by Dov Kornits
“I’m glad that the film felt like a reaction to you because it WAS intended to be a reaction or protest to the way things are supposed to be done,” says skater/filmmaker Rick Charnoski about his feature film debut, Warm Blood, which is everything that slick modern film and TV isn’t.
“A reaction to rules and form. A reaction to everything that I find bizarre about society and our self-destructive species. I mean… I think about this shit all the time. The opening title sequence is a total fuck you to traditional cinema by excluding names and credits and instead using a ridiculous collection of words I pulled from signage. This shit is a part of my daily dialogue… I’m obsessed with it. I wanted to poke fun at politics, media, power, money, consumerism, religion, hypocrisy, humanity and do it without being obvious about it.”
Essentially an American film, set in Californian city Modesto in the ‘90s, it’s surprising to discover that it’s actually an American/New Zealand co-production, with strong ties to the Melbourne International Film Festival, where it’s now enjoying its international premiere.
“James [Hewison, a producer on the film and one-time head of the Melbourne International Film Festival] invited my filmmaking partner Buddy Nichols and I to MIFF in 2006 to show a collection of our super 8 skate films,” Charnoski says. “We met Amiel [Courtin-Wilson, prolific filmmaker and also a producer on the film] that year as well and we all stayed in touch over the years. James and Amiel would visit our studio in LA whenever they were there and on one of those trips Amiel invited me to Cambodia… maybe I invited myself, but anyway – I went to Cambodia and saw Amiel’s approach to filmmaking which looked a lot like how we made our skate films. A hit and run spontaneous attack. Get what you get and move on.
“Amiel and I shot early tests for what was-to-be Warm Blood when we went to Venice with Ruin in 2013. Fast forward a year or two and James was working with Curious Film in NZ and suggested that he could get Matt Noonan [Curious founder] involved to help get the movie off the ground. This is also where our producer Stephen Fitzgibbon came from.
“James, Amiel and I formed some early ideas of what the movie was going to be even though we had no idea what it was. Communication was mostly done via email – sharing notes, ideas, books and movies and lots of skype calls and conversations.
“But this shit had to become real, so I got a hotel room in Modesto for a week and wrote a stream of consciousness script at night after spending the day on the streets shooting video and collecting trash. I laid our ideas out on the wall as a guide and then began doing the research to make everything and everyone and all of our ideas real. 5 steps backward, 1 forward, then 2 steps sideways, then spin in a circle 30 times, then 2 more steps forward, a few back again…. and that happened for years.
“Amiel visited Modesto a couple of times with me. I took him around on my Modesto crawl and more ideas sprouted. Then I assembled the crew in LA and did a full 16mm film shoot for 4 days without an actor or actress or a complete script.
“In retrospect, that first shoot helped to inform how we were going to go about doing this. It was all vibe and instinct and a lot of ‘Shit, what are we doing here?’
“In the end, most of that film made it into the final cut anyway. All of the work I did with James and Amiel – their dedication and commitment from halfway across the world was a very unique experience. I’m really proud of what we did – we created our own method and as a result, our own reality.”
You’re a skateboarder – do you have a theory why so many skateboarders gravitate towards creative pursuits? Why/how did you gravitate towards filmmaking?
“Skateboarding is an activity that requires creativity in order to get the most out of it. Skaters have always been obsessed with self-documentation as well. Photography, video, film, music, zines, graphics, ramp building, a dry place to sleep while travelling… skateboarding to me has always been about figuring it out. How something is going to happen is irrelevant – it’s going to happen no matter what. Skateboarding also requires travel and unknown adventures and unexpected situations, so having a camera to document this experience is a no-brainer. You can only skate so much, so the rest of the time you shoot what’s happening around you and suddenly the world opens up a little bit and everything becomes more interesting.”
Do you have any particular filmmaker influences?
“Filmmakers that inspire me and had influence on Warm Blood: Christopher Petit. Kelly Reichardt. Monte Hellman. Dardennes Brothers. George Lucas. Maysles Brothers. Amiel Courtin-Wilson. Agnes Varda. Wim Wenders. Gus Van Sant. I borrowed from all of these filmmakers. I actually assembled a movie using scenes from all these filmmakers’ films. It was a study to get the juices flowing but also became a reference for Warm Blood as we were shooting. This was a very helpful method. I put the scene name and number and sometimes notes at the bottom of the screen over scenes that felt like what I wanted to do. On set with my cinematographer Chris Blauvelt, we would sometimes look at the assembly on a laptop when needed.”
What’s your connection to Modesto? Is there a different part of Modesto where someone like George Lucas grew up?? As you mention in the press notes, it’s the same place that American Graffiti was made – Warm Blood would be the drugtaking homeless cousin of that film…
“I did not grow up in Modesto. I grew up on the opposite coast in Pennsylvania but when I came to California to skate, we always went to “the central valley” because there are a lot of empty pools. The majority of backyards in the central valley have pools. It’s hot there in the summer and when the local economy went to shit, the pools from the motels went empty too. American Graffiti was shot here in the ‘70s and that movie told the story of ‘apple pie America’ – the post-war California dream when everything in America was awesome… if you were a white man. Anyway, American Graffiti is a contrasting parallel to Warm Blood, then and now, Like 2 magnets fighting one another. I was a couple of years into Warm Blood when I realised how important that movie was as a reference. I even created a news character whose reportage was a thread throughout the film, like George Lucas did with Wolfman Jack in his film.”
What does the title refer to? It’s reminiscent of John Huston’s Wise Blood, which is equally cult film-ish in its intentions.
“The title came from Amiel. He was shooting a yet-untitled film in Cambodia years ago that I jumped on for a couple of weeks. That film at one point was going to be called Warm Blood until it was finally titled Ruin. So, when we were thinking of titles, Amiel suggested Warm Blood and it sounded good to me…. so Warm Blood it is. To be honest, I don’t really know or care what it means but I like it. I guess I could say the same about the movie itself.”
Warm Blood is screening at the Thornbury Picturehouse in Melbourne on November 23, 2022
