Audio transcription

For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.

Man Push Cart introduction and post-screening discussion with Haden Guest and Ramin Bahrani. Sunday April 12, 2009.

Haden Guest 0:00  

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Harvard Film Archive. My name is Haden Guest. I'm the Archive Director, and it's my great privilege and pleasure to welcome Ramin Bahrani to the Archive tonight.

[APPLAUSE]

Last night, we saw Ramin's newest film, Goodbye Solo, which opened on the 17th of April at the Kendall Square theater. If you didn't see it, you absolutely must. Tonight, we are going to see two of Ramin’s earlier films beginning with Man Push Cart from 2005, which was the film that put Ramin on the map and drew immediate plaudits from around the world, for the integrity of its vision of cinema as a tool for understanding the world as a mode of poetic realism and a remarkably mature filmmaking style and voice that belies the fact that this was made by a very young filmmaker. And we're really lucky to have Ramin with us here tonight to discuss this extraordinary film. I don't want to say much more, but I'd like to thank Roadside Attractions for making this series possible. They’re the distributors of Goodbye Solo.

And I'd also like to thank Ramin for taking time from his extraordinarily busy schedule. In case you haven't noticed, Ramin is one of the most talked about filmmakers today. It seems like every day now, there's some major piece coming out in one of the more important newspapers or blogs, questioning exactly: What does Ramin’s style of filmmaking represent? And again, everybody agreeing that what it does represent is an important new focus on, a turn away from the type of faddish and—oh, how do you say it?—“hipsterism” of American independent cinema towards something more real, more authentic. And we'll have a chance to see two great examples of that tonight. Now please join me in welcoming Ramin Bahrani.

[APPLAUSE]

Ramin Bahrani  2:39  

Haden, thank you very much. For those of you who were not here last night, I would like to repeat that it was Haden—I've had several retrospectives recently—but it was Haden who first contacted me over a year ago. And I asked him to delay so that I could bring Goodbye Solo as well. So I appreciate the support and thanks for coming here on a Sunday.

Man Push Cart was conceived actually in 2002. And I was to make it in 2003. But I couldn't find enough money. So I delayed until 2004. And the initial seeds of the idea actually came out of the bombing campaign of Afghanistan, which is strange, because I'm realizing now that Solo in a way was somehow inspired by the invasion of Iraq even though you may not notice when you watch the films—goes again to The Flowers of St. Francis, Rossellini’s film [DISCUSSED AT THE GOODBYE SOLO SCREENING].

I remember thinking about Afghans I knew that were in New York that were pushcart vendors. I ended up spending about a year and a half to two years with pushcart vendors in New York, and in that process met Ahmad who plays the lead in the film. He happens to be Pakistani, and had been a pushcart vendor for a year, maybe a decade, before I met him. When I met him, he was doing construction and working in a sweet shop his parents owned in Midwood, Brooklyn. Ahmad is one of many non-professionally trained actors in Man Push Cart. And in the course of knowing him, I came to rework the script based on a lot of details that came from him and from a lot of other pushcart vendors that I met. After thinking about this bombing of Afghanistan, I was in Paris at the time, and I started walking around the streets thinking that a pushcart vendor would be a great subject for a film, and then I recalled a book that had always been very important to me since I was a teenager, which was Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus. I think we all know the myth. Your fate is to push a rock up a hill and it rolls back down again, and then you must push it up the hill again. And believe it or not, this was Camus’s analogy for why you should not kill yourself.

And as strange as it sounded, when I read it, it seemed very true because it didn't seem like the world was much more than that. So how are you supposed to look at the flowers along the way, and anyhow be resilient to do this every single day. And that came to be a central part of why I wanted to make the film about these workers that I never saw in films before, because the film was always about the guy who bought the donut instead of the guy who sold it. And so I hope you'll be able to enjoy the film, and we can talk about it when it's done. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

 

Haden Guest  5:55  

Ramin Bharani. Thank you so much.

[APPLAUSE]

Haden Guest  6:03  

Thank you so much for this film, Ramin, and I wanted to start our conversation with a few questions to you directly. It seems to me this film works on two levels which are inextricably bound. One being of course, this almost documentary representation of the life and day of a pushcart vendor, actually see the sort of rituals, which is so fascinating—

Ramin Bahrani

You should say “the life and night.”

Haden Guest

[LAUGHS] —the life and night of a pushcart vendor in 21st century New York City. But then there's also the story of Ahmad himself. And I'm wondering if you can talk about this balance between the two of them, because it seems to me there would be a danger of one overwhelming the other, but somehow I think you managed to bring them together and have them compliment each other.

Ramin Bahrani  7:06  

I appreciate that. I think there's a few moments where it trips on itself maybe, which we tried to completely eliminate in Chop Shop. I thought it was important to see what he did and what his job was. And I found his job and his work to be a big part of what the idea of the film was. His actions of setting the thing up, of carrying the tank, of pulling the cart, of being in the cart—something he wants to escape from, but when he does, he gets freaked out and wants to return into it. That's actually what the film is. That's the meaning of the film.

Haden Guest  7:52  

But in terms of the actual story, and how did the story develop then that he would be—his background has this idea of him being—

Ramin Bahrani  7:58  

A lot of the real vendors that I spoke with, especially Ahmad’s age or older, there were some that were eighteen, nineteen, and they were either born here or were here from a very young age, but the other ones, Ahmad's generation and older, I came to know a lot of them and they were journalists. Some of them had been doctors. Some of them had worked actually in television, like they were working doing television work and so many different jobs—engineers. And I think we kind of know this, that a lot of these workers when they come here, their degrees are not accepted. And they are relegated to this manual labor. And in Ahmad’s situation, there are other reasons why his job didn't work here.

Ramin Bahrani  8:49  

And I think they're pretty clear. I mean, I'm not sure how successful he would be here. A lot of artists that come from other countries here, they may not be accepted or be able to find their way, including some filmmakers we know that had a hard time when they came to America to find their way, despite how successful they may have been in their home country.

Haden Guest  9:07  

Could we talk a bit about the music in the film? I mean it's around fifteen minutes into the film where we first hear the theme. This is something that you don't do in Chop Shop and Goodbye Solo; music is entirely diegetic. That is, there's a source. In here, you have music again coming in, oh, a quarter way through the film. It's used, it seems to me, quite specifically. There are key sequences like where the cart is lost where you don't have music. And I'm wondering if you can comment on why you used music and what you understood its function to be.

Ramin Bahrani  9:48  

The musician Peyman… The medium-length film I had done in Iran, Strangers, he had done the music for that and was a friend of a friend that I had met in Iran. So there were sequences that were kind of created with the understanding that there would be music in them. And those are the longer passages like when he's in the banker’s apartment, looking at his objects, and then he discovers his CDs and then grabs a few beers and takes off. Those longer sequences had been designed, shot and edited with the idea that there would be music there. The shorter pieces—that was a very late addition, which even to this day, I'm uncertain about. I like that it comes quite late in it. And in the mixing of it, it almost sounds like it could have been a street guy playing some—

Haden Guest 

A bow or something.

Ramin Bahrani

Yeah, exactly. Like we tried to mix it in a way that it was really buried in the street. Especially that first one. I'm of two minds about it now. I haven't seen the film in a long time, but when I see the sequences in the apartment, it really seems to make sense there. The shorter sequences of music I don't know about anymore—what I think of them. What do you think? Should they be there or not?

[LAUGHTER]

Haden Guest  11:11  

I mean I just found myself wondering if this was brought in because we're seeing repetitions of the traffic of sort of this daily—My theory of it was that you put this in to differentiate those, you know, once we've already seen sort of a daily cycle… But I think your explanation was quite great.

Ramin Bahrani  11:29  

Part of the decision was intuitive for the smaller ones. And also because he was a musician it somehow made more sense.

Haden Guest  11:38  

Also, you don't hear his music. I mean, you know, his music as sort of muffled sounds—

Ramin Bahrani

Barely. Yeah, right.

Haden Guest

So it seems like he should have some sort of theme. It seems quite fitting.

Ramin Bahrani  11:49 

Yeah. And then I think I can't recall, but I think all the music comes when he's in isolation, right? There's no music when he's with somebody else, is there?

Haden Guest  11:56  

Well, the karaoke sequences where someone's singing.

Ramin Bahrani  11:59  

Yeah. But the score music. I can't recall any more. Is their score music when he's with someone? I don't think so. It's usually him in isolation. Yeah. I mean with someone, maybe he's like selling a DVD, but not in the scene with one of the other main characters. And that was a choice not to have it in those more, as you mentioned, like losing the cart or whatever. Or when the girl says, you know, basically, tell me why you’re quitting, he hadn't talked. There's no music, those seem to be clear. There should not be music there.

Haden Guest  12:28  

And one of the most admirable qualities of your films, I think, is the emotional realism of the films and how they avoid sentimentality. It seems to me, however, there's a moment in this film, which borders on that, it comes dangerously close. And that's the kitten. I'm wondering if you could comment on the kitten just because it seems almost forced as a… you know, just trying to nurture something.

Ramin Bahrani  12:58  

Yeah. I can't tell you how many people emailed me and asked me if I killed the cat and were very upset. [LAUGHTER] If you do not reply, I don't know what I'm going to do. Please tell me. One person emailed me for five nights in a row when it was on television. And I did not kill the cat. It really was annoying because you had to wait and wait and wait for it to fall asleep and it took so long. [LAUGHTER] That scene and in addition, about a fifth of the movie has been made by four people. Me, Ahmad, Michael Simmonds and Nicolas Elliott the AD. Anytime Ahmad is alone in a scene, you could assume that it was made by four people.

I knew Ahmad for as I mentioned in the introduction for a while and was altering my script upon knowing him. And I remember visiting him at his family's organization which they had created out of 9/11 called COPO-Council of Pakistan Organization, I thought it had an awful title. It sounded good COPO. But when you read it out, it didn't make sense. Anyway, it was a really great organization that they had created post-9/11 to do free pro bono legal work and ESL classes and computer classes for the South Asians in his community. And I really respected his family for that. And one time when I went there, Ahmad was like, “Take a look.” And he showed me this little kitten that he had found, and he called it Blondie, because it was blonde. And I went back there over the course of the next, I don't know, two weeks, a handful of times and I would see it. And I saw it again and the next time I went there, it was sick. And it was using the restroom, it couldn't control itself and then it died. And he told me what happened. He had fetid milk. I don't know, I didn't have a kitten before and I didn't know these things. But I found that he had fetid milk and that he had taken it to his uncle. (For Iranians and Pakistanis and in other cultures, everyone's “uncle.”) And he took it to one of his uncles. Whoever is laughing probably knows what I'm talking about. And then I learned that you can't bury a cat and you have to put it in plastic bags and throw it away. And it just seemed somehow correct for him.

And it also provided me with one of my favorite moments, which is when he's burying it. Like, his act of rebellion is that and I like that. You know that he can do whatever the fuck he wants. Is it too much? I don't know.

Haden Guest  15:33  

I don't know. I mean, I was wondering if this is something you had thought—But this is interesting to know from whence it came.

Haden Guest  15:41  

Let's talk a bit about the cinematography and about your relationship with this extraordinary DP, Michael Simmonds. Yeah, and I mean, the film is, you know, a lot of it is shot at night or very early in the morning. Very, very dark. Can you talk about just the general look you were looking for?

Ramin Bahrani  16:02  

Michael Simmonds has shot all my films. I had seen Marathon which he had shot for Amir Naderi. And I remember seeing Michael lurking around outside the screening and I'm like, “Did you shoot the film?” He said, “Yes. Is that why you want to talk?” And we met up and talked about Man Push Cart, which I just said, “I want to make a movie about people who live and work in boxes.” And that got his attention. And then we started talking about movies. And we shared a similar language. We had seen the same films and believe it or not, there's a real lack of cinema history in a lot of younger filmmakers. And he didn't have that. In fact, he had seen three times more films than I had.

And one of the things that gave us the courage to shoot dark was The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, which oddly thinking about it later, I realized the themes are quite similar in terms of fate and free will and a person being trapped by their fate. And anyway, he had encouraged me to shoot dark, and I remember talking to Michael about that and that gave us the courage to shoot darker. And then the majority of the film, we shot on a long lens which compresses the image and usually Ahmad is in a frame and then in another frame and then in another frame so he's constantly being trapped by frames and not just by our frame, the long lens, but by physical frames—the cart and the shoe store behind him or whatever other windows there might be. I really wanted to do most of the shots in one take. And we talked a lot about this slow panning up against—about 85% of the film was on a tripod. And so we talked about a slow pan to capture most of the scenes and then I spent a long time looking for locations that had good available light and big sidewalks. Like his corner is 54th and Madison and that was a huge location to decide upon because the sidewalk had to be really big, so you could get the camera far away, and then it had that big window which provided ambient light, and it had that great deli across the street. And the city had these Christmas lights on the trees. And then the same thing had to be done for the newsstand, which was the right newsstand, you'd go by sidewalk, which is the sidewalk you could get the farthest away from the newsstand. And so location becomes a part of the cinematography too.

Haden Guest  18:32  

Let’s open up the floor to take questions from the audience, and then we'll come back and talk a bit about Chop Shop and give an introduction to the film. So well, if everybody could wait, please, for an audience mic, we'd really appreciate it. And here comes one right now.

Audience  18:46  

Yeah, I was wondering what the significance was of the triceratops sticker that kept popping up?

Ramin Bahrani

How do you mean?

Audience

I don't know. It just seemed like the camera seemed to focus on that a few times like when he's washing the cart, and, you know, at the beginning of the movie when he's putting the cart in place and and he's like, Someone's peeling it off and putting it on the cart again. Like when there was a shot with like, a woman inside the cart with him.

Ramin Bahrani

Who is that woman?

Audience

I don't know. I think it was him daydreaming, I guess.

Ramin Bahrani

Anyone? Does anyone know?

[LAUGHTER]

Ramin Bahrani  19:22  

That’s his wife. That’s him remembering his wife. And he's fascinated by this sticker because his wife put it there upon the birth of their child, which is a child he is estranged from now.

Audience  19:34  

Okay, I didn't, I didn't get that.

Ramin Bahrani  19:35  

Yeah. And then in the end of the film, when he's in the other gentleman's cart, that sticker is not there. And you can see him kind of wiping where it should be and pausing for a small second, understanding that that sticker is not here now, because it's not his cart, but it's hopefully a suggestion that he may be moving beyond the death of his wife, which is one of the reasons why I think he's trapped. You know, this idea of nostalgia, which I think nostalgia can be a very tragic emotion because you remember things from your past in a very romantic way, and you want to attain that emotion in your present life, but that emotion never really existed. So in trying to attain it in your real life, you're only setting yourself up to fail. And I think he is trapped in that cycle of trying to attain a nostalgic emotion of his wife. Yeah.

Audience  20:26  

Thank you.

Haden Guest

It seems I mean, a flashback is also something I can’t imagine in...

Ramin Bahrani  20:32  

Big arguments about that. Shouldn it be or not be?

Haden Guest

Right.

Ramin Bahrani 

In fact, Amir and I talked about it. If you know Amir Naderi’s films, they are very rigid.

Haden Guest

Right.

Ramin Bahrani 

And he was actually one of the people that gave me the courage to put it in. The fact that he thought it should be there. I was shocked that he thought it should. He thought it was so well constructed that it deserved to be there, even though we may formally be against it. And I actually think it's important to be rigid in your decisions, but also to break them.

There are many times in Man Push Cart and Chop Shop and even in Solo, but especially in Push Cart and Chop Shop where scenes were constructed in one shot. And in the film, they've actually been cut. And you have to do that for what's truthful to the film, even if it goes against your formal desires. If not, then you end up with a very good film like Children of Men, but a film, which I think suffers by its own decision not to cut. Has anyone seen it? There's too many times where he doesn't cut because he wants to do it in one shot. And I think it's to the scene’s detriment. And I say that with a great amount of respect, I think it is a very, very good film and a very well made film, but sometimes he should cut and he does not. And I think it's important to break your own rules if it makes the film better.

Haden Guest  21:46  

All right, a question right here.

Audience  21:50  

I have like five questions, but I'll keep it to two, one really short one first. I'm assuming a lot of it was just available light. There's only like four people for a bunch of the film. Was it just sort of whatever light you had you were shooting with?

Ramin Bahrani

Well, it depends on the scene. If Ahmad is dragging the cart on the street, the camera is about two-and-a-half blocks away. There is nothing but available light, but the scenes in his apartment even if they're shot by four people it's being lit, so there's a lot of lighting happening. In Chop Shop, the same. You may think that it just looks natural, but there’s actually a lot of work that goes into making something look like that.

Audience  22:29  

My other question was, last night, you had spoken about how things were really very scripted. You did a lot of research ,it sounded like, in getting stories to sort of build the script. And I was wondering if this was true for Man Push Cart as well or whether there was more improvisation than actual shooting.

Ramin Bahrani  22:49  

Not really, no. It’s very scripted. In fact, because Man Push Cart and Chop Shop—most scenes are in one shot, the number of takes get higher. I think the record in Push Cart was fifty-four takes.

In Chop Shop, we broke the record, we went to sixty-two, I think. Oh man, you didn't want to be there on those days.

[LAUGHTER]

Audience  23:14  

Actually, two questions too. I was just struck by how much of the film was visually told. You didn't actually need to hear things and it just reminded me of Sergei Eisenstein. I don't know if you are familiar with the book called Film Form,where he talks about cinematography and how films are made. That's the first question. If the answer's no, it's a quick answer. Second one is umm...uhh, I forgot. [LAUGHS] Maybe you can answer that and I’ll just.

Ramin Bahrani  23:48  

Well, I mean, I think your...

Audience  23:51  

Oh I know. The second question was how did you logistically get that long scene. He was running through traffic in New York City. Just kind of wondering logistically how you did that if it was sort of a real scene or did you stop traffic and had it all set up?

Ramin Bahrani  24:08  

The first question is more of a comment, and I appreciate it. And you know, we tried to tell the stories visually. I think dialogue is important to a film but we try to tell them visually. And here the metaphors of the images are critical again—as I mentioned earlier—to the ideas of the film. Him running through the streets and everything else, we just have permits to shoot on those streets, and then you know, you get out of the way and let Ahmad… Throw him into the reality. You just get really far away. You shoot with a long lens, you go really far away and you just throw him into the traffic. 

Audience  24:43

The cars were actually real cars?

Ramin Bahrani  24:42  

Those were actually real cars. Believe me, I didn't have a budget to bring those cars and stop traffic.

[LAUGHTER]

Audience 24:47

That’s what I thought.

Ramin Bahrani  24:49  

The people in Shea Stadium in Chop Shop, they're not extras. Has anyone seen Chop Shop? For those of you who are going to see it, I don’t want to spoil it, but there's a scene where he steals a purse. Nobody in that scene has any idea what's going on except for the two women that he steals the purse from. So watch carefully. There's not just him. There's another guy who grabs at his arm and there's another man way in the background who runs up to the two women. I didn't notice it for weeks until I was editing. I was like, yeah, there's a man coming to ask the women if they're okay and their babies, okay, I don't know who those people are. I've never met them.

In fact, there were people who bought coffee and doughnuts in Push Cart who didn't know there was a film happening. And then we have to chase them down not just to get the release but to tell them that they've just bought a cup of coffee that's just hot water. [LAUGHTER] Or like, you know, that the bagel’s like five days old. [LAUGHTER] And if they signed the release, then there was a chance that they could be in the film and if they did not sign the release, then…

[LAUGHTER]

Audience  25:51  

Having seen all three of your films now, when you say something takes fifty-four takes, what is the biggest challenge for you? Is it getting those precise images, because they've been scripted and there's things you need to have exact or the crowd is unpredictable, or the traffic? Or is it that you're like you said last night you're breaking down your actors, which I find a really interesting thing to have to do to, you know, non-professional actors to break them down to the point where it feels absolutely real.

Ramin Bahrani  26:20  

Yeah, the ones that are the most takes end up being, for example, scenes with multiple actors, like in the rich guy’s apartment, for example. Those scenes now have been cut up, but they were designed as one shot and in fact, usually they were five-minute scenes. Now they're like two-minute scenes, and they've been cut up in ways that I would have to have a blackboard to describe to you like what happened in editing. It really makes no sense geographically. I mean, like, Ahmad is talking to Mohammad and in reality he's standing here, but in edit, you can never understand it. And that was not by design; it was by salvaging a scene that had great moments and bad moments. And those scenes had to be done over and over again. I don't say this with disrespect to the actors, but mainly for the actors. Michael and I got what we wanted by take seven or eight, and then it's just waiting for them to get it right. And that's as much their issue as mine that it took me however long to figure out what to tell them to get it the way I wanted. And plus, when you do a lot of takes, you go in weird waves. For ten, fifteen takes, no one has any energy. And then you take a little break and people have a snack and then you come back and they're awake. And then you get something good, and then I usually do five, six more, hopefully for magic. Like the kitten knocking the tape into his hand, as it's saying, remember your past. And that happens because there's a good take, and the four of us want to go home. And I'm like, please, let's just do four or five more, something's happening. And then that little thing happens and you realize you've got something and then you go on.

Audience  27:57  

And you seem to come full blown into this beautiful poetic style right from your first film. Where do you see yourself going as your films evolve?

Ramin Bahrani  28:08  

To Goodbye Solo. And then next I'm gonna do a Western.

Audience  28:12  

I saw that last night so...

Ramin Bahrani  28:14  

I want to do Western now.

Audience  28:17  

A Western. Seriously?

Ramin Bahrani 28:19

I'm serious. Yeah.

Haden Guest  28:20  

I should mention that Ramin just was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. It was just announced last week and so that's going to be used [APPLAUSE] for the Western.

[APPLAUSE]

Ramin Bahrani  28:33  

Yeah, it’s going to be used to help me write the Western, which means I don't have to make a crappy film to survive.

Audience  28:44  

Hello. Last night you mentioned something very exciting. I mean many things, but you mentioned you had studied with Edward Said, like the great Edward Said. Did I remember that correctly?

Ramin Bahrani  28:57

In fact, I did not have the opportunity to study with him at Columbia, but of course I've read his work. Yeah.

Audience

Oh, Okay, well then I missed that. My next question is...

Ramin Bahrani  29:03

I’m sorry. But I did have a chance to study with someone who was important. He was very important too and he learned a lot from him, who is Hamid Dabashi who was the head of the MESAAS Department at Columbia and was probably my most influential professor at Columbia. And he has written great, great books about Iranian cinema and just great books in general but sorry...

Haden Guest  29:25  

Other questions? In the back.

Audience  29:31  

Talk a little bit about the relationship to money: who has it and who doesn't have it and what you might have been exploring in that push cart world both in terms of the banker’s apartment but also you know, clearly who he has to deal with to even try and make a go of the push cart biz.

Ramin Bahrani  29:52  

I mean, I don't want to make it more complicated than that it is, which is just some people have money and some people don't. And I mean, that's part of his relationship with the banker, which is an awkward one. I mean, I think the banker is not an awful guy. But there's something strange about his behavior. I don't think he's quite sincere about things. It was also very important for me that—My assumption is somebody in Ahmad's world, like someone on that economic level on the street, took his cart. My assumption is somebody there has cheated him. And that's important too, that it's not actually the banker who ended up cheating him, it was somebody else. I mean, the banker has his own issues. He's neither good nor bad. He's doing some good things, but he's also not handling things properly. But in fact, it was someone from his own who I think has cheated him in the end. The same way I feel Alejandro has been cheated by one of his own. I mean money, but especially in the first two films, there's a lot of hands and money and I mean, that's just the way the world is. There's constantly piles of money coming out of pockets and counting and exchanging. That's just their day-to-day life.

Audience  31:06  

This may be a slightly funny way to ask it, but how did you cast the cart, so to speak? And also when in the filming, did you realize that the cart would have that kind of kaleidoscopic effect as it was being dragged along the street? Is that something that you knew early on? Or I'm just curious when you kind of recognized that.

Ramin Bahrani  31:27  

Yeah, I mean that was known early on, and that was part of the understanding of how the film would look. The casting of the cart is a very interesting question. I've never heard it phrased that way. And I've never heard that question. I'm excited by it. Because you get excited when you hear new questions.

Lots of reasons, one was exactly for that effect. Two was financial and the difficulty of actually getting a cart, because people use them to make money and if you're going to take their cart that's like taking somebody's home away, you know, and their business and livelihood, and that's expensive. And so I had to find a cart that was either out of operation—And those carts that were not really being used tended to be very small. And we needed a bigger one because the bigger the better for the camera, which meant I had to get a newer one. And I had to get a new one that was just off the assembly line so to speak, but that no one had it yet. Which is kind of not as much artistic, it is just practical, like I had to get it and these were the only ones that you could get. And it had to have a light inside of it already. That was important for lighting: that there already be some foundation of light in it. And so I managed to… I mean, in fact, a lot of the carts come from Chinese guys, so I had to go and negotiate—which it’s really hard to negotiate —to get those things. And so we ended up picking the one that would create that effect, you know, Simmonds and I knew we wanted and that I had seen for so long for like a year and a half just hanging around on the street. And then one that was big and hopefully with a light inside.

Audience  33:04

What about the signage, for example?

Ramin Bahrani  33:06

Oh, I had that sign made, because the cart, as I said, had come off the assembly line. Then I could pick the color and the words. And so to have Have a Nice Day and it'd be blue. Because a lot of them are red or orange, and those will be horrific. You know? I see a lot of red in here. Burgundy is okay. But anyhow, big red things look awful for HD. And imagine if it had been, I don't know, some other color, it would have been horrific. So that sign would be correct. It wouldn't be good or bad. It would be correct. That's important.

Audience  33:43  

I'm wondering if you had a plan B, if you went into—I'm not sure about your background, but when you went into filmmaking, if the reception of your first was really bad, or you couldn't finish it, what would you have done? What were you thinking?

Ramin Bahrani  33:56  

Oh man, I think I just told you the story. I don't know, I mean, I made Man Push Cart. I had no idea what would happen. I finished the film and put the DVD into, I don't know, seven or eight FedExes and sent them to the festivals. I had no more money, and I was living in Michael Simmonds’ apartment, because he had gone surfing. And I had borrowed my dad's car, and I had it packed up and I was ready to move back to North Carolina. And the day before, literally the day before I was to go, I got an email that the film was accepted into Venice.

And I got on my knees. I did not pray, because I don't believe in that. I did twenty-five push-ups [LAUGHTER] which was twenty more than I could do. And I had to find the money to blow up the film and that was that. If not, I don't know, I would have screened it in my mom's closet like everyone else. [LAUGHTER] I don't know what I would have done.

Haden Guest  34:52  

All right, we have a question here on the left. Here comes the mic.

Audience  34:59  

There is a sense of realism in your films.

Ramin Bahrani  35:02

Excuse me?

Audience  34:59

Realism, an element of your films much appreciated I think reminds me of Kiarostami’s style of filming. Does he have any influence on you? Or which one of the realist filmmakers have had influence in that part of your filmmaking?

Ramin Bahrani  35:26  

Of course, I like Kiarostami very much, but cinematically that this goes to what I consider more the origin of all those great filmmakers, which is Robert Flaherty. A lot of this coming out of Man of Aran. Right? The man in nature, the scope of that, the struggle of that film. I think it came more out of that. [INAUDIBLE COMMENTS FROM HADEN] St. Francis.

Audience  36:09  

There are in my point of view several similarities between this movie and Ladri di biciclette, Bicycle Thieves, Rossellini.

Ramin Bahrani  36:26  

But De Sica.

Audience  36:28  

De Sica. Yeah, sorry, I was thinking yesterday night. Right, De Sica. And that movie for Italy was the metaphor of the Italian society after the Second World War, destruction, and how to put on screen a metaphor of representing the situation of the Italian society. Is this movie in some way related to the American society in terms of a metaphor for the American society today or not?

Ramin Bahrani  37:04  

Yes and no, I mean, it is, but secondary to the metaphor as I mentioned in the introduction of the myth of Sisyphus. That was the critical idea. Of course, this was a very specific film made in New York City post 9/11. And: What does it mean to be a working class person? And here now, even more specifically an immigrant post-9/11, New York? The idea of making it in the American Dream is not as easy as it had been at another time. I think in fact, if the last century was people coming to America, this century is people going back to their home. And part of that is because the American Dream is not as easy to attain as it had been. And that is part of the film as well as the specific undercurrent of the anxieties of living in New York post-9/11 if you look like me, or like Ahmad, or like any of those guys. In fact, Ahmad and I were accused of being terrorists six times during the making of the film. I remember someone walked by and we were shooting a scene of Ahmad putting doughnuts in the cart, meaning there were some lights and there was eight, nine of us, and a sound guy. And someone said to Ahmad, “Are you funding a Bin Laden training camp?” That was so weird, because should he be so desperate to try to fund it like that? [LAUGHTER] There’s just not a lot of money in it.

And then the FBI called me after the making of the film asking me questions about it. And this was part of the undercurrent to the film, but I did not want it to be the main point of the film and I wanted to handle it correctly to what I saw, which is: a guy trying to pick up women because of somebody’s scar, which is a real guy who was really sliced open and called a terrorist. And in fact, it was Ahmad's brother who saved him. And then Ahmad showed up and they took him to the hospital. He used to, that guy, Altaf, used to work in Ahmad’s parent’s sweet shop, loading and unloading things, and he couldn't do that, because it was now painful for him. But the critical metaphor was the myth of Sisyphus, and that idea and the idea of the cart, that your home is your prison, you know, which connects to the idea of tragedy and nostalgia, which is strange because he loses his cart and he can't wait to get back into it. There's no real reason why he shouldn't say “yes” to the girl but he cannot. He can't move, take that step forward. Instead, he goes back into his cart.

Haden Guest  39:36  

But actually, before transitioning into the introduction of Chop Shop, let's talk about the remake briefly of Man Push Cart.

Ramin Bahrani  39:48  

I mean, there are odd similarities between this film and The Wrestler.

Haden Guest  39:54

Right. Those of you who have seen that, there's something to ponder.

Let's talk about Chop Shop then. Just in terms of... I mean it seems to me that Chop Shop in many ways prepares for Goodbye Solo, and it marks a departure from—We talked about the flashback and the use of music and things like this, but can you speak about general what your goals were with Chop Shop and how you see it as different from Man Push Cart?

Ramin Bahrani  40:27  

Chop Shop originated in 2004 when I was editing Man Push Cart. Michael Simmonds called me and said he wanted to get his car fixed and said I should join him. And when I got to the location, I understood why ,and in terms of the transition, I knew there would be no music this time. It was clear that that location did not require music, except for the source of music of which there's plenty—there's like twenty-five songs in the film. There was a decision to fuse together the narrative—and what appears to be nothing like the reality of it—more firmly. And if hypothetically there are performances which are suspect potentially in some of the side characters in Man Push Cart. I knew that had to be eliminated also that the casting had to be more perfect. And the performances had to be perfect in the smallest of parts. And those were things that were rigorously pursued. So there would be no mistake.

Haden Guest  41:34  

I think I just wanted to give people time to see this film. So I just want to thank you Ramin for coming. This has been really a wonderful visit. So please join me in thanking Ramin Bahrani.

[APPLAUSE]

Ramin Bahrani  41:49

Thank you.

Haden Guest  41:51  

We're gonna have a ten-minute intermission before we start Chop Shop. Thank you.

Ramin Bahrani  41:58  

Hello. So a reminder that the new film, Goodbye Solo, if you have not seen it, it opens at the Kendall on Friday. It's already opened in New York, Chicago, and LA, so you can read reviews. I hope you can see it. I think all the movies in the Kendall are booked for a week. But if they do well, they hold them longer. So it's important that you go the first week [LAUGHTER] preferably the first weekend, and you know with ten of your friends, if you were here the other day. Please read the reviews. I hope it encourages you to see it.

Very, very briefly... Chop Shop. I made it in 2004. I was editing Man Push Cart, and Michael Simmonds, my cinematographer, wanted to get his car fixed. He said join me. I quickly understood why I saw Willets Point Queens, which is on the outskirts of Queens. It’s shadowed by Shea Stadium and flanked on the other side by the LaGuardia airport. It’s twenty blocks of auto body repair shops and junkyards, and Mayor Bloomberg calls it the bleakest point of New York and F. Scott Fitzgerald called it the Valley of the Ashes in The Great Gatsby.

I spent a year-and-a-half there watching things and learning and talking to people, and I came to see a sign on a big giant Billboard at Shea Stadium that says Make Dreams Happen. Banco Popular. Which I think is funny, that a bank is telling us how to have a dream. And it seems more pertinent now than even then, when the film was made. The film premiered in Cannes in 2007 and was released in the states in spring of ‘08. So it was prior to the economic crisis. And I'm excited for people to revisit Man Push Cart and Chop Shop now in the state that we're in and I sort of see young boys working and living in these garages. And I started to wonder what kind of dream a young boy might have. And so we set out to make the film.

Other than Ahmad, who is in Man Push Cart, as you know, now, he's the only person that had acting experience, and that was because of Man Push Cart. Nobody else in the film has ever been in a film before. They're all non-professionally trained. Like Man Push Cart, it's a very detailed script and very rigorous blocking, and a very amazing job by the kids. So I hope you'll enjoy the film and, you know, check out Goodbye Solo on Friday. Thanks a lot.

[APPLAUSE]

©Harvard Film Archive

The compelling story of Bahrani’s breakthrough film centers on a haunting avatar of the old world, an immigrant pushcart vendor who rises at dawn to sell coffee and bagels at the foot of Manhattan’s corporate towers. Man Push Cart sets out to capture the paradoxes and poetry of 21st century New York City as a place of evocative contrasts, embodied in the Pakistani vendor’s mysterious past, gradually revealed to lay worlds away from his Sisyphean life in the streets. Like its lonely hero, Man Push Cart keeps its distance from those characters that represent an easier form of narrative resolution—the love interest, the family, the compassionate fellow immigrant. The film’s critical success saw Bahrani immediately labeled as an heir to the neo-realist tradition, a claim supported by the Man Push Cart’s patient style and its careful, documentary-inspired focus on the grinding rituals that define the vendor’s world.

During the filming of Man Push Cart, Bahrani discovered Willets Point, an industrial area in Queens sustained by block upon block jumble of auto body shops. Instantly struck by the neighborhood’s rich narrative and visual possibilities – “if Los Olvidados were to be made today and in America, it would be made here,” he claimed—Bahrani looked beneath the surface of apparent bleakness to discover a vivid improvised theater of life on the edge. Perhaps inspired by Buñuel’s masterpiece, Bahrani focuses his film on a precocious twelve-year old who scavenges and works odd jobs to support himself and his older sister. While the non-professional cast’s strong performances give the film an authentic, improvisatory quality, the meticulous planning, scripting and rehearsals behind Chop Shop are revealed in the film’s expressive use of the rough hewn auto body shops and the film’s carefully sustained tempo. Bahrani’s seemingly casual yet delicately precise camerawork allows the film to miraculously retain its naturalism while avoiding any traces of sentimentality.