By Paris Pompor
Unconventional filmmaker Cory McAbee is talking about an early scene in his strange and fantastical 2001 feature, The American Astronaut. Shot in black and white, it’s rife with surreal images that are likely to sear themselves indelibly onto your memory banks. If you’re not yet familiar with the film, for starters, it’s probably best just to let you know that it’s a sci-fi-western-musical. We’ll fill you in on the plot later.
Regardless of how audiences react to his preliminary litmus test, McAbee himself is usually compelled to stay and watch until the final credits roll, even though he has watched it countless times over the years in cinemas and at festivals around the globe.
“I end up watching the whole thing because I really enjoy seeing what everybody did, everyone’s performances,” continues McAbee. “Those are real performances. A lot of them were single takes with very minimal cutting. I just feel proud of everybody I worked with. It’s hard not to watch for me.”
Besides heading off to St Petersburg, Russia, very soon – where they’ve invited him to talk about his cult classic after a special screening – The American Astronaut also screens in Australia this month at Sydney’s Riverside Theatre, where the affable McAbee will be beamed in from his hometown New York to chat with local presenter, Peter Castaldi and answer audience questions.
And it’s highly likely you will have questions.
For starters, where did McAbee get the idea for his freewheeling intergalactic odyssey?
“At the time I was working in bars and clubs as the head of security and I was spending all my money on rent,” the filmmaker explains. “It was summertime and I thought: ‘You know what? I don’t need to pay rent anymore. I’m just going to go out and about.’ I [started] just staying in people’s carports and stashing my stuff here and there and occasionally working… doing odd jobs and still performing.”
McAbee is also a musician and songwriter. His band, The Billy Nayer Show, provide numerous songs for The American Astronaut soundtrack.
“I was always moving around and so it was during that time that I started thinking about the story and writing it in my head and re-writing it all the time and adding information. Like I remember learning about the asteroid belt and thinking: ‘That’s interesting’. That changed my story.”
What is the story?
In a capsule – if that’s possible – The American Astronaut is set in an age where space travel is the domain of grease monkeys, cowboys and creeps. One of them is our astronaut antagonist, Samuel Curtis (played by McAbee) who, after meeting up with his former dance partner (a celestial fruit thief named Blueberry Pirate) in a cosmic saloon, stumbles upon a mad but compelling mission: source a new king for the women of Venus, so they have someone fresh to mate with. In return the Venusians will hand over their current stud, whose family are offering a tidy reward for upon his safe return. Pretty straightforward so far, except his traveling companion will be The Boy Who Actually Saw a Woman’s Breast and they’ll be pursued by arch-enemy Professor Hess, who is gunning to murder McAbee’s character.
What is Professor Hess’ caper and why is he hell bent on slaughter? That’s one of the truly mind-bending conundrums of the plot, as our hero explains to the breast-witnessing Boy in one scene: ‘He kills without reason. If he has a reason to kill you, then he has a problem. If he kills you without resolving the problem, you’d be dead and the problem lives on forever.’
“I thought about that for a long time before I wrote the screenplay.” explains McAbee. “I thought that was an interesting idea. It also makes him very dangerous. He’s unstable.”
It’s a terrific twist on the usual hunter versus hunted scenario. If issues are resolved, you’ll die. Therefore best to keep giving your predator reason to kill you, because then he won’t. Perfectly logical.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” says The Boy Who Actually Saw a Woman’s Breast.
“Yeah it does,” responds McAbee’s character.
And that’s that.
Given this isn’t the film’s only claim to unconventionality, does McAbee ever have the above exchange with critics?
“You know, it’s funny, not everyone has the same tastes,” says McAbee, adding, “I don’t think my mother liked it. But there were times when I’d be interviewed by somebody who didn’t like the film and the stuff they were saying had nothing to do with the film. There were people who said it was homophobic and others who said it was homoerotic. One woman who interviewed me said it was clearly an assault on homosexuals.”
She never did explain how or why. And the jury’s out on whether she herself would go on to make any sense.
“It’s a got a weird story structure,” concedes the director.
That’s part of its magic. Rest assured, you’ve probably not seen anything quite like The American Astronaut.
With its venerated underground status and abundance of “space cowboys”, you might assume that the film is a late night favourite with stoners.
“I don’t know if the pacing really works for people who smoke pot…” muses McAbee with a chuckle.
Despite the film’s modest budget, from the moment it starts, the indelible images and scenes come at a steady pace. From the anachronistic rocket technology to the costumes, the movie’s look and feel has cult-classic stamped all over it.
“The whole film was storyboarded for years actually before it was ever made,” says McAbee. “There was no production in sight. Nobody was interested in [making] it.”
Not knowing what else to do, he laboriously sketched out each scene, whilst also heading out to perform the film’s songs with his band.
Even being accepted for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab back in the ‘90s (“before the golden age of independent film”) did little to spark more than cursory interest from those with money.
“I would send it to them and they wouldn’t return my phone calls,” laughs McAbee.
Eventually some backers came on board and the film was released in 2001, winning a Special Jury Award at the Florida Film Festival. It was also nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and Best Cinematography at the Independent Spirit Awards. It continues to be screened, talked about and gain new converts.
“There are films that will always be timeless,” says veteran film critic and Sydney-based film promoter Peter Castaldi of The American Astronaut. “They are unique because of the creative force behind them. They never, ever try to second guess the audience. Call the makers ‘artists’, call them ‘mavericks’, call them ‘mad’, call them whatever you want, their works will forever bubble above the vile slick of mediocrity in which we are in danger of drowning. The American Astronaut is one of those films and McAbee is one of those mad and beautiful mavericks.”
Another critic, summed it up like this: “Imagine a Laurel and Hardy skit directed by Salvador Dali.”
“It’s one of my favourite quotes,” admits McAbee. “It was a huge compliment.”
Does he consider the film to be surrealist?
“Yeah. I think one of the things that gives it a surrealist quality is the nuts and bolts filmmaking. When I wrote it I didn’t have any money – that hasn’t changed – but I wrote it knowing that I probably would be making it with a limited budget. Everything was very simplified, like using paintings for (representing) space. When Professor Hess (played by Rocco Sisto) disintegrates Lee Vilensky (Peter McRobbie), he walks offscreen in a flash of light and [we had] someone throw up a bucket of sand off a ladder. To me the simplicity of that has a nice almost surrealistic quality to it. We’re so used to seeing things that are spelled out for you in a way, with computer animation. To see something like [the sand] it’s a little more startling.”
In that way it’s not dissimilar to the much studied footage of the 1969 lunar landings, which some skeptics claim was fabricated in a studio in the American outback because the US couldn’t bear the thought of not being first on the moon.
Is McAbee an Apollo 11 believer?
“I think it’s always good to be a little bit skeptical, but… yeah, I believe we did that.”
More than 50 years later the image of an astronaut and the idea of space travel is still intoxicating for many, including movie goers. Although McAbee sets his astronauts largely in the rocky frontier of westerns rather than the final frontier of space, he includes images of silver suits and spherical cosmonaut helmets that have that same winning effect on an audience’s imagination.
“There’s hope in it,” says McAbee explaining the long-lasting appeal of the space travel.
“I wrote Stingray Sam (The American Astronaut‘s 2009 sequel) towards the end of the Bush administration and we were all feeling a bit bruised by what the government was doing. I wanted to write something that embraced our culture but at the same time was critical of it. It was nice to be able to work within a science fiction and a cowboy theme because both of those things are very naive and optimistic and forward thinking. One of the things about space is that there’s an optimism to it – at least the old space travel. There was a time when everyone was talking about flying cars and things like that. The fact that we made it to the moon was fantastic! There were even Cat in the Hat books saying ‘we will live on the moon’.
“Today it’s a little weird because people are saying we can live on Mars as if the planet’s dying… so [let’s all go and live there]. It’s a little bit of a last ditch effort. I still think there can be a naive optimism in how we deal with science fiction.”
The American Astronaut screens at 7pm, 29 March 2017, at the Riverside Theatre, Parramatta, presented by Peter Castaldi and featuring Q&A with Director Cory McAbee via Skype. For tickets and info: https://riversideparramatta.com.au/show/the-american-astronaut/
