CREATIVE CONTROL by Benjamin Dickinson Cast Benjamin Dickinson, Nora Zehetner, Dan Gill, Alexia Rasmussen, Reggie Watts, Paul Manza, Gavin McInnes, Jake Lodwick Crew Director: Benjamin Dickinson Producers: Craig Shilowich, Melody C. Roscher Writers: Benjamin Dickinson & Micah Bloomberg Mark de Pace, Zachary Mortensen Director of Photography: Adam Newport-Berra Production company: Ghost Robot CREATIVE Production Design: John Furgason International Sales: Coproduction Office Costume Design: Gina Correll Casting: Eve Battaglia, Karin Sibrava Music by: Dražen Bošnjak CONTROL Sound Design: Paul Hsu Sound Mixer: Michael Moote Editing: Megan Brooks, Andrew Hasse by Benjamin Dickinson Design, visual effects and animation: Mathematic, Paris 2015, 97 min, black & white, USA Short Synopsis In a near future Brooklyn, an advertising executive uses a new Augmented Reality technology to conduct an illicit affair with his best friend’s girlfriend... or so it seems. Synopsis The setting is New York, 5 minutes in the future. David (writer/director) photographer Wim (Dan Gill) and his sexy girlfriend Sophie (Alexia Benjamin Dickinson) is an overworked, tech-addled advertising execu- Rasmussen) - so he uses the glasses to develop a life-like avatar of her. tive developing a high-profile marketing campaign for a new generation Unwittingly, fantasy and reality begin to blur. As passions escalate and of Augmented Reality glasses. things get increasingly out of hand, David is forced to deal with the impending collision between his public, private and imaginary lives. Feeling stuck in his relationship with yoga teacher Juliette (Zora Zehetner), he envies the charmed life of his best friend, fashion Director’s statement The germ of a film usually comes to me as a single image. CREATIVE My characters occupy a clean, tasteful, gentrified Brooklyn; they play numbed with fast-acting vaporized drugs and his repressed sexual fan- CONTROL began with the image of a couple performing coitus more artists in the business of advertising, fashion and technology, where tasies can be exorcized in the safety of virtual reality; just so long as ferarum in a lofted bedroom. At the height of pleasure, the man pauses desire is manufactured, packaged, and sold for big money. They expe- he doesn’t interrupt the holy dawn of the Brave New World with his to grab his phone and takes a picture of the act. He is not just fucking, rience their lives, each other, from behind screens. Like in the ‘60s messy human emotions, all will be well. Did I mention that CREATIVE he’s watching himself fucking; he is both actor and audience. And of Antonioni, everything looks great but something’s missing. CONTROL is a comedy? course, we the audience are watching him, watching himself… I suppose David is a prisoner in this Google-utopia simply because Benjamin Dickinson he has old-fashioned problems. But there’s a cure: his anxiety can be A conversation with Benjamin Dickinson Who is David, the protagonist in CREATIVE CONTROL, and what is he up paranoia and ambition—he works very hard but he’s not sure exactly against? why. Basically he’s a decent middle-class person who has bought into a system that doesn’t work for him, but he doesn’t know another way. And David is an anxious person who is not in touch with his emotions and rather than being in a relationship with somebody who is challenging doesn’t know how to communicate with his girlfriend. He’s an intel- him, criticizing him and exposing his insecurities—which would lead ligent person but he’s also a drug addict, which escalates during the him to a genuine contact with his actual emotions—he chooses to live film. He doesn’t have any spirituality per se and he’s not familiar with in a fantasy world, in which he can control his experiences. himself. In a twisted way he’s a romantic but he exists in this culture of Like your previous feature FIRST WINTER, you combine serious drama Would you agree that your movies are existential satires? David’s The urban creative class—especially in Brooklyn—is an easy target for These are not happy people. Anxiety is a key theme in this movie. Do you with satirical overtones. Are you poking fun at New York City’s creative downward spiral in this movie is existential to say the least. derision these days, with their expensive condos, yoga classes and tech- think anxiety is inescapable in the digital age? And if yoga isn’t the anti- class, or is this a serious examination of its concerns? nology dependence. What made these people exciting to you as movie dote, what is? Absolutely. As far as I was taught, the father of existentialism was subjects? I’m trying to do both because there’s so much absurdity there. But I’m Kierkegaard, who was a Christian theologian. His essays concern sto- I think anxiety is inevitable for modern humans—it was probably ine- also taking it seriously insofar as the people who make up the Brooklyn ries from the Bible and he sought to re-evaluate the sentimental inter- I think there’s an aspirational quality to that lifestyle, which is why I vitable even for our ancestral early humanoids, but their anxiety was creative class are human beings—they have real pain and grapple with pretation of Christianity—to actually look at the human experience of wanted to make the film beautiful to look at. Basically Brooklyn is a a genetic advantage because it kept them from being eaten by more real love and I have compassion for them. It’s an interesting line to walk. being a Christian. Then 100 years later, Sartre and Camus took i to brand at this point—if you go to Paris, everyone wants to talk about powerful predators. So it’s a fundamental part of being human, but I I could have ramped up the satire in CREATIVE CONTROL, exaggerated the next level of criticizing Western culture, our notions of good and Brooklyn. It’s a lifestyle and a mentality that’s been exported and I think don’t know if there is an antidote or solution to anxiety other than that certain aspects of the advertising world, or made the constant plea- bad, success and failure; they questioned the idea of whether it’s even it’s where most middle-class college graduates want to be because you there has to be an engagement with anxiety rather than distractions sure-seeking aspects of these Brooklynites seem even more absurd. possible to win at life, infusing their confrontation with absurdity as get to sort of be an artist but you also have a very comfortable life style— from it. I actually think a cure is the wrong idea. We have no idea how they went about removing all the sentimental trappings of our cultu- you get to make stuff instead of pushing numbers around like a banker. many people in our culture are taking anti-depressants or anti-anxiety But the choice I made when I wrote the script was to present it very rea- ral assumptions. I think that’s exactly where I’m trying to go with my It’s a world I’m familiar with, having negotiated it for the past fifteen medication—I expect the numbers are higher than we know. This notion listically—my thought was that if I presented the lifestyle of the creative movies. years I’ve spent in New York. I also think these characters have become of treating anxiety rather than engaging with its existential nature class realistically but shot it in a way that encouraged a bit of skepticism almost archetypal in our culture. They’re not heroes, but they’re beco- is something I’m interested in. Maybe ten years ago, in Adbusters then it would make for good comedy. My characters are distilled, but ming almost an everyman at a certain economic level. And theirs is very Magazine, there was a picture of a woman sitting up in bed with her certainly not contrived. much a livable world—but it’s also trouble in paradise. head in her hands and very worried look on her face—it was probably taken from a pharmaceutical ad, and the tag line said BREAKDOWN. You turned the page and it was the exact same photo, but the tag line read BREAKTHROUGH. This for me summed up the best of Adbusters in the way that it argued for shifting the linguistic assumptions and even state where you can start being receptive to reality. You can look at yoga the visual assumption of what life’s all about. If you can’t get up for work as a pill that you take, but to me its true function is to bring you back in because you’re troubled about something—if you can’t make money contact with what’s going on in the here and now. and be a good consumer, is the answer to take a pill that’s been tested for three months? The solution to anxiety, if there is one at all, is to go You pepper your cast with hipster, tech and media luminaries like Reggie deeper into your problems and examine them. Watts Gavin MacInnes, formerly of Vice, and Heems from Das Racist—can you discuss these casting choices, and why you went with real people from And what of yoga? You seem to parody it in both FIRST WINTER and the world you are scrutinizing in CREATIVE CONTROL? CREATIVE CONTROL, but surely there is some truth to its usefulness as a remedy against anxiety? There’s also Jake Lodwick—the guy who invents Augmenta in the movie is the actual guy who invented Vimeo.