The Premiere Free Donuts Interview with Filmmaker Elmer Lang

In a world where YouTube gets ten billion hits a day, everybody is a filmmaker. Just click on iFilm, Google video, and you'll see. Just as the weblog boom is responsible for launching the new citizen journalist, film sites like Trigger Street.com have birthed a generation of filmmakers equipped with Sony PD-170's, camera phones and prosumer editing systems. Most of us are vying for hits, hoping to get discovered by a network or studio, build an audience and make an impact.

Elmer Lang is one such filmmaker, a brother in the war to get films made. Except his stuff far surpasses the work of most of what I've seen on the web. His short films are deep, they speak with a unique voice on culture, racism, life and death. He is building on the work of Spalding Gray, going further by creating a mix of Spoken Word performance and dramatic film, with some very bizarre comedy pieces mixed in.
It's an honor to have the first Free Donuts Interview be with New York filmmaker Elmer Lang. Here goes....

Donuts or Bagels?

Bialys, actually. Especially onion bialys. In the center they have this little pile of toasted onion very similar in appearance to toe jam. In taste, too, come to think of it. What?

You’ve had a lot of acclaim on Trigger Street, I’d say just looking at your films and reviews you are one of the more popular filmmakers on the site. How’s it feel to be dubbed the poet laureate of Trigger Street? (ok, even if it was me who dubbed you)

As to poet laureate, I assume my incredibly rich daddy paid you the going fee for praising his beloved son. 100 smackers. O wait, I made out that check.

But seriously (burp), I do like recognition for poetry since I’m supposed to be inventing a new genre, one for poets in film. And I don’t mean poetic filmmaker, I mean using film to document poetry the way the printed page has documented poetry for the past 2500 years. I started my public access tv show ‘From Homer to Elmer’ in 2000 to reconnect with the oral tradition and create a new genre including music, performance and the human voice as part of that document.

Talk about your living situation-- where in NYC do you live?

I live on the corner of 5th st and avenue b in Manhattan’s East Village, or Lower East Side, or Loisaida. When I first moved in, I was greeted by the drug dealer’s security with a gun muzzle to my nostril. I am so glad I didn’t take his offer to make ‘big money’ stashing drugs in my apartment. Now, it’s a wussy neighborhood of students and yuppies, with a community garden outside my bedroom window.

Your films also have a sort of prophetic slant to them-- against reverse racism, against stereotypes, but it all has this “let’s all get real here and put away the pretenses and the masks” of culture and society. Are you influenced more by poets or prophets?

I only feel influenced by my family. My mother stood up to racism when I was a kid. My grandfather stood up to the KKK in the 1930’s. My ancestors were suspicious of institutions and conventions and met in homes instead of churches for religious services. One of my ancestors got lynched. It’s basically in my dna to stand outside and agitate and disagree. I don’t listen too much to what the gang says is right, I’m from Missouri, you got to show me—which really means, I’ve got to see for myself.

Technorati Tags: Donuts, Elmer Lang, Poetic Film, Independant Film, Sock Puppets, Trigger Street

Comments

[SeaMowse]

Elmer Lang rocks.

He is a trailblazer with his innovative films and I hope that he does, indeed, create a new genre. Not only for the residents of TriggerStreet, but for the film world in general.

[Jason_73]

Thats really interesting. I dig the interview format. Maybe I will do an interview with you for my blog. I've always wanted to do an interview/be interviewed.

Hey do you know this guy from London? Looks interesting..

http://www.adrian.warnock.info/

[Roy]

hey thanks for reading. Yeah I know Elmer from Trigger Street where our films are.

[Grouchobeer]

Great interview!