Israeli born Alma Har’el began her career in places such as New York and London, making live performance video art and music videos for bands. Having been inspired by the location for a music band’s shoot, she decided to film the residents in an unorthodox documentary, which shows the protagonists telling some of their story through the medium of dance.
Talking to View’s Matthew Turner about working on the project, she spoke about how she encountered her three main characters: Benny, the bipolar child of neglectful but loving parents, who spent time in prison for suspected terrorism; Red, an old man, separated from his family and living a nomadic life in his trailer, having left home at the age of 13; and CeeJay, a young man desperate to escape the same fate as his cousin, who was shot in a gang-style killing in LA, who came to Bombay Beach to try and win a football scholarship to college.
How did the project come about, first of all?
I'd had this idea to do a film that's a documentary that has dance sequences in it, almost like a year before. It sort of came out of this feeling that I had that I very much love dance, even though I'm no dance expert. It's not like I go to a lot of ballet or dance shows or stuff like that. I just really like certain modern dance. Over the years I'm learning what I like about it but I can hardly even name any choreographers. But it has this story-telling quality that allows you to explore certain inner emotions and themes that aren't necessarily verbal. And I thought to myself, 'I work with dance in music videos and I always get so moved by seeing the dancers, what if I knew their lives and I cared about them as people when they danced, but they weren't dancers?' Like, the movie wasn't driven by a dance theme. So I just had that in my head for a long time without being very active about it but then when I came to Bombay Beach, it just [hit me], like that and I immediately thought I should do it.
I just had a camera in my car and I said, 'Hey, do you want to be in this music video?'
How did that come about?
I was basically doing a music video for this band Beirut, that was this really amazing. We were in Coachella, the music festival, and I went to look for a location, because I wanted to do sort of a backstory in the music video. And a friend of mine took me to the Salton Sea and he said, “I think you're really going to like it. It's very desolate and surreal and I know you like those kinds of places.” So we got there and the first place we landed was on the Bombay Beach marina and it was so haunting and just makes you feel immediately so much. I didn't even know the history, but it's like your own mortality. And at the same you're admiring this beautiful sunset while standing on fish bones, you know? You just feel so – actually alive, in a certain way, because it's not what you expect that does involve beauty and death and all these things.
And I had to come back the day after and I met Benny and Mike on the beach. And the first time I met them, I started filming them. I just had a camera in my car and I said, 'Hey, do you want to be in this music video?' and I filmed them. And then I met their parents when we finished filming, and they told me their story and then I went and finished that music video, and I wanted them to see it, so I drove there to show it to them. And they had such an incredible reaction to the music video - Pamela was so incredibly moved by it and she cried and she showed it to a lot of their family. And I saw that she loved the music and Mike, the kid and Benny were so proud they were in it and they were just so happy.
And I thought, 'Wow, as a music video, the tone of this is so much what I want to do – there's something that has character in it and so many contradicting emotions and it goes so well with this music that I really love. And I told them, 'I want to make a movie with you guys – would you want to do that?' And they said, 'We would love to.' So that's how it started – there was no research or anything like that and I didn't know anybody else.
How did you meet CeeJay and Red [the other two main characters in the film]?
I met CeeJay on the street once – he lived on the same street as them. But when I came there, I just started filming the Parrishes and then I would just hang out at their place and then I would start going out to look for people in the street and say, 'Hey, I'm shooting a film here – can I film you?' And just like that – I just moved there for four or five months and was just hanging out, you know?