Califone's Tim Rutili Talks Directorial Debut

Tim Rutili's family is haunted by superstitions. Once, when his grandfather thought he invited witches home, he chased them out the door with salt. Later, his mother advised Rutili to never take anything home from a funeral, so that death did not follow suit. With these stories in mind, Rutili, singer-songwriter of indie-rock band Califone, realized he had his own tales to tell.

One, as expected by fans of Rutili's work, is an album his band Califone released recently. The other, perhaps less expected, is Rutili's directorial debut, which premiered the weekend after the album came out. Both titled All My Friends Are Funeral Singers, this LP and film mark progress for Rutili, even as a songwriter of 20 years, because while he knew he had a story to tell, he had to learn precisely how to tell it.

When he began writing the album and script last September, Rutili realized he wanted to add more structure to the sounds Califone introduced in 2004's Roots and Crowns. Drones, buzzes and clanging still age the band's electronic distortion, though this time more deliberately. Songs still ramble with a slight jazz-funk turn, but only in short interludes. And with the lead single's chanting chorus, Califone has never been more straightforward. “It became less about making the sound collage and more about making the songs," Rutili told Paste.

Holding up this framework is Rutili's own research: lists of superstitions he found in books, and nearly two dozen interviews with strangers he met. A magician who stationed himself at a Los Angeles golf course advised him to always throw change in a newly-purchased car. A girl named Taylor told him to never smile at a writing spider, or to at least stop before it can count all of his teeth. Rutili later turned some of these voices, including Taylor's, into soundbytes, manipulating specific measures to reveal the broad manner in which fear becomes unfounded. “There's a certain memory loss, a more selective memory or even revisionist history, of basically things people don't let go of," he said. "A lot of them are just pictures.”

Rutili also conceptualized these songs into abstract inner dialogues of the ghosts he would create, ones that would haunt his film's main character, a fortune teller named Zel. He later found his star and setting, in Angela Bettis of Girl, Interrupted fame, and a friend's old beach house, where he once stayed to get bitten by ticks and attacked by a bat. (“They're basically like rats with wings,” he recalled.) 

But Rutil, even as a film-school graduate, had never created a movie of his own. He only knew by sight what he wanted, noting Spain's The Spirit of the Beehive and Japan's Afterlife as influences. “It felt great, and it felt rather frightening. It felt like I was taking a big risk,” he said of starting the film.

So he turned to Bettis and her husband Kevin Ford, who also appeared in and edited the film. With their guidance, Rutili shot all his footage in just 11 days, a feat his filmmaker friends said usually takes two to three years. “They helped me figure out ways to tell a story, in a linear way,” he said. “That was the part I was having a tough time with before... trying to make sense of the footage and make it into a clear story." 

Rutili plans to have a feature-length version ready by next fall, after he finishes editing at Bettis and Ford's Austin home. But for now, Califone will tour with the album and its visual bits and pieces, to provide already an thorough examination of how past precedent haunts people, setting an even higher standard for the band's future.

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