CineVegas Blog

Asiel Norton was raised in a small cabin on Kneeland Mountain with no television, limited electricity, and water attained from a nearby stream. In 2004 he graduated from USC Film School. His first feature film REDLAND was shot in the mountains where he was born.

REDLAND centers around a family that struggles to survive in rural isolation during the Great Depression, as their daughter’s secret affair begins a journey into the unknown.

Tell us briefly about the film’s story, and what it means to you.

REDLAND is about a family struggling to survive in rural isolation during the great depression, and the disastrous consequences of their daughter’s illicit affair. The film obviously carries a great deal of meaning for me. For one thing, I wanted to communicate the transcendent mystery of life. It’s interesting to me, that while we all go about our daily lives feeling so sure of everything, when in actuality we really know nothing. I think as proof of that, all one has to do is ask the most basic questions about themselves and their own existence, and the ultimate answers always allude. Even with relationships with people, how well do we really know anyone? When I wrote the script my Father was dying of terminal cancer, and I was left questioning life on it most basic level, and how well I really knew my father as a man, outside of as a parental figure. I also extrapolated that to all my relationships. Its both a Socratic and Buddhist idea, that we really know nothing. Even in Christian thought, in Paul’s first letter to the Corintheans for example, this futility of knowledge is a central focus. Life is a mystery. Therefore mystery is certainly a key aspect of REDLAND. I want REDLAND to be a film where the viewer leaves with just as many questions as answers. Another idea that I wanted to communicate was of the eternal all-powerful nature of life, and the idea of life as a continuous infinite cycle. Life comes from death, in fact it demands it. And what we think of as disruptions to life, just bring about more life.

You grew up in a similar locale as the film, right? How did that inform the movie?

The film was shot where I was born in Northern California. That was very important for me. I think it’s important to write or make things about which you have some knowledge. I was actually raised in a way not too different from that of the characters in the film. I was born in a wood cabin, up on a mountain adjacent to the one we shot on. My family didn’t have television, and had limited electricity. Our water actually came from a nearby mountain stream, and in the summer, when the stream ran low, we would have to ration water. We raised chickens, rabbits, and sheep. My mom would actually make us clothes from the wool of the animals. I see the film as a sort of metaphoric retelling of my childhood, and a sort of snapshot of my psyche, so it was obviously important to me to shoot it where I was born.

How did you find your cast and crew?

For the cast we held auditions for a few months in Los Angeles. There are actually two interesting stories about casting.

One is that the boy who plays the little brother Paul in the film was not the one originally cast. We were in Los Angeles on the Friday before principle photography was to begin, and the whole crew was already leaving to go up to Northern California. So that afternoon, when I’m supposed to leave myself, we get a call from the kid’s agent, and he tells us that the boy is actually homeless, and the people we thought were his guardians really weren’t at all, and perhaps he’s even kidnapped. We were to begin shooting him in two days, and we didn’t have a backup at all. So I’m screaming at the agent over the phone, and he says he has another boy, his own nephew, who lives in the Smokey Mountains, who would be perfect for the part. So the agent flies out his nephew alone on a redeye that night. Children are notoriously hard to cast and get a performance out of, and nobody else we’d seen worked at all, so we were really between a rock and a hard place. If this actor didn’t work, there was no one. So the boy lands, we audition him right away, and he’s great, better then the first one had been. So finishes the audition, we tell tell him he’s got the part, and he jumps in our car, and we take him, and drive him up to Northern California, and start shooting Monday.

Also interesting is that the guy who plays Charlie Mills, is a very good friend of mine, but he’s not an actor. He’s actually a director, whom we originally hired to shoot second unit photography. Again we cast someone else, but that guy kept giving us all kinds of problems in rehearsal. So while I’m having second thoughts about this actor I’m shooting camera tests, and because Toben is 2nd unit director, he would be at the camera tests, and we would use him as a sort of stand in. And I would look at these camera tests, and see how great he looked. So we took him as an actor. So he both directed 2nd unit, and was a principle actor in the movie. He would actually shoot in costume, and sometimes jump in front of scenes he was directing.

What do you think the role of a film festival is?

Film Festivals serve several many vital functions. I think primarily they are there to show and celebrate cinema. They function as a modern Salon for film artists. That certainly includes finding new or young artists, finding new visions of cinema. Many of the films that show at festivals are never seen anywhere else, so they are an important place to see what’s going on that’s interesting in cinema.

Do you gamble?

Some, I guess. But I’m no pro. Though I am hoping to win my next films budget at blackjack.

2009 CineVegas Film Festival screenings:
Thursday, June 11 – 6:00 PM
Friday, June 12 – 1:00 PM

See also:

• FINALLY, LILLIAN AND DAN interview
• ¿DÓNDE ESTÁN SUS HISTORIAS? (WHERE ARE THEIR STORIES?) interview
• HANK AND MIKE interview