Comedy and Harmony

GO: Aren’t all your movies comedies?


HK: Yeah, I mean, I find them way more funny than I do tragic. I mean, I always think that they’re always more comedic than probably anything.

GO: Some of them have really tragic and dark elements, but it always seems to be kind of at a distance a little bit.

HK: Yeah, it’s hard to say, because for me I think certain things are funny that obviously other people don’t. I always think I’m wrong about the reactions from audiences. I always think something is going to play a certain way and it’s usually much different than the way it’s conceived. Which is kind of interesting because I kind of like that too. But I’m always thinking like this movie will play in the shopping malls, or that it’ll be like the most commercial thing… I never really thought of myself as an independent filmmaker, whatever that is. I always thought I was trying to make films more commercial or more mainstream. I wanted to be a commercial director, but I guess I just didn’t understand the public’s taste. Even with Trash Humpers I thought maybe it would be the type of film that Miley Cyrus or something would like, you know, or like the Jonas Brothers. I could imagine them watching it and getting behind it, but then you show it to other people and they say that’s not the case. So it’s hard for me to gauge.

GO: When I worked on Downtown 81 we would screen a cut of it, and from audience to audience people would laugh at completely different places…never the same pattern. It’s very hard to predict.

HK: Yeah, you never know. I’ve never really done test screening so usually when I’m close I’ll show it to some friends. More like pacing issues and things, but I’ve never really done test screening so pretty much when a movie premieres is the first time I’ve seen it with a real audience.

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