An Article by Jamie Stuart 
-Photo by Jamie Stuart
Jason
Schwartzman is tweaking HARD! He’s got so much energy to talk that he takes
two turns, sandwiching his co-star Mena Suvari in the process. I’d be inclined
to think he’s cranked on crystal meth, like his character Ross in Jonus
Akerlund’s new film Spun, but he quickly makes it clear on this snowy
day, where the outside is as flaky white as the movie’s subject, that drugs
are for losers. He tells me this with a thumb’s-up!
This from somebody I just watched tie a naked woman to his bed and leave her
there for three days. Yes, it’s that type of a movie. As Mena puts it: “The
subject matter -- either you get it or you don’t.”
“Well, that’s drugs for you,” offers Jason. “I think it’s a bit like
Dante’s Inferno. Some days of descending into hell. In my opinion this
movie is about the next 5 minutes. With crystal meth addicts that’s all they
care about -- that and delusions of...I’m rich and I’m gonna go to Las Vegas
and whatever...”
Spun is the first feature from Swedish music video director Jonus
Akerlund. It’s the end result of Requiem for a Dream being mixed with U-Turn,
then thrown into an Avid blender. It also features Mickey Rourke, Patrick Fugit,
John Leguizamo (finding new uses for socks), Brittany Murphy, and rock stars
Deborah Harry, Rob Halford and Billy Corgan, who also composed the score.
Reality was not a top concern for Akerlund, who shot the film in Super-16 -- in
17 days. He rarely dwells on an image long enough for it to fully register. It
was this approach that the actors found most exciting. Jason puts it this way,
“You know, when you look at a Picasso painting, you say, those are 3 women.
But they look nothing like women. But they are women in a Picasso painting. And
I think that’s kinda how we approached our characters in this movie. We tried
to make our characters the most real they could be in a Jonus Akerlund film
about drugs.”
This approach was especially true for Mena, who’s sick of being thought of as
the “American” girl (American Beauty, American Pie). “It was
completely different from anything I’d ever done before,” she explains -- as
I have visions of the scene where she takes a dump on-screen. “It was kind of
the most fun. It was very relaxed. Usually, you go to the set, you put on
make-up to make you look better. It was just a blast for me. Putting red
eye-liner in your eyes. Drawing on veins. Putting this stuff on my teeth. It was
so much fun to play something so dirty and nasty and fun.”
Akerlund, who also edited Spun, meticulously planned the visual style of
the film. With this topic Jason packs enthusiasm on top of his already chipper
spirit. “We were given this book of about 800 pages. Every shot in the movie
was storyboarded. You were kinda checking ‘em off and checking off the written
dialogue as well. It was really nice to have those drawings, cause it was as
close to a reference as we could get -- as close to Jonus’ vision as we could
get.”
Mena elaborates, “I really admired that Jonus did that. That’s just how he
works. He knows exactly what he wants. It wasn’t take after take after take.
We could bring whatever we wanted to it. The finished product is what he took
from that. I think just the fact that he knew what he wanted was very
admirable.”
Of course, all plans come with their own brand of contingency. For Jason, it
occurred on the first day of shooting. Without any preparation he had to kick it
off with the afore-mentioned bondage scene. “The first thing we ever shot was
my love scene. That was funny. It was a little shady, too. Because we shot in
this motel and everybody speaks Swedish as a first language. I walk in, and
it’s like, ‘Hi, I’m Klaus -- I’m the director of photography. You’ll
be doggy-style over here.’ I was like, ‘This is Spun the movie,
right?’ For a second I thought, I’m in North Hollywood -- anything’s
possible. Could’ve walked into a porno by accident.”
“I kept apologizing to her all day long. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ It
was awfully intense. My first time tying up anybody. It was intense, but it was
professional. It was handled professionally. I was extremely nervous about it a
lot of the time. But after a while you understand why you’re there, and
you’re comfortable doing it. I mean, you never feel totally comfortable --
you’re naked, tying up a woman.”
That last thought is a perfect description for this style of filmmaking. Along
with Gaspar Noe’s recently released Irreversible, there seems to be a
growing trend of unrated movies that seek to push the boundaries of popular
culture in a way we haven’t seen since the late-‘60s/early-’70s. The
intention doesn’t seem to be exploitation, so much as creative freedom.
However, when it came time for Jason to show Spun to his mother, actress
Talia Shire, he fast forwarded past the sex scene and told her the tape was
broken.
The picture’s nihilism is aptly summed up in its final silent image: Ross lies
asleep in a car, while Mickey Rourke’s Cook ignites himself in a trailer and
blows himself straight to hell. I think again about Jason’s thumb’s-up
assertion that drugs are for losers, then consider perhaps there is hope after
all, through this blizzard of decay and addiction that has become our society.
According to Mena: “There’s lots of things I want to do. I want to go to
school and get a degree.”
-Copyright
2003 by
Jamie Stuart