Tobacco Daydreams: An Interview With RENDEZVOUS IN CHICAGO Director Michael Glover Smith

Michael Glover Smith: …I worked at that tobacco shop for 7 years. That’s why there is cigar smoking in two of my movies.

Laura Birnbaum for Film Inquiry: Oh, believe me, I noticed.

We both laugh as we smoke our hand-picked, recently humidor-housed cigars at Big Mike’s Cigar Lounge (formerly known as Cigar King) in Skokie, IL. Even at this early hour, the lounge is somewhat populated. Men gather in groups near the television, lounging in their leather chairs, half-watching highlights of games from the night before, half-engaging in conversations unknown. The thunderstorm outside adds a kind of Third Man-like atmosphere to our environment (as the combination of heavy smoke and pouring rain can do).

Michael Glover Smith – the acclaimed filmmaker, author, professor, critic, (and, dare I say, a damn fine cameo actor) and I have chosen a cozy spot near the storefront window.

Among his many well-deserved accolades, Smith is also a genuinely delightful human being who is sitting down with Film Inquiry to discuss his work, life, and unbridled passion for film. In this conversation, we discuss all three of his feature films – from Cool Apocalypse, to Mercury in Retrograde, and Rendezvous in Chicago – each of which skillfully exploring the many diverse facets of romantic connection and the individual experiences of those who are connected to them.

There is a lot to be learned from Smith. His experience as a filmmaker in Chicago is sufficient enough to warrant sincere inspiration from audiences and actors alike, but as further evidenced in our interview, he is, perhaps above all else, a masterful storyteller. In this interview, we learn more about his southern roots, his deep love for the city of Chicago, and how Elvis Presley may or may not have been involved in his decision to become a film professor.

Origins

First of all, I just want to say that I’m a huge fan of your work.

Michael Glover Smith: Oh, well, thank you!

Of course! I would love to learn more about you. Where did you grow up?

Michael Glover Smith: I’m from Charlotte, North Carolina originally.

Wow! I pegged you as a born-and-raised Chicagoan.

Michael Glover Smith: Well, I’ve lived here since 1993 and have lived here longer than I’ve lived anywhere else. I grew up in North Carolina where I graduated high school at The North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem which had a pretty intense conservatory environment. Attending school there felt a lot like going to college a year early because I lived in a dorm my senior year of high school while I studied acting, and it was actually my pursuit of acting that eventually brought me to Chicago. I came up here to go to DePaul University to study acting, and then, like many people do, transferred from DePaul to Columbia College where I studied film production.

That’s so cool! So, what prompted the transition from acting to film production?

Michael Glover Smith: Well, I have always loved movies. I grew up in the 80s, during the golden era of VHS, and really loved classic films. I kind of educated myself on film history through watching classic Hollywood movies and foreign films. Back then, the prospect of making films did not seem like a viable thing for someone from North Carolina to do. It just seemed like something that people did in Hollywood, which was basically on another planet to me. There weren’t any film schools in my proximity at that time, although now, they have a big film school at the North Carolina School of the Arts where I once attended. Later, when I came up to Chicago, I came up here to study acting, but I was a bad actor.

I don’t know about that. There was that scene in Rendezvous…

Michael Glover Smith: Laughs

LB: You were very convincing! Scowling disapprovingly, cigar in mouth.

Michael Glover Smith: That was my little director cameo, yeah. A lot of people say that I looked very ornery in that scene, you know? Like I looked very pissed off. That makes me feel good because that was the intention, but the cigar was 50% of the performance. It was a crucial prop. But really, I belong behind the camera, not in front of it. I liked acting because I liked movies, and it was a way to be close to that creative world. When I came up here, I found that living in Chicago made me fall much deeper in love with movies. There are so many great theaters here, many of which sadly no longer exist. Back in the 90s, we had The Fine Arts Theater downtown, the Biograph Theater, The Three Penny across the street from the Biograph – all of which were all showing indie films. Because of that, making movies suddenly seemed like something I could do. So, I took some film production classes here at Columbia College, and the rest is history.

Well, Chicago is very lucky to have you.

Michael Glover Smith: Thank you.

Living in Chicago made me fall much deeper in love with movies.

What were some more affecting cinematic experiences you had in those early years in North Carolina and Chicago?

Michael Glover Smith: My earliest memories of falling in love with cinema are probably watching Alfred Hitchc*ck’s films and Spaghetti Westerns like Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and The Ugly when I was about 10 or 11 years old. Those were the films that made me realize what a director was. Prior to that, I was mainly paying attention to acting and story, but when I saw Hitchc*ck and Leone, I realized that what I was responding to was the style of the filmmaking. The Good Bad and the Ugly is such an exuberantly-made film. The music, camera movements, crane shots, extreme close-ups – it’s all so wonderful and fun to watch. I think it’s a perfect film for a child to watch, and Hitchc*ck too. If you want to get kids interested in cinema, 10 years old is not too young for Psycho.

On Teaching

I understand that you’re a film professor here in Chicago. Tell me more about your career as a professor and how you became a teacher.

Michael Glover Smith: From 2001-2003, I attended grad school at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California where I got my master’s degree in film production. It was the worst time to get a master’s in film production because literally everything I shot in college was on film. When I eventually moved back here in 2004, I was in a world where everyone was shooting digitally, so I had to learn a whole new set of tools. I was writing scripts and dreaming about making films, but I didn’t know how to actually do it. So, I got a job at a tobacco shop called Uptown Tobacco in Old Town on the corner of North and Wells.

I was just there a couple weeks ago! Such a great place.

Michael Glover Smith: It’s a legendary cigar shop that has been there since 1962 and was opened by a woman named Diana Silvius. She has since passed away, but she was the first, and for a very long time, the only female tobacco retailer. She was my boss while I was there and was absolutely a pioneer in the field.

She sounds really cool.

Michael Glover Smith: She really was. While I was working there, I was dreaming about making films, but I really didn’t know how to make them. I started teaching non-academic classes in my spare time at Facets Multimedia, R.I.P. Milos Stehlik, who was a great mentor to me. When I was teaching there, they were non-academic classes, so I was just giving a lecture, showing a movie, and leading a discussion afterwards. I was doing it for the fun of it. They paid me virtually nothing, but I loved cinema and I wanted to do something related to it, and by chance, one of the women who was in a class I was teaching on John Ford came up to me after a class period and she asked, “Do you have a master’s degree?” I said, “yes,” so she asked me if I had ever thought of teaching at the college level, to which I replied, “no.” I was so naive at that time that I didn’t even know I could teach with my degree. I thought you needed a PhD. She said, “Well, I teach at Oakton Community College but I’m going to take a semester off because I’m writing a book on Elvis.” She was an Elvis scholar, writing the official Elvis for Dummies book.

That’s awesome!

Michael Glover Smith: She wanted to help the school find someone to teach there for a semester. So when she asked if I wanted to be her replacement, I said, “Yes, absolutely.” From there, I went to Oakton, had an interview with the department chair, got hired, and after teaching one class for one semester, I just fell in love with teaching. Now, I do it full-time and have taught at quite a few schools over the past ten years, but I’m still teaching at Oakton as well as Harper College, another very fine school.

A very fine school indeed.

Michael Glover Smith: Yes. I feel like teaching actually led me back to film production, and film production changed the way I teach. I teach film history and aesthetics from the point of view of a filmmaker, so I place enormous emphasis on film form. I would ask my students, “what is the director doing here,” and, “what are they doing with the camera? And what about the mis-en scene, the sound, the editing, and how do all these things create meaning?”

Talking about those things with my students really inspired me to get back into [film production] and coincidentally, around the same time, the cost of film production was going way down. I actually made my first significant short film immediately after I taught my first semester at Oakton. That film played at festivals and won some awards, so I felt very encouraged. If I had been teaching math or anything else, I don’t think I would be a filmmaker today.

It’s amazing how the act of teaching can be an integral part of the self-education of the teacher.

Michael Glover Smith: Yes, because it’s related! If you’re an artist who teaches, teaching helps you.

 

A relationship is a perfect subject for a narrative because a relationship is a narrative.

Wanderlust

Your most recent film, Rendezvous in Chicago takes place, of course, in Chicago, while your previous film, Mercury in Retrograde, is set in the woods. I’m interested to hear how you go about choosing a location for your stories and how the settings you choose inform the way you approach the process, subjects, and relationships at the center of them.

Michael Glover Smith: Well, after my first film, Cool Apocalypse, I knew that the subject matter was not done with me. There was so much more – I really thought I needed to go deeper. But this time, I wanted to make a film in which the characters were not in an environment where they lived and worked. I wanted to take them out of their everyday environment because, really, I’m fascinated by vacationing. When you go somewhere, it does something to your psyche, especially if you’re in a relationship. It allows you to see your relationship in a new light, and that’s what I wanted to explore with Mercury. When you’re at home, you’re working, and if you’re in a relationship, your partner’s working. It’s very easy to get into a routine of: you work during the day, you come home, you make dinner, you ask your partner, “how was your day, honey?,” you respond, you tell each other what you did, you finish dinner, and you turn on the TV. You get kind of stuck in a rut. It’s easy to allow years to slide by in this kind of routine. Whenever I’ve had revelations about what I should be doing with my life – reflecting on my relationships on my work life, my career as an artist, or about what I need to be doing – those revelations often occur when I’m far from home. I thought it would be fascinating to make a film about couples going on vacation together and having each of them be in different points of a relationship.

Fascinating, indeed!

Michael Glover Smith: So, [in Mercury in Retrograde] you have Peggy and Wyatt, who don’t know each other that well. Then, you have Richard and Isabelle, who have been together for 5 years and are in a terrible relationship. Then, you have Jack and Golda who have been happily together for a decade. So, the question for me was: “how does the process of vacationing affect them as couples?” I thought that would be worth exploring.

So, romantic relationships are at the heart of a lot of your films.

Michael Glover Smith: Yes, all of them, until now.

Ah yes, all until now. We will get into that soon, but before we go there, I would love to hear about what fascinates you about romantic relationship dynamics. What draws you to it?

Michael Glover Smith: Relationships, to me, are a source of endless fascination. The kind of movies I’m interested in watching are always character-driven and not plot-driven. It took me a long time to figure out what kind of movies I wanted to make. I wrote a lot of scripts before I wrote Cool Apocalypse, but I wasn’t proud of them because I was trying to write genre films and films that would have clever plots. I realized that the simpler my films are on a narrative level, the better that is for me as a director. I believe in simple plots but complex characters. To me, that’s the key to how I should be working. I also feel like a relationship is a perfect subject for a narrative because a relationship is a narrative. A relationship has a beginning, middle, and end, all of which gives your film a built in structure. The oldest story in the book is, “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl.” I like to joke that Rendezvous in Chicago is like that but it’s, “boy meets girl, boy asks boy to marry him, girl finds boy in bed with other girl.” So that’s my version of that formula.

Direction

I’m really fascinated by a director’s process, especially because I’m not in front of or behind the camera. I’m sitting in front of the theater screen, experiencing and analyzing what the filmmakers have created. So, to look into how you approach your work as a director is of great interest and curiosity for me. What does directing look and feel like to you? How do you work with your actors to create what you’re after?

Michael Glover Smith: I’ve been very lucky because I’ve been able to work with phenomenal actors. It took me a while to figure out that we have the best actors in the world living right here in Chicago. We have so many theater companies, from Steppenwolf Theater to The Goodman Theater, and I have worked with a lot of people who have graced those stages. But, we also have a thousand storefront theaters, and unfortunately, the theater world and the film world don’t overlap as much as they should. A lot of filmmakers who live here graduate from film school without really learning how to cast their films because that’s not something you’re taught. A lot of people cast their friends or they throw up ads on Craigslist and they don’t want to pay actors, but in reality, the actors should be the only people getting paid. You should always pay your actors.

Absolutely.

Whenever I’ve had revelations about what I should be doing with my life – reflecting on my relationships on my work life, on my career as an artist, or about what I need to be doing – those revelations often occur when I’m far from home.

Michael Glover Smith: With Cool Apocalypse, I was lucky to have a good producer on my team, Clare Kosinski, who works for The Actors’ Equity Association. As a theater nerd, herself, she was essentially the casting director as well as the producer of that film. We held a lot of auditions, and the people we cast could not have been better, including the great Nina Ganet. A week after I cast her, Stephen Cone cast her in Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party, in which she is also phenomenal. She actually shot both of our films at the same time in the Summer of 2014. I worked with her again on Rendezvous in Chicago and I hope to work with her for the rest of my life.

I hope so too.

Michael Glover Smith: Yeah, so it was through the making of Cool Apocalypse that allowed me to make Mercury. Cool Apocalypse was a very modest film and was made for no money, but it was a showcase for actors and I was able to show that to people to raise the money to make Mercury in Retrograde, and that was the first time I was able to cast actors who I’d seen in movies and TV shows. I was a big fan of Najarra Townsend, for example, in the movie Contracted, which is a very well-known horror film distributed by IFC Midnight.

Yes! She was great in that.

Michael Glover Smith: She was. I was also able to cast the great Roxane Mesquida. Have you seen the movie Fat Girl by any chance?

I don’t think I have.

Michael Glover Smith: It’s a French movie from the year 2001, and it’s one of the most disturbing films of all time. I loved her in that. I also loved her in the cult horror film, Rubber, as well as a film called Despite the Night, which came out a couple years ago. I approached the actors through their agents, and they all really liked Cool Apocalypse. I think I sent them Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party as well because, not only did we have the same cinematographer, Jason Chiu, but we also had the same producer, Shane Simmons. So, I was able to pitch Mercury in Retrograde by saying, “imagine the content of Cool Apocalypse but with the production value of Henry Gamble.”

I see that! And the acting that I saw in Mercury in Retrograde was truly amazing. It seemed like everyone on screen went to some really deep places. I felt like they really understood who they were as individuals as well as the role they played in their relationships.

Michael Glover Smith: They did! All the credit goes to them. The actors knew it was a heavy script and that we were going to go into intense psychodrama-territory, but they were up for the challenge. In terms of directing them, I didn’t really do a whole lot. I work with them in advance to talk about who the characters are and the themes I want to explore, but then I give them total freedom to do what they want in terms of finding the character. If you’re a filmmaker or a writer, you need to write characters that actors want to play. Then, you can get great actors who will work on a low-budget movie because they want to challenge themselves, which they all did. All of them.

On that subject, do you have any advice for aspiring filmmakers or film writers?

Michael Glover Smith: If you want to be a director, write your own screenplays. Everybody wants to direct. It’s the oldest cliché that there is, but not everyone who directs can write, and if you do write your own script, you’re a leg up on all the directors who don’t write. Honestly, I think that directing is an extension of writing. If you can write a script, you’re halfway done with the job of making a film because you’ve visualized the movie and have created the blueprint for what you’re going to do. You don’t need to pay a writer to do it for you or find someone to collaborate with. In a way, writing is the hardest part of the process, but it’s also the easiest part because it doesn’t cost anything.

Is writing the most satisfying part of the production process for you?

Michael Glover Smith: Shooting is the most satisfying part of the filmmaking process for me. That’s where the magic happens! I’ve talked to a lot of filmmakers who like pre-production the best, some like post-production the best, which to me, is insanity. For me, it’s all in the shooting. That’s where the fun is. No matter how perfectly-planned your movie is, things are going to arise on set that you could not have anticipated, and when things are better than you dreamed because of what your collaborators are bringing to the table, that’s the best feeling in the world.

On Tap

So, I would love to hear what’s next for you. What do you have coming up?

Michael Glover Smith: I’m shooting a movie in the next year, so I can tell you all about that.

Yes, please do! I’m very excited to hear what you have been working one, and while you fill us in, I’m going to re-light my cigar here.

Michael Glover Smith: Yes, re-light! Laughs — So, my next film is titled, Relative.

It’s a film about family. In some ways it’s similar to what I’ve been doing because it’s a character-driven film and it’s about relationships, but it is primarily about familial relationships within three generations of a family with parent-child and sibling relationships at the focus. Exploring those dynamics is very exciting to me because I haven’t done it before. In a way, it’s easy to make films about romance. I think I can make a movie like Rendezvous in Chicago every year for the rest of my life, but I really wanted to challenge myself, not only with familial relationships, but with older characters as well.

That sounds amazing!

 

Michael Glover Smith: Do you remember the scene at the end of Mercury where the father, Jack Sr., shows up at the end?

Yes I do!

Michael Glover Smith: I loved working with that actor. His name is Andrew Sensenig and he flew in from New York for one day to shoot that cameo. I had seen him in a movie called Upstream Color, which is one of my favorite indie films. He’s incredible in that. So, even though he’s only on screen [in Mercury in Retrograde] for about three minutes, I absolutely love that character. He gives that ‘dorky dad’ speech about wanting to own his own bakery, and while he’s talking, his son is on his cell phone while everyone else is listening. I thought, “there’s a lot more to explore here.”

Wow, yeah, no kidding.

Michael Glover Smith: So, the premise of Relative is that the youngest son in a family of four children is graduating from college, and the parents in the family, who are in retirement age, are throwing a graduation party for their son. It’s about his older siblings coming back home for the party. In some ways, it’s very similar to Mercury in Retrograde. It’s going to have some levity but it’s also going to have some darkness because it’s a very dysfunctional family, but instead of it being about people going away on vacation, it’s about people coming home for a weekend.

That’s an interesting tie back to what we were talking about before regarding location.

Michael Glover Smith: Yes, exactly. So, the family bonds get tested over the weekend. The resentments that characters have toward each other flare up, and of course, other relationships are strengthened over the course of three days.

I am so excited for this!

Michael Glover Smith: I wrote the first draft very fast a few months ago and have been furiously re-writing it ever since. The only actor who I have cast so far is Clare Cooney who will be playing one of the daughters in the family and she’s going to have a very prominent role.

I love Clare Cooney. She’ll do an amazing job with that, I’m sure.

Michael Glover Smith: Yeah, I’m very excited to work with her again because we had a great experience on Rendezvous in Chicago.

Absolutely. I can’t wait to hear more about it as it unfolds. So, where can people see your films?

Michael Glover Smith: Excellent question! All of my films will be available to stream and to purchase as physical media before the year is over. Both Mercury in Retrograde and Rendezvous in Chicago are still playing festivals and indie theaters, but both the festival and theater runs will conclude in the next few months. Mercury in Retrograde is actually going to have its final theatrical premiere next month in L.A., and I’m very excited about that because Roxane is going to be there to do the Q&A alongside me. Immediately after that plays, we are releasing a special edition Blu-Ray through a company called Emphasis Entertainment. That will have some behind the scenes features on it including a very special feature in which Roxane shows you how to make ratatouille.

How fitting!

Michael Glover Smith: She did make the ratatouille that the characters eat in the film, and we filmed her making it for a behind the scenes featurette. There will also be an audio commentary track between myself and the producers. All of that will be available for sale in August, and you can buy it on Amazon. We will also make it available to stream through various streaming platforms, Amazon included.

And then Rendezvous in Chicago is being distributed by Cow Lamp Films which is based right here in Chicago, so I am very excited about that. The filmmaking scene in Chicago is amazing right now, with many great, independent filmmakers such as Joe Swanberg, Stephen Cone, and Alex Thompson putting out great work. There are dozens of filmmakers whose work is not really know beyond the city limits, and I’ve been saying for a while now that we are on the verge of a Chicago new wave. The things that we don’t have here right now – the things that are preventing that from happening – are investors and distributors.

This is my roundabout way of saying that I love Cow Lamp Films because they’re one of the only distributors in town that is focusing on the work of Midwestern filmmakers. Cow Lamp seems to recognize that there’s a void here, and they’re putting out good films like Olympia with McKenzie Chinn, a comedy called Skippers by Aaron Wertheimer that I highly recommend, The View from Tall by the same filmmakers who created The Red Line which is playing on CBS. So, Cow Lamp is going to make Rendezvous in Chicago available to stream along with the release of a special edition DVD after our festival run ends in October.

Way to go, Cow Lamp! It’s wonderful to know that there is a distribution company here like them – a company that recognizes a Midwestern film void, as you said, and are actively using their connections to promote Midwestern filmmakers. Now about Movies in the Parks…

Michael Glover Smith: Yes! On August 27^th, Rendezvous in Chicago will be shown at Margate Park in Chicago! I love Movies in the Parks. A lot of people don’t realize that the Chicago Onscreen: Local Showcase is a film festival attached to Movies in the Parks. They show films in every park in the city, and at the end of the season, Chicago Onscreen shows locally-made films. It’s free to submit your film, and if you get accepted, they show your work under the stars, free and open to the public. Rendezvous in Chicago is my love letter to the city, so who doesn’t want to see that while having a picnic? I will be there on August 27^th along with some of the cast and crew. It’s going to be a great time.

Wonderful! I can’t wait to attend. Thank you so much, Michael. I am really happy that we were able to do this.

Michael Glover Smith: Thank you! This was awesome.

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You can learn more about Chicago’s FREE Movies in the Parks’ showing of Rendezvous in Chicago on August 27th here.

Attend the L.A. premiere with Michael, Roxane, and more of the Mercury in Retrograde cast at Rooftop Cinema Club on August 7th.

Pre-order your copy of Mercury in Retrograde on Amazon here.

Follow Michael Glover Smith to stay up-to-date while his films journey from screen to screen at @whitecitycinema and whitecitycinema.com

All of three of his films will be available for purchase in DVD, Blu-ray, and/or streaming forms by Fall 2019.