On taking your time and writing yourself into the story
From Charlie Tyrell
VCspotlight is a bi-monthly interview series with the documentary filmmakers and video journalists who comprise our global filmmaking collective.
The work of Torontonian filmmaker Charlie Tyrell is striking in its visual experimentation. His short doc, “My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes,” premiered at Sundance 2018 and was shortlisted for an Academy Award in 2019. The film uses stop-motion and archival images to explore how we reacquaint ourselves with loved ones through the things they leave behind. For Topic, he’s directed “Broken Orchestra,” a creative profile of a Philadelphia-based music project, and “The Book of Dog,” a comedic series on the history of dog breeding. He’s currently writing a feature film adapted from a graphic novel.
Where did you grow up? Where do you live now?
I grew up in Hamilton, Ontario which is about an hour west of Toronto (where I live now).
What was your first-ever job?
When I was in high school, I designed concert posters, but it wasn’t really a job because I didn’t get paid for it. The trade-off was that I could go to shows for free so I got to see a bunch of my favourite bands. I learned a lot about design and layout and you could definitely argue that some of that has slipped its way into my films.
What are you working on now?
I’m writing a feature film and where do I begin — it’s all challenging. I’ve been able to work through it by staying in love with the story (in this case, I’m adapting a graphic novel) and making sure that I’m finding a new and personal way to tell it rather than just translate what’s in the existing book to a script.
The graphic novel is about a high school kid that gets dumped and wakes up as a tree. But ultimately, it’s a story about growth and change, so I have to look back to that time in my life and find ways to make my own experiences (or modified versions of them) work themselves into the story. It’s just my way to make the story more personal and relatable but has gotten me over a lot of hurdles thus far.
What’s a ritual or mantra that’s particularly important to you as a filmmaker?
To take my time. The film industry can be pretty intimidating when there is so much great work coming out every minute and it can be easy to feel like you’re lost in the shuffle. But I try to ignore that feeling and remember that I have a whole lifetime to pursue my work and not to rush. I actually have a lot of side projects that I involve myself with. I have some renovation projects and an older car that needs a bunch of work.
Both MY DEAD DAD’S PORNO TAPES and BROKEN ORCHESTRA use unique and creative visual devices to tell the story. What inspired those choices?
MY DEAD DAD’S PORNO TAPES was a bit more out of necessity than creative choice. There wasn’t very much home movie footage of my dad and I wanted the most unguarded interview answers possible with my siblings and mom so that’s why they’re (secretly) recorded phone calls instead of on-camera interviews. With that, I didn’t have tons of visual content but I had worked with stop motion a few times previously and knew that I had all of these physical objects, so we welcomed the challenge of trying to tell the story mostly through those items.
For BROKEN ORCHESTRA, the idea unfolded as we were making the film. We went down to Philadelphia to film our interviews and knew that we’d figure out the format to feature them later on. But while we were filming in a few different high schools, we had a shared feeling of nostalgia. It was then that we knew that if we told the story by wandering around an empty school, viewers might share the same sense of nostalgia as well — and better relate to the story through their own high school experiences.
What’s your favorite question for an interview subject? How would you answer it?
My last question is always “is there anything that I haven’t asked you that you’d like me to?” and I’ve found some pretty great/surprising responses can come from this question. I can’t say that I can cite a specific response, but I do find that the question almost gives people a kind of a second wind. I’ve conducted interviews where the majority of the recorded footage took place after this question.
My answer would be that for MY DEAD DAD’S PORNO TAPES I worked with my frequent composer Colin Sigor who made this beautiful, electronic organ-based score for the film. Growing up in Ontario, virtually everyone’s basement had one of those old electronic organs. I think it was a thing that was popular in the 50s and a lot of new home owners would just leave them in the basement because they were so heavy and difficult to get out. So since it was an Ontario-based story, Colin chose that instrument as a way to weave in a deep-cut nostalgic bit that happened to work perfectly.
What inspires you?
I’m mainly inspired by creative challenges. I like to take any obstacle and use it as a way to find an inventive way to tell a story. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t but the exploration of the idea is always the best part for me.
