Richie James Follin, the director, writer and co-star of the dreamy Crystal Cross, started out as a musician. But soon he was getting filmmaking lessons from the best.
“My music career is really kind of tied to film,” says Follin, whose debut feature opened the Waco Independent Film Festival on Thursday. “When I was just out of high school I put out a record with my band The Willowz and shortly after Michel Gondry asked to use my music for his film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He also made a music video with me for our song ‘I Wonder’ where I was the subject he was directing. You can’t get more up close than that.”
Soon he got to watch other filmmakers working on videos for his songs, including as they shot videos for his songs — including Hiro Murai, who co-directed the video for The Willowz’ “What’s Wrong Is Right.”
Crystal Cross has many brilliant musical moments — as well as comic, dramatic and romantic ones. The film is about two near-strangers who travel across America: A magnetic Rubyrose Hill plays Dotty, a Christian singer in trouble. She latches onto James (Follin) because she reminds him of Jesus. Soon she joins him on a trip to Los Angeles. They connect over music, including in a transcendent moment in a recording booth at Third Man Records.
We asked Follin, who grew up Christian in Southern California, about how music informs his movie, casting his co-star in the most surprising of ways, and looking like Jesus.
Richie James Follin on Crystal Cross
MovieMaker: Can you talk about how your musical background helps you as a filmmaker?
Richie James Follin: Crystal Cross is essentially a musical so it helped a lot on this particular film! In general I think being a musician helps with filmmaking in the recognizing the rhythm of dialogue and editing as well as understanding how music plays in to the emotional resonance of a scene and film as a whole.
MovieMaker: What was your inspiration for Crystal Cross?
Richie James Follin: Touring the United States of America as a musician. Growing up Christian and how that can shape the decisions in your life long after you have grown up. Suicidal Ideation. Love, loss, and grief approached through humor.
As far as films that inspired Crystal Cross…a lot of the road trip films: Badlands, Paper Moon, Little Miss Sunshine, Paris, Texas, Wild at Heart, Two Lane blacktop, My Own Private Idaho, Bonnie and Clyde… The Wizard of Oz. And lots of the odd-couple difficult character films: Buffalo 66, Five Easy Pieces, Bottle Rocket, Midnight Cowboy, Days of being Wild.
And on the faith side: Mean Streets was a big one. The romance films: Before Sunrise, Modern Romance, Harold and Maude, Eternal Sunshine.
The chaos of addiction or mental illness films: Leaving Las Vegas, The Lost Weekend, A Woman Under the Influence.
Music films, obviously: Nashville, A Star is Born, Walk the Line, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Little Shop of Horrors.
And it’s hard to make an indie film without being inspired by Godard, and my favorite of his is Vivre sa vie.
MovieMaker: How did you realize you should be the lead, and how did you find your amazing co-lead Rubyrose Hill?
Richie James Follin: Well, the short answer is I had no money to pay anyone to play my part and there was no more room in the car. A large amount of my favorite films also star the director. You can direct from inside the scene and they inform each other. This is more common in music, I think, where multiple roles are taken on by one musician to achieve a singular vision. That being said, I love how much more collaborative film is. My editor Peter Hagan played a huge part in fine tuning the story with voice over and chapters to get it down to 88 minutes. The original cut is 4 hours.
I shot the first act once before with my girlfriend as the lead, and she was amazing, but everything fell apart with the crew and money so I had to end the shoot and then I got my girlfriend pregnant so she couldn’t do the film anymore. So, I started reaching out to the Manson girls from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to play the part of Dotty, and from meeting with some of them to talk about the film, I realized Crystal Cross could be a bigger production than I originally had in mind.
I was in this kind of punk-DIY-shoot-on-my-iPhone-finish-something-good-or-bad mindset, but these actresses had just come off of this giant two-year long film with Quentin Tarantino. Ultimately, at the last second one of them dropped out right before we were scheduled to shoot, and in a moment of despair I took my daughter to go get ice cream and the employee scooping the ice cream at our local ice cream shop in Los Feliz was Rubyrose Hill.
We connected and I saw on her instagram she had done an impression of the character Ruth from that Netflix TV show Ozark which was what I had in mind for the character Dotty. I also saw she was on the season finale of the HBO TV show Girls. Rubyrose auditioned and we left for the road trip across America about a week later. God intervened in the casting process. When you are lost, go get ice cream.
MovieMaker: I was really impressed with how well you balanced darkness and comedy. Can you talk about striking the film’s balance? There’s a lot of dark stuff, but overall the film goes down so easy.
Richie James Follin: I didn’t know how people would react to that but I have gotten a lot of messages thanking me for dealing with the darker subjects in the way we did. It seems the people who struggle with some of the same issues as the characters in real life really connected with the film.
A big part of the balance is music. If you set a suicide montage to bossa nova it is automatically much less heavy. The second was the voice over. We would crack a joke to lighten the mood during a heavy scene.
MovieMaker: I kept thinking, “He doesn’t look that much like Jesus.” But you can see how she might think that. Did people compare you to Jesus a lot?
Richie James Follin: Yes. Always. If you have long hair and walk around America people will call you Jesus. If you walk next to another man with long hair it doesn’t matter if you look NOTHING alike people will ask you if you are brothers.
MovieMaker: How do you feel about playing Waco?
Richie James Follin: I have been to Texas many times, but I have never been to Waco. It is not what I expected. I love it here. The people, the food, the architecture. The Hippodrome theatre is incredible. There seems to be a big art community here and I could not have been happier to have Crystal Cross be the opening night film. Such an honor! When I arrived the people who put on the fest gave me big hugs. That isn’t always the reception I get at film fests haha. I hope to come back soon.
You can read more of our film festival coverage here.
