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Director Takes Viewers 'Down in the Valley'
Evan Rachel Wood, Edward Norton, 'Down in the Valley'
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What began as autobiography became a modern Western
"People were saying, 'Oh, "Dahmer" was so great, it was such a different approach to the serial killer film' and all of that and then I'd get these scripts that were the ones it was supposed to be different from," says Jacobson.
Rather than making a bigger budget to do a "Saw" knock-off or a remake of an '80s slasher film, Jacobson returned to a script he'd been plotting while "Dahmer" was still in rewrites, a genre-bending drama called "Down in the Valley."
"Everyone just thought ['Dahmer'] was too out-there to make a movie of it, so in some ways I was thinking of how can certain themes of this kind of world and this kind of character be brought into a different kind of movie that would have less stigmas attached to it," Jacobson recalls.
The film is the story of Tobe (Evan Rachel Wood), a restless teen in the San Fernando Valley. Her life is shaken up when she falls for Harlan (Edward Norton), a yearning and romantic cowboy who seems to have stepped out of another time. It was a script that developed out of Jacobson's desire to recount his own experiences growing up by the freeways that crisscross Los Angeles, but somewhere in the process, something changed.
"It was strange because I was writing about my youth, but I happened to just be caught up in the whole Western genre, both books and movies, and somehow as I was writing my childhood and reading and watching these Westerns, they started to blend together in some way," Jacobson says. "It felt arbitrary at the time, in a way, but in retrospect, of course, it makes a lot of sense to me -- the connection between the two."
He adds, "The thing about the Valley, which is funny, is you realize that it is the West, it's just paved over."
Thus, while the characters of Tobe and her younger brother Lonnie (Rory Culkin) are loosely based on Jacobson and his own sister, it's the character of Harlan, an increasingly less-than-stable force (hence the thematic ties to "Dahmer"), who pushes the story forward.
"To me, as you go through the movie, Harlan is going sort of deeper and deeper into this cowboy dementia and I think you're carried into his Western fantasy world in a way," Jacobson says. "I always liked the idea of how crazy people sort of carry all of us into their world."
Although it may not be as obviously controversial as "Dahmer," Jacobson knows that "Down in the Valley" -- with its blending of film conventions and its wild shifts of tone -- is still a tough sell.
"Before you start making a movie, most people will tell you, 'Oh, you can't make it' or they give you all these reasons why it's no good and then you make it and then suddenly you find there's this whole audience for it and people are interested in it."
"Down in the Valley" is moving slowly into limited release, opening in Los Angeles on Friday, May 12.
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