Snakes and Ladders (Lucas Haynes interview)
Richard Munro chats to Lucas Haynes ahead of his films screening at the BBBC
Snakes and Ladders
Lucas Haynes, 2023
Richard Munro caught up with Lucas Haynes over the phone, while Haynes was walking around Saigon, to talk about his film Snakes and Ladders ahead of its screening this Thursday 6 June as part of the Buleke-bek Brunswick Bootleg Cinema festival’s (BBBC) wonderful program - more here.
Interview conducted by Richard Munro
The first time I knew of the name Lucas Haynes, was from an email that was sent to all members of the Artist Film Workshop (AFW) collective, just shy of two years ago, talking of a screening happening soonish. I can’t remember exactly what it said, except for the email containing an excessive amount of emojis and words spaced out all over the screen. Attached were a handful of eloquently finger-painted posters coming fresh out of MS paint. In the corner of each was a phone number with the instructions “please call/text for location”. I had only been a member of AFW for less than three months, and at this point the only other name from the collective I really knew was Richard Tuohy.
Deciding to follow the directions on the poster, I received a message back with the address and that “it’s the door with the purple starfish not the restaurant”. Going down a dark alleyway on a Friday night, near the strange stretch of Sydney road where Brunswick morphs into Coburg, I finally came to a battered garage that looked as though no car had left or parked in for at least a decade…
“It’s really spicy, like some very squishy organ looking thing” Lucas tells me, a few seconds after he picks up the phone to be interviewed. He is sitting on a street curb in Saigon having just wandered through one of the nearby food markets. This current sojourn in Vietnam follows Lucas’ residency at the “Cemeti Institute for Art & Society” in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Part 0
Richard: Have you ever been to Saigon before?
Lucas:Yes and no…
… though I would say this is my first conscious time being in Saigon …
Richard: Right … um I’m not going to prod into that more
Lucas: Anything longer than five years in the past doesn’t exist [laughs]
Richard…so I’ve written down some boring film related things we should probably talk about, so I guess my next question is – do you remember the first time you saw a film in a theatre … conscious or otherwise?
Lucas: Yes, Chicken Run - I must’ve seen it six times, each time like incrementally.
So, the first time I went when all the lights went off in the cinema, I freaked out and just left, I couldn’t stand it, I just wanted to leave. And then the next time, I made it to the end of the trailers. And the time after that I made it halfway through the film. Then there was that scary thing in the film where they were cooking the chickens in the pies or something –
Richard: What year was Chicken Run again? How old were you?
Lucas: [longish pause] sorry there’s this super busy intersection. Are you still there?
…what was the question again?
Richard: Back again! Um I think I forgot as well. Hold on – okay, so when you were in school adding up numbers and stuff like that, did you have an idea of wanting to make your own films then?
Lucas: I honestly have no clue [laughs]
Richard: …or did the realisation only come to you after you finished school?
Lucas: I think … I think I’m going to take a photo of this, hold on. Sorry. There’s like a storm that’s just gone through the city and there are these quite nice like floating tiles kind of drifting –
Richard: Floating tiles?
Lucas: Well not floating tiles but like different bits of ground, with different kinds of – and they’re sort of just stuck out and
Richard: Right. True. So, I was talking about when you were like
Lucas: Also my phone is on 5% right now so I might disappear soon
Richard: [laughing] Of course it is, I guess we can unpause this later … I think where I was going was, is a lot of the time you don’t really realise you’re making a film until the film is made. But along that kind of thread – have you ever thought, this is something that is interesting to me and I want to do more of, when was that? When did that kind of spark happen?
Lucas: I don’t know if it’s like a spark necessarily but it’s just a choice. I feel like you just have to choose to do one thing or another thing or this thing or that thing and making films is just the particular thing I’ve chosen to do
Richard: But obviously you’re very passionate about it. And it’s like you’ve put a lot of time and energy into what you’ve made. And so in a sense –
Lucas: Hmmm… maybe… I mean I don’t feel very conscious of making my films and I don’t actually think about making films or being a filmmaker at all really
Richard: No, I think that’s actually a really good headspace to be in
Lucas: It’s just one of those subconscious things where it’s oh … I’ve just made a movie somehow, accidentally
Richard: Definitely, I’ve come across times when I’ve been wanting to try and make things and then being self-conscious about like, is this right? Can I?
Lucas: Though at the same time I don’t want to come across like I was born to be a filmmaker or anything and all that – It’s more kind of just a situationist thing? And also, you know it’s like lots of fun as well.
Richard: It is really fun [laughs]
Lucas: And it’s better than doing something boring
Richard: Something boring … ?
Lucas: Oh, honestly, I don’t even know. I’d much rather be a musician like
Richard: Like a Rockstar?
Lucas: Yeh like a Rockstar, or a painter or pretty much anything else but I’m just really bad at like, all the other things
Richard: …I think there would be thousands of rockstars, painters and rockstar painters who wish they could make films and wouldn’t have a clue where to start
Part 1 (now with Lucas’ phone charging)
Lucas: …I hate interviews. I don’t believe in them.
Richard: Okay, but tell me about the title, what does it mean? Does it have a meaning?
Lucas: I don’t actually know. Rob called me and was like, hey, what do you think about the name “Snakes and Ladders”? And I was like, oh yeah, that’s cool. And then we just called it that.
Richard: And that was that? Were there any other working titles?
Lucas: I think that kind of summed up the creative process where we didn’t really think too much about anything. We just kind of told each other stuff and Rob told me the title is Snakes and Ladders and I said great, call it that.
Richard: When you were shooting footage for the project – I remember at the first screening at LongPlay you kind of described the process as you would shoot some footage and then Rob would put some music together in response and it was kind of like this back and forth. And when you did that, sending the next whatever for Rob to reply to, what did you call the project before it became Snakes and Ladders?
Lucas: Yeah, it kind of – So we basically made the whole film in one month
Richard: Are you serious?! What um…So the whole bit about over three years thing was maybe more or less exaggerated? Where did you even get the money to make it?
Lucas: Well, hmm… how do uh I put this? I’ve found more often than not, money doesn’t make film
Richard: But surely you needed some money?
Lucas: Have you ever tried loading $20 bills into a bolex?
Richard: Is that a recommendation?
Lucas: No don’t do it, the camera will eat the notes and the notes will eat the camera and then you won’t have any money left to eat. See what I mean?
Richard: Ehhh, sort of, yeh sure … I still can’t believe you made the film in a month- It must’ve been a long month…
Lucas: It might have even been quicker, like three weeks maybe, I’m not sure… I sent Rob three minutes of video and then he would send back audio with whatever I sent. And then along with that, he would also send extra audio and then I would shoot footage responding to that. And then extra video on top of that. There would always be a three-minute overlap of silence or three-minute overlap of no-images. And there was no particular order to any of the scenes in the back-and-forth process. And so, we just met up in a hotel room and just arranged the order of all the bits and pieces then and there into one long thing.
Richard: Were there any kind of disagreements throughout any of this? Like if Rob said, I think this would look better if you could film this this way or that way or if you didn’t like the sound of something Rob had sent?
Lucas: We did this the whole entire time –
Richard: …so you were both just like completely on each other’s wavelength?
Lucas: Well, I don’t know. Like he would just send me a dropbox link. And then I would just send one back, and we wouldn’t even say I really like this or I really like that. There was like no discussion at all nearly
Richard: That’s honestly kind of like the ideal way of working
Lucas: Well, it’s one way of working. Sometimes talking gives you energy and sometimes it takes it away…
PALESTINIAN FILMS TO WATCH THIS WEEK
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