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Apr 13, 2016 Web Exclusive By Kyle Mullin

There are no aliens, evil empires or other tired tropes in Benjamin Dickinson’s new sci-fi flick, Creative Control. Instead, the director, co-writer and star’s vision of the future is myopically dystopic: one in which his protagonist dons a pair of glasses, only to lose sight of reality. That’s because said “Augmenta” specs allow him to create a 3D representation of his best friend’s girlfriend that only he, the gadget’s wearer, can see, ogle over and eventually fall in love with. Indeed, the film’s take on tomorrow is cynically satirical—rife with tech addiction, couples driven to dysfunction by those electronics, and the neurotic ad men who shill them. Below, Dickinson tells us about blending fact and fiction for the film’s take on advertising, the pros and cons of being a film’s director and star, and more.

Kyle Mullin [Under the Radar]: You’ve directed ads for Puma and Ford. Did that inspire the scene in Creative Control with the meddling client on the set of commercial shoot?

Benjamin Dickinson: Yes. That scene is basically just a documentary. In short, yes. [Laughs]

How did your advertising career inform Creative Control?

I’ve observed that culture from deep inside of it. But also my cowriter on the script, Micah Bloomberg, has written a lot of plays about the advertising world, and he has an amazing ear for that ad speak.

Micah also constructed the scenes about pharmaceuticals. Our producer, Zachary Mortensen, also has an advertising background. When he read an early draft of the script, he said our lead character, David “wouldn’t only get to do Augmenta, this fun job. He also probably has to do this crappy drug campaign too.” That was such a great note from Zachary, and I thought that would be such a funny B plot. Around that same time I was hanging out in L.A. and noticed everyone had started vaping. Then people started to vape weed. And I thought: “Man, what if these drug companies get the government to approve smokable Xanax, and opiates? What the fuck is the future going to be like?” So I came back to Micah and said: “What if we had David working on a pharmaceutical account where he sells smokable Xanax?” He fucking loved it, and the next day he sent me a rough draft of it. I read it and fucking laughed out loud. So yeah, I had a lot of experience with commercials, but I also sourced material from Micah, Zachary and another producer, Mark De Pace, who are all working in commercials all the time.

Considering the amount of time you’ve all spent in advertising, it must have been fun to bouncing ideas around, and skewer that culture.

Oh God, you can imagine how exciting it is. It’s better than sex, man.

I also wanted to ask you about having Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes and Vimeo co-founder Jake Lodwick costar in the film. How did they offer authentic details about the world of advertising and media?

Well Jake has been a friend for over a decade. And he and I love to talk about futuristic stuff. He actually kind of helped me develop the fake product Augmentia, just through the two of us talking together. He, (costar) Reggie (Watts) and I would talk about augmented reality and what we wanted it to be like. Jake gave me a lot of insight into the tech world that I didn’t know anything about. He helped so much in formulating these ideas that I told him: “You should just play this character, otherwise I’ll just be relaying what you’re telling me to an actor.” And I knew he could do it, he’s a great actor who has made lots of videos that he has performed in himself. I think it’s great when you have real life people play versions of themselves in movies. I always think of Paul Simon in Annie Hall, one of my favorite little roles. I like how as you watch him in the film, you know he’s not this smooth operator who lives in L.A. That’s why it’s so funny to see him play that character, it’s like this inside joke between him and Woody Allen. I really like that.

And with Gavin, I was of course aware of him, because Vice was big in New York in ’99 when I moved here to go to NYU. I remember seeing the first issue everywhere in my dorm and thinking: “What the hell is this?” So I was aware, but it was our casting director who suggested Gavin, and it worked because he epitomises that fast talking male brashness that is so much a part of advertising and tech. It was a great casting decision.

You mentioned Woody Allen a moment ago. I’m curious about your other influences.

I ripped a lot of things off of Woody for this movie. The other two guys are (Michelangelo) Antonioni and (Stanley) Kubrick. I think those influences are pretty self evident in the movie. And there’s a little bit of (Federico) Fellini in there too, but more Antonioni. The long takes, Allen and Kubrick did that too. I took that from them. Thematically the movie is very much aligned with Antonioni’s early 60’s output. And, ya know, the neurotic New Yorker is what Woody Allen embodied. The Kubrick influence is more aesthetic.

I thought of Woody Allen during the scenes between you and Nora Zehetner, who plays your girlfriend Juliette in the film. It was very strong acting on both your parts.

The dinner fight we had, or the final scene?

I was thinking more of the bedroom argument.

Oh yeah. Nora and I found that we were excellent at fighting, from the get go. [Laughs] I think she really figured out how to push my buttons, intuitively. That’s great, that’s what I needed. That scene, if you recall, is one take. I believe the take we used in the movie is take 16, the last one we did.

So by that point your nerves were raw and frayed?

Yeah, we were tired and pissed off, and wanted to get it. And it was one of the looser takes. We went off script in that take, more than in any other one, because we had the blocking so dialled in that it became very flexible and real. So the part where she throws the pillow at me, she just did that for the first time in that take. Then when I threw it back at her and said: “Why don’t you fuck that?” that was improv. And when she said: “It’d be better than you right now,” that was all spontaneous. That’s what’s fun about working with an actor with a lot of craft, like Nora has. She’s able to hit her marks, keep the emotion, and try something new. And it became a real moment. I’m so fortunate to work with someone who has that technique. Because I don’t have it, I’m not a trained actor in that way.

Speaking of which, I read that you didn’t plan on casting yourself as the star. What were the benefits and drawbacks of that decision?

I don’t know if I’d ever do it again. At least not for any character who’s so emotionally rattled. It’s extremely challenging to switch back and forth between the broader analytical practice of directing, and the emotional intuitive practice of acting. It was a schizophrenic experience to say the least. Maybe that gave me some fuel to get into my character’s head. But by the end of the shoot I was in pretty poor health. From that standpoint, it’s not something I’m eager to repeat. But when you have a specific vision of how the character should be played, playing that character yourself means there’s just one less person to explain things to. Maybe in some ways it was a little more efficient. But I suspect if I’d gotten a trained actor, I basically wouldn’t have had to direct him at all, and it would have been a pleasure. But that didn’t happen.

Regarding your very specific vision, the Hollywood Reporter said: “Creative Control looks more expensive than what its limited budget would suggest.” Was there a particular scene that was especially difficult because you didn’t have millions of dollars to pull it off?

The people that bore the brunt of the difficulty were all of the amazing artists who did the effects. It wasn’t difficult for me because I wasn’t the one sitting in front of a computer for hours and hours. But in the scene where David, my character, first creates Sophie, his buddy’s girlfriend (played by Alexia Rasmussen), with Augmenta in his living room, and she straddles him, that’s a complete 3D model of a real person. So that’s just time intensive modelling and rigging. Other scenes, like in the hotel, when Sophie comes up the spiral staircase and appears in color, that’s just frame by frame rotoscope. And there’s no other way to do that shot. So it’s just very time intensive. If I’d had a bigger budget it could have been done more quickly. But that wouldn’t have been better, it just would have been faster.

Comedian Reggie Watts is not only your costar in Creative Control. You and he also recently did a virtual reality short film. What was that experience like?

It’s called Wade, and it premiered at Sundance to much fanfare. It will be available more widely soon. It’s fun, and pretty silly. Much lighter than Creative Control, so watch out for it. It was a pleasure, working with Reggie is always a pleasure. But it was especially a pleasure working with him in a new technological space, in which the aesthetic’s criteria has not yet emerged. I think I just directly quoted Annie Hall. [Laughs] But it was like playing in a sandbox, like being a kid, because there were just no rules.

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www.magpictures.com/creativecontrol