Vincent Liota talks about his documentary on the things in our life, OBJECTS

Vincent Liota documentary OBJECTS, where he talks about the things in our life.

If you have any doubt that inanimate objects with seemingly banal appearances can have a powerful emotional effect on people, you don’t have to necessarily believe the message of Vincent Liota’s Objects. You’ll feel it, when the fate of a treasured candy egg – symbolizing a decades-old turning point for its owner – suddenly seems to be in jeopardy.

Liota and his subjects can tell you everything about why people accumulate the things they do, but the viewer’s emotional investment in that egg puts it across better than words can.

We all know people who collect things, but Objects is different.

It involves items that, in and of themselves, have little inherent value. A piece of candy, an item of clothing, or a $1.50 knicknack found at the thrift store.

Once there’s a story behind them, however, it’s a game-changer.

Whether it’s one forged with the owner at a key moment in their life, or a possibly fictional tale about the previous owner, a backstory isn’t just for sentient characters any more. Watching objects may make you shed a tear for that one possession you lost along the way…or nearly shed one when those in the film are in jeopardy.

Our burning questions for Liota covered candy eggs, radio shows, and whether or not his own film may become a beloved object in the future.

Vincent Liota ‘s documentary Objects

Films Gone Wild: Okay, so you made me care more about the fate of a sugar egg than a lot of movies this year could get me to care about their human characters. Did you even imagine when you started this that you’d be contributing/chronicling a new, significant part of that egg’s story?

Vincent Liota: Initially, I had no idea that we’d be moving the story of the egg forward, especially in such a significant way! It’s fascinating how even the smallest stories can unfold into something meaningful in documentary filmmaking. Over the course of the film, the egg takes on a whole new story and significance. And the film itself becomes a part of the egg’s story.

FGW: Also, how was that egg never swarmed by ants in 50 years? Was the box just that airtight?

VL: The fact that the egg remained ant-free for 50 years is a mystery to me too, especially considering the wooden box isn’t airtight! It’s yet another mystery that adds to the enigma and charm of Rick’s egg.

FGW: How did you find and select the three primary subjects for this film?

VL: Robert Krulwich is a longtime friend, mentor and collaborator who I’ve known for decades. He and I share an interest in objects as touchstones to important memories, feelings and experiences. He was on board from the start. Rick Rawlins, the fellow with the egg, I found through a book of short essays written by people who kept idiosyncratic objects. (It was edited by Joshua Glenn, who also appears in the film). Rick’s egg was intriguing to me. Both the object and the story behind were compelling. And as fate would have it, Rick leaved nearby.

My first meeting with Rick, he showed up with that box with the sugar egg in it. He was committed from the start! Heidi Javits I discovered through a piece she had written in The New York Times, about her failed attempt at attempting tidying guru Marie Kondo’s method.

What hooked me though was a brief mention about her obsession with buying clothing on eBay that belonged to a dead French actress. And I was hooked! I reached out to her. She’s a successful novelist who teaches writing at Columbia. She was so overbooked, it took years to finally film with her.

FGW: What object do you own that has value primarily to you through its story? There has to be one that sparked this idea, doesn’t there?

VL: I have many, but one that comes to mind is a movie ticket that I found in a pile of receipts. I realized it was the last film I went to see with my father before he died a few months later. I had completely forgotten we’d seen the movie and only after finding the ticket did I realize it was the last movie we would see together. A flood of information, memories, and bittersweet emotion from a slip of paper!

FGW: It’s interesting that the project to add stories to objects and increase their eBay value acts like they made a ton of profit, yet they did so by getting value-adding writers to contribute their time and creativity seemingly for free. Were any of those writers compensated by the project?

VL: Rob Walker and Josh Glenn (editor of the book I found Rick in) conducted this experiment that generated a 2,700% profit by selling thrift store items along with fictional stories about them. They were originally purchased for $128.74 and sold for $3,612.51.

The writers, like William Gibson, Colson Whitehead, Jonathan Lethem, contributed their stories for free, and the proceeds went to literary programs like 826 National, Girls Write Now, One Story, and Root Division. BTW- You might assume that the top selling objects were from the most famous authors, but that wasn’t the case- the top seller was relatively unknown.

FGW: Filmmakers often hate cutting down their work, and yours in the final version is just over an hour, which is shorter than the average feature. Was it tough to cut and did the final runtime ever make you consider cutting less just to be a bit longer?

VL: Directors editing their own films usually isn’t a good idea. Sometimes we get too close to our material and that bias makes it tough to make important objective decisions. Despite that, I have always cut my own films. I was an editor for many, many years and understand that the editor part of my head gets final say over the director part when it comes time to “ kill the darlings” for the good of the project. The original version of the film was 15 minutes longer and entire scenes had to go to maintain the film’s focus and impact. I guess that’s how ‘DVD’ video extras are born!

FGW: The beginning of the film, citing the likes of Marie Kondo, Pope Francis, and American Beauty, draws on, let’s say, a shared story of pop cultural references to draw us in. Was that a conscious technique to give your own film a story hook upfront that would instantly cause us to put value on it as an object? (It worked)

VL: Whoa, dude that’s meta! As you suggest, I used the pop culture references at the start as a storytelling hook to illustrate how the emotional value of objects is deeply embedded in our culture and storytelling traditions. Alas, I only wish I could follow that with, “I was attempting to elevate the film’s status alongside these iconic and respected elements of popular culture to establish the film’s importance and relevance as another object in the cultural conversation.” But, truth be told I hadn’t thought about it that deeply! It would be thrilling if, one day, the film became known as a defining film object about objects!

FGW: There are quite a few reenactments in this film. Did you consult the subjects to make sure they looked like their memories, or were they more geared to what would visually appeal to an audience without worrying about accuracy?

VL: For the reenactments, I talked to the subjects to get a clearer idea of what they were like as kids, what they looked like, how the event depicted unfolded, all in granular detail. When it came time to cast the actors for the reenactments, I chose people who looked like them or looked how I thought they would have looked as children or young adults. And kind of an easter egg: I dressed a couple of them identically to how their real life adult doppelgangers appear in the film, same clothing, jewelry and hair styles!

FGW: We see how the 3D printing didn’t really work out for the egg. Did that aspect of the radio show end up working at all?

VL: Because the results were so disastrous, the 3-D printing story element  did not make it to the final radio show/podcast.The experiment never got to see the light of day.

FGW: Popcorn or candy?

VL: Popcorn! Definitely popcorn. Hold the butter. And if it’s a great movie, who knows, I might even save a kernel to remember it by.

Just kidding.

OBJECTS is available for streaming on Amazon.

Vincent Liota documentary OBJECTS, where he talks about the things in our life