MovieRetriever: I heard Robert Duvall on Howard Stern the other day and he spent a long time talking about the difficulty in getting small films financed. There’s been a nagging thought in my mind lately that the effect of the recession on the independent film market has been a bit underreported. How much do you think the recession has impacted the film world and how did it impact this film specifically?

AARON SCHNEIDER: Ours was a five-year journey starting in about 2004. And if you plotted the curve that got off us the ground against the economy, they’re opposite. And the other curve would be the mini-majors closing down. So, as we’re trying to gear up and make progress, the world banking market was collapsing and the indie arms of the studios were closing down. It seems to be a trend in my life. I graduated college into a recession. I couldn’t think of a worse time to get an indie movie off the ground.

MovieRetriever: How’d you do it?

SCHNEIDER: We just kept going. It’s kind of like falling in love. You can get shot down but all you need is one. All you need to do is find the right to make all the nightmares getting there worth it. So, we just kept going. There was no option. After I decided that if I was going to have a career it was going to be Get Low, there’s no way it wasn’t going to happen.

MovieRetriever: Were you offered other projects with attached financing to dissuade you from this one?

SCHNEIDER: There were other offers. There were opportunities. But they didn’t feel like the right first film. It’s not just making a movie, it’s making the right movie. And, so, I could have had an easier time but it didn’t feel right.

MovieRetriever: What made this feel right?

SCHNEIDER: The chance to work with Robert Duvall, knowing that this would be a bigger-than-life character that had the opportunity to be one of his great performances. I like the themes, the tone, the period, the emotional through-line of the story. It was personal to me.

MovieRetriever: What’s the budget?

SCHNEIDER: $7.5 million.

MovieRetriever: It seems me that with Duvall attached, that’s not a high hill to climb for profits. But are people really that gun-shy?

SCHNEIDER: Yeah, I think the problem primarily is that it’s become a global business instead of an American business. Nobody wants to invest a lot of money in something that they can’t sell overseas. A movies comes out and it tanks in the U.S. and it makes a half-a-billion dollars overseas. That was a safety net but, after awhile, the safety net becomes the mantra. They say that if our safety net is overseas then we better make movies that play overseas. So, now you’re trying to make a movie for EVERYBODY in the world. Try sitting down with a blank piece of paper, write “Fade In,” and think of an idea for everybody in the world. That’s why you’re getting the movies you’re getting. People wonder why they’re dumbed down and so hook-driven, it’s because if it’s a story about a naked ghost stewardess, that’s something everybody knows but not everybody knows about stories like a hermit who lives in the corner of town up a hill.

MovieRetriever: Let’s jump to the other end of the business. Like most people, I started hearing about this last September when it played in Toronto. I’m curious about the logic behind keeping it a festival darling for so long. Why release it now?

SCHNEIDER: It grew out of the fact that Sony bought it a few days after Toronto and the decision was simple – crank out a bunch of DVDs and put it in theaters real quick because a film like this often needs critical support to survive and SPC just felt that it needed time to grow on people and be discovered that there wouldn’t be enough time. So, once the decision was made to go 2010 then the question was what part? Then they made the decision to bring it out late summer and let it roll out into the fall and have some time to be discovered. That created this big window. What do we do? People like the film, critics seem to like it, so let’s go out and share it with people. Get some exposure and some marketing.

MovieRetriever: Have you read the articles already proclaiming it a player in the upcoming awards season, particularly for Duvall’s performance? Do you let yourself think about that kind of stuff?

SCHNEIDER: I suppose the politically correct answer would be “Absolutely not.” The truth is that movies like ours need that kind of stuff. It’s part of the world we’re in. When good work is recognized, it creates an opportunity to see the film. That’s the goal. We make movies for people to see them. So if the awards angle creates the opportunity for the film to be discovered by someone who might not have discovered it, that’s a great thing.

MovieRetriever: That’s a p.c. answer too.

SCHNEIDER: Yeah. And, plus, who wouldn’t be excited if their actor were to be nominated? If that was to happen. I’m pretty proud of his performance. I would be thrilled to see what I think to be a wonderful performance recognized.

MovieRetriever: There have been a few articles recently about the difficulty of tracking down Bill Murray. How did you track him down and have the reports about him being difficult been overblown?

SCHNEIDER: The thing is that you have to distinguish. What does difficult mean? It’s not at all about him being primadonna or not showing up at work. He throws people off because he does things his own way. He says, “When do you want me there?” And you go, “We’ll get you a car.” “No, no, no. Where do you want me?” “Thursday, this address.” “OK.” Click. And that’s just not the way people are used to working. When he first started showing interest in the project…he circles the airport. It brings to mind how dogs circle before lie down. It’s his process. He wants to be comfortable. He himself proclaims himself lazy. He only enjoys working when he wants to work. And he likes underdogs, which is terrific. It was a series of events where we contacted his attorney who said it was highly unlikely. We sent a synopsis which was forwarded and were surprised with a phone call. Bill left a message. And then called a few weeks later and talked to a producer and said he’d talk to “this director guy.” Then four weeks went by and I’m sleeping with the phone by the bed. It’s getting to the point where we have to cast somebody, so I sat down and wrote him a letter and sent it to a P.O. Box where we sent the script with no idea how often he checked it. It was our last shot. He’d been in touch, he just wouldn’t “land.” I was flying in two or three weeks before we started shooting and I got a text that said, “Bill Murray got your letter and he’s in.” So, it was a combination of things.

MovieRetriever: You have a lot of filmmaking experience but there must be a bit of nerves. Is there any sort of intimidation when you get on set for the first day with legends like Duvall and Spacek?

SCHNEIDER: I wouldn’t call it intimidation. It was more like a sense of obligation to live up to what they needed and what I knew they were capable of bringing to the project. You’re not so much intimidated by them as people because they’re so nice and respectful and ready to go to work. Very quickly you get to know them as people and that falls away. What does stay is the sense that these people have done it all and you have a tremendous responsibility to live up to their level of work.

MovieRetriever: How is Duvall different from other people who might have taken on this role?

SCHNEIDER: He so embodies a character and he is legend himself. We’re telling the story of a mysterious character and Bobby is revered by audiences and fellow actors, so we were able to tie the legend of Bobby Duvall into the legend of Felix Bush. I don’t know if there’s anybody else that’s capable of not only bring that talent but bringing that gravitas. He was the only person on our list from the start.

MovieRetriever: How close does it follow the true story?

SCHNEIDER: The events that take place are true. There was a hermit. He had a mule for a companion and a big old beard. He lived alone in the hills. He threw a living funeral and 10,000 people showed up out of curiosity. It caught fire. It was a phenomenon. There were traffic jams and people coming from out of state. We couldn’t afford 10,000 people. Our party was smaller. We met some of the real people. No one could answer the one question though – why? So that became the jumping off point for fiction built around this unusual event.

MovieRetriever: Are there any filmmakers that inspired this film or your work in general?

SCHNEIDER: We made a presentation for investors and we had a fancy document so that people could get to know the movie and we had “Influences” that talked about The Straight Story, The Godfather, The Road to Perdition, and To Kill a Mockingbird, and Capote. They’re all there for different reasons. Godfather is the ultimate touchstone in terms of classical photography. Straight Story tonally and pace-wise. We wanted some of the old-fashioned quality of To Kill a Mockingbird. We wanted the expanse and classical sense of Perdition – an intimate story on an epic canvas. And Capote is very studied. It’s very much an internal, character-driven story.