Ramin Bahrani’s second feature Chop Shop, is a touching film about Alejandro, a twelve-year old boy, his sixteen-year old sister Isamar and their deep connection which helps them overcome the struggle of surviving on the streets in Willets Point, Queens. The film, which received a standing ovation at Cannes, is a testament to how much work goes into making a film feel so authentic some even mistake it for being a documentary. The incredibly natural performances, complex sound design and unaffected shot compositions all come together to deliver a genuine heartfelt story which commands the viewers attention. Recently at a coffee shop near the Arclight theaters in Los Angeles, we had a chance to talk with Ramin about what went into creating his brilliant new film, which has been described as “a loose shirt dangling from your body.”

What was your foray into filmmaking?

I grew up trained as an artist – drawing and painting. In my adolescence I got interested in literature. My dad had authors in the house like Dostoevsky, Camus, Kafka and Iranian poets like Rumi, Khayyam and Hafez who I started reading and enjoying. That lead to wanting to write stories and you know the cliché – the combination of all these things is film. So I started getting interested in film, started making short films and now it seems to be too late to change… (Laughs)

Did you grow up on the east coast?

I was born and raised in North Carolina to Iranian parents. I went to New York as an undergraduate at Columbia University, and after that I went to Iran for three years. While I was there I made my thesis film, it was a medium length film called Strangers… In fact, I went back to Iran in 2001 to make my first feature and about a week later was 9/11. So everything collapsed for the film financially. Then the idea came for Man Push Cart when I was living in Paris, so I went back to New York in 2002 and started working on Man Push Cart – doing the research, re-educating myself in cinema, re-thinking how I had imagined cinema. My eye had changed by that point, so everything had to change with it.

Your perspective changed to creating something less affected and more natural?

Push Cart premiered in Venice and in North America it premiered at Sundance. The next place was New Directors New Films at the Moma in the Lincoln Center. They told me one of the reasons they wanted my film was because for the first 17 minutes they couldn’t tell whether it was a documentary or fiction. So it was a confusing to them. I think the style of Push Cart really makes sense for that film; it is a little different for Chop Shop.

For Chop Shop you shouldn’t feel me at all. The mise en scene is complicated. Each scene is one shot for the most part, but it doesn’t feel like it. We were very lucky the film premiered in Cannes. Kiarostami was there, he loved the film and he said a lot of very amazing things. One of them was that he felt the mise en scene “was so complicated and so effortless,” and I’ll never forget the metaphor he used. He said, “It feels like a loose shirt dangling from your body.” That was a great way to put it.

What did you do to research the story or to get into the headspace of your characters?

I was there (in Willets Point) for a year and half. So I knew all the people there, I knew what happened, I knew the best parts of it and I knew the worst parts… I also knew Rob the garage owner, who plays himself in the film. I made Alejandro work with Rob for six months in advance to filming. So Ale knew how to do everything already. He and Rob had a good rapport and one month before we made the film, my cameraman and I shot the entire thing on location with a handycam and the actors, so they would get used to being filmed. We also started filming the people surrounding Rob’s garage that we knew would be in the film or who would be around cameras a lot. Often times I would come with my cameraman and maybe three other people, an assistant director, a PA and an intern just so there would be five people. So little by little, the location would get used to not just me being there, but me being there with four or five people and a camera… So once we made the film and five people turned to fifteen and the handycam turned into a larger camera, it didn’t make much difference to them, it was just like, “Oh they’re showing up to work again,” and that was really important.

So that was your rehearsal period then?

Definitely. It was a chance for us to see what worked, what didn’t work. Michael Simmonds (the cinematographer) and I would figure out how we may want to shoot things. Of course when we come to shoot we may change everything – I don’t storyboard or map things out like that. I like to be open to the day and to block shots out on the day. I don’t like to be a slave to a piece of paper when making a film. It seems to run contrary to the life that’s around you.

Did you start with a script or an outline of the story and let the details present themselves during the rehearsal?

There was a script. I had maybe 10 pages. I then talked with a close friend of mine in Nice, France who is the co-writer of the film, Bahareh Azimi – she’s a French/Iranian architect and a writer in Nice, France. We talked about the film in Europe when I was traveling with Man Push Cart… I told her about the project, showed her photos of the location and told her my idea. She had some very critical ideas that changed my story and I thought they were very good, so we started to work together on a script. We re-wrote a lot for specific locations once I picked them, and also for Alejandro and Isamar once I cast them.

It was important to Azimi and I that Alejandro be a survivor. He is very slippery. Whatever you throw at him, he makes it slide off and he keeps coming back with a joke or a smile. That was important to his survival in that location.

It was also critical to us that if I told you I want to make a film about a 12-year old boy and his 16-year old sister, and the boy loves his sister so much he would do anything for them to stay together including telling her she should sell herself for money. You would tell me he’s an awful kid. But I believe if you watch this film you will love him – all of them. Yesterday someone who saw the film told me, “From now on when I see a kid stealing a purse and running, I don’t know if I want to stop them.” I thought that was a very interesting comment. As a filmmaker it is important to me not to judge what is happening in the film. I hope that you wouldn’t judge it and I hope you would love them despite what they have to do.

With that in mind, when he discovers his sister is selling herself to make more money so they could buy the truck…

Even that we don’t know. Is she making the money for the truck? Is she saving it for herself? Does she want to go with her friend to Florida? We don’t know. You think it’s for the truck, maybe I agree, and maybe I don't. I don’t know and the boy doesn’t know. It’s frustrating that he doesn’t know and he can’t talk to her about it, or at least he chooses not to.

There’s a scene where Ismar hands Alejandro some money saying it’s for the truck. When Ale grabs it, he just looks at it for a moment as if he’s wondering where she got it. You can really see what he’s thinking in his expression. Alejandro was really great in the film!

He’s amazing. I think the girl is great too. Obviously since it’s Alejandro film, he’s great in it. I glad you mentioned that, no one else has mentioned that moment. It was a very important moment.

It’s a great moment because it feels so natural…

They train you to beat people over the head with things and I just don’t want to do that. I assume that you as an audience have an imagination, that you have an intelligence, that you want to watch something, that you don’t want to be told what to think and I still believe that’s true despite what anyone tells me. I think it is very interesting what the kid does after that. He hides his money, his friend shows up and he throws that cart into the Flushing Bay, this kind of displaced violence. This is a very self-destructive moment. He’s almost punishing himself for taking the money.

How did you find Alejandro, Ismar and Carlos?

It took almost six months. We saw 1000’s of kids. We went to hundreds of schools, twenty-five youth centers, countless neighborhoods, playgrounds and streets… I found Ale and Izzy actually in same school in lower Manhattan. Carlos came from a different school in the lower east side. Izzy and Ale knew each other. Isamar had stood up for Alejandro’s real sister – who was two or three years older but really tiny – so he already looked up to her and loved her for that. It really was very fortunate. I didn’t cast them for a long time, but they would come every Saturday for rehearsal while I saw other people to make sure. So they kept growing closer to one another and you can really feel it in the film. They really feel like brother and sister. They’re so natural together.

What is it about these city stories that speak to you as a filmmaker?

I don’t see these films being made. I think that the characters in Man Push Cart and Chop Shop – their economic existence is the majority of the world. Even though people say I make films about the margins and minorities, I disagree. I think I make films about the majority, which is hand to mouth existence. That is how most people in this world live. Despite what Hollywood and also what Independent Cinema in America shows you, which are educated, affluent, beautiful white people. This is not the majority of the world. I’m not saying there’s no room for that, but for 98% of cinema in America to be dominated by this I think is not correct. I think it’s a dictatorship of dreams and imaginations.

I find these people interesting. I want to know how they live. I want to know how they have so much hope in front of so many hardships. It makes me so embarrassed when I complain about something in my life… Look at Alejandro, they’re so happy to have a private room and a private bathroom. How could I complain about something? I find it gives me a lot of hope. I find it to be a realistic hope, as opposed to the typical American Independent or Hollywood film, which sugar coats everything and creates sensations of hope that I can’t believe. You know, I just can’t believe those things. They just go contrary to what I see on a daily basis.

Chop Shop’s, open ending is really interesting too. It doesn’t end on a down note, but then again nothing is perfect either.

Everything is not perfect and any film that tries to tell you that is lying. I mean everything isn’t going to be good. No matter what you say, you will end up in the dirt which you came from. That’s a fact of life and that’s ok, but I’m not going to close my eyes to it. I want to have my eyes open and learn to live. Alejandro has his eyes wide open and he is doing the best he can. Look how much they love each other in the end. They know everything now. He knows what she has done. She knows he knows. He’s told her to sell herself and they know it. They accept everything with no judgment. They made each other smile and you know they’re going to continue to struggle everyday.

So when you were editing, were there moments that you got rid of because they felt false or not genuine?

Definitely. There were scenes that I said, “No this feels like a movie.” Cut. I started editing with Man Push Cart because my editor quit after one day. He said the film was no good, that I don’t know anything and no one is ever going to see the film. I really would like to thank this person because he forced me to become an editor. I didn’t know how to use a Macintosh at all. I learned in one weekend how to use a Mac and how to use Final Cut Pro and I had a few very talented directors who gave me advice on editing and the philosophy of editing.

Both of them, without knowing it, taught me something very important, which is whatever scene in your film you think isn’t true… even though you feel it’s absolutely critical to your story, throw it away and then try to make your film. I think that’s the best advice they gave me because you can smell it when it’s not good. You know it is wrong and you can try to fool yourself, but you will not fool an audience. You just picked up your coffee. I believed it. If I watch a film and I can’t believe someone has picked up their coffee, drank it and put it back, it’s done and I don’t want to watch anymore.

This is actually what you start to think about! Do I believe the person is walking? Do I believe they sat down? Do I believe they ate that food? If not, you’ve lost already because who’s going to believe the other stuff? Who’s going to believe the big moment, if you can’t get that right? Whatever is not good throw it away and then make the film. With each film try to spot what’s wrong faster, and if it is not good reshoot it. I like reshooting in production. I never reshoot after a film is done. The energy is gone by then. Reshooting after a film is wrapped I think is a bad idea, but reshooting while in production is a good idea. I also don’t know how independent filmmakers shoot movies in 20 days. I think it’s rude.

How long did this production last?

I shot in 30 days and I found it to be rude. A gentleman should shoot a movie in a minimum in 60 days, but preferably in 90 days or even a year. It should be shot in sequence and I think the first one or two weeks of filming should be thrown away. Unfortunately, I’ve never had the pleasure of this experience, but I think a gentleman would do that. I think it is rude to yourself, to your actors and to the life surrounding the film to shoot a movie in 14 days.

I think large crews is also all of the service of the ego of the director and the producer. A large crew is meaningless unless your film really needs it. You have no right to have a large crew unless you have the talent of a Fellini, or a Coppola at his best, people like that. Shooting independent films with 40, 60, 80 people I think is a service to people’s egos and the conservative nature of film crew. Films should be shot with a small amount of people… but you should’ve proven yourself that you need more people. Fellini deserves whatever he wants, because his extras are better than my actors! He should do whatever he wants. Otherwise I don’t see any reason why people shoot with so many people. I find them all to be disruptive to the life [of the film]. They destroy the life that can enter your film if you allow it. If you erase yourself from the process, you allow a life to enter.

So did you try to keep your crew down to a minimum then?

Man Push Cart was nine people. Chop Shop was maybe 14 or 15 people. You see a lot of names in the credits because at night we had extra people and they changed – like we had four or five people for three nights, they would get called on to another show, so we had two or three other people that would replace them. That’s why it looks like it’s more…

The last scene with the birds was really nice. When Ale and Ismar come out of the garage and Ale’s throwing seeds…

…and the birds really come. It’s all one shot! That took fifty takes. It took me five weeks to get the birds to come there. They were at another guy’s garage, so I had to feed them little by little to get them in front of Rob’s garage. That took five weeks. Fifty takes and it happens in one take four times. No one can deny he brings those birds there because it happens in one shot. She stomps her foot and they go up and on the left side of the frame there’s a guy with a broom and on the right side another broom – right at the edge of the camera trying to keep them in front of the camera. (Laughs)

Were there other things, like the birds, you found to be particularly challenging during production?

All of it. Everything. Making a film is hard. The location was really chaotic, so we were constantly having to adjust ourselves to a massive truck that would come and block what we were doing. You have to suddenly abandon and start shooting something else. Little miracles I think were like, being able to shoot in a subway, which normally you have to spend more money to get permission to shoot on a subway than our budget of our film, but somehow we got it. Getting permission to shoot at Shea Stadium at the US Open on that Boardwalk. Those things I never thought we would get them and they happened like last minute miracles.

What was your approach to the look of the film? How did you shoot it?

It was almost entirely with a 50mm lens. That’s a Bresson lens. Very rarely did we change lenses.

So you were going for a more natural field of view as opposed to using a wide-angle lens?

A wide-angle lens is so disrespectful to the image and to the actor. 50mm is a very good lens. Longer lenses are good too. Shooting from a distance with a longer lens is very good in terms in respecting the location and the actor and again removing yourself. 50mm is a great lens; it’s a respectful lens.

Why shoot high def as opposed to film?

Shooting on film costs more money and requires more people. I don’t see any reason to do those things. If I filmed you on a handycam people would accept it more than if I filmed you on 35mm. Your performance would become more acceptable to people. Man Push Cart was shot on high def and most people have no idea. They think that both films were shot on 35mm… I have incredibly lengthy color correction process, maybe two to three times longer than most independent films. I have a great sound mixer in New York, Dig It Audio, Tom Efinger is the best, I had great color correction at DuArt with a wonderful woman named Jane, a true artist, and I spent a long time with both of them.

Do you have any thoughts or advice for new filmmakers?

You should make the film you want to make. I remember every single person, agent, buyer, producer who saw Man Push Cart and told me it’s a great calling card, because I have no interest in talking to them again. You shouldn’t make a film to be a calling card. You should make a film because you want to make a film. You make a film for two reasons: either you do it because you have to or you want to make a lot of money. You can tell when you watch a film, what camp the director is in. If you are doing it because you really want to, you should be prepared to jump in front of a moving car to get a shot.