Tim Rutili Makes the Indie Rock to Indie Film Leap

An interview with the Califone frontman and an exclusive clip from his first film "All My Friends Are Funeral Singers," premiering at Sundance next month.

So you wrote “Buñuel” in front of a Buñuel film. How else does film influence your music, do you think about them while you’re making music?

Yeah, a lot of it is visual cues. There’s a Spanish film called “Spirit of the Beehive,” I think I watched it 50 times. A lot of these songs are referencing films, and I wrote them while watching films, trying to figure out things I wanted to do with the movie. So it gets in there.

How did you arrange the album, are the tracks ordered in relation to how the film plays out, or was there some other method behind it?

We tried to do it in sequence with the film, but it wasn’t working out, wasn’t a good listen. So we temporarily forgot about the movie and sequenced it as an album that we thought flowed nicely.

Having just made one, what do you think about albums in a world dominated by mp3 singles and people listening to their music on their fucking telephones?

I don’t know, I have to ignore it in a certain way. I like the idea of singles, and I like the idea of albums that are objects, ’cause that’s how I grew up. And it does feel like that’s changing too fast for me to really get a handle on. We made this record as a record — it’s meant to be a vinyl record broken into sides, which I guess doesn’t work well for the mp3 age, but that’s the way we did it.

What film would you like to live inside of, if you could?

[Long pause] Just about every film would get insane after a while. The first thing that came to my mind was “The Wizard of Oz.” But what do they eat in “Wizard of Oz?” I get hungry, I really like eating. They ate poppies right? And freaked out — at least Dorothy and the Lion did, and the other guy was a robot. He wasn’t a robot [laughter]. If you live in a musical, you’re gonna get annoyed. If you live in a Western, you’re gonna get shot. If you live in a comedy, things are gonna stop being funny after a while.

[Laughter] Well let me ask this, what film you would like to have done the soundtrack or score for?

When I read that they were making “Blood Meridian,” the Cormac McCarthy book, into a film, I thought man, I would love to do the music for this weird violent Western. Really fun to do with Califone, that would be great. Another movie, I think my favorite soundtrack, is “The Hired Hand” a Peter Fonda movie. It’s just a beautiful, slow Western.

Are we going to see more films from Tim Rutili?

Yeah, I’m writing one now. I don’t know when I’m going to be able to do it, have to raise money.

A Western?

No, it’s a road movie. I don’t want to say too much, but I had a bunch of people telling me at one point, “Man, I wish I could just leave. Go someplace where no one knows me.” And that’s what it’s about.

“All My Friends Are Funeral Singers” will premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The album is available now.

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