Nowhere Fast: Winston DeGiobbi on "Mass for Shut-Ins"

Winston DeGiobbi’s artisanal and anarchic debut is one of the most distinct visions to emerge from recent Canadian independent cinema.
Adam Cook

Winston DeGiobbi's Mass for Shut-Ins (2017) is exclusively showing August 23 – September 22, 2018 on MUBI in most countries in the world as part of the series Canada's Next Generation.

Mass for Shut-Ins

Arriving with an unexpected boom of Nova Scotian inspiration alongside Ashley McKenzie’s Werewolf, Seth Smith’s The Crescent, Cory Bowles’ Black Cop, Winston DeGiobbi’s artisanal and anarchic debut feature is one of the most distinct visions to emerge in a larger movement of recent Canadian independent cinema. Easily likened to Harmony Korine for its on-the-ground in-the-thick of it poverty-grit setting and style, Mass for Shut-Ins, is, refreshingly, a film that seems born directly out its own milieu rather than out of any sort of reverential relationship to cinema. DeGiobbi possesses a sensitivity and skill in taking observations of his surroundings and channeling them into something just bent past realism into a discreet poetry where mundanity and strangeness blur as one. Aside from the simple significance of dwelling in the underclass and letting it express itself, a humanist instinct guides this incisive portrait of a do-nothing, Kay Jay (Charles William McKenzie), in the middle of the depressed nothing-to-do town, living in a co-dependent relationship with his grandfather Loppers (Joey Lee MacLean). Pestered by his older brother, September (Stephen Melanson), and crushing on a girl in an anti-meet-cute subplot, Mass for Shut-Ins is a film about a character going nowhere fast that reaches, against all odds, for the sublime.


NOTEBOOK: Can you talk about New Waterford, Cape Breton and how the film comes out of where you're from? 

WINSTON DEGIOBBI: I wanted to make a film that was very specific to the place I grew up. I can't speak for everyone, but I grew up working class and some of my extended family or people from the neighborhood were having a much harder time. They were very poor and some of it was due to alcoholism. The quality of life was so low, but I'm not interested in exploiting that. I'm more interested in finding the poetry in it. I started to see the poetry in drinking a whole two-liter bottle of Pepsi by yourself. These are just images that have been very familiar to me that I wanted to reflect through the work. The effects of a post-industrial economy was a total afterthought to me. I was compelled by the perspective of surrendering to those conditions. Not once does anybody talk about a plan to leave this place. None of my characters can really see the forest for the trees and some of them revel in it, like September.

NOTEBOOK: How do Cape Bretoners react to the film? Did you think about what audience would see this?

DEGIOBBI: I would show my friends the rough cut and I would get their feedback, and it would feel alien to them but I would imagine a lot of their reaction was because it was painful. I wanted it to feel like you were uncovering something. I wasn't thinking of an audience in particular, I went with my gut and I was hoping that people would see the humor in it, see something. I think it's very important to me that you feel something new, whether the setting is familiar to you or not, it has a texture that's its own thing that I want people to get lost in.

NOTEBOOK: Can you talk about the unconventional structure of the film and the elliptical style? You circumvent typical narrative design or arcs.

DEGIOBBI: I prefer an indirect way of giving you information. I want to keep the viewer as a fly on the wall and you may have to work a little to find your way in, especially with characters like Kay Jay and Loppers, who barely communicate. That being said, I have a 10-minute scene of expositional dialogue between Tracy and Kay Jay when he stumbles on her on this long walk. It feels natural because Tracy Hughes is amazing and she doesn't stop talking. Often I'll take you straight to the essence of a scene, jump into the middle of a conversation or another day which I suppose can make the piece seemed fragmented at times. There wasn’t a script. Once we had casting down, they were so interesting, so I would just walk around and scribble notes and an outline for a scene. It becomes very loose and I leaned into that when I was cutting it. What’s most important is a texture and a tone. This feeling that was consistent through the whole thing.

NOTEBOOK: What you show could be described as mundane and yet the way you show those things imbues them with the strangeness.

DEGIOBBI: I want these moments to feel natural, but it's very important to me that the actors tap into this strange tone. If everyone adheres to the tone, like Herzog says, there’s an ecstatic truth. I wanted to reach for this poetic quality. Like when they’re cradling bottles of pop, in my hometown people stock up on Pepsi if it’s on sale, you know? You fill a closet with it. My uncle purchased a flower vase to drink out of so he could always have the most Pepsi in the house. Those things stick with me, and the poetry in a particular kind of boredom, like when their computer breaks and it’s like the end of the world. What does that look like? How does time move in their apartment? 

NOTEBOOK: When the range of a film is deliberately limited to such small actions or mundane moments, the aesthetics of boredom all of a sudden become interesting. Where you place the camera is quite striking and offsets this normalcy.

DEGIOBBI: I wanted the film itself to feel like it was infected with something, like it has a feverish quality. It needed to feel subjective and I didn't want it to be like cinema vérité. It needs to be stylized and reflect this caged perspective, of not being able to see the forest for the trees and sustaining it for the whole film.

NOTEBOOK: Can you talk about designing the character of Kay Jay?

DEGIOBBI: I feel like we're used to seeing the trust fund kid in a state of arrested development, you know, enabled by their parents. I want to see the other side of the spectrum where the characters are directionless and are living in poverty and the codependency in that setting. I've seen this dynamic firsthand. I would love for Charles to reprise the role someday. He’s a bit of a wallflower. I wanted a character who would go to any extent to do nothing and have people take care of him and he would do whatever he could to get a new computer, to have junk food…very, very simple and empty things. At first it was funny to me, but then it became less and less funny and kind of horrifying as we were shooting it.

NOTEBOOK: He’s so passive and has this lack of ability to communicate—all the characters do to an extent. They can't even seem to really interact with each other in any meaningful way. 

DEGIOBBI: They consume their time and thoughts with those empty things. I feel we come into the film at a transitional time when we're taking one of those things away, the computer. And so we see that they don't communicate with each other. September is a bit different, he revels in it. There’s a resistance to facing reality, the safety of us being so cut off and living in your own little shell.

NOTEBOOK: How do you work with actors?

DEGIOBBI: I was very careful to, to have them not be so self conscious, and just be interested in the moment. I would express a pace and a tone that I'd want them to hit. We'd have a discussion about how the scene may might play out, but we would discover it as we were going. Stephen, who plays September, had done a lot of sketch comedy videos with his friends and he would come in with these ideas for blocking a scene. I began to review footage with him, which is something I didn't do with the other actors, and when he saw footage of how it looked, we worked on stripping the acting away, be in the moment, go to that place and improvise.

I just worked with extended family and friends of extended family, they don't have such a guard up and you're able to have this shorthand. It's important to establish that intimacy and trust. But it can’t get too cozy, I’d take them out into public and do things guerrilla style and get our hearts racing. The anxiety levels are what would help us conjure the results.

NOTEBOOK: Did you show them specific films so they knew what you had in mind?

DEGIOBBI: I would show Charles some stuff. He was staying at my place part of the time. I would encourage him to stay up later and watch something, get him to fall asleep to Sálo The 120 Days of Sodom or Gummo, or The Comedy by Rick Alverson. I wouldn't talk about them or over analyze. I would say, “here, watch this.” I just wanted it to sort of wash over him.

NOTEBOOK: Can you talk about the budget that you worked with and working with those limitations.

DEGIOBBI: We made this for 12 grand through provincial funding. It afforded me more time with my actors. I was able to pay my actors. I started running out of money going into post-production, which was difficult to navigate. Having funding like that was totally new and I hope we have more resources for the next film. I'm more a resource for my first feature. I felt tickled to have funding because I would have made it without any.

NOTEBOOK: Last question, what the heck is going on in Nova Scotia, let alone Canada?

DEGIOBBI: It's funny, I never reflect on this too much. It's just sort of, yeah, it's just all, all of these like-minded filmmakers, and we're just all making films at the same time and we're working with the same sound editor and stuff like that. It's crazy. It was bound to happen I'm glad it’s all coming to fruition at the same time and that all of us can't help but be very individual, you know? That’s what makes a wave great. 

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