Exclusive Interview: Writer/Director Noah Buschel Talks THE MISSING PERSON And The Condition Of Indie Films

Michael Shannon and Noah Buschel

This past week I had a chance to interview writer/director Noah Buschel (Bringing Rain, Neal Cassidy) who has a great indie movie titled THE MISSING PERSON, recently released in select cities, I hope you guys get to watch it, a really cool mystery film starring Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road). Noah didn’t just talk about the film, he also talk about the unfortunate state that Independent Films are currently in, blaming it on Little Miss Sunshine and agents. Read the whole interview after this jump…

RS: What attracted you about noir? Why did you feel it was necessary to approach this story with this style of storytelling?

NB: There’s just something about detectives that’s just… such a great metaphor. Ya know, I mean, it just makes things uh.. not just be poetic but ya know, I think we’re all kind of detectives in our lives, ya know, so there was something about, it’s just a really easy way to, as opposed to if they’re a garbage man or ya know, I mean and then they also have to solve a mystery. I mean I don’t know, we’re all solving mysteries to some extent so let’s just make it a detective, ya know.

RS: Do you think it can connect with today’s generation or audience?

NB: Probably not, probably not. I don’t feel it’s in touch with my generation so. I don’t know if you want to make a movie for this generation, you’d have to make a twitter movie right? So you might as well just do your own thing and not worry about it, I think.

RS: What’s the inspiration for The Missing Person and specifically the lead character John Rosow, he seems like to be a combination of several noir film characters in the past?

NB: I think I was just interested in dealing with New York and 9/11 and the feeling that a lot of us New Yorkers had and with someone dealing with post-traumatic stress basically what I wanted to do. So that’s really what the movie is. Ya know, kind of a post-traumatic stress story.

RS: How much direction you give to Michael Shannon as opposed to Michael Shannon just fully understands his character and run with it.

NB: Well, with Michael the whole thing was uh..keeping him off balance because he came with a lot of ideas, and he always wanted to know what was going on and it’s about a detective who doesn’t know what’s going on so my job basically was to keep him in a place of not knowing. He wanted to know, first of all, he wanted to know how he was doing and I remember one time he was actually asking a producer how he looked on the monitor and the producer went ‘o you’re doing a great job’ I didn’t want him to know he was doing a great job, I wanted to keep him in kind of a vulnerable place where he didn’t quite know what was going on because for the first two thirds of the movie, his character has no idea what’s going on.  So that was kind of my job, was to keep him in a place where he didn’t know what was going on.

RS: You mentioned it’s about post-traumatic stress. I feel like this character John Rosow does not let himself be put down by the tragedy, yes he’s affected by it but he’s still motivated at least in doing his job. Am I correct?

NB: I think he becomes motivated by the second half of the movie, at first he was just motivated to make some money so he can keep holding up and drinking, his motivation was just to drink and then as he starts to see where the case is going, I think he becomes motivated to… uh.. I mean it’s like in our own lives, if we’re feeling depressed or something, a lot of the times I don’t think we get out of that until we have to deal with the real world and then you get motivated just because you have to. So he’s not motivated at the beginning

RS: How long was the writing process?

NB: Probably the first draft in a couple of a weeks and then probably 11 more drafts so overall maybe 6 months but the first draft was the up all night sweat kind of thing and the first draft is always painful at least for me.

RS: How did you get Michael Shannon on board?

NB: Ya know, I’ve been reading some of the reviews and some of the reviews saying something like some of the supporting cast isn’t up to the level of Michael Shannon besides Amy Ryan and that’s kind of hilarious because the whole cast is actually, I mean you have a bunch of Tony Award winners, Paul Sparks is one of the best New York theater actors, and Yul Vazquez and Frank Wood and Linda Emond, these are basically the best actors in New York so what happens is the media just being pretty lazy and not using their own eyes so you have 2 Academy Award nominated actors but when we started shooting the movie, neither of them were Academy Award nominated actors, ya know I’m saying, I mean they’re just great New York actors like the rest of the cast and then a couple of years from now, a lot of the cast members will have Oscar nominations and people will say ‘o the wonderful Paul Sparks..” right now it’s the wonderful Amy Ryan but the truth is when I set out to make the movie, no one knew who Amy Ryan was or no one knew who Michael Shannon was

RS: Amy Ryan was in your previous movie Neal Cassady and now she’s in The Missing Person, is she slowly becoming your go-to girl like Uma Thurman and Quentin Tarantino type of deal or Francis McDormand to The Coens.

NB: I mean Neal Cassady and The Missing Person happened within a couple of years so I think it was just an organic thing that happened, I gave Amy the script The Missing Person but no (laugh) I don’t have any roles for Amy in my next movie so I don’t think it’s going to be like that

RS: What was the budget? When did Strand Releasing pick it up or has Strand been with this project from the get-go?

NB: Strand picked it up a couple of months after Sundance and the budget was somewhere around $2 Million which is a nice level of movie, you can still kind of make an art film at that level.  And I think if it gets up higher, you’d get a lot of different cooks in the kitchen. I don’t think anyone is necessarily going to like the movie but at least we get to make it its own thing.

RS: The film was well received at Sundance by why is it only getting limited theatrical release? It seems a bit unfair that only a few would get to watch this really cool movie.

NB: Well you’ve seen it, it’s probably the rhythm and the pacing and the quietness of it, it makes it pretty hard to sell. I mean I think that’s really what it is, even that noir movie Brick was a lot more kind of uh.. sellable than this movie, I mean I think people are probably disappointed because the hero Michael Shannon in noir and then they see the movie and it’s kind of slow, I don’t think it will necessarily fit the market right now. At all. I think we’re lucky to even have limited release at all, frankly.

RS: Have you been hearing any award buzz surrounding this movie, the actors, or you?

NB: I mean Michael Shannon’s been getting a lot of nice notices so maybe they’ll push in for the Indie Spirit Award, I don’t think we’re up for any Oscars, it’s just that, ya know, they’re looking at something that punches you in the face. I mean it would really have to be a movie like Precious, have you seen Precious?

RS: Yes, I thought it was  a great movie.

NB: Great movie but it punches you in the face, if you’re an Indie movie you’d have to really be calling attention to yourself but if you’re doing something quiet and slow, ya know, nobody cares. I mean that’s the reality, nobody really cares (laugh)

RS: Sounds like you had a great experience at Sundance, are you bringing your next movie to the next Sundance, when will you return to the festival again?

NB: I don’t know, Sundance has changed a lot because Geoffrey Gilmore the director just left, so I think the landscape of some festivals just changed a lot and I still have to shoot this next movie, I think we still have to shoot it, but I don’t know if next year Sundance is going to be, but I think Tribeca festival might be the festival to go to so I don’t know, I think the landscape is changing a lot right now

RS: What do you think about the condition of independent movies these days? Thriving? Struggling?

NB: Struggling I would say because you have a lot of movies like Precious getting made for like $10 Million and then you have a lot of movies getting made for $200,000 and you don’t have much in between and I think a lot of blame has to go to the critics because they want to see either a mumble core movie or new labeling like that Wendy and Lucy with Michelle Williams, they’re calling it Neo-Neo Realism so a lot of indie films, if you don’t fit into a certain category, it’s very hard to get people to see the movie. And I think the critics are to blame for that because they’re just so lazy right now like I go back to ya know, the wonderful Amy Ryan, the wonderful Michael Shannon, so it’s almost like they’re not using their own eyes. So I would say it’s not good.

Unless you wanna make a certain kind of movie that everyone is making but if you wanna do your own thing and make a movie that doesn’t’ fit into a label, you’re going to have a real uphill climb. And that’s unfortunate ya know because I think indie movies,.. I think they all should be different, isn’t that the point of Independent film? Like every one of us should feel different, look different, sound different, but unfortunately most indie movies look like they’re being made by the same person right now

I mean Little Miss Sunshine was a big game changer, now that was a really unfortunate independent film, I don’t say it wasn’t entertaining or that it wasn’t good but I think it had a negative effect on the independent film world. So you have a lot of movies like Sunshine Cleaning and stuff like that where they’re basically just mini studio movies. They’re not interesting, they’re not challenging, they might as well be Sandra Bullock movies, as far as I’m concerned.

And I’ll tell you the reason why and feel free to quote me on any of this stuff. A lot of it is because the agents are putting these independent films together. So ya know like Emily Blunt wants to do a little movie, so they put it together, they find a script, and if the agents are running independent films, it’s just going to be boring. It’s just going to be really boring because Agents are boring (laugh) so that’s a big part of the problem is ya know, a lot of these movies are getting packaged, and ya know movies like Sunshine Cleaning, they know it’s going to play for a month, but it’s not new, there’s nothing new about it.

RS: What can you tell us about your next project Mu, is it already filming? Any other cast besides Jena Malone?

NB: That’s a good example with what’s going on with the Indie film situation because we went to Sundance me and the producers of Mu with Jena Malone attached. It’s a true life story about a woman who left her waitressing job in Boston at the age of, I think 24 and she went to Japan and became a Zen Master, that’s pretty much a all-male monastery in Japan and then she died at 27, it’s a pretty interesting story, I mean Jena is one of my favorite actresses. But the climate right now, people just wouldn’t bite, we couldn’t get the financing. Unfortunately, we have to go look for someone who’s more bankable than Jena Malone, so that’s where it is right now.

An actress is reading it right now. Basically there’s like 5 actresses who are under 30 who can get a movie made so you kind of need one of them in order to do it.. but I have another movie (I Thought About You) that I’m going to do with Martha Plimpton and John Ortiz , it’s a little smaller in New York, agoraphobic, a woman who can’t leave her apartment

RS: How’s that one coming along?

NB: I mean that’s a lot easier because it’s all in an apartment so I think it’s going to happen pretty soon, so that’s more like a character piece.

RS: So it’s fair to say right now that Jena Malone is no longer attached to Mu.

NB: So yeah, unfortunately, we have to look for an actor who can get it made because we only have the rights for so long. I would’ve loved for Jena to do it, she was really gung ho, she wanted to go Japan and shave her head. She’s one of my favorite actresses. Ya never know, she’s in a big action movie now called Sucker Punch that’s coming out soon, maybe that would change things, I don’t know.

RS: You mentioned big project, why not make a big budget project? Any that you’re thinking about doing or anything that has been offered to you yet? Why not go for big budget film?

NB: I had a couple of scripts that were a little bigger that were offered to me. These movies take a long time, they take 3 years of your life and that’s not counting the stress factor so they probably take 3 years of the end of your life too (laugh) so you add it all up , that’s 6 years of your life and I guess no one has really sent me a script that I’d love enough to give 6 years of my life to. I’d rather make a low budget movie that I really care about than doing something I don’t care for. I don’t even quite frankly know how directors do that, I don’t know how you spend that much time on something you don’t believe in. I mean I have no problem living in studio apartment.

RS: Who inspired you to be a filmmaker? When did you wake up one morning and say ‘I wanna be a director’?

NB: I think some of the old movies, some of those Brando movies that I saw when I was a kid really rocked my world. So I’d give the blame to Kazan and Brando, those movies like On The Waterfront, Viva Zapata! and also Rebel Without a Cause by Nicholas Ray, some of those 50s movies. I guess they just changed my life. I had a video camera when I was 7, I was already making movies with my cat (laugh).