I’m well aware that my career isn’t on the same level as a Gus Van Sant, Harmony Korine or Gaspar Noé and that the Centre Pompidou, BFI and MoMA aren’t exactly racing to play my shit. I mean, I’ve never even been invited to participate in a measly “underground” film festival. So when a total stranger reaches out about showcasing my work I appreciate it immensely. In 2021, Josh Heaps hit me up, out of the blue, about screening all four of my features at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was a PhD candidate in the Cinema Studies department. He even offered to fly me out. I’d had a couple of retrospectives in New York, but never a full one outside of here. I did the math in my head and figured Josh inviting me to his regional film society (the Kino Korner) was as close as I would ever get to feeling like Hitchcock after Henri Langlois invited him to play his films at the Cinémathèque Française, so I said, “Of course,” and hopped on a plane. My weekend there was a blast. Not only was it cool to get to know Josh and his friends, but it was also cool to see that there were students interested in the specific type of zero budget filmmaking that I practice.
Josh and I stayed in touch after the series and he wrote a wonderful essay about my films for the MUBI Notebook. It was the first piece anyone had written about them all together, from Happy Life through Project Space 13. It felt legitimising. After graduation, he moved back home to NYC. One day, not long after returning, he hit me up asking if I wanted to grab a drink. I happily obliged and suggested Bull McCabe’s on St. Marks Place. After a few beers he hit me with the dreaded question no one ever wants to hear, “Can I tell you about this movie I’m writing?” I sat back and prepared for the worst. I don’t mean this as a personal dig, it’s just that this question is usually followed by a long, meandering follow up that can quickly become uncomfortable for both parties. Hearing him out was the least I could do, though, after everything he had done for me. I politely agreed as he proceeded to tell me about a fictitious director named Saturnino Barresi and a young woman’s obsession with him. I loved the story. It sounded exactly like my kind of movie. As an Italian horror fan, a collector of rare media and practitioner of DIY weirdness, it had it all. He then showed me some art he had been working on for it and described his (highly logical) plan of attack for making it. We talked about the highs and lows of indie filmmaking all night. Again, I felt a little bad because I liked everything he was saying so much, but it just didn’t seem likely that he would actually make the thing, since most people never do.
Against all odds, Josh began production on City Wide Fever in 2023. He was even using the same camera we shot my first feature, Happy Life, on, the Sony PD-150. Discovering that he was using it felt like an exotic form of masonry or woodcarving being passed along generationally. I enjoyed chatting and texting with him during this period and when he asked if I would appear in a scene at an authentically grimy porn shop with Larry Fessenden and Douglas Buck, I instantly said yes. What more could an actor want than that? I was extremely impressed with how he handled the whole production. Somewhere around that time he became Paul Schrader’s assistant, too. I was Abel Ferrara’s assistant when I made my first feature. I could relate to a lot of the things he was going through.
Finally, I was invited to a preview screening of the film. Good news: the movie fucking rocks! Josh has made a superb debut film, and he’s done it with style, humor and the right attitude. Not only do I want to congratulate him on it, but I want to thank him immensely. Living vicariously through him during its production helped me get amped about the process again. It made me want to jump back into the trenches. When he asked me to moderate the Q&A for
the world premiere at The Downtown Festival I was already well into shooting my new feature. I’m sure he wanted it to premiere at the New York Film Festival (who doesn’t want that?), but it was the perfect venue and a perfect night. It felt like North Carolina again, only this time I was on the other side of the Q&A. I can’t wait to see his follow up and hopefully write a piece on his larger body of work in the future.
City Wide Fever screens this evening, September 23, at Nitehawk Williamsburg as part of the series “Local Color.” Director Josh Heaps will be in attendance for a Q&A.
