Oct 8, 2025
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Feminist Makes Movie about Boys and Babies plus Interview
by Doniphan Blair
Kara Herold's new film, '39 and a Half', has the great Bay Area actress Beth Lisick consulting Tarot to improve her love life. image: courtesy K. HeroldIN THESE POLITICALLY AND SEXUALLY
troubled times, should a filmmaker make a movie about the simple fact that she, or more precisely her mother, would like her to get married and have a baby?
And should she make that movie in a quirky, whimsical way, using lots of animation, asides and intimate experiences played for laughs?
Would it win plaudits from MeToo movers and shakers, for whom a men- and marriage-centric movie might seem like walking into a stereotype ghetto and locking the gate behind you?
Of course it would BUT only if good enough!
Kara Herold's last film, 'Bachelorette 34' [2007], essentially a documentary on the same subject, featured her mother spouting such retro lines as: "Put on makeup. Be more perky. Go out on a mission and look for Mr. Right."
Nevertheless, layered with drawings, found footage and Herold's introspective humor, it was accepted by AND premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. That was when Herold realized her style was viable and her mother was very funny—so why not whip out a quick companion piece.
Alas, “39 and a Half” blew up into a feature film with a full crew and SAG actors, including Beth Lisick, the excellent Bay Area thespian, known from "Pushing Dead" [2016] and "Everything Strange and New" 2009], as well as tons of Herold's patented animation.
Herold's mother came to San Francisco to help her find a husband and became the subject of her last film, 'Bachelorette 34'. image: courtesy K. HeroldAll shot and looking damn good—see trailer here, Herold has launched a Seed and Spark campaign to cover an editor and composer and getting a clean cut by the end of summer—contribute here.
When forwarded her trailer by Steve Indig PR, I was surprised by Herold's seamless mix of art and feature film, a style we often boost at cineSOURCE, and how she did it in such personal and female terms.
As it happens, although Herold teaches film in Syracuse, New York, she returns to The Bay every summer because she attended San Francisco State, has lots of friends here and loves the scene. Which means, of course, she had to find a work space in Oakland, as she did, just down the street from cineSOURCE studios.
We tried to connect for weeks but it was hard since we were constantly leaving town. Finally, as cineSOURCE's tenth anniversary issue was about to launch and Herold was Lyfting from San Francisco, to spend the night in Alameda, she decided to divert her trajectory and drop by cineSOURCE, even though it was ten at night.
When she appeared at the door, a strikingly chiseled and handsome human, replete with wild red hair, we started out discussing the state of the industry—or lack there of.
Kara Herold dropped by cineSOURCE studios, at 10 pm one recent night, for a conversation about artful and alternative feature films. photo: D. BlairKara Herold: My film isn’t industry.
cineSOURCE: The ’39 and a Half’ trailer looks really good.
Thanks.
But still very indie. This is your first feature outing?
I made a lot of short films.
Yes, I saw “Bachelorette 34” [2007, 37 min], a beautiful collage film and also very personal. You have a lot ‘30s’ in your titles.
[laughs] Yes, I am no longer in my 30s.
‘Bachelorette 34’ was a found footage film with animation, a documentary, so stylistically, ’39 and a Half’ is different. This film was going to be a short sequel I was going to make really fast. Then it blew up into this huge feature film.
The script seems quite pithy, especially the line, ‘Reality is never as tasty as our plans.’ That guy—I was just watching ‘The Source’ documentary about the LA commune—he looks like he came right out of it.
Everyone who is in the film is based on reality—autobiographical. That was my ex-boy friend, but everything is exaggerated.
Who did the animation?
I have been doing the animation but not super professional. I [do] them in Aftereffects and then I hand it to over to this woman, Sylvia Roberts, who puts in the flourishes: making things pop, making the characters actually walk instead of sliding across the screen. Josh Tuthill has been doing some of the animations as well.
The drawings are done by two people. One is Andi Zeisler, who has done the illos for all my films—she is the editor of Bitch Magazine. I don’t know if you know it.
Between Bust, Babe and Bitch—plus you are not even allowed to say those words any more—it is tough to follow. But I am big fan of—
‘Zines?
Yes, but also matriarchies. I follow the old-school idea that they were highly-sexual, which is poo-poohed by a lot of academics, so I like those magazines with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. I had a girlfriend once who worked for a similar local magazine called On Our Backs.
An old boyfriend inspired the new ager, played nicely by Marcus DeAnda, who tells Kara's character (Beth Lisick), 'Reality is never as tasty as our plans.' image: courtesy K. HeroldYeah, I have heard of it.
A playful dyke magazine but the publisher and then the editor, Suzy Bright, ended up marrying and having children with men, which kind of fucked it up. But they were being playful, so they were ahead of the game—I think all that is very good.
Andi was the subject of my first film. It was about ‘zines and called “Grrlyshow” [2001], with two rs.
Ahh, sounds like it is about something else.
It is the same thing as Bitch or Bust, calling it ‘Grrlyshow’—re-appropriating language.
Andi's 'zine Bitch was one of the subjects of ‘Grrlyshow’ and she drew the title sequence. Then I asked her to draw stuff for the next film, ‘Bachelorette 34’, and she started drawing for ’39 and a Half’.
Then there is another person named Lisa [McElroy], who is drawing some of the illustrations. I asked Lisa to match Andi’s but, of course, that is impossible but they are still great.
I just had a friend of mine, a filmmaker, tell me that, ‘Animation is no good. It is middle class, too expensive.” But it has become quite popular.
It is pretty popular.
In fact, the recent big film out of Oakland, ‘Sorry to Bother You’, has quite the animation scene at the end.
Do you know George Rush?
Yes. He produced ‘Sorry to Bother’.
I just met with him—I don’t know if anything will come of it. I want to see that film, especially now that you mention that.
And [the director] Boots Riley even put puppets in it. By the time he gets to animation, he has already gone through puppets! I wasn’t going mention that to my friend—he would probably blow a gasket.
[they laugh]
A 'zine editor from Herold's first film 'Grrlyshow' [2001], a documentary made with a lot of found footage. image: courtesy K. HeroldFor me animation has always been to add [important stuff]. For ‘Bachelorette’, I felt I had to because it is all found footage, from the Prelinger Archives [which has free movies].
Did you know Steve Parr?
Some of it was from Steve’s collection [Odd Ball].
You heard what happened? Tragic, too bad. [Parr died Oct. 24, 2017, see cS article ‘RIP: Stephen Parr, King of the Oddballs’.]
Yeah, too bad.
For ‘Bachelorette’, I had this modern San Francisco story. Having animation on top of the found footage added some depth to the story telling.
For ’39 and a Half’, shooting a feature film as a super indie, on a self-funded budget—I got one grant and I got some help from Syracuse University, where I teach—the animation allows me to develop the interior space of the character. I couldn’t realize that shooting a feature film on the budget I had.
I am wondering if it is a low-budget solution to shooting a huge feature. You can’t afford the entire crew and actors to come for an extra day--thousands and thousands of dollars, you know?
I just think it allows you creativity in story telling [during] the editing process. You know my background [is documentary]. I always find my film in the editing. The animation allows me to still write while I am editing, instead of the Hitchcock method, where you know exactly how to put it together.
It jumps you into the interior world, which film is not that great at—art films are but not feature films. That is the real art, getting inside the character’s head with typical straight shots and cuts.
You have a lot of freedom with animation .
Not to be stereotypical but I think girls like that stuff. I remember seeing another film about a girl in San Francisco two years ago—
‘Diary of A Teenage Girl’ [2015]. Yeah, yeah but how about Terry Gilliam [who did lots of animation]?
Yes of course. And ‘Black Panthers: Vanguard of Revolution’ starts with this long animation sequence. My friend claimed that was garbage.
In my review, [see cS article] I said that it was a critical metaphor. He wanted to set the tone for the film because everyone has a different impression [of the Panthers].
Herold directs a child actor in a scene from '39 and a Half' shoot in San Francisco in 2017. image: courtesy K. HeroldAnimation allows you to get to a very different space in your film.
You say it is largely biographical: so now you have a child?
You will just have to wait and see the film [laughs]. It is kind of about it. There are a lot of characters in the film. There is the mother character based on my mom.
‘Bachelorette 34’ was more about my mother than it was me because I discovered, through making that film, that she is super funny.
Where does she hang out?
She is in Minnesota right now, retired with my dad. They are from South-East Kansas.
So they moved one state?
They moved to California—I grew up in California—to escape the fundamentalist Baptist Church, which both their families are embroiled in. Politically, they are pretty progressive.
My mother is still uneasy that I didn’t follow the traditional path of marriage and kids. [She] was also deeply saddened. She thought that my life would be full of misery without that.
So I made ‘Bachelorette 34’ about her worries and anxieties around that. I also internalized some of these worries and anxieties. I thought it wasn’t going to be a film—I was just recording [her]—but then I started playing with the footage.
It turned out she is really funny. So it ended up being a film, she is the star and it is full of her fears and anxieties.
I wanted to make a sequel because I felt she is kind of a collaborator—she provided all the good lines.
‘Bachelorette 34’ took seven years to edit, even though it is [just] a thirty-minute film. After seven years of listening to her, I felt I could write her very well. I wanted to try something different: casting actors and doing a fiction piece. Writing her lines was the easiest part of the whole film.
Did she or anyone complain about you appropriating their life?
Not yet. The guy who was the Zen boyfriend hasn’t responded to my Seed and Spark campaign, [although] he donated to my last film.
Herold claims she is guarded but opens easily to discussing things many see as off limits. photo: D. BlairThat is problem because you get hit with three different human motivations: envy, shyness, legal.
Yes [but] it is such an exaggeration. I don’t know if he would even recognize himself in the film.
You would think but the people sometimes insist it is too close to them.
You know Caveh Zahedi [‘I Am a Sex Addict’, 2005, see trailer]?
Yeah, he did some very exposing films.
Yeah, he exposes everything in his film. His films ARE autobiographical. I feel ’39 and a Half’ is so far from the truth, it is exaggerated.
Are you familiar with Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch: ‘Tangerine’ [2016] ‘Florida Project’ [2018]?
No.
I love those guys. All their films are great. The weakest one—about a porn star, ‘Starlet’ [2011], on her day off—it is still good, especially if you are a man [laughs].
They research the stuff, then they make a feature but they could have easily made a documentary. They could do both: a documentary AND a feature! [see cS article]
Yeah, yeah. Are you a filmmaker?
Vaguely. I just made a film in Death Valley. It basically shot itself and then edited itself—god only knows what it is. [see it here]
Oh.
It ties into the Baker-Bergoch system: find the thread and go with it.
’39 and a Half’ is a great theme. I have a daughter who is almost 39, so I am familiar with those issues. I also like that it is unabashedly female.
Yeah.
Yeah, it used to be that people would say women couldn’t be comics or you couldn’t make movies about wanting to get pregnant—
Yeah, yeah, I know. Its interesting because I am not married and I consider myself a feminist and yet I tend to make these films with subject matters that some might say that doesn’t pass the ‘Bechtel Test’ [for whether films have three dimensional female characters]. They talk about men in my film.
Herold has long used animation to access to her inner world, as a way of writing in the editing room and to save the money needed for a lot of actors and equipment. image: courtesy K. HeroldI think your film passes the Bechtel Test.
I know. But sometimes I am self-conscious about making films about marriage and kids—in some sense, it is a reexamining.
Of course, it is perfectly legitimate—particularly birth. Birth was in that famous tearjerker from the 80s, what was it—‘Terms of Endearment’ [1983]. It showed a birth and people were like, ‘Oh my god, this is revolutionary!’
Well guess what? This is a thing that happens in every person’s life and it is extremely dramatic, particularly for a women but also for a man. Why hasn’t it been shown in movies?
Stan Brakhage, he did one: ‘Water Baby’ [‘Window Water Baby Moving’, 1959].
’Water Baby’ wasn’t that by Gunvor Nelson—no, hers was ‘My Name is Oona’ [1969]. I recently met that ‘water baby;’ she’s like fifty years old.
In so many ways, my film [’39 and a Half’] is so female. It is autobiographical . It has animation, all the major parts are female—although I don't think autobiography and animation are female per se.
Well, it is about a very female concern.
But it is a modern perspective.
So it is all shot?
Yes my goal is to get a fine edit this summer. After this Seed and Spark campaign, I need to raise a little money for the sound design.
Foley?
I don’t know if I need too much foley I had really good sound person, his name is Roger Phenix. He did the sound for ‘Rachel is Getting Married’ [2008], by Jonathan Demme.
A great film, I loved it.
He had six microphones placed in every scene. Doug Quin also did sound on the days Roger couldn't make it. So I am good with sound.
I need a little ADR and I need a score. The trailer had music that is paid for but it is all temp.
Can you divulge your total budget?
It is too much. Total, it is probably like $150,000, which is super-low budget but too much for the kind of filmmaker I am, you know what I mean?
It looks good. That is in the pocket. You can’t do much for under $100,000 and it has a known actress.
Beth Lisick.
She also starred in ‘Everything Strange and New’ [2009, a famous Oakland film], where she was great. And that is your one major actress?
Yeah and the mother, played by Alice Schaerer. I took a lot of time casting her.
[She] is in a lot TV shows in New York. She is a SAG actress. She is in ‘Law and Order’ and ‘Blue Bloods’, little bits here and there. She was an actress when she was younger and took years off to be a mother. She came back to acting I think in her late ‘50s.
Herold's character (Beth Lisick) self-inseminating in '39 and a Half'. image: courtesy K. HeroldThat is pretty bold.
She is doing pretty well.
Where was it shot?
It was shot in San Francisco, New York City and Syracuse [New York State]. All the interiors were shot in Syracuse, where I live, and all the exteriors and some interiors in San Francisco. I came here for a week.
Is there a particularly reason you shot in San Francisco?
I think it is a San Francisco story. For one, it is autobiographical—I lived her throughout my thirties. A lot of women are single in San Francisco and they come to this choice in their thirties like, ‘OK, well, what am I going to do?’ It is kind of a crisis for some women—
A lot of women.
So Beth Lisick plays me and has two best friends in the film. One is a complete advocate for having a child-free life. The other one is based on a filmmaker friend of mine Kristy Guevara Flanagan [known for the doc ‘Wonder Woman’, 2008]
She is a really great filmmaker. She just got the Sundance Grant. She knows the part is base on her but is totally exaggerated. She is the person who decided she can be a single woman; she can have a kid; she can still make films—she can have it all!
And do it all easily, from the outside. The real Kristy, she is a professor at UCLA; she is making a feature film; she has a kid.
I am sure she has her struggles but from the outside she is doing very well, you know . This character is the comedic [element] in the film: the myth that people can everything.
If you don’t go to therapy for an hour every week and you are stable enough. I had the advantage of living in a commune, so I had built in baby sitting.
Oh wow. You could have been a character in my film, if I had met you earlier.
I have a whole alternative child raising system [laughs]. I used to take my daughter to movies at nine o’clock at night and when the lights would go off I would say, ‘Time to got to sleep.’ That worked for almost a year until one time we were seeing ‘Vertigo’ and I looked over and she was staring at the screen.
Where was your commune?
In San Francisco, Pine and Webster, only two blocks from the Source commune, after they got kicked out of LA.
Hmmm. What was yours called?
Modern Lovers. We were small, just a family-type thing, but it made it easy to do a certain type of child rearing which other people don’t have.
Herold in a portrait by Mary Joe Scott, from 'Bachelorette 34'. image: Mary Joe ScottAre you still in touch with all the people in the commune?
Yeah some of them.
The reason why I was asking about your autobiographical stuff, I did an little expose on the commune last year [see article], for the fiftieth anniversary of the Summer of Love, and got some negative feedback. I had to cut people out of photos.
Oh. Is it available, that film?
That was an article. We do have film that is archived but never made.
I was a little surprised. I kept saying ‘That’s you naked 45 years ago, you don’t look like that anymore. No one knows that's you unless you tell them. No one will known those are your titties.’
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I have always tried to convince women friends to let me take some nudes—you will thank me when you are sixty, eighty. A few have but a lot didn’t.
Even the film I just shot in the Death Valley, of the people naked in hot springs, they didn’t want me to use their names. They let me use the footage but I wanted to put their names since they say beautiful things about love and romance. This is kind of a chilling period.
Yeah, yeah, that is true.
The autobiographical thing, now if it was something really weird [laughs], I can understand. Making these documentary films, getting releases , its really problematic.
You didn’t seem to have any of those problems.
‘Bachelorette 34’, the first question everyone asks is: ‘How did your mom feel about this film?’
The first night it screened was on the Free Friday at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, so I had a huge crowd, in a huge screening room, and my mom was super embarrassed. But the second night, she was totally up for it.
She recognized the humor and she had some good things to say. She was funny. She oscillates in between. She is one of those people who doesn’t censor herself, which I appreciate because I censor myself all the time.
A lot of women are like that. They don’t have that super ego. My mother is ridiculous. It grows as she gets older because she just don’t care about anything.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A lot of them are like that, they just make remarks, whatever is their flow, like they were with their sisters. They haven’t hung out enough with men, who are very guarded about their emotions, constantly gauging and jabbing and protecting and hiding.
Well there are degrees in women, obviously. I appreciate it in my mother, like how you appreciate it in women.
I appreciate it in my mother although it took me ten years to convince her to tell me the first time she had sex.
Oh.
Herold's cinematographers, Alex Mendez (lft) and student Sam Kolber, hard at work on '39 and a Half' (second cinematog Anjali Sundaram not shown). image: courtesy K. HeroldI thought it was relevant. My daughter was outraged. To me that is the matriarchal side of history. Those are the things that have always been hidden. I think there are still quite a few matriarchal stories that are simply not told.
’39 and a Half’ seems like a very funny film and you hope to have a fine edit by the end of the summer. And you are doing it right here [in West Oakland]. Where is your space?
At 12th and Center. It is not far; we will be neighbors.
Do you have any feelings about Oakland film, or Bay Area film?
I am definitely a Bay Area filmmaker. All of my major film influences are Bay Area. I went to San Francisco State in the ‘90s, when all the people who are working professionally in the Bay Area were doing autobiographical films. They were mostly men though, like Jay Rosenblatt, Cavey Zahidi, Marlon Riggs
Jay I remember. I have seen one or two of his films.
That was when identity politics was the rage and also a lot of punk rock, making films with whatever resources that you have, what ever camera you can find, using found footage.
How about Tiffany Shlain? She is a found footage fanatic.
Yeah, I don’t know her work that well. But you know Craig Baldwin, he runs Other Cinema on Valencia Street, he makes found footage. Jay does as well A lot of my immediate roll models are in the Bay Area, a lot of men, actually.
But then all my classmates at San Francisco State were women. I entered this filmmaking class that was really rare—thirteen woman and one man, and the man dropped out.
A lot them were older, I was in my twenties—it was grad school—and other people were in there thirties, which seemed old at the time [laughs].
They introduced me to all the radical feminist filmmakers who were also making autobiographical films, found footage films, scratching on films, animation, sort of this hand crafted way of making films. I think it was sort of this merging of East Coast feminist filmmakers with Bay Area filmmakers. It influenced my style.
I learned the most about filmmaking from the incredible women in my class. They are all still making films today: Anita Chang, Greta Snider, Cathy Crane, Corey Ohama, Lisa McElroy, Christa Collins and Kristy Guevara Flanagan.
I also worked at Yerba Buena for 20 years as a projectionist. I saw a lot of films. Like Joel Shepherd [the director]—last week he was let go from his position—but he showed a lot of exploitation and B movies.
I love some B movies. One of my favorite female filmmakers is Kathryn Bigelow. I don't think she has ever really equaled her early film ‘Near Dark’ [1987], which is a B movie, a vampire film.
She actually went to the Art Institute, she was a painter. Then she went to LA and had an affair—actually married the guy, the filmmaker—James Cameron.
I think ‘Near Dark’ is a perfect film. The beauty of B it comes under the radar but then it has to go above it at the end.
Un hun.
At State did you run in to Christopher Coppola? He is obsessed with B film because his family is all A. The only problem with him is he is so obsessed with it he doesn’t believe in coming up at the end. We disagree there. He just loves the general B tropes and freaks and weird stuff.
Yeah, yeah, sometimes it is hard to know. I just saw this film recently, it was so bad, I wondered if the director meant it to be that bad. Even though I projected a lot of those B movies, I am not totally into them.
Well there is that guy [Ed] Wood—I doubt they are doing it on purpose.
What are some other filmmakers you are into?
I came to film through Women Studies at UCLA, so my professors showed a lot of films, mostly documentaries, that is why I started making documentaries first.
Which they claimed was a female form but isn’t that is erroneous?
Herold' enjoys a good laugh, after she opens up and relaxes, no alcohol needed. photo: D. BlairIt is a form where women are not the minority.
It is like anthropology, they got into that because it is a touchy-feely thing but I don’t see it as such a female form as perhaps autobiography or fantasy.
Yeah. Have you seen ‘The Watermelon Women’? It is by this woman, her name is Cheryl Dunye, she made this film in the ‘90s [1996]. It is autobiographical and she is in it and Genevieve Turner is in it. She is black and dating a white woman in the ‘90s, in Philadelphia.
'The Watermelon Woman' follows the efforts of a young black lesbian filmmaker, played by Dunye herself, to find out everything she can about a black actress known as Watermelon Woman, who played maids in 1930s black-and-white films.
She now teaches at San Francisco State—that film was really influential [for me].
Then lately there has been a lot of films, like Lena Dunham ‘Tiny Furniture’.
I thought ‘Tiny Furniture’ was a masterpiece, exposing, particularly about a lot of characters and stories I grew up with. She nailed them--and she had her sister play her sister—
And her mom plays her mom.
It is over the top! They shot it on a Canon D7 and didn‘t pan. She had that guy whom I love, Alex Karpovsky, he is more of schlemiel. He is almost like a Steve Buscemi.
He always plays annoying artists. [In ‘Little Furniture’] he comes over to spend the night—I think the mother invited him—he doesn’t like the sheets, the smell, or something.
Yeah.
I am surprised she didn’t go on to do another feature—
Well, she has this little TV show. I only watched a few episodes.
I think ‘Girls’ is good—she deals with a lot of contemporary stuff—but she went down the rabbit hole with too many annoying characters and not enough reveal.
The punch of Tiny Furniture is just over the top it is so precise with no pans, it made it so clean—how about older stuff like Maya Deren [1917-61]?
Of course, who doesn’t love Maya Deren. In film school I did my Maya Deren film but I didn’t show tit to anyone.
And you mentioned Stan Brakhage.
Yeah, I showed all the Cinemateque films, so we had a night I projected Stan Brakhage.
You know the ‘South Park’ guys studied with Brakhage? What do you like to show [in your classes]? Michael Snow’s ‘Wavelenght’ [1967]?
Yeah, makes sense: Colorado.
I like to show Brakhage, I have showed Snow. I teach at Syracuse University [in upstate New York]. It is not like teaching at San Francisco State or UC Santa Cruz, where I have taught before.
Is it pretty big the department?
The departments it small and we all art filmmakers. There are two programs and one is art and the other journalism but because Syracuse University was written up as one of the top twenty five film schools [in the country] the students are applying from everywhere.
You sure you don’t want anything, I have tangerine juice.
I’m good—maybe some water.
I see it as my mission to introduce art and experimental filmmaking to the students.
And how do they like that mission?
[both laugh]
In my evaluations, sometimes they say she shows way too much experimental film. But that is my background and they hired me having seen my films.
Herold puts herself into found footage in 'Bachelorette 34' using the high-tech animation method of 'cut-out paper puppetry.' image: K. Herold‘39 and Half’ is pretty mainstream compared to anything I have done. In part, I wanted to make a narrative film because that is what I teach. I felt I had to make one of my own to understand it.
I came up through the Art Institute and although Brakhage didn’t teach there, he was there almost monthly.
Yeah?
Of course, we Bruce Bailey, we had Bruce Connor—he didn’t come over much but he lived in the city. We had Larry Jordan, George Kuchar, Gunvor Nelson, Al Wong.
If I showed George Kuchar, I think the students would just not understand.
George was very loose. In my mind he was a better film teacher than filmmaker. He was very enthusiastic, very motherish, while Gunvor Nelson and Al Wong were very critical. That was the Golden Age for art film. It seems it has gone down hill.
My thesis—that I often spout in cineSOURCE—is I believe in the multicultural film: bringing in animation, bringing in improv. I don’t know if you are familiar with Rob Nilsson?
Yes, I am smiling because I have a colleague at Syracuse University, where almost every conversation, he brings up Rob Nilsson. He loves Rob Nilsson.
So does Rob Nilsson.
[they laugh]
So do I. A few times I have said to Rob, ‘That was a fabulous improv, just fabulous. So, now that you have it down, why don’t you reshoot without a fluctuating iris on your a cheap video camera. You have rehearsed the actors, done 99% of the work—I will shoot it for you!’
‘Naw, naw that takes the spontaneity out of it,’ he claims.
My theory is the combination of elements, you know, you have a scripted scene leading up to moments where you improvise, like jazz, or you bring in animation or… You know ‘Casa de Mi Padre’ with Will Ferrel [2012]?
No.
The critics didn’t have the feintest idea what they were looking at. Went over their heads.
The famous SNL-guy—Will Ferrell—speaking Spanish the whole movie? Long shots with cheap plastic cars on weird sets? Written stuff on the screen?
‘This is the assistant director. I supposed to get a real tiger here but I couldn’t and the director is forcing me to write this.’ And then, in the middle of the film, they have an avant-garde film!
What is the name I want to see it.
‘Casa de mi Padre’ and every single critic said, ‘This is garbage.’ The only one who got it, what’s his name from Chicago?
Siskel and Ebert.
Roger Ebert was the only one who got it—it’s insane.
Yeah.
The others didn’t even know what they were looking at. They thought they were looking at a poorly produced film. Didn’t they notice, in the middle of the film: crosses everywhere and now the character is in drag on a white set?
That sounds great.
That is my whole philosophy. It comes from Dusan Makevajev ‘WR: Mystery of the Organism’ [1971] which starts as documentary about Wilhelm Reich, then goes into a weird story about a Russian ice skater.
What is it called?
‘WR: Mystery of the Organism’
The reason I’m asking is I am trying to figure out: I shot three years of documentary footage for ’39 and a Half’ . [It was] of my parents coming to New York to audition people to play themselves.
So in ’39 and a Half’’ you have all this doc footage. I don’t remember seeing—
It is not in the film right now. I have been trying to figure out how to incorporate it, you know, how to move between this fiction film and documentary. So I am curious to see—
It seems like it is pretty solid right now, but you know—
Yeah I know. My editor, who is coming in May, said, ‘That is opening a whole can of worms.’
Well, you could but it has to cut itself. But trying to have a dream sequence, ‘I remember back’—
Anything is possible, it is just a matter of time. My goal is to finish this summer so incorporating three years of documentary footage is…
A lot of editing? There are so many things that can be done. I just saw ‘The Naked City’ [1954], remember that one?
No.
Herold casts her investigative but tolerant gaze on many things through a haze of fiery red hair. photo: D. BlairIt was shot on the streets of New York, cinema verité, they even introduce New York as a character—a little pretentious but it lives up to it. It has shots of the lower Eastside with Jews and horse carts, great stuff.
Dusan Makevejev used to do that, back in Yugoslavia before he left. He has a famous scene of a fight in a market place; he zooms back, no one knew what was going.
I love ‘Mysteries of the Organism’. He came ten years ago and played it at the Castro and it completely lived up to my memory. It has a shot of Stalin, and then an erection and it cuts to a missile going up, it is so good it makes the other art films look like garbage.
One of the best cuts I have ever seen except for the Coen Brothers’ ‘Blood Simple’ [1984], when they are sticking their fingers into bullet holes and then punching an answering machine, and a few others.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That is the type of stuff I love, call it mixed media even. But it has to work . It can’t work on paper, philosophically. It has to look good, which is hard.
When I was going to school all those people—Nelson, Wong—thought indie film was going to be the new psychedelics, open us up. It never did. Nevertheless MTV borrow a lot of that stuff and it did open up film to be more aggressive, wild, quick cutting, any number of things. By bringing in animation or weird little bits that work then art film can do its stuff and Stan Brakhage wasn’t all for naught.
What years were you there?
’74 to ’89. It was interesting time because that was when multiculturalism and structuralism hit. It didn’t produce that cgreat art in fact the ‘70s was much more fecund because there were al these types of filmmakers: feature, art, doc.
There was also James Broughton—Pauline Kael’s baby daddy [‘The Bed’ 1967].
It would be me and James against the class because they were all Marxists. You had to follow rules, you can’t show privilege. ‘Rich art’ that was their favorite criticism.
Un, hunh.
Which kind of fucked up the film department, although it was interesting to see. I think we are still in the throws of that, particularly in academia. It was a fabulous place…
I wonder what happened to the Art Institute?
Now it is run by Coppola. He is doing the best he can. He is great guy. I haven’t seen a lot of his films that are that great but he also believes in the mixed style. He says most of the kids now are from China.
They got hammered by a perfect storm: they got onboard digital about five years late; the Academy of Art came up and started eating their lunch; then they brought out this brilliant woman from the Barnes Collection, Ella King Torrey in 2003. A real rainmaker but she embezzled a million dollars and got into coke.
She embezzled a million dollars to feed a coke habit?
There is some disagreement—
I guess, you never know why anyone commits suicide.
She was a very handsome woman too—I mean that is only five percent—I guess, in part, she was out of her support system, she was in a new place.
They were already fading. They had a guy in the ‘80s, Stan Goldstein, he was a great. That was a mistake letting him go. We used to smoke pot with him in his office—that doesn’t make him a great guy—he was very familiar with the artists here. He came up through community arts, which is very developed here—one of the highest in the nation, he knew a lot of local artists, very articulate.
But it staggers on, a boutique school.
But the Art Institute had such good reputation; it is sad that it is fallen. And that location, you can’t beat it. San Francisco State has a good film school but the location is the pits.
I remember trying to energize them, getting up in the school meetings and saying why can’t we bring in someone from LA, not to become commercial and I suggest Haskell Wexler, he is writer a cinematographer he made ‘Medium Cool’ [1969], an fabulous guy.
I think they just drank the cool aid the idea that this very arty film is going to be so precious and so fabulous and so beautiful that it is going to go forever and the ‘70s with the people they had there certainly seemed that way.
They had other departments. Photography was quite strong with Hank Wessel, Jack Fulton, Linda Conner and photography is a local art form.
I am still in touch with a couple of teachers trying to hash it out—the main thing was missing digital.
Kuchar was pretty excited about digital. I was projecting his stuff at Yerba Buena and he was super excited about all the digital effects he learned to do: wipes and stuff.
Kuchar was easily amused, he loved life, he brought character into these weird art films there was so little it was like a breath of fresh. The films themselves never resolved into anything that great but he was a great spirits and lovely guy, great to be around.
I loved a lot of hose people Larry Jordan and Bruce Bailey, he has mad some great films and some of the others I thought ‘Wavelength’ was a perfect film.
If you find all the strong ones and put them together it was very impressive but they would never do that it, it was like one strong one and all these annoying ones [laughs].
You like Scott MacDonald and read his books.
Yeah yeah he did a book about Canyon, he’s great.
He is at the neighboring school, Hamilton [Clinton, New York]. I have never met him but I will have my students read his interviews I feel that is as an accessible way to [learn about art films].
I show ‘Fuses’ [1967] to my students, a 16 mm film by Carolee Schneemann (see it here. Mostly of her having sex with her boyfriend, with her cat in her room, but it is beautifully crafted.
Sounds good.
But the students hate it. They complain I am showing porn in my class.
You have to give trigger warnings?
After they read the interview Scott MacDonald did with her, they start to appreciate the craftsmanship. He interviewed all these people that you are talking about.
What film of that ilk does touch your students: ‘Moth Light’ [Brakhage, 1963]
Yeah, they like that and Maya Deren.
You know when I was in film school when I was 21 and I saw ‘Wavelength’[1967] I had no idea what I was watching and when I was projecting for Cinemateque it took me a long time to understand the language. I can’t blame them for being—plus these are films made fifty years ago.
But ‘Wavelength’ is so professional. How about something like ‘El Topo’?
I haven ‘t shown that or even seen it [laughs].
I would say ‘Mystery of the Organism’ that would be a good one to show, like ‘Wavelength’. They are a little like the B Film that works, that it pulls itself out of itself at the end, which makes it, to me, great.
Have you seen that Flicker film?
Oh ‘Flicker’ [1966, Tony Conrad], sure.
I showed them that and they thought they were going to die—students walked out. It is really interesting what your brain does just simple black and white image.
But I should probably start with ‘Rosie the Riveter’, which is a good film it is not experimental but it is accessible documentary [‘The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter’, 1980].
I would love to teach a documentary class. I haven’t been able but I was able to teach an autobiography class. That was fun.
There is a great film on Netflix that just won South By South West made by a Chinese woman where she follows a hippie around Florida.
Oh my god, that sounds great.
It is a new step for Netflix or SXSW, where they also had ‘Waking Life’ [2001, Richard Linklater].
SXSW also showed ‘Tiny Furniture’.
It is called, ‘I am another You’.
That is a great name.
The intro [here in Amazon] is bullshit. Basically, she just meets a dumpster diver. It is the reverse of 'Orientalism’ by Edward Said, who never told anyone that he moved to New York and appropriated all of that culture.
Of course a hippie dumpster diver would be mind blowing to a lot of people who imagine the US is just privileged people and condos. There are a lot of anarchist kids in Oakland, at the Rainbow Festival, in Florida, a lot of people think they are just homeless.
Of course, a lot of homeless are poor, fucked-up people, but there is always about 30-40% of voluntary people, who are just getting off the grid. She found one and her mind was blown. She became his Sancho Panza.
I was like, ‘Whoa.’ Every once in a while something rises up and it is so new and fresh it gives one hope.
But then it is all the same: commercial, averaged out, dumbed down, although I think ‘Sorry to Bother’ is also pretty good.
I am seeing Jonathan Duffy [known for ‘Hellion‘, 2014] tomorrow—he is one of the producers of ‘Sorry to Bother’. We meet for coffee once in a while.
He has made five films while I have made ’39 and a Half’. He is very prolific. Once a year he has film in Sundance. He is a producer mostly he knows how to pick his projects.
That is what a producer does.
So San Francisco has finally gotten over-yuppied. Do you think that spirit will move to Oakland?
I don’t know what happened. I am just some here for the summers and sometimes in December. Most of my filmmaking friends either left like me—they are academics — or they are hanging on. Or they have moved to the East Bay. But it also a matter of getting old, people change.
When I moved here in the ‘90s you could be an artist and get by. I was a part-time projectionist. I don’t know what the kids are doing these days. Are they moving to the Midwest? Detroit?
There are a lot kids still but they are mostly techies who don’t really support the arts, there are less clubs.
A lot of people I know moved to LA. LA has had a resurgence.
I have always loved LA.
Yes.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on May 24, 2018 - 06:44 AM
by Doniphan Blair
Kara Herold's new film, '39 and a Half', has the great Bay Area actress Beth Lisick consulting Tarot to improve her love life. image: courtesy K. Heroldtroubled times, should a filmmaker make a movie about the simple fact that she, or more precisely her mother, would like her to get married and have a baby?
And should she make that movie in a quirky, whimsical way, using lots of animation, asides and intimate experiences played for laughs?
Would it win plaudits from MeToo movers and shakers, for whom a men- and marriage-centric movie might seem like walking into a stereotype ghetto and locking the gate behind you?
Of course it would BUT only if good enough!
Kara Herold's last film, 'Bachelorette 34' [2007], essentially a documentary on the same subject, featured her mother spouting such retro lines as: "Put on makeup. Be more perky. Go out on a mission and look for Mr. Right."
Nevertheless, layered with drawings, found footage and Herold's introspective humor, it was accepted by AND premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. That was when Herold realized her style was viable and her mother was very funny—so why not whip out a quick companion piece.
Alas, “39 and a Half” blew up into a feature film with a full crew and SAG actors, including Beth Lisick, the excellent Bay Area thespian, known from "Pushing Dead" [2016] and "Everything Strange and New" 2009], as well as tons of Herold's patented animation.
Herold's mother came to San Francisco to help her find a husband and became the subject of her last film, 'Bachelorette 34'. image: courtesy K. HeroldWhen forwarded her trailer by Steve Indig PR, I was surprised by Herold's seamless mix of art and feature film, a style we often boost at cineSOURCE, and how she did it in such personal and female terms.
As it happens, although Herold teaches film in Syracuse, New York, she returns to The Bay every summer because she attended San Francisco State, has lots of friends here and loves the scene. Which means, of course, she had to find a work space in Oakland, as she did, just down the street from cineSOURCE studios.
We tried to connect for weeks but it was hard since we were constantly leaving town. Finally, as cineSOURCE's tenth anniversary issue was about to launch and Herold was Lyfting from San Francisco, to spend the night in Alameda, she decided to divert her trajectory and drop by cineSOURCE, even though it was ten at night.
When she appeared at the door, a strikingly chiseled and handsome human, replete with wild red hair, we started out discussing the state of the industry—or lack there of.
Kara Herold dropped by cineSOURCE studios, at 10 pm one recent night, for a conversation about artful and alternative feature films. photo: D. BlaircineSOURCE: The ’39 and a Half’ trailer looks really good.
Thanks.
But still very indie. This is your first feature outing?
I made a lot of short films.
Yes, I saw “Bachelorette 34” [2007, 37 min], a beautiful collage film and also very personal. You have a lot ‘30s’ in your titles.
[laughs] Yes, I am no longer in my 30s.
‘Bachelorette 34’ was a found footage film with animation, a documentary, so stylistically, ’39 and a Half’ is different. This film was going to be a short sequel I was going to make really fast. Then it blew up into this huge feature film.
The script seems quite pithy, especially the line, ‘Reality is never as tasty as our plans.’ That guy—I was just watching ‘The Source’ documentary about the LA commune—he looks like he came right out of it.
Everyone who is in the film is based on reality—autobiographical. That was my ex-boy friend, but everything is exaggerated.
Who did the animation?
I have been doing the animation but not super professional. I [do] them in Aftereffects and then I hand it to over to this woman, Sylvia Roberts, who puts in the flourishes: making things pop, making the characters actually walk instead of sliding across the screen. Josh Tuthill has been doing some of the animations as well.
The drawings are done by two people. One is Andi Zeisler, who has done the illos for all my films—she is the editor of Bitch Magazine. I don’t know if you know it.
Between Bust, Babe and Bitch—plus you are not even allowed to say those words any more—it is tough to follow. But I am big fan of—
‘Zines?
Yes, but also matriarchies. I follow the old-school idea that they were highly-sexual, which is poo-poohed by a lot of academics, so I like those magazines with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. I had a girlfriend once who worked for a similar local magazine called On Our Backs.
An old boyfriend inspired the new ager, played nicely by Marcus DeAnda, who tells Kara's character (Beth Lisick), 'Reality is never as tasty as our plans.' image: courtesy K. HeroldA playful dyke magazine but the publisher and then the editor, Suzy Bright, ended up marrying and having children with men, which kind of fucked it up. But they were being playful, so they were ahead of the game—I think all that is very good.
Andi was the subject of my first film. It was about ‘zines and called “Grrlyshow” [2001], with two rs.
Ahh, sounds like it is about something else.
It is the same thing as Bitch or Bust, calling it ‘Grrlyshow’—re-appropriating language.
Andi's 'zine Bitch was one of the subjects of ‘Grrlyshow’ and she drew the title sequence. Then I asked her to draw stuff for the next film, ‘Bachelorette 34’, and she started drawing for ’39 and a Half’.
Then there is another person named Lisa [McElroy], who is drawing some of the illustrations. I asked Lisa to match Andi’s but, of course, that is impossible but they are still great.
I just had a friend of mine, a filmmaker, tell me that, ‘Animation is no good. It is middle class, too expensive.” But it has become quite popular.
It is pretty popular.
In fact, the recent big film out of Oakland, ‘Sorry to Bother You’, has quite the animation scene at the end.
Do you know George Rush?
Yes. He produced ‘Sorry to Bother’.
I just met with him—I don’t know if anything will come of it. I want to see that film, especially now that you mention that.
And [the director] Boots Riley even put puppets in it. By the time he gets to animation, he has already gone through puppets! I wasn’t going mention that to my friend—he would probably blow a gasket.
[they laugh]
A 'zine editor from Herold's first film 'Grrlyshow' [2001], a documentary made with a lot of found footage. image: courtesy K. HeroldDid you know Steve Parr?
Some of it was from Steve’s collection [Odd Ball].
You heard what happened? Tragic, too bad. [Parr died Oct. 24, 2017, see cS article ‘RIP: Stephen Parr, King of the Oddballs’.]
Yeah, too bad.
For ‘Bachelorette’, I had this modern San Francisco story. Having animation on top of the found footage added some depth to the story telling.
For ’39 and a Half’, shooting a feature film as a super indie, on a self-funded budget—I got one grant and I got some help from Syracuse University, where I teach—the animation allows me to develop the interior space of the character. I couldn’t realize that shooting a feature film on the budget I had.
I am wondering if it is a low-budget solution to shooting a huge feature. You can’t afford the entire crew and actors to come for an extra day--thousands and thousands of dollars, you know?
I just think it allows you creativity in story telling [during] the editing process. You know my background [is documentary]. I always find my film in the editing. The animation allows me to still write while I am editing, instead of the Hitchcock method, where you know exactly how to put it together.
It jumps you into the interior world, which film is not that great at—art films are but not feature films. That is the real art, getting inside the character’s head with typical straight shots and cuts.
You have a lot of freedom with animation .
Not to be stereotypical but I think girls like that stuff. I remember seeing another film about a girl in San Francisco two years ago—
‘Diary of A Teenage Girl’ [2015]. Yeah, yeah but how about Terry Gilliam [who did lots of animation]?
Yes of course. And ‘Black Panthers: Vanguard of Revolution’ starts with this long animation sequence. My friend claimed that was garbage.
In my review, [see cS article] I said that it was a critical metaphor. He wanted to set the tone for the film because everyone has a different impression [of the Panthers].
Herold directs a child actor in a scene from '39 and a Half' shoot in San Francisco in 2017. image: courtesy K. HeroldYou say it is largely biographical: so now you have a child?
You will just have to wait and see the film [laughs]. It is kind of about it. There are a lot of characters in the film. There is the mother character based on my mom.
‘Bachelorette 34’ was more about my mother than it was me because I discovered, through making that film, that she is super funny.
Where does she hang out?
She is in Minnesota right now, retired with my dad. They are from South-East Kansas.
So they moved one state?
They moved to California—I grew up in California—to escape the fundamentalist Baptist Church, which both their families are embroiled in. Politically, they are pretty progressive.
My mother is still uneasy that I didn’t follow the traditional path of marriage and kids. [She] was also deeply saddened. She thought that my life would be full of misery without that.
So I made ‘Bachelorette 34’ about her worries and anxieties around that. I also internalized some of these worries and anxieties. I thought it wasn’t going to be a film—I was just recording [her]—but then I started playing with the footage.
It turned out she is really funny. So it ended up being a film, she is the star and it is full of her fears and anxieties.
I wanted to make a sequel because I felt she is kind of a collaborator—she provided all the good lines.
‘Bachelorette 34’ took seven years to edit, even though it is [just] a thirty-minute film. After seven years of listening to her, I felt I could write her very well. I wanted to try something different: casting actors and doing a fiction piece. Writing her lines was the easiest part of the whole film.
Did she or anyone complain about you appropriating their life?
Not yet. The guy who was the Zen boyfriend hasn’t responded to my Seed and Spark campaign, [although] he donated to my last film.
Herold claims she is guarded but opens easily to discussing things many see as off limits. photo: D. BlairYes [but] it is such an exaggeration. I don’t know if he would even recognize himself in the film.
You would think but the people sometimes insist it is too close to them.
You know Caveh Zahedi [‘I Am a Sex Addict’, 2005, see trailer]?
Yeah, he did some very exposing films.
Yeah, he exposes everything in his film. His films ARE autobiographical. I feel ’39 and a Half’ is so far from the truth, it is exaggerated.
Are you familiar with Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch: ‘Tangerine’ [2016] ‘Florida Project’ [2018]?
No.
I love those guys. All their films are great. The weakest one—about a porn star, ‘Starlet’ [2011], on her day off—it is still good, especially if you are a man [laughs].
They research the stuff, then they make a feature but they could have easily made a documentary. They could do both: a documentary AND a feature! [see cS article]
Yeah, yeah. Are you a filmmaker?
Vaguely. I just made a film in Death Valley. It basically shot itself and then edited itself—god only knows what it is. [see it here]
Oh.
It ties into the Baker-Bergoch system: find the thread and go with it.
’39 and a Half’ is a great theme. I have a daughter who is almost 39, so I am familiar with those issues. I also like that it is unabashedly female.
Yeah.
Yeah, it used to be that people would say women couldn’t be comics or you couldn’t make movies about wanting to get pregnant—
Yeah, yeah, I know. Its interesting because I am not married and I consider myself a feminist and yet I tend to make these films with subject matters that some might say that doesn’t pass the ‘Bechtel Test’ [for whether films have three dimensional female characters]. They talk about men in my film.
Herold has long used animation to access to her inner world, as a way of writing in the editing room and to save the money needed for a lot of actors and equipment. image: courtesy K. HeroldI know. But sometimes I am self-conscious about making films about marriage and kids—in some sense, it is a reexamining.
Of course, it is perfectly legitimate—particularly birth. Birth was in that famous tearjerker from the 80s, what was it—‘Terms of Endearment’ [1983]. It showed a birth and people were like, ‘Oh my god, this is revolutionary!’
Well guess what? This is a thing that happens in every person’s life and it is extremely dramatic, particularly for a women but also for a man. Why hasn’t it been shown in movies?
Stan Brakhage, he did one: ‘Water Baby’ [‘Window Water Baby Moving’, 1959].
’Water Baby’ wasn’t that by Gunvor Nelson—no, hers was ‘My Name is Oona’ [1969]. I recently met that ‘water baby;’ she’s like fifty years old.
In so many ways, my film [’39 and a Half’] is so female. It is autobiographical . It has animation, all the major parts are female—although I don't think autobiography and animation are female per se.
Well, it is about a very female concern.
But it is a modern perspective.
So it is all shot?
Yes my goal is to get a fine edit this summer. After this Seed and Spark campaign, I need to raise a little money for the sound design.
Foley?
I don’t know if I need too much foley I had really good sound person, his name is Roger Phenix. He did the sound for ‘Rachel is Getting Married’ [2008], by Jonathan Demme.
A great film, I loved it.
He had six microphones placed in every scene. Doug Quin also did sound on the days Roger couldn't make it. So I am good with sound.
I need a little ADR and I need a score. The trailer had music that is paid for but it is all temp.
Can you divulge your total budget?
It is too much. Total, it is probably like $150,000, which is super-low budget but too much for the kind of filmmaker I am, you know what I mean?
It looks good. That is in the pocket. You can’t do much for under $100,000 and it has a known actress.
Beth Lisick.
She also starred in ‘Everything Strange and New’ [2009, a famous Oakland film], where she was great. And that is your one major actress?
Yeah and the mother, played by Alice Schaerer. I took a lot of time casting her.
[She] is in a lot TV shows in New York. She is a SAG actress. She is in ‘Law and Order’ and ‘Blue Bloods’, little bits here and there. She was an actress when she was younger and took years off to be a mother. She came back to acting I think in her late ‘50s.
Herold's character (Beth Lisick) self-inseminating in '39 and a Half'. image: courtesy K. HeroldShe is doing pretty well.
Where was it shot?
It was shot in San Francisco, New York City and Syracuse [New York State]. All the interiors were shot in Syracuse, where I live, and all the exteriors and some interiors in San Francisco. I came here for a week.
Is there a particularly reason you shot in San Francisco?
I think it is a San Francisco story. For one, it is autobiographical—I lived her throughout my thirties. A lot of women are single in San Francisco and they come to this choice in their thirties like, ‘OK, well, what am I going to do?’ It is kind of a crisis for some women—
A lot of women.
So Beth Lisick plays me and has two best friends in the film. One is a complete advocate for having a child-free life. The other one is based on a filmmaker friend of mine Kristy Guevara Flanagan [known for the doc ‘Wonder Woman’, 2008]
She is a really great filmmaker. She just got the Sundance Grant. She knows the part is base on her but is totally exaggerated. She is the person who decided she can be a single woman; she can have a kid; she can still make films—she can have it all!
And do it all easily, from the outside. The real Kristy, she is a professor at UCLA; she is making a feature film; she has a kid.
I am sure she has her struggles but from the outside she is doing very well, you know . This character is the comedic [element] in the film: the myth that people can everything.
If you don’t go to therapy for an hour every week and you are stable enough. I had the advantage of living in a commune, so I had built in baby sitting.
Oh wow. You could have been a character in my film, if I had met you earlier.
I have a whole alternative child raising system [laughs]. I used to take my daughter to movies at nine o’clock at night and when the lights would go off I would say, ‘Time to got to sleep.’ That worked for almost a year until one time we were seeing ‘Vertigo’ and I looked over and she was staring at the screen.
Where was your commune?
In San Francisco, Pine and Webster, only two blocks from the Source commune, after they got kicked out of LA.
Hmmm. What was yours called?
Modern Lovers. We were small, just a family-type thing, but it made it easy to do a certain type of child rearing which other people don’t have.
Herold in a portrait by Mary Joe Scott, from 'Bachelorette 34'. image: Mary Joe ScottYeah some of them.
The reason why I was asking about your autobiographical stuff, I did an little expose on the commune last year [see article], for the fiftieth anniversary of the Summer of Love, and got some negative feedback. I had to cut people out of photos.
Oh. Is it available, that film?
That was an article. We do have film that is archived but never made.
I was a little surprised. I kept saying ‘That’s you naked 45 years ago, you don’t look like that anymore. No one knows that's you unless you tell them. No one will known those are your titties.’
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I have always tried to convince women friends to let me take some nudes—you will thank me when you are sixty, eighty. A few have but a lot didn’t.
Even the film I just shot in the Death Valley, of the people naked in hot springs, they didn’t want me to use their names. They let me use the footage but I wanted to put their names since they say beautiful things about love and romance. This is kind of a chilling period.
Yeah, yeah, that is true.
The autobiographical thing, now if it was something really weird [laughs], I can understand. Making these documentary films, getting releases , its really problematic.
You didn’t seem to have any of those problems.
‘Bachelorette 34’, the first question everyone asks is: ‘How did your mom feel about this film?’
The first night it screened was on the Free Friday at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, so I had a huge crowd, in a huge screening room, and my mom was super embarrassed. But the second night, she was totally up for it.
She recognized the humor and she had some good things to say. She was funny. She oscillates in between. She is one of those people who doesn’t censor herself, which I appreciate because I censor myself all the time.
A lot of women are like that. They don’t have that super ego. My mother is ridiculous. It grows as she gets older because she just don’t care about anything.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A lot of them are like that, they just make remarks, whatever is their flow, like they were with their sisters. They haven’t hung out enough with men, who are very guarded about their emotions, constantly gauging and jabbing and protecting and hiding.
Well there are degrees in women, obviously. I appreciate it in my mother, like how you appreciate it in women.
I appreciate it in my mother although it took me ten years to convince her to tell me the first time she had sex.
Oh.
Herold's cinematographers, Alex Mendez (lft) and student Sam Kolber, hard at work on '39 and a Half' (second cinematog Anjali Sundaram not shown). image: courtesy K. Herold’39 and a Half’ seems like a very funny film and you hope to have a fine edit by the end of the summer. And you are doing it right here [in West Oakland]. Where is your space?
At 12th and Center. It is not far; we will be neighbors.
Do you have any feelings about Oakland film, or Bay Area film?
I am definitely a Bay Area filmmaker. All of my major film influences are Bay Area. I went to San Francisco State in the ‘90s, when all the people who are working professionally in the Bay Area were doing autobiographical films. They were mostly men though, like Jay Rosenblatt, Cavey Zahidi, Marlon Riggs
Jay I remember. I have seen one or two of his films.
That was when identity politics was the rage and also a lot of punk rock, making films with whatever resources that you have, what ever camera you can find, using found footage.
How about Tiffany Shlain? She is a found footage fanatic.
Yeah, I don’t know her work that well. But you know Craig Baldwin, he runs Other Cinema on Valencia Street, he makes found footage. Jay does as well A lot of my immediate roll models are in the Bay Area, a lot of men, actually.
But then all my classmates at San Francisco State were women. I entered this filmmaking class that was really rare—thirteen woman and one man, and the man dropped out.
A lot them were older, I was in my twenties—it was grad school—and other people were in there thirties, which seemed old at the time [laughs].
They introduced me to all the radical feminist filmmakers who were also making autobiographical films, found footage films, scratching on films, animation, sort of this hand crafted way of making films. I think it was sort of this merging of East Coast feminist filmmakers with Bay Area filmmakers. It influenced my style.
I learned the most about filmmaking from the incredible women in my class. They are all still making films today: Anita Chang, Greta Snider, Cathy Crane, Corey Ohama, Lisa McElroy, Christa Collins and Kristy Guevara Flanagan.
I also worked at Yerba Buena for 20 years as a projectionist. I saw a lot of films. Like Joel Shepherd [the director]—last week he was let go from his position—but he showed a lot of exploitation and B movies.
I love some B movies. One of my favorite female filmmakers is Kathryn Bigelow. I don't think she has ever really equaled her early film ‘Near Dark’ [1987], which is a B movie, a vampire film.
She actually went to the Art Institute, she was a painter. Then she went to LA and had an affair—actually married the guy, the filmmaker—James Cameron.
I think ‘Near Dark’ is a perfect film. The beauty of B it comes under the radar but then it has to go above it at the end.
Un hun.
At State did you run in to Christopher Coppola? He is obsessed with B film because his family is all A. The only problem with him is he is so obsessed with it he doesn’t believe in coming up at the end. We disagree there. He just loves the general B tropes and freaks and weird stuff.
Yeah, yeah, sometimes it is hard to know. I just saw this film recently, it was so bad, I wondered if the director meant it to be that bad. Even though I projected a lot of those B movies, I am not totally into them.
Well there is that guy [Ed] Wood—I doubt they are doing it on purpose.
What are some other filmmakers you are into?
I came to film through Women Studies at UCLA, so my professors showed a lot of films, mostly documentaries, that is why I started making documentaries first.
Which they claimed was a female form but isn’t that is erroneous?
Herold' enjoys a good laugh, after she opens up and relaxes, no alcohol needed. photo: D. BlairIt is like anthropology, they got into that because it is a touchy-feely thing but I don’t see it as such a female form as perhaps autobiography or fantasy.
Yeah. Have you seen ‘The Watermelon Women’? It is by this woman, her name is Cheryl Dunye, she made this film in the ‘90s [1996]. It is autobiographical and she is in it and Genevieve Turner is in it. She is black and dating a white woman in the ‘90s, in Philadelphia.
'The Watermelon Woman' follows the efforts of a young black lesbian filmmaker, played by Dunye herself, to find out everything she can about a black actress known as Watermelon Woman, who played maids in 1930s black-and-white films.
She now teaches at San Francisco State—that film was really influential [for me].
Then lately there has been a lot of films, like Lena Dunham ‘Tiny Furniture’.
I thought ‘Tiny Furniture’ was a masterpiece, exposing, particularly about a lot of characters and stories I grew up with. She nailed them--and she had her sister play her sister—
And her mom plays her mom.
It is over the top! They shot it on a Canon D7 and didn‘t pan. She had that guy whom I love, Alex Karpovsky, he is more of schlemiel. He is almost like a Steve Buscemi.
He always plays annoying artists. [In ‘Little Furniture’] he comes over to spend the night—I think the mother invited him—he doesn’t like the sheets, the smell, or something.
Yeah.
I am surprised she didn’t go on to do another feature—
Well, she has this little TV show. I only watched a few episodes.
I think ‘Girls’ is good—she deals with a lot of contemporary stuff—but she went down the rabbit hole with too many annoying characters and not enough reveal.
The punch of Tiny Furniture is just over the top it is so precise with no pans, it made it so clean—how about older stuff like Maya Deren [1917-61]?
Of course, who doesn’t love Maya Deren. In film school I did my Maya Deren film but I didn’t show tit to anyone.
And you mentioned Stan Brakhage.
Yeah, I showed all the Cinemateque films, so we had a night I projected Stan Brakhage.
You know the ‘South Park’ guys studied with Brakhage? What do you like to show [in your classes]? Michael Snow’s ‘Wavelenght’ [1967]?
Yeah, makes sense: Colorado.
I like to show Brakhage, I have showed Snow. I teach at Syracuse University [in upstate New York]. It is not like teaching at San Francisco State or UC Santa Cruz, where I have taught before.
Is it pretty big the department?
The departments it small and we all art filmmakers. There are two programs and one is art and the other journalism but because Syracuse University was written up as one of the top twenty five film schools [in the country] the students are applying from everywhere.
You sure you don’t want anything, I have tangerine juice.
I’m good—maybe some water.
I see it as my mission to introduce art and experimental filmmaking to the students.
And how do they like that mission?
[both laugh]
In my evaluations, sometimes they say she shows way too much experimental film. But that is my background and they hired me having seen my films.
Herold puts herself into found footage in 'Bachelorette 34' using the high-tech animation method of 'cut-out paper puppetry.' image: K. HeroldI came up through the Art Institute and although Brakhage didn’t teach there, he was there almost monthly.
Yeah?
Of course, we Bruce Bailey, we had Bruce Connor—he didn’t come over much but he lived in the city. We had Larry Jordan, George Kuchar, Gunvor Nelson, Al Wong.
If I showed George Kuchar, I think the students would just not understand.
George was very loose. In my mind he was a better film teacher than filmmaker. He was very enthusiastic, very motherish, while Gunvor Nelson and Al Wong were very critical. That was the Golden Age for art film. It seems it has gone down hill.
My thesis—that I often spout in cineSOURCE—is I believe in the multicultural film: bringing in animation, bringing in improv. I don’t know if you are familiar with Rob Nilsson?
Yes, I am smiling because I have a colleague at Syracuse University, where almost every conversation, he brings up Rob Nilsson. He loves Rob Nilsson.
So does Rob Nilsson.
[they laugh]
So do I. A few times I have said to Rob, ‘That was a fabulous improv, just fabulous. So, now that you have it down, why don’t you reshoot without a fluctuating iris on your a cheap video camera. You have rehearsed the actors, done 99% of the work—I will shoot it for you!’
‘Naw, naw that takes the spontaneity out of it,’ he claims.
My theory is the combination of elements, you know, you have a scripted scene leading up to moments where you improvise, like jazz, or you bring in animation or… You know ‘Casa de Mi Padre’ with Will Ferrel [2012]?
No.
The critics didn’t have the feintest idea what they were looking at. Went over their heads.
The famous SNL-guy—Will Ferrell—speaking Spanish the whole movie? Long shots with cheap plastic cars on weird sets? Written stuff on the screen?
‘This is the assistant director. I supposed to get a real tiger here but I couldn’t and the director is forcing me to write this.’ And then, in the middle of the film, they have an avant-garde film!
What is the name I want to see it.
‘Casa de mi Padre’ and every single critic said, ‘This is garbage.’ The only one who got it, what’s his name from Chicago?
Siskel and Ebert.
Roger Ebert was the only one who got it—it’s insane.
Yeah.
The others didn’t even know what they were looking at. They thought they were looking at a poorly produced film. Didn’t they notice, in the middle of the film: crosses everywhere and now the character is in drag on a white set?
That sounds great.
That is my whole philosophy. It comes from Dusan Makevajev ‘WR: Mystery of the Organism’ [1971] which starts as documentary about Wilhelm Reich, then goes into a weird story about a Russian ice skater.
What is it called?
‘WR: Mystery of the Organism’
The reason I’m asking is I am trying to figure out: I shot three years of documentary footage for ’39 and a Half’ . [It was] of my parents coming to New York to audition people to play themselves.
So in ’39 and a Half’’ you have all this doc footage. I don’t remember seeing—
It is not in the film right now. I have been trying to figure out how to incorporate it, you know, how to move between this fiction film and documentary. So I am curious to see—
It seems like it is pretty solid right now, but you know—
Yeah I know. My editor, who is coming in May, said, ‘That is opening a whole can of worms.’
Well, you could but it has to cut itself. But trying to have a dream sequence, ‘I remember back’—
Anything is possible, it is just a matter of time. My goal is to finish this summer so incorporating three years of documentary footage is…
A lot of editing? There are so many things that can be done. I just saw ‘The Naked City’ [1954], remember that one?
No.
Herold casts her investigative but tolerant gaze on many things through a haze of fiery red hair. photo: D. BlairDusan Makevejev used to do that, back in Yugoslavia before he left. He has a famous scene of a fight in a market place; he zooms back, no one knew what was going.
I love ‘Mysteries of the Organism’. He came ten years ago and played it at the Castro and it completely lived up to my memory. It has a shot of Stalin, and then an erection and it cuts to a missile going up, it is so good it makes the other art films look like garbage.
One of the best cuts I have ever seen except for the Coen Brothers’ ‘Blood Simple’ [1984], when they are sticking their fingers into bullet holes and then punching an answering machine, and a few others.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That is the type of stuff I love, call it mixed media even. But it has to work . It can’t work on paper, philosophically. It has to look good, which is hard.
When I was going to school all those people—Nelson, Wong—thought indie film was going to be the new psychedelics, open us up. It never did. Nevertheless MTV borrow a lot of that stuff and it did open up film to be more aggressive, wild, quick cutting, any number of things. By bringing in animation or weird little bits that work then art film can do its stuff and Stan Brakhage wasn’t all for naught.
What years were you there?
’74 to ’89. It was interesting time because that was when multiculturalism and structuralism hit. It didn’t produce that cgreat art in fact the ‘70s was much more fecund because there were al these types of filmmakers: feature, art, doc.
There was also James Broughton—Pauline Kael’s baby daddy [‘The Bed’ 1967].
It would be me and James against the class because they were all Marxists. You had to follow rules, you can’t show privilege. ‘Rich art’ that was their favorite criticism.
Un, hunh.
Which kind of fucked up the film department, although it was interesting to see. I think we are still in the throws of that, particularly in academia. It was a fabulous place…
I wonder what happened to the Art Institute?
Now it is run by Coppola. He is doing the best he can. He is great guy. I haven’t seen a lot of his films that are that great but he also believes in the mixed style. He says most of the kids now are from China.
They got hammered by a perfect storm: they got onboard digital about five years late; the Academy of Art came up and started eating their lunch; then they brought out this brilliant woman from the Barnes Collection, Ella King Torrey in 2003. A real rainmaker but she embezzled a million dollars and got into coke.
She embezzled a million dollars to feed a coke habit?
There is some disagreement—
I guess, you never know why anyone commits suicide.
She was a very handsome woman too—I mean that is only five percent—I guess, in part, she was out of her support system, she was in a new place.
They were already fading. They had a guy in the ‘80s, Stan Goldstein, he was a great. That was a mistake letting him go. We used to smoke pot with him in his office—that doesn’t make him a great guy—he was very familiar with the artists here. He came up through community arts, which is very developed here—one of the highest in the nation, he knew a lot of local artists, very articulate.
But it staggers on, a boutique school.
But the Art Institute had such good reputation; it is sad that it is fallen. And that location, you can’t beat it. San Francisco State has a good film school but the location is the pits.
I remember trying to energize them, getting up in the school meetings and saying why can’t we bring in someone from LA, not to become commercial and I suggest Haskell Wexler, he is writer a cinematographer he made ‘Medium Cool’ [1969], an fabulous guy.
I think they just drank the cool aid the idea that this very arty film is going to be so precious and so fabulous and so beautiful that it is going to go forever and the ‘70s with the people they had there certainly seemed that way.
They had other departments. Photography was quite strong with Hank Wessel, Jack Fulton, Linda Conner and photography is a local art form.
I am still in touch with a couple of teachers trying to hash it out—the main thing was missing digital.
Kuchar was pretty excited about digital. I was projecting his stuff at Yerba Buena and he was super excited about all the digital effects he learned to do: wipes and stuff.
Kuchar was easily amused, he loved life, he brought character into these weird art films there was so little it was like a breath of fresh. The films themselves never resolved into anything that great but he was a great spirits and lovely guy, great to be around.
I loved a lot of hose people Larry Jordan and Bruce Bailey, he has mad some great films and some of the others I thought ‘Wavelength’ was a perfect film.
If you find all the strong ones and put them together it was very impressive but they would never do that it, it was like one strong one and all these annoying ones [laughs].
You like Scott MacDonald and read his books.
Yeah yeah he did a book about Canyon, he’s great.
He is at the neighboring school, Hamilton [Clinton, New York]. I have never met him but I will have my students read his interviews I feel that is as an accessible way to [learn about art films].
I show ‘Fuses’ [1967] to my students, a 16 mm film by Carolee Schneemann (see it here. Mostly of her having sex with her boyfriend, with her cat in her room, but it is beautifully crafted.
Sounds good.
But the students hate it. They complain I am showing porn in my class.
You have to give trigger warnings?
After they read the interview Scott MacDonald did with her, they start to appreciate the craftsmanship. He interviewed all these people that you are talking about.
What film of that ilk does touch your students: ‘Moth Light’ [Brakhage, 1963]
Yeah, they like that and Maya Deren.
You know when I was in film school when I was 21 and I saw ‘Wavelength’[1967] I had no idea what I was watching and when I was projecting for Cinemateque it took me a long time to understand the language. I can’t blame them for being—plus these are films made fifty years ago.
But ‘Wavelength’ is so professional. How about something like ‘El Topo’?
I haven ‘t shown that or even seen it [laughs].
I would say ‘Mystery of the Organism’ that would be a good one to show, like ‘Wavelength’. They are a little like the B Film that works, that it pulls itself out of itself at the end, which makes it, to me, great.
Have you seen that Flicker film?
Oh ‘Flicker’ [1966, Tony Conrad], sure.
I showed them that and they thought they were going to die—students walked out. It is really interesting what your brain does just simple black and white image.
But I should probably start with ‘Rosie the Riveter’, which is a good film it is not experimental but it is accessible documentary [‘The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter’, 1980].
I would love to teach a documentary class. I haven’t been able but I was able to teach an autobiography class. That was fun.
There is a great film on Netflix that just won South By South West made by a Chinese woman where she follows a hippie around Florida.
Oh my god, that sounds great.
It is a new step for Netflix or SXSW, where they also had ‘Waking Life’ [2001, Richard Linklater].
SXSW also showed ‘Tiny Furniture’.
It is called, ‘I am another You’.
That is a great name.
The intro [here in Amazon] is bullshit. Basically, she just meets a dumpster diver. It is the reverse of 'Orientalism’ by Edward Said, who never told anyone that he moved to New York and appropriated all of that culture.
Of course a hippie dumpster diver would be mind blowing to a lot of people who imagine the US is just privileged people and condos. There are a lot of anarchist kids in Oakland, at the Rainbow Festival, in Florida, a lot of people think they are just homeless.
Of course, a lot of homeless are poor, fucked-up people, but there is always about 30-40% of voluntary people, who are just getting off the grid. She found one and her mind was blown. She became his Sancho Panza.
I was like, ‘Whoa.’ Every once in a while something rises up and it is so new and fresh it gives one hope.
But then it is all the same: commercial, averaged out, dumbed down, although I think ‘Sorry to Bother’ is also pretty good.
I am seeing Jonathan Duffy [known for ‘Hellion‘, 2014] tomorrow—he is one of the producers of ‘Sorry to Bother’. We meet for coffee once in a while.
He has made five films while I have made ’39 and a Half’. He is very prolific. Once a year he has film in Sundance. He is a producer mostly he knows how to pick his projects.
That is what a producer does.
So San Francisco has finally gotten over-yuppied. Do you think that spirit will move to Oakland?
I don’t know what happened. I am just some here for the summers and sometimes in December. Most of my filmmaking friends either left like me—they are academics — or they are hanging on. Or they have moved to the East Bay. But it also a matter of getting old, people change.
When I moved here in the ‘90s you could be an artist and get by. I was a part-time projectionist. I don’t know what the kids are doing these days. Are they moving to the Midwest? Detroit?
There are a lot kids still but they are mostly techies who don’t really support the arts, there are less clubs.
A lot of people I know moved to LA. LA has had a resurgence.
I have always loved LA.
Yes.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on May 24, 2018 - 06:44 AM
