An interview with James Rumsey, noted down by Nils Bothmann

How did you get the idea for MILK MAN?

With MILK MAN, I wanted to realise something which was the reason for leaving my job as an IT manager in 2002 and return to filmmaking. Like Brian in MILK MAN, I was stuck in a routine I didn’t want - but nevertheless I still followed it for a full seven years! My previous try to lead a production company together with some university friends, led to high debts and forced me into a job which I needed to pay back those debts. And then, like many others, I stuck to it – longer than I had to.

And that was the core idea: a film in which the main character and the audience learn that there’s more to life than we realise at first. That is no new idea, though – it is based on my interest in the existential perspective of Sartre, Camus and other philosophers who put free will above predestination. They – and I – believe that our lives are influenced by our decisions and nothing else. In other words: we’re responsible for who and what we are. I think the meaning of responsibility in this context is very invigorating, and it is the core of the MILK MAN story.

Brian’s history and his character development are a very obvious demonstration of his ability to break free from a routine. But Brian’s dilemma is just a vehicle, a MacGuffin if you want to see it that way. I always wanted that the story and its structure inspire the audience to ask themselves if their own decisions have become a routine by now. I don’t know if it works or not, but that has always been my intention from the start: to deliver a fragment of a story which causes the audience to draw certain conclusions before they get told the whole incident once again and are proven totally wrong. So, Brian’s story was meant to be a mirror reflecting conditions well known to us and thus shouldn’t be called „fiction“. It took me seven years altogether to realise that I really could lead another life, and coincidentally, my friend Henry Everett (who plays Brian in the film), did the same as I did and quit his job to become an actor. The fact that Henry made similar decisions at about the same time I did, meant that I always thought of him playing Henry one day. It strengthened my belief in the idea and added a deeper meaning to the project.

All this is relevant for the concept of MILK MAN – but maybe you want to know more about the milk?

Maybe you’ll be disappointed to hear that it was just a narrative means in the first version of the script. I wanted Brian to leave his flat in order to make the life-changing experience happen, and didn’t want it to be overly complicated. So I thought that leaving the house to buy some milk is as good a reason as any other one. As a result, Brian’s life changes during a banal occasion which turns out to be important. He didn’t conquer Mount Everest nor did he save the world, he just went out to buy some milk. I noticed that I wasn’t forced to stick to my usual routine in exactly the same way: I was at my desk and did the same things I always did. I suddenly imagined Brian seeing something in the shop – a place I had been hundreds of times – he hasn’t seen before. The milk became a symbol of his compulsion neurosis, and I started to like the infantile vulnerability of his character – I let him buy writing pads and pencils for his CCTV notes. Originally, I had this idea of the milk because it was so banal.

Are there any directors who inspire you or serve as a kind of role model?

Hitchcock is an important influence. “Rear window“ was one of the first movies having a lasting effect on me. It’s the simplicity I love so much. His way of using the camera very efficiently as a narrative tool in his works is a recurrent pleasure for me. You could almost hear him directing a shot - he doesn’t hide the fact that he shows you something you must remember, it’s a helping hint for you. Apart from that, he is fascinated by stories dealing with the dark side of human life looming behind the respectable facades which also always allures me.

Nowadays, I always look forward to the films of Martin Scorsese, and not accidentally so… For me, Scorsese’s stories and camera work have a lot in common with Hitchock’s. And I feel attracted to Scorsese’s films because of the partnership he has with his editor Thelma Schoonmaker. There’s always one or the other inspiring moment in a Scorsese film where he suggests to edit a scene in a special way, be it a transition or an appealing music part, for instance.

The expression of the free human spirit in the films of the French Nouvelle Vague is also an inspiration. A beautiful new world of jump cuts, low budget work and an objective and free role of the camera started to develop thanks to people like Godard and Truffaut. Godard’s “Vivre sa vie” contains one of my favourite shots demonstrating my opinion about camera usage. It’s been a while since I saw it the last time, so please excuse the vague scene description: we’re in a café, and two characters are talking to each other. While they’re talking, the camera moves away from them and shows the street outside instead. The two keep on talking, but now their talk serves as a comment on the things that happen outside and leaves you in a totally different position regarding the scene itself and your role as an observer. I love that – that is absolute artistic freedom and utterly inspiring.

And there’s Luis Buñuel, the surrealistic film maker. I love how he deals with human existence. He presents it as something which has to be inspected, but with a dash of unusual humour. He doesn’t do comedies, but he encourages us to laugh about the absurdity of the human race, although he makes movies of esthetical and topical importance.

Is MILK MAN and the way it describes the lonesome milk drinker influenced by certain things, for example movies?

Three particular films helped me to create and realise MILK MAN. First, as already mentioned, „Rear window“: apart from the immediate and lasting impression it left on me, its influence is pretty obvious, I think, with the story presenting a kind of helpless character observing his neighbours with a camera objective. In MILK MAN, though, I wanted the audience to be in Jimmy Stewart’s position. I wanted them to see fragments of Brian’s ordeal and to assume the worst – just like Jimmy Stewart did concerning Raymond Burr and his annoying wife. Jimmy Stewart was at the receiving end of Raymond Burr’s look – in contrast to that I wanted the audience to be caught watching when their alleged conclusions are proven to be wrong.

Then, there’s „The Life of the others“: Seeing it, I had just decided to review the MILK MAN script and had found out that I had to revise Brian’s role thoroughly, he was just too two-dimensional. Ulrich Mühe’s Stasi man was a brutal, but vulnerable type having your sympathies at the end. I wanted this complexity for Brian, too. But in the first draft, he had been a workaholic accountant needing milk for his coffee to stay awake – not very complex at all. I had already redefined Brian as a compulsive-obsessive borderline character fearing other people, so the incident in the shop would be a kind of crucial test – it would provide the room in which Brian could be this kind of unusual hero, finally changing his self-consciousness. What I was still looking for was another main job to emphasise his machine-like, routine existence, and I wanted to provide this inconsistent character with a dark side. A job as an accountant didn’t bring that out, especially because I had already decided that Brian was unemployed due to his neurosis. Seeing Ulrich Mühe’s character in the attic with all this surveillance stuff was a „Eureka!“ moment: Brian the voyeur was born.

Brian’s flat and the way we filmed it was inspired by Coppola’s “The conversation”. It is an incredibly well-conceived and fascinating movie, but there is one scene at the beginning with Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) returning home from a surveillance job which had mostly inspired me to use that kind of aspect for MILK MAN. The way Coppola uses the camera in the first scene with Harry is extremely influenced by Godard and his Nouvelle Vague friends. 1974 was just an early stage in the new definition of American cinema, so this affaire with the Nouvelle Vague could blossom. In Harry’s flat, you have this wonderful feeling of stasis, the camera just refuses to move when Harry moves about his flat. If the camera angle changes, then often very slowly and randomly – not necessarily related to Hackman. I tried to catch this atmosphere in the floor scene, and the slow uncovering of the video camera, the tapes and the CCTV equipment. In this surrounding, Brian feels good and powerful, just like Harry Caul. It is possible for him to move without satisfying the audience’s desire to see him. He and I – his alter ego as a director – are in control, not the audience. At least, that was the intention I had.

Recently, there have been many discussions about public surveillance in Great Britain. Is your demonstration of private surveillance in MILK MAN a comment on these circumstances?

It wasn’t my intention to comment that. Nevertheless I think that a moral debate on who has the right or not to monitor us with video cameras is unavoidable in connection with a film dealing with voyeurism via CCTV. I wanted the audience to have mixed feelings about Brian, and to let him operate in an ethically grey area was one way to achieve that. I fostered the sympathy for him by showing Marina’s concern and his encounter with those hooded people, but I also had to insinuate a dark side of this character which, once let loose, causes him to attack somebody for the last bottle of milk. If you see it from that angle, the moral problem of a CCTV installation and other ethical questions are influenced by the discussions you have mentioned.

Other than that, there’s also a formal aspect. I wanted to dwell on the inherent reflective quality of the CCTV installation. It’s an old idea, but the decision to make a film about a man „making films“ watching others, was a try – at least design-wise – to suggest they’re accomplices, sitting in the dark, observing and judging Brian. The first scene of MILK MAN, with Brian watching himself on video, was an early invitation for the audience to do the same and to study themselves in the process of the story. I don’t expect too many people to follow that idea, it isn’t necessary, but that had been a formal aspect of introducing the CCTV system.

Do you think your protagonist could be living next door? Someone compensating his loneliness by having this “window to the world“?

Yes, Brian is definitely living next door... and we ignore him. It is a modern, mostly urban tendency not to know our neighbours, although we sometimes literally live above each other. The music coming from Marina’s flat or the music from the hooded people Brian hears from above demonstrate that. We live with our neighbours, know so much about them, including their taste in music, but we don’t know them personally. It’s a choice we make. We could get acquainted, but many of us don’t do. So, Brian personifies that part of our psyche dictating us to walk on, not to get involved and to adapt – which is constraining us and others.

The city paintings by Edward Hopper were an intense inspiration for this aspect of the film. Hopper shows people being isolated in totally crowded places: trains, hotel lobbies, and even their own living rooms with their own family in them. These people are among other people, but they don’t have any contact to the others. I think that’s still a very important problem of our society, and it was already there in the 1950s when Hopper painted this series. For me, it is very interesting to see Hopper also operating with perspectives. The observer is outside the picture and looks out of a window in the first floor, café window or even from behind curtains. That creates an uncomfortable relationship and is – at least for me - a challenge of my view on his paintings and the world in general.

The suggestion of another perspective by using the camera in a reflective way for MILK MAN was a coherent thought of mine and Gavin Fry, my cinematographer. It was important to present Brian as the neurotic, milk drinking loner, but he is also a person. As a person, he is able to take a second look at himself and to realise that he needn’t be that manic person forever. And I hope, the audience gets that. Not that he’s strange and has to be avoided, but the exact opposite. With his activities, Brian not only achieves a positive outcome for himself, but also for the pregnant woman, and Marina.

How do you see the situation of aspiring directors on the British fim market, especially concerning short films?

That’s a difficult question. I don’t feel like I have enough experience to assess the market – I never really thought there was one for shorts anyway. I don’t want to say it doesn’t exist. I’m sorry – I can’t help you here. My experience with public film promotion which is available to create a market, is that the means for film makers are limited. But we have a lot of talented and enthusiastic film makers in Great Britain, so that shouldn’t limit us. If you really want to make a short film, you won’t be kept by the lack of public subventions – you’ll find another way. Apart from that, it helps to know the right people at the right places, like in any other industry, and to be good at self-marketing which I’m slowly getting into. But by seeing how my director friends are getting more and more attention I found out that the best way to make a film is to make a film which is liked by the audience and which is shown. Of course I could dwell on the infrastructure of the British film industry, but it wouldn’t improve my ideas or change my commitment to filmmaking.

What do you think about the genre of short films in general? Does it get the appreciation it deserves as an art form? Is the British market different from the international one in this regard?

In the field of short films, I am a newcomer as a director, and MILK MAN teaches me a lot about trying to get attention for your own cineastic feats. I think there is an overwhelming mass of talent, passion and commitment, not only in the British, but also in the international community of short film makers. So, I am totally ecstatic when my film is accepted for a festival, it doesn’t matter where, within a competition or not. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other films and talented filmmakers who don’t get this chance. So I feel incredibly honoured to be part of the Europe in Shorts presentation which represents so many nations.

Are British short films appreciated enough? I don’t know. I think TV stations and cinemas (especially in these digital times) really could show more shorts and compensate the filmmakers for it. Right now, it is normal to say: „It’s just a short film, we’ll show it, but we won’t pay you for that.“ 1994, I met Jon Jost when “All The Vermeers of New York“ got enthusiastic reviews. I asked him if he was interested in more commercial movies, with him having gained a reputation and all. He wasn’t too impressed by my question and explained that the audience liked his films, the distribution companies just didn’t leave the decision to the audience. I think this situation could be changed by people having the power to decide on the quality of a short film. In my opinion, the YouTube users with their appetite for short clips demonstrate that there’s a lot more interest in short films than offered by the traditional channels, and that’s a good argument for paying these short film makers. Unfortunately, the multiplex cinemas think that four screenings a day of an ill-conceived 2-hour film with 20 minutes of commercials before it starts is more interesting for the Brits than to show a short film before the regular film. When I was a child in the Seventies, it was a standard procedure in Britain to show a short movie before every full-length feature; and I was looking forward to both of them. Part of the anticipation was the fact that I did not know what kind of film it would be or which actors would be in it. It was refreshing! But at some point they stopped showing short films and apart from a few exception, they haven’t made their way back to the regular cinema program.

After having said all that – my reason to make short films is to develop as a film maker without commercial restraints. Short films are a great way to create new and clear cineastic voices. If there still was a conventional market for short films, it would supposedly support the creative visions the new directors in this field are exploring right now.

Links

• MILK MAN (GB 2009. James Rumsey)
• Got Milk? – Nils Bothmann about MILK MAN
• Realism for the Art, Romance for the Market – Nils Bothmann about the British film market