Smiley Face... and Gregg Araki

Gregg Araki returns to Sundance with an aptly titled film slated for Saturday night. Featuring the Scary Movie franchise's Anna Faris and actors from the Christopher Guest films, "That '70s Show" and other comic corners of creativity, Smiley Face seems set to expand Araki's earned reputation as a provocateur.

Moving Pictures Magazine: A lot of your films have had dark, lost-in-transition titles: The Doom Generation, Nowhere, Living End, Totally F---ed Up. Is this a new or sarcastic Gregg Araki?
Gregg Araki: (Laughs) After Mysterious Skin, which was my most serious, darkest movie, I was really looking to do something a little lighter. This is a script that I had read a few years back, and I just remember it was really funny, really witty, very truthful and, in a weird way, kinda beautiful. It's a slacker/stoner movie, but it has this other layer to it that I think is really, for lack of a better word, profound.

There was a lot of laughter on the set. The supporting ensemble - John Krasinski, Adam Brody, Michael Hitchcock and Jane Lynch from the Christopher Guest movies - everybody was just so cool and so funny. It was a hard shoot in the sense that it was a very tight schedule [22 days] and a tight budget, day but the vibe on the set was really positive.

The experience of making Mysterious Skin was also a really great experience, but because the material itself was dark and heavy, the vibe on the set was much more studious, like we were doing something very important.

MPM: Mysterious Skin received significant critical recognition, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's performance marked his professional resurgence. What made you want to use him for that role?
Araki: I just really look for people who have that kind of spark. He came in and auditioned for the part and he was just, hands-down, the best person for the role. He was so serious about his work and had so much raw talent... It was just one of those sort of kismet things for the right role and the right actor at the right time.

MPM: How did you come to Anna Faris for Smiley's lead?
Araki: Anna's on the screen, like, every second of the movie, so I was really looking for somebody that you see in movies and you feel they're sort of stealing the movie, and then they leave and you return to the rest of the movie and you get kind of bored.

I remember in Lost in Translation, there was this sort of sunniness to her character. ‘Cause that whole movie is just kinda dark and dour and sort of like stone-faced. [Laughs] And then she comes along and she's just this ray of sunshine in the movie. That's what I wanted for this movie. She was, like, my first and my only choice for the role.

MPM: With your budgets, how do you afford the killer soundtracks with known artists like the Chemical Brothers?
Araki: Nobody's working on the movie because it's a payday. When you don't have a lot of money, you really have to hustle and you have to appeal to the artist on a kind of artist-to-artist level, and that's kind of how I've always gotten the music.

MPM: And it's been 15 years since you were first at Sundance?
Araki: (Laughs) I guess if you want to put it that way.

MPM: It's amazing how much both the festival and you, yourself, must have changed since Living End.
Araki: Well, its interesting ‘cause I talk to my friends and it's like - the titles of the movies change, but what I do on a day-to-day basis doesn't. Today, I have to go to the lab and work on the color and this and that and the other thing... 15 years ago, I was probably doing exactly the same thing.

MPM: Do you have better catering now?
Araki: Not really. (Laughs)