe a hundred, because we shot all over the country in these little one to two week spurts, because it is a cross country journey. In a way it was exhausting in that it was like making four or five short films that tied together into a story… It’s not episodic, it’s not actually like five short films together, but the shooting process was like that, so yeah it was good training. Making short films was good training for me.
Quint: What about casting? You guys have known each other for a while right?
Ari Gold: Yeah.
Quint: So it was always the idea that you guys would do this together?
Ari Gold: I wrote the part for him, but didn’t know if he would be available. We had back up plans in mind if he wasn’t available, but I would have been really disappointed, because I knew that he was… He is a very funny person who has never been able to show how funny he can be on screen yet and knowing certain sides of his personality and the way that he could make this thing come to life, I really wanted him to do it, but you know his schedule is tough and it ended up working out.
Quint: [To Adrian] So what did you think when you got the project?
Adrian Grenier: I was really excited and very thankful that he offered it to me, because it’s a really delightful film and a great character to portray and it was a lot of fun to do. It let me explore these boundary-less aspects of Dallas H. He is absolutely larger than life and often ridiculous.
Quint: I’m looking forward to seeing it tonight. What are the plans to the film? Are you looking for distribution out here?
Ari Gold: Yeah, we are. We’ll see what happens. I think people are looking for a comedy and people are looking for… well I’m sure they’re looking for raunchy comedy too, but this is a comedy that could play to anyone from age ten to seventy and I think that’s something that’s good for… I don’t want to say I made it for the good of the world, but I think its good and people like that. Some of the comedies that I love, going back to Charlie Chaplin and its not like I’m remotely on that level, but I think comedy can transform people and it’s a good chance people will want that.
Quint: What’s next for all of you guys? Do you have anything in the pipelines?
Ari Gold: Oh, lots.
Shoshannah Stern: My second season of JERICHO comes out in two weeks, which is great… it was cancelled after the first season, which is crazy and then obviously all of the fans sent in twenty tons of nuts and what is that, the size of three elephants? I don’t know, but they brought it back and it’s actually really good. I think it’s the best thing that could have happened to the show, because it’s 22 episodes condensed into seven and I come in in the second episode and so much has happened just in that first episode, so I had to grab it and read it, just so I could understand what was going on in the show. It’s definitely become quite a bit darker and I’m such a dark person, so… I like dark. I like playing dark. I think people are going to be very happy and I’m just a little nervous, but excited.
Quint: Cool.
Adrian Grenier: I’m retiring on Wednesday, so…
Ari Gold: No, he’s lying. He’s knee deep, shoulder deep in a documentary… very intense, complicated, heavy, interesting documentary that he’s making about… Can I say?
Adrian Grenier: Sure.
Ari Gold: It’s sort of about celebrity, which he has an inkling of what’s that like and he is exploring that from a philosophical and political point of view and he’s being modest, because he’s very involved with that right now.
Quint: Well, they say everybody wants celebrity until they have it and then…
Shoshannah Stern: I don’t think everybody wants it though. Personally, I just don’t like it.
Quint: I know. I don’t know if I could deal with that amount…
Shoshannah Stern: I think America has an obsession with that, but does everybody want it? I don’t know if that would be true.
Quint: Sounds cool.
Ari Gold: Yeah and he and I spend a lot of time with our band, we have a bunch of new songs we have got to record, so we are doing that and then also as far as next, I have some ideas cooking right now including… This film has musical like aspects, because people air drum instead of singing and I would actually like to do a full core musical, so I’m toying with something right now…
Quint: Did you say “horror” musical?
Ari Gold: No no no, a real musical where people actually sing instead of air drumming, but it’s in it’s gestation phase, so…
Shoshannah Stern: With a deaf girl in it of course.
Ari Gold: Every time.
Shoshannah Stern: Every movie from this point forward…
Ari Gold: I’ve never heard you sing.
Shoshannah Stern: I’m so good obviously. I have such a beautiful voice…
Quint: Cool. I think that’s about all I’ve got.
Ari Gold: Cool and thank you very much.
Quint: Thank you so much and I’m really looking forward to the movie.
Ari Gold: I hope you like it!
The flick is still looking for distribution, which is a shame because it's a really fun flick. It's been a slow market this year, so hopefully things will pick up soon and we'll get some good news about this film finding distribution. Hope you liked the chat. I still have more, more, more. And if that wasn't enough I'm leaving directly from Sundance right into the Santa Barbara Film Festival, where I'll have another full week of movie watching and reviewing (and hopefully some more interviews). Keep an eye out. -Quint quint@aintitcool.com
