Special Report: Heads or Fails

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Ur hey hoax. Welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking with writers directors Harpo Goot and Lenny Good, as well as their composer, Simon Haynes. We are talking about the film Heads or Fails.

It is a Belgian movie, which is strange since we just were talking about Belgian films on the melbur tweet episode. This is a Belgian film that is not a horror movie about a crazy house. This is about an unemployed woman our Monday. She is struggling in Brussels as we all struggle. It's a great character study, really good acting.

Looks fantastic. It's playing at festivals right now. Definitely checking out and I hope you enjoyed this interview. How did you guys get into filmmaking in the first place. Our father did film and since the beginning, since we were charged.

We grew up we were watching a lot of films and when we were little we wanted to do the same. We started with little little camera and we did our film in the living room and then with friends and it grew up from there and then one day we had the money to do a film, so we were lucky. And then the second one with Fix. What's that that mother smucker? Yeah, and it was also in the Fantastic Festival in twenty twenty one.

How was that going from shorts to your first feature film. We love to do films with that money. Just do try a lot of stuff with friends and people we met at the school Film school of theater school, and then we try to do like in Belgium, there's like a found little found to do the first new movie and retuire our chance and by lucky we succeed. So yeah, that's why we do our first feature. So where did the idea for Headzer Fails come from?

The idea came from like we want after a mode of focus. We wanted to explore new stuffs and we had this idea of telling the story of a gambler and like a group, and so we started to write some ideas around this character. We wrote a lot of them and at the end we like choose the best ideas from that and put them all together to make the movie. And that's how Armond got created. And tell me about your thead actress, because she's fantastic.

Her name is Maria Valveson and she's from France, but also she's alf French, alf Peruvian and she did school in Belgium. And as soon as we met her, we knew that it was and we made her read the scripts and started working with her, and she told us some ideas and so we changed some stuff. What were some of the biggest challenges of making this movie. Trying to be real with the emotion because Macas was more of a comedy and absurd comedy, and this one we wanted to tell a story a bit more emotional and to really experience the moments of Almond's life. And so this was the challenge to put this all together and to go full into emotion moments and also filming some stuff.

How did you get involved with these crazy Belgians. This crazy Belgians and me were part of a music making color in France called Fortune Collective, and we were both doing a this is correct, right, every month we would have to write a song based on everybody in the collector would write a song based on a photo. And so we became friends on SoundCloud. And then it just so happens that these two crazy Belgians who are technically Parisians but don't tell anyone, we're looking for music to put in their first film, Mother Smuckers, that they didn't have to pay for. And so they contacted me very kind with a very nice passion, sank, can we use a couple of her songs?

We don't have any money, And naturally I said no, but they did it anyways, now just kidding, of course, it was an honor. I actually don't remember what exactly happened, but. You said, of course, you can use what it wants, and he sent us like all of these music as well, even he's hemming when he was a child. Even like songs of me in the bathtub as lit look kid. And then I watched Mother Schmuckers, but they didn't tell me that the music of mine they used in a sequence that takes place after the credits of the film, like a skit.

So so I watched the whole movie waiting for the music and then it turned it out anyways, and then we met in person for the first time and it turns out that we have a lot of similar interests. So I asked, So then when they started working on heads or Fails and they wanted to do an original score, it seems a totally understandable next step. That's what I mean. Had you done a score for a film before. Yeah, I've been studying or like working on film music for and trying to make that part of a big part of my life for many years.

And the thing that's really I couldn't pass it up about this experience is that they wanted to really do the whole process in a way that's totally not Hollywood and not even New York. And I really involved, which I got very emotionally, became emotionally part of the process of making the film, and you can't pass that up. You know, it's same. But you were talking about the music even before the movie was shot. Yeah, but he doesn't treat French, so we send him the scripts.

That didn't mean anything to me. Yeah, so like that, I'm curious, when did you actually shoot this film? So we shot it last year on April, so we had nine months of editing and post production stuff. That was a lot. So it's like the second time at Fantastic Fest we showed the film to real purple, not our friends and mama.

How did it go over? It was? It went really well. I think it was for us Belgian people. It's crazy.

The scanning room is we can't get in a long position and eat a lot of stuff during the film. So some context for that. You know that the Alamo draft House GOP reclined so far back that it's like lying down. Did you know about that? No?

I did not know that. And there are waiters that it will serve you food during that bad I knew it's fairly decadent. But you were at the screening at the Phantasy Fast I was not. No, I'm up here in Detroit. Was that your premiere?

Second premiere? We had one in France also, but we were concerned that American people will understand the jokes and the story, and it went well. I think we try to work on It's that we love cinema and the feeling, the special feeling we get when we get stuck in the film, like in Little mis Sunshine or we Blash, and so that's why we wanted to try to redo this feeling again, like when the I can't no, I wouldn't say the stuff of the Thinglets we try to do this little moment where we like. How do you guys, as brothers and co creators, how do you dev up the work? I work the day, work the nights.

That's why I'm a little tired. Now that's a my hours. Do you already know what you're working on next? We do have still searching for ideas if you have one. Don't hesitate to textas with ideas.

You've done so many different things over the years, especially with the shorts. What inspires you for actually creating a film? We have lots of We have friends and grady stories around us, and so we try to get those stuffs and put them in movies. And so we watch a lot of movies, so we are inspired by other movies and we try to put all of these with our z poetry and do our own movies. That we try to do stuff that doesn't look like ostus and creates out on.

Something I think that's interesting about Like when I first met them too, I went to their house where they grew up and they have like where they grew up as the entire walls are all covered with DVDs and CDs of mixing film and music from lots of different cultures. And you can tell by their family and the way that they live that they've spent years and years taking in information about film and music and it's and particularly American film music, and it's really soaking it in. But because they're so out of their minds, it all comes out in a totally different way. And I think that the two of them have enough inspiration between them for maybe two more movies. I need to the two and then you're done.

Yeah, I've done. As we say, the film looks fantastic. Can you tell me about your cinematographer. We met this guy, Kinan Massarani, and the same way with Simon. We had a lot of time together to imagine, to figure it out and try to find some stuff we love in the form to accompany the story.

We wanted to be like the it that nothing is free, just in the way we wanted the film to look. So he had many ideas. We met him and we had some ideas and we wanted to try to put them in the movies, and he had many other ideas. So we tried to organize all of these ideas and put them all together. It was like a pink pink pung of idea and we wanted to be the thing, to be dirty and to feel like a row and he was all in for that.

And we had the luck to meet Quinan. Massa Ranich and it was a big sceney five, so he had many movies to show us and he was like, we could do something like this, and that's great working with him. Like I said, it looks wonderful. And then it's so very tightly edited as well. We are working for many ye with a guy named Gil Mule and the other guy named to let A Shook, and they are great editors, and so we like to spend really long time in the editing room and do some pose and then going back to have a new vision.

And so that's what we did because we had many rushes and that's how we say rushes, and so we had to took the time to know the stuff we were working with and to try many different editing and and we came up with this. We could love for a moments the producer said we have to finish it. Bellis, thank you so much for your time today. This is great talking. With you, and thank you so much.

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