By James A. on July 25th, 2007
I first met John Harlacher 11 years ago in a Brooklyn College news writing class after I interviewed him for a writing assignment. He told me about blowing up a school building and his plans to take over the world. At the time I didn?t really believe his story. Then I got to know him, and wondered why he hadn?t blown up the entire city yet. Harlacher, 30, is now breaking laws as a filmmaker. He recently wrote and directed his first movie, ?Urchin,? a bizarre and thought-provoking fantasy about a homeless kid from the underground world of Scum City. With little money and few resources he was able to put together a stylish, professional movie and, of course, break some laws in the process. Harlacher filmed many of the movie?s scenes in New York, especially the subway, without permits, dodging and outwitting the authorities at every turn. Check out ?Urchin? (urchinthemovie.com), which is now available on DVD. But before you do, read the interview below.

Tell me about Urchin.
When I came up with ?Urchin,? I wanted to make a movie that had the feel and tone of a fantasy film, but no supernatural elements. It?s the story of a nine-year-old boy who lives in a place deep under NYC called Scum City. The Old Man who rules that place convinces everyone that he?s from a paradise in the hollow earth called Agharta. The story follows the Kid?s journey from believing in this tale to finding some reality for himself. Essentially I took the hero?s journey that ?Star Wars? and ?Harry Potter? are based on and inverted it. So instead of the hero learning to trust the wise teacher and merge with the universe, he learns to stop being a sap and think for himself.

Are you calling Harry Potter a sap?
I?m not afraid of his wand, if that?s what you mean. I?d pit my kid against him, Michael Vick style, anytime. ?Urchin? takes place in a wrinkled version of reality. Harry Potter takes place in a full-blown alternate universe. If magic and Quidditch exist, Harry Potter makes sense, and I enjoy the story. In reality, a kid who literally believes in channeling powers outside himself and that some wise person will teach him about life will be ripped of by various people. He will wind up going to the Landmark Forum and smiling all the time to conceal his confusion.

What was the inspiration for ?Urchin??
My mom was clinically insane, and when I was ten and my brother was younger, we fled New York. She took us out of school and we ran around the country living out of our car. The Nazis were after us, she explained, and all the food was contaminated, and we could only eat very few things. So I would steal food from stores to feed my little brother and myself. ?Urchin? was an emotional expression of that time?s desperation and hunger and strange myths presented as real, filtered through the realities of our tiny budget. I made a list of the things we had or could get, and commanded my subconscious to make use of them, and wrote the script in three weeks. That?s basically what we wound up with.

You say you made the movie ?illegally,? shooting in New York without permits. What led to that?
We had no budget. We got a SAG contract, and pro crew, but my producer, David Solomon Rodriguez, was only able to get me a few thousand dollars a month, and we never knew how much it would be. He broke his ass to get that money. In the end, we only spent $12,000 shooting it. So we shot without permits. We shot in the subways and tunnels late at night. We shot in other remote places where we didn?t bother people or disrupt what was happening. I actually think it?s better to shoot like that in some ways because you don?t shut down chunks of the city. If you want to talk illegal stuff, you should talk to David. I don?t know where the money came from.

Were there any close calls while filming without permits?
We had an actor playing a bum lying on the floor in a Brooklyn station for a while. He looked really gross. Someone called the paramedics. When they came and saw him, one of them rubbed Vapor Rub under his own nose so they wouldn?t smell him. When they realized it was a film and they didn?t have to pick this guy up they were very happy and went away. But they said on the radio that we were filming. The station superintendent came by and hassled us. I told her we had a ?Class G Permit,? and my producer would be by with it soon. That bought us the few minutes we needed to finish. We didn?t have many close calls, because we were fast, and careful to rarely do disruptive things, and if we did we did those last.

How many laws do you think you broke making ?Urchin??
Eighteen. I don?t know. Honestly, I don?t think we did anything wrong. Sure we had a nine-year-old kid, and a two-year-old kid, but no one was hurt, nothing was destroyed, and a movie was made. I was really worried when we did the opening beheading sequence, when the villain Goliath, played by Rick Poli, claims a soul he needs to get to the hollow earth paradise. It was a long shot, and it would be possible to see one actor cut a prosthetic head off another actor, while a gore FX chick shot blood all over the place, and not see the tubes or crew. We did it at five a.m. on a Sunday, and I had a PA kid across the platform telling people it was a movie. One lady almost puked, which I feel bad about.

Now, after making your movie illegally, you?re seeing your movie available online illegally. Do you find any irony in that?
Every piece of intellectual property is available online for free. We made ?Urchin? the way we did because it was the only way we could. Also, I don?t know what irony means.

What was the biggest obstacle in getting ?Urchin? made?
Time. Because we had a child lead, we could only work a couple days a week for a few hours at a time. Then sound. Because we couldn?t control our conditions, we had unusable sound for most of the film. What I mean is we couldn?t wait for a machine to stop droning, or some crazy guy to stop yelling. We spent six months working almost every day in a house music studio we found to do complete sound design for most of the footage. From start of shooting to finish took two years total.

Robert Rodriguez wrote a guide to guerrilla filmmaking. Did you use that?
?Rebel Without a Crew? is brilliant, and I read it many times. A shorthand my DP, Luke Leonard, and I would use is ?Go Rodriguez? if things were getting hairy and we wouldn?t be able to get all we wanted. This meant to get several shots in the same take, like Rodriguez did in ?El Mariachi.? It looks like you covered a scene all day, but it drives your editor mad, because the shot will change itself in the middle. The main thing I got from it was the attitude of accepting everything as something to use and play with. We stopped using a shot list after the first week, which we planned meticulously, because it didn?t work. We had to go to the place, my DP would have his five lights and three gels, we?d set up in 15 minutes, shoot for half an hour and get out of there. So many things were in flux, it became useless to plan too much.

What advice would you give someone who was attempting to make a guerrilla movie?
I think if you have a full budget, it?s like sculpting a fine piece of Lucite with a set of torches. You can basically get whatever effect you have the skill to make. If you are making a movie without what is considered proper resources, it?s like sculpting a gnarled piece of wood: the material will be a major partner in the result. See how your vision is possible with what you have. Does that sound like some New Age freak talk? What I mean is, what you see the scene looking like in your head is probably impossible, but something else is possible that will give the same result to the audience. Try to discover that in what?s there. Also, make sure your crew and actors are very cool, and will roll with the situation. I was very lucky that we had almost no whiners.

You managed to make a movie that looked like it had a much higher budget. How did you pull that off?
Most micro-budget films are what I call ?apartment films.? They take place in apartments and deep woods. I deliberately refused to do that. Other micro budget films celebrate their cheapness with a schlock sensibility, like Troma films, which I enjoy. However, I also refused to do that. I make a living as an actor, and so most of the actors in the film were my friends, and pro actors, which helped. I also met very skilled crew people: makeup artists, composite artists, cartoonists, and musicians who gave us an original score. We found this amazing drummer named Shakerleg performing on the subway. While we were shooting, Axl Rose also found him and he opened for then new Guns n? Roses a few times. One of my composers does beats for Kool Keith. My color corrector did effects on the first ?Resident Evil.? They all worked with us because they liked the film, and for very little money. I was fortunate to find so many skilled post-production artists who would work for what we could afford. One of the biggest things we worked on was our sound design. My producer and I worked with these house DJ?s every day for six months in a SoHo loft to get it right. I?d pit our sound against any Hollywood film in a death match.

Has ?Urchin? opened the door to making more movies?
Yep. My company is called The Enemy, and it was founded by myself and my editor Dave Buchwald. Our second feature, ?Kuru,? already has distribution and a real budget, and we start shooting this winter. It?s about an ancient bank owned by immortal and affluent cannibals that is robbed by computer criminals. It?s good to make your first feature. You should do it.

I plan to. Do you have $50,000 to spare?
No.

Would make another guerrilla film?
I would wage guerrilla cinema again. I have advised other films shooting in that way already. Hopefully I will be able to wage mid-budget cinema next time, Our next film, ?Kuru,? is getting attention from some A-list actors, so if I decide to go that way we will probably be able to raise some cash. I?ve never worked with a full-blown movie star, and fear their bullshit. But I hope I can find people who are good actors and cool.

http://urchinthemovie.com/

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