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Sept. 23, 2011
Close brother-sister bonds
Alex Ross Perry and Carlen Altman have written a solid film.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
Among the films of particular interest in this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival (Sept. 29-Oct. 14) is The Color Wheel, co-starring and co-written by Alex Ross Perry and Carlen Altman; Ross Perry also directs.
In the most simple terms, The Color Wheel is a funny road-trip movie featuring two siblings who don’t get along initially, but come to value each other as their journey progresses. They meet some strange people, reconnect with high school “friends” and experience the best of stereotypical small-town America. But then there’s the part of the synopsis that reads, “Resting uncomfortably somewhere between the solipsistic, unrepressed id of the late Jerry Lewis and the confrontational pseudo-sexual self-loathing of Philip Roth and shot on grainy 16 mm. black and white, evoking the motels, diners and loners of Robert Frank’s America, The Color Wheel is a comedic symphony of disappointment and forgiveness.” In other words, there’s a lot more going on beneath the surface.
The Color Wheel is Ross Perry’s second feature film. His first, Impolex, premièred at the CineVegas Film Festival in 2009 and was the official selection for several festivals that year, as well as the winner of two awards (best foreign film and best foreign actor) at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival. As he does in The Color Wheel, Ross Perry wove humor into an otherwise serious topic in Impolex; in that instance, a U.S. soldier’s “mission to locate and retrieve German rockets and rocket science” after the Second World War.
For her part, Altman is a writer, actor, artist and stand-up comedian; she has her own Judaica jewelry line, called Jewish Rosaries. For her jewelry and comedy endeavors, she was named by Heeb Magazine as one of the Heeb 100 in 2008. In 2009, she was featured for her artwork in Interview Magazine’s New New York Art Scene and, also in 2009, she was in the movie You Wont Miss Me, which premièred at Sundance.
“Carlen has a supporting role in a great film called You Wont Miss Me, directed by Ry Russo-Young, who plays my character’s girlfriend at the beginning and end of The Color Wheel,” Ross Perry told the Independent about how he and Altman came to work together. “It was said that her and I could pass for brother and sister and this more or less allowed me to explore this idea about growing apart from somebody whom you probably had nothing in common with in the first place.
“Carlen really responded to this idea, and was interested in writing it with me, so as to explore a lot of these issues we had both been feeling in the years I suppose you could call our mid-twenties. The two characters argue a lot, so it was very beneficial to have somebody else writing their own dialogue in order to prevent both Colin and J.R. from talking the way I talk and write.”
Neither Ross Perry nor Altman have any siblings. According to her website, Altman “grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with a stand-up comedian as a father and an artist as a mother (and six pet guinea pigs).” Ross Perry grew up in Bryn Mawr, a suburb of Philadelphia.
“I was overweight and unpopular and spent most of my time playing video games or watching movies at home, alone,” he said. “My high school had a cable-access television station in the basement that was broadcast throughout the township. When I was in eighth and ninth grade, there were some guys who had their own weekly comedy show and that seemed cool; and, on the weekends, there was a student-produced news program.
“By 11th grade, it was I who had my own weekly comedy show, with my only friends, and I was a major contributor – and later director – of the weekly news program. I was allowed to stay after school every day of the week until 5 or 5:30, shooting, editing or planning. It was my idea of perfection, so film school seemed like the only way to continue.”
Ross Perry went to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, graduating in 2006. “But really, he got his education working at the legendary video store Kim’s Video in Manhattan,” reads his bio on The Color Wheel website. There, he met several people with whom he would work on his films.
The Color Wheel first screened at the Sarasota Film Festival and was an official selection there, as well as at several other film festivals across the United States. At the Chicago Underground Film Festival, it won best narrative feature. One aspect that sets the movie apart is that it is filmed in black and white. As to why he made that choice, Ross Perry told the Independent, “The most honest and succinct answer is that I saw an exhibition of Robert Frank’s (another heroic Jew!) ‘The Americans’ photograph series about a year before filming and, during discussions with my cinematographer [Sean Williams] about the tone and style of the film, kept coming back to the beauty, simplicity and elegance of his work. The photographs really had everything to do with deciding what The Color Wheel would present itself as, and were a huger inspiration than I can possibly convey. Nothing I ever create will be as timeless or sublime as those photographs.”
Another major influence on the film is, as the synopsis also states, the work of Philip Roth.
“I couldn’t fully explain this even if I tried, but if you have read him, then you know,” said Ross Perry about why he likes Roth’s writing so much and how that preference influenced The Color Wheel. “The best I can offer is that his writing has taught me more about being a Jew, a man and a human than anything else I have ever read or experienced. His insight into the plight of the modern man (or person) defines revelatory when you first discover it, but then there is also humor and pathos and superficial things like explicit sex to hook you, on a titillating level.
“I tried to make a film that honors the spirit of what Roth does with his writing, and to do it in a way that is as personal to me in an exploratory sort of way as his novels feel. And, like Roth, I had hoped that inhabiting the script with risqué elements would interest people, and then I would be able to sucker punch them with a story that, like much of his writing, is really about loneliness and isolation and the problems faced by people who are made to feel that society is forcing them to repress the person they feel they must be.”
The Color Wheel is a very well-written, reasonably well-acted and thought-provoking film that deserves the critical claim it has received. Combined with his first film, it promises a successful career for Ross Perry – that is, if he can find the necessary financing.
“I do not think I will be able to make another film because I have no money and nobody to help me do it,” he told the Independent. “I produced The Color Wheel, as well as my previous feature, Impolex, alone and raised all the money from friends and family. This is horrible and makes things more difficult than they need to be, so, until I am able to find a producer or producers who are interested in helping me make films, I will be inactive.”
Lest you think this (hopefully) temporary setback has dampened Ross Perry’s spirit, when asked about what else he would like to share with Jewish Independent readers, he joked, “I crave validation, so if you come to a screening of The Color Wheel at the Vancouver International Film Festival, it will go a long way towards convincing me that I am not wasting my life. Also, please come if you wish to start a lengthy and intelligent decision about Roth during the Q and A, or if you want to help me make another film. This is my first-ever trip to Canada and I hope it is an excellent one!”
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