Mike Gordon's an interesting cat, that much should be obvious from his bass playing. He's a musician, writer (author of "Mike's Corner", a collection of esoteric vignettes published in 1997), and - now - a filmmaker. While all of these projects are in very different mediums, there is something genetically related about them, the same spirit manifesting itself in different forms. Like other musicians who have translated their visions literally onto celluloid - Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa, and Sun Ra, for example - Gordon's initial effort doesn't always succeed, though it does harbor a dazzling array of information about the creative process. It's also damned entertaining.

It struck me as pretty humorous that when the chance finally materialized to interview member of Phish, I wasn't even really allowed to ask about them. Well, it was more a polite request than anything else. And rightly so: they're not what's going on right now. I can't say that the question, the big question - "what the hell is up with Phish?" - wasn't on my mind. It was. Sort of. The answer, though, was obvious without having to ask: when it happens, it happens. So, we talked about the strange worlds of "Outside Out", a surrealistic tale of a young guitar student (Jimi Stout) and his cosmically touched instructor (Colonel Bruce Hampton, [retired]). 

JJ:     How would you describe "Outside Out" to a film geek?

MG:     Do you mean a buff?

JJ:     Yeah, a film buff.

MG:     It's very experimental. I don't know if I'd use a different explanation for the film geek as the normal person. Experimental, homemade, but with 5000 hours of work; with a story, but the story not being the major charm.

JJ:     What would describe as the major charm?

MG:     (Laughs.) The major charm. The strangeness of the world that the characters live in, and something about the style in which it was put together. I'm being vague. I don't know. I guess that it's just that you can tell that it was a labor of love.

JJ:    The film has a pretty unified look and feel to it that's pretty different from a lot of what's out there. Were there any specific ways you went about getting that look?

MG:     Well, we shot on video, for one - high quality video, Beta-SP, actually - and transferred to film and then went back to video, from the film. First of all, that creates, technologically, a certain kind of look. The actual video master itself, before the film, was a lot more accurate in a lot of ways, but we liked the look of the film. I was working under certain constraints, like he [Ricky/Jimi Stout] always wore the red shirt because of continuity reasons. We were trying to fit in some earlier filming with some later filming. There's kind of a lot of red and blue -- red, white, and blue, actually. There's a lot of it. I was working within certain means. It was low budget, 'til the end.

JJ:     Was there anything else with the art direction? The sets all seemed pleasantly surreal in a real specific way.

MG:     I like surrealism.

JJ:     Noticed.

MG:     I just go for the surreal. I like things that are realistic but a little bit warped in a certain way; subtle but deep ways. We did a lot of blue-screening, where you act in front of a blue screen and then the blue is taken away and another scene is put in where the blue was... for people who don't know. There's a lot of that. There were certain gimmicks like that were used a lot. There's a lot of certain sound effects and dream sequences. It's kind of like... there's sort of a pile of concepts that don't necessarily relate to a strict reality.

JJ:     Sort of related to that: how would you describe Col. Bruce Hampton to a civilian, or just to someone who didn't know him?

MG:     I've used different ways. I've said "a Southern Buddhist Colonel", or "the personality of a one-year old in the body of a 55 year old man", "someone who's held on to their child's eye", maybe "someone who's done a little bit of everything from music to acting to stand-up comedy to accounting to race-car driving". Sort of a hard to pinpoint guy, just in that you don't know if he's toying with you or not, whether he really has extra senses, supernatural abilities.

JJ:     Did having Bruce and his musical philosophy at the center of the movie dictate any of the experimental techniques you used?

MG:     Well, I guess... I don't know. A lot of the actual way it was filmed and edited - the look - probably becomes from my own experimentation. Do you have the VHS or the DVD?

JJ:     The VHS.

MG:     On the DVD there's some extra footage. One thing there is this four minute film I made and sent to Bruce, which inspired him to make a film with me someday. The four minute film is his hand moving in slow motion, for most of the time. It's a little experiment. Experimenting with film techniques probably just comes from me, although Bruce is the right kind of character to bring into this world that's somewhere between reality and the absurd.

JJ:     Do you differentiate between those techniques and more conventional story-telling methods, or filming methods?

MG:     For starters, I haven't had a lot of experience writing stories. I've had more experience doing weird experimental stuff, which is why that becomes more significant than the story in some ways -- at least, a few respectable people have said that to me, and I believe them. (Laughs.) 

Another thing, that I think I talked about somewhere... oh, I know where: part of the web site. There's this little statement that I, somewhere, wrote out. I was talking about how one thing about a story is the protagonist is supposed to be challenged in big ways and is do a lot of things to help themselves, but with this sort of semi-pseudo Buddhist perspective, it's not so much about taking such obvious action. Bruce's philosophy sort of stems from the idea of just existing, and being in the moment. If you're existing and being in the moment, then you're not being proactive in the same way as someone who's a go-getter.

In the movies, I think it was Woody Allen or someone, said "we go to the movies to see people do things, because in real life we don't do things". I think that he doesn't really get challenged quite enough, or do quite enough, in terms of the story, but I just kind of... I sort of like David Lynch's concept, which is: you just start making it and you get into the world of the film and then it dictates itself, it writes itself like a poem, if you let it. Certain things are thrown in, even certain part of the story are worked out, just because it felt right.

JJ:     That said, did you write anything for Bruce or any of the characters that dictated who they became or did you let them run free?

MG:     That's a good question. There was no screenplay, but there were pages and pages of notes, like 30 pages. Within those notes, there was a shot list, and - within each shot - there was, just about, all the dialogue -- not verbatim how they would say it, but all the concepts I wanted to get out. I thought that improvising would be more natural. In retrospect, improvising is more difficult. And, besides, I came up with all their lines for them anyway, on the spot. (Laughs.) I learned a lot. The whole thing was a real learning experience.

I pretty much told everyone what to say, even Bruce. Bruce has this line, a couple of lines, in "Sling Blade"? The movie?

JJ:     Yeah, the band scene.

MG:     Yeah, and in one of them he reads that poetry stuff, like he's the poet/lyric writer guy. He just spews off this stuff that's very Bruce-ish, and I assumed that he had just come up with that himself, but he said that Billy Bob [Thornton] wrote it for him, just knowing Bruce... which is sort of the same thing that I did.

I started off with a whole bunch of concepts, terms that Bruce had used - like the vomit, or whatever - and then encouraged him when we filmed the guitar lessons, which were just random days of guitar lessons, to just use these concepts and play with them. There are a couple of things - like the monologue when Rick first arrives at his house - that he did without any prompting at all, I wasn't even rolling the camera. He just started doing it, and I just rolled the camera. That's a good little monologue, the weird thing. Other than that, I pretty much told him what to say and he just said it in his own way, for the most part.

With the other characters, the same sort of thing: they sort of ad-libbed and went off on concept but I was sort of figuring out what worked on the spot. There was a lot of planning, but a lot of improvisation also.

JJ:     Did any of this grow at all out of the "Mike's Corner" vignettes or stories?

MG:     Those little vignettes are so much more visual than narrative, I think. For me, it just starts with some funny image and then I just write some things down to match it, to go along with the situation, the image. I like the idea of trying to keep that same sort of tone going in movies. Some people have said that I've sort of done that, like, if you like the "Mike's Corner" book then you probably have the right sense of humor to appreciate the movie.

I don't think it was conscious, but I had thought of that. The "Mike's Corner" book was a compilation of stories from my whole childhood and everything, old stuff. But, when I directed the video - the "Down With Disease" video, the MTV video - the band thought that it didn't have the Mike stamp on it enough, because there were too many people working on it when it was done. Everyone seems to think that, whether or not you like the film, it definitely has "Mike" written all over it. (Laughs.)

JJ:     (Laughs.) I'd definitely agree with that. Why did you choose to use untrained actors or local actors?

MG:     It was partly of because the way the project grew, the same reason it was shot on video. The original goal of the project - it was going to be called "the Outstructional Video" - was going to be Bruce looking into the camera, no other actors, just some spoof on playing guitar. That was the original concept. So, I went down and just filmed the guitar lessons, but - between coming up with the original concept and going down - I decided I wanted there to be a student. Bruce showed up at the airport and there was Jimi with him - he was Bruce's tour manager - and I asked him if he wanted to help move lights and, on the side, be in the movie.

I was getting more and more into the concept of there being a story, so - for the next year - I came up with the rest of it, based more on the life of Jimi than Bruce, and I thought that would be sorta cool. And Bruce didn't really want to travel as much either, so it worked out to concentrate on the life of the student. Originally, it was just a whole bunch of guitar lessons, just randomly done, and then pieced together.

Then, what I was going to say, the original goal was to learn how to use my new video equipment and editing system, the Avid system. When the film started growing a little bit, I still thought it was going to be a lot smaller of a project than it ended up being. There were these funny people that I know -- and I always liked the concept of taking some funny people that I know and have them try to be actors. It was fun for me. I've done a lot of verite, I guess you could say, more from the real world. I feel more comfortable in that situation.

But, with all that said, I think next time, I would have a script, I would shoot on film, and I would have real actors.

JJ:     You've mentioned before that you're thinking about doing another film, and you've got this chunk of time off now, do you have any specific plans?

MG:     Yes and no. I'm just trying to prioritize some different projects, and I want to make room for the most important ones -- that being one of the most important. That would be the film project I wanna do, and the rest would be music projects. But there are other projects which are also interesting that aren't quite as high-priority. I'm trying to figure out what I should be spending my time doing. I haven't allocated all the time yet. Not too specific. I have a lot of specific ideas that I've had for years for the next film, but they haven't solidified to speak of.

JJ:     What kinds of connections do you see between your various creative endeavors, between music and film and "Mike's Corner" and other stuff? Kind of a broad question...

MG:     There are different ways to answer it. I guess the most profound way, for me, is that I believe that consciousness is something that can be explored -- with or without drugs. With music, my favorite thing is when the music takes you to a different place. It doesn't have to be an exotic place, it can be one room over, but it takes you into a part of your mind, or the group mind, that you didn't know existed until you were there. With film, it's obviously like that too and with dreams it is also, where you're brought to a different place with its own emotions and flavors and sounds and everything. The "Mike's Corner" book also, I was saying, was sort of visual.

I used to have this fantasy of having a little environment simulation room, it'd be tiny, where you'd go in and there'd be screens on all the walls and then there'd be sounds in quadraphonic sound and everything. They have things like that. But I thought it would be cool to make one of those in my home. That would be the total simulation. That's what ties it all together for me, this chance to get into different parts of the soul and the brain.

Creatively - obviously, since it's a film about music and I spent a thousand of the hours doing the soundtrack - it's very music-related. There's some crossover. The creative process is a bit different for me in that I get more intellectually involved with film stuff than I do with music. I like to kind of work the left brain and have that chance to do that. It's a different feel for me. Actually, you could look at it from the other side. When we're on tour, we watch movies on the tour bus, or if we go to the theater, and that inspires this music. There's a lot of back and forth. It's sort of related.

JJ:     Were there any sudden incidences playing music where you were suddenly informed by something you were working on with the film, or vice-versa?

MG:     (Long pause.) It might be kind of indirect. The days of filming, if we get into a certain groove, then it's kind of like a music groove in a way, and everyone working together, kind of a little team of people. Not to mention, recording the soundtrack, where I got to be in more of a leadership role. Definitely, with all the Phish experience, I knew when to keep to take or when to keep going or how much to plan out and how much to let happen in the studio. I don't know if I can remember being with the band in specifically being inspired by scenes from the film. I don't think I remember specific examples of that but probably, more indirectly, some of the concepts in the film were pertinent.

JJ:     What was the process of scoring and writing songs specifically for the film like?

MG:     I had a couple of different bands come in. Mainly, it was one band - which was Gordon Stone on pedal steel, [Burlington jazz musician] James Harvey on trombone, and Russ Lawton on drums [Gordon Stone Band/Trey Anastasio Band], and me on bass - and there were different musicians that came and added this and that. I wanted there to be that country pedal-steel sound which goes throughout, and I wanted a funky drumbeat which Russ provides. It's kind of a good mixture of those three, actually, because James is a great jazz piano player. It mixes the slightly jazzy, slightly funky, slightly country. It never occurred to me that it... anyway... not to throw genres around when it's all meaningless.

We went into the studio. I just finished building the studio. Jeff and I - Jeff's my partner and producer - spent a couple of years building it and equipping it and wiring it. Just in the nick of time to record the soundtrack, we were ready, and we had the band come in and we had different musicians come in. I also did a bunch of bass jams with just bass and drums with Fish [Jon Fishman] and then I did it with this guy Gabe Jarrett [ex-Jazz Mandolin Project, presently playing with No Glue]. 

JJ:     The JMP guy.

MG:     Right. And we used some of that and added. In my studio there are a bunch of different instruments just always miked up and computers and this and that, so I can sit down and just add some textures. It's fun: it's like an arts and crafts of sound room. 

Then, actually, what was much more tedious: we actually taped a lot of our own sound effects and we also got a sound effects library, so we used both -- from CD and tapes. But, to do the sound design, which was 32 tracks of sound, including mix downs of music (the music was mixed down to 16 or 12 of the tracks) and then the rest were for production sound, which is the dialogue and all that, and sound effects, ambiance. Putting all that together was very time-consuming, tedious, but fun. 

The rough cut was all silent. For each scene, I had this thing on the computer, which was a list of a million different jams that we had, and I would just keep plopping them in -- like 20 at a time, or 25 different ones. The music changes the emotion of the scene so much. I would just try to see what seemed to work best. Usually, it wasn't intuitive. It was more following the gut. There's a difference between intuition and following the gut, maybe, because I thought that something would work and then it ended up not working and then I would just have to go with the feeling.

For some scenes, there wasn't anything that worked, and I was pulling my hair out. And then I started to worry that there were too many different kinds of music, which some people have said, and not enough silence anymore. Originally, the whole thing was silent. There was something nice about that that went away with adding so much background music.

It was a big learning process. At all the different phases of the project, I was reading books about that part. I read a film sound book and watched a lot of independent movies and movies with my wife, just getting all inspired and experimenting. That was pretty much the process.

I wrote out some charts - just basic chord progressions and melodies - for a few of the tunes. One of them, actually, between the background flavored marshmallow scene, there's this thing I always wanted to write, that I wrote, for pedal steel and trombone, because they both slide -- and they kind of slide in and out of each other. I'm reworking all the music for a CD release, but it's been - actually - nine months since I've been able to work on that. I need to get back to that.

JJ:     Do you have any time frame on that?

MG:     I had advertised sometime this year, but I would probably guess the end of the year.

JJ:     Would you be re-recording entire songs or just remixing what you have?

MG:     Not just remixing, and not just re-recording either, but reediting. I'm doing things like taking a jam, and editing it into a song, and making up lyrics that weren't in the movie. It's fun. It's just fun stuff.

JJ:     Oh, sorta like the process for [Story Of The] Ghost" in that way.

MG:     Did we do that? Yeah, we sort of did do that. Yeah, exactly. Right. (Laughs.) Yep.

JJ:     You mentioned that you were watching a bunch of movies while working on this. Was there anything in specific that influenced you? You also mentioned David Lynch and Woody Allen before...

MG:     Yeah, he's a big influence, and some people would probably be able to pick that out. Woody Allen is too. I like Terry Gilliam. Everyone who has a touch of the surreal. And [Ingmar] Bergman is probably an influence on all of them. And I like the Coen brothers' movies.

But, we watched a whole pile of movies. I can't even remember which year I watched which, but there were certain ones that stood out in the independent. I couldn't say that I could pick out ways that they specifically influenced me. Like that movie, "Welcome To The Dollhouse", which was edited by Alan Oxman, who did "Bittersweet Motel". What else? I just saw this movie not too long ago, "Celebration" -- a Danish film. There's nothing surreal about it, very dry, but it's a really, really good movie. I really like the "Twin Peaks" movie, "Fire Walk With Me", and I like "Wild At Heart"... and "Lost Highway". I don't necessarily gravitate towards the one that most people like. In Woody Allen, I like "Purple Rose Of Cairo", which is the one where he walks off the movie screen -- a whole bunch of them actually. "Brazil", in terms of Terry Gilliam.

JJ:     Yeah, he always has those multiple layers of reality going, like in "[The Adventures of] Baron Munchausen", with the Baron stepping in and out.

MG:     Yeah, I think the big question I'm trying to answer is really an existential question: do I really exist? (Laughs.) Who am I?

JJ:     The David Lynch definitely came through in this. In a backwards way, Col. Bruce kind of reminded me of a more Zen version of the Log Lady from "Twin Peaks".

MG:    (Laughs.) Yeah. (Laughs.) There were actually times when I had to specifically avoid something that would've been too Lynch-y. Like, towards the beginning - well, maybe there's a little bit of that sound left in - when the first shot after the opening sequence, there was a pretty loud vibraphone sound, which is throughout all of "Twin Peaks". I had to avoid that. There were a couple of other things that I avoided for that reason, too. Too close.

JJ:     In some ways, "Outside Out" seemed to be a largely collaborative effort on many levels, but specifically with Bruce. Do you have any future plans to work with Bruce, or anybody else from the film?

MG:     I would, actually. I would like to work with Bruce again. I just know that I'm going to do so many things differently next time. Yeah, and the friend - who everyone likes, Rick [Valyou] jr. - who's just a real native Vermonter. Jeff [Lawson], who was the producer, we want to keep working together. Those are the ones that come to mind right off.

JJ:   You were a film major at UVM, and you've spend the last 15 years pursuing mostly musical endeavors -- though you've done a couple of film projects in there, like "Down With Disease" and "Tracking". How has your view of filmmaking evolved over that period?

MG:     There are different levels of ways to answer that. My teacher, my mentor - Ted Lyman, who I've done a couple of soundtracks for - is really into artsy films -- not artsy films that you see in theaters, but avant-garde, where there's not necessarily a story, just shapes moving across the screen. The screen is more like a canvas to paint on, an abstract painting.

JJ:    Like Harry Smith's stuff...

MG:     Yeah, or Stan Brakhage in Colorado. I've had some arguments with him, but I would like for there to be a story and for there to be a more accessible component in that way. His opinion is, I think, that as soon as you get into concentrating on story and more kind of theatrical aspects of filmmaking that you're not going to be able to do the artistic part fully. I sort of disagree. I think you can have the story and get very creative, to a degree. That's the biggest evolution. I always thought I would make films that didn't have stories, and now I want to have stories. 

I didn't know what I would be doing. One thing that's evolved is that I didn't know that I would spend this much time with film. I really wanted to concentrate on music after college pretty seriously, because I was having so much fun with it. So, for about 10 years I didn't let myself do too much with film. Once the music thing became more established, I let myself take more time to work on film. Since they're different pursuits, they kind of work off each other too by getting in a different mindframe, and then you miss the other thing, and you flip back and forth.

JJ:     What's evolving next? Do you have any specific film or music projects that you've been working on?

MG:     I'm just dabbling in some things. I don't know which I'll finish. There's this Gov't Mule thing, where I'm doing some filming in the studio. It's a tribute to Allen Woody. They're making an album, where each bass player is a different incredible bass player -- all people who influenced Woody. I've been filming that on 16 millimeter film and I'm not sure whether we're going to see the project through to the end. It's been fun for me because it perfectly mixes film and bass playing... except that I don't really wanna be a documentary filmmaker.

There's that, and I'd like to write a script sometime, and there's a few different musicians that I'll be doing some jamming with and maybe some recording with, and probably doing some writing on my own. But all that is probably too vague to even mention. A lot of different ideas. I'm just at the point where I'm trying to figure out what I should be doing.

JJ:    Do you have any desire to play with a regular group of musicians?

MG:     I would if the situation were right, if they were -- I was gonna say, if they were around here. If we had time to really put something together. I would like to at some point. Even when Phish starts playing again, I would still consider playing with other people just for the experience. I like the idea of doing something more regular. I haven't done too much on the side.

JJ:     Are there any other mediums you'd like to try besides writing, and film, and music, now that you've got those knocked off?

MG:     Film, writing, and music... I want to be an inventor, actually. I only have a couple invention ideas to my head. Maybe, drawing painting, that sorta thing. 

JJ:    Nothing patented yet.

MG:    Yeah, I'm probably forgetting something. I have a hard time weeding out my pursuits, so I'm not spreading myself to thin. There's probably 10 different instruments that I'd like to learn how to play better -- banjo and piano and pedal steel and a few others. There's just lots to do and I can't do everything.