Q&A: Elgin James (“Little Birds”), Part 4
Recently I had the opportunity to interview Elgin James who wrote and directed his debut movie Little Birds. Here is some background:
Elgin James’ first screenplay, “Little Birds,” was accepted into both the Sundance Screenwriters Lab and the Sundance Directors Lab. In 2009, James was awarded a Time Fellowship Grant as well as an Annenberg Feature Film Fellow Grant. He was recently named as one of Ioncinema.com’s “American New Wave 25,” in addition to being selected as one of Variety’s 2011 “Directors to Watch.”
Homeless as a teenager, James was a fixture in Boston’s hardcore punk scene, founding a national street gang that targeted neo-Nazi skinheads and robbed drug dealers to give the money to charity. After years in that lifestyle, James renounced violence and relocated to Los Angeles.
“Little Birds” marks his feature film directorial debut.
Here is Part 4 of my conversation with Elgin:
SM: Talking about autobiography here, you’ve got these two primary environments in Little Birds. You’ve got the Salton Sea. You’ve got LA. Can you talk about what that meant to you, those two places, thematically? What did Salton Sea represent and what did LA represent to you?
EJ: Totally. I’d grown up in a small farm town, like a small, rural New England farm town and it looked nothing like the Salton Sea, but that’s like how it felt to me… dead, arid, and dry with no life. I felt like Lily; I felt too big for it. I felt like I was on fire. I was into punk rock at the time, and I’m like eleven, twelve years old, and with this stupid Mohawk that I had my poor mom shave into my head. I’m surrounded by like cows, and pigs, and sheep. All I craved was concrete. I craved the city, even when I was like nine or ten listening to Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen and hearing about knife fights, and the city, and the shore and all of these things in my imagination. That’s a life that I wanted, and then you go up and you get that life, and it chews you up and spits you out. I was really the Lily character and that’s why we go for LA. I tried to write it and then also shoot Salton Sea still with colors. The Salton Sea is very warm because it’s home. I didn’t know what I had until it was gone, and that’s where the Alison character comes in of just like… I wish I’d known what I had at the time, instead of being so obsessed with what I was missing and what I wasn’t getting. Even in my household, that’s one thing that Robert Redford set out for me or broke down for me is like… I was so obsessed with what I didn’t get from my father or my father’s shortcomings and the abuse… that I missed how strong, and quiet, and beautiful life my mom lived throughout. That’s really where the Alison character came from. The Salton Sea is basically my small town in New England and LA is supposed to represent Boston and the world.
SM: Here it is, this story that you instinctively came to, and it does have that Hero’s Journey arc, doesn’t it? It starts off in the ordinary world, goes off into this extraordinary world of adventure, and the characters… not to reduce it… but they learn something. They go through these experiences, these challenges, right?
EJ: Right. That’s so funny because I hadn’t read that until late, but you’re totally right. That’s what it comes down to. 10,000 stories or whatever the number was that we’ve had in our lives. It becomes our own language and our blueprint. That’s so funny. That’s interesting. It’s totally true.
SM: Well, Joseph Campbell was a smart guy.
EJ: Sure was.
Here is Part 1.
Here is Part 2.
Here is Part 3.
Here is the movie’s website.
Little Birds debuted in NYC on August 29th. It screens for the first time in LA on September 14th.
Thanks to one of my former UNC students Ariel Butters for setting the interview into motion. Ariel has been working with Electric City Entertainment, one of the producing outfits involved with Little Birds.
Thanks as well to Black List intern Justin Kremer for handling the transcription of the interview and turning it around as quickly as he did.
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