I first met Jef Taylor earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. He is a man who chooses his words carefully, but still says what he means. We shared a similar dry sense of humor, as well as the ability to carry on a joke for as long as possible.
His film, After You Left, was selected as part of the shorts competition for Sundance. The film — told entirely through loosely-scripted improvised scenes — is a semi-biographical account of a man going through a break-up, and yet it still contained scenes in which Taylor’s sense of dry and observational humor is put on display.
Other scenes, however, made me feel uneasy. It was as though I was in a dark corner of the room, witnessing a man’s heartbreak and confusion when he thought he was alone. But I couldn’t look away, and its realness is the film’s most enduring quality. It left me wondering, “Was that documentary or fiction?”
Taylor, now based in Brooklyn, New York, is originally from a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. He was kind enough to chat with me while visiting family and friends back home in the Midwest.
Jef Taylor: It’s nice to be home.
Benjamin Panama: You have a full house?
JT: Yes. My sister is in town from San Francisco with her kid — my nephew — and my mom, dad and uncle came in from Colorado. And we have other relatives in town that come over. It’s hectic.
BP: How long have you been back in Ohio?
JT: About a week. It’s been a good stay so far. It’s quiet here in the suburbs.
BP: What’s it like being back in the town you grew up in?
JT: I come back about two to three times a year. I still have some friends in town, and it’s always good to see them. Cleveland isn’t doing well as a city; the economic crisis has really hurt it in a profound way. I had to leave because there was no creative work in the city. So many college graduates flee the city due to this lack of work. It used to be a blue-collar town, but all of the steel mills here went overseas.
BP: So when you do go back to Cleveland, are you hailed as the hometown hero?
JT: Uh, no. We’re not really a small town — we’re a suburb. There’s no downtown Westlake. I’m not really sure anyone I knew in high school is aware of what I’ve been up to since. But to answer your question: yes, I’m the hometown hero. They throw a parade for me every day. I have 12 keys to the city, and I demanded a key ring for them. I asked them, “What am I supposed do with all these keys?”
BP: Have they announced “Jef Taylor Day” yet?
JT: No, but I have four streets. It’s really confusing driving around. You’ll tell someone, “Take Jef Street,” and they don’t know which one to take. Actually, just one town over is the place where Patricia Heaton — of “Everybody Loves Raymond” fame — is from. I believe Trent Reznor grew up in the Cleveland area as well.
BP: Do you three hang out a lot then?
JT: Yes. Patricia, Trent and I are going to party later on tonight. I don’t know either of them, but I actually did work with Patricia Heaton’s sister at Houlihan’s years ago.
BP: Houlihan’s?
JT: It’s a chain restaurant like Applebee’s. I don’t know if they have that in L.A. or not.
BP: It’s a very suburban thing to have chain restaurants everywhere. How has the transition been going from the biggest city in the U.S. to a suburb in Cleveland? Do you feel trapped, or long to escape?
JT: It hasn’t been too bad. I’ve lived in New York only for about three years now. Before that I was in Savannah, Georgia — a more low-key city — and before that I was in Seoul, South Korea. It’s nice to get out of New York sometimes — it’s loud and it gets hectic. I do love that there are always people everywhere and things to do.
Coming back to the suburbs, you don’t see people that often. Everybody is in their homes, and they get in their cars to drive where they’re going. They park as close as they possibly can to where they’re going and walk those 10 steps to the door — which is fine; it’s just a different scene. I lived here a combined 26 years, so I’m pretty used to it. Sometimes I get work done here that I would never get done in New York where I’m surrounded by my own stuff all of the time. Being back in the house you grew up in is also fairly loaded emotionally, so that brings up a lot of shit too.
BP: You grew up in a little suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. What exactly piqued your interest in film and inspired you to become a filmmaker?
JT: My mom always tells the story of how I was a musical child. According to her, I was the only kindergarten student who could keep the rhythm to the songs my teacher played for us. When I was a bit older I went to a children’s theatre show at a community theatre near here, and for some reason the whole thing enthralled me. I pestered my mother and told her this was something I wanted to do, and I eventually took classes there and ended up performing in shows from third grade all the way through high school. I wouldn’t be doing what I do today if it weren’t for that. It was a very formative experience being exposed to that whole culture of misfits and outcasts who liked to dress up in animal costumes and perform.
I had never been exposed to much theater before that; I never knew that the arts were something you could do. Theatre isn’t exposed too much in the suburbs; sports seem to be rammed down people’s throats instead.
BP: Where did you go from there in high school and afterward?
JT: I was in show choir in high school, and no — it’s nothing like “Glee,” except for the fact that we sang songs and danced. Theatre and show choir were basically my life in high school; I was going to class during the day then to rehearsals at night. I didn’t want to major in theatre in college; I knew that it would be a difficult road to walk. Plus, I wasn’t that great of an actor, so I ended up studying English at Ohio University. People told me I could do anything with an English degree, which wasn’t true at all. What you can do with an English degree is teach English in South Korea, which I did for a couple years.
BP: When did you first pick up a camera and start to seriously shoot film?
JT: When I was young my father would always record my sister and I singing and talking on a tape recorder. When I got to high school, I would constantly carry a tape recorder around and interview random people asking them all sorts of questions. The decision to get into film came when I was in Korea. A lot of people who go there to teach English never leave, but I knew I needed to go. I was filming a lot in Korea, and taught myself to edit; I was always the guy who filmed at parties. I decided to go to film school soon afterward.
BP: Overall, where do you find inspiration for your films? Are your films more personal, or do you feel you are telling other people’s stories?
JT: It depends on which movie you are talking about. My thesis film, COVERAGE, is about a guy who fetishizes the 9/11 tragedy. So that, obviously, is not based on real life. I was always fascinated that 9/11 is the most documented event in history, and when I had to come up with ideas for short films in my screenwriting class I threw it in just so I could have the minimum ten ideas. My teacher was like, “No, no, no,” until I mentioned the 9/11 one; then he was like, “Now there’s an interesting idea!”
After You Left was the kind of film I’d always wanted to make: a deeply personal film with improvised performances. I like films that feel painfully real, and I find that improvisation generally captures this better than fully scripted dialogue.
We originally made the film without any real consideration of an audience outside of ourselves; it was almost an experiment to try and capture and deal with what we (Michael Tisdale and I) were going through at the time. The fact that so many people have connected with it has made me realize emotional truth goes a long way, particularly when dealing with something everyone has gone through. It’s also nice to have taken this shitty period of my life and turned it into a film that got into Sundance. Sometimes life works out perfectly.
BP: Are you working on any upcoming projects?
JT: I’ve signed on to edit a documentary and a few short films, and am working on a script in the same vein as After You Left, but feature-length. It’s been difficult writing, mostly because the short was largely improvised; but producers and investors generally want to see a script. It’s hard to structure and write out something beforehand knowing most of it will probably be improvised. I do need to finish it, as I’m planning on submitting it to the Sundance Labs in September.
Film Still: After You Left
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For more information visit OneFJef.com. Photography by Will Stark.
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