Michael Tully

Michael Tully makes movies about people whose lives don't fit tidily into conventional society. A native of Maryland, the New York City-based filmmaker spent years writing about cinema before completing his 2006 debut feature, Cocaine Angel, a dark drama about drug addiction. Tully's longtime love of music factored heavily into his second film, Silver Jew, a documentary that focuses on indie singer-songwriter David Berman and his lauded ensemble, Silver Jews. For his next major project, Septien, Tully not only sported a gray hoodie and a formidable beard, he donned three different creative hats, serving as writer, director, and a lead actor. The resulting film—a moody tale of three damaged and eccentric brothers—garnered Tully a significantly wider audience and established him as a notable up-and-comer in American independent cinema.

Critical Questions for Michael Tully (from our 7/2011 newsletter)

CM: Septien is the first film you've written, directed, and acted in. How difficult was it juggling all three roles, and would you do it again?

MT: I look very forward to not acting in my next film! A few years down the road, I might just very well be stupid enough to try it again, but for now, no thank you. Directing and acting at the same time is a seriously disorienting thing to do-especially when you don't consider yourself an actor-but with the help of good friend and great cinematographer Jeremy Saulnier, as well as a bunch of spirited cast and crew members who didn't make fun of me to my face, I felt okay enough to keep moving forward without collapsing into a puddle of overwhelmed tears.

You developed the story with your co-stars Robert Longstreet and Onur Tukel, but wrote the screenplay yourself. How did the three of you come up with the idea?

The main skeleton of the film, including the title, was actually born at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival over Irish coffees with my friend David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express, George Washington, etc.). In February and March, Robert, Onur, and I had an ongoing email conversation in which we further fleshed out the characters and developed the narrative. The writing was an organic, instinctive process. It was a refreshing and exciting feeling to not only be taking such strange chances on the page, but to know that we were going to be shooting these strange chances on Super-16mm! Looking back on it now one year later, I kind of can't believe we actually did what we did.

Your character in Septien is deliberately mysterious and prone to odd behaviors. Is this the character you imagined from the start, or did he develop and grow during shooting?

Initially, the whole film was conceived as a bizarre inside joke. It wasn't until we began shooting that the genuine depth of the Rawlings brothers' pain began to emerge. Robert likes to remind me that at one point midway through the shoot I turned to him and said with surprise, "I think this turning into a serious exploration of male repression." I'd be lying if I said that was our plan from the beginning, but I was also thrilled to discover that the film was taking on a deeper and more emotionally resonant shape as it came to life. For Cornelius, I simply thought it would be funny to portray a withdrawn character-my direction to myself was "narcoleptic Jesus"-who took the Vincent Gallo anti-hero to a comical extreme. But I also didn't want to make light of or belittle the reason for Cornelius's lingering pain. To that end, my mantra while shooting became, "We're not making a comedy. We're making a drama." It felt like the noblest way to approach the film's more sensitive content.

The beard looks fantastic. How long did it take to grow, and did you ever consider keeping it?

I started growing it right around March 1st and we shot the film between July 5th and 20th. So, 4.5 months total. At the time, I was incredibly relieved to be shaving it off, as that meant the film was in the can. While I have intermittent flashes of missing it, all I do is think about how pleased my almost-wife is to have my face back, and I'm quite pleased to have it back, too.

The film conjures up a Southern Gothic vibe. Where did that inspiration come from?

I'm a huge fan of the Southern Gothic tradition, whether in literature or cinema. Having attended film festivals for the past several years as a member of the press, I felt like the most personally challenging and rewarding thing to do would be to make a low-budget American film in 2010 that wouldn't be digitally rooted in the very present. Septien is like a preposterous fairy tale in many ways, and I thought it would be a real achievement if we were able to produce something out of this material, on this budget, that people took even somewhat seriously.

Music plays a big role in setting the mood of the film. How did you create the score?

I wrote the film's theme song, "Smother the Demons." Initially, I had a vision of the film's score ebbing and flowing into, out of, and around that theme throughout. But since I'm not a musician, and my own brain would have churned out repetitive, simplistic, uninteresting variations, this would have been another case where doing it myself would have sold my idea pathetically short. Thank greatness for Michael Montes, who is a highly accomplished and intelligent composer, but whose positive spirit and energy made him an even more fun person to collaborate with. Michael had never worked this way before-drawing from an already-written theme-yet he embraced the challenge and ended up producing something that took my elementary melody to an infinitely richer and more expressive level. He made the score his very own.

How has your approach to directing changed, if at all, since your first feature, Cocaine Angel?

For me personally-and this is based on having made only three features-I'm not sure if directing is something that one gets "better" at as he or she gets older. I actually think each project is its own unique creature-whether narrative or documentary-to the point where every time a new production begins, those previous films don't even factor into the equation. Of course, there are lessons one learns that come in handy along the way, but, at that point, I think it's more subconscious than conscious. For me, it's important as a director to create a comfortable environment where everyone is having a good time and feels that they are on an equal footing, whether they are a producer or an actor or a PA.

You're also a film critic for Hammer to Nail. How does that perspective inform your filmmaking?

I watch a ton of movies every year, and I write a bunch of reviews at Hammer to Nail, so that can't help but inform my filmmaking. And while I am constantly making references to other films on set, I also never want my work to feel like it's a stupid game of "spot the reference." My overriding goal as a filmmaker is to not call attention to myself behind the camera and instead deliver stories that are grounded in real-world emotions, yet are unique universes unto themselves.

Where do your ideas typically come from, and is there anything new in the works?

My ideas come from living life, watching movies, reading books, listening to music, traveling, eating, sleeping-actually, not sleeping; I have been waiting for years to have a million-dollar idea in a dream, but no such luck. Next up is the first film I ever wanted to make. It's the reason I went to film school. The easiest way to pitch Ping-Pong Summer is to call it the original The Karate Kid meets Wild Style, but with ping-pong. As it's a period piece set in the mid-1980s and is a much more ambitious production overall, I have been psyching myself out every summer for the past 18 years. But I finally feel like the forces are aligning and the time has come to make this thing once and for all.