The claims that David Gordon Green is going back to his older days, where films like George Washington and All The Real Girls had him heralded as America’s Next Great Director, isn’t necessarily true. Sure, Prince Avalanche is Green’s first film in years that resembles his earlier projects, but the influence from his shift to studio pictures is just as prevalent. Even with all of the quiet, contemplative scenes this is still a very broad comedy, one that feels like a perfect middle ground between the two different sides of the director. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.

Opening with a title card that talks about a Texas forest fire in the late 80s, the film cuts to gorgeous footage of trees being destroyed by a massive fire before showing two street workers preparing for their day. Alvin (Paul Rudd) and Lance (Emile Hirsch) spend their week walking around painting lines on a road that runs through the forest mentioned at the beginning. The job requires the two of them to be isolated from the outside world, camping out along the road during the week before heading back to town on the weekend.

Lance is the brother of Alvin’s girlfriend, and it’s evident that Alvin only hired him as a favour. Lance is a young playboy with only one thing on his mind, while Alvin prefers solitude. “There’s a difference between being lonely and being alone”, Alvin says at one point, which sums up what Prince Avalanche is about. Lance is constantly looking for a way to not be lonely, while Alvin prefers to be on his own. Both of them end up getting what they wish for, but not in the ways they imagined.

For most of this entirely whelming film, Rudd and Hirsch are usually clashing over their different approaches to life. There are some welcome detours in the narrative, one involving a truck driver (Lance LeGault) who has a never-ending supply of alcohol, and a fantastic scene with a woman (Joyce Payne) going through her destroyed home that nails a lot of what Green was trying to accomplish (and it says something that this scene was never in the script). The same can’t be said for most of Prince Avalanche.

Alvin and Lance feel broadly drawn as characters, making it hard to take either of them seriously. Rudd and Hirsch do fine in their roles, but the material they’re working with is lacking. Green’s focus on nature involves several montages of nature shots which, despite Tim Orr’s great cinematography, feel less evocative and more like padding for time. There’s a heartwarming quality to Prince Avalanche that contrasts with the themes of loneliness and depression, but there isn’t enough dramatic weight behind Alvin and Lance’s situations to make the uplifting quality feel earned.

Nonetheless, there’s plenty to admire. The late Lance LeGault is great in his minor role, and the score by David Wingo with Explosions in the Sky helps support the film’s off-kilter tone. Whether or not it’s an improvement on Either Way, the Icelandic film that Green based his script on, remains to be seen, but it wouldn’t be surprising if both films can easily stand on their own merits. For Green, a director who seemingly fell into a slump after Your Highness and The Sitter, Prince Avalanche certainly seems like a step in the right direction, but it’s too light and forgettable to really make any impact.

Prince Avalanche trailer:

Back in May at the San Francisco International Film Festival, I sat down with director David Gordon Green to talk about his new film, Prince Avalanche, starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch. The film—a character study about two road workers who bicker and banter with each other as they tediously paint road lines in a burned down Texas state park—is a notably weightier comedy than most Rudd vehicles (this isn’t one), striking some beautiful, poignant notes along with the funny dialogue. It also happens to be a remake of an Icelandic film, Either Way by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson (awesome name.)

Green is one of the most versatile directors working today, constantly switching between formats. He does comedies (Pineapple Express), dramas (George Washington), television (Eastbound & Down), and even car commercials. He chatted with me about how the post-rock band Explosions in the Sky influenced the film, reinventing actors, randomly meeting a woman who changed the entire film, the late, great Lance LeGault, and more.

So I hear you love Explosions in the Sky…
Yeah, they’re kind of the reason the movie exists. They’ve done a couple of songs for my movies before. Actually, they just finished a song for my new movie that I mixed in yesterday that sounds awesome. We’d been talking about what we could do together again but in a bigger form; they wanted to score a movie. It had been since Friday Night Lights that they scored a film.

I was at a Super Bowl party a little more than a year ago, and I had this commercial in it (the Super Bowl). It was this Clint Eastwood Chrysler commercial. It was kind of crazy and epic. I was watching it with the Explosions guys and I was talking about how amazing that process was. It feels very epic when you watch it, but it was a very stripped down crew, guys in a van jumping out and filming something. We never really knew what we were going to film that morning, but we’d get up and go film a brickyard in San Francisco or we’d film a train track in New Orleans.

I was talking to them about the process of making that, and they said, “You should take that process and make something in this burned down state park outside of Austin.” After they told me about it, I went hiking up there and I thought, “Yeah, absolutely. I have to make a movie here soon because it’s going to come back to life.” It was burned maybe three months before I was there. I thought, I want to make something here immediately with this run-and-gun process. I woke up one day with a title in my head. It needs to be called Prince Avalanche.

So it was location first, then title?
It was process first, then location, then title. Then, I was doing a commercial up in New York and I was talking to my art director friend. We were just sitting around, having a beer. I said, “Ok. I’ve got the process, location, and title. I have a bunch of scripts lying around, but none of them are going to fit what I’m trying to do.” He said, “You should just remake this Icelandic film that my friend worked on called Either Way.” I said, “Is it good?” and he said, “I don’t know, haven’t seen it.” (laughs)

So, I YouTubed the trailer and I thought it looked really interesting. It was just two guys painting stripes on the road. I tracked down the movie with the intent of how I would remake it. I was thinking, “What’s my version of this?” I started getting really excited because I loved the film. It’s a wonderfully made movie. I was trying to figure out how I could put my fingerprints on it.

What are your fingerprints on the film?
I think the emotional elements of the love stories. I really wanted to bring my honest threads of lost love. Their version is a little more straightforward. It’s a beautiful movie: almost all master shots, very little coverage in it, amazing landscapes. But [my version] felt a little more raw in its cinematography and more explicit in its emotion.

I love how contained the movie feels. The only time we leave the burned park is in the shot where we speed down the road to Paul Rudd’s girl, but that all takes place in his head.
Right, that’s not in their movie. That shot is just a way for me to integrate the frustrations of relationships. There’s always something interesting for me to explore. The balance of masculinity in a relationship, two characters at odds with each other, and yet, they’re saying the same thing. I kind of look at these characters as two versions of myself, both I can relate to an incredible amount. There’s the me that’s trying to be manly and mature, and then there’s the me that just wants to get laid and have fun. Those are the stems, and I just tried to find ownership of the characters in order to do what I thought I could do with [the film], as I’m sure [Sigurðsson] did with the original.

The location is absolutely gorgeous, but really grey. Talk a bit about the splashes of color you use throughout the film: The blue lines of paint on the trees, the mustard Emile plays with.
Yeah, there are those primary colors that explode, like the paint on the road, which you see close-up shots of. There’s the blue overalls, the red car. We really wanted to have an animated world. There’s not a lot of film influence in this, but I could cite a couple of them. Kings of the Road was maybe an influence. With our camerawork I could point to the Darden brothers. The biggest influence was Super Mario Bros. We really wanted it to be this weird, apocalyptic, wasteland landscape, and the Super Mario Bros. took over the reconstruction of the world.

Seriously?
Yeah! Jill Newell was our costume designer, and we were looking at Super Mario Bros. and The Sun, the Darden Brothers movie. It kind of became this odd…

Is that why Paul has the mustache?
Yup. We didn’t want it to be too obvious by making the distinctive Luigi, but we had the red helmets…you know, just trying to be subtle about it.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Emile and Paul had not met before production.
Correct. We all met at my favorite seafood restaurant in Austin, and I just started laughing when they started talking to each other.

So they were funny with each other right away.
Well…funny to me! (laughs)

It was funny to me, too!
The best part is that they’re playing characters that aren’t necessarily what people know them as, as actors. In a lot of ways, Emile is comedic relief in the movie, and he’s never done a comedic performance in his life. Paul takes a lot of the depth and drama of the movie, and he’s mostly known as a comedic actor. I’m really proud of being able to take actors outside their wheelhouse and try something that the world doesn’t necessarily expect of them. Show them something fresh. I tried that with [James] Franco in Pineapple Express. He was mostly known for Flyboys and Annapolis—all these pretty boy movies—and then I said, “Let’s just make him as raw and messed up as possible.” I just did a new movie with Nicholas Cage where I took him in a way that I don’t think he’s ever played. [The role] is all about restraint and subtleties, a really tightly wound performance rather than a big outrageous one. I really like the idea of reinventing an actor, at least in my own way.

Before we run out of time, let’s talk about Lance LeGault. Were there things that he said or did that didn’t make it to the film?
Everything. (laughs) He’s amazing, man. He died right after we shot [the film.] He’s an amazing singer, and he sings one of the songs in my new movie. We’re trying to keep his presence alive. Lance was an extra in a Dodge commercial I did out in Tehachapi, California in the desert. We were filming the new fleet of Dodge vehicles blazing through the desert. I kept hearing this guy talk, and I looked over and thought, “Who is that dude?” He was full of tall tales and piss and vinegar, and I just fell in love with him. I started talking to him and I said, “You’ve got a great voice! You ever do radio?” He said, “Do radio?! Man, I sang with Elvis for over 20 years!” I found one of his records in a record store recently. He’s got albums from the ’70s that are amazing. He was a bad guy in The A-Team for a little bit, bad guy on Magnum, P.I. He’s just a wild card. It was an honor to be in his presence. He’s just so larger-than-life and says the weirdest things.

So the way he acts in the movie is really what he’s like.
Oh yeah. He has the weirdest way of speaking. It’s simultaneously scary and funny. When he smacks the boombox off the log in the movie…

That absolutely killed in the theater.
Yeah, it’s one of the biggest laughs in the movie! It’s all him. He’s just wild.

The interlude with the elderly woman searching for her stuff in her burned down house really gives the movie a beautiful shape.
It’s interesting—it wasn’t in the script. We were location scouting for the scene where Paul pantomimes through a burned down house. My AD Atilla and my producer Craig were looking at these houses and they saw this woman sifting through the ashes in her house. They started talking to her, and she was looking for her pilot’s license in the ashes of her house. They were like, “Hang on…let’s go get the cameras.” (laughs) They came and got me and said, “There’s this lady…I think we should film her. She’s amazing.” We got her permission to bring Paul and a camera over there, and [what’s in the movie] is all her story. I didn’t feed her any lines.

The beautiful contrast of the film is these things that are…like, there’s a background that’s very sad, and yet, there’s humorous things happening in the foreground. In that sense, she’s seeing her loss and her devastation, but there’s something just beautiful and absurd about her looking for a piece of paper in the ashes of her home. It’s all Joyce (Payne), an amazing woman of many accomplishments. She was an artist and had a whole room of ceramics that she had built and things she’d collected from her travels—all of that was gone. She was in a very affected, emotional place, shared it with us, and then we worked her into the truck [at the end] which kind of makes her a supernatural character.

One of the beauties of a low budget movie—so low budget no one knows you’re making it, no one’s looking at you, no one’s asking you why you’re deviating from the script, it’s a three week shoot, nobody’s getting paid—is that when an idea like [including Joyce] comes along, you have to follow your instinct and go chase it. Now I can’t imagine the movie without it. But, we would have taken a different journey if we hadn’t met her.

It’s funny, we showed it at SXSW a couple of months ago, and she didn’t tell any of her family or friends that she was in a movie. She showed up with her friend who said she called her at 1pm and said, “Hey, you want to go to this movie at 4? I’m in it.” Her friend said, “What do you mean you’re in a movie?” They show up, and there’s the red carpet, Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch are there, there are photographers everywhere (laughs).

You can really feel the weight of her scene.
It’s pivotal. It’s hard on a movie like this, because I think it’s a really likable, warm movie. It’s the first film I’ve made where I feel like it’s for everyone. There’s no vulgarity in the movie, there’s no violence, nothing questionable other than maybe some moderate conversation. It’s the first movie I’ve made that I think everyone will enjoy. Obviously, we’ve got the great acting talent of Paul and Emile and Lances charisma, but she brings an honesty to it that gives the movie such a gravity that can sustain on dramatic qualities without needing the big laughs of a comedy. All of a sudden, there’s a truth that she speaks that inherently weaves through the rest of the film. Once she shows up, the film can be as funny as you want or as dramatic as you want—you’re allowed to break all the rules at that point. I kind of attribute the movie to her in a weird way.

Prince Avalanche is in theaters and on iTunes August 9^th.

Inequality for All

Inequality for All’s message—about the threat of the expanding income gap between the middle class and top 1% in the United States—is delivered by an extraordinarily charismatic and inspirational messenger, Robert Reich. Director Jacob Kornbluth couldn’t have found a better, more qualified face for his statistics-driven documentary. Reich has an uncanny gift for making complex, vast, potentially confusing ideas and distilling them down into easily digestible morsels. A former Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration, author of 14 books, and current professor at UC Berkeley, Reich lends invaluable experience and unstoppable vigor to what could have been a cold, dismaying film. You can’t help but be inspired by his conviction. Reich makes the film, much like Philippe Petit did for James Marsh’s incredible Man on Wire.

Reich’s ability to inspire is made more impressive by how serious and concerning the film’s subject matter is. The United States’ widening income gap is damaging our economy’s health more than anything else, and we as a country need to rectify this quickly. The first step in doing this is to become knowledgeable about how we got to this point, and Inequality of All is a powerful tool in this education.

The graphics employed to illustrate the dismal state of the economy are stylistic and engaging, aided greatly by Reich’s textured voice. The film’s most resonant graphic—cleverly superimposing the economy’s rollercoaster rises and dips over an image of the Golden Gate Bridge—is powerful and surprisingly emotional. Kornbluth spends a little too much time drawing parallels between Reich’s personal life and the US middle-class, but nevertheless, the documentary ultimately achieves its main goal of making us care.

RATING: 7.9

Prince Avalanche

Set in 1988 Texas one year after a devastating forest fire, David Gordon Green’s Prince Avalanche follows two road maintenance workers (Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch) as they form a bond through shared loneliness and displacement. Though the plot doesn’t go anywhere particularly interesting, it’s pleasantly minimalist and the characters grow on you nicely. Considerably more artful than his recent studio works (Your Highness, Pineapple Express), Prince Avalanche carries genuine emotional gravity, though there are still plenty of laughs throughout.

Green lets loose creatively in Prince Avalanche, casting Rudd and Hirsch in character types they don’t typically play (Rudd is bitter and stern, Hirsch is the off-beat comic relief). He gives them lots of room to work, fitting in quirky character moments and extended, humorously idiotic dialog about nothing in particular. They fuss and fight over the most mundane of issues (Rudd yells at Hirsch for writing in his vintage comic books), and their squabbles quickly escalate toward the end of the film in a battle over who will be crowned ‘king of the stupids’.

Hirsch is hilarious, playing the role of buffoon without ego—he scrunches his chubby face as he strains to articulate even the simplest thought, and eventually spews out words even dumber than his dopey mug. Rudd doesn’t offer anything particularly noteworthy, though he sets up Hirsch like a pro.

Green uses splashes of primary colors throughout the movie (the duo’s clothes, yellow road paint) that really pop on the muted landscape. Explosions in the Sky provide the film’s understated, ethereal score, which lends itself perfectly to the peaceful setting. A haunting scene involving Rudd interacting with an elderly woman searching the burned remains of her home sticks out like a sore thumb (in a good way) and gives the film a unique shape that distinguishes it even more from Green’s studio work.

RATING: 7.2

As the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival comes to a close, as does our coverage of the festival. This last article contains the award winners of this year’s festival. The top prize award of the Golden Bear went to Child’s Pose from the Romanian director Calin Peter Netzer. See the full list of winners below.

Full list of 2013 Berlin International Film Festival Winners

Golden Bear: “Child’s Pose” by Calin Peter Netzer (Romania)

Silver Bear – The Jury Grand Prize: “An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker” by Danis Tanovic (Bosnia and Herzeogvina/France/Slovenia)

Silver Bear – Best Director: David Gordon Green, “Prince Avalanche” (USA)

Silver Bear – Best Actress: Paulina Garcia in “Gloria” (Chile/Spain)

Silver Bear – Best Actor: Nazif Mujic in “An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker” (Bosnia and Herzeogvina/France/Slovenia)

Silver Bear – Best Screenplay: “Pardé (Closed Curtain),” by Jafar Panahi (Iran)

Silver Bear – Artistic Contribution: Aziz Zahmbakyjev, cinematographer of “Harmony Lessons” (Kazakhstan / Germany / France)

Alfred Bauer Prize: Denis Côté, “Vic and Flow Saw a Bear” (Canada)

Best First Feature Award: “The Rocket” by Kim Mordaunt (Australia)
Special Mention:  “Layla Fourie” by (Germany/South Africa/France/The Netherlands)
Special Mention: “Promised Land” by Gus Van Sant (U.S.)

Golden Bear for Best Short Film: “Fugue” by Jean-Bernard Marlin (France)

Silver Bear for Best Short Film: “remains quiet” by Stefan Kriekhaus (Germany)

DAAD Short Film Award: “Ashura” by Köken Ergun (Turkey/Germany)

Crystal Bear for the Best Kplus Feature Film: “The Rocket” by Kim Mordaunt (Australia)
Special Mention: “Satellite Boy” by Catriona McKenzie (Australia)

Crystal Bear for the Best Kplus Short Film: “The Amber Amulet” by Matthew Moore (Australia)
Special Mention: “Ezi un lielpilseta” by Ēvalds Lācis (Latvia)

Crystal Bear for the Best 14plus Feature Film: “Baby Blues” by Kasia Rosłaniec (Poland)
Special Mention: “Pluto” by Shin Su-won (Republic of Korea)

Crystal Bear for the Best 14plus Short Film: “Rabbitland” by Ana Nedeljković, Nikola Majdak (Serbia)
Special Mention: “Treffit” by Jenni Toivoniemi (Finland)

The festival is in a state of transition. Much of the international press is beginning to leave the city, and as the weekend nears, they are replaced with more general audience members looking to enjoy the scene. Nearly all of the films have now played at least once, meaning the press has gotten what they came for, and there are now more films in screen circulation for the general public to see. As the press events begin to wane, I find myself making the transition myself; though I plan to stay for the entirety of Berlinale, as there are still several films I want to see. There are no longer any screenings that are press only, and the theaters are taking on a more organic feel with the presence of general movie goers filling the seats around me.

I’m one of those guys that has to have a snack with a movie. I’m not sorry about this–for any of you who cannot stand the popcorn crunchers or mid-show pop-openers. And of course, I never buy from the theater concessions, choosing, rather, to collect my goods from the grocery store on the bottom floor of the neighboring mall. I’ll never forget the time I managed to sneak a whole 16 inch pizza into Rocky Balboa. Europe is ideal for bringing food into theaters because everyone carries a backpack with them where ever they go, so no one questions its presence. During the press screenings I always felt out of place with a Coke and a Mounds bar because I was one of the only one indulging. I’m sorry, but a movie isn’t a movie without snacks–especially ones you sneak in.

Now that I am back with the general audience, I am home again. I don’t have to take three minutes to quietly open my soda–which is exceptionally pressurized after bouncing around in my bag. I can pop that baby open and go to town. Same goes with the candy bar wrapper. After all, going to a movie should be an event. Even if you are hitting three or four screenings a day, this is a time to kick back, have fun, and get lost in a story for a couple of hours. I think if anyone forgets this side of cinema they are really missing out.

Prince Avalanche

I like going into a movie not knowing much about it. Knowing too much sets expectations, and you can fall victim to distracting yourself during a film waiting to see if your predictions prove true or false. For this reason, I will usually follow the recommendations of friends more than I will a review. Sometimes, however, I don’t always manage to steer clear of a review or trailer if my anticipation is too hot to handle. I am, after all, only human.

Because Prince Avalanche was one of the films in which the press was combined with a general audience, I decided it would be a good idea to show up to the theater earlier than usual to ensure a good seat–and by good seat, I mean a good place in line. I showed up to the Berlinale Palast about fifty minutes before showtime, and a thick line was already forming. The group beside me had apparently partied too hard the night before, and weren’t feeling sociable, so I pulled out my phone and decided to entertain myself by reading the reviews of my colleagues. In this process, I stumbled upon a review of Prince Avalanche from Sundance, and decided to break my rule and give it a look.

As usual, it set an expectation. However, I found that the critic in this case was very off base. He declared the film to be a serious role for funny man Paul Rudd, and noted that the pacing was incredibly slow, since much of it is just the two main characters out in the woods. My perception proved otherwise.

Prince Avalanche tells the story of two men, Lance and Alvin. Lance is the little brother of Alvin’s girlfriend, which is the only reason Alvin hired him to help repair the forest roads in a fire scarred region of Texas. The two have nothing in common; Alvin prefers solitude and self-reflection where Lance craves social scenes and partying. The film plays along the usual lines of a buddy film, where the two characters eventually find fulfillment in the character aspects of their foil. It is a bumpy road, but the two reach it ultimately and the ending is very satisfying.

For those Paul Rudd fans out there who have read reviews like I did, and are upset that he will not be providing his usual antics, forget it. Prince Avalanche is hilarious. At times the humor is subtle, but you will find it there none the less. Writer and director David Gordon Green said his script for the 90 minute film was only sixty pages long, meaning he left plenty of room for improvisation of the actors, which is one of Rudd’s strong points. The banter is wonderful between Alvin and Lance, and I couldn’t help but watch the film and, at times, see the characters as children in adult bodies. Not that the humor is childish, it is quite the opposite; rather, the speech pattern is simple and poignant. Rudd commented that he felt the dialog was similar to that of a foreign film, but spoken natively in English. (It should be noted that Prince Avalanche is a remake of an Icelandic film called Either Way.) The film is engaging and keeps a solid pace. With only four characters in the entire film, the actors do a great job to carry the weight for the full 90 minutes.

Apart from the press conference for Prince Avalanche I also made it to a Talent Campus presentation on crafting emotion in screenwriting, in which David Gordon Green was a part of the panel. He gave some interesting introspect on his script for Prince Avalanche, as well as his writing process in general. According to Green, his first task is creating a cohesive story, with a solid arch and a beginning, middle, and end. This first draft story might be bland and hyper-straightforward, but he says that once he has this in place, it gives him freedom to get as weird or offbeat as he wants. Green stated that too often writers will try and write all the quirkiness into the very first draft of a script, and try to make this quirkiness an integral part of the story and characters. He warns against this, as it can create serious challenges in telling the initial story. “Once you have your solid script, your solid story,” he says, “you will never lose it, and that frees you to wander later as far as you want.” Using this process also allows Green to get the actors involved to develop their own characters, which leads to some really unique and entertaining performances.

Greens methods definitely play out in this excellent addition to his work as a fairly prominent director and screenwriter. Green noted that he managed to keep his efforts on this film largely unknown to Hollywood and the press. It was just “friends going out into the woods and making a movie.” This privacy freed Green of expectations and gave him true creative license to do what he wanted, away from external eyes. Prince Avalanche is a fresh, fun comedy that carries a solid message and story at the heart of it. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and I hope it achieves fairly wide distribution as I think it offers something for everyone.

RATING: 8.6

Director David Gordon Green and lead actor Paul Rudd at a press conference.

COMING UP: As I mentioned, things are beginning to slow down a bit here at the 63rd Berlinale, but there are still plenty of films to see. Later this week is the screening of Dark Blood, the last–and never fully finished–film with River Pheonix. Also, a gold rush American western with a German spin.