Filmmaker Jo Custer

[caption id="attachment_2713" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Jo Custer (right) guest judging the Gulf South Funniest Comedian semi-finals hosted by Johnny Rock with Vince Vance and Terry Jurgelsky."][/caption]

Born in Maine and raised primarily in northwestern Pennsylvania, Jo is currently a New Orleans writer/director/producer, cab driver, photog and occasional journalist and actress. At six she entered a Sunday School essay contest and won: first in her church, then in the region, then in the state. Studying creative writing intensively for a few years at Penn State before ultimately switching to and earning a degree in journalism, she expanded from poetry, short fiction and play writing into film criticism, editing, news reporting and writing for the screen.

Last summer, Jo strung a story for the short-lived Louisiana Entertainment Reporter. She was also hired to adapt fiction for the screen under the auspices of mixer publishing and solicited to write film features for Paste Magazine, but both pursuits have so far had to cede way to her ability to keep herself afloat financially and growing as a filmmaker. Since ’09, she has been whittling away at a short story collection under the pseudonym Jules Alder — and various short films under her more prosaic name, since ’02. Last year, The History Press published her personal essay, Chopsticks, in the journal collection Western Pennsylvania Reflections: Stories from the Alleghenies to Lake Erie.

This year finds Jo’s short film HOTCAKES, an urban Western shot last November, in post-production. The rough cut will be under twenty minutes and test screened in New Orleans and on her Unclear Pictures YouTube channel on January 28.

HOTCAKES represents the first in a series of short film challenges Jo has set herself en route to readying herself to make a first feature film. The second in the Short Stack Series is currently in treatment form and will be produced mid-May or in late September, the determining factor being the success of the HOTCAKES Kickstarter campaign.

What is the current project you are working on?

We're in post-production and pre-marketing, in the rough cut/test  screening/crowdfunding stage, of HOTCAKES, which I originally wrote as a 5 page urban  Western. I liked the concept and characters so much, I expanded it into 17 pages and decided to direct and produce it myself with my editor as co-producer. I had started to shop the 5 pager around New Orleans, then realized there were no producers available who really got or connected with the story. My writing's too subtle for many, producers and actors alike, which is rough because I agree with Gary Oldman, et al, that acting is not a cerebral process; it's an emotional process. But a highly cerebral and intuitive process needs to precede the emotional, something that the uber-talented Gary Oldman maybe takes for granted.

People familiar with Owen Wister's classic Western novel The Virginian will have a clue as to what kind of protagonist HOTCAKES features. Those who aren't should picture a gentleman ranch hand, a real cowboy, surrounded by cowboys and wannabes at a poker table after one of them calls him a son of a bitch. The gentleman cowboy, the Virginian, lays his gun on the table as though discarding it, as though to say he doesn't even need it, and tells the loudmouth wannabe to smile when he says that. Marty, our Virginian, took a lot of layers from there, but that was the kernel of his character. And Burton Tedesco's tough but graceful demeanor pulls it off.

I knew I wasn't ready to make a feature, so I needed to start making longer films with embedded challenges, like making a seated dialogue scene watchable -- something I failed at in my last film, TOLL ROAD -- and finding the kind of actors and department heads who could interpret the characters and the setting as a character. My experience with my HOTCAKES lead was almost spiritual, Burton connected with the character so deeply. Our one on one communication really sustained me throughout the shoot. There were even a couple of times he saved me from making stupid mistakes while in a sleep deprivation coma of sorts. An actor like that is worth his weight in gold, if you're the kind of person who places value on something pulled out of the earth that you can't eat.

The same can be said of our production designer, Cassie Giveans. She's young, just old enough to drink legally, and this was only her second time helming an art department; but she's smart, strong, capable, multi-talented, very handy with the entire range of power tools, most of which I can't even name, and cute as a button. She was my right arm, really. At some point during the shoot, I decided to stop making or taking phone calls. I stopped wearing my producer's hat while on set trying to direct and pretty much just made Cassie my personal assistant. She took it all in stride and we got through the shoot relatively unscathed. This was my first budgeted film and Cassie made it relatively painless in terms of upfront production costs also, not spending a few hundred of the $1200 I allotted for set design. Since we shot all 17 pages in one location, we had to really make it count. We didn't have total control. We had a few different set configurations because of the narrowness of the gallery in which we were shooting. But she made it work, even staying up on set nights to change the scenery despite having classes and two jobs.

And I'm pleased that we're over halfway funded on Kickstarter before we've even test screened the film or released a trailer. It's still a long haul to $2500 by February 3, but I have some hope, which is nice.

Did you always want to be a writer?

The George Carlin answer is: "Well, not in the womb, but right after that." The serious answer is: I couldn't stop if I tried and I know deep down that writing and directing are my universal calling. That's when I'm fully myself.

What inspired you to become writer?

Overcoming illiteracy. I didn't learn to read by the first grade with the other girls and boys. I was diagnosed with a learning disability and it was suggested that I was, to use the language of the day, mentally retarded.

People who know me think that's hilarious in its discrepancy. I'm not sure I agree.

One teacher used to rip up my illegible homework in front of the class. My mother, who has my undying devotion for this, told the public school officials to go fuck themselves and co-founded a private school across the street at a church. I can't say with complete certainty that my staunchly anti-establishment mother didn't become a Christian just for me. We're still sort of marveling at how that all went down. Nixon didn't tear gas my mum for praying.

But the long and short of it is, Mom got me these books on tape and I sat and listened to them for about six weeks, and that was pretty much how I learned to read, after I learned the alphabet and phonetics within a few weeks or so at the new private school. Appears I sleepwalked through that part of kindergarten, too.

Turned out I had mild dyslexia, which was correctable with the audio books and some simple tracing exercises.

Then one day we had a "Sunday school is..." essay contest and I just knew I was meant to be a writer. Winning reinforced that belief. It won in the church, then the region, then the state. Then it went to nationals and was never heard from again, but it was an interesting ride while it lasted.

Something just clicked. This was what I was supposed to do.

What is the best thing about being one?

The worldview you get from it, I think, is like no other. It can be kind of lonely, but in that loneliness, you find a confidence; you learn that the only thing that matters is what we do and say. That's actually a pretty easy place to be coming from. And then you spend all your downtime, on the receiving end, listening to what others do and say. That's an extremely pleasing and peaceful form of existence, to me, constantly processing life as it happens.

What is the worst thing about being one?

It's amazing how many people think I'm stupid or insignificant because I'm motivated far, far more by beauty and a sense of order than money. My running joke is that God herself couldn't get me a date. Only, it's not a joke.

Also, I get tired of non-writers pestering me with ideas. At this point, I've been writing for 30 years. That's 30 plus years' worth of ideas I already don't have time enough in the day to write and they're what inspire me most. Other people's ideas typically don't inspire me. It's so rare that I hear a good one and even when I do, it's just like, Well if you love the idea so much, why don't you go write it yourself? I never really know what non-writers want from me.

I'm not going to write your book or screenplay for you. There are other people who do that. Find them instead. I'm not into bloodless writing. That's not why I put myself through this torture. And if I were, I'd write for television.

What is the estimated number of projects you have worked on?

Film? I think around ten with a direct role -- writer/director/producer or writer/AD. Add another ten for crew, I think. But most of this has been really small, often disorganized stuff -- a lot of student work -- and a lot of it in the last year and a half. I'm an old writer, perhaps, but I'm a young director. Progress in that arena has really only started happening lately. That's why I moved to New Orleans, in fact. Making films in Pittsburgh was too damn hard.

Who is is your favorite writer?

My favorites tend to vary with my mood. In the last year, the mood's included Miranda July, Guy de Maupassant and Martin Amis, three very different writers. On days when I'm feeling glib, I say Salman Rushdie. I adore Rushdie and I've read a lot of his nonfiction, but not a lick of fiction, not yet. Any day now.

How has your life changed since you became a writer?

I think I can honestly say that it has saved my life in a way, though I don't know that I could honestly say how. I'm very sensitive, that's a certainty. Writing -- and facing criticism and failure as a writer -- has helped me develop a thicker skin in some ways while retaining all of the sensitivity that makes me who I am when I'm at my best. At least, that's the hope. It's a constant sifting, deciding what emotions you're going to let yourself be vulnerable to and for what reason. I'm at my best when I'm hip deep in a story with no time to look backward, only forward.

And maybe it's in part a function of the learning disability I was diagnosed with as a kid, but I am constantly trying to make sense of the world. Constantly. And it often just doesn't make sense. So if you want to get on my bad side or be ignored, just throw some confusion my way. I won't come calling, that's for damn sure. I've got work to do.

What is one piece of advice you can give to someone who also wants to make it in the movie business?

Don't believe anything that will force you to make a major life decision without checking with your inner child first.

What do you like to do besides writing?

If I had my druthers, I'd be horseback riding and picnicking with someone I love. Also, I love swimming. Anywhere but still water. I'm not an attention whore, which makes me question whether I should be in independent filmmaking sometimes. I like to be alone. I enjoy privacy and safeguard it, probably a little too much. But I'm okay with that.

Now that I have two dogs to take care of (not mine, but I love them), I've returned to long walks too. I love to just go outside and commune with nature, wherever I am. Places have such histories. You can feel them palpably.

Have you had any other jobs before you decided to become a writer?

Well, writing came first for me, obviously. Although my grandmother did put a camera in my hand when I was five and declared that I had "the eye" after she developed the prints. But that really came from her. I love photography, but it's not my first love. I tried to publish when I was nine. I sent a limerick to Cricket magazine: Rejected. I think that was my first clue that my calling is a real job and hard. I didn't try to submit anything again until I was a sophomore in college. Sent a story to The New Yorker: Rejected. You learn to scale back your ambitions rather than try and be something you're not. Despite over a hundred odd jobs, I've never been anything less than a writer.

What are some of your favorite American films? Foreign films? Television shows?

I'm pretty much addicted to all things Pedro Almodovar, Sam Ball, and Czech New Wave. Also, The Wire completely reset my rating system. Now, if it's not True Blood, I don't even want to watch TV. Which is good, I guess. Frees up time, especially since I don't get HBO. Or, at least I don't think I have cable. I moved and didn't even bother to check, which should tell you something. [Update: Turns out, I get HBO. And Game of Thrones.]

How would you describe your film education?

Ongoing. All the classroom work was really just a springboard into handling equipment and networking with the film community. It's my communications degree and the time I spent simply blogging about film that's keeping me on a clear course I can plot strategically, not to mention that private school my mother co-founded. You set your own pace and corrected your own work against a scoring key and really, in many ways, were self-taught and self-disciplined. I definitely think a good independent director is a good self-teacher. Like with anything you want to improve at, you set your challenges and rise to meet them. If I succeed, I learn to set greater challenges. If I fail, I gain confidence from correctly identifying my weaknesses and blind spots and apply more energy in that direction.

How would you describe the film "scene" where you live?

One of the things I love about NOLA is that there isn't really a "scene," per se. There are students who all pretty much run together and there are these meetup groups that try to get a sense of community and fresh-flowing blood, but this town attracts so many individuals and a lot of actors, especially, who come for all the films that are just now starting to hire more principal roles outside of L.A. I think a good way to put it might be that in other cities, you might feel like an outsider looking in at first as a filmmaker. But in NOLA, that's sort of the realm of the old money, and they aren't in film. The rest of us are all pretty much equals, even if competitive cliques still do exist.

That said, this isn't much of an online town. Most people in film here are on Facebook, but not so much on Twitter or anything else. If you see that as an unforgivable negative, then I'll say this to you about NOLA: If you're an artist and you haven't at least visited here, your education's incomplete on several levels.

How has social media changed the independent industry?

I think that question would better be answered by Henry Jenkins and Ed Burns. They should get together and write a new book. I'd read that book, as long as it contained hard data and analysis and wasn't padded with fluff.

What's your opinion on crowdfunding?

I've seen the pie chart depicting the divisions of wealth in this country, so I'm not as happy about it as I could be. Does it help a lot of people? Yes. Are they for the most part people who need and deserve it? That's up to their networks. It's actually kind of nice because I don't have to evaluate and judge each and every crowdfunding opportunity that comes along. The networks for these projects take care of that. I've only contributed to two projects in my life, and only one of them used an online platform. When I see something I dearly wish I had money to contribute toward, I do what I can to give it a little exposure. In the future, I'm hoping to be able to change my giving to sharing ratio. I think too many people outside of indie film get bombarded with fundraising messages with no good context in which to place them. Hopefully that's not happening on mine. I'm contacting people directly. But that's just a starting point. How it takes shape and rolls beyond those I already know is rather mysterious.

But to get back to the division of wealth, one of the strangest things I've observed is this vein of dissonance running through the indie film community over famous people crowdfunding. The argument seems to be that it should be saved for those who need it. Now, that's not laissez-faire, nor is it kind; more importantly, it's not practical. For one thing, famous doesn't automatically connote rich and even if it did, trying to limit someone else's creative potential over a quality based solely on perception, a quality which can dissipate at any moment, is absurd and, to reiterate, unkind. To get to the practical matter of the issue is that pie chart I mentioned. If famous people can help to redistribute that wealth even a little, then that's a good thing. But I would caution people not to have stars in their eyes. If you want to complain about something, complain about campaigns that keep trying to raise funds after they've made their goals. It's classless and an indication you set the wrong goal in the first place.

For that matter, while we're on the subject of greed, please make sure you fundraise what you need. Not "how much you can get." I worry that people think we're all socialists, when it's only socialism to an extent. Just because a filmmaker gives to others' campaigns doesn't mean that filmmaker can expect reciprocity; the same goes with audience for those films. That's capitalism. I worry about people being misled and exploited, thinking that they're buying into a system that's eventually going to pay off for everybody when obviously that has not been and will continue to not necessarily be the case. It pains me to say it, but most of the people I've met in independent film are pretty thickly mired in middle class values. So I guess I also worry about disillusionment.

An online friend of mine stunned me last summer, to give you an example of mild disillusionment. He hadn't really been using Twitter, just Facebook, and it was clear he hadn't done any real research on crowdfunding before he jumped into it to raise money for a production studio. In fact, he pretty much just asked a random question on Facebook about it and I came out far and away in favor of Kickstarter, with good arguments to back that up, and then he used IndieGoGo instead. Like, a couple days later. His campaign was not going well and hadn't ended before he started a second IndieGoGo campaign to raise money for the production studio's first film. Then that started to founder. I emailed him about it and he said that he was surprised that none of his industry contacts were supportive of his venture. This is the part where I should add that he lives in L.A. I tried my best to break it to him gently that I wasn't surprised. I'm a research hound, though, so I was pretty speechless beyond that.

What is the casting process like?

In this crazy, old city, it's a doozy. TOLL ROAD was the first film I'd ever had a formal casting for, and I have to say that it was worth the rigor I put myself through, to do it in a way that I felt would benefit everyone. I diverged from the norm in that I formed relationships with people online during the course of the process. Not so much before the actual audition night; actors are both understandably skittish of saying too much before an audition and busy. But with all the truly good ones who showed up, I was firm friends by the time I had the film cast. I was making solid foundations and inroads for future filmmaking: The 48 Hour Film Project, HOTCAKES, the next one...

Of course, we still had a few absolute loons show up and put on a show. One of them even got my cell number somehow and left me a half dozen messages about us doing lunch. Like we were going to The Palms or something, like I was Dean Martin and she was going to be the newest member of the Rat Pack. And this was after she turned in an audition that left everyone in the room uncomfortable with its craziness -- craziness, mind you, that included playing with my cookies while she was "in character." There were no cookies in the script, not even any food in the script (it's not that kind of film), and she was moving around my cookies right in front of me during the reading. It also seemed vaguely sexual, in a way I can't really put my finger on. We didn't do lunch.

Since then, I've developed a system of getting to know and then writing for specific people. With HOTCAKES, it backfired in two small ways. First, I wrote a waitress role for someone who had never been a waitress. In retrospect, I should have asked if she had; the physicality of it made her feel awkward. Second, the woman I wrote the fortune teller role for moved the week of rehearsals. I had to find a replacement right quick. But you have to be a dedicated actor for me to write you a role. If you're a stand-in, you're not an actor. If you're looking to make a big break in background work, you're deluding yourself and you're probably not an actor. Try an indie film like Kat Loyacano did and get dirty.

How does independent film differ from the mainstream?

The mainstream ones almost always give me a headache. Or worse, an eye ache. The independent ones often do too, but I guess I prefer better odds of seeing something innovative, or possibly even inventive, and definitely less stuffy. I like it when filmmakers put the real back in realism and that usually comes from the indie camp.

You could go back in time and see any classic film being made. Which film would it be and why?

Probably 2001: A Space Odyssey. But only if Kubrick promised not to be cruel to me like he was to Shelley Duvall.

What's your favorite movie quote and why?

Honestly, I don't have one. It's about character, not lines.

What is your opinion on movie remakes?

My initial reaction is always to say that I don't watch them, but I've noticed a trend. If I'm not aware of or haven't seen the original and it looks decent, I watch (3:10 to Yuma). If I've seen the original, and especially if I loved it, chances are no power on this earth could get me to see a remake. The studios put them out to make money in "lean" times, and I try to avoid giving money to studios whenever I can.

What is your opinion on book to movie adaptions?

Wish we saw more of it, but I also think it could use more diversity. Brit lit has had kind of a choke hold on the industry for a while now. If you look at the Oscar contenders and what films really impacted people over the last couple of decades, you'll find British authors quite a bit. I love Atonement, but it would be nice to see a film of that caliber come out of the independent sphere, only from a new point of view. We need subversion, we need to have our taboos and norms pushed at and questioned and challenged to a proper verbal duel. And we need that from the entire world. Which is all part and parcel of being in independent film and not caring much about Hollywood.

Who is the best vaudeville performer of all time?

I don't honestly know; I can only say that my favorite is Charlie Chaplin. I suspect that I would have loved Vaudeville, though. If I had lived in that era, I might have opted to be a classic stage actress. After work, I would've skipped over to the follies to get my turn.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I'd like to invite you and your readers to the online HOTCAKES test screening, going live privately on YouTube on January 28. All you have to do is subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/filmielady

For the online portion, we may rely on comment fields and analytics, but we do reserve the right to track down your email address so that we can send you a questionnaire, should you be so inclined. It's optional, of course. Also --

Thank you very much for electing to maintain a blog like this that opens up artists' worlds to others. And don't forget what I said about how a hobby can turn into a career. Those words may haunt you yet, John Hoff.

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Thank you for doing the interview Jo. I wish you all the best with your Kickstarter campaign.  I was also diagnosed with a learning disability as both a child and recently as an adult.   I agree I think having an obstacle to overcome can be very inspiring and push a person to do their very best work.

SIDENOTE: I heard that Charlie Chaplin once came in 3rd in a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest.