Interview
SLIFF 2019 Interview: Max Carlson – Director and Writer of PRINCESS OF THE ROW
PRINCESS OF THE ROW will screen at The Tivoli Theater (6350 Delmar Blvd) Saturday, Nov 16 at 2:30pm as part of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival. Writer/Director Max Carlson will be in attendance and will host a post-screening Q&A. Ticket information can be found HERE
PRINCESS OF THE ROW tells a heart-wrenching tale about the powerful bond between a father and daughter. Alicia Willis (Tayler Buck) — a 12-year-old who’s bounced around the foster-care system for most of her life — longs to live with her father, Sgt. Beaumont “Bo” Willis (Edi Gathegi), a homeless veteran on the streets of LA’s Skid Row. Bo, who suffered a battle-induced brain injury during the Iraq War, is unable to recognize his own daughter most of the time, but she remembers the father he used to be: a caring man with a love of storytelling. Alicia, who has inherited her father’s creativity, wants to be a writer and crafts fantasy tales about a princess on a quest. A family-services social worker (Ana Ortiz) recognizes Alicia’s gift and places her with an award-winning author (Martin Sheen) and his wife (Jenny Gago), who live in a beautiful farm on the coast. Unfortunately, their home is 10 hours away from LA. Fearful of never seeing her father again, Alicia decides to escape the city with her father. Now on the run, she must cope with her father’s severe PTSD breakdowns, outwit the pursuing social-service workers and authorities, and overcome the worst kind of thugs that the streets of LA offers.
Max Carlson too the time to talk with We Are Movie Geeks about his film PRINCESS OF THE ROWS.
Interview conducted by Tom Stockman November 1st, 2019
Tom Stockman: Your film PRINCESS OF THE ROW is playing Nov 16 at the film festival at 2:30. Have you ever been to St. Louis before?
Max Carlson: Never. I don’t know what to expect.
TS: Let’s talk about your movie PRINCESS OF THE ROW. I watched it and enjoyed it quite a bit. Are you from LA?
MC: Yes, I was born here in LA. I was raised in the Los Feliz area. That’s why I wanted to make a film set on a Skid Row. I’ve always known about Skid Row growing up, It’s kind of a thing that’s always been there but nobody really addresses. If you step foot there, it feels like a totally different city, and if you walk just blocks away, you’ll be in the richest areas of downtown LA. There’s a really big divide there.
TS: I noticed at the beginning of the film there are these striking birds-eye view shots of the homeless camps and tents. I assume those were the real homeless camps.
MC: Totally. We filmed there. We had some people that were experiencing homelessness performing as extras. We were filming right on Skid Row, so a lot of those tents, even in the background of our shots with the main characters, are the real thing.
TS: I assume you had a set director create a tent that your main characters lived in.
MC: Yes, Sonya Kroop, our art director, created the main three tents right there in the immediate section, but everything surrounding that were homes for people that had fallen on really hard times.
TS: Did you have any problems or challenges filming there so close to the homeless camps?
MC: Not really. Filming on Skid Row was easier than filming on in Malibu or other areas in LA. The people that lived there on Skid Row were very receptive to our project and there were no problems. There were people coming up and asking to be in a scene and I would put them in one. That was a nice added feeling of acceptance in that area. One reason that I think it was easy was that we met a homeless veteran during pre-production, His name is Gerald Hall, who is in the film. He served in Iraq and is now homeless, so we hired him not only as an actor, but as a liaison to be with us during the filming and even be with us prior to filming. When we brought in the lead actor Edi Gathegi, we all went down to Skid Row with Gerald to walk us around and meet different people and observe the area. There was one challenge. The day that we were supposed to start shooting, we didn’t realize that LA had this program where they, once a week, force everyone to dismantle their tents and they hose down the entire streets. Even though we notified LA that we were filming in this section, they told us we had to take our set down. We’d spent hours the previous night assembling our little area, so luckily, they spared us from having to take it down since we had the proper permits.
TS: Did you consider incorporating that hose-down procedure into your film?
MC: Yes I wanted to, make it sort of an ambiance visual, but we weren’t ready with the cameras and never got the chance.
TS: Where did you get the idea for this story?
MC: It was a combination of things. First my interest in wanting to do something on a Skid Row just came from me living in LA and seeing homelessness rise and wanting to and telling a story on Skid Row that people had never really seen. Aside from a film made called THE SOLOIST, I can’t remember any other films set there. My grandfather, who was a veteran, had dementia. I wanted a main character who was a veteran who is going through that. I partnered with my co-writer Shawn Austin, researched the story, and talked to several homeless groups where social workers would tell us stories. We stumbled upon this idea based on kids, homeless kids and foster kids who do have parents on Skid Row. They will run away and go to be with their parents, because those are their real parents, But unfortunately they can’t take care of their kids because they don’t have the mental capacity to do so, or financial capacity, but that doesn’t stop the kids from loving their parents. I felt that storyline was so heartbreaking and a beautiful and layered and I fell in love with that idea.
TS: Your film is book-ended with these fantasy moments, in this forest with a unicorn. Talk about that.
MC: The idea there is that this young girl has this father played by Edi Gathegi. His name is Sergeant Beaumont Willis. He served in Iraq and sustained a brain injury that was quite traumatic. He no longer became the father that he once was. Before he sustained that injury, he was a father who had a lot of creativity and would tell his daughter bedtime stories, making up these fantasies about kings and princesses in fantasy worlds. After his brain injury, he’s incapable of taking care of his daughter and he’s living on the streets. She has inherited those creative qualities and she wants to be a writer and has come up with stories inspired by her father. This is a way for her to have a connection with that part of her father that she lost but still wants back. It’s an escape and a way to deal with and contextualize the surroundings she’s forced to live in and her lot in life. It’s a way to see things through a lens that’s a little naïve but still a beautiful way to look at something.
TS: I want to talk about another scene that I liked. You have this montage set to music where Alicia and her father are trying on clothes while a song is playing. That is such a cliché. You see that in romantic comedies, but you sort of turn that cliché on its head and I really liked it. Talk about how her you were trying to do something different with that scene.
MC: It was something that I’m aware that I’ve seen many times, but I didn’t necessarily set out to make something different. In that section of the film, things are working out bit better and it’s sort of an uplifting part. She thinks this fantasy of living with her dad is going to work out and she wants to buy him some new clothes.
TS: Yes, it moves the story forward where a lot of times, in other movies, that scene would just be filler. Let’s talk about the character of Alicia. I’m I assume you had a lot of screen test for young actresses for that part. What about Tayler Buck’s audition made you want to cast her?
MC: We had auditioned a variety of girls but it’s a complex story for a young actress.
TS: Yes, it appeared to be a challenging role.
MC: Yes, there is so much emotion and so much going on for a 12-year-old. When Tayler came in, we read a couple of scenes, and immediately I felt that she had an emotional depth and wisdom beyond her years. I immediately responded to her. As an actress, she has an amazing ability to be in touch with her emotions. That was amazing to see. She could cry right in front of us in some of the scenes we had her read. I had her headshot, flipped it over, and wrote on the back “she’s the one!“. We did some screen tests after that to really make sure, but she did an incredible job.
TS: Let me ask you about the participation of Martin Sheen in your film. He’s known for political activism. What did he bring to the project?
MC: He brought a lot to the project. This was an incredibly low budget film. SAG has different tiers of how their budget ranges are. The lowest is ultra-low budget, and ours was ultra-low budget. We weren’t sure how we were going to cast of this film, so I thought of who I actually knew. I knew Martin Sheen. I had made a documentary about the Bohpal gas industrial disaster and the same year Martin Sheen had worked on a different film about the same subject. We had that shared interest and we met back then. That was in 2011 and I’ve known him since. We wrote the part and we just asked Martin if he would play it. Martin graciously read it and said yes. You asked how he contributed. In a way, he got the ball rolling. He was the first actor to say yes to the project and I think because of his validity and the fact that he is an American icon, so many other people were willing to listen and read the script and say yes to the project. I think he really unlocked a lot of doors by just responding to the material and wanting to help. The social activism part of his life is admirable. He’s been arrested more than 100 times for his political activism at rallies and marches. I think that’s great because our film has a social message within it.
TS: And he’s a Hollywood legend. I’ll bet he had a lot of stories to tell.
MC: There were different bits of synergy, He spoke about APOCALYPSE NOW when he was on the set and the first film that I can remember seeing as a child, was HEARTS OF DARKNESS, the film about the making of APOCALYPSE NOW.
TS: Let’s talk about you. Did you grow up as a movie buff?
MC: Yes. I’ve always loved movies. My parents met at a news station. My mom was editor at the news station and my dad was a cameraman, so growing up I had access to a camera. As early as elementary school, I was making little movies with my family and friends. Movies that started to sink in and stand out when I got a little older are ones that I saw in high school. The first movies I can remember loving were Paul Thomas Anderson’s MAGNOLIA or maybe DANCES WITH WOLVES, these really cinematic epic movies.
TS: Do you have a favorite directors that you have found influential?
MC: There’s Paul Thomas Anderson. I love Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg and also Martin Scorsese.
TS: One more thing about PRINCESS OF THE ROW I want to mention. You have to be happy with the musical score for your film. It is so evocative
MC: Yes, I think it’s beautiful and there are layers to it that are singers from Skid Row itself. We heard singers from a group called The Urban Voices Project, a nonprofit group that’s like a choir which anybody who is homeless can be part of. Also interwoven is vocals from people from Skid Row . Julian Scherle, who is our amazing composer, is a music geek. Conceptually, he wanted sounds to sound like they are from the street so he did something very unique. He got shopping carts from skid row. He actually bowed the shopping cart with a violin bow and those are some of the sounds that you hear. Some of the hits and stomps and claps are actually being made by some of the people from Skid Row.
TS: Those are awesome little pieces of trivia and that’s why I like doing these interviews. Good luck with PRINCESS OF THE ROW and we’ll see you at The St. Louis International Film Festival.
MC: Looking forward to it.
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