Moviemaker Interview: Greg Chwerchak
Greg Chwerchak, the director and co-writer of Greetings from the Shore, the 2008 Fargo Film Festival’s award for Best Feature Narrative, has created music videos for an impressive list of pop and hip-hop royalty, including Destiny’s Child, Alicia Keys, Kelly Clarkson, Eminem, Ludacris, and Ice Cube. Additionally, his two short films, The Hook-Armed Man and The Quarry, have been screened at more than one hundred film festivals around the world. The Quarry was included in the 2002 Fargo Film Festival, and we are excited to see more of Greg’s work.
Now, along with producer and co-writer Gabrielle Berberich, whose own personal experiences form the core of Greetings from the Shore, Greg has made the leap to features, and is hoping to continue his already successful filmmaking career.
Talk a bit about how Greetings from the Shore came together as a project for you.
Greetings from the Shore grew out of Gabrielle’s summers at the Jersey Shore, so I suppose you could say the project has been coming together for years. A lot of the characters come from colorful people in Gabrielle’s life. Plots developed from events that shaped her summers at the Shore. And the filming location is the real Jersey island where the events happened to her. But on a practical level, the project came together when Gabrielle and I took a trip to that island in New Jersey - Lavallette.
I’d heard her reminisce about it for years, and I guess I assumed it was inflated with a little exaggeration and Jersey Girl pride. But when we got there and I walked out to the ocean, I instantly understood what she’d been talking about. New Jersey isn’t at all like how it’s represented in TV shows and movies. The Shore is beautiful. Soon after that, I remember talking to the core team of Gabrielle, [co-producer] Greg Schaefer, and [executive producer] Rob Schulman. We decided that first and foremost, we wanted to show audiences the real New Jersey and that the Jersey Shore would essentially be the first character. That’s when the story began to crystalize and the project quickly came together.
You have made many short films and music videos in the past. What are the biggest differences and considerations when completing a feature?
The biggest difference between a music video and a feature is that with a feature you don’t hear the same song blasted 1000 times a day! Seriously, the answer is almost as obvious as you’d think: a feature takes longer. But what’s surprising to me is that the temporal correlation isn’t linear; it’s exponential. And while much of physical production is identical - lights, lenses, and such - the creativity that informs those decisions seems vastly different.
With music videos, you’re trying to grab iconic images. With a short, you’re often trying to express one clever idea. But with a feature, iconic images and clever ideas mean very little if you don’t have a good story, good characters, and great performances. As a director, creatively maintaining those elements for two hours with a consistent tone is very different than catching someone’s eye for a three-and-a-half minute music video. I used to joke that music videos use sprinters’ muscles and features use marathoners’ muscles; it’s all “running” but they’re vastly different races.
What was your favorite scene or moment to direct in Greetings from the Shore?
There were tons of amazing moments for me. I’m so proud of the cast and crew; they blew me away. But one scene is frozen in time for me: Jenny, the young lead character, has just checked into a room by herself at a rundown summer rental. It’s basically a storage closet under a stairwell; no amenities, no comforts, she’s all alone. Jenny begins to unpack, and she pulls out a photo of her and her dad, who we’ve just learned has passed away. She stares at the picture, and her eyes fill with tears. I remember watching the first take on the monitor and seeing the father’s photo in the actress’s hand.
I hadn’t seen the photo before in rehearsals, and the emotion of it suddenly hit me because it’s a real photo of Gabrielle and her dad. It was a surreal moment, as if in all the chaos of making a movie I’d forgotten what the movie was actually about. But seeing Gabrielle’s dad, Leo - who I was lucky enough to know and was an incredible guy - jarred me. The scene reminded me of his loss, and I was overcome with sadness; it was like I was watching the real Gabrielle grieve all over again. Now, however, when I see the scene at a festival, I’m at peace. It’s a strange consolation, but I’m so happy to see Leo again, share him with audiences, and know that we’ll have him in our movie forever.
Can you tell us anything about your next project or upcoming projects?
The next project is a film called Lucky Mucker. It’s a darkly-comic twist on Romeo & Juliet set in the slate mines and Oktoberfests of Western New Jersey. Without giving away the twist, the story is steeped in Jersey folklore and urban legends; tonally it’s dark and funny, in the vein of films by the Coen Brothers or Wes Anderson. As with Greetings from the Shore, the location is virtually a main character. Where Greetings from the Shore taps into the nautical history and beautiful scenery of the Jersey Shore, Lucky Mucker plays out on the colorful stage of Western Jersey - autumn leaves, polka bands, sausage factories, etc. The storytelling is similar to Greetings from the Shore, but Lucky Mucker is more of an over-the-top comic romp.