Interview: Jonathan Parker (Untitled)

Director Jonathan Parker (Bartleby, The Californians) returns with a film focused on the contemporary art and music scenes of New York City, and how artists maintain passion for a creation that may be more miss than hit. Inspired by his own experiences as a musician and art collector, (Untitled) stars Adam Goldberg as frustrated contemporary classical composer Adrian, whose shows are sparsely attended while his artist brother Josh (Eion Bailey) draws rave reviews for his gallery work. The bridge between them is Chelsea art gallerist Madeleine (Marley Shelton), who both supports Josh’s work and begins a love affair with Adrian out of a shared love for music and art. In it lies an intelligent humor that doesn’t make a joke out of its protagonists, but treats them with dignity and class in being thoughtful artists. It’s a broad look on how artists handle the unpredictable tastes of crowds and try to balance playing to their audience while staying true to their artistic passions.

I was plagued by tape recorder problems during my meet up with Parker in Manhattan, so here is a concise and to the point transcription of our conversation.

Melissa Silvestri: How did you and writer/producer Catherine di Napoli come up with the story?
Jonathan Parker: I was a musician for a long time, and always played in a variety of bands, and there were people with difficult personalities in music, so it was always in the back of my mind, and so we started with that, and then we created the antithesis, this guy with a sunny disposition and didn’t have any of these problems in the creative world, so after researching the art world and talking to a lot of art gallery people and artists, we came up with this character whose work is sold out of the back room, but who wants a show in the front room of the gallery, he doesn’t understand the distinction.

I’ve been involved in the art world through parents and kids and relatives, and do a little collecting myself, of kind of obscure work. I go to a lot of shows, and art markets and auctions, and it’s just interesting noticing the people who are buying art and collecting art, and their mixed motivations. It just seemed like a nice comic setup to have these two brothers, bringing together these two contemporary artists.

MS: Why did you choose to focus on a contemporary music composer?
JP: With classical music, and contemporary classical music, as opposed to all other forms of music, there’s a seriousness and a high-mindedness to that world that doesn’t exist in the rest of those music worlds, that I think sets up this comic dichotomy where you’re very serious about what you’re doing, but what you’re doing can often look kind of funny.

MS: What kind of research did you do to prepare a portrayal of the contemporary art scene, both music and in visual art?
JP: Well, in music, I have a lot of firsthand experience, but also I’ve attended a number of concerts, and had a long interview with the composer David Lang, who gave me a ton of background information, and he’s more than just the guy who wrote the score for the film, he became kind of a consultant, and the spirit behind the music side of the story. As for the art, I met with gallery owners and artists, and went on studio visits with the gallery owners. Also having collected some art myself, I had talked to auction house people as a collector, and they’re trying to sell you art, so you get a different perspective.

MS: Your family is very much involved in the art scene. How has there been a familial draw towards visual arts, and how has that influenced Untitled?
JP: I would say so. I grew up with that, my parents have an art collection, my mother has been an artist for a long time, and still is, to that extent, but when my son got interested in it, it was actually kind of in the beginning of writing this script because I started going to a lot of contemporary galleries with him, and he became very knowledgeable about it, so it kind of filled out that very contemporary side of it for me, and I just began to make friends with some gallery people and some artists, of various types, some conceptual artists, and some artists who are more like how the brother is in the movie, doing more decorative work.

MS: There is a theme of being really passionate about something, despite it seeming absurd to others, like Adrian with his music or Madeleine with the art she promotes. Do you identify personally with that?
JP: Oh sure, yeah. I think anybody who pursues a creative endeavor, when the product is idiosyncratic, then you’re always going to run into that basic dilemma that is in the bottom of the film story which is, “OK, I’m passionately pursuing this thing that nobody responds to.” Those who are committed don’t care what the response is, and those who are more uncertain about themselves are obviously much more swayed by response or lack of. But I think it’s a pretty classic dilemma that that has a really good comic setup, and I just think it’s something that a lot of people respond to, I think that no matter what you’re doing, that if there’s a creative side to it and people are always balancing what they have to do for a living with what they want to do as a true passion, it’s very rare when those two things sync up to the exact same activity.

MS: How did David Lang get involved?
JP: Well, I knew David from college, we went to Stanford together, I was a percussionist, and he was writing music back then, and I’d get called to play on his compositions. I just periodically had kept hearing about him over the years, he did work for the Santa Fe Opera, and my mother actually met David at a dinner there, so I kept hearing about him periodically over the years, and when it came to this story, I really loved his music, and I really wanted to have him be able to use some of his music in the movie, and as it developed, once he read the script and got into it a little more, he really wanted to do all of the music in the movie. So it made it a little bigger job that he actually thought it was going to be (laughs).

MS: Do you feel that he identified with Adrian a lot?
JP: Well, I think he identified with Adrian, and as I was getting background information from him – David’s a guy who knows a lot about music and his attitude about it is fresh, and I’m a big fan of his music, I just think he’s an amazing composer. I just thought it was nice that while he was working on the score he picked up the Pulitzer Prize (for The Little Match Stick Girl).

MS: Who did he spend a lot of time with to understand Adrian and the music?
JP: Initially what we did, I wanted the actors to know what it looked like to perform this music, so I had them come to the recording session that David was doing, which was just the music that was performed on camera by the actors, so that was the beginning of his involvement there, And after that, the composer’s not someone who’s gonna be on the set at all, but he worked with Lawson White, who played Seth, so he did the whole score basically.

Samuel Goldwyn Films releases Jonathan Parker’s (Untitled) in theaters this Friday.