SXSW Interview: “Bomber” Director Paul Cotter

The second memory was traveling with a man who was seeing Germany for the first time in years, having bombed it 60 years before.  The idea for plot came out of that.

Please elaborate a bit on your approach to making your film.

It was very simple.  I took three actors and seven crew to Germany and made a film.  I wrote the story around things I knew I could get, and if anything got to complicated I ditched it in favour of something else.  I owe a nod to Abbas Kiarostami.  I did a workshop with him in 2005 and he taught me three things:

1)  How easy it is to make a film.  Strip away all the bells and whistles and assorted paraphernalia and what you have is a subject and a camera.  It’s that simple.
2)  Embrace your surroundings.  Don’t fight what the world gives you.  It’s one big happy location.  Embrace it.
3)  Use real people wherever possible.  Actors are great, but real people are equally as great.  It’s hard to cast and dress a good cow farmer.  Find a cow farmer.  The mud on his boots and sweat on his brow, and callouses on his hands are real.  It’s difficult to have someone who went to drama school re-create that.

I’ve also been inspired by my fellow filmmakers.  People like the Duplass Brothers and Joe Swanberg.  I met them on the festival circuit when I was schlepping my shorts around and they’ve been tremendously inspirational and supportive.  They really encouraged me to go for it.

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

The fact that I did so much myself.  It’s exhausting.  But I surrounded myself with a really cool group of people and we did a great job, and created a film I am proud of.  So you forget about all the challenges.  And anyway, if you think to much about the challenges, you just freeze so it’s best not to think about them.  And furthermore my wife’s a doctor, so anything I do doesn’t really seem like that big of a challenge.  Hanging on to your life with a team of surgeons working feverishly around you - that’s a challenge.

How do you define success as a filmmaker, and what are your personal goals as a filmmaker?

I can only define success in my own personal terms.  Success to me is simple.  E.M. Forster put it best when he wrote at the beginning of one of his books:  “Only Connect.”  If I can connect, I’ve succeeded.

As far as my goals:  I just want to keep developing as a filmmaker, stay happy doing it and eventually shuffle-off my mortal coil with a body of work I am proud of.  If I get to make 7 feature films and four of them are good enough stand the test of time, I’d be happy.  Deep down, I think it’ll be more, but “baby steps”.

What are your future projects?

I want to see if I can do a real genre film with this lo-fi, personal form of filmmaking.  I loved American B-movies as a child.  “Gun Crazy,” “Detour,” “The Killers.”  Genre is a fascinating form for telling stories.  Kind of like adult fairy tales.  I wonder if I can do a film like that Bomber style.  I have some bigger projects too, but who knows.  Let’s see what happens.