Transcript: Episode 51
51. Five Piece, Part One
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[Short piano piece is played, lasting about 20 seconds]
Today I have special guest, Matthew Roth, the writer and director of the film Five Piece which has won Best Picture for Independent Film Festivals. Five Piece is a film about a metal band that approaches a once in a lifetime shot at success - a contest with a prize of one million dollars and a recording contract. All five players stand to finally escape marginalized lives of subsisting and hoping in Hollywood. But as the hours count down to the contest, they’re gifted but troubled star member drummer, Brandon, becomes stranger and more belligerent. Unknown to the rest of the band, he lives with Dissociative Identity Disorder, and the four other distinct personalities he carries within him will now present the greatest battle that he and his band has ever faced.
Here’s a clip from the trailer.
[Trailer clip plays for approximately one minute]
You can find more information and links to the trailer and to the film website on our blog at systemspeak.org.
Matthew Roth attended Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida to pursue filmmaking, learning all aspects of the craft in under two years. Upon receiving his bachelor’s degree in film, Roth embarked to Los Angeles, California where he worked on various productions. The following year he raised money for his first feature film, The Man Who Collected Food, which went on to win numerous awards at various film festivals and find distribution through media blasters.
Then while seeking financing for other projects, Roth had a chance meeting with writer and director Martin Donovan, whom he worked with for the next few years developing scripts, filming sessions with actors, and learning even more about the art of film. Roth then decided to make his next film, and wrote one with a small budget in mind, Five Piece, with the cast consisting mainly of actors Roth met through Donovan. He shot Five Piece on a shoestring budget and completed it in late 2017.
Dark and subtle, the movie tells the story of Brandon and his band, but what is presented with deep vulnerability and subtle shifts in perception and presentation is one story of Dissociative Identity Disorder.
Here’s writer and director, Matthew Roth.
***Interview Begins***
Interviewer: Bold Font
Interviewee: Standard Font
My name is Matthew Roth and I am the writer and director of the film Five Piece. Five Piece is a film that follows a drummer who is living with Dissociative Identity Disorder and it is to.. he’s in a band and they’re getting ready for this big event where they can win a lot of money and he’s...the drummer is about forty or so years old. He’s been down so many of these roads where he’s come so close to success, but due to him trying to figure out how to live with DID.
It’s not him that’s creating the issues, it’s more the people around him that don’t accept or try to find out more about what’s going on with him. You know? Because he changes with them. And especially when it comes to the music, he has this alter is protective in its own way. It comes off as aggressive, but it’s the cocky….we called it almost like the Buddy Rich of his system. He’s really great. He comes out and he does the work, but he demands so much out of other people around him that it creates issues that people don’t understand around him.
Wow. It’s a really intense piece.
Thank you.
Where did this come from? Tell me the background of how you developed this project?
Well, I always wanted to do a movie on Dissociative Identity Disorder. In high school, for one semester we took a psychology class, and I was absolutely blown away by what we were learning and I wanted to learn more. And unfortunately, it was only that one semester, so it was only a few months, but during that time we watched this video...I think it was...I can’t remember the details about it. But it was about this woman I believe, or it could have been a man, that was living with Dissociative Identity Disorder. And I think at the time it was labeled as Multiple Personality Disorder.
And the funny thing is, I can’t remember any of the details. I just remember this woman sitting in a chair and she’s changing alters. Again, I don’t remember who it was or what it was about, but it always kind of stuck with me. I was always interested in learning more about Dissociative Identity Disorder and at that time too, I was developing an interest in film. I was realizing that I was going to go off to film school and start making films and learning and everything like that.
And I always had this image of this man, as you see in the film, the way the film opens...I always saw this man standing over a sink looking into a mirror trying to see who he really is. And we kind of go through the other alters within him. So that’s how the film starts out and then nothing ever came of the film. I think it would have been a lot darker and a lot more fabricated before I started...this was before I really started learning what it was really like. I think it would have been more in tune with the previous portrayals that we have seen of DID. But obviously, I did my research.
And so the years kind of went by, and I was looking to make a film that was on a smaller scale, and something that I knew would be interesting to me and interesting to others. And there was this one more where I woke up and I saw this man, the man that was standing in the mirror, Robert, who plays Brandon. I saw him go off to band practice, and after that, that was it. I think I took the next six or so months to develop this story to write the script.
At that time too...this all kind of plays together, because it was a really interesting time in my life where I was working with my mentor, Martin Donovan, and the things that I was seeing him do with actors was so fascinating. He has this way of working with actors where they go through their journey’s. They don’t have to say a single word, but you see them go through this whole emotional journey, and once I started researching Dissociative Identity Disorder a little bit more, I was realizing that the two were kind of linked in some strange way. I was like, “Oh, this would be so great to have a character whose changes we all see in the eyes.” You know? Like we see in media where a different alter will come out and the character goes off and changes clothes and everything like that. I wanted it to be completely in the eyes and I believe we achieved it.
When I look back at the film now and see where Robert goes, it’s always sort of interesting to see if he’s...which character he is. We did that a lot too. Because I had met Robert through Martin Donovan and I loved his look. I saw what he could do as an actor, so he would come over and I think for about three or four months, we just worked on A, developing Brandon and who he is. And then as we started to get more comfortable on that, I said, “Let’s talk to the boy. Let’s talk to the mother. Let’s talk to his other alters.” And so we would spend hours just seeing where these characters were going and who they were and how they interacted with the other band members.
There’s a whole bunch of stuff that...there’s scenes that we never even filmed, but in preparation I would invite one of the actors to come over and be like, “Talk to this alter within Brandon.” And through there, we learned even more. We would tweak the script as we went along, but that was the entire process from beginning to end.
They really speak highly of you, and I want to point that out because I know it’s not at all the same, but my husband is in musical theatre, and so he works a lot with actors and directors and producers and different things and different context. And the rapport that you have with your actors is very unique and special and that was a pretty positive project. I really feel like that came through and that’s to your credit.
Oh, thank you. I mean even our producer had said he’d never been on a set like the one that we had where everybody...because after we had wrapped on our final day, everybody was hugging each other and it was a bit emotional. And he just goes, “I’ve never been on a set where the crew and cast are hugging each other at the end of it.” [Chuckles] So I kind of realized then that we had put something special together as far as our work environment. Then obviously you hope that the end product is something that is one, watchable and also something that people will walk away with. They’ll walk away with something after viewing the film. So…
That’s amazing. How did you research DID itself?
I read. I mean, I read books. I watched videos. I went everywhere that I could to kind of learn more about this. And obviously, if you go online, there’s stuff that’s wrong and there’s stuff that’s right. But what I would do is I would take all of the information that would always be repeated or sound similar and go in that direction. And that’s what I was really finding was a lot of people coming out and saying Dissociative Identity Disorder is not like what you’ve seen in films like Split and The United States of Tara and all that.
Once I started finding that common idea about what it’s really like to live with it, and I can’t remember where I read this bit from, but this is the information that I really started to go with. It was when somebody had said...it was either in somebody’s book or maybe it was a video. I can’t remember, but they had said Dissociative Identity Disorder...if somebody switches, it has to take a special person around them to really even realize that they’re different. It’s not obvious and as you see in the film, we went in that direction where it was never obvious. That’s what we were going for, and I was really fascinated in showing what that was like.
And I know you talked to Robert. He had reached out to this group in Seattle, I believe. I think a lot of them were reluctant to talk to him, but this one woman did. But he was able to talk to her and to see what it was like living with Dissociative Identity Disorder too. I was doing my research more for story purposes and script and characters and he was doing it for himself and to get a better understanding of it. And once we kind of came together and realized that we were going to do this very subtle characterization of it, or portrayal of it, that just opened up so many doors and we just knew that...it always felt right to go in that direction.
Well I think that it’s one reason it’s being so well-received in the survivor community. I know you didn’t set your project up to be in contrast to those other projects, but as survivors, we can’t help but notice that and be grateful for it. That there are portrayals that are more reflective of what the actual experience is rather than other projects that feel exploitative or cast us again as killers or whatever. You know?
Mmhmm. Yeah.
And just make it extra crazy and make the stigma worse. As opposed to this where it was so raw or like right now I’m thinking of the scene with the psychic and he’s just sitting there and those tears that come. It’s just so raw and real in the layers of it rather than it being exploited or dramatized.
Yeah. Yeah. It was little things like that too where...I don’t know. There was a part of me that really wanted to make something we hadn’t seen before, especially... I don’t know how much you know about what the process that I...the script writing process and changes of ideas and all that, but originally he did go to a therapist for a lot of the film. But I ended up taking that out and kind of everything that was in that was in that psychic scene. I wanted something kind of where it wasn’t an obvious go to place.
I like the idea of him just driving around at night. He can’t sleep. He’s awoken from this nightmare and he just happens to come upon this psychic shop and just happens to decide to go in. And she’s a legitimate psychic where she can see past the physical realm, and so she obviously...you’ve seen the film...she picks up that he’s not alone.
It’s pretty powerful. And it feels like he’s at the therapist’s office. [Laughs]
Yeah, I mean, that was a real...you know, I really wanted that place and that character to really be like a safezone. We kind of also shoot the movie differently once we get into that spot where it is a very safe and comfortable place and that’s why he’s able to come out and try to find a solution. Because I think at the end of the day, the movie’s about DID, but a big portion of it is of him trying to make it as a musician who has incredible talent. He just hasn’t been able to find that yet. And to have been to help others understand.
Well, and I think that’s part of what feels so real though. Because there’s so much of the experience of DID where there is nowhere safe or I mean, even at home, nightmares in the middle of the night for example. That’s a very real thing and a very valid part of the experience. And wandering around, even though in this film, it was so artistically portrayed as the wandering through the night kind of thing, but you wonder, whether it’s through relationships or literally through the night like that or from one therapist to another or whatever the experience is. There is this wondering that is a piece of it and when you finally find that safe place, whatever that looks like, there is kind of a break down and a falling apart, whether you’re ready for it or not, because you’ve been waiting for it and looking for it. And that’s portrayed really well in that scene.
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.
I think it’s a real piece. I do. How did you prepare Robert for this role? I talked to him about some of the study he did and the conversations with that woman, but how did you present this or explain DID to the actors?
How did I explain? I told them it was… because at this point in time the script hadn’t been finished and I had all this research. I had all this stuff that I had read, videos that I had seen online, and I kind of put it…I just kind of...I forwarded everything that I found to him, the stuff that I knew was to be A, truthful, and B, that would help him develop this character and get us on the same page. I think at first, I don’t think he really understood what the film was going...you know, what we were going to do for this film. He had talked about the United States of Tara, but then he had read the script. Then he started reading some of these books.
I was showing him these videos online. I can’t remember who it was, but there was this woman who was switching, but she wasn’t...and it was in an interview. It was on a network or something, and she was switching. There was nothing dramatically, over the top different, but she would go into these different alters. So, he was on board to do it this way pretty quickly once he understood that it was going to be very subtle and be a little slow - slow in the sense of everything kind of starts revealing itself as we progress through the film.
It was hard to even talk about the movie in the interviews and not give away spoilers, because every scene leads to something else. And everything that happens is another clue to something else.
Yeah. [Laughs]
But that also feels like therapy really. I mean, that’s kind of what happens is, once you finally figure out what’s going on and you get the diagnosis, and you have a good therapist, which all of those things take time to be able to do or figure out. But once those pieces are in place, then it kind of is a bit of following clues to figure out all that’s happened and gone on.
And then the other piece that you said too is also true about...I mean the arc of the story about him being an artist, a musician, and trying to make it is another very real tension. I think it resonated with survivors who are often very gifted and very creative and yet all of this stuff going on in the background can interfere with their functioning. And so that’s a real piece that was portrayed in the film as well, because you can be really good at what you’re doing and you can be really gifted in this area or that area, but when you have DID, it’s also really hard to function sometimes. Or you’re just starting out, when you have that many adverse childhood experiences, to start out behind and try to be able to catch up just to where other people are functioning. All of that’s really hard.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that I had come across that through my research as well. I think I remember somebody saying that they would have a hard time holding down a job. I think their case was really...yeah, I came across that a couple...so that’s when the idea that he’s having a hard time with...because you know, at the end of the day, his band is consisting more of just him. I was finding too that a lot of people, and I know everybody’s different in how they tell others about it, but from what I was learning was, a lot of people living with DID would say, “I don’t tell my family. My family doesn’t know. Only this person knows.”
So that’s why we kind of went in that direction too where in the film only his girlfriend knows. It’s not something he talks about with his band members until that psychic scene and then he tries to go and talk to them about it. He still doesn’t have that… I don’t know if it’s strength, but he doesn’t have that ability to do so. And it’s not so much that. It’s not so much about having the ability to do it, but it’s the people around him, the other band members, they’ve already kind of came up with this judgment of him due to how he’s acted. So he’s...the people around him are not willing to change or listen. It becomes too late.
That’s absolutely a part of the experience, and it’s very difficult to come out so to speak when other people don’t understand or are overwhelmed by the stigma or only looking at the behaviors without understanding context or all of those pieces make it very difficult. And then there’s that safety factor again of who is safe enough. And not just safe enough, but also strong enough to handle this outside of myself. Because when you get to that point, like in that scene with the psychic...once you get to that point and you’re far enough along in the process to feel those things, part of what you’re realizing is the very thing that’s helped you get through this far is now the thing that’s working against you. And that’s part of what feels crazy and is destabilizing and is so scary, because your default mode for safety is now what you’re trying to protect yourself against and to stop doing and you never intended necessarily to do it in the first place, meaning dissociating. And that’s a hard thing. If dissociation has been your safe place to now stay present and also look at the dissociating, which is outside of itself and stay grounded while doing that, that’s hard. All of that’s hard.
Yeah.
And that footage of that scene is just raw and it shows all of those layers.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think right now where we are in the world, I think it is harder even to come out about it, because of movies like Split where it’s shown as something completely not what it is. I was talking to...after we made the film, I found the DID community on Twitter - the DID chat and all of that. And obviously then I’m learning more and more and more about what it’s like to live with it and some of the stuff that I would read or hear about from people living with DID, especially after movies like Split or Glass would come out, they would receive death threats or that people were urging them to turn to God to help save them or heal them or whatever. And if that’s what people are getting...if that’s the audiences, the people of the world, if that’s the way that they’re seeing it be portrayed and they can’t tell that that’s not realistic, that’s all they’re going on. So obviously it doesn't help people living with it to come out and say this is who I am and be accepted, because there’s this false presentation of it due to previous media portrayals.
Right. And really these are not...any mental illness or physical disability or any struggle like that is hard enough anyway, but with DID, that’s specific to trauma survivors. And so movies like that are not just in bad taste or inappropriate or adding to the stigma, they’re actually dangerous. They’re retraumatizing to people who are already so traumatized that they dissociated. And so it’s really in a social justice sense or as a community or as individuals, it’s a big problem and absolutely not okay. And I think seeing the difference between something like that and this film where it’s still actors portraying it because it’s a film, but there’s an art to it. And by art I don’t just mean it’s a beautiful or pleasant piece. There are some parts that are really dark about the film, but that’s valid, and it reflects accurately the experience in a lot of ways even though this is just one person’s perspective of it.
Yeah. I think you came across it...of the film around DID Awareness Day, correct?
Yes.
Yeah, so that day too, I sent it out and I’m still hoping to hear back from...I sent it out to a lot of psychologists, a lot of mental illness institutes, and I hope they get to watch it too, because I know that they...I would love their approval of it. I know that a lot of people in the DID community have already come forward and have talked positively about the film. But I think too, having some of these institutes come out too and start agreeing and watching the film and talking about it and saying that this is a close portrayal of what it’s really like or a close experience, I think that would help too.
Absolutely. Well, even in trying to connect with the communities that way or the professional organizations that way is already a different approach than some of those other things and so I think it does make a big difference and people notice that, whether that’s professionally or clients themselves. They’re aware of who’s actually making that effort and who’s actually presenting this as part of the community as opposed to just exploiting it.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. I always looked at this project from a place of love and very careful consideration. It was never any attention at all to exploit. I think after people now have seen it, I can definitely say that I achieved that. For me it was just a place of curiosity and fascination. The more I read about it and the more I learned about it, I just went with it.
What are you loving about it? It’s already getting Best Picture at the festivals. What do you just love about it overall - DID or not?
For me it’s kind of going back to what I mentioned earlier about working with my mentor, Martin. It’s just that style of acting and that way of having an internal journey and the fact that we have it in this film where we see the character of Brandon, especially in the psychic scene, where he just shifts from one alter to the next. I love that we were able to capture that in the film. I mean, as far as working with the actors and everything like that, and our long takes where we show these characters moving, just walking or going from point a to point b, where there’s not necessarily anything happening from an obvious standpoint. But even with that, it connects to the character of Brandon where he’s always moving somewhere. Whether it’s through one of his alters or another or just himself in general, just through Brandon, I love how interconnected that all comes across.
Because we had a lot of thought and a lot of care into making this film and to see...I love being surprised by different things I didn’t maybe think about at first, but watching it later on or watching it in another showing of it or whatever, and seeing little surprises here and there is...and hearing what people think, their own takes. I know a couple of people have talked about the end of the film, when he walks into the bar and everything like that.
But one thing that I really loved when I was watching the film at one of the festivals we played at was I almost realized there’s that musician, Sid, who kind of travels throughout the film and she meets certain characters along the way and she’s there. It was funny, because I kind of realized that maybe she was his mom. She was his mother, Brandon’s mother, you know, once she passed away, and then he suffered that abuse, but she was there. She was still there in a different form almost, because I don’t think we talked about this in the film, but when Robert and I were discussing the character of Brandon, we talked about...he came from a very musical background.
His mother and father were both well regarded musicians. They knew how to play. They’d have parties at their house where people would come over and everything was fine, but once his mother passed away, his father goes in this dark depression. His whole childhood is disrupted by that and to see as a possible character, the mother is there, still present. Because we never see her face. She’s always in shadow.
I love that about the film too. I love it when you make a film and you yourself as the creator, you find these little surprises around that maybe you didn’t consciously create, but they were always kind of there.
What did you think when you first won Best Picture?
We were really happy. That was our first festival that we played at in Tennessee. And it felt like we were on a good start, obviously. It was the first time that an audience...a public audience had seen the film. And like I said, it was our first festival. So when we won that, it’s always a good boost to have your work recognized and it gets you excited to show more and more people. I think that the hardest thing about creating a film is you always kind of wonder are people going to get what we were going for in this? And for a while, we were getting a lot of...again, the film had gone through a couple different edits. So the edit that you saw was the third and final edit, but up until that point, there were a handful of people that we were showing the film to just to hear their thoughts and to see and to ask questions or whatever that were just like, “I don’t get it. I don’t get the film.” And for me, it didn’t really upset me. I just didn’t know how to take it.
You know, because I’m the creator of it? So I’ve written it. I’ve directed it and everything like that. So I get it. I understand it. I can watch it and be like… you know, I perfectly understand what we’re doing and what we’re showing. But then you start to wonder like, should we have explained it a little more?
That’s the big reason I took out the therapist scene too, because it was just explaining everything. I never wanted to do it, I wanted to show. And the way that you’ve seen it depicted in the film is that we never really explain anything, and it is one of those things that I can’t remember somebody had said too that has watched the film that had got it and appreciated it and thought highly of it, they had said, “It’s like a film where you can’t be doing something else while watching the film. You have to be paying attention, because if you don’t you’re going to miss everything.”
Right.
We didn’t put a big ringing bell in there every time he changes or anything. And if you’re not watching it, you’re going to miss what he’s going through and again going back to the idea of an internal journey, you’ll miss it. And so once we had played at a festival and played it for a public audience, there were people that came up afterwards that were just so enthusiastic about it. They loved everything from the camera work to the acting. And so you’re just like okay, so people get it. [Laughs] At first, when the majority of the responses you’re getting are, “I don’t understand it”, there’s a little panic there. And you’re like well, somebody has to. And then once we played that festival and won the award and again, with the audience coming up to us afterwards and just really enthusiastic about it, I was like okay, so people get it. And that’s what’s obviously most important.
Thank you for that. Thank you for your contribution. Thank you for your respect to the community and I know that you wanted to share the film. But as someone as part of the DID community and also a clinician, I wanted to thank you for doing it so respectfully and presenting it so well, because I think it makes a difference for people. And as I told Robert, there’s healing in that to see art reflected. Art does not have to be exactly my story, but it’s an expression of the feelings of my story. And your film does that, and it does it beautifully.
Oh good, well thank you. And thank you for being open to watching it. We received some feedback of people living with DID that just didn’t want to watch it at all or give it a chance due to previous depictions of it. So, I thank you for giving us a chance.
Sure. Is there anything else that you want to say before we wrap up?
You know, when people watch it, like I had just said, please give it the time and patience to sit down and watch it all the way through. Don’t busy yourself with other things while watching it. Definitely when you put the film on to get ready to have to pay attention, because there’s so many little things. And this is even said by you, that there’s so many different layers that you’ll miss if you don’t pay attention. So...
Yeah. Well, thank you for talking to me today.
Oh yeah, thank you for having me.
[Break]
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