indieWIRE INTERVIEW | “Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell” Director Matt Wolf

Please elaborate a bit on your approach to making the film…

Since there’s such limited archival footage of Arthur Russell, I needed to create a unique visual language to bring him to life.  My cinematographer, Jody Lee Lipes, and I worked with an outmoded VHS camera and Super8 to create “fake archival” material that seamlessly integrates with real archival footage.  Actors wore Arthur’s actual clothes or handled the objects and materials that Arthur possessed in evocative recreations. Arthur’s music lends itself incredibly well to visual interpretation, but I didn’t want stylized visual in the film to be decorative filler.  Instead, I tried to make this visual material push the story forward. I also tried to avoid some of the traps of the conventional music documentary—too many uncharacterized talking heads and overly detailed musical lore.  So I really limited the amount of characters in the film. 

My editor, Lance Edmands, and I focused on Arthur’s relationship with his boyfriend and his parents in Oskaloosa, Iowa. My goal with “Wild Combination” was to introduce Arthur’s music to a larger audience, but also to tell a more resonant story—about the pursuit of art and popular success; downtown New York in the 1970s and 80s, and the experience of being gay and confronting AIDS.  My hope was that the intellectual and visual dimension of the film would be matched by a powerful emotional experience.

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in developing the project?

It’s not easy to raise money for a film about a gay Buddhist cellist from Oskaloosa, Iowa.  But I was lucky to have immensely supportive executive producers and partners.  And as any documentary filmmaker working on a historical subject will say, archival clearances aren’t fun.

Who/what are some of the creative influences that have had the biggest impact on you? Watching and learning from movies as a teenager was extremely formative, particularly films by Fassbinder, Todd Haynes, Kenneth Anger, Sadie Benning, and Derek Jarman.  In college, the filmmaker Kelly Reichardt was a teacher of mine and really activated my interest in filmmaking and challenged me.  And more recently music and its cultural contexts have been a major source of creative influence.

What is your definition of “independent film,” and has that changed at all since you first started working?

I think about independent filmmaking as an “artist-model,” in which filmmakers generate ideas autonomously, free from creative demands or limitations imposed by funders, distributors, or broadcasters.

What general advice would you impart to emerging filmmakers?

To develop sustainable models and goals for filmmaking; to not take on insurmountable personal debt; and to finish what you start.

Please share an achievement from your career so far that you are most proud of.

Figuring out a way to balance earning money and making a feature film.