Dirty Talk

 
York’s own Matt Johnson is finding much-deserved success with his film The Dirties.
The film premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, where it won the Grand Jury Sparky Award for Feature Narrative. The film had its international premiere at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, and is premiering in Canada at the Toronto After Dark Festival on September 26.
The Dirties is an ambitious first feature from the director, who also co-wrote and starred in the film.
The film depicts the lives of two teenage boys who are victims of bullying; Matt and Owen try to take matters into their own hands as they make a film about their bullies and the revenge they want to take on them.
The Dirties is extremely topical and relevant, and should be seen by high school students as it realistically displays the effects bullying has on Matt and Owen, and the way bullying compels the boys themselves to become violent.
The Dirties handles school shootings, an extremely sensitive topic, in a unique and conversational way. The film has a strong comedic flare, yet still has a lot to say about school violence in a dark and disturbing manner.
The characters of Matt and Owen will stay with the viewer long after the film is over, as they are strikingly real and relatable
Excalibur sat down with director, writer, and star Johnson to discuss his new film, his approach as a filmmaker, and his time at York.
Excalibur: What inspired you to take on the topic of bullying and school shootings in The Dirties?
Matt Johnson: There are two different things. Right away we wanted to make a film about a crazy killer. Josh [Boles, co-writer] and I have always been obsessed with the Columbine killings, because, for our generation, it was such a touchstone.
I’ve always been really interested in school shootings because it’s a thing they never ask kids’ opinions on.
You always get politicians and news anchors.
You never hear young people give their opinion on what school shootings are. That’s why it was interesting to me.
The way it evolved into this story about bullying and mental health is we were trying to make an accurate recreation of what the people in Columbine and other school shootings went through. We stole from home videos of them and things that we read about them.
We had never seen it done in a movie before. Elephant [a 2003 film by Gus Van Sant] is about school shootings but it’s so pathetic how little you actually learn about who those kids are. We wanted to try to be the opposite of that.
E: What kind of reaction are you anticipating to the film? Do you want people to sympathize with the characters? 
MJ: A lot of people will put an intention into this film, that the people who made the movie are very anti-guns or anti-media or anti-bullying, but we didn’t have an intended political message at all.
Even my feelings about these issues, I’m not completely certain of. I know how I feel about media and teenage celebrity, and I think that’s what I was trying to get at: how teenage celebrity infects so many young people who try to become something powerful and something that will make an impact on people, which is what I think happened in Columbine and what I think happens in most of the big young-man-goes-into-a school or any public shooting.
I always think that’s a major part of it that’s never discussed, I certainly think that’s at the heart of this film.
But what I want people to get out of it is nothing other than being with these characters and then talking about how they feel about it.
I think it’s inevitable that a certain type of person would sympathize with what they’re [Matt and Owen] going through, but it was never a trick like, “They’ll think that this guys so cool, and then he’ll kill everybody, and then they’ll feel so bad.” Everybody approaches it differently.
E: Describe your experience as a film student at York and how has it helped shape you as a director.
MJ: I was kind of a goof in film school. I was very much like my character in the movie — that was me to a tee: endlessly optimistic, never thinking of the consequences of anything.
In terms of my experience at York, it was the best.
That’s where I met all my friends, all the people who worked on this movie are York students. This movie wasn’t made out of the school. It was an extension of all the relationships and ideas I had as a film student.
When I was in film school, I was trying to be like regular North-American-style filmmakers. The York style is very narrative. Everything is set up, and it’s all blocked off shots, and my filming of this film was very much a reaction to that philosophy of shooting, where you have to follow the rules and legally clear everything.
I don’t mean this as an insult to film education, but I was so sick of working in that model and trying to be an adult movie set, which is what they teach you in film school.
We wanted to do something where we didn’t get the rights to anything and we lied and cheated and stole everything. We wanted to make a movie that way and see what the result would be because we spent so long in film school doing things the way a professor told us to, which is actually very counter-intuitive to the way a young person would do something creative.
When you’re young, you just do whatever. Why would I care if someone would sue me or if the police come arrest me? It’s just a kid making a movie.
E: Do you have any plans for another fim?
MJ: The next movie we are making is the exact same style except it’s set in the 1960s. It’s a secret movie.
It’s about the CIA and the moon landing, about the documentary the CIA made. I’m in it, and Owen is in it, and we play ourselves. Formally, it’s identical.
E: Is that your style?
MJ: That’s the way I want to make movies that star me as a maniacal filmmaker.
It’s my style in as much it’s a cheap way to make compelling stories. You can use so many narrative shortcuts. The grammar of film audiences is getting very refined because of reality television. You can do stuff like what The Office did or what Borat did, where explicative scenes don’t seem like explicit scenes. It doesn’t seem like you’re holding the audiences hand because they’re involved in the process.
In The Dirties, Matt includes the audience in his own creative process, and he shows you himself making the movie, which is interesting on one level because I get to see this kid watch a movie that I’m watching.
It’s also very easy to jump through story beats because the character is in control of everything. It’s a lot easier to tell simpler stories because you don’t have to be so artful in how you do it.
It means you can pay more attention to the pacing and verve of a scene because the expectation is taken care of.
Adriana Floridia
Contributor