Staff Pick Premiere: "Charlotte" by Zach Dorn |
In this Week's Staff Pick Premiere, forgotten folk musician Lena Black discovers her fifty-year-old track "Charlotte" was remade to become a popular pop tune. The film is set in the wake of the song's release, director Zach Dorn explores how the influence of the original song has on Lena and her daughter Diane and her eleven-year-old grandchild, Eli.
In a letter to the singer, Lena writes: "There is something far worse than losing your memory in the first place, which is being misunderstood." The central idea runs through the entire film, as the track's recent popularity reveals the old injuries. In a series of all-but-one conversations - Lena's letter, Diane's phone call, and Eli's tape recording Dorn paints a poignant portrait of a family starting to listen to each other over the sound of music.
When asked about his unique design for the film Dorn said: "I loved the conceit of exploring these relationships but never seeing the families interact. By delivering the story through isolated monologues, I wanted it to feel like the characters were each creating each their own versions of the same song. There are these generational emotional, geographic, and generational gaps, but, hopefully some element at the root of their anxieties will eventually lead to the same melody."
The melody may sound familiar to viewers who've experienced the separation of their families, but "Charlotte" is unlike any other drama for families we've seen on the . With hand-crafted puppets and stop-motion animation, Dorn draws us into their stories, experiences, and imaginations to create an moving journey.
In advance of the release, we reached out to Dorn to learn more about his inspiration, process, and style. Check out the interview to learn more about "Charlotte."
The film's source of inspiration:
"In 2019 I made a puppet show about the world's biggest sponge as well as the popular TV program Gilmore Girls. One day, while picking up some miniature supplies in the fake flower aisle of a Michael's craft shop, Carly Rae's cover of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" came on the loudspeaker. It's a wildly upbeat cover and a wonderful bubbly pop tune, which is odd because Joni Mitchell's original track is complex and mournful. It was an uncanny feeling that I enjoyed this Carly Rae cover so much. To me, the pop song version, despite being more artificial was still full of the emotions from Joni Mitchell's first. I was a bit embarrassed and conflicted at this thought, yet kept imagining Carly Rae Jepsen and Joni Mitchell's versions of "Both Sides Now" as they conversed. This conversation eventually became the basis of "Charlotte ."
When making the script
"I imagined the original"Charlotte "Charlotte" as an radio show, a sort of a Joe Frank voyeuristic drama, with footage of miniature worlds, without puppets. I wrote the lyrics from the perspective of eight characters who all were in a professional or personal relationship that was built around the theme of "Charlotte." Following spending time getting to know them, Diane and Eli felt the most interesting which is why I kept them in the mix along with Lena and the pop star T.Y.M. When I realized this, I spent a lot of hours trying to find out how I could make their tales connect."
The music collaboration:
"When I was writing "Charlotte," I always thought of singer Jenna Caravello in mind. While I was writing the lyrics, I recorded Jenna's fictional Rolling Stone interviews with Lena Black and some of fake diary entries. From this material, Jenna wrote the folk tune.
Jenna's track was sent to Zhenya Golikova, who I connected with online. In 2020, Zhenya covered these voice notes I had written to a friend, silly and silly songs about marshmallows and cats and missing someone who lives in a different country. And later Zhenya changed my lyrics into a stunning ballad. It has that Magnetic Fields sound, as though it was written by the sea by horny sea monkeys.. Jenna's track was sent to her and she had the pop version one few days later ."
on the talk-show program:
"So many female folk musicians from the 1960s and 70s were largely ignored. The likes of Vashti Bunyan, Karen Dalton, Linda Perrhacs, as well as The Roches, were ignored or were pushed aside into categories such as "freak folk," and never taken as seriously as their male counterparts. It's fascinating contradiction in that folk music is associated with modernist ideals but is immersed in a specific kind of subtle sexual sexism.
With these artists in mind, I kept imagining Lena at this strange moment in her career, where in order to stay relevant it would be necessary to engage in the 70s Laurel Canyon lifestyle, party with the right kind of people as well as take the appropriate drugs - a world made and conducted by men. But I don't believe she'd feel up to it. Maybe because she's a mother and maybe she saw Through It All. I'm not sure. However, I was influenced by her sadness - which was spread across an entire lifetime of mourning over the loss of a profession. What happens to her anger? How will the anger play out with her daughter? In thinking about these concerns, I tried to write Lena's interactions with Sam as a prologue towards the relationship she has with her daughter."
On developing his unique visual style:
"In my 20s and early twenties, I trained as a puppeteer, but I was never any good in doing it. I am missing an eighth part of my brain. I'm sure it contributed to a real absence of spatial awareness. The idea of building or manipulating something in three dimensions was impossible. However, I did stumble upon Toy Theater, a type of two-dimensional puppetry once used in the 19th century England. I started making miniature dioramas from matte boards and acrylics these sort of makeshift pop-up books, and I used live-projecting digital cameras within of them as I narrated stories of my landlord or dead dog.
I am obsessed with the specifics of stuff, whether it's the barcode on an Doritos bag or the design of the shape of a McDonald's Happy Meal box. Because of my missing brain, I'm unable to cut in straight lines, or design things in a realistic way. So I'm a bit of a, a sort of mashup of something falling apart and obsessed.
To create the puppets, I collaborated with stop-motion animators Oliver Levine and Lily Windsor for a more grotesque and textural look that matched the film's hand-painted world. Because I created the film during the period of lockdown, we traveled on a long-distance basis, Lily from Chicago, mailing tiny boxes of llamas as well as Oliver dropping head-sculpts off at my front door Burbank .">
On what's next:
"Currently I'm creating a short film on Livia Soprano, the CGI Livia Soprano from the third season of The Sopranos, as well as this genetic defect known as BRCA2. I grew up with an Italian American family filled with various eccentricities and characters, however at the end of my 20s the BRCA2 caused the break-up of these family bonds due to the early deaths of relatives.
In the year 2020, I watched The Sopranos for the first time. Each episode felt like I had a conversations with my family once more. Today, I'm creating an film on this event in which I recreate my home movies in stop-motion , and then analyze Livia Soprano's performance posthumously in connection to my own grieving experiences. ."