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Interview with Sean Price Williams: Collaborating with Alex Ross Perry for "The Color Wheel"

Who: Sean Price Williams, a prolific cinematographer working out of New York.
Body of work: The Color Wheel; Impolex; Kuichisan; Fake It So Real; Somebody Up There Likes Me
Goal of interview: To gain insight into the relationship between director and cinematographer.

Williams has collaborated with Alex Ross Perry on two films now. First with Impolex, and now with The Color Wheel, which was voted the #1 undistributed film of 2011 by both Village Voice and Indiewire. William discusses his process with Perry and how their collaboration shaped The Color Wheel.

Cinema Beans

How did you and Alex Ross Perry meet and come to collaborate?

Sean Price Williams

I worked at Kim's Video on St. Mark’s (New York) for 5 years. Toward the end of my time, Alex was an NYU student looking who came in all the time. To rent and ask about a job. Eventually he was hired on the sales floor. I encouraged it as he was so passionate about movies in a way that was pure and real. Not so long after that, we found ourselves at many of the same screenings of films all over town. We bonded pretty heavily over the weekend screening of Rivette’s Out 1 at MOMI. Sometime around that was when he made his thesis film. I thought it was really terrible and asked him how a guy who sees so many good movies could make one so badly. I think this was the first time he considered collaborating with me. Alex is sort of a sicko. Definitely a deep masochist. I admire that. So we made Impolex, which is a film I will never understand. And I like it quite a bit. 

Cinema Beans

So first step: you read The Color Wheel’s script. Perry said that you ask specific questions that force him to defend his choices in the screenplay. What are you looking for in that initial reading? 

Sean Price Williams

I hate reading scripts. It’s a really wretched format meant for cinema engineers. I am barely literate, and not at all a technician. I have read a couple of really wonderful scripts that I tried to service through camera. It’s always strange how hard it is to remember what you thought a film might be like once it has been shot. The resulting film always replaces my initial conception. Once or twice, I think the film is just as I imagined. But in a way, that seems like a failure. At least a let down. Color Wheel was funny. Though there was a scene which I thought was sort of bad. It very explicitly explained the whole point of the film in words that showed no honest humor. The scene in the film is the worst part for me, by far. Not much of an improvement on the script. Alex is stubborn. I admire that too.

Cinema Beans

What scene was that?

Sean Price Williams

The party scene. I think it still sucks.

Cinema Beans

So now you’re sitting down with Perry and discussing the screenplay. What is the nature of this conversation? And how long does it take? Do you have any specific examples pertaining to The Color Wheel? Perhaps a change you convinced Perry of, or an element he helped you to better understand? 

Sean Price Williams

We sat down one afternoon outside of Lincoln Center and rushed through some important decisions. I hate to spend hours talking about things when I know they will change once we are actually working. But some things have to be discussed. He was really interested in trying out video. He thought that he and Carlen would feel more free to improvise. I told him that it would be a real shame for him to turn his back on film so soon. It really didn’t take any effort to convince him. In fact, it was so easy, that I added another insistence- that we shoot black and white. I had watched dailies for another film I had shot, called Kuichisan, and was so much more thrilled by the black and white footage than the color stuff. Comedy and monochrome have a great history and I thought it would be nice to see if they could still work together.

I also told him not to act in the film. I knew that we would be shooting without playback and that he would be asking me my opinions on performances which is really tough to do when operating sometimes. I didn’t want that responsibility. Nor did I want to scrutinize his face in the camera for three weeks. He is not a careful shaver. He just doesn’t care. I admire that too. 

Cinema Beans

How in-depth is your pre-planning? Like, Perry mentioned Metropolitan as motivation for the party scene. So are you two studying Whit Stillman and determining the shot selection during the initial discussion? Or is it more on-the-fly once on set?

Sean Price Williams

I have never sat through Metropolitan. I saw Barcelona when it came out and thought it was OK. But the VHS cover of Metropolitan was so disgusting that I could never imagine watching the film. The photograph on the cover as I had remembered it was my reference for the party scene. Alex is pretty specific about shots on the set, and they are realistic within our means. Simple, I guess. He isn’t so serious about light, and it is a problem for me in the film. We had two, maybe three lights for most of the shoot. He was sure since the original conception that he wanted a ten-minute shot at the end which would end in the sex scene. He told me to move in for a closeup whenever I felt like it was time. We drank a lot before we shot that scene. We did one take and I just moved in for the closeup just before I felt like my foot would be asleep. We wanted a couple of subtle dolly shots in the film just to make it seem a little more polished perhaps. He built the dolly with a neighbor. The wheels broke off after the third or fourth setup. 

Cinema Beans

Perry said he’s incapable of making a rigid film with “clockwork precision”. The Color Wheel seems to barrel forward at all times, such as the cross-cutting at the party and the rapid-paced dialogue. For me, it just feels like the movie is always heading somewhere, even if I don’t know where that is. How is an atmospheric decision such as this established between the two of you? 

Sean Price Williams

I think the energy was in the script. I imagine he could make a precise film if he had a good crew working with him. He bites off more than he can chew, but he gets all the jobs done in the end. I think he is unlikely to make a precise film because he wouldn’t want to. He is always excited to change something at any stage. He isn’t interested in the film being as he had envisioned. Some things changed in the editing. He was very firm early on that we were making a road movie with almost no driving shots. We allotted about 30 minutes to shoot the driving scenes. It was supposed to be about one minute of screen time. Luckily, I rolled a few times on my own while we were driving to Vermont when I thought the light was nice or when I saw some birds. I was pretty pissed off that he ended up using almost every bit of the driving footage. Some ugly moments in there. 

Cinema Beans

I also got a sense of claustrophobia from The Color Wheel? The inevitability of JR and Colin’s hook-up is constantly hinted at. Obviously through dialogue, but much more so through how they’re awkwardly framed, such as the bathroom scene where JR changes in front of Colin. 

Sean Price Williams

That scene was awkwardly framed because we shot it in one of the smallest post-colonial bathrooms in North America. It was L-shaped and had a mirror. We had to fit Alex, Carlen, me, and Adam, the sound guy. I think he was on the toilet for some of the takes. The shot of her in the mirror is my fave in the whole film. If I made a reel I would include it. I think she looks beautiful and the light is kicking into the lens softening the whole image in a way that reminds me of films I love from long ago. Shooting in real locations can lead to some unusual framing and movement. I enjoy that sometimes and I want to kill myself other times. 

Cinema Beans

My favorite moment of the film was also a shot that made me squirm in my seat, which was when JR dreams up a life for Colin as a teacher. The scene slowly creeps forward as Colin lies next to JR and builds the sexual tension, and then you suddenly lurch forward for a tight shot of their faces. It was an out-of-body experience for me…I think all I could do was grab my head and say, “no no no no no...” But I loved it because it was both a release of sexual frustration and the culmination of what that sense of claustrophobia had been pointing toward. Are you looking to invoke this sort of reaction from the viewer? 

Sean Price Williams

I think Alex would like to trap an audience in a very small room and do whatever he could to make them squirm. And he is probably a little sexually motivated in this desire. He puts two very unlikable characters in your face and then has them kiss. There is something perfect here. It must be a formula studied from horror films. These two lovers are not of this world. Destined only for each other. Is it a romance? 

Cinema Beans 

Perry called you his most essential collaborator, and it seems as though you’ll continue to work together after his first two films. Is a close personal relationship essential for producing the best possible results? 

Sean Price Williams

There are so many great collaborations in the history of cinema that aren’t personal. But I haven’t found myself a part of this legacy. I am almost always very close with the directors I work with. We always become friends if we weren’t already. The relationship between director and cinematographer in films of this scale is really important. Our crew was three to five people, including Alex. We have to make decisions together quickly and it is important that we can feel free to argue our positions. The cast has to be able to know that we are friends and that it’s not a deadly or destructive battle. Our tastes may not always be totally synchronized, but that helps me to try out new things. On a bigger scale project, the purely professional arrangement works as everyone has their specific role and all that planning and pre-production prevents most conflicts. The creative decisions are protected and gifted the director. It’s an interesting relationship always, and is always different. I guess I would be sad if Alex asked someone else to shoot a film even if I didn’t love the story. I would want him to have the right guy for the job, and I would try to be a big man and accept that.

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