Indie Interviews #8: Justin D. Hilliard
Continued

FC: So that is a personal part of the story, the Narcissus segment, it is very personal to you?
JH: Narcissus is pretty much as close to a documentary or reality that I could get. There are still some things that are different within the story because this is still a film. The basis is still a screenplay, but all the situations that connect to all the different stories are all based on something that happened in real life that is connected to Narcissus.

FC: Did I catch a glimpse of you in the Narcissus segment? Where you were interweaving a shot of you with another woman? Did I make a mistake or was that you?
JH: You are actually correct. There are a lot of hidden images in Narcissus and there is a lot of behind the scenes footage from filming the other segments, a lot of small clips within Narcissus. The clip that you caught that kind of holds for just a second longer than some of the others, what you are seeing is me and my ex. For the audio in Narcissus I actually on the third meeting in London…I asked her if I could bring over a camera to record some audio because I wanted to do this voiceover. So I took over the script for Narcissus of all these things that were still fresh and we had a nice dinner, sat down, and recorded the audio. That is what you hear. That's the voiceover for Narcissus is us repeating these painful things that had happened to us, though it was also something that was very cathartic for both of us. I walked out of there and felt like I had something quite special and real that I hadn't seen in a film or felt before.

FC: In my review of the film, I say, “If Wednesday had one fault it's that I’m not left remembering those things, the things that should have made me love the film.” That’s not negative criticism, it's just saying that there is this sudden, surprising change, but it works as a stream of consciousness type thing. Did you see it as a problem when you were writing it? Did you see it as possibly distracting from the other stories you were writing too?
JH: You had these segments and you have the hell, the purgatory and the heaven and they all have their ending whether it is redemption or they are stuck in hell or whatever happens. So when it came to deciding how to put in Narcissus it had to be abrupt like it kind of was in real life for the fact that we are working on Lyrics and I wasn't personally attached to that segment at all. I mean that it had almost no personal influence. Literally as the film falls apart so does Lyrics on screen. It's supposed to be abrupt. That's what's interesting because so many people relate to different segments in the film but forget a lot of that once Narcissus arrives. So on the second viewing, they go back and remember these other characters. The reason it's there is because every emotion that you felt for these past segments whether good or bad, is slammed into this one character. I think that if it was not as abrupt, it would be too long and I think that if you are automatically slammed into this one character it does involve you. That kind of shake up does force the viewer to be more involved

FC: I completely agree with that statement. That is one of statements I make too, to be a cliché as possible, that it brings it all together.
JH: It takes the entire cinematic story, these film elements and sure it takes the attention off of them, but it focuses on what the whole film is saying. If you have to revisit it, then there are other things that will connect even more and those segments can come across stronger.

Indie Interviews #8: Justin D. Hilliard...continues here