So crazy, she's feeling sane

The former Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist makes her movie debut with a 'blood-and-witches fantasy'

From: The Globe and Mail, 2009-01-17
Date added: 2009-01-19

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By Simona Rabinovitch

Melissa Auf der Maur is out of her mind. At least, she hopes she is.

"We need to step out of these logical patterns we live in, because it's hurting us a lot," says the Montreal-raised musician, photographer and now filmmaker, taking time out from packing for the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

Out of Our Minds, the "fantasy film" she's made with New York-based filmmaker Tony Stone, debuted yesterday at Sundance as part of its New Frontier series. Independently produced, the 28-minute short is the first incarnation of Auf der Maur's multidisciplinary project of the same name. A comic book and solo album are due out by summer.

"I'm asking people to travel out of our minds, and into our hearts standing by," says the artist, whose father was the late city politician and bon vivant, Nick Auf der Maur. "Of course, we can't live in some utopian psychedelic world full-time, but we definitely need a balance of the two."

Without dialogue or words, the film unfolds through archetypical symbols, images and music scored by Auf der Maur and Los Angeles-based band Entrance. A woman (played by Auf der Maur) is driving through a forest when a car crash opens a portal to three parallel worlds and time periods, all linked by a mythological quest: what Auf der Maur calls "the hunt for the heart."

"We had zero reason to believe our 'blood-and-witches fantasy' would get into Sundance. We even forgot we had applied," says Auf der Maur, now 36, and best known for playing bass in infamous American rock bands Hole and Smashing Pumpkins in the 1990s. "So, nothing was finished. This month has been total madness trying to finalize a project two years in the making."

But things are falling into place. A neighbour has agreed to feed Auf der Maur's cat, Isis. Friends of friends have offered lodging. And rather than deal with the kerfuffle of air travel, Melissa and her boyfriend will take the train to Utah - a three-day journey from their small-town home in upstate New York. While this real-time mode of transport might seem a weird choice, Melissa has always leaned toward the visceral, mystical and authentic.

"We're old-fashioned," she says, laughing, her deep voice calm despite the prefestival chaos. "And it's a chance for me to unwind after a non-stop two years of being my own production company, my own manager, my own accountant, my own T-shirt designer, my own ... everything, and give myself a little pat on the back. I just want to be away from the Internet, and read books and write."

Auf der Maur got the idea for Out of Our Minds a few years ago, while learning to reinvent and manage herself as an indie artist after the rock-star adventure she describes as a Cinderella-like rise to fame. Legal battles with her former label were preventing her from releasing her second solo album. (She now owns that material, which morphed into the forthcoming Out of Our Minds album.) "I was so frustrated with not being able to control my own creative actions that I really committed to the whole concept: the comic book and film. I knew I wanted a visual component more elaborate than a music video, but I hadn't yet met the filmmaker. It was like, 'If only I could make the movie version ...' "

Then, through mutual friends, Auf der Maur saw a rough cut of Stone's first feature, Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America. (That movie premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival, and hits select theatres this spring via indie distributor Magnolia/Magnet.) "It's a period piece set in 1007 and scored with black-metal music, so modern and wild, and he made the whole thing himself. Talk about ambitious and epic. Literally, the next day I asked him if he would make a film with me."

In 2006, shooting began in the Vermont woods owned by Stone's family. Filming continued well into the following year. "It was a pretty long process," Auf der Maur says. "The storyline was clear, the structure was there - like, now we're in the beaver dam or witch's hut - but we had to wing certain parts of it because the environment is so primitive and extreme. Like, 'The light is going, the rain is starting,' so a lot of details happened in the moment."

Auf der Maur describes her character as a "lost-in-time secretary slash comic-book hero." Alongside the witch and the woods itself, she is one of the film's feminine entities.

In Auf der Maur's art and her life, such archetypes are as relevant as wise old relatives with whom one shares tea or bourbon, or pumps for advice. (Her previous cat was named Thor - "god of thunder," she notes.) "Ancient archetypes exist all around us," she says, "like Vikings, whom I've always used as a source of inspiration when I tap into my masculine side."

It seems that while urging audiences to lose their minds, Auf der Maur has located hers. "I've always lived in the ephemeral, psychedelic heart world to the point where I wasn't able to have a cat, a stable home or a stable relationship. Now, after this three-year journey, I've learned how to take care of a cat, pay my bills, be my own manager, and be organized, so I can make something out of all these dreams that I have.

"The joke is: I've found a balance by entering a structured world, while I've asked other people to enter a crazy world."

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