Interview: Matt Farnsworth (Iowa)

Iowa is like a drug-induced walk through the Mid-West. In this sleepy
town full of shady characters two young lovers begin cooking up drugs
and selling it out of a ranch house, hoping to get enough money to leave
their world behind. Soon they find themselves escaping reality, on the
run and heading on a downward spiral.

The story revolves around a young man (Matt Farnsworth) whose mother
(Rosanna Arquette) is plotting to kill him because she wants to live
alone with her boyfriend, a local cop. So the young man runs away with
girlfriend (Diane Foster) and leaves his girlfriend’s father (John
Savage) behind. Together they shack up and bring in two more friends to
start their Meth lab. The soon takes effect and everything falls apart.

The most intense scenes in the film are the ones where the effects of
Meth are displayed using every camera trick in the book. The
hallucinations are reminiscent of Trainspotting or Requiem for a Dream. Matt Farnsworth is a first time feature length director and he makes use of all these tricks giving Iowa a distinct style.

Here is my interview with Matt Farnsworth.

Justin Ambrosino: Where did the initial story come from?

Matt Farnsworth: It came from research. We went to Iowa and investigated
the Meth crisis and wound up filming a girl who burnt over 60 percent of
her body working in a Meth lab. The documentary is called Dying for
Meth. Based on her story and my knowledge of the Midwest we made a
script that was fictional but loosely based on a few stories this girl
was telling us.

JA: How much time did you take fleshing out the script?

MF: It took a long time, just about a year to write, maybe almost two.
Because of the Meth problem was changing and they way that I felt about
it.

JA: Did you go to film school?

MF: No. I watched a lot of films and I started out in L.A. very young –
like 20 years old. I was at every appointment you can imagine. I screen
tested for Star Wars, I’ve screen tested for Terminator. I’ve done a lot
of things in the acting world that have frustrated me enough for me to
say, that’s it, I have to make something of my own. And that’s what I did.

JA: Being a first time filmmaker can you explain what it’s like to be
making your first film?

MF: Well you have to depend on people to a certain extent and then you
have to answer the question of exactly what it is you want. Somehow
those two things have to meet. On this set they didn’t always meet. You
are working with people for the first time. I did depend on the first
A.D., I did depend on the Supervising Producer for contacts. Hell, we
depended on the Independent Filmmaker’s Manual, just to figure out what
is this that I’m doing. At that point I only knew how to call an agent
and go to an appointment, but to actually make a movie, no. It is a lot
about hiring the right people.

JA: Did anyone ever doubt your credentials?

MF: No because I just said what I wanted and I was very direct. I like
to work with actors. I don’t think I was steering them wrong because I
was one; I knew how they feel.

JA: How about raising the funding were there any complications to that?

MF: Yeah, it always is a struggle to raise money to do a film, but
through the years of filming this particular girl that I talked about.
The being able to manipulate it and make something that could be at a
festival was a big enough deal to get people interested and say, ok,
we’ll give you some money. They really didn’t have to get it back. They
know that they might lose the money because you are making a movie. We
were very lucky.

JA: Did you ever consider using kids from that area to tell your story,
maybe non-actors who were involved in the whole Meth problem, instead of
acting in it yourself?

MF: Well I had often wanted to cast myself out of this. It was pain to
do everything, but we knew the actors were going to come out of LA.
Dominique, the girl who plays the dark hair chick who likes to shoot up,
she is from Ohio. David Baxcit the guy who’s really funny in the film,
he’s from Iowa.

JA: Was it hard to get the script to Rosanna Arquette?

MF: No, I just sent it to the publicist and they said “Yeah, she’ll do
it.” I didn’t have a hard time getting people to say “Ok” to this film.

JA: Did you rehearse the scenes at all?

MF: Yeah we did, about a week or two before. We did it three or four
times a week before we even got there. That’s why they were really
good. John Savage came to all the rehearsals too.

JA: How did you choose your cinematographer?

MF: That’s an interesting story. There’s two. The first one, he and I
didn’t get along that well. There wasn’t a lot of input from him and I
needed input, because, like you said, I am a first time director. I
wanted him to say more. Then I found another guy, from Iowa, that I
liked and we went back and shot more with him and he and I gelled
better. So we did some reshoots and additional stuff like that. That
really worked great. The look and everything was actually chosen by me.
I chose to go on film, Super 35.

JA: There are many old school camera tricks, like time lapse
photography, that seems like in-camera work, was that thought of
previously or did you create that effect in post?

MF: No we did a lot of that there, on set. It was the second cameraman.
He went back and did a lot of the time lapse stuff. I shot a lot of
those effects in camera, but that being said, I did a lot of effects in
post because I cut the film.

JA: How much time did you spend in post?

MF: Honestly about 12 months, a long time.

JA: Were you screening the film as you were cutting it??

MF: No.

JA: One thing about this film that is different from other films about
drugs is that there isn’t any glamour attached to the drug taking,
making or selling. Was that something you intended to do?

MF: These people are really simple. They really are inside sitting and
talking or driving and talking or they are smoking and talking. There is
nothing flashy that you could do in this film because it’s not like they
are in New York or LA. A lot of people don’t understand that about this
film. They way these people are acting are the way most people feel
there. They don’t jump around and dance and sing. I just don’t that a
whole lot down there. So I think it’s taking a while for people to
understand the movie. Meth is a big deal out in the Mid-West and it’s
now in a pandemic state.

JA: What are you working on next?

MF: We have a television show we are working on called Final Cut. It’s
20/20 for our generation. We are out in the field filming gritty,
personal stories. Like that girl, hre mom is smoking Meth in front of us
and see told us about how her life is so screwed up and that’s why she
got burnt and that’s why she does Meth. People don’t say those things to
other people but to us they do.

Full Fathom 5 released Iowa yesterday in New York at the Village East and on the 14th of April in Los Angeles at the Sunset 5.