AN INTERVIEW WITH MALCOLM INGRAM

BY CHRIS GRAVES

CHRIS GRAVES: For those who do not know, what is your background?

MALCOLM INGRAM: I started working for the Toronto Film Festival as a young man of about 20. Working as a volunteer in the Press Office. Slowly working my way up to Press Office Manager. It was an awesome job.

I ended up making friends with the Film Threat boys…..who had recently been allowed back to the festival after being banned the year before for hi-jinx. I’d tip them off to the big shindigs and slip them tickets to stuff. We ended up getting along real swell…. and I eventually made my way into the profession of word whore.

Journalism was an awesome gig, especially for Film Threat. They were really on the cutting edge of the Indie scene and had a very cool following. I went to Sundance for the first time with them…went to the the Playboy mansion…..all kinds of cool shit.

CG: How did you become involved with View Askew?

MI: I had just been offered the job as Canadian editor for Threat and was at the Toronto film festival with newly appointed Editor In Chief, Paul Zimmerman. I had helped him with his festival coverage in the past.

He had been talking about these guys, Kevin and Scott, who he’d met at a festival in Texas. They had made this indie flick called ‘Clerks’….and he thought that they’d be my type of people. We all went to dinner and he was right.

We ended up meeting again at a film festival in New Orleans, bonding over petting sharks, tawdry strip shows and a bizarre run in with Mick Jagger, while window shopping for swords with Henry Thomas.

Eventually, I pitched Paul a cover story on Mallrats.

Thus it begins…

CG: Can you describe your experience on the Mallrats set?

MI: Mallrats was cool. It was Minnesota in winter. We were all so fucking young and excited. I slept on Mosier’s floor. In retrospect, I feel bad for Scott…here he was producing his first big gig and he was stuck with a surly Canuck.

It was like camp.

Everyone was at the same hotel…the hotel bar was the clubhouse….and we essentially had the run of a whole fucking mall.

Thinking back to that experience, all I can do is smile….

I made some lifelong friends and got my first chance to witness one of Kevin’s sets. Which are probably the most fun in the bid-ness. Good fucking times!

CG: Did you always want to be a filmmaker? How did Drawing Flies come about?

MI: Since I was 5 years old.

It’s an interesting and frustrating road when you ALWAYS know what you want to do. But there is no real set path to follow.

I was a horrible student…I only wanted to watch or talk about film….

My poor parents had no idea what to do with me…

Cut to

My friend Matt Gissing and I drunk on his back patio coming up with ideas for a screenplay…. I had originally tried to sell him on the concept of mounting a live theater production of ‘Beyond the Valley of the Dolls’.

He wisely suggested a movie.

We both seemed stuck on the concept of a slacker being sent on a quest by a fever dream.

Cut to

The Mallrats set…the last week of production…Kevin and I are playing Sega hockey. Kevin casually mentions a script I had told him about…and asks how much it would cost to make…”$27,575 bucks” was my reply…. an obvious joke, as that was the much written about budget of Clerks. “It’s yours” was his reply. My life immediately changed…. and that 5 year old kid’s dream came true.

CG: Do you enjoy co-directing on stuff like Drawing Flies and Tail Lights Fade more than directing by yourself like on Small Town Gay Bar?

MI: Drawing Flies was an incredible gift…It was my film school…. what an incredible privilege to work with the cast and crew we were lucky enough to get on board.

Nobody got paid…people worked on the film because they believed in it…Who DOES that these days?

I’m a very lucky man.

I remember one great moment when Jason Lee has that great freak out scene near the end of the movie. He is brilliant! He took Gissing and myself aside and told us that for the first time in his experience with the craft…he transcended just acting and he WAS the character.

Those are the memories that get you past the bad times.

As far as Co-Directing, Drawing Flies was the only film that I shared the credit. Although with Tail Lights Fade I offered the writer Matt Gissing a co-Director credit, that he certainly earned, but turned down.

Gissing is truly like a brother to me. He’s helped me out through so much…..he has been the equivalent of my Mosier. Unfortunately all of his hard work is rarely rewarded. When I started ‘small town gay bar’ Gissing was onto his own thing…. but when the Producers dropped the ball. …Gissing was the one to come in and clean up the mess. And he didn’t even get paid.

Without Gissing….’small town gay bar’ would never have gotten finished…

As far as directing by myself…..I hate to sound like a hippy….but it’s such a collaborative process….I never really feel like its all me. DP Jonathon Cliff, PTO Scott Tremblay, and editors Graeme Ball and Scott Mosier could easily share the Director credit with me.

CG: What was your inspiration for Small Town Gay Bar? What awards did the film and yourself win?

MI: “small town gay bar” was a direct result of me coming out of the closet at a very late age, and seeing zero representation of what it felt like for me to be gay.….stuff like WILL & GRACE and QUEER EYE FOR THE STRAGHT GUY was like a minstrel show for me. Mincing queens prattling on and completely devoid of saying anything remotely idententfiable or interesting to me. I mean..the only thing that makes me gay is that I suck dick. I have no idea why the key identifier for fags became the sissy.

I wanted to find people who represented a reality that I knew existed…. real people who happen to be gay.

I researched the movie for 4 years and finally got the opportunity to film it in the South in ‘04.

The incredibly brave, thoughtful, outspoken and decent people that I met left an impression on me that I will carry for a lifetime. The eloquent way in which they told their stories are what makes that movie what it is…and I am humbled to be their messenger.

We went on to play over 50 film festivals… including Sundance, SXSW, London Gay & Lesbian and Outfest in Los Angeles. Winning several key awards including best documentary at Outfest and the HBO Best Feature Documentary at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.It’s really hard to have a complaint after such incredible good fortune…..one thing I’ll say…..

The film industry is not for the thin skinned or weak willed. As wonderful as the entire creative process was for this film, the business side has left me wanting to quit the business many times. That’s where it was incredibly helpful to have someone as smart and experienced as Kevin on your side…He talked me down off many cliffs.

CG: Can you tell me what the status of “Oh, What a Lovely Tea Party”, (the behind the scenes documentary for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back that he and Jennifer Schwalbach worked on) is?

MI: I’m not quite sure. All I can say is that I am no cameraman.

I actually had a great time working on that with Jen……although we had some brilliant knock down brawls. Jen is very much like a sister to me…and we fight in only the way family can. Jen and Kevin were good enough to let me stay in their house during production. It was this nice house in Toluca Lake that was full of people. Kevin really loves to surround himself with friends and family. As with any family….. there was always some kind of drama going on…It always made me laugh that there was a tire swing hanging from a tree on the front lawn, completing the white trash vibe of it all.

Jen and I also had double duty as she was starring in the movie and I was given the job of Mewes wrangler, which entailed keeping Mewes occupied while he battled his demons. Which was nowhere near as fun as it sounds…and led to my absolute worst X-mas ever when I was forced to stay in LA on Mewes duty. Then again…. I also remember sharing a smoke with Kevin and Gail (Jen’s Mom) on the patio of the house on a really nice night, we just exchanged small talk. As we headed in…Smitty said “We’ll remember these as the good times.”

Man was he right.

Anyway.

The doc suffered as a combo of my complete lack of experience and the fact that I was distracted. I’d love to have a second shot at shooting it….but ultimately I think it kind of fits that it’s sloppy and amateurish. It’s a home movie of a time and a place that meant a lot to some good friends. When we showed it at the Dome for Vulgarthon ..it played at the end of a very long and action pact day….The only people left were the die hards who had made it to the end…it felt like an intimate setting…

And in that context…it works.

That’s the life that I’d love to see that movie take.

Dragged out at events….and shared with friends.

CG: Is it true that you were working with Bryan Johnson on a remake to the film C.H.U.D. and a movie about the Jersey Devil myth?

MI: Yes. It’s true.

We even had a meeting about C.H.U.D. that included Scott Mosier, Brian Quinn, Johnson and some douche who apparently had the rights to C.H.U.D.

I’m a huge fan of Johnson’s flick VULGAR….and for awhile I was really excited about helping Johnson create his next vision.

I thought the idea of a C.H.U.D. movie melded perfectly with Johnson’s sensibility…and wrapped in the package of View Askew Presents….delicious!

I’d drop everything I was doing to be involved in that project if it ever came to fruition.

After C.H.U.D. fell through…Johnson had written some great pages for JERSEY DEVIL that I found really exciting….yet it was not meant to be.

Johnson is one talented mother fucker…and I’d love to see him make another flick.

CG: Is the character you play from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Mallrats related to Silent Bob? That’s been bugging me for years.

MI: No. I’d hardly call it a character. It’s basically an inside joke between 3 people: Kevin, Mewes and me. One day on the set of Mallrats they needed to fill the space around Renee Humphrey in a scene and Kevin threw me out there. It was last minute and I was disoriented, so I actually look like someone just smacked me in the face with a salmon.

Cut to….

The Mallrats screening at San Diego Comic Con….a great screening to have been at. Anyway….the scene where I flash on screen comes on…..and you just hear one solitary guffaw resonate throughout the theater…in what is an otherwise non-comedic shot.

My work as the worst extra of all time seemed to have captured Mewes’ funny bone. And led to much good natured ribbing…. When it came time to make Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, Kevin’s idea was to bring back characters from all of his previous films. And apparently that included the worst extra of all time.

CG: What is your favorite View Askew / Kevin Smith flick (Drawing Flies / Mallrats excluded)?

MI: I’m gonna cheat and name two…

The movie of Kevin’s I enjoy watching the most is Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. I just think Mewes is so fucking funny it. And I love the fact that Kevin got to make this decent budgeted old school ON THE ROAD flick with a monster cast, made about these two small time drug dealers from Jersey. It’s a funny, funny movie.

The movie I admire most is DOGMA. I think it’s a brilliant meditation on faith. And it’s got a poop monster. I always laugh when I see people attack Kevin online for this and that. I think that some people really forget how audacious he is as a writer. He takes on these incredibly controversial subjects: lesbian falls in love with man, Catholic Dogma, sexual politics and adds this incredibly human perspective without being treacle-y. And on top of this…..He lends his name to flicks like Vulgar, A Better Place and small town gay bar. Clown rape, youth violence and homos……this is a man who is clearly not looking to take the easy path.

Can’t wait for RED STATE.

CG: Do you have any new projects coming up? Any more documentaries or fictional films?

MI: I got plenty of pans in the fire…..I’ve been working with a great Canuck screenwriter Tony Burgess on a flick called COMMERCIAL DRIVE…best described as a love story about bears….as well as a bear documentary called BEAR NATION, Bears of course being husky, hairy men and their admirers. I’ve also started talking with my friend Ash (FAT GIRLS) Christian about doing this really cool doc about a famous NYC gay landmark.

Down the road….

I’m still interested in the ‘small town gay bar’ narrative feature that I traveled down South with the talented Ms. Guinevere Turner to discuss ……and a top secret LSD bio-pic that I’d LOVE to tackle when I have the chops.

CG: And finally, do you still keep in contact with anyone related to the world of View Askew?

MI: Yup.

Whew! A nice long read there. Thanks so much to Chris for another set of questions that led us to some new answers, and for our pal Malc for taking the time to answer in such detail. Hope you enjoyed the interview — Chris will be back with more in the future, of course.