Here Kitty, Kitty: Goliath Q&A
Appeared in Sundance Daily Insider, 2008If you haven’t seen David and Nathan Zellner’s first feature Goliath, this Q&A will make absolutely no sense. But do read on; like the Texan brothers’ delightfully idiosyncratic movies themselves, the sheer weirdness of what was talked about after the screening is funny in and of itself, and will perhaps inspire you to see the film to connect the dots.
Q: What’s with him blowing smoking in the condom?
D. Zellner: He was trying to stop the smoke from getting out in the house. It was a really ridiculous solution… but that was his logic.
Q: What’s up with the pole saw?
D. Zellner: I’d had a fantasy for a long time of using a pole saw, I’d been looking at them at Home Depot for years, and seen greens keepers with them and like, the idea of a spear with a saw seemed really exciting. And we hadn’t seen that in the movies so we thought it would be a lot of fun… That was in our neighborhood and no one even questioned me running around with it. There were people driving by and they didn’t think twice.
Q: Where did the idea for the voice box come from?
N. Zellner: I bought one off of eBay and we had it lying around and that’s why I wanted to use it.
D. Zellner: Oh yeah, it was completely unrelated, it just seemed interesting aesthetically. I kinda liked the way it sounded and I hadn’t seen any films with supporting characters that have dialogue with it, and I thought it would add an interesting dynamic to this character and his vulnerability.
Q: Where did you get the dead cat?
D. Zellner: Well, we didn’t have the budget for a Rick Baker super fake cat, and that scene was kind of the crux for us… So we put a note on Craigslist if anyone had seen any cats alongside the road… and did our own casting call. It just seemed like the best way to do it. It took some time before we found the right one. All we did was drag it off the road and filmed it where it was – we didn’t do anything crazy with it.
Q: More about the pole saw, who’s was the door that you scratched and busted up?
D. Zellner: It’s my girlfriend’s door and she was a great sport. We have yet to replace it. It’s on our To Do List.
Q: I heard a rumor on the internet that someone was willing to pay you a sum of money to change the title. Is that true? And if so, what was the title?
D. Zellner: Uh yeah, before we went into production we were offered a substantially larger budget if we would change the title from Goliath to Pussy Hunter. We thought that was really inappropriate. Terrible.
Q: What job do the guys in the blue jumpsuits do?
D. Zellner: It’s so mysterious isn’t it. I want to know too.
Q: Did you guys make the Nasty Nasty Asian movie he watches on the Internet?
D. Zellner: We could never do anything as remarkable as that piece of filmmaking. To find something that majestic you have to go to the Far East and search the inner web and you’ll find treasures such as that.