Michael M. Bilandic's Project Space 13 is exclusively showing on MUBI in many countries starting December 10, 2021 in the series The New Auteurs, as well as in the series Anarchy in NYC: Michael M. Bilandic's Streetwise Cinema.
I remember seeing Dušan Makavejev’s The Coca-Cola Kid back in the spring of 2020 at Anthology Film Archives in downtown Manhattan. It’s a satirical indictment of unhinged imperialist soft drink distributors wreaking havoc in the Outback. It’s also a pretty dumb romantic comedy starring Eric Roberts in full 1980s yuppie mode. It’s my favorite type of film: humorous, absurdist, yet grappling with serious issues in an entertaining, devil-may-care manner. I had no idea at the time that it would be the last 35mm print I’d see in a theater for well over a year. After the screening a bunch of us went to a bar down the street. There was talk of Cloverfield-looking cell phone videos from China of people dropping dead in the street, bat soup, old people dying in Italy, and potentially nightmarish travel bans. The word was things might close here briefly, but it all seemed highly unlikely. The one thing everyone was certain about, though, was that we were facing a grave and imminent toilet paper shortage. Everyone was stocking up!
As our “two week” lockdown turned into three, and three into four, it became clear that things were not going back to “normal.” My neighborhood, Greenwich Village, completely emptied out. Most of the older, and upwardly mobile, population relocated upstate to roleplay an idyllic Town & Country fantasy. The New York University students all went back home. My good friend, cinematographer Sean Price Williams, shipped out for Europe (every American artiste of note needs a “Paris period,” duh). No one took the subway. The streets were totally dead at all times. The only faces outside were some shadowy figures in hospital gowns who had been kicked out of Bellevue. It was grim. I didn’t see my friends for months. They kept trying to push some heinous new tech called Zoom that magically appeared overnight to replace socializing, on us. It all sucked so much. So I just checked out.
My saving grace was getting word that the Safdie brothers were starting an internet radio station, Elara Radio. I put all my time and effort into creating a hyper-goofy Eurodance themed show for it called Rare Art. I spent literally every hour of every day mining the depths of the internet looking for obscure happy hardcore, technobilly, hi-NRG, and technopera oddities from the 1990s. I’d email tracks and ideas to my co-DJ, Matt Folden, and we’d put them together. Everything else faded away as I obsessed over this spaced out music. Sean had a show. Our composer, Paul Grimstad, had a show. Our editor, Stephen Gurewitz, had one. It became the main way we all communicated. It scratched a creative itch and we all listened to each other’s programs when they aired, always trying to raise the bar. It was honestly a blast, all things considered. However, after a series of unbelievably tragic and horrifying events things took a different turn. The radio station took a hiatus that became more than a hiatus. Protests escalated. Everyone was on edge (or over the edge). Nothing was funny. Everything was political. Living near Washington Square Park, the streets went from empty to packed overnight. Police cars were burned on my corner. Luxury stores, dollar stores, and every other type of store got smashed in. You could find designer clothes strewn about on the sidewalk (though mostly something useless, like one Prada high heel shoe). It was a lot to take in.
I entered a state of not knowing what to do creatively. Right before lockdown I had finished a script about an intellectual “hype house.” It suddenly felt super, super dated. Embarrassingly dated. And not only that, considering all the physical constraints of putting a project like it together, it seemed not doable. But nothing seemed doable. Things from a few months earlier felt like decades earlier. And it was impossible to imagine what a week in the future might look like. I felt awful, because there was so much enthusiasm for that other project, but I knew logistically it couldn’t be made under the current circumstances. So I sat down and tried something else.
In the summer of 2020 I locked myself at my desk and banged out the Project Space 13 script in a few days. I had no outline, no plan, and no agenda other than it would take place in an art gallery with a few actors and one of them would be in a cage. And it would take place in the present day. In the exact moment, in fact. It all just spewed out. It’s a character driven comedy. It’s also an expression of an instant where people, myself included, were mentally on the brink and experiencing extreme anxiety.
We scraped some money together and found an abandoned retail space in Soho to shoot in. There were plenty of empty boutiques at the time. Abel Ferrara, who executive produced my first feature Happy Life, would always advise shooting walking distance from one’s own home, especially when working on a strained budget. The gallery was a ten minute walk from my apartment. We managed to get the whole gang back together. Everyone from the radio were once again together IRL. Sean flew in from Rome, where he was about to shoot Abel’s new one, Zeros and Ones, and we filmed the entire movie in a mere four days. Four totally insane days. In addition, the whole neighborhood was boarded up and locked down, as the election was our final shooting day. No one knew what was going to happen. It was dramatic, cathartic, and the most fun I’ve had in years.
David Cronenberg has said, “As an artist, your responsibility is to be irresponsible.” He doesn’t mean this in a physical sense, as a “citizen” or as a “parent.” We took every conceivable precaution to make sure the set was safe. He means in terms of the material. We tried to have as much fun with it as possible while sticking to a tight schedule. And we didn’t hesitate to get completely stupid either. This was all thanks to our fearless actors. I know it was an immense challenge for them to do so many outrageous pages in a short time period. The thing about taking chances is you never know how it’s going to turn out. I believe that no filmmaker understands what they’ve made until it’s completely finished and screened. This one’s unique in that the world it was finished in is substantially different from the world we all remember. I returned to Anthology Film Archives seventeen months after The Coca-Cola Kid. Only this time I had to wear a mask and show proof of vaccination. No beers were snuck in this time! And instead of enjoying a light, yet subversive, Eric Roberts comedy we watched a punishing 1960s, seizure inducing, structural film of strobing lights, Paul Sharits’s Razor Blades. It was intense! I have no idea where things are going in the world. And I don’t pretend to have any special insights into anything. I do know, however, that it’s a privilege to work with your friends, and a miracle to get your work out there. I hope you enjoy Project Space 13!