DON’T CALL HIM HOLLYWOOD

Battle in Seattle director Stuart Townsend makes an independent film, and don’t you forget it

By Michelle Michael

Will movie star turned director Stuart Townsend be at the SIFF opening of his film Battle In Seattle?

“Fuck yeah” he says.

His film, recreating the historic 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, follows 11 main characters, played by actors like Charlize Theron, Woody Harrelson, Ray Liota, and Michelle Rodriguez. Like any good Hollywood Irishman, Townsend’s generous use of the word “fuck” takes nothing away from his charm, but whatever you do, don’t call him Mr. Hollywood. At least not when it comes to his film.

“It bugs the shit out of me when people say this is a Hollywood movie,” says Townsend, who counts SIFF as the film’s sixth independent film festival. But how independent is a film that cost $7 million to make and employs the glitterati of Academy Award-winner Theron?

The budget isn’t exactly couch change, and the cast isn’t old-friend-from-a-high-school-play-you-paid-in-beer, but Townsend and his production designer Chris August insist the film is about as independent as it gets. Townsend points out, “Look, just because I enlisted A-list actors for my film, doesn’t mean it’s not independent.”

Independence is a virtue in a city proud of its utter lack of phrases like “lets do lunch,” and Townsend knows it. Anticipating the May 22 opening of his film to a Seattle audience, he says, “I’m gonna be fucking terrified.”

But his career has long straddled the fence between Hollywood and grass roots projects. As an actor, Townsend has appeared in two independent films, About Adam (2000) and Shooting Fish (1997). After graduating from the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin in 1994, he and some friends started a theater company, “Ether for Lunch.”

Woody Harrelson (right) as a member of the SPD

Townsend’s apprehension is not for a lack of familiarity with the subject of his film. It all started with a book on globalization, “an idiot’s guide” he says, and an article by Paul Hawken that sucked him in to the story of protesters around the globe. Over a period of a year and a half, he dove into the five-day demonstrations that resulted in the cancellation of the WTO’s annual meeting in 1999.

It might be easy to call a film independent when the director is unheard-of, the film cost nothing, and the acting is “theatrical,” but the word means something altogether different to Townsend. He explains himself in detail, and with a nervous excitement you might not expect from a man who lives-in with Charlize Theron.

He begins with his original plan to hire a writer. “After doing so much research,” he says, ” I realized I was an expert on the subject [of the protests] and a writer would have to just play catch up.” Even though he claims “I am not a writer,” he suffered through four major re-writes to tell it his way.

In addition to directing and writing the screenplay, Townsend also produced the film. He says “I didn’t want to give it to anyone else,” another mark of his independence. His personal views are reflected in the film, and he remarks that while the laws the WTO impose affect every aspect of our lives, the global protest movement was “sort of crushed in light of 9/11.” Townsend is optimistic that the timing for the film is right, now that “we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

“The WTO is a dark homogeneous force,” he says, “a dangerous organization definitely run by a covert agenda, and they don’t favor the labor industry or the environment.”

Andre Benjamin as a WTO protester

Battle in Seattle was shot predominantly in Vancouver over a period of 29 days, rather than Seattle for the cost difference and tax credits given up north. Independent Canadian and some American investors funded the project, but production designer Chris August reinforces the idea that “even though it has a studio look, it was shot on an independent budget.”

Most of the $7 mil was seemingly spent on the all-star cast, including Andre Benjamin (aka Andre 3000) from the band Outkast, and heavyweight production DP Barry Ackroyd. August is “in deep” with the film industry, and knows he brought experience to the project. The illusion of endless resources in the film is a due to August’s creativity, although he later admits there is a certain “spare lusciousness” that is indicative of an independent film, and only being able to capture the single most important moment and say everything with that one shot.

The opening sequence is of protesters rappelling from a crane over an I-5 overpass, unraveling an enormous protest banner that depicts the WTO in opposition to democracy. In order to re-create that historic scene with “no visual effects” budget, August went to work. “We built part of a construction crane and put it on the top floor of a parking garage, and had the actors 200 feet up from the ground.”

“They were only about ten feet off the parking structure, but they still had scared looks on their faces,” he laughs.

The logistical issues that come with a lower budget film were manageable challenges for the Vancouver-based crew, who August calls “some of the best in the world.” Many of August’s aesthetic decisions were based on what was available at the time, and what could be matched closely.

Like a tailor would describe the hemming process, he gets in close to explain how they made 50 extras look like 200. August would narrow the camera’s field of vision by “limiting to the left, then limiting to the right.” He says, “In a Hollywood film, the camera can use all 180 degrees.” Not so for Battle In Seattle, such as when the crew tried to mimic a scene from historical footage, in Vancouver, with only one side of a building to work with.

Battle In Seattle was shot with a Super 16mm camera to match the heavy grained Beta SP original footage of the protest. The film was edited with Avid, a traditional Hollywood tool, and yet two weeks before SIFF, there are no DVD’s.

When asked why the film seemed to be under a shroud of secrecy, Townsend replied with a huff, “Ok, you wanna know the truth? We ran out of money, and we can’t afford to print DVD’s yet.”

Sounding frustrated, he continues, “I wanted you to see the film, but I only have a shitty copy, so I didn’t want to send that one, but we will start printing them next week.”

Director Stuart Townsend

On Screen remembers the WTO protests well, and wondered about a seeming departure from the spirit of the movement in the trailer for Townsend’s film. Where Battle in Seattle appears to feature strong individual leaders rallying the troops to protest, the protesters we remember insisted there could be no leaders, and the movement had to operate purely by consensus and democracy.

Townsend says he fears that will be a “point of contention with Seattle activists who were present at the scene.”

“You know, I know the protests were largely consensus based,” he says. “But I think it’s total bullshit to believe that there weren’t any leaders. There were people who were at ground zero for six months, who knew what was going on. If I had a group of people sitting around a table in discussion, it wouldn’t make for good filmmaking.”

Despite Townsend’s seriousness about the story, he says, “this film is actually funny too.” Woody Harrelson, a well-known Hollywood activist, plays a cop. But according to Townsend, he complained pre-production, “Dude, I wanna play an activist.”

On set, the production crew felt like family, and Townsend recalls a 60-person crew having an all-out snow fight one winter day. But there have been emotional molehills that initially felt like mountains for Townsend. For example, the film was screened for a youth-based group in Austin Texas, and “I thought, oh fuck, how is this going to go,” hoping the best for a film he describes as “about people.”

The screening ended with a standing ovation, something he says keeps happening at the film’s showings. For Townsend, the film was “a chance to put the world of protesters on screen and not portray them the way they usually are in media.” Battle in Seattle begins as a war sequence, and by the end, Townsend says, “fuck, there is so much stuff going on.” The climax scene suggests the question of “why do we hurt each other,” he says, and “shows the world in protest.”

While it turns out that Stuart Townsend is fucking charming, Battle in Seattle may be quite serious.

CREW BOX

Director: Stuart Townsend
Producer: Stuart Townsend and associates
Cinematography: Barry Ackroyd
Editing: Fernando Villena
Production Design: Chris August