Postal interview with Sam Dixon and Adam C. Briggs / A GRAND MOCKERY / SXSW

 

A GRAND MOCKERY is the latest feature from filmmakers Sam Dixon and Adam C. Briggs. It follows Josie, played by Sam Dixon. A man who becomes lost in his psyche and begins to physically deteriorate. Shot on muddy super 8 stock, the film has a dream-like quality unlike anything I have ever seen in Australian film. It plays this Wednesday at SXSW Sydney.

Inspired by a postal club that Adam hosts, Flynn decided to do a postal interview.
Here it is ]: (full transcript also available below)

Adam’s response:

1. How did A Grand Mockery come about? What brought you together as collaborators?
2. You both have a talent for casting from your community. What qualities do you look for when casting and how did you shape their performances?
3. Super-8 film stock is rarely used in feature films. Was there a particular reason you used it for this film?

ADDENDUM:

5. What inspired you to make movies? Are there any films from your youth that still shape you today?

Sam’s response:

1. How did A Grand Mockery come about? What brought you together as collaborators?
2. You both have a talent for casting from your community. What qualities do you look for when casting and how did you shape their performances?

3. Super-8 film stock is rarely used in feature films. Was there a particular reason you used it for this film?

4. Sam, What parts of Josie do you feel is most similar to you today? What is most different?

5. What inspired you to make movies? Are there any films from your youth that still shape you today?

5.  cont. What inspired you to make movies? Are there any films from your youth that still shape you today?

SXSW SYDNEY 2024

Transcript of Interview:

1. How did A Grand Mockery come about? What brought you together as collaborators?Adam:Sam and I knew vaguely knew each other for years, and also came to share a cinematographer, Adrie Watson. When Sam returned to Brisbane from living in VIC and NSW for years we met up. I recall Sam seemed unhingedand restless. At one of our first meetings he described to me that he had recently broken into a church and injured himself and nearly bled to death, and that bow the church was pursuing him for damages. We were both experiencing a moment of creative crisis. Sam was even questioning whether he should continue making films. But as Josie would say “What the fuck else am I gonna to do?’. I believe at this point something  occurred between the landscape of Brisbane, the psychological tissue between it, ourselves, and those around us, and A Grand Mockery emerged as a necessary thing.Sam: I was kind of living a grand mockery anyway. Adam and I had known each other for a number of years and had admired each others work.  We’d spoken of working together at some capacity. Some fruitful conversations combined with the bizarre of life at the time & ‘mockery’ just kind of made itself.
2. You both have a talent for casting from your community. What qualities do you look for when casting and how did you shape their performances?Adam: Me and Sam’s practices were very different – so we had a nice intersection between them. I feel Sam brought more rigour and discipline and I preferred experimental processes I had been honing. This involved my love of casting from the rich social tapestry of the people in my world. A fair few people we also discovered during the writing process by mysterious encounters. This film is forged from the psychological wreckage of our questionable city and it seemed imperative to have people in its guts close to the microphone.Sam: Anyone can be an actor it just depends on the role & the piece whether the performance will be any good or not. For me it goes either two ways. I’m either conjuring up a character & a person I know will come to mind. Or a person I know will spark an idea for a character. You match the essence of a character with the essence of a person and workshop it from there.
3. Super-8 film stock is rarely used in feature films. Was there a particular reason  you used it for this film?Adam: Prior to A Grand Mockery Sam and I had both only used 16mm for our work.Ideas have certain demands, and 16mm or digital seemed disagreeable to this one. The nest we were in in 209/2020 felt Super 8, in a word. Foggy, corrupted, unreliable. Practically this process was difficult, but we trudged ahead, because it was adjured.Adam: ADDENDUM: Walking along Avoca St on the fringes of an empty schoolI found a demolished VHS, of which the above materials were salvaged, and 50m removed, this inverted ritz cracker box. I can imagine A GRAND MOCKERY being discovered in a similar manner in years to come, crushed and rotting in some gutter garden abutting a forlorn school.Sam: We wanted the film to feel kind of like a dream or a memory of a dream you lose upon waking. Super 8 seemed like the right aesthetic decision that was locked in very early in the conception of Mockery. I think it turned out even more surreal than we imagined it would, & I’m happy with that.
4. Sam, What parts of Josie do you feel is most similar to you today? What is most different?Sam: As I said previously, the film is very much inspired by actual events. Josie is kind of a more extreme representation of my inner world at the time. I’d like to think I’ve become slightly less deranged since wearing Josie, but I don’t know – you would have to ask someone who knows me.
   
   
5. What inspired you to make movies? Are there any films from your youth that still shape you today?Adam:I feel like these primordial questions are best left undisturbed. For this film in particular Sam and I were mostly talking about books : The Castle, The Trial, Frankenstein, Dracula, the works of W.G Sebald.Sam: I’ve just always wanted to be a story teller. Film happens to be a medium I feel into., seemed more exciting than writing books & the films of Ingmar Bergman were an enormous influence om my formative years. His entire filmography but I’m particularly fond of his biblical/ existential dread / God is a spider period.

Hope you are keeping well Flynn.