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Interview with Rasmus Skotte (January 2005)
"Please look & listen in the dark!"
Intro:
When you first hear the concept behind the "Daft Beach Movie" project, you wonder if it can really work; i.e. can there be enough synchronicities in various segments of established films to the life of Brian Wilson to collectively tell a fluid, understandable story? Well, with the "Daft Beach Movie", MHRS Productions shows that it can be done in an effectively surrealistic way. The film takes several of the important turning points of Brian Wilson's life, such as: his visit to an Amsterdam brothel in 1964, his nervous breakdown on the flight to Houston in 1964, his fascination with his sister-in-law, his experimentation with LSD, the Smile album, Monterrey Pop Festival and finally the experience of the HOLLAND album. Then, in a twist that is reminiscent of the Lewis Shiner "Glimpses" novel, we go back in time to "finish" the Smile album. The film ends as Smile is completed, only to sell 40,000 copies. On a beach is the Brian Wilson-representative character, having a nervous breakdown while a young child plays along the shore, with original Smile version of "Child is Father of the Man" playing out to the credits.
The narration by Andrew Martin really helps to smooth along the transitions from film segment to film segment. Some of the coincidences are amazing, like Rock Hudson's in-flight breakdown in the movie "Seconds", eerily similar to Brian's breakdown on the flight to Houston. It is no wonder that this movie freaked Brian out when he first saw it! The film also captures the sometimes terrifying aspects of an LSD trip, leaving you to wonder how close to the mark was Brian's own experience? Finally, Brian's inner turmoil with art, spirituality, genius and evil are covered, again by coincidentally accurate segments from other films.
The "Daft Beach Movie" has more of a cerebral, art-film feel to it than the straight fantasy film, "Dumb Angel Fairy Tale". While both films have a common thread in the music of Smile, the "Dumb Angel Fairy Tale" is a glorious celebration of life, while the "Daft Beach Movie" is a more surreal, almost disturbing view of a tortured genius and the often dark areas of our own imagination.
Unfortunately, both films have a slim chance of commercial distribution, due to the amount of legal releases involved with use of both the original Smile recordings and the various film segments used. But that is usually the story with independent film makers, whose only outlets for showing their work is usually film festivals or fan festivals. But, if you get a chance, definitely check both these films out, they are amazingly creative and a true tribute to Brian Wilson.
The following interview is a combination of recorded interviews, e-mail correspondence and written letters from May of 2004 to January of 2005.
E.C.: Was the "Daft Beach Movie" created by the same team that did "Dumb Angel Fairy Tale"? Rasmus: The "Daft Beach Movie" is not a "DAFTfilm", but rather a MHRS-production with me and Andrew Martin. E.C.: I was a little confused since it had "Daft" in the title. I assumed it was a DAFTfilm project. Rasmus: The word "DAFT" in the title was chosen for several reasons; it is wordplay on Nick Kent's: "The L a s t Beach Movie". It has the same meaning as "Dumb", like in "Dumb Angel". And yes, it is also is an acronym of "DumbAngelFairyTale". This is because I see the two movies as supplementing each other and this pair as companion pieces to "Beautiful Dreamer". E.C.: What was the timeline for the "Daft Beach Movie" and "The Dumb Angel Fairy Tale"? Were you working on both films at the same time? Rasmus: "Daft Beach Movie" was completed first. We screened it one year ago in November 2003 at the Beach Boys Britain convention in Manchester, England. E.C.: Can you explain the concepts behind the film? What was your inspiration and what is the background? Rasmus: "The Daft Beach Movie" is an experiment to visualize Brian Wilson's key moments and situations leading up to and surrounding the original project. The title is inspired from Nick Kent's epic Brian tale, "The Last Beach Movie" reprinted in his book, "The Dark Stuff". The names in the movie - Brian Gemini (Wilson), David Carrot (Anderle) & Michael Spinach (Vosse) came from Brian's old fairy-tale about vegetables printed in "Beat" (1966).
The film is also an attempt to find a common ground upon which to understand and interpret all those infamous happenings and events we've been reading about - without disqualifying them as, "that's just Brian being weird". Instead of that, and above all, it is trying to take Brian and his own claims seriously. E.C.: At the end of the film, the camera pans across all the reference material. It is not listed in any credits. Can you give me a full list the your sources for this film? Rasmus: The sources are:
Also regarding sources: The letter quoted in the Beach Movie is allegedly
an authentic one from Jack Rieley to Warner Bros! It was reprinted
some years ago in the British fanzine: Beach Boys Stomp. E.C.: A combination of both writings and film influenced this project? Rasmus: The research began back in 1998 (as did Dumb Angel Fairy Tale's) when I revisited Franheimer's film, "Seconds" and just realized that Brian had been (mostly) right all along. In that at least from his perspective the film really seems to evolve around his own life: birth, death, rebirth - and the beach. There are lots of references (as documented in the Beach Movie) such as the Smile Shop entrance- like corridor, the mid-flight panic attack - the fire and being-a-painter allusions. Also, scenes that seems to be taken right out of two of his L.S.D.-trips (as described in his "auto-biography"). So it appears that his original claims about the film were right (- though not his alleged paranoid conspiracy thinking since Spector & Frankenheimer weren't working for the same company and Frankenheimer wasn't even Jewish by faith or on his mother's side). E.C.: Essentially, the "Seconds" film set off the idea? Rasmus: When I first conceived of doing this...I was watching the "Seconds" movie to see if there was anything to Brian's claims about it. I found out there were many things similar to what he experienced in the '60s. So, that was the first one that I completed. Then I found this Faustian interpretation and then coincidentally I found the film "Picture of Dorian Gray". Then I came across the "Death In Venice" movie and to my astonishment, especially the flashbacks, I found a way to show how Brian was influenced by his new friends. And then I chose the Brian Wilson [live] footage to go with it. E.C.: I have never seen "Seconds" and was not aware that there was a scene where he has a breakdown on the airplane. I only knew of the infamous "hello Mr. Wilson" part that freaked Brian out. Rasmus: That was so close to Brian's own experience. [Brian's breakdown on the plane to the Houston Beach Boys concert in 1964] E.C.: I also see an influence of "Glimpses", i.e. the "going back in time" to the Smile era? Rasmus: I found Lewis Shiner's novel, "Glimpses" with its very convincing Smile-rescue scenarios as well as the Brian-as-hermit part of Brian Schorn's essay from "Palm Desert" - which we later were able to visualize partly through Svankmajer's Faust-film.
The Brian-portrait on display-scene between him and David Anderle (as retold in "Beautiful Dreamer") to me is a "Dorian Gray" moment! Then after hearing about the Thomas Mann-novel "Doctor Faustus", I realized that a Faustian approach would hold a very high explanatory value (this western-European understanding of Smile does not exclude a parallel eastern Zen Buddhist one) since the Faustian wisdom-seeking at all costs seems to be the unifying basis of all the stories including Brian's own. Discovering then that the flashback scenes in Visconti's film, "Death In Venice" were heavily influenced by Mann's "Faustus" was for me like the missing link - giving me and Andrew Martin the chance to convert those visions into a cinematic "docu-drama". The dialogue between the composer (Brian) and his Van Dyke-like musical friend seemed to me like a good approximation of the kind of conversations Brian was having with the likes of Loren Schwarz (Darro), Derek Taylor and David Anderle - and later of the verbal abuse he had to take from his own father and Mike love and maybe even from some of his former Smile-project collaborators who might have felt betrayed.
The devil-in-disguises scenes are lifted from Mann's novel. I want to stress though that I don't want to imply an actual Faustian pact with the devil though in Brian's own imagination the demons would have urged him to accept such a deal. This is why we never see Brian Gemini putting his signature on paper with or without blood.
Maybe Brian now knows that it was possible to write a teenage symphony To God without help from the dark forces. The movie's "fire-suite" hints at a Phoenix rising - like Brian seeking rejuvenation and rebirth." E.C.: I noticed the mention of the Wilson family history. Did you get that from "Nearest Faraway Place"? Rasmus: Yeah... E.C.: Do you plan to have this film released commercially? Rasmus: That would be even more difficult than the "Dumb Angel Fairy Tale"... E.C.: Because you have to get permission for each individual film that you use as well? Rasmus: Yes. E.C.: Then you are basically left showing the film at... Rasmus: Conventions. E.C.: But the eventual goal would be a DVD release of some sort? Rasmus: DVD-format absolutely! But we still have to sort out the sordid copyright details. E.C.: Are all the films used in this project still in circulation? Rasmus: I'm afraid they are all in circulation on DVD with one exception, "Picture of Dorian Gray" (1945). E.C.: Were you going for a more surreal, kind of art-film? Rasmus: No, it just became that way. It became surreal with the choice of footage.
I've heard the term "art house" used a couple of times about this film.
I sense that it's not meant to be positive and I don't really understand, since I'm not an intellectual myself - not even an academic so this has been an attempt on my part to make it as simple as possible so that even I could understand it and have it presented in an emotionally engaging format. I think it takes other brilliant artists like Mann, Wilde Frankenheimer, Visconti and Shiner to understand a creative genius such as Brian Wilson. E.C.: What other film projects do you have lined up? Rasmus: I'm preparing a sequel to it called "The Last Beach Movie" for next year, which will follow the Smile tale from the late sixties to the present.
While there is currently no website for this film, you can contact Rasmus at:
EAR CANDY:
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Right: Rasmus at the Atlanta SMiLE Gathering II (5-22-04)