First of all, let me ask, what does your Mother think of this movie?

I'm happy to say she loves it. Being a writer, Carol Emshwiller, she is well aware of the fact that writing something doesn't necessarily make it the truth or something you believe yourself. She's been overwhelmingly supportive during the entire process.

It seems like In the Land of Milk and Money is not a "normal" movie. How would you characterize it?

I think it blends a lot of genres. At the center it has a kind of corny '50s sci-fi plot in the vein of Them, or The Blob, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Then it has this social satire, how the government and society react to the crisis, as in Terry Gilliam's Brazil, or Mackendrick's Man in the White Suit. Add in some spaghetti western, some horror, some slapstick, some surrealism, some pathos... and you get this weird, kooky, concoction that defies labels. I hope people watch it without trying to fit it into a box. If they think they are getting a Sci-fi, or Horror, or Romantic Comedy, or Thriller they may be disappointed.

It is like a dream which has it's own integral logic; a different world. For instance, it is not a "period" movie, yet has a lot of '50s look to it: clothes, some cars, hairdos... This was because I wanted to portray the Ideal World gone bad. I feel there was a time when there was a vision of the Ideal Family, the Ideal Mom, the Ideal Home. It comes from the Dick and Jane/ See Spot Run books of the time, Leave it to Beaver on television, the Life Magazine advertisements: Happy Mother serving dinner... Yet this movie also has pagers and Mad Cow Disease and other contemporary aspects. If people are literal about it they will say it is all wrong. But if they go in with open minds they will enjoy the alternative world created by the film. I tried to give a hint of that concept with the first image of the film.

What was that image?

It is a shot of a little toy cow walking toward the camera. And it starts with my hand putting the cow down and getting it walking. As if to say "See, I know you know this isn't a real cow, and there are hands behind it, but now... lets pretend..." As if this toy cow is the ambassador of the film, leading us into a fictional, playful story-world.
Interesting. What about this subject matter?

Mothers killing their kids? It's a bit risky isn't it?

I didn't feel it was risky when I was writing it or shooting it. I think that is resonates with people because we all have felt angry toward our mothers and all have felt their anger towards us as kids. It doesn't mean we'll act on it. But to ignore feelings because they somehow disturb the "sacred image" makes them all the stronger. I think mothers do have an unbelievable wonderful bond with their children, of care and nurturing and unconditional love. And fathers for that matter. But we don't have a "sacred image" of a father's love. And, though it plays with a taboo subject, it is make-believe.

Before we go farther, tell me, how did you get into film?

My father was an avant-garde experimental filmmaker who did all his own work. He turned the second floor of our Levittown house into a film studio, creating a "black box" in one room and an editing suite in the other. Of course it was all done with old rickety materials, nothing "state of the art". This was in the '60s. His film bin was made from wood with nails to hold the film clips and a pillow slip. With film around the house, it was just another thing to play with. I made films with my brother and sister.

And you always knew you wanted to be a writer/director?

Not at all. I didn't think of it. It was just around. My mother was a writer and so we grew up doing that, too. And both parents were visual artists so we grew up drawing constantly. I went to Syracuse University and got my BFA in painting and printmaking. Then my Dad became Dean of the Film School at California Institute of the Arts. He'd never had a "real job" before and didn't know if he'd like it so he called me and said "if you want to go to graduate school here, go now, cause it's free while I'm here and I don't know how long I'll be here." (He ended up loving Cal Arts.) I applied and went out to California starting in the School of Art. After one year I finally asked myself "What would you do if you could do anything and didn't have to figure out how to get there?" "Direct movies." was the instant answer. "So, why are you in the art school?"

A self-interview isn't new to you, I guess.

I'm ignoring that. Where was I? Oh, yeah... so I transfered to the film school immediately and began studying with Alexander Mackendrick, who directed a favorite film of mine Man in the White Suit.

Let's get back to In the Land of Milk and Money. How did this film come about?

It was actually the first script I'd ever written. And it was awful! And before I had a computer so my "word processing" involved cutting and pasting paper. But, as I worked in film art departments making a living, I'd write another script, then go back and re-work this one, write another, re-work this one, and each successive draft would slowly go from awful to bad to rotten to mediocre to ok...

Writing plays taught me a lot. Working with actors, doing acting myself so I could talk with them and know what the process might involve... I became a much better writer.
I had a producer take the script around with Amy Madigan attached as the female lead and we had some nibbles but no bites. I finally thought that people aren't seeing the movie the way I see it in my head, so I shot a "teaser" of certain scenes, hoping to get financing from it. Lots of nibbles now, but no bites. Amy Madigan formed a limited partnership to raise money to shoot it, and still... nothing quite gelled... At a certain point I said "Enough!" I didn't want to have someone else's money dictating my life and love and career, so I decided with my husband to do it with our own money. For a miniscule budget.

Rather than waiting for your ship to come in, you went out with a hand-made tugboat to drag it in.

Exactly! My husband and I worked art department jobs back to back for a year and then dove head first into making this film. It worked out quite well timing-wise because there was the threat of an Actor's strike looming and lots of productions were racing to get their films in the can before it hit. When we started filming in the summer of 2001 there was no work to be had for film crews because productions had anticipated the strike happening and had nothing ready to shoot. Our crew was made up of entirely professional "industry personnel" willing to work for free because there was nothing else going on.

How did your invaluable producer Gretchen Engel get involved?

Invaluable is right! I met her while decorating Miguel Arteta's The Good Girl on which she was art department coordinator. I don't know if you know the movie...
Yes, you do...

Ok, so you know the entire store that we created was an empty store devoid of any shelving, product, everything... Well, Gretchen was incredible in contacting companies and product placement houses and procuring all that product for the shelves. When I saw what she could do, getting things for free, working tirelessly,... I thought "I wonder if she wants to produce!"

Gretchen loved the script and said yes. We took it from there. She got our wonderful crew, lined up locations, found picture vehicles from bar patrons down the street from shooting, grabbed extras from youth hostels, set out craft service, painted flats, made bread dough...

What about your cinematographer, Gabor Szitanyi?

I met Gabor thru his wife director Katy Jelski. I knew her from an acting class I'd taken years ago and we'd become friends. She directed the feature The Young Unknowns and Gabor had shot it. It looked wonderful and I hoped he would shoot our film. Luckily he said yes. Gabor was fantastic to work with.

What do you mean by low-budget?

We had just $30,000 when we started shooting. I guess we could have shot on digital video, but I really don't like the look of it. I wanted the wonderful colors and cleanness of film... like Almodovar's movies. I haven't seen a movie shot on video I thought looked good and the look of this film was important to me.

We shot for 25 days and more than half of them were at our "ranch" north of L.A. We converted a metal horse shelter into the diner with donated flats. The funny part was... we built the walls before we did the floor and before realizing we would have to level the severely sloping ground. Pick axes were brought out, but within 5 minutes we realized it was a lost cause, the ground was like cement. So we thought rather than dig down to level it, we would add dirt to level it... We ordered 500 cubic feet of dirt delivered. A huge dump truck showed up and left a huge dirt pile in front of our diner. My husband and I stood with our shovels, Ma and Pa of American Gothic, as the truck driver drove away laughing. We got good at shoveling.

I heard you had an accident early on.

You heard right. After the second day of shooting, it was a kind of a fight between some different departments, the prop person and the transpo person got in a tangle with a production assistant and... because they were all the same person, me, I fell out of the van I was driving as I carried a load of rubber rifles and landed wrong and snap! My foot! There was no time to go to a doctor to have it looked at. I was finally shooting my own movie and I was damned if I was going to change the schedule or miss any time. So I bandaged it up with an ace bandage, put on heavy boots, and went to work. The grips made me crutches out of C-stand arms, grip clips and some Duvatine. 5 weeks later I went to the doctor and found I'd broken a bone in my foot. Just shows what adrenaline can do.

You got some terrific actors in your movie. Tell me about how you got them.

My first lucky break was to meet Chris Coulson in Kansas City on the Robert Altman movie. It's funny, I had drawn a lot of little scenes and characters for the film over the years and the main character Dr. Peter Cochran, looked just like Chris. I guess he is my idea of a leading man! Chris was great to work with, very natural and easygoing. He also was there behind the scenes, helping me with the choreography, not to mention all the work he did like getting gas for the generator, driving our equipment truck, building the sets, etc etc...

As to other actors, a whole lot of them came from my working at the Met Theater in Hollywood. I was part of the saturday workshops as a writer/director/actor and worked with Kim Gilllingham, (Laurie Shallot), Mark Brady (Officer Green), Wayne Pere (Hank), Jesse Harper (Melvin Trevors), Jill Andre (Mrs. Shallot), Beth Ruscio (Martha), and of course the Met board members and workshop teachers, Tom Bower (Lenny Cochran) and Amy Madigan (Arlyne). Other actors I got thru calling their agents after picking them out of the Academy Players directory. Actress Frances Bay I'd known from her work in David Lynch's films and hoped she would grace my film, which she did. She was a joy to work with. They all were.

What were the difficulties of shooting?

I found it was pure bliss the whole time. The cast and crew were wonderful and professional and we all became friends if we weren't already. We tried to feed them well and often, and tried not to go over 12 hours. The only people I yelled at were the art department or the writer, both being me, and I'd have the writer re-write a scene if it was too wordy, or fire the prop person for the millionth time cause I'd forgotten to make the food for a scene. But, honestly, it was all great fun. I'd do it again anytime and hope to.

You found a unique voice in composer Ego Plum. How did you find such a wonderful composer?

I had tried to find a composer who could do cartoonish, Leroy Anderson, Muzak-ish music, and I was really having a tough time. Desperate, I was looking thru the internet search engines on independent film when I came upon a classified ad section and one add said something like, "Do you like the films of David Lynch, Pedro Almodovar, Tim Burton? Then I want to write the music for your film. Signed Ego Plum." I went to his web-site and was able to hear some of the music and immediately contacted him. Ego was having a concert of his music and his Ebola Orchestra at the Silverlake Film Festival and I went to see him with Chris Coulson, actor and co-exec-producer, and we just cracked up laughing at the first notes. They were so perfect! Ego loved the rough cut of the movie and we went from there. He is very talented and my time working with him was a highlight of this ride.

What's next?

Entering festivals, getting the film out there and seen. And writing scripts for the next one.

I'd better let you get to it. Thank you. Anything else you'd like to add?

Just to say, I hope people enjoy the movie. Thank you.