Aaron Katz San Francisco, CA 3/12/18
Click here to listen to the interview.
Aaron Katz wanted to bring a different perspective on Hollywood to his neo-noir, GEMINI (spoiler alert: he succeeded). It’s one of the things we discussed when I spoke to him on March 12, 2018. His film finds Jill, the personal assistant to Heather, a rising movie star, caught up in the mystery of just what happened when the gun Jill left with Heather went off. It’s a situation complicated by the fact that Jill comes under suspicion of murder by Detective Ahn, who seems empathetic, but in a world where perception is everything, and the PR machine works to spin the truth like and out of control gyroscope, only a fool would trust what’s on the surface.
Our conversation covered tabloid culture, the fluidity of truth, the irony of how Bud Schulberg’s quintessential Hollywood novel, What Makes Sammy Run?, Is so unfilmable.
We finished up with his inspiration for creating the right soundscape for a contemporary thriller, why Edinburgh is the anti-Hollywood, at least according to Katz, how he fell in love with Los Angeles after moving there in 2012, and the oddball buddy aspect of both GEMINI and of his last film, the emminently charming tale of aging bachelors in Iceland, LAND HO!
The film stars Jill Kirke, Zoe Kravitz, Michelle Forbes, John Cho, James Ransone, Nelson Franklin, and Ricki Lake. Katz directed from his own script, and his previous work includes the endearing buddy film, LAND HO!
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