Having screened his boundary-pushing documentary work at Sundance, Telluride, and the Berlinale, Robert Greene is now at Venice where his newest work premieres at Orizzonti. Too Much Sugar follows a working-class father as he comes to terms with his former incarceration, family trauma and failures while trying to be a better father. At the Palazzo del Cinema at the Lido, the director sat down with Lidanoir to talk about the lower-class background he shares with his protagonist, autofiction as a means of self-realisation, and the multiple meanings of its title.
Lida Bach: Your film has the feeling of participating in a rock song with its own rhythm. Did you have something like that in mind?
Robert Greene: I think it’s just the energy of it. That all comes from Ryan, our main protagonist. His energy is so aggressive and forward. We were trying to capture what he brings to the table in the way we shot it, the way we edited it, and bring everything to life.I edited the film, so any musical comparisons are always good.
Lida Bach: Following the question about music: The score is very original and composed by your son?
Robert Greene: That’s such a special question because this film is about fatherhood. Yes, the score is by my son. He’s 17 now and incredibly talented. We made the film intentionally with very few resources, so not only is he talented, but also cheap. I could say, “Hey, would you like to do the score for the film for just a little bit?” And he said, “Absolutely, yes.” His name is Wilkie Davis Greene. We knew exactly what we wanted to do with the score, and we worked on it together in my basement.
Lida Bach: Coming from a working-class background yourself, you center the perspective of working-class people in a world where these perspectives are often erased or reframed through a middle-class view. What was important to you when bringing these experiences to the forefront?
Robert Greene: The collaborative aspect was the most important thing. That’s what Ryan and I originally connected over. We come from very similar spaces. Our mothers were very strong but hardworking, and they also made tons of mistakes. We both had either terrible fathers or no fathers. When we started talking, that was what connected us.
He said, “I want to make a movie called Too Much Sugar.” And I said, “I want to make a movie with you.” I’ve made several films that are about collaboration, and I said, “This is what it has to be. It can’t be my film. It has to be our film.” Ultimately, it’s co-created by the whole family—all the families. Bringing in the camera gave us the chance to say things that we wouldn’t have said otherwise.
There’s a moment where Ryan is talking to his second-oldest son, Gavin, about how much money it would cost him per month to have custody. I remember thinking, if my father, who left when I was a baby, had just said to me, “This is what it would have cost me of my salary to take care of you,” I would not have forgiven him, but I would at least have thought, “Yeah, that explains something.”
Gavin later said to me, “It’s very weird. It’s our crazy family and all this stuff, but not every family gets a camera introduced so that we have conversations we weren’t going to have otherwise.” I’ve made films about my own family, so I know what he’s talking about.
Lida Bach: In the film, you said that you hated him because he was noisy and obnoxious. And then you changed your perspective.
Robert Greene: When someone is obnoxious toward your kid—when he’s yelling at the referees during a basketball game and your son is playing on the opposite team—you hate the guy. But when they’re on the same team, you’re like, “I love him. He’s fighting for the right cause.”
I was a very loud parent myself, but I was never as loud as Ryan. So I would always be the second-loudest parent at the game, which is another reason to love someone.
Lida Bach: Throughout many of your films there is always a process in which the subjects are psychologically or existentially processing something about themselves. Do you go through a similar journey with them?
Robert Greene: Yeah. I think one of the things you learn from a working-class background is that you have to perform. When I was a kid, I moved constantly. By the time I reached seventh grade, I had lived in about 15 different places. When you move around that much, you learn that you are a different person in every single one of those places. Your persona, and the person that you are and become, can change very quickly.
Through making these films, I realized that I had done the same thing, and that’s why I was obsessed with it. When you’re working class, you’re told that your dreams don’t matter. When you make films about people’s realities, but then watch them perform what they want to be, what they hope to be, what they dream to be, you realize, “Oh, that’s what we all do.” That’s how you survive: by taking on different skin when you need to. So I’ve been changed by my films.
Now I can be with Ryan and AccRite, two men who have made plenty of mistakes and have suffered because of things that have happened to them and because of problems they’ve caused. I can say to them, “Guys, I’ve been through this already.” The goal is to be able to take responsibility for the mistakes you’ve made. The goal is to look at your family and give up power rather than collect power.
The films become about my relationships with the protagonists and their families. This film is certainly an extension of that, and maybe the most honest and realist version of it.
Lida Bach: Is that a special skill, or is it something like being a psychologist?
Robert Greene: I think I start from the premise, it’s a little bit of a cliché, that I have to love the people we’re filming with.
I lead with being in love with people, and that breaks down a lot of barriers because they see that I’m enthusiastic about them, and they can be enthusiastic in return. I teach documentary to students, and I tell them, “The one thing I can’t teach you how to do is get trust.” Everybody has to have their own method. My method is to talk a lot. I say, “This is all I’m thinking about. This is everything I’m dreaming about myself. Lay it all on the table.” I just try to be open about how strange it all is.
Lida Bach: Were there moments that were too difficult, where you felt, “Okay, we cannot put this on the screen”? Or did you ever have to stop because it became too much?
Robert Greene: Never, actually. Although you expect it to get there.
Lida Bach: And when they saw the film?
Robert Greene: They saw a rough cut of the film in different groups. AccRite and Ryan saw it together, Gavin by himself, and Ashley and Avian together. We had multiple screenings so they could have individual responses, in case someone wanted to say something they didn’t want to say in front of another person.
They knew they would have a chance to give feedback. The kids are a little mortified sometimes by how they come off, but of course they are. We just try to reassure them: “No, it’s not cringey. You’re fine.”
My philosophy is always that you can leave. Every scene can end. The movie can end at any time. If this suddenly becomes a bad thing, we have to stop, because there’s no reason to continue. That’s why Ryan, at the end, feels good about what has happened in his life.
Lida Bach: What’s your relationship with the mockumentary genre?
Robert Greene: I don’t really have one. I helped produce and edit The Featherweight, which is Robert Kolodny’s film from a couple of years ago. It’s a fake documentary, which is different from a mockumentary. Mockumentaries can be funny. Some of the funniest movies ever made are fake documentaries or mockumentaries. Documentary as a form is so elastic and useful that you can also use it for comedy.
But I don’t think our work has anything to do with that. We’re using tools to get at the mixture of reality and fantasy that’s at the core of every person. That’s not the same thing as pretending.
Lida Bach: How difficult is it to survive as a documentary filmmaker?
Robert Greene: It’s impossible, I would say.
You make films for cheap if you can. This film comes out of frustration with the documentary industry. I sold my film Procession to Netflix. Then I thought, “Oh, my next film will have a big budget or something.” It started to happen, and then it fell apart.
So Too Much Sugar partly comes out of frustration with the inability to take risks, the inability to try new things, and the inability to make films about real people. A lot of what gets funded in the US is celebrity-driven documentary. There are many great celebrity documentaries, but the industry is heavily focused on them. Part of the way we made this film, as low-budget and focused as possible, was a way to show that you could still do this. But surviving is difficult. Most documentary filmmakers have multiple jobs. I have kids in college, so I teach, I make multiple films, I edit, I shoot.
Lida Bach: You expand the documentary form and blend in fantasy as well.
Robert Greene: There’s fiction in the movie as well. I don’t care about blurring the boundaries between fiction and documentary. I think that’s boring—not because the idea itself is boring, but because every film blurs those boundaries. To me, it’s also about being more honest about what documentary really is. It’s fucking weird to bring a camera into people’s lives and say, “Tell me how you feel.” What does that mean? What do you want me to talk about? The worst day of my life? My darkest feelings?
If you’re not making that process active and intentional, I think you’re doing bad things. That’s where it starts for me: this idea of intentionality.
Lida Bach: You have these bits of genre films within the documentary. Did you always know how much to put in, or was there a version with much more of that?
Robert Greene: Genre is collective fantasy in a way. When you speak of genre, you’re talking about something that everyone has imagined. If you say, “I want to make a horror movie,” you imagine what that is, and you know that other people can imagine it too. So it’s a way of connecting fantasy to fantasy.
There was certainly a longer version of the movie in general, but there wasn’t a version where half the film was made up of those elements. All of it was about the idea that movies are fantasies, movies are dreams. When you’re a working-class person, you’re told your dreams don’t matter. We’re trying to counteract that.
Lida Bach: What do the words Too Much Sugar mean to you personally?
Robert Greene: When Ryan said, “I want to make a movie called Too Much Sugar,” I was like, “That’s the best title I’ve ever heard.” The reason is that it means so much.
I’m literally drinking a Coca-Cola. I’m addicted to this corporate entity, and I can’t seem to have enough of it. I think that’s brilliant because it describes Ryan perfectly, but the metaphorical possibilities are endless. Ryan says in the movie, “Sugar is life force.” But it could also be too much. To me, there’s too much of a lot of things. Sugar is just the thing we love the most that can also be too much. Maybe the sugar for Ryan is the thing he thinks he needs to be. And that’s what causes a situation where he has six kids from five different women.
So maybe that was the sugar that he needed to settle down from a little bit. But no one who tells you to stop drinking soda or eating candy tells you that you shouldn’t have a birthday cake on your birthday, because it brings people together. Ryan’s sweetness is his best quality. He’s like a lot of men. I think you see that performance of masculinity in the film. I grew up in a similar milieu, but I didn’t have the instinct to fight that he has. My instinct was to talk my way out of things. His instinct was to punch someone in the mouth.
When you’re that kind of guy, you’re told your feelings are a problem. In prison, he’s literally told, “Don’t have feelings,” because if you have feelings, you’re not going to make it through. So he’s a man who has spent 25 years of his life trying to get back to his feelings, trying to get back to emotion. He’s now able, in his 40s, to get back to that boy. And that’s inspiring.
Lida Bach: Did you watch the film with the family, and how were their reactions?
Robert Greene: They loved it. They saw it in a small, safe room, and now they’re going to be here for the premiere in front of thousands of people. So it’s going to be an intense experience. But so far, they’ve loved the film. It honors them while also acknowledging how fucked up things can be. I think they see the truth, and that’s what you want.
Lida Bach: Are you still in contact, and will you keep in contact with the family? Beyond the film?
Robert Greene: Yeah. I think if you make a film about someone, it’s a lifetime contract. Maybe not for everybody, but to me it is. I grew up with a very destabilized family in a lot of ways, and an expanding family. My parents kept having more children, and the family expanded infinitely.
So I have this philosophy that everyone can be family. For this film and beyond, I think you have to think of it that way. You don’t have to do anything—I choose to think of it that way because, to me, that’s exciting.
It creates a stable base for us all to be okay; for me to be okay, for them to be okay.
Lida Bach: Thank you for the interview!