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The Best Film You’ve Never Seen
PHIL LORD on Trent Harris’ The Beaver Trilogy
Friday, September 18, 2009
Interview by Robert K. Elder
Phil Lord, best known for creating the cult animation series Clone High and executive producing TV's How I Met Your Mother with creative partner Chris Miller, makes his feature co-directing debut this week with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Below, he talks about a little-seen, but much beloved film: The Beaver Trilogy.
Rob Elder: How would you describe this film to someone who’s never seen it?
Phil Lord: I've shown the movie to a few people, and I have the most beat-up copy that you've ever seen — like a bootleg of a bootleg of a bootleg, and I just tell them, "There's a movie, it's called The Beaver Trilogy. You have to trust me, I don't want you to know anything, just sit down, commit 80 minutes to it and prepare to be amazed." And I showed the movie to Pam Brady, who wrote the South Park movie and Team America, and with that introduction she was blown away.
The brief synopsis is there's a guy who's testing out a camera in a T.V. station in Salt Lake City and he finds this kid, Groovin' Gary, in a parking lot who claims to be the Rich Little of his hometown. So one thing leads to another and the cameraman follows the kid back to his hometown and the kid puts on this elaborate talent show, which culminates in him doing a really embarrassing Olivia Newton John impression. So it's at once this incredibly funny thing and also really heartbreaking that this kid so badly wants to get into show business. Then, over the course of the next few years, the cameraman remakes this film twice in a fictionalized way: once with Sean Penn and once with Crispin Glover.
RE: How did you stumble upon it?
PL: A childhood friend of mine who was a filmmaker and was making no money and crashed with me. We don't know how it came up in conversation, but he was like, "You’ve never seen The Beaver Trilogy!? Oh my God!" (Laughs) So he like went out to his friend's house that night, got it and brought it back, and sat me down and made me watch it.
To me, it was like a film school education in 80 minutes. You see this moment that's a completely true real moment and then watch it be interpreted in so many different ways by different actors and in different styles. It's a great treatise in storytelling and the different ways you can tell a story just with subtle changes.
RE: What scene closed the deal for you?
PL: I think Gary in the parking lot saying, "I'm kind of a regular Rich Little," was the moment that hooked me, because it's so antiquated in one way. And it shows how hopeless he is, I guess. It's weird. He's hopeful and hopeless at the same time — that's what's incredible about that. The director, Trent Harris, tumbles upon this kid who has no talent but he's obviously compelling enough that he went and made 80 minutes worth of material about him. Do you know what I mean? So he's like a star but he's not a star. I loved that character and wanted to see anything that he did.
RE: It’s timely that we talk about this film now because the subject of the film, Richard LaVon Griffiths, a.k.a. Groovin’ Gary, died this year. What sort of a legacy is this for film?
PL: It's funny that movie reminds me of Grizzly Man a little bit because there's kind of a wise lunatic character in it who's got big dreams — they're both wannabe actors. What's his legacy? I mean, you know, he's got one role. I guess what's great about it is he has this dream to become famous and known and make an impact and share art with the world. And he seems like he's never ever going to get there. By putting him in this movie, Trent Harris basically makes his dream come true in this most crazy, oblique, twisted sort of way. It would be presumptuous to assume that he took some satisfaction, like, "Oh wow, I always had this dream, and look at that, before the end of my life it really came true."
But the impact — that naiveté, the hopefulness, the interest in sharing his creativity — speaks to anybody who makes anything, and there's something really pure about that.
RE: If you would please talk a little bit separately about the performances of the Groovin' Gary character by both Sean Penn in 1981 and then by Crispin Glover in 1985.
PL: Sean Penn does sort of an impression of Gary. It's half mocking, but half a studied personification of the character. And there's something about copying something and repeating it — you're sort of honoring it and emphasizing it. That's what his performance does for me, by doing as faithful an impression as he can. You can tell that he just thinks the guy is hilarious, but there's definitely an edge to it where he really understands the humanity of Gary. Just by reproducing it faithfully, it draws your attention to certain things.
RE: And let’s talk about Crispin Glover.
PL: The Crispin Glover version is really a much more of an original characterization. He kind of takes it in his own direction, whereas Sean Penn I think was just trying to be faithful to the source material. Crispin's role explores more of the inner emotional turmoil of the character. You see the character at home a lot more. You see the character out in the town. There's this scene with Elizabeth Daily in a diner. It’s just a lot more fleshed out. There's a lot more back story.
RE: As you were watching this film, what was your reaction to it?
PL: My jaw was dropping! And it drops to a different level each time, because you know the original Gary is this crazy person, and because I've seen a million crazy people on reality television shows, he kind of fits into that field. They found a weirdo and now they're just kind of exposing his weirdness. But then, I was presented it without knowing that Sean Penn or Crispin Glover were there, so it took me like a good minute into the Sean Penn version to realize that that was Sean Penn. Because he’s soooo young and it's black and white and I have the dinkiest, shittiest copy in the whole world.
RE: Now, the radio show "This American Life" did an episode about this movie. Did you ever hear it?
PL: No, I never heard it. I just found out about it today…
RE: One of the themes of that radio piece is: This character and this filmmaker are both repeating something to get it right. I'm wondering if you, as a filmmaker and as a guy in television, ever fall prey to that instinct?
PL: I see what you're saying. So, in other words, the act of remaking something to try and get it "just so."
RE: Yes. Did it appeal to the George Lucas in you?
PL: Not at all, no, because each of those segments is perfect in its own way.
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Read the entire interview in the forthcoming book The Best Films You’ve Never Seen (Chicago Review Press).
Phil Lord's Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs opens Sept. 18.
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