Mix-n-Match Interview: Marcus Rosentrater, Director of "Limo Ride"

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MARCUS ROSENTRATER

MARCUS ROSENTRATER

Complete this sentence: "If you liked _________, you'll like my film." Explain why.
If you like Drunk History, you'll like our movie. Because trying to remember, convey and reenact the truth while intoxicated is funny.

Is your film for dog people or cat people? Why?
Not sure. There are definitely dogs in the movie. Especially at the end. Gideon always said, "this ending is way too adorable to be in our movie." He's probably right.

What’s the most challenging part of making a film for you? Do you enjoy that challenge, or is its something to be avoided?
Movies are not compatible with life. Many times it seems the universe does not want you to make a movie. It wants you to work a job, go home, consume, sleep, and repeat. The process of creating can force you to make choices that let down people, or be unavailable to some when you should have. It sucks. But at the same time, creating a film can bring lots of people together who normally would not connect. Our screening will be a mix of family, friends, and locals not often together. A reunion of sorts.

Of the filmmakers working today, whose talent do you most want to steal?
I want to be just like Alex Orr and Bret Wood.

Name three films you consider to be under-appreciated and explain their hidden genius.
Diseases like this move slowly. It's hard to know when I picked up the bug exactly. For Gideon it was probably from conception. His parents are art geniuses.

Name three films you consider to be under-appreciated and explain their hidden genius.
Lessons of Darkness, Jazz on a Summer's Day, The Red Shoes. You asked which movies I've watched too many times, right?

What are your three favorite ways to eat potatoes, and what’s your favorite dinosaur?
About the potatoes: we'll let you know during the production of our next movie (lots of food stuff). The best dinosaur is Deinonychus. Look it up. Don't believe Steve Spielberg dinosaur propaganda machine.
 

All of our work features heavy narration and a combination of archival footage, animation, and graphics. No talking heads. All but 1 of our films tell Southern stories. We trend towards the line between documentary and narrative. CLANDESTINE is half fact/half fiction with clean breaks between sections. Limo Ride is a little more blurry. Dick-George, Tenn-Tom and Grand Fugue on the art of Gumbo are both straight documentary, and rooted in the South. We are non-fiction filmmakers who grew up saturated by narrative films. We see documentary as needing to be as visually interesting and meaningful as narrative films. In fact, we feel that documentary often has a higher potential to be more radical with the visuals than narrative films. Whether we're successful at it with our own work or not is up to the audience, but that's what we strive for. We're just starting out, have a lot to learn and are planning our next 2 films at this very moment. We are going to Minnesota in August to scout locations and do some exploratory filming.

Here our our previous films: *denotes previously played at Atlanta Film Festival.

The first screening (World Premiere) of "Limo Ride" sold out! Stay tuned for Encore Screening details.