by Holly Grigg-Spall
Ari Gold might be best known as the inspiration for the name of Jeremy Piven’s character in Entourage. Google “Ari Gold,” and that’s what you’ll find first, but look a little closer and you’ll see the man behind, and in front of, the cult classic, air-drumming comedy Adventures of Power (which also starred Entourage’s Adrian Grenier). You’ll see the Ari Gold who wrote, directed, produced and starred in Adventures, as well as award-winning short Helicopter, and got an unprecedented three shorts in a row into the Sundance Film Festival. Gold is currently in post-production with his latest feature, a somewhat less ambitious, one-location drama for which he has played writer, director and producer.
Adrian Grenier and Ari Gold
HOLLY GRIGG-SPALL: What prevents people from making movies in the D.I.Y. way you pulled off so successfully with Adventures in Power?
ARI GOLD: Making a movie has become much cheaper, but the possibility of making your money back has been restricted. It has become harder to raise money in the last five years or so, even though you don’t need as much money.
Ari Gold and Jane Lynch in Adventures of Power
The internal barriers are there as well I think. It’s very easy for an artist to have a perfect work of art in their own mind. The process of making something is realizing the perfect thing you envisaged won’t exist. People suffer from the delusion that perfection is attainable and any slight move towards creating something makes them see it’s harder than they thought, and then they don’t finish because they know it will never be perfect. The closer you get to making something, the more you need to compromise. It’s not a negative, it’s just adjusting your ideas to reality, whether that’s the money you have, the cast you get, or the weather. You might want to shoot a sunbathing scene but it’s snowing, so you change your vision because you can’t make the snow go away.
GRIGG-SPALL: What’s the benefit of not having a studio involved and playing so many of the roles yourself?
GOLD: I do have other producers involved, but I don’t have a studio telling me I need to cast a certain person or add a different kind of ending. However, not having much money causes other problems. I have friends in the studio system, and they complain about having to go to meetings with executives and explain their choices, but on the other hand they can snap their fingers and hire any crew or cast member they want.
I would be happy to work with a production company and have them take all the production work off my shoulders, but I know very few independent filmmakers who don’t need to carry some of that weight themselves. At least I’m not also acting in the movie this time!
GRIGG-SPALL: When you are the director and producer is it hard to call the movie finished?
GOLD: On Adventures of Power I had to declare the movie done way before I was ready in order to be ready for its premiere date. I had to lock picture before I had time to really even watch the movie with a clear head. After we played a few festivals, I cut ten minutes from the movie and found the rhythm that it needed all along. I would certainly advise other filmmakers not to rush their project for a big festival just because you’ve got the movie accepted. Don’t always feel you have to say yes. Take your time. If you don’t have a studio breathing down your neck do a solid cut, test it, and then walk away for a few weeks to have some space and come back to look again. Then you will be able to see it with the beginner’s mind you need to be successful in the editing room.
One of the many locations Adventures of Power was shot at.
GRIGG-SPALL: What did you learn on the first feature that you carried over to your latest project?
GOLD: This time I’ve made the opposite kind of movie. Adventures had crowd scenes, filmed all over the country—we’d wanted Adventures to have an epic quality. The new movie is shot in one house. I learned that although it is possible to make an epic on a small budget, I didn’t sleep for three years. I wanted to do something more sane, focus on working with the actors, and not have to consider the logistical things I was concentrating on for Adventures.
GRIGG-SPALL: Adventures of Power has developed quite a significant fan base, was this something you cultivated deliberately and how?
GOLD: I have to admit I didn’t even really think about the poster before the film was showing at festivals. It wasn’t until the movie started getting awards that I realized this achievement alone was not going to get me distribution. I began making videos to post on YouTube and built a Facebook page. These things take a huge amount of time, and I tried everything.
Ari Gold has created more than 10 different posters to promote Adventures of Power
I ran charity events to raise money to start a program that helps disadvantaged kids learn to play musical instruments. There are enough people now that absolutely adore the movie that maybe in 10 or 15 years people will have heard of it! I wanted to plant the seed even if I wasn’t going to get the fruit right now. I did that seed-planting for a solid year after the release.
GRIGG-SPALL: What were some of the problems you came up against making this movie?
GOLD: We actually came in slightly under budget. We didn’t have any crazy surprises. We had a lot of scenes on boats however. We had some boat repairs to cover and shots that fell apart because the boats died in the middle of everything. I broke every rule of low-budget filmmaking for Adventures of Power—multiple locations, acting in the movie, music, kids, animals—everything you aren’t supposed to do, I did. For this one I decided to add a lot of boat shooting. We had some trouble with that, but nothing that cut a hole in the budget.
GRIGG-SPALL: What is your distribution plan?
GOLD: The eye of the needle is small for these kinds of movies. It’s a beautiful movie, but it’s a drama with an interesting story that you can’t really summarize on a poster. I don’t think I can pull off a viral campaign because it’s not that kind of movie. I do still hope that it will go over well enough that we will get a distribution partner, so I won’t have to carry that myself again. I think there are one or two performances in it that might be Oscar-worthy and the right distributor might see that.
GRIGG-SPALL: Do you always have a lot of different ideas and scripts in development?
GOLD: I converted to being a juggler when I was making Adventures of Power. This time when I premiere at a festival with this film, I intend to have two if not more, say four or five, completely written screenplays ready that I can pitch at the festival to get something else made. One is a genre piece set in Germany, one is an action movie set in Los Angeles that could be made with a big or a medium budget, I have a romantic comedy and another drama. I also have a children’s television show! I’m developing them all simultaneously. I work on one or the other depending on what day it is.
Ari Gold as Power in Adventures of Power
The path of least resistance with the most mojo will be the path I will follow. If, for whatever reason, these scripts that I’m working on can’t be directed by me, that’s fine, precisely because I have a lot going on. I’ve learned that in LA, no one wants to say “No” to anything, so there’s a lot of bullshit, and people can go years without making anything. They say, “Maybe, maybe, maybe” all of the time. Unless someone is actually writing the check and setting a start date, it’s probably bullshit, and so I know that eventually I will likely have to make my own movie again.
