Q&A with Kemp Baldwin
A conversation with filmmaker Kemp Baldwin on His short film, My House, CarL.
How did you first get into filmmaking?
I wanted to be a novelist when I was growing up. I then realized that novelists don’t make much money unless they are really really good or very, very popular. And chances were that I wasn’t going to be either — see the previous sentence for proof. Plus, I had probably seen way more movies than books. (You see books, right?) So during my junior year of college, I made a shrewd career move and decided to pursue screenwriting. I quickly found out how difficult it was to get anyone to read your stuff — well, at least my stuff — let alone make it. I banged my head against the wall for a number of years before finally deciding to go produce my own stuff. I loved it. Writing and then directing my own projects was everything I wanted out of being a novelist but I also got to hang out and work with some of the funniest, most talented people alive who in turn made my work way better. And it only took five years of directing to realize that my statement about the financial insecurity of novelists also applies to filmmakers — except novels are much cheaper to make. I’m now considering becoming a novelist to fund my filmmaking habit.
What was your creative process for this film?
I was working on a couple of feature ideas that I wanted to write and direct when my parents told me they were going to sell the house I grew up in. I had always wanted to shoot something there and now there was a ticking clock. I dropped the feature ideas to focus on making something at my childhood home. I only had a handful of months to come up with an idea, procrastinate because of self-doubt, write it, rewrite, say, “fuck it, let’s make it”, cast it, scrape together the budget, pull together the best cast and crew, and then head to CT to have long weekend sleepover production party.
To come up with the idea, I spent a weekend at the house writing every good, bad, and dumb idea I had down. I shared four pitches with some friends and My House, Carl won out. It was by far the dumbest idea of the bunch. “What if the walls in the statement ‘If these walls could talk’ could actually talk?” So dumb. But it actually made me laugh out loud, which I took as a good sign. And if I have a style or approach of any kind it’s trying to take a dumb idea and make it good or smart or, if I’m lucky, both.
I tried to pump that potentially terrible idea full of heart and emotion, hoping that if I made the house a real character the audience would fall in love with it and really mourn its loss.
What projects are you working on next, and how can people who are interested best support or follow you.
I’m trying to finish up three low-budget feature scripts and then go out and make one of them next year. One of them also came from my brainstorming for My House, Carl. It has fewer farting houses, which I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.
People can follow me on Instagram at @kempbald, or go to my website.
