Photo courtesy of Paul McComas
Photo courtesy of Paul McComas
Photo courtesy of Paul McComas
Photo courtesy of Paul McComas
Photo courtesy of Paul McComas
Photo courtesy of Paul McComas
Photo courtesy of Paul McComas
Photo credit: Jim Ziv
Photo courtesy of Paul McComas
Photo courtesy of Paul McComas
Photo courtesy of Paul McComas
Writers have been doing it forever—going back to old manuscripts and revising them. Big name movie directors like George Lucas have also gone back to “improve” old work. Contemporary technology has brought revision work—even decades later—into the hands of indie filmmakers.
Milwaukee expat (and Evanston resident) Paul McComas calls the process Inter-Generational Self-Collaboration” (IGSC) and adds that these ex post facto post-productions often involve “the help of new friends you didn’t have back then.”
The IGSC screening and workshops McComas had scheduled at Woodland Pattern will continue in virtual form. At 7 p.m. Friday, April 17 he will give a virtual presentation of “The Collection,” a short film he made in 1983 and then restored/revised/enhanced in 2019 along with three other, shorter works that he’ll screen beforehand. The shorter films include “Blood of the Wolf Man” and “House of Usher” (made when McComas was 13), “The Tale of Capt. Shaw: A Loch Ness (Mis)adventure” (at age 17) and “Shelter Skelter” (at age 18).
The screening will precede a two-session workshop centered on McComas’s concept of IGSC. Intergenerational Self-Collaboration: A Multi-Arts Workshop with Paul McComas will take place on Sundays, April 19 and May 10 from 1-3:45 p.m. each day. For information on accessing the presentations, visit woodlandpattern.org, or Woodland Pattern’s social media (Instagram and Facebook).
McComas responded to some questions about the project:
Define exactly what you mean by InterGenerational Self-Collaboration?
Nearly all films—and certainly every film I've ever made (or on which I've ever worked as an actor, writer, or in any capacity)—are collaborative. The inherently collaborative nature of cinema is, at once, the medium's greatest strength and its greatest weakness: if every specialist is working at her/his/their best, then the results can be spectacular ... but the “weakest link” dynamic applies as well. IGSC films contain two types of collaboration: the regular kind between the filmmaker and cast/crew, plus the pseudo-collaboration between two people who've inhabited the same body, i.e.: that person’s young and old mind, abilities, and aesthetic sensibilities.
What’s more, these two types of collaboration overlap. In the case of my own restored/revised films, original cast members have returned up to 40 years after the fact to dub their own dialogue and even to act on camera in insert-shots and -scenes (filmed on Super-8; yup, I still shoot it). (Nearly all of the originals, btw, were shot on the inferior and more cumbersome Standard-8.)
I’ve done IGSC in other, more solitary media as well—fiction; songwriting/-recording—with, again, some compelling results.
Other than having the opportunity to fix a technical problem from a film made long ago, is there a reason—aesthetically, philosophically, whatever—for intergenerational collaboration?
Well, the satisfaction derived from that first part—fixing/improving a piece on a technical level (which invariably makes it a better piece on deeper levels, too)—is not to be understated! In my youth, filmmaking saved my life. Bullied daily and often cruelly by some members of the ultraconservative, preppy, conformist student body of 1970s north-suburban Milwaukee, and being a willfully unorthodox boy with a small handful of friends (of whom my two closest—"go-to” cast members Julia and John—were residents, not coincidentally, of more-open parts of Milwaukee proper), I found in filmmaking a place where my work, my aspirations, and I myself were respected, and where I, as writer-director and an actor (often the villain), was in control. I had precious little control at Henry Clay Grade School, or during my first couple of years at Whitefolks Bay High.
But, on set—whether in the P.C. Productions “studios” (my parents’ basement) or, frequently, out on location—I got to call the shots. Looking back on those films, I feel this odd compulsion—as, now, an award-winning indie filmmaker/screenwriter with a Master’s in the field—to re-engage with those movies in order to make them the best versions of themselves that they can be. Maybe I'm trying to caretake or even heal that bullied kid. And the thing is, the crap he suffered and survived back then informed his work; how could it not?—as in, for instance, “Blood of the Wolf Man”—and so was contributive to its power. I see that now.
Beyond all of that, I believe that IGSC—like good collaboration of any kind—yields a piece richer and deeper than either artist could have created on her/his own. In IGSC, ideally, the thrill and sense-of-discovery of the new/young teams up with the experience, wisdom and professionalism of the old, creating something pretty damn special.
What will occur during the workshops?
Having shared, and discussed with the audience, some of my IGSC films at the April 17 screening, I’ll share examples of my literary and musical IGSC pieces, permitting a further discussion that is both medium- and genre-specific: how does IGSC collab in one discipline differ from that in another? Each participant will choose a piece of art—any medium; any genre—that they made in their past, to revisit and with which to re-engage. I call this “meeting your work again for the first time”—a paradox, to be certain, perhaps even an oxymoron, but an expression that makes sense once you're immersed in the process.
In a workshop comprising two long sessions, the first (on Sunday, April 19) will be spent experiencing, understanding, and exploring the possibilities inherent in IGSC. Three weeks later (on Sunday, May 10), participants will bring the fruits of their labors—a new version of their old artpiece—to share and discuss with their peers. Get ready to understand your past, your craft, your artistic potential, and yourself in ways you never dreamed possible!
