Interview with Jon Moritsugu

After a lost decade of madness, The Godfather of Punk Cinema returns to the screen with his 8th feature, NUMBSKULL REVOLUTION, filmed in Marfa, TX and Santa Fe, NM. On Friday July 17th, Hyperreal hosted the one-night-only late slot Austin premiere, following a screening of fellow Asian film god John Woo’s unhinged masterpiece, FACE/OFF.  It was preceded by a special short film Jon made exclusively for this night, which was deleted afterwards per his request.  

Andie talked to him about the making of his underground art punk satire which stars his ex AMY DAVIS and the darkest actor of all time, the bunny from Donnie Darko and “Dark” in Gregg Araki’s Nowhere, the great JAMES DUVAL.  

Congrats on the film! It looks at some heavy issues in an unflinching way while also being hilarious, something your movies always manage to do.  I also appreciate your dedication to finishing it, considering it stars your now ex-wife. Was it cathartic or therapeutic to power through post-production after y’all had split?  

Totally! I think part of my whole Phoenix comeback is being able to finish the movie and I mean, really, the movie is all about me, it's about Amy, it's us together, and just for me to be able to work through and say some shit through the movie, it was really difficult and yet the most fucking amazing thing too, you know? 

And she plays twins, so you not only had to look at one Amy, but two!  

At the beginning, my day would literally revolve around just turning on the editing system, getting into the program, then fucking turning it off, and I'd be like, that's all I can do today.  Then I worked up to where I'd be like, I have to just do one edit in the movie and then I could turn it off, and after a couple months, I could sort of find a distance, and I could appreciate Amy as an actor, and me as a director, and I just wanted to bring out her performance, and edit this a certain way, and it really was, by doing the edit, it helped me to deal with what had gone on between us, with her, and it was really healing. 

That's awesome. It sort of shows cinema as a teacher. 

Yeah, and it also was like A Clockwork Orange at the end and my eyeballs are pried open and I'm being bombarded with this imagery of me and my ex making a movie and her in a movie! It’s like, oh my god, it's hilarious. I love it. 

I like that you're totally eschewing festivals, just going around the sort of cottage industry that film fests have been for a while.  

Thanks for all your props, this really means so much! The movie took so long to finish that when I was getting close, I was like, man, I have to get this movie out because people are dying and life is short. If I get this movie done in February and I do the film festival thing, maybe it'll have one screening by the end of the spring, and it might be some esoteric European location where only I can fly off and see it, and all these people in America can't. Thinking about the waiting with the finished movie and dying to get it out to people, especially people who helped me to make it, I was like, “Fuck!” Plus every distribution deal I've done, especially theatrical, it's taken like half a year, tweak the contract, another half a year, get it going off the ground and I knew that if I try to get a deal, it's going to be another year of waiting. And so finally, I was just like, I'm gonna book this movie on my own.” And what has been really cool is just seeing how many more theaters are in America and across the world, and especially micro theaters and punk rock theaters, cool shit like that. Like it's so much better than 10 years ago. I'm so stoked on how you can make a movie and get live screenings! 

There must be something with the general anxiety out there that is pushing people to be more communal and appreciate directly supporting one another’s art in person.  

Yeah I think it goes hand hand in hand with physical media where everyone is like, “fuck streaming, fuck all this shit on clouds.” People want the actual experience and object. And also knowing, like, I can't stream it, I can't get a Blu-ray, I've got to be sitting down in this theater in this city at this moment to catch it. It's like a band. It's so fucking vital and what the world needs instead of this like 24/7 accessibility to like fucking everything. That's like a disease that's going to kill you. 

Yes! I also program at the Eastside Cinema, which is inside an old-school youth center with a bowling alley, arcade and roller rink that’s all about keeping the kids off the streets, shoot hoops not smack, and the importance of community.  

That’s awesome! I really want to come back to Austin and do a film workshop. After my break up, I was hanging out in these McDonalds cause they’re 24 hours. For someone who's homeless or a college kid at 2am who’s fucked up or like a shut-in or you're just going through depression, it's like, fuck, that's your ray of sunshine.  

A golden ray of sunshine, those golden arches.  

Yes!

It’s great that you’re taking your vision on the road and directly to the people.  

Well when I started making movies, I sort of looked at filmmaking like I'm a band, and every movie is like a new album, and when the movie is playing across the world, It's like a tour. Punk rock and the music scene has definitely inspired me way more than filmmakers. 

That brings me to a question I thought of when I found out the other day that my girlfriend hadn’t seen Independence Day, which also features your man James Duval, so we watched that ridiculous but fun popcorn flick on July 4th. And for some reason in my mind, maybe ‘cause you went to Brown, I imagine you having fairly highbrow taste, which then filters through your punk aesthetic and expresses itself as your films, which are a great mix of high and low art. What percentage of your movie viewing diet is trashy B movie or pop culture blockbuster junk, versus like classy Criterion shit? Do you have guilty pleasures? 

Alright, man, this is a good question. I actually haven't been able to really watch movies for the last couple years. I don't know what the fuck is going on with my brain or my soul or whatever. I have just a hard time and there's lots of really cool vital shit coming out right now, lots of cool indie stuff. And I just can't sit down and watch a movie. I've gone back and watched a couple of old movies that I know really well and just walked away with a completely different vibe from the movies from prior viewings. Even just Hollywood movies, where it’s just interesting seeing where my head was at like 10 years ago, 20 years ago versus now. But yeah, as far as viewing right now, I mean, honestly, I'm watching a little TV, and like the fucking Alaskan punk rock gold miners where they're in these little pontoon rafts floating around. It's like Alaska Bush family shit. That's the only shit I want, these alternative people like out of nature with no pretense of “I'm watching art.” It's a document of these fucking crazy ass people trying to pan for gold in the Bering Sea. 

That's hardcore. So anthropological type stuff. 

Yeah, they're really cheesy, they have a formula, they build up drama where there's no drama. They're just really, really bad and really good. It pretty much is the only visual shit I can watch. It's wild. 

Do you find that the reason behind why you watch that type of stuff is because you get inspiration out of it, or is it just more like pleasure and diversion? 

I think pleasure, diversion and it's just relaxing. Honestly, a lot of Criterion art house pictures and fine art, Tarkovsky and shit like that. I'm like, fuck that shit, dude, make music videos. Say that in 3 minutes, not 3 hours. I have really lowbrow taste, so low that even the lowbrow shit is like, I can't even approach it, I'm so lowbrow. I mean, I have an appreciation for moments of the French New Wave and then other stuff I'm just like, I can't watch this shit. So I don't have very pretentious viewing habits, however I think I like just fucking weird ass movies, that, you know, might have a big Hollywood budget, for instance, stuff like Soylent Green or Swept Away, stuff that I grew up watching or getting snippets of when I was a kid that really impacted me. So, yeah, I love these out of control dystopia movies from the ‘70s and stuff like that.  Planet of the Apes. Red Dawn, that ‘80s movie about how the Russians invade and just start slaughtering Americans and a pack of people run to the mountains. When I was a kid, I watched it and I remember it just being sort of a joyous, fun movie, and when I rewatched it a couple months ago, I was like, this is really fucked up and bleak, and the ending is really pessimistic. I was like, “I didn't realize that.” 

Do your reading habits these days also gear towards more nonfiction or do you like fiction still? 

I like it all. I like good weird fiction and also just like non-fiction, adventure. 

At Hyperreal’s screening, this is going to be a cool double feature where people can catch John Woo and Jon Moritsugu, the 2 Jo(h)ns of Asian cinema!

Yeah! I'm the Godfather of Punk Cinema. He's the “Maestro of Violence” or something? I don't know. 

Something like that yeah. The artist who paints with bullets! 

I love it!  

I know he’s not one of your absolute favorite filmmakers; what's the strongest reaction you've had to one of his films if, if any? 

I've like, set aside days and got my drug stash, my booze, I'm going to watch a John Woo movie! And I've never been able to sit through one. This shit got hyped so big before I saw anything, and I tried and it was just like, sort of silly and gratuitous and tiring for me. I like Face/Off because it's a little more Hollywood than the other movies and the performances are fucking awesome. However some of this like artsy stuff, I'm like, whoa, I don't want to deal with 15 minutes of this bullet ballet, you know? And I didn't feel that there is much of a sense of humor. I especially love when filmmakers are poking fun at themselves or their characters or what they're creating. 

Who were your heroes as a kid? Was there a turning point when you realized, “Oh, having heroes is stupid. I'm going to just go rogue”?

I had like the typical punk rock heroes, Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious. And I also gravitated to the pranksters, like Re/Search magazine Industrial Handbook and all those weirdos like Mark Pauline and Monte Cazazza. People who were just sort of confusing other people and disrupting the system, underdogs. I remember hearing Sonic Youth’s “Kill Your Idols” when it came out, and I was like, yeah, this is actually a good idea. When you meet some idols, it definitely makes you want to go home and burn their records. This art you totally love, what if the person behind it is an asshole? Does it change your consumption of the artwork? It did for me, so after a while, I finally was like, fuck. The only one I can rely on to be a good hero is me. Everyone else has their own issues and that's not their job. Obviously, I get inspired by other human beings. However, I don't have competition with other people. I'm sort of like, you be your own hero. I’ll be my own hero. We'll meet in the middle. Fuck yeah. 

Awesome. I feel like you might be a fan of William Burroughs, “The Godfather of Punk”? I am reading a biography of him and he’s another genius that no one should idolize as a person, ‘cause his life is so fucked up.  

Oh my god, yeah, like, fucking shooting people and shit like that. He's like Warhol to me in that he had so many fucking great brilliant ideas about writing and life. However, I think they should have just stayed on the conceptual level instead of like, holy shit, he had this idea about like the cutups where you pull a word out of a bag and you put a whole book together like that. It's like, “cool idea.” You could have described it in a paragraph, I get your point. And just like Warhol with his film Empire State Building for like 8 hours, we didn't even have to see it. In Burroughs’ The Western Lands, he opens up with 2 or 3 pages describing a tropical paradise, and I'm just like, this is his best, most descriptive, lush, I'm-falling-into-this-fucking-writing and I wish he would just do more like that, because that guy could write really well in a normal way and he just freaked out and didn't, you know? I mean, I'm sure people are saying that about me too, like, make more normal movies, Jon, do more Terminal USAs, don't do the Numbskull freaky shit haha. 

Have you played it in Marfa yet? 

Not yet, man. Really good idea, I'm going to jot it down. I miss Marfa. Have you been there recently or West Texas recently? 

No, but I just booked a trip to West Texas in a couple months where I’m going to shoot some music videos in the desert! How many times and what were you there for before you decided to shoot in the town? 

I've been there like 4 or 5 times and me and Amy, we just heard about it when living in Santa Fe. It's like an 8 hour drive, and within 10 minutes of getting there, we're talking to people we know from college, it was fucking wild. The first 24 hours, you go crazy, there’s like only 2 cafes, and on some days, one of them is closed. What the fuck? And the other one closes at 3, shit. And, you know, 48 hours later, you get into the vibe, and then, because it's only, like, a couple thousand people or less, it's just like a happy lack of choices. I did do a Santa Fe screening. That was like a really good bookend to the project just because, you know, I filmed most of the movie there and a lot of people who helped to make it, you know, came out. It was a really, really fun night. 

Have you messed with recording any new music of your own or with anyone else since finishing this movie? 

I haven't. I mean, I'm actually gonna record some music for my new movie. I'm going to pull a Jim Jarmusch, like his band SQÜRL . 

I haven't heard them. I heard of some of his other bands like The Del-Byzanteens.   

That vampire movie, Only Lovers Left Alive? It’s got this sludgy doom rock & roll band, and that's his band in it. They sound really fucking good. I want to just do the one-man-band and record crazy rock & roll or weird ambient shit for my new movie and it's gonna be so fun because I can finetune it. 

I know you've had (Jon’s band with Amy) Low on High on your film soundtracks before. Have you ever done ambient or instrumental stuff for the scores to any of your films before that? 

No but for Numbskull Revolution, to create the soundscape, I downloaded chiptunes and sound effects and was doing like Musique concrète. This is like my biggest sounding soundtrack in theaters, it's so lush and almost operatic. I’m having a good time composing and creating moods and, you know, feelings that way, so I guess that counts. 

Are you totally won over with this new HD raw 4K green screen filmmaking approach you took for Numbskull, after being so hardcore lo-fi up until now? 

Never again! The next movie, reality is my green screen. I learned so much, but it was so difficult. I started checking out some really big Hollywood stuff and I was like, wow, even with this shit is failing and looking really fucked up and bad. That's when it hit me, this is a really hard craft to learn. I had so many problems and the way we lit it wasn't perfect. So, people's hair was being sort of green, shit like that, that's why I put all the green smoke all over every scene, at first to disguise it, and then it became a theme, and I was like, well this is set in Shitsville, of course, there's green smoke everywhere! People have to breathe this shit. And then I took it further and I was like, I'm going to layer in a soundtrack of just people coughing and hacking because of the green smoke. So it all worked out. 

That’s a great illustration of that philosophy of accentuating your mistakes and making them look on purpose. 

Yeah!  What is it, like if you're playing a guitar solo and you fuck up one note, do it a 2nd time and it becomes intentional, you know? 

There are no wrong notes, like Thelonious Monk says, It's determined by the note you play next! 

Yes!

Hey so what’s the latest on your autobiography, SKULLFUCK, is it still coming out?  

We have to do a little more layout and it's going to come out at the end of the year. It looks amazing, like 350 pages, tons of photos and letters and weird ephemera. My publisher said, “We're not gonna put the book out until you write one final chapter,” and I'm like, “Well, no, the book is done.” She's like, “The book's not coming out until you write the final chapter, which is gonna be you telling us what the fuck happened in your life with Amy in the last couple years.” I was like, what the fuck? So I did and it's like my best writing. It was almost like automatic writing, like I woke up in the middle of the night, I just started writing the last chapter almost word for word, the 1st couple pages of it.  I've never done that before. At first I was like, I just want to grab my secrets and just all this disaster in my life and just fucking disappear. Why do I have to broadcast this shit?  But now, yeah, I'm so glad I'm doing this. 

You mentioned Mark Pauline earlier (of robot art group Survival Research Labs) and I was introduced to them via Target Video VHS tapes, which also introduced me to the band Crime.  One of the guys in that band, Johnny Strike, wrote a book that Burroughs even did an intro or jacket quote on I believe. But how did you get the legendary punks Crime on the Numbskull soundtrack? 

I had this amazing 21-year-old Chicago rapper, and the soundtrack hadn’t been working until I popped in her music, and it worked perfectly, she loved. And then she wouldn't sign the release forms, and I think she was talking to her friends because then she starts saying, “I'm only going to do it if you give me tons of money,” so I said, “Fuck you.” And I'm in the middle of post-production on a deadline, so I was like, I'm gonna dream big. And Hank Rank (drummer in Crime) produced Mod Fuck Explosion (Jon’s most popular film). I've never asked him for music. And just ended up shooting the shit and reconnecting and going back and forth, negotiating a deal, and he gave me the go ahead to use my 2 favorite tunes. So it just came together out of just losing my original music, which sort of pushed me into even better music! 

So cool. I hear you’re working on a horror film next?  

It's going to be the slowest moving horror movie ever made, and it's going to be shot completely in fucking nature. So that's all I'm saying. I have the script outlines, and I can't wait to just sit down and flesh it out. And I'm gonna do the music, so yeah, slowcore shit, slow moving sludge. 

Sounds like the antidote to all the annoying beat-you-over-the-head, shock cuts that most modern horror rely heavily on. 

For me, the horrifying shit in life is so subtle, and some horror movies definitely capture that, but my view of horror, I think, is different from most people’s. It's just, like, way more tweaked and even quiet. 

More psychological? 

Yeah, which ultimately will be the most horrifying shit, man. It isn't like the bear in the woods or the weird bogey man or something. It's just like you.  And you're facing some shit you don't like and it's in you and you bred this shit and you're breeding your own virus, disaster, and I think that's the most horrifying stuff, that moment of looking at a mirror and recognizing like who the fuck you actually are, in that bad way. And also good because it's sometimes like, oh shit, I've been avoiding this for a while, you know? 

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